John's assistant Ray was so kind to pick us up from the airport. He is a really nice and funny Taiwanese geologist. After driving through Taipei's blood-freezing morning rush hour (which is not so much scary because of the amount of vehicles but because of the hazardous driving habits of their owners), we finally met our boss John Suppe (at least Micha, who has not met him before) and his lovely wife Barbara. We will stay at their home for the first few days until we manage to settle everything in our own flat.
The first impressions of Taipei are: 1) very green (beautiful flowers everywhere, trees with bananas or papayas, and lots and lots of unknown greenery), 2) noisy (cars, motorcycles, sirenes, people), 3) lots of smells (delicious ones rapidly changing with abominable ones), 4) scruffy and shabby houses but incredibly clean streets (oh yes, dear Swiss friends, it's even cleaner here in Taipei than it is in Bern!) and 5) very friendly people.It really is a town full of extremes.
Motorcycles seem to occur here only in swarms of at least ten (mostly 30 to 40), cruising chaotically between all other vehicles. At traffic lights, they have designated areas in pole position, so you don't want to find yourself still crossing the street when lights turn green for them... To anticipate such situations, Taipei's traffic lights for pedestrians have: 1) a counter, counting down the seconds you still have until red; 2) an animated green man in the traffic light who at first walks normally but will start running in the last 10 seconds of the green phase.
And then, there is another speciality concerning bikes. Almost all of them have little "handles" standing out from the rear wheel axes for standing on them. At the campus one can observe students pedaling their bicycles with their girlfriends standing on these handles and commanding their boyfriends where to go. One can occasionally also spot families of up to three persons riding a bicycle this way...
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