About breakfast and learning Chinese

My quarantine is coming to an end. Today is the last day here at the hotel in Qingdao. I'll be picked up at ten tomorrow and taken to the airport. I'm going to fly because the bullet train takes eight hours. China is the fourth largest country in the world. The route I would drive looks like it would take two hours by car on the map - but that is totally wrong. The day always starts well. The weather is warm, it is as bright as day at seven in the morning. Then first aerobics. This is the ultimate sport for quarantine. Skipping rope and exercising with your own body weight are also effective, but excruciatingly boring. Aerobics with good music is simply fun. It's good that I'm so old and still had in the back of my mind how Sidney Rome and Jane Fonda encouraged housewives to do sports at home in front of the television. This can be transferred fantastically to a hotel room.

Then breakfast, well then - blanched cabbage leaves, briefly boiled soybean sprouts, a few fried balls rolled in sesame, sometimes a few slices of bacon with it or a yeast dumpling. Opinions differ at breakfast. It is clear that people eat differently in other countries, and out of curiosity one likes to get involved, but maybe the morning is a particularly sensitive phase of the day when one is not yet completely open to the world, but rather a bit withdrawn thinner nerves. I still remember eating salty goo rice with pieces of bacon and millennial eggs for breakfast about two years ago. Frustration! I actually love millennial eggs - but not for breakfast. Now I'm used to getting blanched vegetables with sauce in the morning and a few fried treats to go with it. Let's just turn the tables and consider German breakfast customs from a Chinese perspective. This confirms the thesis that in the morning the nerves for foreign enjoyment are too bare, no matter where in the world you live.

Mett, the raw pig in the morning !!! Pure HORROR for the Chinese. On the subject of a nice video from a funny Rhinelander who lives in Shanghai. Half of the film is chattering in Chinese, the other half in German. But it's worth it. Raw pork ??? You Germans are crazy. Oh, by the way - love brought this Thomas from Oberbergischen to Shanghai. He became a YouTube star in China who makes cultural comparisons between China and Germany and explains them in his very special way. He speaks FLUID Chinese and even speaks the Shanghai dialect perfectly, so that Chinese are full of admiration. Learning languages After my breakfast, I first had online lessons. The students will take their oral exam for the German language diploma in December, which entitles them to study at a German university. Super nice, the young people - and talented! They develop their positions on social issues in long, detailed presentations in partly impeccable German. Slowly and hesitantly, of course, but it's also a damn difficult language. Each time they participate, they stand up and speak while standing. That is definitely a psychological challenge. You are exposed, you speak the difficult language, the teacher is there and actually always evaluates - you have to endure that first. I am glad that I am no longer a student.

Mett, the raw pig in the morning !!! Pure HORROR for the Chinese. On the subject of a nice video from a funny Rhinelander who lives in Shanghai. Half of the film is chattering in Chinese, the other half in German. But it's worth it. Raw pork ??? You Germans are crazy. Oh, by the way - love brought this Thomas from Oberbergischen to Shanghai. He became a YouTube star in China who makes cultural comparisons between China and Germany and explains them in his very special way. He speaks FLUID Chinese and even speaks the Shanghai dialect perfectly, so that Chinese are full of admiration.

Hier ist er: Der ultimative Green Health Code für Shanghai, den ich morgen UNBEDINGT brauche, um ins Flugzeug und in die Stadt zu kommen. Es war ein Akt, den aufs Handy zu kriegen; dafür braucht man eine chinesische Telefonnummer, die ich natürlich noch nicht habe, außerdem ist die App auf Chinesisch. Drei Tage habe ich es immer wieder versucht, Leute online kennen gelernt, die jemand kennt, den ich kenne, die Deutsch und Chinesisch können und mir helfen wollten. Ich hatte schon aufgeben und plante, es wie in guten alten Zeiten mit analogen Papieren zu versuchen, was natürlich Riesenprobleme gegeben hätte, aber nach einiger Wartezeit ("Ihre Angaben werden geprüft.") war er auf einmal einfach da, der Code - wie durch ein Wunder.

Das zweimal täglich stattfindende Ritual: Fieber messen und per WeChat an die Hotelverwaltung weitergeben. It's Corona-Time.