As some people know, I had a vacation in February. Only very few knew
that I was heading down to Taiwan. I was leaving Germany at the 8th
and back here on the 24th of February. Yes, that neatly fit this years
Chinese New
Years parties.
Was at home for four days (and at work for one), after which I went off
to this years Cebit. Until the day I arrived in Taiwan it looked
like we do not have a booth there, but then everything changed while I
was having a nice vacation. I really have to thank
Alex here. Cebit was actually my
task, but he jumped in and did all the preparatory work that was needed
right in the time I started my vacation. Without that either my vacation
would have been much different and less nice or we wouldn t have had a
booth.
I am back home since some days now, without any travel plans for the next
few weeks/months to come. Though I wish I had a job (and private life)
that would allow me to just go off again, ie. something I could do
everywhere where there is net. Meh.
Of course I did take some pictures (more than 2500) and also some notes
during the trip. And having a blog that one or two people read, I think
I should bore you all with it. But hey, you can skip it if you want. :)
Yes, I should really take some time and work a bit on the pictures I
took. Right now I only selected around seven hundred which I show off to
people (and to link to from here), but they are basically just
copies. While some are great in itself, many can need a bit of work here
and there (cut out unimportant, blurry, colors, the usual stuff). And I
also prepared multiple shots for
HDR
processing or to make a panorama view from, but thats something that
takes time and has to wait. Just for the record, I think that
this,
this
and this
are very nice ones.
This is a public version of this text, so names and also various events
and days have been cut out. Yes, people who know those in my pictures
will know names, but thats no reason to feed the evil $searchengine
caches more with hits for their names.
Flight down, 8 Feb.
Flight down from Frankfurt, using KLM so it went via Amsterdam and
Bangkok (short Transit stop) to Taipei. The days before we had lots of
snow and cold and all that stuff which tends to get flights cancelled,
but I was lucky, none of that for me. The only slightly annoying thing was
in Taipei, where KLM demonstrated how much a Business class Priority
luggage sign is worth for them sometimes. We came in half an hour
before schedule, but then had to wait an hour for our luggage (while all
of economy luggage passed by). I think the business class Priority
sign actually meant Priority to wait .
The food on the flight from AMS to BGK was good, having a No Lactose
Meal actually tasting well. Can t remember what it was, but better than
the fish I got from BGK to TPE. Catering from Thai Airways, they do not
know anything besides Fish when preparing No lactose meal and then
they also manage to prepare it in the most boring way possible. Sad
thing, but happened four times now, all the times I had catering
prepared by them.
Other than those points, no trouble at all. Immigration was done in
about 20 seconds, customs didn t want to look at me, just the asians in
front and behind me, all fine. Met my Travel Companion outside and
off we got. First to the Taipei Main Station, where we got some
food. Some rice (with a bit of meat) and red sauce, together with a
soup. And a glass of tea, but that had an oily surface. Umm. Guess the
cup wasn t all that clean, we both skipped that.
Then I tried to get money from an ATM. First had to find one that actually
wants my european credit card. And then, as usual when I travel offroad,
I managed to forget my pin. Bah. Well, found an HSBC somewhere that
actually takes my Maestro card, so at some point I got money (a pretty
helpful thing, that is).
Wednesday, 10 Feb.
First night in a new Timezone which is 7 hours before my normal
one. Makes my body think I should not be allowed to sleep much.
So it only allowed me some two hours before I woke up again. It didn t
listen to any argument and didn t care that it was all dark and night,
so I couldn t sleep more. Wellwell, got up at the same time as $TC then,
we got some breakfast, egg/ham sandwich and tea. From
there I set off and juggled my way through Taipei MRT over to YuanShan
Station.
It is good for a visit of the Confucius Temple and also the
Dalongdong Baoan Temple
which is right beside it. Later on I got told there are much more
impressive Confucius temples elsewhere, but it is still a good place to
start off. And it just means I have one more reason for another visit.
After those two temples I moved over to the Taipei Fine Arts
Museum. Took about an hour to go through that museum, which again made
it pretty clear to me: Some people just have too much time and money.
