Day 21/63

I fucking hate Shanghai. I know it’s a personal opinion, but that’s how I feel. And I am a person who *loves* China. One of the greatest experiences I ever had was in Xi’An and Beijing, but this city makes it impossible to enjoy oneself. Even when the prices are ridiculously low.

Today we had a nice breakfast in the hotel’s 2nd floor and had an hour of typing before leaving the room at 11ish. We took a taxi to a park in the French Concession for more shopping opportunities. This got immediately some ‘hello lady, do you want a watch?’ types on our face, even before standing up from the taxi. My husband calculated how many times someone came up to him trying to sell something today and that was 19. Could be worse, I suppose. We saw some pajama practice and sword action with grannies, oh and some people hugging trees in the park. Always a good show the Chinese parks in the morning.

Our walk in the French region took us through shopping streets of dress-makers and all kinds of tat and it had just started to rain when we happened upon this small, cat-pee smelling junk shop, which seemed to sell DVDs of tv series, which is what I was after anyways. Let’s just say that I went slightly mental and purchased the small amount of 11 entire series (some of which have up to six seasons) with a fair price.

When it was time for lunch, we seemed to be on streets that only sold overly priced food for foreigners. Those places are often also tasteless, so I suggested we try to find a small place somewhere and as a miracle, an off the road restaurant came along. Our three course meal and two bottles of water was the whole of 25 quai, (2,5euros TOTAL) and it was really good. That’s the only thing this city has going on for it: Cheap food, cheap shopping.

After some more walking around in the area, we decided to get the metro to People’s square to see the Shanghai museum. As far as museums go, this was a quality visit. Lovely, western style bathrooms, clean exhibition halls, good access, no admission fee… However, the collection didn’t really show us anything very exciting that we had not seen before. Specialy as the one section of minorities that we were there for anyways – was the only being renovated and re-shaped. In any case, this well-air conditioned oasis in the middle or the people’s square was the high light of my day.

The weather had been piling up onto a hard, thick mass of humidity and as we walked out of the museum, we could not see the buildings around very well. At this time in Australia, there has been a massive, red sand storm – this was nothing like that, but we are certainly keeping our eyes open. We had dinner in a kind of a tunnel of fast food, but for the locals, so it was once again really good but really cheap. The Whole of 2-3euros / plate.

It’s the getting home from the city what kills you at the end of the night. The taxi drives really do not know where they are going they have no idea where the area of the hotel or anything is… And they are really not stopping for you, even if you’d be standing on the taxi station. You do get offers from dodgy cars pretending to be taxis, but I’d rather keep my life thanks. Two motorcyclists even offered to take us home, but after an hour of trying, I decided we’d get a metro for one stop onto the Pund and by some miracle we did get a taxi from there. Okay, this one was old, deaf and not knowing where anything is, but after about 10 minutes of negotiations and map showing, he managed to recognize the Russian consulate right next to our hotel. So conveniently, we got back.

The streets of Shanghai make you really angry. I think perhaps that’s why the Chinese are always yelling and pouting, because their living conditions are so fucked up… I am glad that I have had lovely two weeks in other parts of China, because if this would be what I got to my face first, I’d never come back. Doesn’t help that the Pund is a construction site – they are trying to make it beautiful for the Expo next year, so this year everything is even more horrible than it’d normally be.

What can I say: Shanghai is a cock and a half. Nothing personal, just the way it made me feel.

Day 10/63

After such an efficient day in Hakodate yesterday, we bounced out of bed before seven and were on our way to Sapporo by 8:30 train. Morning excersises included walking to the station and scouting the station area for yet another memorial (read: like a statue, but crap). We did manage to find a small althar for Hechi Kata Toshiso, a samurai that killed himself at the battle of Hakodate at that particular spot (they had lost the war).

I love Japanese trains. Three hours and we were in Sapporo. Lucky enough, I sleep anywhere, so I just blinked and I was there… Our mission in the beer city was to find a proper Ainu (the Northern People) museum, but first we stopped for a gorgeous lunch at ‘Taj Mahal’, where my vegetable curry with cheese naan was so far the best lunch I’ve had. And remember that yesterday we had Viking buffet that was pretty awesome. I am however, very addicted to curry and this was a heavenly place. Cost us about 800yen (6euros each)…

Then we were off to find the Ainus… This proved out to be one quest where mr. cock-up paid us a visit of “we are not open on Mondays”. Reminding that getting there from Hakodate took a train of 3hours, a walk of 30minutes, a metro of 20 minutes, a bus of 38 minutes… So almost like we popped into somewhere like Saarijärvi from Helsinki for the day, only to discover that what we wanted to see was closed. I didn’t let it bring me down, we did get to see the amazing Hokkaido countryside and the neverending mountains with their green covered hills. I stumbled on a great field of something yellow as well – for me, the trip was paid with that one picture there… And the Ainu museum had huts outside, so we could break laws and scout the Ainu toilets.

