Wuzhen - one of the watertowns around Shanghai

Who wants to spend entrance ticket for going to a town?! Sometimes some towns are actually museums. Not knowing that, instead of looking for a ticket, it fealt more reasonable climbing over a small fence at the shade of late evening to get into the town.
Only some 15 minutes later it came clear when looking for a guesthouse and meeting security guy, how this place operates.
Anyway this museum actually offered also accommodation... of course after getting kicked out by security and getting back in with a ticket.






Relaxed life in the museum, imitation of real town life.














Silk factory for tourists







Silk cocoon, thin threads coming from each cocoon that are floating in water








Silk factory






Streets less crowded, this dosn't really happen on real towns... but in museums everything is possible.

Time for wine

Red wine, this time

When Barbies rule the world

One day it will happen! I have seen a shop with 5 floors selling only Barbie dolls and accessories. Including a cafeteria with Barbie burgers.
Never ending pink dream!


Life in plastic






The true masters watching down at the 'puppets'






Life of parents






Pink dream

Hunt for the place to live

Two last week of May went in a name of apartment hunt. After visiting some 50 different flats, I can be your very own real estate consultant :) This time it was really worth to visit all the different places, as for some strange reason over the time quality of apartment and overall price/quality ratio clearly improved.
There were temptations of selecting a studio style apartment with a big bath in the middle of bedroom in an old traditional Shanghai style house. But maybe having the open space toilet at the corner of the bedroom is not that convenient solution...
There were options of apartments with 3-4 bedrooms, several bathrooms etc. But always was something not matching with expectations... often the very strange understanding of luxurious interior design and furniture... code name 'prosperous style'.

Final selection is 1 bedroom , living room, kitchen solution. Liked it from the moment when stepped in from door. House is very small only 11 floors, I am on 5th (according to numbers on 6th, as number 4 is not a lucky number in China, in my house there is just no 4th floor). Main feature is big corner window with huge windowsill - this is the tea drinking and book reading area.




Dream houses of Shanghai - scratching the sky wherever you look

Shanghai in April

At this moment the time in China (this week I will celebrate my first half year in China) can be divided the time before trip to Europe and the time after that.
So yes, at the beginning of May I had beautiful 1.5 week spring experience in Europe.
Of course when flying out from Shanghai airport, I managed almost to miss the plane. While putting my luggage on check-in conveyor there was already "Check-in closed" sign blinking on the counter. And this was not all, when handing over my passport the girl was looking the PC for long time and finally said there is no ticket for me. Not very pleasant feeling :)
This is the first time when Credit Card helped me out in big times, as there was still one seat available and I was able to reserve it over the phone! Then I had few minutes to realize that 3 hours of badminton per week are not enough to make me nr. 1 sprinter in airport. This time also 2nd fastest sprinter was allowed on the plane.

Some photos from the time before trip to Europe


Fancy old man






...and old house. Soon the house will make space for new road and new more prosperous building. Red bra reminding the life that used to be here