It is now 30 minutes that I am in possession of travel chopsticks made of stainless steel.  Travel chopsticks are good for in-between meals, when you don't like to eat with your fingers. The individual parts are simply screwed together, and in no time you have your cutlery. Absolutely self-explanatory, an intelligent solution.

 
Ling gave me my travel chopsticks as a present. This week she is working at the Pin Trading Center in the Paralympic village. Here too the organizers revealed perfect preparation, because trading pins at the Paralympics has been a growing market for many years. Whether earlier venues of the Paralympics also had a Pin Trading Center is not known at least by the experienced Paralympics technicians on the Otto Bock team.

 
Occasionally enormous efforts are made to complete personal pin collections. The following is a strictly confidential example: When athletes from the Canadian national team came to the workshop and asked whether someone could break open the ring locks on their bicycles, this request was complied with subject to the donation of a pin from Canada. These are about the most attractive of all pins.

 
In order to avoid misunderstandings, no criminal offence was involved. Because the Canadians had been given the wrong keys for their loaned bicycles, and nobody was able to shed light on the whereabouts of the right ones. Incidentally, bicycles can be bought in Beijing for as little as 20 Euros - Ingolf Hentsch, orthopedic technician from Schwedt purchased one for this price yesterday, and it is now standing in his hotel room. A safe lock would have cost nine Euros, but who would spend almost half the price of his bicycle for a lock.
Pins on the other hand cost nothing. Only the ones we buy ourselves. It is a fair barter trade that has grown to become exceedingly popular amongst athletes as well as helpers. The exchange rate is always 1:1, independent of nationality. 

 
Ling also revealed to me which pins are amongst the most demanded rarities. According to her, the pin from Andorra is the hit of the season. Of course she has one. And that's no surprise, in the middle of the Pin Trading Center. What is all the more surprising is that Ling, after the usual Chenglish greeting ("Ni hao, hello") asks us in German whether we come from Germany or Austria. Now, that's being lucky. She is a German language student in Beijing, already speaks fluent German and is also very honest: "The grammar is terrible." An assessment shared not only by Mark Twain, but also by many Germans.