I do not even get
the
setup in the entry hall, even though it looks nice, and let s not start
about the rest they show there. Definitely not my thing, Fine Arts ,
nothing worth to waste money on, at least for me.
So I left there after just about an hour and fought the MRT again. This
time it spit me out at the Taipei Zoo station and I went through
that. Appearently the nice sunny weather let some animals have fun,
and that all in public. Tssk.
Won t someone please think of the
children?! :)
Otherwise it is a pretty big area with lots of animals. Not all of them
seem to be in areas that (I think) are big enough for them, though I m no
expert in that. But it looked small for them.
Also, while I thought it pretty well visited, many people there, I bet for
Taiwanese standards the zoo was nearly empty. At least looking at their
preparations for queues, like in front of the koala house, they are used
to deal with like 20 times the amount of people. I count me lucky that
there haven t been that many, else I would have needed to wait everywhere,
which I hate. Queues are bad, mmmmmkay?
As I already mentioned, the weather that day was pretty nice. Mostly
sunny, only few clouds and some 25 til 29 degrees. No rain. Now that s a
nice winter day.
Dinner was scheduled for 1800h, a Hot Pot session. 5 people in total.
Appears you order the meat for the hot pots from the waiter and let them
bring it, but all the additional stuff you get yourself. They have a big
selection of vegetables, seafood, bread/cake like stuff and whatnot you
can take. I first also went there and got a small dish with stuff. But
stopped right then and let the Taiwanese do the rest. Better that way,
they know it. And hey, we had been 5 and they got stuff for like 35
people. :) It was a nice 2 hour session, in which we had lots of
different kinds of additions to the hotpot (two pots actually, one
spicy and one not spicy). I know of some meats, some vegetables, but
then there also was said to be duck bladder and some other organs which they
couldn t (or didn t want to? :) ) name in english. Now, db sounds worse
than it is, it doesn t have a special taste and is mostly boring, I
think. Of course, not liking seafood, I skipped on that, but about all
the rest was nice. I like Hot Pot :)
After this session the other 3 left for various reasons and $TC and me
had a nice walk around/through the University, before going back to $TCs
place.
Thursday, 11 Feb
Had another short night as I only got to bed around 2AM, just to get up
around 9AM. Additional fun that my body again insisted in being
elsewhere, not accustomed to the timezone in Taiwan yet, waking me up a
few times during the night.
Got an easypass for the MRT as that is a little better than buying a chip
for every single trip and battled with MRT again, finally emerging at
Danshui station. Sat a bit at the beach eating breakfast before finally
starting a walk out to the Fisherman s Wharf . It is some 4 kilometers
to it, made out as a bicycle path, but I just walked. Visited Fort San
Domingo on the way and then went all the way up in that Wharf area,
another kilometer. Got me a nice peppermint ice tea, though it was a
funny process to it. The salesperson didn t speak english and my chinese
is - well, limited is a too soft word to describe it. But it worked
pretty well, with us pointing around on the menu and then the salesman
showing me various additions, if I would want them. Like showing a milk
bottle Want milk in tea? , showing sugar,
At the bridge in that Wharf I was approached by some Asian people,
asking me to take a picture of them in front of the bridge. Fine, did
it, did it again in another setting and then, when done, they asked me
where I am from. When I said Germany they thanked me in German which
surprised me a little. :)
That is something funny anyways. Wherever I go, people look. They aren t
much used to someone my size. Kids are usually more direct with pointing,
grinning and sometimes crossing my way on purpose, just saying hi (some
kind of test of courage, I bet). Every now and then I also get asked if
they can take a picture with me. Right now there are like 20 pictures of
me (that I know of) all over Taiwan that I didn t take, nor have. :)
Now, who here loves Spongebob? This is the country for you!
The picture only shows one small table, you can find much much
more. Same goes for Hello Kitty and other such stuff.
Dinner this day was initially planned to be at some place called
Maokong, but then plans changed, as $TC and others that we should meet
there needed to pack for the next day. So $TC and me just went to the
Shilin Night Market. Right beside it is a big food plaza. Like a
thousand square
meters (or probably a few more, what do I know, I haven t measured it, but it wasn t all too big) having some hundred or more little kitchens where you can get a
very broad mix of things. We had cold noodles with some slightly spicy
sauce and then some fresh guava juice. Tasty tasty. Though noodles
with chopsticks was something new, but it worked out well
enough. Later I had a noodle soup, that was something more tricky, but
in the end you just need to find the right trick.
