A little more from my Trans Mongolian train trip:
After an evening at the Russian Border (passport control took 4 hours!) and the Mongolian border (passport control took 1.5 hours) we entered Mongolia. While enjoying a good night sleep, after yesterdays
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I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street
I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
Beijing is again a complete different world. The people are very very friendly, and here I feel safe walking around in the city with my camera. I have been in the Forbidden City and saw the Lama temple (including their 15 meter high Buddha statue) and it was both beautiful. Even the supermarkets are interesting. It is impossible to press all those impressions into one single post on this blog, so I guess you have to be a bit patient it will come later, with the pictures.
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I am in China! Wooohooo!
Moscow was harsh in many ways, and I didn’t feel too sorry to leave it. I found my train, woohoo! for that and thanks so much for all the crossed fingers – it helped!, and I will write more about all my up front worries later. But I entered my 4 persons compartment in the train and sat down. 2 minutes later my train roommate came in, also here I was prepared for the worst. After a tough time in Moscow I ended up sharing my cabin with only one person, so lots of space, which was great.
And how I love Ithika and A simple twist of fate, because this person, are you ready, was as English as an Englishman could be (and hearing him speak was like music in my ears after days of struggle Russian), and the very first morning I woke up after my first night on the train and he-served-me-tea-in-bed. Tea in bed ladies and gentlemen, and not just any tea, it was bloody Yorkshire tea!
China in London
The nice thing about living in London is it’s diversity in cultures. There is a rather big Chinese community in London, and yesterday was the celebration of the Chinese New Year. The Year of the Pig has now officially started. The streets look beautiful with the red lanterns and there are a lot of activities going on the coming days. A good way to get an introduction to China before actually going there.
One downside of this is if you happened to have booked a trip to China quite a short while ago. Normal people would prepare that some time in advance so there is time to get all the visa’s in place. Other people, people who don’t think that much about things, don’t prepare at all. And then it can happen that you find out that it’s the Chinese New Year, which is an important celebration for the Chinese, so important that the Chinese Embassy decided to close for a few days.
The same Chinese embassy that was supposed to take care of my visa?
Yes them exactly.
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Right. I think I’ve actually overdone myself in madness this time. But I believe in that simple-twist-of-fate I was talking about even more now.
Let me tell you what my plan was – yesterday. Oh : long post alert.
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