May 3rd (Week Edition)

#EconomicsPerspective #WeeklyReview #currentaffirs #magazine #international #GlobalNews

Closing the books on another week. It takes courage to say "no" and protect your energy. If you set a boundary this week to protect your mental health, I am proud of you. Enjoy the weekend! 🎊 #WeeklyReview #BipolarStrong #PositivityClub

Read more: https://open.substack.com/pub/speakingbipolar/p/closing-the-books-on-a-good-week?r=y4fp9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

#weeklyreview 21/2026

Summary

Still fiddling with the Evernote migration to Paperless. Very good organ concert in Prenzlau.

Evernote to Paperless Migration

Still importing old Evernote documents into my Paperless instance. Takes a while to churn through 10GB of archived data and index them all again. But Paperless is doing it quite well.

Now that I have all my data in my own system with proper API access I’m experimenting with an app to improve the Paperless Metadata. While Paperless is already using OCR and machine learning to classify and tag documents, I thought maybe I can improve on that by using beefier AI modules on my Mac. Let’s see how that turns out. Was also playing around with Paperless AI a bit. That’s a software that tries to provide an AI interface for paperless so that you can search in natural language and get AI answers based on your documents. I’m not yet fully convinced of that piece.

Was searching for a Paperless MCP and only found an NPM package. That is a security nightmare lately so I went on asking Claude Code for Rust MCP for Paperless NGX.

After about 30 mins that was ready and now my LLM is adding document summaries to a customer field in my Paperless instance.

Organ concert

On Sunday we went to the last session of the opening concerts of the new organ in the St. Marien church in Prenzlau. That old church was severely destroyed during WWII and only after the 1970s restoration began. While the building has a roof and floor again, the organ was missing. Eventually they found an old Scottish organ from 1904 which was donated by former West Parish Church Kilbarchan in Scotland to this building. Now it is in full operation and was christened on the weekend.

The organist was very well versed with these majestic instruments and picked songs that demonstrated the full glory of the instrument and the building. You could literally feel the thundering bass of the large pipes. But also the quiet and bird-like passages of the small pipes came out perfectly. Looking forward to hear and see many more concerts in that magnificent building.

Maintenance

just realised I actually published this weekly review too early … thats new…

Anyway… yesterday I did some needed maintenance on my Jenkins server. That trusty old PC that’s been waking up whenever there is a new Mastodon release. It’s supposed to pull the sources, apply my 5000 character patch and build a new Docker image and publish it. So that my Dockhand can automatically update my Mastodon instances.

Machine woke up, but build failed when 4.5.10 was released. So I had to look into it. Jenkins was heavily complaining that it’s outdated and the Java version I was using wasn’t supported any longer. So I started the OS and Jenkins updates. But that was painfully slow on the wired network. The wired network was coming via PowerLine but had less than 1 MBit/s bandwidth. So I had to dig out an old WiFi USB stick to improve the network bandwidth. Fortunately that worked. Odd enough PowerLine was meant to fix bad WiFi …

Once the machine and Jenkins was up to date, the Mastodon build succeeded. But there was another build of the alternative Fediverse Web Interface Elk that was also failing. Complaining about an Out of Memory issue when doing JavaScript compilation. Checked the repo and found out that this is not yet really fixed in Elk’s Dockerfile. The workaround is to add some parameters to the Dockerfile to use a bigger heap.

The formal way would have been to create a patch file for the Dockerfile, put it somewhere (in my own repo) and let Jenkins apply the patch after checkout of the Sources.

But I considered that too much hassle for a single line to add to the Dockerfile. There must be an easier solution to that. And of course the good old Linux/Unix tools came to the rescue. Turns out sed can insert a single line at a specified location into a text file:

that was the single line I needed to add to the Jenkins build instructions before calling the simple docker build. I love it.

#weeklyreview 20/2026

Summary

Movie, rage quitting Evernote and a plant bazar in the village

Berlin in the 1980s

Last week I watched “Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo” for the first time with kiddo. I roughly knew the story but had never seen the actual movie.

First thing that I noticed was how clean Berlin streets seemed to be. The movie is supposed to be a documentary about the dire situation of drug addicted kids in the 1970s in West-Berlin. So one would expect to see disgusting dirt and filth. And of course there was that when the kids take their drugs in the public toilets and all that. But even these looked cleaner than we you see today in public bathrooms and the street.

Overall I liked the movie. The cast and make-up is really good. The dialogues are very dry though. I can’t tell whether people in West-Berlin would have really talked like that. But it didn’t felt natural at all to me. Nevertheless great movie with great soundtrack and appearance by David Bowie himself.

Evernote enshittification

I was an early on user of Evernote, the note taking app that started in 2008 and allowed to synchronise notes across devices as well as richt content notes.

I had a paid account for decades and poured all my scanned documents and notes into it. I stayed with the company because the tool just worked, and thought I’d understand their business model to be around for a long time. Because that’s what you want for an document archive and 2nd brain, right?

I don’t know about the exact economics but apparently the base of paying users wasn’t big enough to sustain the company. Or to make enough profit for the owners. They eventually sold to the infamous Bending Spoons company. An Italian company that started buying former famous internet stars like Evernote, Vimeo and Komoot. Quickly firing all the staff just to run the service centrally with their own team and tweak the commercialisation.

That of course was a shitty move, but I thought at least it’s not a US big tech. Apparently that has changed as well. Last time I opened Evernote desktop I was presented with a big announcement that the service is now fulfilled by Bending Spoons US. In addition they are again raising the prices for the yearly subscription from around 90 EUR to around 135 EUR. For me that’s the final straw to eventually move away.

For years I was also primarily pumping all my scanned documents into my self-hosted Paperless NGX instance. This services my primary purpose of a searchable document archive. My written notes currently live in Joplin which I also sync via my own webdav server.

Still I needed to find a way to backup my Evernote data and eventually import the old data into Paperless. Since Paperless only stores Documents in PDF format I had to find a way to turn Evernote rich notes into a PDF. Most of my notes were PDF documents anyway. Some were richt text notes with images embedded.

Of course I ended up vibe coding a Python script which consumes the Evernote export files, renders them as PDF and uploads them to Paperless. This seems to work quite well. For notes that contain PDF documents I append the PDF to the Evernote note (which might contain additional text beside the PDF document in the note). Now my trusty Paperless is churning through the thousands of old notes and I’ll cancel my Evernote subscription. Let’s see what will happen to the account of the subscription is not prolonged…

Plant bazar

On Saturday we had our annual plant bazar in the village. That was again a huge success. More than 50 people turned up to share and swap their seedling and other plants. We provided coffee, tea and some people chipped in with self-made cakes.

I was really surprised to see that many people showing up from our village but also from the villages around ours. We hit a nerve with the plant bazar apparently. Of course we’re in the countryside and agriculture or rather garden cultures seems to be the literal common ground 🙂

#weeklyreview 19/2026

Summary

3. Digital Independence Day #Uckermark in Templin, Michael Seemann (@mspro) extending his power formula. Some 3D printing at last, new open source software of doctors office reception, iOS 26 Safari swipe tip, my new bag setup, UNESCO bioshere talk in Gollin, new well pump.

Di.Day

last week Sunday was our 3rd event of the digital independence. Again taking place in the BündnisBüro in Templin, prepared and held by my friend @René

Although there were only two people (we were really sloppy with the advertisement and the weather was just too nice) showing up, the conversations nevertheless were very engaging and hopefully fruitful for the participants.

We again talked about the Fediverse and privacy around location tracking.

BATNA – mspro thread

Michael Seeman, probably better know as @mspro, extended his power formula with the “BATNA” concept. That is the “best alternative to a negotiated agreement” … in his context I read it as a “safety net” to agreements that are not the person favour (not the desired outcome of said negotiations for said person). Adding a quote from his blog here

Der Exit ist nicht nur eine Möglichkeit, die man wahrnehmen kann oder nicht, er ist ein BATNA: Ein „Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement“ (Roger Fisher & William Ury, „Getting to Yes“ (1981).)

BATNA spielt eine besondere Rolle, denn sie zieht in der U_scheitert Funktion einen zweiten Boden ein. Einen Boden, auf den man fällt, wenn die aktuelle Verhandlung scheitert.

Mit der Einführung von BATNA in die Theorie verändert sich alles, weswegen es sich lohnt, die ganze Formel nochmal aufzugleisen.

He then goes on to explain this effect to all sorts of scenarios and relates to known power structures (like wealthy heirs etc.) in his thread: https://fnordon.de/@mspro/116526882427577720

He publishes this stuff on his blog at length if you’re curious.

As his theory is getting quite complex, some people have started summarising it. One of those is Felix Stalder for the DIE ZEIT in “Wer reguliert die Regulierer?”

3D Printing

Had to dust off my trusty 3D printer and dry my filaments spools this week. Was printing two cases for Heltec V3 for my friend @thinkberg. Had finally talked him into joining the mesh radio bandwagon 😀

Open Reception

a new open source software reached Version 1.0 last week that piqued my interest. It’s Open Reception, a software meant for doctors office to allow patients to make digital appointments reservations.

A lot of doctors in Germany use the DoctoLib for this. Which is a privacy nightmare. You have to share a lot of personal details with that company just to make an appointment. Even worse, I’ve seen practices which do no longer offer making appointments via phone or walk-in. Thus making it mandatory to share your date with DoctoLib. Wouldn’t be surprised if this is illegal actually.

In short… this makes me so angry that I’m considering hosting an Open Reception instance and reach out to some doctor I’m acquainted with whether they want to give it a try. Just need to find the time …

Safari Swipe

everyone hates the new iOS 26 user interface. There are also a bunch of changes to the UX that people get annoyed with. For instance the changes to the Safari browser. It seems toke take much more effort to get to the overview of open tabs.

Fortunately that’s not quite true. As the way you get to the overview has “just changed”. One can swipe up from the address bar at the bottom of the screen to get to the tab overview in one go.

EDC

As my friend @gemlog was wondering about the size of new bag pack and took a picture of the contents. I carry a lot of stuff with me. I try to be prepared for a lot of nerdy situations and have all sorts of tools on me. Whole bunch of cables and adapters, power banks, pens etc.

To make it not too messy inside, I use various pouches to bring some order into this chaos. The Got Bag itself comes with a nice laptop pouch that is fixed with velcro tape to the inside of the bag.

Biosphere Reserve Schorfheide-Chorin

On Friday our local society organised an info event about the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve “Schorfheide-Chorin“.

That is the special protection zone our village is located in. The head of the administration office, Dr. Susanne Winter gave an interesting introduction about the concept and the local application of the UNESCO program.

What I didn’t know is, that this explicitly not a mere nature reserve but also a cultural heritage program that aims to foster and nurture the wellbeing of men and nature in that area. Human society and its dwellings are not seen as mere invaders but as part of said biosphere.

Unfortunately the administration is severely understaffed and underfunded to fulfil all their duties. A change to the country legislation is currently in the talks and stirring up some heated discussions.

new pump

Our old well pump gave up after about 3,5 years. We didn’t had a pressure tank so far. I guess we’re paying that price now. I ordered a new one with a 20L pressure tank and installed it on Saturday.

Of course this involved a whole lot of fiddling as the new connectors of the new pump had different sizes and the new pump was taller than the old one. Eventually I got it working. Let’s see how long this one lasts.

Bookmarks

This weeks bookmark collection:

• Kodak Instant Kamera https://chaos.social/@ubahnverleih/116528011284079888
• Canon EOS Infrared filter removed: https://mystical.garden/@janamarie/116527887020070338
• SystemD runs docker images natively: https://infosec.exchange/@phileas/116529683639003532
• bidirectional links in Joplin: https://mastodon.social/@kantel/116494964066942138

#weeklyreview 18/2026

Again a very busy week with work-related stuff. I’m working on a global that involves AI technology. It’s hard as a large international company to keep pace with how fast the industry moves in this area. Before we even have a chance to evaluate a new tool, model, concept etc. the object has likely changed. Leadership members are of course demanding more speed and just repeat the marketing bullshit from all the AI companies. Expecting unicorns and glitter to be delivered in no time. That’s going to end in tears and everyone knows. A bit similar to climate catastrophe…

I jailbroke an old Kindle eReader just for the fun of it. I saw multiple people posting their projects of liberating their Kindle devices with instructions from https://kindlemodding.org

It’s not entirely easy as it requires multiple steps in the correct order. But it’s doable. I didn’t manage to load my books with Calibre so far as there are some network issues to be solved.

Got Bag

I finally got myself a new backup. The old one was decomposing severely and too small anyway. I always carry a lot of stuff beside the mere work laptop. I’m prepared with all sorts of cables, power banks, tools and stuff.

I settled on a got-bag Rolltop 2.0 with the Seashepherd logo. Got delivered within 3 days and I love it. It’s large, versatile (got multiple inner pockets and a pouch for a laptop) and comfy.

Glitza Band and Open Studio day

On the weekend it was open studio day again in the whole country. Our local artists of course participated. We went to Silke Schmidt again as she had the slightly unfair advantage that the local band Glitza was playing a little concert on her terrace.

Very lovely. There were missing two musicians of their usual setup and had to improvise a bit. They called it an open practice session. Delivered with as much enthusiasm and talent as always.

#weeklyreview 17/2026

I know, this is a bit later for week 17 review. There wasn’t too much to talk about. Very busy at work and that’s why not much time to do much other things.

It was slightly weird weather as the sun came out but it was still rather cold. Down to -3ºC in the countryside and also Berlin was rather cold in the morning. The sunshine almost made me not wear a jacket on the bike ride to the office. But fortunately I checked the weather app before.

Nevertheless we had few nice lunches outside in the sun. One time in the new Szechuan restaurant at Torstrasse/Tucholskystrasse. The menu looks very authentic and the food was rather good as well. Might do this more often.

#project25

We had a lot of scrap wood ripped out of the attic of the house. That was still on site and I want to recycle parts of it for a new shed in the countryside. In order to transport it over there we but had to remove all the nails that were poking out still. That was more intense than I anticipated. They’ve used a lot of nails back in GDR construction times. One very thick (as thick as my pinky finger) nail flipped off the crowbar and hit me in the face. Fortunately no lasting damages on my side. But that was a close call for the eye. Wear protective glasses!

By brother and dad properly decommissioned some more debris from the attic at the local dump sites. Good progress over all.

Open Stage in Templin

On Saturday night it was time again for open stage at the MKC in Templin.

As always a colourful mix of artists who gave their best. This time an old author lady recited some poems and aphorisms of her own. That was surprisingly good.

A duo did some experimental music performance that reminded me a little bit of Deichkind. Their setup crashed several times at the beginning and they almost gave up. Nobody knew whether that was part of the performance or actual software problems 🤣

My highlight was the last band named “VEB Klangschalen”. They played rock music of their own creation and some cover songs – and with much verve and energy. For a local band absolutely outstanding und surprising as I’ve never heard of them before nor knew those guys would play in a band (Templin isn’t that big, so I know quite many people one or the other way).

Again a fun packed evening.

Wrapping up the week with some fresh air.
Nature didn’t cure my bipolar,
but it definitely made the week easier to handle.
I’ll absolutely take that win. 🍃
#NatureIsMedicine #WeeklyReview #BipolarLife

Read more: https://open.substack.com/pub/speakingbipolar/p/did-you-get-your-green-time-this?r=y4fp9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

#weeklyreview 16/2026

Back from China trip and slowly adjusting to “normal” life again. Got my ollee watch assembled and love it. #project25 updates.

back to normal

As already reported in last weeks report the China trip was awesome. Surprisingly we didn’t seem to suffer any jet lag. Neither on arriving in China, nor on the way back to our german time zone.

Slowly adjusting to my regular schedules of office and private life. Missing the electric traffic of Beijing already in noisy, stinky Berlin.

ollee watch

A while ago I ordered this nerdy project named ollee watch. A Canadian enthusiast developed a replacement mainboard for the famous CASIO F-91W series watches. That watch was my first watch after the Berlin Wall came down and I loved it. It’s still being produced by CASIO today and is very affordable and widespread.

The developer build a tiny smartwatch PCB which adds BLE connectivity, an accelerometer, and a temperature sensor. This turns this trusty little watch into a simple smartwatch and extents the watch functionality by a world clock, countdown timer, heart rate calculator, counter and even some games.

He’s reusing the existing LCD, so don’t expect fancy graphics. It pairs with the ollee App on the smartphone where you can set the features and synchronise the step counter, heart rate measurements, counters and temperature readings.

The assembly was really just a quick 10 min swap of the PCB.

The package almost didn’t made it to me. Ordered several month ago I couldn’t really control the delivery. Of course it was scheduled to arrive when I was in China. DHL sent me a notification of the delivery attempt and that it will be rerouted to the next post office and kept there for pickup for 7 days. If I don’t pick it up, they would return it to the sender.

Of course there is no contact details available for the specific post office to ask them kindly to keep it a little longer. I eventually sent my son who stayed in Berlin to go ask them in person whether they can keep it until my arrival (I also had to pay the import toll on pickup). They flat out refused. In the DHL app I saw, that by this time the package hadn’t even arrived at that post office yet, despite the notification in the app.

I filled out the authorisation form for my son to pick it up at the post office. But wasn’t sure he actually was able to make it. The DHL app sent me a notification that they’ll only keep it two more days on last Friday. Which wasn’t the full 7 days they promised initially as the parcel was still in transit until Wednesday. But apparently they counted from the delivery attempt the week before on Thursday. Drama unfolded. Fortunately I extracted the information out of kiddo that he was able to pick up the parcel actually. Phew … that was a close call.

But shame on DHL for offering no way to get into contact with the post office, for miscalculation of the storage period and sloppy security. Anyone could have filled out the authorisation form. They obviously couldn’t check the proper signature and I wouldn’t have been able to issue a proper signature as was 9000km away ….

Gödel, Escher, Bach

My friend @gemlog told me about the apparently famous book by Douglas R. Hofstadter about these icons of science & art. I was searching for the ebook version but couldn’t find it. I had access to a PDF, but that didn’t render well on my screens. So I ended up ordering a physical copy of the book. This also arrived during my vacation.

I didn’t know that it’s such a huge book. The bible would look like a Reclam book against it 😀

Looking forward to start reading this. But first I have to finish the Bell Hooks book.

#project25 updates

The attic buildout comes to a finish. The drywalls are all up, majority of the wiring done and sanding and plastering of the walls in progress. Unfortunately the plumper is on vacation which delays the finish of the bathroom and floor heating system.

#weeklyreview 14-15/2026

This is a combined review for the weeks 14 & 15. These two weeks we’ve spend in China – our long awaited vacation in the land of the rising sun.

We flew from Frankfurt/Main to Beijing with Air China. Flight time was about 9,5 hours for roughly 7800 km. 6 hours time difference. A friend and former colleague of mine was so kind to pick us up at the airport and take us to our hotel. He also took a lot of time and effort to guide us around Beijing the next few days.

Beijing

Right on the second day in Beijing he drove us to The Great Wall near Mutianyu up north of Beijing. We climbed the stairs up to the wall and wandered around for a few kilometres on the top. The weather was perfect that day. Not yet too hot and sunny.

It’s as impressive as you’d expect. In this part the wall was in pretty good shape still and is actively maintained. Fortunately it wasn’t the tourist hot spot although there was tourist infrastructure at the bottom of the mountain where we had parked the car.

In the late afternoon, back in the city we enjoyed our first Peking duck in a somewhat fancy restaurant. The whole roasted duck is prepared right next to the table by a chef.

Next day we had booked tickets for the forbidden city and joined masses of tourists to see the old home of the Chinese emperors. I had seen the forbidden city before in the year 2000. Back then it was almost quite as not many tourists were around that time. Now it was pretty crowded.

In the afternoon we visited an art district. That was a former industrial area that has been repurposed to host a whole bunch of galleries and exhibitions as well as small arts & crafts shops.

In the evening our friend had organised a “team dinner” with a bunch of our former team mates in a cosy little restaurant in the Hutong area near the Drum Tower. That was great to see the old colleagues over good feed and drinks. Even my kids enjoyed to the restaurant and conversations. Before the restaurant we roamed through the remaining old Hutongs in that area. Back in 2000 there were much more of these areas. But they have mostly been removed during the rebuilding and expansion of the city for the Olympics in the early 2000s.

On the last full day in Beijing we went out west to the old summer palace. But… with a boat. Starting at the Bamboo Palace was about half an hour ride out to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace itself was also crowded, although it was a really nice day with clear views, sunshine, and everything. It was pretty crowded, and we walked around the lake, saw that famous bridges, all the little boats on the lake, and climbed up the stairs to that famous temple in the back of the lake, and wandered around a bit. Unfortunately, the old stone boat that used to be a teahouse, that was closed back in 2000, I had tea with my wife in that stone boat.

Early the next morning, we took the high-speed train from Beijing to Chongqing. It was pretty early, and we had to get to the train station like two hours ahead of departure because that was recommended by the train booking app, as they have airport-like security at the train stations as well. Eventually, I think that wasn’t necessary, so I think maybe an hour earlier would have been sufficient. They have large waiting halls at the large train station. It feels like an airport; it’s huge. The train ride was interesting. A high-speed train going at 350 kilometers per hour across the countryside took more than seven hours to get to Chongqing, because that’s I think, 1,600 kilometers away or something like that. So it’s definitely a huge country.

Chongqing

Chongqing is, from an area perspective, the largest city in the world. It’s apparently almost as large as Austria, and millions and millions of people live there. It’s in the mountains a bit, so not super high mountains, but it is certainly hilly, and you have to climb stairs all the time in the city. The Yangtze River is going through the city, and you have all these skyscrapers, and they are beautifully lit during the night. Very, very interesting and modern city to some extent, with all the modern skyscrapers and stuff like that. We walked around and explored the old city, some nice little restaurants at the side of a hill where you have a very good view over the city in the evening at sunset. Enjoyed beers and BBQ dinner over there. Whatever else did we do? There was a large restaurant in what feels like an old metro tunnel or something like that, a tunnel going straight 300 meters straight into the mountain, and that was used as a restaurant. You couldn’t see the end of it, and we had dinner with the famous Chongqing hot pot, where you basically get a stove with an iron cast skillet. Then you order a whole bunch of ingredients, like meat and vegetables and stuff like that. And in the skillet you cook, like, a broth or something like that. The skillet is actually divided in two parts, so you can have two different flavors of broth. We went for the traditional chili-based hot, very spicy broth, and the other one I think was chicken or something. Yeah, very fancy, very traditional in that area, and, of course, delicious. I like that stuff.

On two evenings, we saw a large drone show over the city. What was amazing to see is that all these skyscrapers have their individual light show, basically displaying advertisements at the facade. Briefly before the light show starts, the whole city lights are coordinated and blink with the same rhythm, I think, to announce and prepare tourists and people for the drone show that’s coming up. Then you have this huge swarm of apparently 7,000 drones painting a 3D movie in the sky. It’s pretty amazing to see.