After food we went through the night market. Well. Parts of it. It s big.
And its crowded.
About the most crowded place I ve been to. Heck, half of Taiwan was in
that street area. :)
Didn t buy anything. The only stuff I thought interesting was a T-Shirt
with a Taiwan map on it, but do try getting some in my size. Ha. Small
asians. They say they have big sizes, but then its XL only (or a totally
ugly color, brrr).
We finished early here, as the packing for the trip starting Friday
right in the middle of the night still needed to be done, and getting up
at 6AM you do not want to stay up too late. But it was nice there anyways.
Friday, 12 Feb
Got up early. I mean, early. 6 AM. ARGS. Not really my favorite thing to
do, but as our plan said we have to get the HighSpeedRail to Kaohsiung
at 7:42AM there wasn t much else to do.
Pretty nice train, lots of room to sit, even in second class. Don t know
business, but probably even more. And it looks fast, if I can trust the
display it had we where going near 300km/h.
After arrival in Kaohsiung we went out to $TC s place to get our luggage
away, as it is annoying to move around with all the stuff. I got another
easypass here, this time a lent one from $TC s Mother. It s fun,
there are two MRT systems in Taiwan using the same technics, basically
the one in Kaohsiung is built like the one in Taipei, using the same style
of RFID cards (and chips for single trips). But they made them
incompatible. One can not use a pass from Taipei in Kaohsiung and vice
versa, for whatever reason. It s not like the two cities are very far
away from each other, it would actually make sense to be compatible, but
that is probably what stops them doing it.
We took this Friday and also the Saturday to get around Kaohsiung,
visiting several places. As the MRT in Kaohsiung has a different station
design at every of its stations we did look at some of those
too. Especially
Formosa Boulevard , a station that has two points
describing it best:
- it is largely oversized for the function it serves. I guess the
people who build it only thought of the health of the passengers, who
have to walk a marathon distance from one trainline to the other. It s
huge.
- it has a Dome of Light inside, which does look nice.
I do have some more pictures of that Dome and whenever I find some time
I should try making a nice panorama out of them, but not now.
Right outside one of the exits is a funny little cosmetic surgery. I
only remember it thanks to the english name of the Doc, but somehow I don t
think it was chosen wisely: Dr. Luck . . Aiik, you need be lucky to
get out there looking better? Dr. Unlucky might not be good for you
taking a wrong cut? :) (Yes, I know, I m crazy, don t tell me. Ok,
if you really want, queue up, you aren t the first.)
At one point we went out to Sizihwan, where we walked to a
ferry. Actually we tried renting bikes, but this little bike shop wasn t
prepared for a small german like me, not having bikes my size. (And no
safe way to get the saddle of the smaller ones into a height I could
start using the bike). So walk it was, not nice bike trip.
Still ok, got to the ferry, got over to the other side and had a nice walk
there to the/along the coast.
We bypassed multiple temples there, at one of which a great cite came
up:
Temples in Taiwan are something like 7-eleven. They are everywhere.
I love it. And somehow it s true, you can find one around each other
corner, a little like those churches in
Puebla, Mexico.
In the evening we had been out for a night market. The first one was
pretty boring. While having been announced in the MRT station
near it to be a night market for New Years things, we found it to be
about empty and very boring, so we went over to another one
nearby. Wasn t as crowded as the Shilin one, and not as large, but
nice. At the end of it had been a small game stand, where one could
shoot balloons to get some price. I ended up getting the biggest
available, as this isn t really a challenge. How anyone can miss hitting
a balloon there I don t know. They are only like 3m away, not moving,
you have clear view, and if you really need it even get a laser pointer
on your gun. Anyways, was fun enough, I repeated shooting enough times
to get the biggest available Patrick doll they had (a
meter). Hrhr. Who likes Spongebob, eh? Speak up! :)
I got a few nice shots of the night skyline of Kaohsiung late one of
those evenings, where we went to the Dream Mall and up into the big
wheel . Also had some game spots there, but turns out I m not as good
throwing things at a target than I am shooting at them.
