Category Europe
About two months ago I posted about my experiences of traveling by flight during a global pandemic. Now I’m back in Taiwan and since the pandemic situation has changed a bit since last time, I think I should write a bit about how it was to return home to Taiwan.
As you probably know, the corona virus situation started becoming worse in October. Because of this, Germany went into a partial lockdown which meant a few things. First, places where people gather such as museums and most restaurants closed temporarily. Second, rules regarding mask usage and social distancing became stricter … Read the rest
It's been a couple of weeks since my last post about tourism in Germany during the Covid19 pandemic. Me and my colleagues spent most of those weekends exploring the southwestern part of Germany, checking out a lot of different sightseeing spots. To my surprise there was a fair amount of other tourists at several of the places we visited; except for the fact that museums were closed and we were limited to eating fastfood in the car, it didn't really feel like there was a lockdown. Granted, Germany was only doing lockdown light but in some places it felt so normal it almost made me question if there was any lockdown at all. Don't worry, I have not become a Covid denier, it's just that the overall experience has mostly been like normal, pandemic free tourism.
So, just like in my last post, I want to share some of the more worthwhile places with my readers, enjoy: read the rest
I feel my photography skills have improved a fair bit recently, mostly when it comes to adjusting the settings to difficult light but other aspects as well. During my stay in Germany I’ve taken a few pictures that I’m actually quite proud of but they don’t really fit in any of my other posts. However, I would still like to show them off so here we go:
I’m here in Germany for business reasons but me and my colleagues still get the weekends off like normal, so we are able to go out sightseeing. There are of course some limitations due to Covid19, but so far they are comparatively mild and we’ve been able to visit a bunch of different tourist attractions. Some of them are really worth seeing so I thought I would share them here.
Schloss Lichtenstein
Germany is full of castles, if you do a search on Google Maps you’re bound to find at least ten in any given area. With that being the … Read the rest
I recently changed jobs and because the Taiwan branch of my new company is just starting up, management has decided to send a bunch of us to the head office in Germany for training. Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t really be worth posting about but as everyone is well aware, circumstances right now are everything but normal. Simply put, I’ve had a chance to go traveling internationally despite a global pandemic. This is something that I think is worth posting about.
First of all, we are ten people in my team, I am the only European, the rest are Taiwanese. … Read the rest
My company has sent me on a business trip to Milano. While I haven’t taken any time off for traveling like I did last time I came here for business, I’ve spent what little free time I have exploring as much as I can of northern Italy.
Milano
Last time I was in Milano I crossed the main tourist spots off the list. This time I was here with a different colleague so I ended up revisiting a few of them, and adding a few others.
The Milan cathedral, or Duomo as it is known in Italian, is of course … Read the rest
Last week one of my best friends got married so of course I had to fly back to Sweden to be there for him. Renegade Wife and I spent the week before the wedding in Göteborg meeting up with old friends in lots of different constellations which was great fun. In fact, I had too much fun chatting with them to remember to take photos.
Anyway, the wedding was on Saturday last week. The ceremony was a bit unusual compared to most Swedish ones I’ve been to since the bride has polish ancestry, but beautiful all the same and the couple looked very … Read the rest
Today was our last whole day in Italy, and we spent it in Florence. This is a much bigger city than all the other places we have visited, with lots of things to see. I’m sure you could spend several days there checking out the various churches, palaces and museums but we only had one afternoon, so we focused in on the main goals, the cathedral and the Uffizi art gallery. Because this is such a popular tourist destination, there was of course a lot of people, with massive queues for the biggest attractions; to skip the queue we decided … Read the rest
Today we have taken things easy compared to the other days and focused on a single tourist site, Siena. It is a larger city than all the other places we visited and there were a lot more tourists. It has several well know places to visit like the Cathedral, The Palio horse races on the Piazza del Campo and the hospital Santa Maria della Scala. We strolled around there for several hours and though we didn’t go in to all of them (the tickets for the cathedral, for example, were unreasonably expensive), we saw most of them from the outside.… Read the rest
During most of my business trips my parents and I don’t bother to see each other but this time, since my wife joined, they couldn’t resist. So on Tuesday Yini and I took the train north from Napoli to a small town called Chiusi Chianciano Terme in Toscana where my parents picked us up in their rental car. The hotel is in another town not too far away from Chiusi but there are several picturesque little towns in the area so we stopped by a place called Pienza and strolled around there for an hour or so before going to … Read the rest