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Published: August 6th 2006
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in the morning i started to the railway station because i had to buy some tickets for the next day. i was kind of nervous since i did not know how well the communication would work and prepared as well as i could: phrase book, approximate time table for the trains and something to write and to draw. i went straight to the soft seat (1st class) ticket counter. just didn't dare to upset 20 chinese behind me because i was too stupid to speak there language. it went easier than i'd thougth. the woman behind the counter knew some words english and there was a monitor, wher i could see if everything went right. my wishes weren't too easy: i needed two tickets to sunzhou, one back to shanghai for felix and one furthe to nanjing for me. but after not even 10 minutes i had my tickets.
went to a cafe afterwards. i'm a little bit emberrased to say, that it was pretty european, but it was just to tempting to have a decend coffee in a quiet atmosphere.
at noon i visited the urban planning exhibition hall, a recommendation by marc (my host). well, aehm... in the beginning
i thought that marc has probably quite a wrong idea of my personality. i mean it was not bad, though a bit boring. pictures of places in shanghai i did not know form long ago, a small model of an area of shanghai how it should look in 2010 (reminded me pretty much of this area how it looks now) and similar stuff. but when i cam to the third floor and saw the huge model of shanghai, i was pretty much impressed. this one really looks good. another nice thing is the "virtual world": a cylindric room with a screen all over the wall and beamers in the center, so that they can project a film all around you. they showed an animation of shanghai. you kind of flew through some important places of shanghai. from the childish, excited voice of the comments i could guess that there was pretty much propaganda. in the end a lot of expo stuff came, but it was pretty much fun anyway.
then felix called to ask if i'd like to go to the shanghai museum. of course i liked. i walked over to the museum and had to wait more than an
hour since felix had some problems getting there. that didn't bother me, i was tired and therefore was thankfull for this break. when felix finally showed up we had 1 1/2 hours before the museum closed. we saw some bronze and ceramic pots, clothes, calligraphy and paintings. of course all pretty old stuff. not bad.
when we went out felix proposed me to go to the yu'an garden because he was ther the day before and liked it. he wanted to show me how to get there when three chinese showed up, one girlm two boys. "where are you from?" they asked. ok, good old trick. "austria and usa" we answered. they were quite good. everything seemed to be very natural. they said they were also students, now on a trip to shanghai, came to late for the shanghai museum. then they started talking about a "tea festival" somewhere close to here. so now we knew where they wanted us to bring. we told them that we already had plans and after a while they gave up and started searching for some other victims. when you know their tricks it can be quite funny playing with them a little bit
though it really sucks that they force you to block every contact to locals.
felix and i seperated and i went towards the yu'an garden. i had to walk through old town. there were streets i really liked. a lot of small places to buy something, let repair somethimg or just to cut your hair sitting on the street. then began a pretty touristic part. houses that are looking like you would imagine how chinese houses should look like. actually it was mistly just the fassade. when you looked into the small side streets you saw again the small, dirty and shabby houses of the people who lived there. i walked around a in disgust a while searching for the garden. but i was tired and gave up soon. i walked into a nearby park, sat down somewhere to watch some kids playing. i saw the sun set and enjoyed once more the thought of being in china.
in the evening i wanted to go out for eating with claire and marc. unfortunately claire was ill and so i went out with marc alone. we went to a small chinese (what else? haha!) place, which he said was his favorite.
it was just around the corner, and indeed was very good. i could not have managed to eat there alone since the menu was only in chinese. we had three great dishes, some rice and two big bottles of beer. we paid 30 RMB for that. that's, haha, 3 euros. i think i like china!
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