We also went out to a historical sugar refinery, looking around. Of
course, this being Chinese New Years eve, there haven t been that much
people moving around, it was pretty empty. And the people working there
all just waiting for their shift to end. But still got some pretty nice
pictures from and around it. Also tasted a new kind of icecream (new for
me that is), which actually has a kind of sand like feel. I like
it. Like I actually liked most of the food, pretty much all the time. Of
course everyone has things one does not like, but in general the food is
great. Especially the largely different style compared to the european
way of cooking. I ate lots of things I won t ever touch here in
Germany.
Sunday, 14 Feb; Monday 15 Feb
A nice two days some way out of Kaohsiung. Found out I am pretty
good at losing various things: I got a bag full of (Li n w ; Syzygium
samarangense; wax apple, love apple, java apple, bellfruit, see
the
wikipedia page for more on it) and about an hour later I totally had
lost track where it ended up. The same happened with a big bag of
tissues I had bought. Somehow both of the bags got feet and ended up
elsewhere without telling me.
That one evening we went out for Dinner, a big party of people. Was a
place right beside the ocean, so yes, seafood. Oh yay, I don t like that
too much. Happy enough there must have been a conversation going on like
Hey people, this silly german doesn t like seafood much, lets get one
other option too . So we had a plate with some cold chicken on. But I
tried various of the seafood dishes too and liked some of them. Actually
some I had tried in Germany at some point where I learned to hate them
and now I liked them as I got them in Taiwan. People also seemed to
think I am good at using chopsticks, though I think I am just
fiddling around and be lucky when I get my stuff. But maybe it just
means Hey, it looks funny what you are doing. Keep going, we like to
laugh. :) ).
We actually had been around this place a little earlier that day, taking
a walk around it, drinking some tea, that type of thing. And got a set
of nice bottles of fresh coconut juice. My first time i got it fresh, I
think. But I also managed to lose track of it. I bet somewhere there is
a party consisting of tissues, (Li n w ) and a bottle of coconut
juice, singing classic songs like
Strike, we escaped the german
Lunch the other day happened to be a big family meetup. Lots of people,
lots of chatting, lots of fun (I think :) ). When we arrived it started
out by about all of them trying to get me to sit down somewhere. And me
bad impolite german not wanting to. But there was no way to escape, so
finally they won and I sat, with a number of people around me, trying to
chat with me. Which is actually hard work for both sides, but every now
and then gets a good laugh. But my chinese is far far away from being
useful for even a small meaningful sentence, so they had to activate
their english knowledge, especially for the times $TC had been
elsewhere and couldn t help out translating. Somehow the job got done,
they asked their questions and I hope they mostly understood my
replies. Bad me, speaking too fast english sometimes.
We had a nice lunch there, with the most notable part being the way I
got called to it. It s interesting how much you can say by just using
body language and pointing. (Oh, of course food was very good too, but
that fact is one you can take as a given, even if I don t mention it
again).
Later on a dice game started, and after a short explanation of
the rules I joined in. Took only a little, but then I got the rules, its
easy.
I didn t get any of the chatting that happened during the whole game, but
it was very much fun and really insane (so would also
fit
DebConf very well) and nearly no times
you do need words to understand what is going on. I like this game and they
gave me a set of dices, so I can train it and come back to play
again. Ha.
A bit after that dice game people unpacked some of the sweets I brought
from Germany. One of them being spicy. Really nicely spicy, at least for
the average Taiwanese. If you happen to have been at
DebConf9 and also
had the luck to be one of those I offered some chocolate or wine gum
to, you know what I write about. The stuff here was slightly less
spicy, but still more than enough to leave a nice impression.
They had lots of - well - fun trying them out, gave a good set of
laughter. And ordered more for next time. Uhoh, I already know which I
will take with me, but then there have to be special preparations before
testing. :)
I ve also got invited to come back next year. Might be I haven t made the
worst impression. Well, lets see if I can take this up and if they still
want me in a years time. At least my chinese should be much better by
then, given another year of training. (Even if I find it actually hard
to learn. For some reason its not easy for me to memorize language
things, at least not chinese. Oh my, one year, I should have some 3
words more, I hope :) ).
