Times flies when you are having fun! Last weekend I have discovered some new places in Shanghai. More than 4 years in Shanghai and still you find some new places you have never been before. Saturday an American friend of mine was in town again and we decided to gather together with a group of friends. We started at the Thai house, which was a restaurant inside a Chinese compound. It was not really a restaurant, but just some tables inside a residential apartment building. It felt like eating at home, but then with many people around you. The place was pact! My question was; how do people find this place?
After a good Thai dinner we went for some wine. Winebars has been popping out in Shanghai for the last 2 years. The first year I lived in Shanghai, not one winebar could be found in the city. Even getting some nice bottles of wines was difficult. Nowadays, having a winebars in Shanghai is challenging and in almost every convenient store you can find some OK foreign brand wines for about 80RMB ( which is cheap for China). The place we went is called Cuvee, tucked away in a small alley of Kang Ding Road. This place is a new urban development project in Jing'an, transformed from an old Church. The moment you get inside the alley, you can't imagine you are in China. With an Belgian Bar and another lounge bar Exit next to the winebar, this alley is a new gathering place for winelovers in town.

It is always good to go back to the Netherlands. Not only will your mind put everything in perspective what is happening in China, but it also gives a new view about how things works in the Netherlands. You find out that things which is common in the Netherlands is not all that common as you think. One example which everyone has to deal with everyday and my all time favorite subject is; food. For living in Holland so many years, I have been eating lots of bread and drinking milk my whole life. In China bread is not that common and the milk is different from the milk in the Netherlands, so I haven't continued my Dutch feeding rituals in China. Once back in the Netherlands, it was strange to me to eat bread every day again, especially the lunch. I packed 6 slices of bread for take away for my lunch. I was thinking; that's it? that's only for lunch? I caught myself having the Chinese thought ( Chinese would think it is an insult to only have bread for lunch). In China we would go out for one hour and enjoy an extended lunch. 6 slices of bread seem so little now. And about the milk, why does Dutch people always have milk on the table? It all feels so strange to me now, but at the time when I was still living in the Netherlands, this all was so common. I guess when things are more integrated in to your personal life, you will not notice the weirdness of it anymore.
After two weeks of being in the Netherlands, I came back on the 15th day of the lunar year, the last day of the Chinese new year. I tried to take some rest and recover from my jetlag, but the fireworks all over Shanghai kept me awake. At least now I can say that I have also celebrated Chinese new year ;)