My life in Bochum in Hiroshima

First day

-          Note: I had 11 hours at the airport in China before my next flight and so I had a lot of time to write every little boring detail, enjoy. Maybe skip this post.

-          The guy next to me on the plane doesn’t respect my personal space. Manspreading. Also, he smells a bit. But other than that, he is quite nice and made the stewards help me with the little (broken) screen on the seat in front of me so that I could watch movies and listen to music.

-          The stewards avoid eye contact and successfully ignore me most of the time to only talk to the Asian passengers.

-          The choice of music varies from Chinese opera to all other extremes. And so I listen randomly to Leonard Cohen, Nothing but Thieves and Warpaint. Then somewhere over Russia at 3am I watch Collateral Beauty.

-       I made it to Shanghai. Couldn’t sleep on the plane and so I sleep at the airport now. I wake up with five mosquito bites. The airport seats are very comfortable though and I figured out the perfect way how to sleep around my backpack so that it doesn´t get stolen.

-          Technology often scares me and so I wanted to be prepared. Already in Prague, I bought the adaptor (is that the name for the thingy you need for different types of power plugs?) so that I could charge my phone and laptop in Japan. I asked the staff for help and once I got home I found out, of course, he had helped me to pick the wrong one. I didn´t get discouraged and went back to return it and buy a new one. This one should work also in China. Well it does fit in the Chinese electric outlet (or socket? What is the difference?) but the Czech cords don’t fit into it.

-          They have a charging point here which works though. So I can use my laptop now and postpone dealing with the problem on later.

-          Seven mosquito bites.

-          They have many free water fountains here at the Shanghai airports. All of them with (intentionally!) warm or hot water??!!

-          If you ever go to the Shanghai airport, there IS Wi-Fi but you need to find a really small information desk somewhere between the gates, scan your passport and get your personal log in data. After a little technological battle, I managed to get the Internet working for about an hour.

-          I forgot Facebook doesn’t work in China. And for some reason Google doesn’t either and so I use Seznam for the first time in about ten years.

-          Oh my goodness those mosquito bites really are annoying.

-          (The stewards in their uniforms, high heels and identical hairstyles, walking around in groups like students from Beauxbatons look like a sect from the future.)

-          Overall it´s very calm and clean here at the airport, after all the bad reviews I heard and looked up, I am pleasantly surprised.