In the evening, back in Kaohsiung, $TC also told me rules of a second
dice game that I had seen some people playing. Also seems like fun if
played with enough people.
Tuesday, 16th Feb
We started the trip by taking the train from Kaohsiung to
Taitung. We had been a little late for it, had to run
from the MRT to the train station. Silly me took that as an opportunity
to fall down a set of stairs. Only to discover, when getting to the
platform, that the Taiwan Railway wanted to give me a feeling of home,
delaying the train. First by 31 minutes, later it got up to 43
minutes. Somehow felt like Deutsche Bahn, being late is also their best
quality. When the train finally got in we saw that we had been lucky to
have seats reserved, this train was full, lots of people moving
around within Taiwan that day.
We got to Taitung all fine and had the Hotel send someone to pick
us up at the train station, as it is a long way from the train station
over to the Hotel. Got our room and left it pretty soon again to look
around.
Spotted a funny little Hello Kitty car and got some food for lunch
followed by a walk along the beach. Found some sculptures made of
wood, where one of it seems to have some bad stomach problems
Later on we had a nice and long walk through Taitung Forest Park. Took
some time, got some nice pictures. It was getting dark when we got back
into town, time for Dinner already. Yay, food.
Next day a train trip to Hualien was set, but only for the afternoon, so
we had time to look around. We first went through the Peinan Cultural
Park, but unfortunately
we had no dog to park there. After that we rented a scooter to get a
little farther away from the train station. After getting some fuel for it
we headed to National Museum of Prehistory (which was much more
interesting than the Fine Arts one earlier) and later on just drove
around some time. Just looking around, without a clear direction, simply
for the look around. Was fun, but too short actually. But we had to head back at
some point to catch our train over to Hualien. In Hualien we again got a
Taxi to the Hotel. We left that soon after arriving, Hotel rooms are
boring, and it was food time again anyways.
Only a little annoying, one of the few days we had rain and I can
imagine something nicer than rain when I am outside. But somehow this
damn weather doesn t bother to stop raining when I go out.
Thursday, 18th Feb
A full day stay in Hualien, no Hotel change. Just a trip over to the
Taroko Gorge.
Which is a very nice and impressive place to visit, sure
too much for a single day, I definitely have to come back here. (Well, I
have to come back for multiple other reasons, but this sure is one).
We took the bus to the first stop in that park, somewhere around the Leader
Village Taroko. Probably a nice place for a night or ten.
There was a short trail we followed, getting some more pictures and
impressions, but it didn t take us long until we where back in a queue
for a bus, this one going all the way up to the furthest away spot a bus
goes to. There we had some lunch before we wanted to start walking
around. Unfortunately (for my nose) we then passed by a place selling
Stinking Tofu . Other customers there said that this is not the best
available, but I got a taste of it. Don t really need that version more
often, even though its not as bad as it smells or the name suggests.
We walked a little there and I got some more pictures before we set off
to climb the stairs to the Hsiang-Te Temple of Taroko .
Looking down from there we saw a lot of buses which was our sign to get
back to the bus station, as the last bus was scheduled to get off
somewhere at 3 in the afternoon. And as we didn t have a Hotel place
here it is pretty helpful to catch the bus. So we queued up once more
and had a bus ride back to the train station. Next time there should
definitely be a night or more in some Hotel somewhere there.
On the way back we took a slight detour, having another time at the
beach, not enjoying the weather which insisted on a little rain and lots
of wind.
Friday, 19th Feb
This day saw us moving to Luodong, another place with a day of
rain. Still, my gps log tells me we where moving around a lot, even
though I do not have a single picture from the whole day. And as
pictures are the main source of my memory ups.
Well, I remember the rain, of course. I also remember that I got a steak
at some place and that we bought various kinds of food (and tea and
juice! :) ) on one of those markets, eating it in our Hotel room. (Rain
is bad, mmmmmmmkay?!).
