Advenures on the road 2011

Hey Peeps,
February 2nd 2011 was Chinese New Year Eve, also known as the start of the spring festival. This is the only time of year where the Chinese take a holiday so they celebrate it to the fullest! Today is February 7th and still there are fireworks still going on every night without fail - shops are closed, people are enjoying themselves, market places are quieter, temples are packed with people praying for prosperity in this year of the Rabbit.

Febrary 2nd Marie and I arrived to Shanghai to meet our lovely friend Eva who is living there, she is another from New Zealand. The three of us are pretty proud of ourselves for living all so far apart yet this is our third trip together in three years since NZ - I guess you could say we like each other! By the time we got settled into our hostel in the old city part of Shanghai it was supper time. I had the unfortunate event of spraining my ankle the day before in Xi'an so I'm afraid any time lost in Shanghai was my fault due to my turtle speed ambulation. When we checked in the hostel owners were providing a Chinese New Years feast for us which we were happy to take part in. In true Gill, Marie and Eva fashion we had made no plans for the evening so when a New York dude invited us to an "event" he was going to we decided to tag along.

The event turned out to be a Couch Surfers Party in a beautiful apartment on the 10th floor. What is Couch Surfers you ask? Well, let me tell you......google it! I actually still am not clear on the organization itself. Somehow you sign up and say where you're travelling and people from that place agree to let you stay on their couch for free or something like that. It sounds good, and it was a great party! A very international crowd of youngsters just trying to be wild in Shanghai! At midnight we were all out on the balcony and there were so many fireworks going off. All just regular people lighting them from the streets - it was beautiful. The height we were at on the 10th floor was so perfect - they were exploding right at our eye level. The Chinese don't seem so concerned about safety as is apparent in their lax traffic laws, open and unmarked cracks in the cement where people can fall in and sprain their ankles, and regulation of fireworks. There were children lighting them off in the streets between cars. It sounded like a war zone when you were on the ground - absolutely blew my mind. I can't describe for you the atmosphere of this day but just take it from me - it was amazing. I think I will always celebrate Chinese New Year wherever I am.

The following days were spent exploring Shanghai. It is a beautiful city - so many lights, so many people, so much action! Eva took us all over as quickly as my ankle would allow, she is an awesome tour guide especially when her Danish accent turns into a soft British style telephone voice as she explains the significance of the items to our right and our left The smog in this city is incredible - unlike anything I've seen before. At times when I looked out the window I thought we were having a snow storm - so white and foggy out. But it is very warm which was a welcome change from Beijing and Xi'an. We saw things like the Pudong district with all the tall buildings and fancy lights, the Bund or beautiful walk along the harbour, the Shanghai acrobatic circus, the fake markets where I did way too much shopping.... Since we were in a bigger more international city we found we weren't being stared at so much which was a nice change except for one event when we were 3 blonde girls strolling along the sea wall - a lady ran up to Marie speaking wildly in Chinese and handed her a small child then stepped back and snapped picture after picture after picture, it was so funny! A few minutes later we asked someone to take a picture of the three of us with the Pudong in the background and they did, then more people came to get pictures then a few people came in to stand with us in the picture, then a father brought his baby son to have a picture.... It was so crazy, I just can't believe it.

Now Marie has gone home - I guess some people have to go deal with the reality of school.... psssssht not this girl, I still have 3 glorious weeks to spend in this country! Eva and I flew to Guilin today - we will have a week here before Hong Kong and Thailand. The fun continues......

There have been so many new things I have seen and done over the past few days; I would love to recount it all for you but it is just impossible! China is so different from home - a few things I will never get used to;

1. The traffic: The only pattern I have seen so far is this - anything goes. Even if it means crossing a 4 lane road 1 lane at a time and it taking about 5 minutes, no one cares! The pedestrians, bikes, rickshaws move through traffic like they pack as much punch as a bus. When Li Suo was still with us I made sure to hold his hand whenever we crossed a street, but now without him Marie and I find a Chinese person (not hard) on the corner and walk across with them. There has not been a time where I have not arrived at the other side breathless, heart pounding and adrenaline rushing through my veins - and not in a good way! Everytime we are in a bus or taxi I just cringe and most of the time close my eyes because I don't want to see it when we run over someone. I feel it will happen soon....

2. The staring: When in Beijing we did notice people looking at us but now that we are in Xi'an (a small city of 8 million) we are noticing people watching us more and more. In the train station on the way to Xi'an there was a man filming us as we ate our little snack. People are often bringing their kids up to us to say hello which is sweet. Or taking our picture with or without our consent which made us feel like movie stars at the beginning but no more and more we are just feeling like freaks! Yesterday Marie said "you know, I'm really finding that I am staring a lot when I see a non-Asian person on the street" She's not the only one!

3. The spitting: I don't think we go 5 minutes out in China without hearing someone pull up all the mucous they have in their lungs and spit it on the street. Or the floor.

4. The people EVERYWHERE: There are so many people here and they just push their way through the streets or wherever they need to go. The people don't seem to care when they get pushed around or that there is people crushing them in the subway so I guess it is ok!

