Trans Mongolian part 4-China in our hands
Trip Start
Sep 25, 2008
1
8
29
Trip End
Apr 01, 2009
Beijing,
China
Monday, October 6, 2008
There's a problem that needs to be overcome when you arrive in China - when they started building their railways Russia decided to make their tracks a different width to those in Europe and China, supposedly to prevent invasion. I really can't see it happening, war breaks out and all the troops jump on a train and try secretly to ride into Russia?!?!
It is annoying, because it means they have to lift up all the carriages and put them on new wheels
No such thing huh?
! This had happened in Belarus before, but it'd been late and we had our passports back so we just went to sleep. Here, they had our passports, and it was only 8pm, we'd have to endure 4 hours with no toilet and only the slight comedy of seeing our carriage fly up in the air.We shunted forward and back and forward and back some more, at some point they lifted us up but I didn't actually notice it. During this time they returned our passports and we arrived back in front of the fairy-lit station building and were actually allowed off, for a whole hour! This was exciting, we'd never had an hour to explore a station before!
It was also exciting because the station had a supermarket, selling all kinds of weird and unfamiliar food, like whole ducks in a bag, Coca-Cola that didn't say Coca-Cola on it, and some very weird drink that somehow had pieces of fruit suspended within it. The strawberry flavour one looked suspiciously like frog-spawn, we had to try it!
So we bought a few things, some disgusting Chinese beer, the 'Coconut' flavour drink with pieces of 'Coconut' floating in it, and the Germans bought the frogspawn and various other delicacies
Flying train
. We returned to the train to taste our wares.The coconut drink was not infact coconut as the image clearly showed on the packet, but apple. If you cut up pieces of apple and put them in water I believe they would sink to the bottom, or float on the top depending on their size. The pieces in this drink were all floating at different levels within the liquid, and no amount of shaking could make them return to anything other than their orignal positions. This meant that the 'liquid' was actually on it's way to being a solid, through the addition of some horrible gum, I guess. It tasted ok, but the fear of what it may be doing to our insides prevented us from drinking more.
The frogspawn was even stranger, the sensation of the little bits entering your mouth was exactly how i'd imagine if you did drink frogspawn. Fortunately it didn't taste of pond.
To see my theory through to its conclusion we mixed Vodka with the drinks, and sure enough it sat on the top, meaning it was impossible to drink and any sip gave you neat, cheap vodka!
Before we left the station the conductor brought round vouchers
'Coconut' Juice
. Never let anyone tell you there is no such thing asa free lunch - I had in my hand not only 2 free lunches, but 2 free breakfasts also! Only snag, breakfast had to be taken between 7-8 and lunch between 10:30-11:30.'I'm going to stay in bed until 7:30, when Sven and Sepp get back from breakfast, if they say it was worth it I'll get up' said Andre
'This was our plan!' replied Sven.
In the end, most of us did get up for breakfast, 2 hard (too hard) boiled eggs, cold. 2 pieces of bread, stale. Butter, too cold and jam, perfect! Oh and some very nice chinese tea.
Lunch, just 2 hours later, was much nicer. Beef in blackbean sauce, with rice.
By now we were just hours away from Beijing and the scenary changed dramatically. Fields gave way to hills, then mountains and the train weaved a path through dozens of tunnels with some stunning views. We could even see the wall in the distance at one point. Strangely built at the bottom of a mountain. Perhaps instead of building the wall they could have just sat on the top of the mountain with some rocks to throw and they would have achieved the same effect? But then what do I know about empire building???
And then, just minutes after our scheduled arrival we pulled into the station, we'd made it to Beijing without flying. We gave ourselves a pat on the back, said some goodbyes and set off through the crowds!