And there was some kind of park too, in which I got a funny little game.
Oh well.
Saturday, 20th Feb
There is nothing nicer than starting a day with a fun bus trip in the
morning. Going high up into the mountains. On a day where the clouds
reach down to some level underground, more or less. Using very narrow
streets and the usual mountain like narrow curves. While not being able
to see far.
We got up to Taipingshan all fine but once there we had to wait for our room to
be ready. So we took a walk around. Actually not a walk. More a
climb. Being a mountain place, and those mountains never having heard of
those nice invention called elevator or that other named escalator,
people setup stairs. Millions of them.
Besides the stairs it is a very nice place to walk around. We took
various of the trails through the area and besides me sometimes nearly
falling down (damn slippery grounds) it was great.
At some point in the afternoon we got our room and also ate some instant
noodles before taking another trail, one that took us some 2 hours.
You should really take a look at all the pictures I took,
as the few I
link directly sure do not present this area right. Taipingshan starts at
Picture
434 and continues up to
Picture
634, but a good number of them is from the second day too.
Sunday, 21st Feb
Contrary to the day before there wasn t a single cloud to spot. Ok, ok,
there have been some, pictures proof it, but it was a nice sunny
day. Nice start of the end of the trip through Taiwan (still one and a
half day in Taipei to follow, but the trip around country is over).
Of course that meant taking a lot of pictures again,
and soon after breakfast we took the BongBong Train over over to
the Maosing station. There are again a few prepared trails, most
of which we took. We only skipped on the one going to the waterfalls, as
it wouldn t have fit into our schedule.
Got compensated with a pretty adventurous track with lots of nice
sights following the old train tracks. Thanks to a number of landslides
there is no train going anymore and thus it is a nice way to walk.
It is a 1500m long walk and sometimes you really have to be careful, but it
provides many great views and is a really nice trail. Got a few hundred
pictures, yay. Including a proof I ve really been there. I hate pictures
with me, really, they are just shit by default (maybe I shouldn t be in
them?), but in total I got 11 pictures that proof I was really there and
not only sent a camera (four of those are included in that gallery I
always link to).
We got back to the main place around noon and after Lunch we took the
Bus back down to Ylan. The bus was scheduled to go at 15:30h, so we went
to it fifteen minutes earlier. While we had a sunny day, clouds had
started coming in at 15:00h, and at the time the bus started it was all
white and there wasn t much too see for the driver again.
But it turned out that this makes no difference. The driver must have
a very prominent wish to die while taking his passengers with him. Or he
is insane. Or has a very important appointment somewhere else. Whatever
it is, he drove down, on narrow streets, very tight curves, not too much
sight and all that with a speed thats incredible. Several times a part
of our bus was out over the abyss. I found it pretty fun and all that,
especially as it made for a set of very nice views all over the area,
and appearently another passenger thought similar, but $TC did have
quite the opposite of thoughts and did not feel all that great.
We arrived in Ylan one hour before schedule, which, on a
70km trip through mountain area should give a hint how it was. Took a
minute off to regenerate and then we wanted to look around a bit. Having
our luggage with us that is annoying so we tried to leave that at the train stations
baggage service counter. Turns out the personell there is a bunch of
crackmonkeys not following their own advertised opening times. Probably
wanted to go home early, those lazy dolts. Fortunately the people at
the ticket counter were better and exchanged our tickets and we took the
Train back to Taipei a little earlier than initially planned.
Monday, 22nd Feb
Bad day for all those people who had a nice vacation during Chinese New
Year, they had to get back to work. I didn t have that problem and so
went around Taipei a bit. Initially I had plans of going to some tourist
spots, like the National Palace Museum or others, but then just skipped
them all and just took a walk through various spots of Taipei. Basically
just Get out of MRT station XY, walk around .
The GPS track later told me that I actually covered about 15 km that
way, and my feet agreed to that. At some point I did bypass a German
Cuisine restaurant, called Zum Fass . Don t ask me how the food is
there, I wasn t in, but still had to grin a little when reading the
menu.
In the evening we went out to get me some Tea to bring back to
Germany. Well, some is some kind of understatement, it was lots, as much
as I could pack. But good stuff, some of it is steaming right now right
besides the keyboard here. Yummy.