5. The excellent service: Every place we go - whether it is a restaurant, shoe store, tourist place - there are staff ready to wait hand and foot on us! Every store has at least one greeter who guides you where you need to go. We never have to wait for the staff to come and take our order because usually they are standing right beside our table pen raised just waiting for us to point to what we want on the menu.

Some highlights of the past few days;
Running on the Great Wall of China - awesome!!!!!! Sunny but cold day, very few tourists at the place Li Suo took us. It was a very challenging run as the wall snakes through the mountains and there are little staircases every few hundred meters I had to navigate my big feet around and I set a pretty ambitious pace as I was so excited to be living my dream! My legs were sore for 3 days after!

Travelling and living with natives. Li Suo and his sister Hua who we stayed with in Beijing were wonderful hosts, taking us everywhere we wanted to go, making sure we got the best deal, keeping us safe crossing the road and teaching us what we need to know to enjoy this country to the fullest! They are now gone from Beijing to their hometown in the North of China to celebrate the New Year with the rest of their family. Marie and I were quite lost (very literally) when they left and we had to navigate Beijing on our own for one day.

The overnight train journey. What a great experience! We were travelling from Beijing to Xi'an on the 8pm train - a 14 hour journey. Li booked our tickets for us and he was able to get us beds on the train which is awesome! We arrived at the train station with what seemed like the rest of Beijing - it was madness. Everyone is trying to get to their homes for the holiday. We hadn't slept the night before due to an awesome party so we were pretty exhausted and in our beds before the train left the station. We lucked out and had a 4 bed cabin all to ourselves The train steward woke us up just after we left to check our tickets, he woke us up about 10 hours later to collect our garbage of which there was none, then woke us up 4 hours after that saying we were in Xi'an and could we please get up. Such a good sleep!

So now we have been in Xi'an for 2 days. Tomorrow is Chinese New Year! I'm excited to see exactly what that entails - I am picturing paper dragon dancers, red laterns everywhere, heaps of Chinese people, fan dancers, confetti - I'll let you know if it lives up to my expectations. We fly to Shanghai tomorrow at midday so will be celebrating with Eva in the big city!!

Happy New Year, peace out!

Nihao from Beijing!
I arrived safe and sound in Beijing FINALLY after a long delay in Moscow. I am very happy to have made it here as Li's sister heard on the news last night that the Moscow airport has been bombed. One day after I was there. I'm lucky!
Li Suo was there to pick me up when my flight landed and we waited an hour for Marie then we were off! We went to Li's sisters to drop our bags then out to the city - we bought out transit tickets for the week and had our first experience in a Chinese subway train. As we were travelling we heard this nice signing voice in Chinese. Me and Marie thought it was awesome someone was entertaining us like this - the sound was getting closer and closer then we discovered it was a boy with no eyes and a little radio tied around his neck and his mother pulling him along asking for money. Our first stop was a huge tourist market where the shopping began It is a bit of a scam in all these places - they will quote one amount of what something costs to me and Marie and if Li asks it would always be lower! So he has been keeping a close eye on us, pretending that he is our boyfriend to keep the traders honest!

We went to a huge food hall in the basement of this market for dinner where there was heaps of different choices, Li knows everything about food so he ordered us a variety of different noodles and meats and rice to eat, it was good. One thing that is hard to get used to is the lack of water. Tap water is not safe so you have to buy it bottled everwhere you go and it is not always available - however coke is always there. And if you're at a place that does have both the water is 5 times more expensive than the coke! I forgot about the tap water thing and brushed my teeth with it my first night, but I'm still breathing!
My first encounter with the Chinese washrooms came here as well. Picture a small tiled room with holes in the floor around the outside. Put partitions

The party continues!
The last couple days in Copenhagen have been awesome! It has been cold weather but the sun has been out most of the time to allow me to enjoy my second visit to this beautiful city. Me and Jens came to CPH at 1 on Thursday and were met with a rather violent running and jumping hug from Marie, my good friend from New Zealand. So good to see her! And the excitement for China increased even more

We went to Kristopher's house for lunch then set off in his volvo to look around a bit. We went to DTU (Danish Technical University) where Marie and Kris are both studying engineering. Marie was supposed to be there in class, so she tried to keep a low profile while showing us all the highlights. Her semester was to end the next day and she had a big project due but she just assured us she's stay up late and get it done later, so no stresssss! Then we drove out of the city a bit to go to a Castle that had a very rich history (built in the 16th century by the King for the summer home, then destroyed by fire and rebuilt). To Marie's dismay it was closed when we arrived.... But we didn't mind, just took some pictures of the outside and walked around the gardens all four of us holding hands - it was nice!

