Sunset over Taipei

There is a very nice park on top of a hill nearby where we live. The hill is named 蟾蜍山 (chan2 chu2 shan1). It translates as "toad mountain". At sunset there are truly many toads hopping around, so the hill deserves its name. The hill hosts a nice park and unpaved footpaths through dense forest, so it is an ideal place to seek some relief from the noisy city. Also, we recently discovered that there are some truly nice views down on Taipei City. The following panorama shows a view of Taipei as seen from the park up on chan2 chu2 shan1. The view is dominated by the skyscraper 台北 101, or Taipei 101, towering even above the easterly adjacent mountains (to the right of Taipei 101). Being Austrians ourselves, we are of course particularly proud that it was Austrian Felix Baumgartner, who dared to base-jump off it! The mountains in the background belong to the Yangmingshan (陽明山, see our blog entry in March).

The following photo shows how the exuberant vegetation frames the city so it appears to shrink in size.


Sunset itself makes everything look peaceful and calm.


Once dusk has fully set in, the city gets an entirely different look.

The Perfidies of Getting your Hair Cut in Taipei

After more than 8 months without a haircut, I (Micha) finally decided to go to the hairdresser. Prices are mostly more than reasonable, so that this would not present an obstacle, but the language barrier prevented me from doing it so far. Kamil had cut his hair in Taipei already three times, and after the first two times turned out quite terribly (they did not wet his hair before cutting...), he found a really good place with a well-trained hairdresser named Donna. But again, the young lady - skillfully as she is with her scissors, lacks any knowledge of English... And because our Chinese still is more than only rudimentary, we have some problems in communication there.
...
The hairdresser must have misinterpreted our "jie yi dian dian" (cutting a little, little bit), with which I wanted to indicate to only cut the tips of my hair. Well, instead of cutting 5 cm, she cut about 15 cm! I now have definitely a new look! (But don't worry, my hair was long enough to prevent a real catastrophe.) And as I told you, Donna really is a professional, so I now have really impeccably cut hair - it just turned out a bit different from what I expected:

Anyway, Kamil says it makes me look much younger. ;-) If it's true than even the better!!!
(And it had cost only 550.- NTD, which are about 12.- Euros!)

By the way, one has to be careful in Taipei in choosing the right place for a haircut. Quite many hairdresser's shops here do not only provide a haircut, but have a distinct backdoor where they offer much more than just cutting your hair...

Holidays in Europe - Part IV

John, our boss in Taipei, and his wife Barbara, who both were staying at Munich for this summer, came to visit us in Innsbruck. As the weather was fabulous, we took them up into the mountains, namely up to the Hafelekar, the steep mountain ridge just north of Innsbruck. We had a magnificent view from up there - we could see as far as the Grossglockner (highest mountain of Austria) and the Venediger group (in the background of this picture)!

Kamil is taking chance of the spectacular view from the Hafelekar and the clear sight of the day to explain the geology of Tirol to John...

... while Kamil's brother Michi is explaining more touristic aspects of this country to Barbara. As he works with the Tirol Tourism Bureau, he's the right man for this task!


So I just enjoy the fresh air, the wind, the sun and the breathtaking view!


After all the talking and explaining, we went for a short walk along the ridge...


...and later headed to the Seegruben Restaurant to enjoy Knoedelsuppe and Apfelstrudel, which was critically eyed by a flock of jackdaws in the hope of getting a share.


We are very grateful to John, who took picture of us, when we were showing them the town of Innsbruck, because it is probably the only picture we have of us in front of our town's landmark, the "Goldene Dachl". (You just never take touristic pictures in your own town...)


By the way, this visit could not pass with a bit of work.
If they both wouldn't look so grimly, this picture could pass as an Mac advertisement...
We really enjoyed Barbara's and John's visit as this also gave us the chance to show them some insights into our home country.

Holidays in Europe - Part III

Nostalgic dreams: A pick nick like we had it when I was a child with cold Schnitzel, potato salad and a mountain creek to build a dam in - that was one of my plans for this vacation! And yes, I got it! Together with Kamil's family and my parents, we went to the Mieminger Plateau (about 30 km to the west of Innsbruck) on the foots of the Nordkette-mountains.


For this occasion, Kamils father Marek took his jewel out of the garage: The победа (Pabieda), a Russian old-timer he completely assembled and renovated himself!


From there we walked for about one hour along a little river until we found a nice spot for our pick nick. There, our mothers unpacked this delicious pick nick pack: heaps of Schnitzels, salads, bread, cheese, Speck, fruits and lots of cakes! Yummy!!!

My parents enjoying the fabulous weather and nice company:















Kamil's parents - Magda does it like a Taiwanese lady using her umbrella to shield off the bright sunshine.
Apropos Taiwanese manners, look at these guys, they completely copied the most typical gesture when young Taiwanese get a picture taken of them:


Kamil's brother Michi installed a hammock below the littel wooden bridge to rest in the shadow and in the cool spray from the mountain creek.... - if his nasty older brother would not be teasing him all the time!

Finally, Michi gave up and Kamil conquered the hammock. ... He, he, now I could tease HIM!

Holidays in Europe - Part II

Due to the warm temperatures and a lot of rain, it is an incredible "Schwammerljahr" this year - there is nothing more satisfying than a successful hunt for mushrooms in the steep mountain forests of Tirol! And no, we did not get into crazy mushrooms, my mom and I are just a bit over-excited about our rich loot... boletus (or boleti?) and chanterelles! The chanterelles landed in the cooking pan right away, the boleti were dried and will be used for our family-traditional soup on Christmas eve. Yummy!!!

Holidays in Europe - Part I

We flew back to Europe for a three weeks vacation end of July, beginning of August. Unfortunately, it turned out that Kamil had so much work to do that this did not become a full holiday for him, but more a time of work and business interspersed with some free days with families and friends. But we won't complain - it still was wonderful to be back enjoying the time spent with our beloved ones and our friends, taking in the beauty of our home country and savouring the fresh air and cooler temperatures.

In the following, we want to post some pictures of our stay with Micha's brother Georg, his wife Ruth and their absolutely adorable little daughter Judith.

Judith is now 10 month old and motorically much talented as she crawls with the speed of a TGV and walks already along walls and furniture. Nothing is safe from her anymore...
And she loves nothing more than her red racing car, about which she sometimes get very excited!

Georg was preparing a fabulous BBQ for us! (Both Micha's brothers are very much into BBQ, so Kamil finally got to enjoy several times real big slabs of meat, which he desperately missed in Chinese cuisine where everything is chopped up in tiny pieces!) Here you see two strong men at work...


Happy in Daddy's arms!


Poor Judith is not getting any grilled meat (yet! - as Georg is emphasising), but is fed with yummy mash by her mom Ruth. She obviously enjoys it, too, and after a few spoons, though carefully plugged into her mouth, her consumption can be seen all over her face!

Therefore it's bath time after this.


Being fresh and in her pyjamas, Judith is flirting with uncle Kamil.










Kamil and I are both impressed how much such a little human being is touching our hearts. Well, she is part of our family and we love her really much!!!