The Ainus took baby bears when they were little, raised them in cages and then killed them for food. However, my husband tells me that you can’t really eat bear meat because of some of the insects or whatever that live in their skins… This was however not the only way of their food gathering. They had efficient fishing methods like nets and spears and on their spare times they embroided all these incredibly beautiful patterns on their skin coats and furs. Maybe I was an escimo in a previous life, I find this all very fashinating. We were looking at the Japanese fish movements in the northern seas the other day and stumbled on to the fact that if the Ainus and other Northern people really went fishing as far as it looks, they must have found America… Also I find fashinating that there is no other conversation about any other continent in the world to be found except America.

Our legs were numb by sitting in a very smallish place for two in a bus to Sapporo station from the middle of no where where the Ainus were not at home. So we decided to use our last two hours to make an effort to check out the Sapporo beer factory and the gifto shoppus that were attached to it. By the time we walked back to the station (which btw is about the same as Kyoto station – fucking huge and complicated to find anything in it), we had a fast Ramen dinner before our train back to Hakodate.

Today’s learned lessons included: Sapporo is the capital of Hokkaido, 2 million people living in it. I enjoyed my short visit there, but very much the same as on my first visit to Japan – I like Hakodate better than Sapporo, like back then I liked Nagasaki better than Kyoto. I still stick to those principles. In three days my husband and I have decided that Hakodate is an excellent city where we’d both very happily live in. Plus, we live much more cheaply here than back home. Lunch today was 6euros each. Dinner was 5. Taxi home from station was 5 pounds… Makes you really think – what kind of places are London and Jyväskylä, if even Japan is cheaper.

I’m in a meeting in Bavarian house, in the middle of Brussels, five meters from the European parlament. Glass buildings are pretty impressive in general, tall, massive, the castles of the millennium. There’s a large variation of flagpoles outside, probably the full 27+1, but I don’t have time to count them. Brussels has a feeling of high-expressed political atmosphere, splashes of all Europeaness floats around in small street cafes which you need to walk through to get past the french and Flemish speaking business women with clout. Euro buys you anything, but the value of it is about the same as in back home, Finland: Expensive. Alcohol is cheaper, but that’s really not a surprise. Alcohol is cheaper anywhere outside Finland. Chocolates are everywhere. I would buy cheese if it wouldn’t be such a hot day – it would just melt and besides, I won’t have time to eat it as I’m due to be in Crete next week.

I work in EU funded eLearning projects, which take me around Europe almost every other month, sometimes more often. This is a great job as it means traveling and meeting new, interesting people and innovations. I am in Brussels for a kickoff meeting of ‘Open Science Resources’ which is a three year project that aims to create ways to include digital learning resources produced by Science Centers and museums into huge pan-European repository and therefore reach teachers and students around the 27 member countries.

I love European cities at warm evenings with cool breeze, blue skies and impressive buildings. The air is magical and the roads are covered with individually set stones. Small shops sell tourist crap but also sometimes interesting items and specially fresh fruits and flowers. You would not see this in Finland, because both would freeze to death in a second outside, so there’s never this kind of central European feeling back home.

However, it also gets aggressive on the streets at night and I find my martial arts training from last week coming in handy: I walk alert, no victim behavior, head high, no mp3-player armed with a 3-kilo camera and 1,5litres of Evian. I get some dodgy males shouting “Ca va?” to me, but no one really bothers me even if I am woman alone in heals and a dress after dark. This is an area near the metro station “Rogier”, which apparently has been known to be slightly questionable in the past. To prove that, in the morning at 8am, my colleague and I leave for the meeting and discover three hookers outside our hotel, really selling themselves as well. Who buys sex at 8am on Thursday mornings? Business men stuck in traffic perhaps?

It really doesn’t get anymore European than Brussels, I think. Who ever you come across on the streets, is cross-cultural, multilingual and dress-code free. you can hear which ever language and one should not assume that one speaks a language that no one else speaks. Behind me and my friends walk some Finns, complaining as usual, this time about how slow we walk, so they cannot get past us. I say to them “Kyllä, voimme siirtyä sivuun, olkaa hyvä vaan” (Yes, we can get out of your way, please pass in your hurry) And they feel as embarrassed as I have occasionally done. Somehow I get immediate pleasure on lowering their feeling of superiority – I know, I have cheap fun.

I meet some colleagues from another European project. We have an interesting analysis of human behavior in consortiums, how do people establish social interactions and politics all the wat. However, that’s clearly a long enough topic for another post because we keep ourselves entertained for five hours. There is also a carnival in the Grand Platz in the honor of Charles V. It’s called “The Entre” and quite an entrance it is: Perhaps a thousand people dressed in medieval costumes, carrying flags, riding horses, dancing and singing. There’s a huge barrel of beer and the pheasant dressed men and women are distributing it to the audience. There’s even a dragon and of course releasing some pigeons and firing thousands of paper pieces around the area. Kings of today might throw parties like this one, but I don’t see the population appreciating it to the extent of Europeans back then.

Brussels, however hot or dirty on the streets, still gets my favorable stamp. It has been young and old, new and traditional, memorable and surprising. I buy my overly prices bottle of water from the airport and wonder when I’ll be back.