Shanghai

After 42 relatively comfortable hours, Atilla, Eva and I arrive in Shanghai. The hours went by quite quickly as we reflected on the camp and spent many hours sleeping. As it turns out the hardsleeper on the train is more comfortable than the bed I spent 15 nights in back in Kunming (or Anning, technically) and I imagine even a nailbed is more comfortable than my previous trainride.

The first thing we notice is the heat, it takes some time to get used to the 35 degrees in a humid climate. When we walk over Nanjing road the following morning at 10am it is already 31 degrees, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Attila and I spend our days  in a very comfortable hostel, the Blue Mountain Bund Youth Hostel, and are accompanied by Aleena the next three days. The best thing about Shanghai was spending a little more time with a few of the awesome people I met during this internship, an unforgettable experience in many ways.

Even though we arrive early in the afternoon, we do little more than checking out Nanjing road for dinner and spending some time at the Bund in the evening. We decide to go for easy and cheap as we both crave a burger, so McDonalds it is. I rarely go to fastfood places back home, but here it seems like an easy choice if you want something familiar with a decent amount of meat. The Chinese seem keen on having rather light meals and snacking a lot on the street, but it doesn't look so tempting to me. We also weren't in the mood to randomly select something on the menu in a small restaurant, or pay premium fee for the English menu (you essentially pay more than double for one page of google translate in the menu). Afterwards we enjoy the beautiful view of the financial district across the river and the nice atmosphere of the Bund, which provides us with quite a comfortable (only 28 degrees now, but at least there is a breeze) and scenic walk back to our hostel. A really nice bonus is Attila's invitation to join him in London during the olympics, even though the booking after was quite troublesome and annoyed many people in the hostel on the only day the wifi was down.

The city appeals to me much more during the night. During the day it felt to me like it lacked atmosphere and culture that you would find in cities like Berlin, Stockholm and London, to name but a few. As our hostel was located close to Nanjing road, the main shopping street, I definitely got the feeling that this city is much more about shopping and showing of your social status (even though Chinese claim they don't like to do so).

The next day we pick up some EPs who arrived from Hangzhou and we meet up with some other EPs already in Shanghai. Together we make our way across the river by boat to the financial district (after saying goodbye to Anissa and Suhaila), ready to visit the Shanghai Global World Financial Center or, as we dubbed it: beo (because it looks like a beeropener), with 500 meters the highest building in Shanghai and fourth highest in the world. The sun is slowly setting as we ascend to the observatory at 474 meters, providing us with the opportunity to see the view both in daylight and with the many lights that illuminate the city after sunset. It was worth the wait as the view is even more beautiful in the evening. As we were all pretty hungry at this point Eva decided to take us to a restaurant nearby in a shopping mall (appearantly a normal place for restaurants here). The Restaurant was quite nice and we tasted a delicious dessert with toast and ice that is supposed to be rather famous, especially in Shanghai. Unfortunately, most restaurants in China close at 10, and this one is no exception. We all go our own ways and decide to meet at our hostel tomorrow for a final drink together.

The next day is not so special as the Yuyuan garden turned out quite dissapointing and Aleena and I fail to find the French concession area while Attila tries the Maglev-train (he is a physicist, after all). Luckily the evening program makes more than up for it as we enjoy conversation, a game of pool, cold beer and Dave's remaining tequila. It was really good seeing Dave again the past two days, after separating in DuJiangYan, even though he is otherwise occupied most of the time. I also got to know a new friend of his, who is also an AIESECer and who had joined us yesterday as well. A very enjoyable evening indeed.

Having said goodbye again to everyone and being left with the three of us again, we meet up the next day with Eva, our local (yet horrible, haha) guide at the Shanghai Museum. After a relativy interesting tour it is already time to meet up with another EP, JiaYing from Malaysia. Together we do manage to find the French Concession, which has a few very nice streets with some nice (but pricey) bars and restaurants. The atmosphere is great here and it is relatively quiet here, or at the very least we could escape the constant honking and noise of cars here. The buildings are nice too and there are relatively few people for a well known tourist area, perhaps they got lost like us the last time. Although, in our defense, we had no idea what we were looking for and this was well hidden between two big shopping streets. As none of us were really hungry, we have a few drinks at a bar instead. After we are joined by two Chinese volunteers, who also live in Shanghai (like Eva), we reminisce about what we learned about Chinese culture during this internship. After happy hour (which lasted three hours, strangely) I want to go to a jazz bar, which is said to be the best in Shanghai and they said was close (turned out to be 2.5km). Because of the 50rmb entrance and the fact we had to make our metro (which we didn't), after this long walk I was the only one who went in, and only for 10 minutes (to avoid the fee). It was enough, however, to get a taste of the atmosphere in Shanghai's greatest jazz club.

When we finally return to the hostel and are done with packing and everything else that has to be done before leaving to Bejing, it is time to catch some sleep. At this point, however, it is already 2am and we have to get up three hours later to catch our train, which departs to Bejing at half past 7.

Time to say goodbye to Shanghai and meet up with one more EP in Bejing before Attila flies back to Budapest. I will spend some more time in Bejing, enjoying a bit more culture here and finally taking some time to relax, a not unimportant part of a vacation of course.