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Shanghai is one of the largest cities in China and belongs to the east coast belt, where economic development takes on very fast. When you wander through the streets, you can see many construction sites. And with thousands of medium and high rise buildings, it just looks like a megalopolis.
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I arrived in Shanghai last Sunday, that makes me being here for almost a week now. So far I can say that I like it here, though the weather is hitting on me hard.
Just returned back home from an early and quite exhausting trip to get my visa for China. Actually thanks to the International Office I got the possibility to go to a Summer School in China.
I remembered when I applied for that 2 years ago for the TU9 Summer School in Beijing, as this was my first attempt to do some abroad studies, but that didn’t really succeed because of many organizational problems. So this time everything worked out quite smoothly and the program schedule sounds even more appealing. Downside: I need to finish my thesis earlier and have to apply for a job while I’m in China. Though I’m graduating very soon (6 years passed by so fast), it’s still academically feasible to attend summer school since I’ll still be enrolled. As I wanted to visit China for a long time but never had the chance to, I think it’s a good time to do this now, just before I enter the job market. This means I’ll come over in August for 4 weeks, including Shanghai’s Tongji, Xi’an’s Northwestern Polytechnic and Chongqing University. 4 weeks of knowledge, insights, language practice and fun. I’m really happy about that, I finally can not only see one of the most interesting countries in Asia but furthermore, I’ll be able to attend university courses that are not so much focused on my business major, but deal with history, society and language class.
By the way, I also passed my (which was no big surprise), hopefully I can do the next two levels after returning from China. Oh yes and I will also go to Korea for a week :)
(In Korean, it is 파전.)
Pajeon is a type of Korean pancake. It is mainly made out of rice flour, instead of a sweet pancake it is a salty one, more like the French type of quiche. So for getting that taste, you add salt, sugar and mix it with green onions. You also add either meat (pork belly, minced pork) or seafood to make it not too bland and tasty. Pajeon is a typical drinking dish, which is served with Banchan, side dishes. These can be for example yellow radish, small anchovis, Kimchi, black beans or just green spicy peppers. It is said that Pajeon is eaten on rainy days because farmers didn‘t go out working when it was raining in former times. Instead, they stayed inside houses and pajeon was easy to make due to the availability of the ingredients. Very often, people eat it with Makgeolli, a sort of sweet, milky looking rice wine.
Ingredients for Pajeon (2 servings)
Put water and wheat flour in a bowl and stir well. Add egg and salt. Stir until there clots have dissolved. Cut green onions into pieces of 4-5 cm length, slice red peppers and cut down pork belly. Add green onions, peppers into dough. Heat up frypan with oil. Put mixture into frypan. Fry for 5-10 minutes until pancake become golden brown and green onions a little bit roasted. Serve with soy sauce.
Every city has its own landmark, which usually is a high-rise building with a visitor platform. From this rule, Seoul does not bail out for any exception and has built the Namsan Tower in the end of the 1960s.
If you are planning to visit Korea, you can look forward to a lot of places to see and attractions to visit. Most of them are located in Seoul, but if you visit other regions (or so called provinces), you’ll experience a lot of other places woth to see. Assuming you are doing a short trip, here are some ideas to start off with. Many of them are in Seoul, but for some you would need to travel.
When I was in South Korea, I met a bunch of nice people and one of them was Joseph. He’s from Canada, but being a Korean-Canadian we share the similar culture being foreign in our residential country and together in Korea :) I was quite busy with a lot of things so we didn’t have the chance to hang around a lot plus he was not living in the dorms. For socializing a lot, that was probably quite good.
Anyways, before I left Korea he told me that he would be studying his next semester abroad, too. Though it was not Germany, France is not that far so we tried to stay in contact. June came and his trip in Europe with it. As I know it’s quite hard to show people around in Hanover (right, Jumi and Lok-Hin?), I decided to meet up in Berlin. As a student, it’s not uncommon to take a car pool and getting there for merely a third of what I probably would have paid. The stay was in some hostel and as I don’t crave for high standards when traveling alone, it’s a big money saver, too.
I also tried to meet up other friends but it’s quite hard to arrange a meeting - why that?!
So I arrived in Berlin in the afternoon. It was quite late so we started off to get some bite near Frankfurter Allee, where our hostel was. I would say for 10 Euros it’s quite ok, not a real backpacker or hostel place rather than a former hotel, but I got my sleep and it was clean.
The first thing we saw was the East Side Gallery. It’s basically a long street where parts of the Berlin Wall has not ben torn down for commemorative reasons. The walls are predominantly painted by German artists and portray subjects about German reunification, cold war and freedom.
On one of the paintings you can see Breschnew and Honecker kissing - the notorious ‘brother kiss’. Acress the street, there was a picture of a couple making love. The woman has a GDR emblem tattoo while the man a FRD (federal republic of Germany) tattoo. Make love, not war.
It’s near the O2 area, where an event was obviously held.
Fun in the subway? Never grow old…?
Some subways cars look very old-fashioned and carry a lot of atmosphere :) Like the Parisian subway it’s not super modern. Golden 20s glamour :)
At Märkisches Museum there was a church with nice architecture. It turned out it was not that nice and closed. So we went back to Warschauer Straße to change directions. A lot of people in Berlin, as always. Joseph wanted to check out landmarks, so we just went around according to his map. Some science museum we saw. A US Air Force plane.
Berlin’s mascot is the bear. Looks like every larger city has a mascot. ![]
The Red City Hall is near Alexanderplatz. It was too late to get in, but this is where the mayor and the Berlin senate resides. I wouldn’t want to take the job as Berlin is one of the most poorest cities in Germany!