Tuesday, 23rd Feb
As always, the worst day of any vacation. The day you have to leave and
go back home. My flight was scheduled for 20:00h, so I took another half
a day just looking around Taipei. Which made me even more jealous of
those not having to get away, as I happened to pass by some preparations
for the Lantern festival. Which happened only a few days after I got
away. Next year I have to plan better and stay longer, what I saw on
preparations, and that only at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall definitely
makes it worth it.
Timing in the afternoon was very tight, I actually got the last bus that
was in time for my flight. Just one later would have created some
trouble, my total time on the airport was something around 30 minutes
before boarding started. Just enough to get the minimum needed amount of
postcards written and off to boarding.
The flight back was boring. Food from TPE to BGK was a pretty good
variation on No lactose , some noodles with stuff. Of course from BGK
over to AMS it was fish again, same boring Thai Catering as usual.
I was unable to sleep well on the flight. Somehow I woke up very often
despite earplugs and eye mask. With all that I turned out to be half
asleep when we arrived in Amsterdam and so I accidently took an opened
half litre bottle of water with me through security. Funny, they didn t
spot it. Instead they decided to make a big fuss about my camera bag,
asking me in detail what I have in there, supposedly trying to check if
I know what I carry. And made an even bigger show of scanning it again.
And that bad liquid that those idiotic stupid laws written by
brainless monkeys from our governments forbid got no notice at all.
Imagine what I could have done to air safety with it! Oh my.
Back in Germany my luggage got out first, so no waiting at all. I passed
by work to leave some weight there (Hello boss, want some tea?) and went
back home.
This was also my first trip where I had a noticable jetlag after coming
back. For nearly a week my damn body insisted on being in Taiwans
timezone, waking me up at times I should sleep, feeling tired when I
should be awake. Tssk.
Conclusion of this trip: I will be back in Taiwan for sure. I don t care
if you take this as a promise or threat, but I will be back! :)
Yesterday, I was finally able to fetch this:
(plus 99 more like it)
It's been a while since the concert back
in march, which we recorded (with dvswitch); the reason it
took that long was mainly due to a few organizational reasons where
people who needed to order couldn't because someone else was delaying
(you don't want to know). But the DVD's are now, finally, ready. I
(really) like what they look like.
There'll probably be a few leftovers, but I can deal with those.
Of course, one would expect me to react to 
Whew!
Is it karma or what? What makes me get involved in two horribly complex, two-week-long conferences, year after year? Of course, both (DebConf and EDUSOL) are great fun to be part of, and both have greatly influenced both my skills and interests.
Anyway, this is the fifth year we hold EDUSOL. Tomorrow we will bring the two weeks of activities to an end, hold the last two videoconferences, and finally declare it a done deal. I must anticipate the facts and call it a success, as it clearly will be recognized as such.
One of the most visible although we insist, not the core activities of the Encounter are the videoconferences. They are certainly among the most complex. And the videoconferences' value is greatly enhanced because, even if they are naturally a synchronous activity (it takes place at a given point in time), they live on after they are held: I do my best effort to publish them as soon as possible (less than one day off), and they are posted to their node, from where comments can continue. This was the reason, i.e., why we decided to move at the last minute tomorrow's conference: Due to a misunderstanding, Beatriz Busaniche (a good friend of ours and a very reknown Argentinian Free Software promotor, from 
While driving through Spain around DebConf, I saw a few things that
I thought I should share with the world...
San Sebastian runs on dbus!
Alright, Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 AKA as Lenny 
What does the new stable release bring for system administrators? I ll give an overview what news you might expect when upgrading from Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, codename Etch (released on 8th April 2007) to the current version Debian GNU/Linux 5.0, codename 
A common way to debug a network server is to use 'telnet' or 'nc' to
connect to the server and issue some commands in the protocol to verify
whether everything is working correctly. That obviously only works for
ASCII protocols (as opposed to binary protocols), and it obviously also
only works if you're not using any encryption.
But that doesn't mean you can't test an encrypted protocol in a
similar way, thanks to openssl's s_client:
