Discovering Suzhou

About twenty five years ago, when I was at university in Northern Ireland, I took a friend over to Munich with me. Where we stayed a Studentenheim. The people living there knew me from my having stayed there previously and I began at length to tell them how beautiful the Antrim coast was; well I almost got away with it but my friend had to remind them of the fact that my experience of that part of the world was almost limited to the Anchor Bar and the Montague in Portstewart and Paul's Bar in Portrush. Now, it wasn't quite true but strangely enough there was almost a sort of deja vu today.

This afternoon we met my friend from Qingdao and his wife and son and after our coffees etc in the new Bookworm we went for a walk around an area of Suzhou that I didn't really know and, for the first time, I began to understand why they call it the Venice of the east. There were nice little cobbled streets, there were nice little cafes and pleasant shops and it was, all in all, a very jolly, very interesting and very hunky-dory little amble and after about two hours or so we hopped into a taxi and took ourselves on to and into the other, older, bigger Bookworm where we met my friend from work and his girlfriend.

Well we talked about this, that and the next thing, about "Gott und die Welt", about China, touched on Ireland, mentioned England, Luxembourg came into one of the conversations, drifted into exchanging opinions on our jobs and then started talking about our wee walk and then it dawned on me that I have been in Suzhou for about a year and I would find it much easier to give a tourist a description of some of my favourite drinking holes than I would to give him or her a description of some of those things that would make a tourist want to come to Suzhou. As I prepare to leave Suzhou, I am in the process of discovering a pleasant city away from Harry's Bar, The Blue Marlin and The Shamrock. Still, it is never too late and tomorrow I will sup my coffee in the area where I had my wee walk today.

The picture was taken in Suzhou during my walk today. It is Suzhou and not Venice; in Venice they do, of course, where different hats.