Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Wierdest day of trip

Today is supposed to be the day I arrive at Würzburg. It is supposed to be the day I start my elective. Today is supposed to be 1st of June.
But today is the 31th of May, a day that I had perceived to be nonexistent until I'm on the train going to Würzburg.
The guy who checked my ticket pointed out that I had written a wrong date. I'm supposed to write 31/5 instead of 1/6. I argued with him for a while until I realised I was wrong. This means that I'm going to arrive Germany a day ahead of schedule, and nobody is going to pick me up at the train station today. They will only pick me up tomorrow.
I'm left with a sudden 'extra' day, with nowhere to go, no place to stay, and no plans at all.
I studied my lonely planet right on the train and decided to go to Frankfurt.

Okie. So far so good. Although I messed up my calender, I arrived at Frankfurt, and got a dorm bed in the hostle right across the train station. This is a hell lot of luck in this World Cup season, when everything is so fully booked.

The number 2 weird thing. I bumped into a University student protest on the plaza right in front of the train station. They are a group of uni students protesting against tuition fee payment changed. All Uni students in Germany is currently having free uni education. They don't have to pay a penny. Now the Government is trying to impose a loan system, meaning that students have to pay their own tuition fee. However, no detailed structure of the loan system is established (e.g. the interest rate of the loan is suggested to be 7.5%!!) and it sounded all like students from poor families are going to be in huge debts when they finish uni while those in rich families are going to be debt free (Well, isn't it the same in HK?). Anyway I was simply having so much free time I joined them. I talked to some of the students on the way, and experienced their way of protesting. For some reason they liked marching on the big car roads IN BETWEEN RUNNING CARS. It all looked a bit dangerous to me, but they do succeed in transmitting their message to the public; well, at least to the drivers that passed by.
I tried to discuss with them the grant-loan system in Hong Kong, and some of them seems to agree with our system. Anyways, good luck to them.

The number 3 thing. This is not weird, it is a very very nice thing. I went to a Chinese restaurant to have dinner tonight -- and I bumped into a restaurant ran by Hong Kong people!! I had a full dish of Yeung Zhou Chau Fan and Lai Tong (the regular soup), and read the European version of ShingTao Daily!! This is simply luxury when you have had bread bread bread and bread as your sole food (well, nearly. Coz this is cheap) for 10 days consecutively...

Anyways I'am going to Würzburg tomorrow at noon time. I've forgotten all my Surgery... good luck to me!!

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Frankfurt am Main... a good choice!


By the way, if you take one hour train, you can arrive at Mannheim, with a further 15-min train, you can arrive at Heidelberg, a famous university-city.

1:05 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You've earned a day because of the time difference?

2:03 AM  

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