now that i'm here

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first, for all of you who don't know: mid of june i fished my studies and therefore i decide to do a little travelling befor beginning to work or start my phd. after a while i decided for china and finally i had to wait for the wedding of my sister on 29th of july before i could go. so on 1st of august i flew away from vienna to shanghai, where i landed today 9 o'clock local time. the flight was pretty much okay. nothing special happened and when i finally arrived on shanghai puong airport i realized that i had only slept 1 hour because the time shift had taken all my usual sleeping period. however, one of the first things i saw where these things even more stupid then automatic stairs, that's automatic sidewalks (i actually made a photo but don't have it with me now). i know that's not very special, but i thought it's funny.
then it took quite a while to get out of the airport. there was a long queue where they checked the passport and these forms we had to fill out. when i came to the luggage, i was kind of surprised to find my backpack where it should be, but i took it anyway. i changed some money and went outside. the moisture heat of shanghai hit me immediately. no wonder since i was more or less freezing the last 10 hours in the plane.
then i got onto bus number five, where i got one of the last places, just behind the driver. i remember thinking "what a fucking big city" several times while driving into shanghai. i mean, i of course knew that before but i guess experiencing is very different to knowing. just like i still think sometimes "wow, that's a lot of chinese people here" or "huh! i'm the only european in this restaurant/stree/internet cafe".
the bus took me to the railway station. in the lonely planet map it looked quite easy to get from there to my hosts. haha! yeah, now that i know the way, it's indeed easy.
yet, i still arrived there at around 12. they're really a nice couple and helped me a lot. the guy turned out to be suisse. talking german here, kind of sucks but it makes life easier again.
after i took a shower went to people's square by bus. the way there was really nice. i saw the kindness of the people here (a woman showed me that i have to pay only one instead of two RMB) and the harmonic way of honking and driving and sliding through the traffic, which is a complete mess without causing an accident. then i found out that people's square actually is not interesting at all. so i went to nanjing donglu. i knew from before that it's supposed to be a touristic street (you even can find some not-chinese people there) but finally it was really annoying. all the time people start talk to you, that wouldn't be too bad, but it always turns out that they want to talk you into spending some money for something you really don"t want. that sucks. the only way tou can walk there is to say constantly "no".
i then kept on walking around to some other places and finally i thought i'm just going to the bund, walk it down and go home again. i was tired. then i met a guy from california who also wanted to go to the bund and so we went there together. it was quite nice and finally we even did a boat tour. all the chinese ran up to the top floor of the boat where they were standing completely crowded on the platform, so we went down again one floor to the platform there, it was empty. there were some chairs and the most silent 30 min. since i'm here in shanghai began.

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Photos

View from the flat
In the middle you can see Jade Buddha Temple

Comments

[sofia]

wonderful idea..........
........keep going

[Wietske]

Hallo Flo!
Heej Florian, Geweldig dat je op reis bent in China!!! Het wordt vast fantastisch, je blog staat bij mijn favourites dus ik zal je zoveel mogelijk volgen de komende tijd. Toevallig, je bent al de derde vriend in China, een vriendin van mij woont en werkt nu in Shanghai! Wasnneer kom je eigenlijk naar Braunschweig, ik kan niet wachten je hier een keer in Nederland te ontvangen! Wietske

[Bernie from Graz]

All the best
Hei Flo! I wish I was traveling china now, but spending the summer for once in some years in Graz isn't that bad either. I found out about LaStrada (a street theater festival) and some other nice things to do here in summer. :) Anyways I wish you a great journey and post some fotos some time! I'm looking forward to reading further blog entries from you! Have a great time and good luck! Bernie

[Toni]

servus
servus! super, dass du schon in china bist. das war aber jetzt wirklich flott. wie lang bleibst du eigentlich?

[panq]

Hi Florian!
WOW! You suprised me! You told me that you'd like to travel a bit but I didnt expect China... A friend of mine was in China last year. He told me that chineese people liked him very much for two reasons: 1. He was tourists so they sold him things 10 times more expensive than normally :) 2. He is red, so they pulled his beard at every occasion to check if it is real :)) Knowing you a bit I wonder what kind of stories you'll tell when you're back :))) Have a great time!! panq