another day in shanghai

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first of all, i'd like to thank all of you for your nice comments - keeps me motivated to write more entries. probably i should answer the question, how long i'm staying, huh? well, my plane leaves from here on 21st of september so i will be back in vienna on the 22nd in the evening.
@nico: would be great to do some climbing here, unfortunately i'm just travelling here in the east and i don't have my miuras with me :-( can't read the wikipedia entry about moon hill. seems the chinese gouverment is not a big fan of free knowledge for everyone. hehe!

on my second day i woke up at 7 and found myself covered with sweat but unexpectedly fit. after taking a shower i talked a little bit with my hosts and left the flat. just opposite of my hosts flat is a small temple, the jade buddha temple, so i went there. guess, you should see the pictures but i couldn't upload them yet. probably on sunday. it was really quiet inside there, a great place to be. a lot of people were praying or meditating or whatever they use to do on such places. you could just walk through the gardens, watch some stone buddhas or some passing by monks and enjoy the - for shanghai - unusual silence.
afterwards i went on to explore the area around my hosts flat and i was amazed. that's still the best place i found in shanghai up to now. a lot of small shops, where they cook or fry stuff and every wher people running around, biking and driving. this is more what i expected from asia. i bought something and ate it for breakfast.
i got onto the next bus and went to people's square once again to find some internet cafe. sounds easy, but it's harder than it sounds. after some searching i found myself in the tourist office to ask. inside there was one guy, he was phoning and didn't care about me at all. i didn't really mind that because it was nicely cool inside there and so i sat down and watched him phoning. after about 10 minutes a girl came and he stopped phoning. she asked me what i wanted, so i told her that i'm searching for an internet cafe. she asked him, he answered, and she explained it to me. you have to go inside a shoe store, take the elevator and go to the 4th floor. no wonder i couldn't find one.
so now i was able to write my first blog entry. it's quite some fun inside here. there are a lot of young people, most of them playing some games in the net. yesterday there was a girl next to me who was playing a dancing game. damn it! i consider this to be strange.
when ready, i went around again a little bit, ate a water melone on a stick and finally found a nice cafe. then i made my way to jinmao tower. it's supposed to be the 4th highest building in the world. i went up to the 88th floor and took some pictures. i went on to the huaihai street, which didn't impress me very much, but i was tired so it was not easy to impress me in this mood. finally i went to a real nice restaurant to eat something. claire, my host, had written me down in chinese some local dishes i should try so i asked them if they have one of them and decided for chicken with peanuts. during eating a chinese family next to me started laughing at me for my not really professional handling of the chop sticks. they showed me how it's supposed to work. guess it will take me some more meals...

for all who want to know, i bought a chinese sim card so you can probably call me or sms me. i think, i can't call or sms out of china so don't expect answers. my number is: [phone]

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Comments

[Peter]

Great idea - thanks for sharing your adventure!
Dear Florian, the 1st time when I got your email I was confused about a "blog". Sofia explained me and after that I discovered your travel impressions - a great idea! We feel very close to your adventure. I also realize, that we had not Chinese food together to practice chop-stick usage - you will be a master after that trip! Thanks for the impressing pictures. I am curios getting new "blogs" from you. Peter