The Funkturm in the evening. Missed the chance to go up. You have to wait approx. 45 min to get up. If we arrived earlier, we would have been able to see the sunset - but getting there in the dark is not worth the money!!!
Around Alexanderplatz a lot of shops opened. A big wide space also used for demonstrations and gatherings.
People sitting by the fountain. A lot of malls, too! From Alexia, we went on to Berlin’s landmark, the Alexanderplatz. And went on to the Oberbaumbrücke next to the Dom.
We had a beer “unter den Linden”, probably one of the most expensive ones I ever had. 3.50EUR for a 0.3 bottle >.< that’s a whole sixpack in the supermarket ;)
THe sun slowly settled down and we went to see the parliament at night. Chancellor’s official residence (Bundeskanzleramt) is just some steps away from the Bundestag!
Dedicated to the German people. Humm. I more and more doubt that. Politics is a thing in it’s own world.
At Brandenburger Tor a lot of people took photos at night, had beers, waiting for other people an so on.Big tourist magnet. I noticed that nobody tried to scam me.
The Quadriga on the Brandenburg Gate. Hotel Adlon is next to it and must be pretty expensive. We parted ways in Berlin Hauptbahnhof and I took a ride back to Hannover then.
It was too hot in the afternoon to run around yesterday. So I wanted to get somewhere inside and experience some culture. The Museumsinsel (museum island) is famous for its many art collections. I heard the Pergamon Museum is very fine, so I gave it a try.
So on our second day we started off early to get to Den Haag, the city where the Dutch parliament is settled as well as the royal family resides. Beforehand I also contacted friends I met half a year ago and some of them could make it. I was really looking forward to see them.
The city is really green. I like the style of tress along the canals. Like Amsterdam, Hague has also Grachten (canals) where boats reside at the banks So we took the train from Amsterdam Zuid to Schiphol and went on to Den Haag. Unfortunately, they have two stations and since I thought Den Haag HS is the one before the one I intended to get off, we went on until we were in Rotterdam! We were a little panicked because we just wanted to get off the next station and go back.
Well, it’s just 15 minutes far away our friend had to wait. Arriving at Hague HS we were a little bit surprised by the dirtyness of the area. It turned out that a lot of foreigners (i.e. immigrants) settled down like in every other larger European city but it was not too bad. Only the fact that the station officer sold us a transportation map while I wanted a city map. Totally dumb of him.
We came along a museum but we didn’t go neither after meeting up. Well, after walking some minutes we arrived at the main station where Dieuwke waited for us. It was great to see her again, because I didn’t have the opportunity to say goodbye then though at that time everyone knew that people are leaving so we didn’t keep much in contact.
She showed us around a little bit. We saw the Binnenhof, where the Dutch parliament resides.
This was in front of the Queen’s working palace. It is just some minutes around the Binnenhof’s corner. This is also the place where she announces budget decisions or stand on the balcony on Queen’s Day.
Just in front of there palace there’s the statue of William I. who founded Netherlands (I think).
The International Justice Court is the place to be - when you are a worldwide hunted villain. It was closed on Sunday and I doubt you could ever visit it.
The world peace flame is burning until eternity. Almost every nation has contributed a typical stone from their country.
Schenevingen (which is not like we Germans pronounce it at all!) is the beach area. Really cool atmosphere, must be great in summer. You could see from far that housing looks upscale, a hotel at the beach and a casino makes it feel pretty non-Northern European to me! More like somewhere in the south…
We settled down in a beach café and had little snacks. Bitterballen is a typical Dutch snack like our German ‘Kroketten’ and has a crunchy dough from the outside but the inside is filled with mashed potatoes. Love it, was delicious. Dieuwke and Bohyun ordered Chicken Wings and Prawns. Beach flair.
Yup, the hotel must be really expensive. At least it looks like it from the outside.
After that we met Tim in the city, wandered a little bit in Chinatown.
You can see a Mosque in Chinatown! It even was a synagogue before!
The Indonesian food was fine. Seems like food is a little bit more expensive than in Germany, but you definitely get full.
Great to see my friends again. Also Marie made it to our little reunion. And then, we took the train back to Amsterdam. What a nice day we had.
Sigh… I have so much stuff to do so I’m still not able to care about this blog that much though I’d really like to improve so many things on this site. Currently I’m pretty packed with working on my diploma thesis in information management (Wirtschaftsinformatik) so I have to read a lot of sources. Thanks to my idea writing it this time in LaTeX, I spend a lot of time for finding out how this anti WYSIWYG system works correctly. Darn page layout, you…
I have my HSK test in two weeks. I still have to practice a lot if I don’t want to score low, though it looks like it’s really not too hard for me. Though I can do quite well in the reading part, listening sometimes still troubles me due to words I haven’t learned yet or the different pronunciation that I’m used to in class.
My class by the way is great: We are 8 people who range between 16 to approx. 45yrs, among these it appears that I’m the only one who hasn’t travelled to China yet. The level of teaching speed is pretty fast so if you are serious with learning Chinese, the Konfuzius Institut (孔子学院，中国中心) in your local town is the best way. It’s way better than the German “Volkshochschule” or my Foreign Language Institute at my university (though my teacher was great there, too).
I’ll try to post some pictures of it one day. Meanwhile, I should finish the redesign of a local soccer club by the end of this week.
Since this is my first serious job for which I am well fairly compensated, I should do the best. After that finished project, I should set up a little portfolio just in case.