Welcome to the published part of my life!

… is a wonderful hostel in the countryside outside Yangshuo, which is run by a Dutch couple and is a wonderful place to stay at! We where lucky enough to find it and decided immediately to stay longer than we intended.

Since our travel plans changed in Xian (Trains where booked out forever) we decided to go to the south of China (Guilin) immediately.  Unfortunately the weather was quite bad during the last couple of days, so it was getting really cold down here and it was raining a lot.

But I guess this “cleaned out” all the tourists from this region, and we were nearly alone today when the sun came out. The landscape around Yangshuo is just breathtaking! And when you go with your worn out rented bicycle over those bumpy dirt roads trough those little, tiny villages along the river and through the rice and vegetable fields, along Pomelo- and Orange trees, you can not imagine that there is a more beautiful place in China. The peak mountains around are just gorgeous and the sun was pleasing us the whole day! Fortunately we have time to stay here for another four days.

So if you ever visit China, make sure to stop by the Giggling Tree in Yangshou. They have a restaurant with the best Chinese food I’ve eaten so far (even better than dumplings), it really feels like home far away from home and the landscape is unbelievably scenic. And make sure that the weather had been bad the days before you come, so you can enjoy the whole scenery all by yourself!

we are travelling for one week now, and that’s what comes to my mind, when I think about it

• cheap food tastes mostly better than expensive food and the staff is friendlier
• ABBA even found its way to Xi’an
• Smog is killing me – and is unfortunately everywhere we’ve been so far
• I managed to order Lian Mien (?) but I like Guan-Lus version way better
• Body language is awesome
• Numbers are shown differently with fingers here than in Europe
• Hostel staff is very friendly and speaks good English
• McDonalds is a reliable source of good Orange juice and Coffee
• Chinese Bubble Tea tastes as Vancouver Bubble Tea – Jammy
• Going by bus is sooooooooo cheap!
• I love dumplings! They are sold everywhere, they are so good, and they are soooo cheap!
• The great wall is amazing!
• The weather got better!
• People trying to sell stuff to tourist annoy the hell out of me
• Night trains are quite comfortable (if the speaker is not right above your ear) and they can be booked out 10 days in advance
• Travelling plans can change unexpectedly
• Construction works are going on everywhere!

Yesterday, we arrived safely in snowy Beijing and it is freezing cold but sunny.  I like this better then rain, so its fine

We’ve already seen parts of the historic town today and visited the Forbidden City, what was truly amazing. Ordering Food and communicating with Chinese people is harder than we thought, and this already in Beijing! Only rarely people speak English, and that not really well. But somehow body language, pointing and guessing helped us out and we bought some interesting foot, that actually tasted really good (most of the time). The supermarket experience is also not to be missed. Your don’t understand anything that is printed on it, and if you can’t see through the package you are lost. But we’ll learn (I hope).

Tomorrow we’ll visit the Great Wall during a trip organized by the staff of our hostel (Downtown Backpackers Accommodation – to be recommended!) and the day after we’ll go an see The Birds Nest.

Since we succeeded somehow to by a train ticket to Xian at the station where nobody really spoke English, we hope to get there at the end of the week. t

Since the technical communication is not optimized jet, I’ll first write without posting any of my pictures

When you’ll read this, I’ll probably be already on the plane to Beijing. My luggage weights 13kg and I hope I didn’t forget anything.

I tried to prepare for all sorts of attacks towards the theft of my passwords or accounts (thanks Martin for your advices) but I can’t promises anything. Therefore I want to point out here, that YOU SHOULD NEVER TRANSFER MONEY ANYWHERE, even if I ask you to do so via eMail, SMS, Skype ore whatever. If it would be me I’d call or prove my identity somehow with something only you and I know. One of my friends eMail and Facebook was hijacked lately, so I know what I’m talking about.

Talking about Facebook, I can’t access my Facebook anymore and I couldn’t fix it so far. So just don’t use this platform to contact me anymore. Its not really important, but I just wanted to mention it

Other than that I can only hope to access my blog, to find time to post some short notes or to otherwise send out an eMail to hopefully everybody who is interested and hopefully to nobody who isn’t

Take care and I try my best to take care of myself

Since I’ve been to Canada, I don’t think that autumn is colourful in Germany anymore. There are mostly yellow or brown trees and in between some green ones. And if you are really lucky, you can find an orange coloured tree. But in Canada the Maple trees have a colour range that goes from orange over red even to dark red and they are everywhere.

Now one of this lovely maple trees was plant in front of the Mensa in Dresden and it is just so beautiful! I passed this tree very often lately, but today I finally took my camera with me and took a picture