Saying goodbye to Lili

This will be my last blog entry, that I write while being in China. Today we woke up early and started to pack our things. Lili bought an extra bag for me to use as hand luggage, which I desperately need for the amount of presents I bring to my friends and family in Germany. Unfortunately on my last flight with my Quadcopter one of the four motors stopped working. I hope in Germany and some spare parts I will be able to repair it with my new learned soldering skills 🙂  We asked Li and his friends to come to our room to grab all the remaining stuff that we can not take with us. They hesitated at first, but then grabbed an Ikea-bag full of alcohol, sweets and food. Additionally we gave Li and Zhu our mattresses, ikea-light and chairs. Meaning we will sleep one night on the normal mattress ….

We finished packing and Lili picked us up to go for one last dinner with her and her family. We again went to the German restaurant „Schindlers Autoladestelle“ and almost ordered everything from the menu. It was the perfect dinner to say goodbye. We had such a great time.

The past two month blew away our expectations. The hospitality, kindness and friendliness of the people was unbelievable. We learned, saw and experienced so much. I would do this trip all over again if I could. <3 Lili

Our China Mother!
Our China Mother!

Thank you for everything!
Lukas and Alex

 

 

Trying to remain calm Monday

On Monday we were invited to an overwhelming dinner, because the son of our hostess got married. We were picked up at around 4pm to drive to our dinner reservation. A lot of old and young met to celebrate the wedding.

This entry will end here, because this motherfu**#** piece of fu****** crap hunk of metal dell notebook decided to end his duty early with this message:

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You can only begin to fathom the amount of coc*$#suc***$$@ing madness inside of me right now.fuc#####**#*## bitc***### cun###*** Fuc\\\\¢¢¥¥ hor-&&#%%#-#&&#$&¢€€®©©£¥^¢^^^¥£¥¢^¢™@&&#&#$&#-@-@

Let’s hope together for a better tomorrow

Lukas

The last day in Hangzhou and Shanghai

We awoke in our 4 star hotel and quickly headed towards to breakfast in the 2nd floor.
The breakfast buffet offered everything one could have asked for. We ate toasts with fresh marmalade, fresh fruits, eggs, bacon and orange juice.
After breakfast we checked out of the hotel and our driver picked us up to drive us to Leifeng Pagoda, a very tall ancient tower with an amazing view from every floor. Around the tower is a lovely park with a hill full of miniature buildings, statues and a bell:

Next we left Hangzhou and drove to back to  „The last day in Hangzhou and Shanghai“ weiterlesen

Shanghai III – Hangzhou

Today we traveled to the city of Hangzhou, located south-west of Shanghai. But first we had a delicious breakfast in our five star hotel. They offered toast, marmalade, honey, fried egg, bacon, a lot of fruits, some Chinese stuff and a lot more.

Then we drove to Hangzhou. The ride took about three hours on a very good and smooth highway, but the speed limit is 120 km/h. And we had to pay a toll of 9€ for it. We arrived at our hotel (Haihua Hotel), which again looks great, we have a perfectly fine room with shower and toilet for ourselves. Life in luxury! „Shanghai III – Hangzhou“ weiterlesen

Shanghai II – picture day

We awoke, each of us in their own room and met at 8am to eat breakfast in the hotel. Shortly after we checked out of the hotel and our driver named Chen gave us a ride to two of our companies project sites. One of them are twin towers, one a bank, the other for an insurance company:

twinsThe total investment adds up to around 8 billion Yuan. Each tower has a height of 250m with 55 floors. They use a handy technique, where they work their way upwards, using something best described as building blocks. Floor by floor they move higher, finishing one complete floor every week. The towers are planed to be finished around the end of 2016. Kenny and the engineers showed and described everything about the planning, the parts used and the building procedure. the most interesting of cause were the cable management. Copper, Fiber, cable ducts and how all fits and works together. Vast number of pictures ahead „Shanghai II – picture day“ weiterlesen

Shanghai I

Today we said „Goodbye“ to our by now beloved dormitory room, because we will spent the next three or maybe four nights in Shanghai. After the (maybe) last toast breakfast for a few days we took the bus to get to Lili’s home. Her friend Tina, who visited the Summer Palace with us, was so kind to give us the ride to Beijing South Railway Station. We already knew the place since we also left to ZiBo from here. Before boarding the train we met with Kenny and bought some hamburgers to have for lunch later. At 11:10 am the train left with ten minutes delay, still better than in Germany the past days I guess 😉 The ride was quite comfortable, you have a lot more leg space than in a plane or in the Deutsche Bahn. It took a little more than five hours to get to the Shanghai Railway Station. We slept most of the time, but when I didn’t I took at least one photo of the speed the train was driving most of the time.

