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Taipei Main Station

It is said that Taipei is a city where everywhere is downtown. And it is true.
The main station is only a geographical epicenter through which energy flows, like everywhere else, but where it might take a momentary halt waiting for the train.

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Taking Songshan in

Looking back to a previous spring, fragments in memory from arriving to Taipei. And waking to a calm Saturday morning in the area around Songshan Station.

 

That was a pleasant building, especially to a traveller looking for space to breath. However the architecture in the surrounding blocks varies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All of it typical Taipei though.

The interior cannot be told from the facade; some of these flats will be renovated new-asian-all-pearly style and some will be basic and maybe with bug issues.

 

What doesn’t change throughout is the energy in all times of day and places, even empty streets. Or temple backyards getting ready for the day.

 

And impeccable alleys that become a maze of people, shouts, money and food a few hours later (aka Raohe night market).

 

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Bombardment by high standards

Two years ago these days … this traveller was in the middle of her only massive cultural shock ever.

Landed on Tokyo to spend two months and overwhelmed by the amount and totality of design, beauty and purpose everywhere around; within a week I lost weight, got a bunch of white hair and wasn’t sleeping well; it took me days to simply start catching the subway and go sightseeing.

Don’t get this wrong: the feeling was ecstasy. The whole time. Continuously. I was under constant bombardment by high standards.

 

A few photos of the mind-blowing flat and view. It was warm and fuzzy, it had a bathroom unit and a kitchen unit, and the elevated metropolitan express highway was passing only a few meters from the third-floor balcony. (At nights I was feeling that some mythical golden river kept streaming by.)