Zhangjiajie

After these three nights in Chongqing, we continued our journey again by high-speed train to Zhangjiajie. That’s an area where the Chinese people have their national forests and mountains, and this area is famous for their rock formations. These rock formations have been used in James Cameron’s Avatar movies; that’s why they also have the nickname the Avatar Mountains. We went on to see these mountains over three days, I think, because it’s a large national park, and you have multiple spots that you can go to and start your journey and hike into the mountains. The view also very much depends on the weather. We had a bit of luck on the first day when it slightly cleared up, and we could see some of the landscape. On the second day, it was completely foggy, and you could not see more than five to seven meters apart. Although we had been on the top of the mountain and were supposed to see the impressive stone columns and stone bridges and stuff like that, there was really almost nothing to see; it was just foggy. Still, on the second day, it was very crowded with tourists from all over China, a very small percentage of foreign tourists. Still, amazing to see.

On the third day, again the weather was much better, and we hiked up the mountain and down, which was pretty amazing. I think it was overall a 15-kilometer hike or something like that. Very hot, I think it was 26 degrees Celsius, and super humid as well, so we were sweating like hell, but it was very interesting, very nice, stunning views and all that, very, very well.

Hong Kong

Then again, we took the high-speed train from Zhangjiajie to Hong Kong. That was another seven-hour ride, as that’s also a pretty large distance from the middle of the country all the way south to the coast. Spent another three nights in Hong Kong, which is still kind of a separate country. You have to go through immigration twice, actually leaving China mainland, entering Hong Kong, and stuff like that. Hong Kong, as you expect, it’s a much more western city, a colony city with a large western influence. But China is slowly creeping in there. What was most notable is that the traffic in the streets was much, much louder, noisier, and smellier than in China mainland, because in China mainland I’d say almost 90 percent of the cars are electric cars. So it’s quiet, there’s no exhaust pollution and stuff like that, and that was immediately noticeable in Hong Kong where they still have combustion engines a lot.

In Hong Kong, we also just roamed through the city a bit. On the last full day we spent there, we hiked up Victoria Peak to view the sunset over the city. You see all this nice skyline with the skyscrapers and their colorful lights and stuff over the harbor.

Eventually we took a flight back to Beijing because that’s a huge distance to cover from Hong Kong to Beijing. So we took a flight which almost took four hours to get to Beijing and had one night stay over in Beijing to eventually fly back to Frankfurt.

Summary

Overall, it was a very nice trip. Very, very interesting country. Very friendly people. It was amazing to see how the country has changed in the last 26 years since I’ve been there first from a maybe underdeveloped country with a lot of air pollution problems to a very modern country. Everything is digital. You can use your phone to do everything: you order your food, you order your rides, you pay with the phone. And it works at every occasion just flawlessly, that also solves the “we don’t know how to queue up” problem because every little shop has their own app in WeChat and you just order your food, you get an order number, and you don’t have to build a queue then.

Was amazing to see that in Beijing they also seem to agree on a battery pack standard for the motor scooters, so you have these large charging cabinets where there are multiple compartments, and you just go there and swap out your battery, and then it’s charged. They also have mobile phone charger, like basically power banks charging stations for power banks, all over the city. In every city we saw them at every corner. So you don’t need to worry about running out of juice with your phone because you can just rent these phone power banks everywhere, and they had them obviously also in the National Park, right at every little kiosk. So you have all these charging stations, and thinking about it, I think that’s also a good way to store the excess electrical energy that they get from all their renewable energies, right from the solar panels and the wind turbines and stuff like that. Yeah, it’s amazing to see.

And then again, the electrification of the transport system is amazing in China Mainland. Subjectively, ninety percent of all the cars are electric. That obviously helped with the air pollution. The air quality was really good in all the cities we’ve been, except a little bit from Hong Kong, but Chongqing, Beijing, Zhangjiajie were all like perfect air quality.

So what you need to prepare for your China trip is the WeChat app to communicate within the country and also for payments. You need AliPay for payment and public transport as well as ride hailing with the DidiApp within AliPay. You might want to use Trip.com to book your hotel and trains inside the country.

If you’re going to Hong Kong make sure you’ve got the proper visa if you need one. Also AliPay has a special Hong Kong app. Some shops in Hong Kong didn’t work with the