A European Street

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There is a special street in Taichung - the third biggest city of Taiwan, located in its centre -, which is as European as can be: European architecture, European shops (see the post on German running culture - Deutsche Lauf-Kultur) and European cuisine. When seeing buildings like this one, you may think that you are somewhere in Southern Germany, Austria or Switzerland - but it will never occur to you that you are in Taiwan:

What is that for, then? How come this street can be so European? This may be a tribute to the part of the world which is more or less publicly admired by many Taiwanese people: French lifestyle and cuisine, Swiss exactitude, Italian dolce vita and German punctuality and product quality. So isn't it the most natural thing to give Taiwanese people a place where they can virtually live these feelings linked to Europe. And isn't this the most promising motivation for every one of them to travel to Europe one day so as to see what things really look like there? I think it is, and I am by far not the only one...

Italian Culinary Culture

In Taiwan, cuisine is a tremendously important topic. It is not only that people travel to other - often remote - parts of their country to degustate their local specialties, they also favour the taste and flavour of intenational dishes. This inclues Italian cuisine which is relatively prevalent in Taiwan.

Apart from Little Italy, a chain restaurent which features Italian specialties accompanied by Italian music, there are quite a number of small restaurants and cafés which offer Italian cuisine.

This means that Westerners can always find culinary places which remind them of their origins, and this also means that Chinese cuisine is by far not the only type of cuisine to be enjoyed in Taiwan. As in the Western world, there is an uncountable number of Chinese restaurants, in Taiwan, there is a (countable) number of Western-style restaurants - this is another aspect of globalisation... .