To Uncertain Shores

March 31st 2019

If a flight from Frankfurt to Hong Kong takes about 11 hours and a flight from Hong Kong to Taipei takes about one hour, how long does it take to get from Frankfurt to Taipei non-stop?
That's right, about 14 hours.

Because Russia only sells overflight rights to a single airline per country and Taiwan belongs to China as far as Russia is concerned, our China-Airlines flight has to fly around the entirety of Russia*, which means we have to fly around Syria, which also means that we have to fly around the Indian-Pakistani border, which also means that we arrive with even less sleep than anticipated.

At least that means there's enough time to watch a few movies (Crazy Rich Asians & The Green Book, both definitely worth watching) and calculate that we could be up to 1.4 minutes faster if we'd fly on sea level due to the curvature of the earth. Why nobody came up with that before? Yeah, we don't know either.

The feeling of flying off early in the morning and arriving at the desired destination early in the morning has something deeply unsatisfying. Apart from the five movies I watched I kept myself occupied with getting upset at our not too logical detours to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

*Update: That's not entirely correct as is — the rule of one airline per country applies only to European countries and on our flight back, we did indeed fly over Russia. As far as I know, Air China flights starting in Taiwan are, however, not allowed enter Chinese airspace — flights to Taiwan appear to be fine, but have to avoid Russian airspace.

Day of the Living Dead

It's eight thirty when we finally touch down in Taipei. While waiting for our luggage, we fantasize about how much time we can kill: Half an hour luggage, half an hour immigration, one hour for getting SIM and metro cards, two hours train ride and then we can almost drop off our bags already!

About 20 minutes later we are on the train to the city with a SIM card and everything. So that's that.
After locking our bags somewhere we might find them again later, we take the subway to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall.

Chiang Kai-shek was the ruler of China before the revolution and founder of Taiwan. In front of the memorial, which is very reminiscent of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, there seems to be an event going on that I don't quite understand. Large speakers blast fragments of English sentences and children reciting poems into the crowd — an interesting sight, nonetheless.
A quick stop at Seven Eleven later and it's finally time to head to our AirBnB. We end up in Ximending, an area that looks really cool even when you're half-dead from sleep deprivation. Taipei's Shinjuku is definitely not a bad way to put it.
There are pretty little stores, restaurants, neon signs, and alleys just about everywhere. I take pictures of every second alley we stumble upon, always desperately trying to come close to Jacky's black-and-white Hong Kong photo. No luck so far though.
Our eyes are getting smaller and the sky a bit darker. With the last of our strength, driven by curiosity, we make it to one of the night markets that Taiwan is famous for. These markets that first developed on the outskirts of temples offer typical Taiwanese food and a nice atmosphere.
On our way home we visit the Longshan Temple, too, of which I can't remember much if I'm being honest.
I'm sure it was beautiful.
As soon as we get home, I put my backpack in a corner, change into my pyjamas, get into the bed and let my brain take a quick break of 14 hours.

Part-time Buddhists

We start the day with breakfast in a small shop just around the corner — ordering in Chinese works okay, but definitely does have room for improvement.
Next up would be the Museum of History, which unfortunately turns out to be under renovation right now. Instead, we stroll through the botanical gardens, are almost struck to death by a palm and take a look at the graduation projects of a local Art School, where an interactive game teachers us the dos and don'ts of being in a theatre — not too easy if you can't tell which button says "right" and which says "wrong".

After a short detour through the 2/28 Peace Park we move on to the Huashua 1914 Creative Park — an old industrial area that is now home to creative shops, green spaces and community areas.
There's live music in front of the old buildings, families with kids sit on the grass, surrounded by food stalls. The 'find the longest queue and join it' strategy yields me a chocolate pancake.
I wonder if anyone considered the dangers of short-wave laser beams to the human eye before mounting a few dozen lasers pointing in every direction...? My physics class caused me constant paranoia of possibly reflected beams.
On our way to the Taipei 101 we come across a large building that is marked as a temple on Google Maps. From the outside, it looks a lot more modern and plain than the ones we've seen so far. We decide to take a look anyway and get a glance of a hall full of praying people through a closing door — okay, let's not disturb them. We are about to turn around when an old man signals us to come in — the room is full of people dressed in black, with a book in front of each one. Verses are read in unison, from time to time everyone bows.
A woman notices us and shows us to fold our hands in front of our chest, like everyone is doing it.
We stand next to the door like that for what feels like an eternity, trying to bow at the proper moments. We say goodbye to the man by the door with a slight bow and make out way back outside.
Strange, but very nice of them.
We've already spotted the Taipei 101, the world's tallest building when it was built, peeking out between the other houses every now and then in the past days, but seeing it up close is something else entirely — we can hardly get enough.
I'm not going to lie, the just about ten million steps of the Elephant Mountain Trail are exhausting, but they guide us through a pretty forest to several scenic viewing spots from where we get an amazing view of Taipei's skyline at night.