I feel very fortunate to have found a large house to live in in the downtown area of Hsinchu. The house is old, horrifically ugly, and some important things don’t work (doors, hot water, toilets, the roof) but it affords the luxury of 4 floors in which to pile my junk. It’s relatively cheap too.
One of the unfortunate aspects is the lack of parking. The house is down a narrow alley which only just has room for scooters. The alley would be about the width of a sidewalk in Canada I suppose.
To find a place to park on the street is impossible most days and cost prohibitive. Luckily there is a parking garage a five minute walk away that offers a monthly rate with few people using it other than a small office building across the street. But at times the garage is quit full and I just don’t understand why.
The neighbourhood I live in has a multitude of restaurants, most of which are never terribly busy. I am surrounded by downtown malls as well but these have there own large underground parking facilities. So it’s a complete mystery as to why this garage gets full on some evenings.
In any other country I would accept the fact that people have decided to park in a central location and take a stroll to the restaurants, bars, and shopping centres that form a 10 minute walk of a circle around this parking area. But the simple fact is no one in Taiwan walks anywhere. It’s an impossible assumption. People here with drive around for an hour looking for a place to park so they don’t have to walk five minutes from their car to where ever they want to be.
So last night when I drove home and the parking garage was full, with a line up of cars waiting to enter, I felt like getting out of my car and asking people why they are parking there in some effort to explain this weird phenomenon. I know all the other parking garages had plenty of space so why choose the one farthest away from where people seem to want to be?
These boring and mundane mysteries of life in Taiwan are what keep you on your toes and put aside any chance you might slip into a sense of normalcy here. Life here doesn’t fit any mold.