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305 km/h, that’s about ICE speed.  „Shanghai I“ weiterlesen

Back to Beijing

We started our day early in the morning and surprisingly without hangover. Kenny took us to a small restaurant to eat breakfast. It consisted of a hot soup in which we threw pork, vegetables, mushrooms, an egg and most important ricenoodles. Then we mixed everything and had a really tasty meal.

Afterwards we took a look at an other project of the company. It was a furniture store, but it was still a construction site. But nevertheless we took a look around and tried to image how it might look in the future.

Then we changed the side of the road and went inside a furniture store, which was already finished. The architecture looked quite the same, so that’s maybe how the construction site might look after finishing. „Back to Beijing“ weiterlesen

ZiBo Adventures

#UPDATED: Today after our breakfast, we met up with Kenny at the Beijing Railway Station to catch our train to ZiBo. A town three hours away from Beijing. The train ride was quick and comfortable.
abfahrtAs soon as we arrived we took a Taxi to the place of our project, where Kenny worked for a long time. It was a newly built mall, where our company designed the security camera, elevator, escape and air-conditioning infrastructure. We were allowed to visit the „ZiBo Adventures“ weiterlesen

Wednesday

We again woke up early this morning, having to go to class at 08:15 and eating breakfast 08:00.
Today we had burgers, which tasted quite good, mcdonalds quality, but for only 10Yuan!
Strengthened by our healthy meal we headed towards JAVA-class. We were greeted by our friendly teacher „Melody“. The lessons were quite interesting, learning about access modifiers.
Each student had his own computer to work on and a live broadcast on screen of what the teacher was doing. Giving the students the possibility to work side by side with what the teacher tutored.
Additionally the teacher had the ability to lock all students PCs to force them to listen 🙂

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top picture: full focused learning!
bottom picture: playing some games during breaks 😛

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After three 45min blocks of very educative java lessons we again headed towards the canteen
and ordered a soup I had noticed a day earlier. It was delicious and prepared freshly:

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Afterwards we rushed towards networking-class, but were quickly interrupted by our teacher Mr Chen who asked us to go to a Cisco meeting with him.  The meeting was held in Chinese, as well as the powerpoint and the handed out materials, fortunately we had a small private chat afterwards with the cisco representative, so not all was in vain.

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We ended our day at a local bar, having German beer and fries.
A little bit pricey, but with a very nice ambiance and most importantly „fast“ Wifi!

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Till tomorrow
die Pekinenten

 

Our easter

Early in the morning Zhu & Lee waited for us to head into town together
and enjoy a delicious breakfast. Not far away from our College we entereda very small restaurant and were told to eat donkey.
The dish consisted of a small soup and bread with donkey meat:

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All in all the dish was quite delicious. A little bit greasy,
but tasted interesting and fresh.

After our donkey breakfast we headed towards the subways station
to travel to Tiananmen Square. At the entrance of every subwaystation
is an extensive security check, more thorough than at Tegel-Airport,
which is a pain and really time consuming.

We tried to enter the national museum as well as the forbidden city,
but both were that heavily crowded due to the Qingming Festival (Tomb-sweeping Day),
that we decided to try another day and only take a look from outside:

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Instead we headed towards the wangfujing market. After a quick detour at McDonalds,
we were prepared to enjoy the culinary delicacies Peking has to offer.The highlight was scorpion on a stick, which died on the grill before you own eyes.

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The taste was interesting to say the least, but all in all it was nothing one would miss.

Lee, Zhu, Alex and I ended the day with having dinner together at a small restaurant nearby.
I had handmade noodles with „meat“, which later, because I complained about the
indistinguishable rotten smell, turned out to be intestine…

From donkey, to scorpion, ending at intestine – nom nom.