I know I haven't been writing much but many ideas and stories piled up so I'll be writing for a while now.

Taiwan - travelling there and back

We are getting to be more and more a global village. Through Skype, MSN, Gmail and many other internet derived services we can connect to people all over the planet provided they have a cable or a modem. Even if that is a maximum of 25% of the world's population, it is still an overwhelming number. And with faster and cheaper planes you can get anywhere in a day.
In theory al is airy, happy and easy but, take my argumented word for it, it ain't a piece of pie.

Getting from my dead-end country to Taiwan, for example, is an interesting experience. One must take a plane from my city to Bucharest, Bucharest to Amsterdam then Amsterdam-Taiwan. Total flight time approx 24 hours, plus wait time in airports, I reached a stunning 36-38 hours to get from GMT+2 to GMT+7.
The Atlantic is always cold. The outside temp is -45 Celsius degrees so they heat up the plane at an absolute minimum in order to conserve fuel. They give you blankets but it's still cold, especially for a heat-lover like me. Sitting in a chair for 16 hours, even with the provided food, drinks and air plane entertainment is not fun. Especially since air plane food is a grand sort-of. They try, I know, but they manage a food that is between lol and bah.
It's funny, they give you a brochure where, amongst other useful information, they present some exercises so you don't remain stuck in your chair. But even with those, when the flight is over you see people who seem they've forgotten how to walk, wiggling away from the aircraft.

Except the actual flight times, sitting in an airport is another fun-for-the-family experience. I guess if you're with a friend the whole situation is more bearable but being alone does not pay off. First of all, most airports have this stupid non-smoking policy. So for a smoker you have two choices: get out or go smoke in a box. I kid you not. They've made little boxes with or without seats where all the smokers gather behind a transparent wall, looking as if they are there solely for displaying purposes. In Amsterdam I was seriously expecting a tomato being thrown at us.
And everything in airports is expensive. The food, the drinks, internet access.

So basicly in these hours you go through many states of trying to sleep out of boredom, reading, pretending to be drinking coffee, thinking all by your lonesome. It all went like one big dream.
Twas funny, they picked another of the Europeans at the Taipei airport, a Spanish girl, and asked her "are you hungry, tired?" and she responded "I dunno. Gimme a minute to figure out who I am, what I want, where I am, what time it is..."

Also, the transition is a bit bizzare. I believe the people travelling on a boat or in the train or those merchants one doing the Silk Road were lucky only because they had time to adjust. And going there was not such a big problem. In Europe it was really hot, and the only difference was the humidity. But coming back from 35-38 degrees and 80-90% humidity to the crisp, 15 degrees cool Europe 6 AM morning was interesting.