GERMANY TO FRANCE Önder had been invited to my parents´place. He took the opportunity to travel to France. He spent 10 days in Dijon where he enjoyed French foods and drinks, spent time with my parents going to farms, to the market, and did lots of sport activities such as swimming, walking around the lake, hiking in Switzerland. This trip was his birthday present. He was very pleased with it!. He also had some time to read during the day and at night he watched some travel films made by my father. Summer 2018 was extremely hot, daytime temperatures went over 35 degrees and night time went down to 29! It made life more difficult. Dijon When Önder got to France, he enjoyed not only the culture but also the food! Any occasion is good to eat good food such as cheese, chocolate, and cakes! HIKING IN JURA - BORDER TO SWITZERLANDA two day trip to Dole, a town that is near Switzerland and where hiking paths crossed each other - French and Swiss ones On the way the met lots of cows and snails too. The first day was rainy that pleased Önder! The second day was sunny again, nice too. A BRIGHT AND SUNNY DAY For Önder gathering snails was an interesting activity but for my parents a fascination! THE LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST... A crepe before going back to Dijon! It looks delicious! Although there was some language barrier, everybody enjoyed each other company and laughed a lot. Maybe next year ...another trip to Dijon? Who knows...
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First day – landing and general statement I woke up in another planet where everything looked the same, people, buildings, and streets. It was scary. No culture, no fun, no religion, one way of thinking, and people functioned only. They didn´t live on this planet, they studied or worked, and eat to get functioning. Life there was reduced to a minimum vital. No identity, everything was erased to start from scratch some time ago, no comfort. Idling was not admitted at all, it was seen as a waste of time, people were always busy. No one was not allowed nor to think neither to express its opinions, or ideas. I landed in the South, where people were not willing to speak the language of the North. I could not understand the language neither read it. I was lost, people didn´t show emotions, mealy mouthed. No one was ready to help, not even for the sake of it. Any kind of help had to be done with a favour in return. People looked at me in a suspicious way, people interested wanted only to benefit from my knowledge, but no friendship could be sealed. If they smiled at you, the very next minute they could stab you in the back. I went to the North too, it was “same, same but different”, only the language and winter. Winter was cold, and some parts of the planet was not cold enough to be equipped with heaters. People considered as spoiled if you had the AC on even by temperatures below 0. What stroke me on this planet is that everybody was using a device like a smartphone to do any kinds of things: paying, chatting, ordering stuff, taking pictures, and at some point communicating too. People looked at me like a beast or an exotic thing, I stood out of the crowd. At some point, I understood that people on this planet were admiring my skin, my height, and even my nose. I learned at a later stage that if you don´t belong to the Han, you belong to a minority. Second day - a general day of discovery. The second day I went out, it was chaos on the street. Apparently, this was not a chaos but a normal situation. People drove, honked like crazy or drove like snails, 30 km per hour. It was hard to find drivers aware of the traffic rules. Giving way to any other driver showed weakness. Accidents were something common… sad but true. Taxi drivers falsified taxi meters so that passengers paid more. Everything was an experience, especially when you are a long nose and round eyes. Pedestrians had no right at all and if you dared to cross the street, you had to force it as drivers accelerated and ran you over! Scary! E-bikes drove on pavements and e-bikes drivers behaved like as if they were the king of the pavement, honked when you stood on their way!. The scariest was to observe cars stopped in the middle of the road: people phoned, used maps or even let children out to pee on the pavement. Disgusting but true. This was a common practice, children were allowed to pee wherever they felt like it even toilets were around. Coming to the topic children, they were the king of the family. Grandparents dedicated their time to the education while parents worked like a dog to pay the best school ever. 7-year-old kids had a 40 hours schedule, they went to school, had duties there too after school once or twice a week. Then they had extra classes every single day and at the weekend too. Extra classes consisted of English, Maths, Drawing, Piano, Ancient Chinese, how to play Five in a Row: wǔzǐ. Children were exhausted and had no time to play, a waste of time. Sport was not part of their activity considered as non-intellectual. However, competition was part of their daily life since they were born. Be first in every single field, if not children were considered as a failure and not able to attend the best universities. By the age of 15 or 18, age when they took the final exam Gaokao, teens had burn out, hair fall, and any sickness related to stress, it went to commit suicide. If it occurred, no one was allowed to speak about it. It went from the family and the school reputation. Everything was taboo, included Tibet, religion, and politics. Be sure to nod when people on that planet told you that Hong Kong and Taiwan belonged to that planet and Japanese were defeated during WW2. . Monitoring, controlling, observing, and reviewing each other was also a daily task. Everybody was the leader of someone else. For instance, in a school, there ranked list establishing the best students, the best teachers, the best leaders, and so one. Each class watched the other one and so one. Cameras were part of the landscape. Every step