Sleepless in Nanjing
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Wow. We had no idea that the jet lag would hit us this hard, but it just won't let up! Sadly, we couldn't manage to hook up with the NetBeans Coding competition in Nanjing. Mobile telephony here works a little bit like the old-school walkie talkies, I guess: 20% technology and 80% luck. Either way, we'll remember Nanjing fondly.
On three days with no sleep, Martin and I got ourselves involved with another 12 hour bus ride to the beautiful port city of Qingdao. I can't recall exactly when I said that "from where the sun now stands, I will ride no more busses forever" - maybe somewhere in the Turkish hinterlands? Well, promises are made to be broken, I suppose, and I'd never been on a "sleeper bus" before! Buckle up for a bumpy ride...
Deep in a Nanjing lounge, enjoying the tail end of a very surreal halloween party, we enlisted the help of Emilie, a French/Chinese student whose local knowledge and language skills significantly eased our travels a bit. She's a bit crazy, for sure, but who else would agree to guide us two through the mega-cities of China?
Nanjing was a beautiful city, but waking up by the seaside in a town that seems more German than Chinese is a real treat. It isn't all fun, games and grilled chicken hearts, though! Through some online sleuthing, I managed to track down a guy named Mark, who runs Qingdao's nascent Linux User Group. While wandering the old town, we manage to set up an interview with him to talk about his experience living and working the open source life in the new China. That interview is coming up, but in the meantime, we hope you'll enjoy a little sampling of "Chinese Switzerland" with us!