We went back to the city and got ready for our dinner with Li Suo - the man who takes me and marie to China!!! He moved to Denmark 8 years ago for school, just by himself - leaving his family back in China. He and Marie met while working together at Burger King, back in the day! Today Li is a successful buisness man, owns a beautiful apartment in downtown CPH and treated us to an awesome sushi dinner. The first part of our trip - before we meet Eva in Shanghai has been totally unplanned by either me or Marie. I think we were both waiting for the other to set some sort of itinerary but that didn't happen..... Until Li entered the picture! He has a grand plan of showing us Beijing and surrounding area while we stay 4 days with his sister in the city. Then he sends us off on the night train to Xi-an where we will stay 2 nights and visit a local friend of his. Then he has booked our flights to Shanghai where Eva will take over. This is travelling people!! Awesome that he does this for us! So anyway he is super nice and we made a plan that he is going to wait for me in the baggage area in Beijing as his flight arrives 20 mins before mine.

Had a little car trouble on the way home...... Kris left us downtown to go party and we took his car home - Some crazy feature of his volvo - you can't turn off the car if the signal light is still on or the lights go crazy, even when you take the key out. So we disconnected the battery and decided to let it rest overnight and keep our fingers crossed that it would work in the morning (it didn't).

Marie had to go to school to finish her semester the next day so she set me and Jens up with some maps and off we went around the city (bus and train), making a few wrong turns here and there but for the most part navigating this foreign place really well! Public transport is awesome in Denmark! I can't understand any of their crazy words but we managed to find everything we wanted. We met our friend Sabina in the centre and walked around with her, catching up on all the news since I saw her last time.

This night Marie had planned a party to celebrate end of semester, going to China, me visiting etc! so as soon as she got home we went grocery shopping (on the bus!) and starting making some food. Our friend Jeppe and Mari came to join us with Sabina and a few of Marie's other friends came along as well, it was fun!! Had a party and danced our faces off

Today was an easy day of just sleeping in then going skating downtown. Now I am at Sabina's house watching the game! (the game is handball! Denmark vs Poland - interesting....) and they will take me to the airport tomorrow morning for a long flight to Beijing! I am so tired I am looking forward to this flight!

Later!

Hi all,

I left Calgary on Friday Jan 14th and arrived in Hamburg the following day at 6pm, a good flight- thankfully I have the gift of sleeping like an angel on airplanes and this time was no exception, the flight felt very short

My friend Jens was there to pick me up, we hopped into his VW and drove 3 hours to his hometown of Strooodne (thats how I think it should be spelled for how its pronounced). His parents and grandma were waiting for us to have supper. I think the food helped to be a bit of an icebreaker because Angelica,Willy and Ilsa speak zero English. And I speak zero Deutch. Luckily Jens speaks both so he didnt get to eat -just talking the entire time!! Ilsa (the grandma) went for the history book after supper and showed me some pictures of the town through war times and her life growing up, it was very nice

The next day we just explored the farm a little bit and the area around the farm, the landscape is quite flat with bunches of trees here and there -very green. The snow had just been melting so it looked really good. Jens took me to see 3 of his friends at their houses-he chose these friends to introduce me to because they all spoke English! We went to the zoo, checked out the town where Jens grew up, his school, his other school, things like that. I love seeing these things from my friends - it helps explain so much!

That evening we started to drive, 4 hours later we reached Schollene a small town an hour from Berlin. Fritz, the father of Jens friend was our host. He was so nice to us, always trying to feed more and make sure everything was perfect for our short stay. Jens again was in the translator role and getting really good at it which was good for me!

Berlin the next day was so awesome- we got there in the morning and because neither of us had done much research on all the things we wanted to see we decided to take a city tour on the hop on and off bus. This is something I have always wanted to do but never did. Our first stop was a huge shopping mall called Kar De Wa (I think) and we decided to stay a little longer here and get the next bus. But when we wanted to leave there were no busses to be found and we are too impatient to wait so we ended up just walking to all the sights we wanted to see..... First experience on this bus - not the best.
It was a beautiful day, nice and sunny a bit cold but we were walking so much it didnt really matter. Other things we saw were the Sony centre in Potsdamplatz, lots of big beautiful churches or cathedrals, the parliment buildings, the brand new multi level Hauptbahnhof (train station), Checkpoint Charlie and the Topography of Terror at the Berlin wall. This was so interesting - I didnt realize Germany was divided until 1989! All the memorials and information I read was quite startling how the wall was made and how people lived on either side and how it eventually was destroyed. We went up into a hot air balloon near Checkpoint Charlie and had an amazing view of the city. It truly is beautiful. I will have to come back here - there is so much left to do!

The following day we drove again, this time up to Kiel. A city on the Baltic Sea where 2 of our friends from New Zealand are studying agriculture at the university. We met Wiebke at her residence hall and had lunch together. She showed us around the university and to the one of the beaches. For dinner we met Oke and enjoyed his company once again. He was nervous to talk to me because he said he hadnt spoken English in 2 years since our trip. But it came back to him quickly and it was like old times! So great to see these people in their regular lives.

Now I am in Ravesburg....or is it Rensburg....Or maybe Resbourge.... Jens university place. It was a relax day today -slept in, cleaned some clothes, walked around the town, that sort of thing. This town is lovely as well- such old yet well maintained buildings, tiny little stone streets that are good for strolling around the shops with a kaffe. Tomorrow we leave for Copenhagen for the weekend. Staying with Marie - probably making a party or two then Sunday off we go to Beijing