you mad was recorded, cameras were installed absolutely everywhere, every single meter people were framed. This planet could be renamed as a Big Brother. No trust, be the best. The whole system was based on that as a pyramid. Third day - Interacting with people As a foreigner, it was not easy but finally I understood that having friends as I used to have was surreal. People always were very friendly at the first place, as it was “cool” to have met a foreigner, they promised you to eat out, to visit places, or even to invite you at their place. But in the end, nothing really happened. Although I had to admit that one family contacted me regularly to visit them and they were very friendly. I could say that I sealed one friendship all this time. People started their day, very early in the morning – 5am for elderly, 7am at the latest for younger people. Everybody had to be busy until 11.30 – lunch time. 11.30 until 2pm the planet stopped living. From 2 until 5.30 the planet was active again then break again to have diner. From 7 until 9 or 10pm, people were busy again with evening activities. Elderly went out dancing on local music and old people during an hour or two just danced. Students studied and workers still worked or did some home chores. At 9pm, lights were turned off. No parties, only for men to get drunk, have late barbecues. Life has been defined in details and people followed it as soldiers. Same with holidays, the whole planet has holidays at the same time. Travelling to the North was also an experience, taking the train was not as easy. Buying tickets, understand the boards, and passing the controls: passport and X-ray. Queuing jumping was something normal and pushing even more. No manners! Be the first to get on! Eating habits on the train, people carried so much food, it would be unusual not to eat on time, sharp 6pm. Everyone got hot water to mix with instant noodles, people eat snacks like dried fish, meat. What a stench! Food on this planet was quite good, foreigner should find their own way as people ate anything that crawled! Rice and noodles three times a day were the basic with meat or fish (south dishes). Cultural differences were extreme on this planet. What for one is a custom, for the other can be totally unbearable. People spat all the time, did not use anything but fingers to blow their nose. When temperatures raised to 30 degrees Celsius or higher: men had this strange behaviour to roll up their T-shirt and slapped their bellies. Saying no, showing emotions, pointing a finger at someone is strictly prohibited, it was an offense. Never answer back even in a polite way if not people would have stamped you as a rebel, being someone against the planet. Taking responsibilities, signing documents or giving instructions did not exist. It meant danger for the one who did it, getting evicted in case of issues. Just very high ranked managers had the right to do so, the rest obeyed and shut it. To me the last thing would be that nobody said please or thank you, people routinely slammed you out of the way in their hurry to get out of a place…It was enough! To get around on that planet would be staying with your own people, wrapped in a surreal bubble but that could drive you to lose you too! Even that was not tempting at all. Fourth day – a future to all the universe? Observing more the planet, made me discover entire cities inhabited, they were called “ghost towns”. Being built just for speculation and the sake of making money. No one will ever live there. Resources of the country were over exploited until no one left such gas, water, minerals. It was needed to respond to the domestic demand and to support the economic growth. One of the solutions is to outsource and see what other planets had to offer and exploit there. This led to catastrophic environment destructions with a pollution of the nature such as lakes, rivers, forests. It generated another serious problem: smoke. The air quality especially in winter was extremely bad. People could not even see one meter ahead, green lights appeared in the sky, nothing to compare with aurora borealis, it came from pollutants. When it rained, it turned into an acid rain. For human being, health issues were the main concern: cancer, lung problems, asthma, and any respiratory sicknesses. It was said that over one million people died every year due to bad air quality. Index provided by the government was not reflecting the reality, using another index showed how alarming it was. I was concerned about my health too. I have been told that every year spent on this planet cost three years of your life. Coming back to the health and hygiene on that planet, you ´d better stay healthy and avoid hospitals. You did not go to the doctor as we did on our planet, but you went straight to the hospital. The procedure before going to visit a doctor is quite strict. First get some cash, queue to get a card and recharge the card that allowed you to be examined. If the doctor thought that you need a more thorough examination than you would be sent to a specialist. Hospitals looked like a town. Everything under the same roof. The doctor asked questions, you should only answer, discussions were prohibited. Hygiene was not the same standard as on my planet. Bedsheets were not changed regularly, gloves to prepare medicine were not a common usage, cigarette butts laid everywhere, cottons with blood stain left on the floor. I experienced it for quite a time I had to go three days in a row as I had a bronchitis and a flu, I was on a drip for hours on Christmas eve. It was the worse Christmas ever. Another time I had a laryngitis, I had to go every day for a week to breath oxygen mixed with a treatment. The longer I stayed in such an environment, the more I noticed things. Even doctors to get rid of foreigners, lied to his patients! It was easy as most of foreigners could neither read nor speak. Truth came out… what could I do? Nothing! Just as anything else, I accepted it and lived with it.
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