Third week: Mid exchange break and visit to Taipei

March 5th. A busy week is behind us. After the district conference last weekend we had our “mid-exchange break”. That turned out to mean the same as shopping. The boys, young and old, bought electronics and the girls bought clothes. Göran and Janis also took the opportunity to by some real Wasabi. Real Wasabi is pretty much non-existing in Europe, and when it exists it is very expensive. In Taiwan, however, it is cheap. In the evening we went swimming in the ocean outside Tainan (You have already seen the pictures, right!?). The water was warm and the waves awesome. It’s interesting how something as simple as 25 minutes in the ocean immediately turns in to a treasured memory

March 6th. Early Tuesday morning it was time to board the High Speed Rail (HSR) Taiwan’s super-fast train system. Taipei was less than a two hour ride away even though several stops were made during the ride. Our day in Taipei started at the National Palace Museum, an ancient art museum covering Chinas entire history and many dynasties trough the art and material artifact point of view. It was easy to find personal favorites among the many beautiful items. The most difficult was trying to avoid being overrun by the hordes of mainland Chinese who roamed the museum.

In the afternoon we made a stop at ICRT, Taiwan’s only English speaking radio station. It was a vocational visit for Markus and he got to try recording a radio commercial. He definitely has a future in that field. 

Leaving ICRT the team split in two. Dana went to meet Mia, a performance artist just like herself, who turned out to work with almost exactly the same thing as Dana. They are already planning to collaborate in the future. The rest of the team went on to visit the tallest building in East-Asia, and up until last year the tallest building in the world, Taipei 101. From ground level Taipei 101 does not look that impressive, despite its height of more than 500 meters.  That impression changed as soon as we reached the observatory at floor 89. Other tall buildings adjacent to Taipei 101 dwarfed in comparison when you could see them from above far far below.  The panorama view from the observatory was ecstatic and will remain with us forever. The elevator of the building is worth mentioning. It is not exactly your average office elevator but more like a space shuttle. It takes you from the fifth to eighty ninth floor in 35 seconds and reaches top speed of 1010 meters per minute. 

From morning to night our detour to Taipei was our longest day so far in our trip, but it was trult worth every minute.