Want my Ibex back. Now. *grml*

as I had bad news two days ago like: sorry, the train is fully booked within the next ten days!(well, this is the 'translated' version: originally the woman threw only a "no!" in my face) I was trapped in Chengdu once more and decided to be a little more careful. (Well. Plan B works as far as I know: My Bus departs tomorrow 6.30 in the morning to songpan.)

At the same time I am a l-i-t-t-l-e afraid that the trains to Beijing could be as busy as the ones to Xining, that I wanted to take. So I went right today to the office for booking train tickets. but all I received was once more a "No!" with chinese comments. I asked another woman, standing close to the nearby park entrance, if she could help me, and she explained why "No!": it was because - and now listen - it is NOT possible to get a train ticket at Chengdu with departure NOT at Chengdu. So it is NOT possible for me to buy a train ticket going from Lanzhou to Beijing. And it's NOT possible to buy a trainticket departing from Chengdu and then just to get on the train some stops later. Welcome to China.

The girl from the youth hostel was nice to me, and invented a solution: make a reservation at a hotel at Lanzhou, give them a deposit and ask them to buy the trainticket for me. Not possible, because all Hotels in Lanzhou mentioned in LP (have to check internet now)
- have wrong telefone number
- accept reservations only ONE day before
- are toooooo expensive (4*)

and now? don't ask me. I'll manage this. somehow. *sigh*
maybe booking a flight from lanzhou to Beijing, even if I, somehow, was looking forward to the 19h-journey by train.
Maybe go to Beijing right the next possibility, and passing my time over there.

My mood was so good today, managed to do so many things, including fetching my passport at the Embassy (got my visa!) and now once more all turned round. gonna go to haeagen dazs now.

Next year I'm gonna pass my holidays in Austria. as I'm gonna pass the "year" not there, maybe a good choice:
less pollution, more friends, more english-speaking persons (even if not necessary).

btw: thank you for your calls the last days, Martin, Dagmar, David, Mama, Papa and Andy, I really enjoyed my "holiday break", even if I got to bed only at 4 am. sorry for not having answered all messages in a proper way, but phoning and chatting at the same time is not a thing I appreciate. So Sorry Christoph, Mathieu, Stephan and Denis for not chatting much with you.
Kathi, thanks for thinking of me, things like that better to talk about when I'm back, as it's not possible to lend me your books earlier ;)
Gerd, if you read this, please let me now, where and how you are, I'm missing the answer to my textmessage.
Susi, are you ok as well? missing your comment like: "and what about Tibet?!? :(" however, have a good time in Italy! Goditi il sole italiano - e non solo ;) e non dimenticare le stelle cadenti in questi giorni!

Don't know, when I have Internet for the next time, this time at the youth hostel, but beginning with tomorrow I will stay at smaller places, and I don't know how the hotels are equipped.

Angi

http://images.google.at/imgres?imgurl=http://www.maniacworld.com/Automatic-Mahjong-Table.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.maniacworld.com/Automatic-Mahjong-Table.html&usg=__i1QChFYURbCt91edDt_8-m8hl44=&h=249&w=329&sz=16&hl=de&start=2&um=1&tbnid=DLy8rk9Pw8Y9mM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=119&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmahjongg%2Bshuffle%2Btable%26hl%3Dde%26um%3D1

Cooooooooool :)

1)
When living in Italy, I always said: loud - louder - Italy.
but there is an increase:
loud - louder - Italy - China.

I have a stereotype of an old chinese on my mind: sitting with his traditional hat, holding one hand behind his ears, because he is deaf.
Now I ask myself: what was first, the chicken or the egg? translated to chinese: what was first: the deaf one, or the cars blowing their horn?

2)
chinese traffic is like a dog: you must not show your fear, and it won't harm you.
all are complaining about chinese traffic. well, me as well, because of the exhaust fumes (Abgase). not of the way of traffic - I got used to that in Italy.
If you step on the road, they will stop (or go around you). but nevertheless one has to be careful.

4)
solitude.
last year I was looking for it, I found it, and I appreciated it.
This year, not possible. one is never alone. And as a foreigner sometimes I feel to be a trophy: "may I take a picture with you?"="one more picture with a foreigner - yesss!". they sometimes dont even ask, where Iam from. but at the same time one is lonesome. but a sad lonliness.

Maybe some of you are interested - yes, and somehow I enjoy talking with my friends at home after this long period - tomorrow (monday) evening (for me... -6 hours for you) I will be online at skype for a long time (with headset, and camera this time), as I want to fix my blog and write some more stories. (maybe I will be online also on tuesday. depends on the bus going to songpan)

Bad news today: the train in the region I wanted to go, is fully booked for the next 10 days... miss my bike.
Plan B is made: going there by bus, step by step. not from a to b, but from a to d, to f, to s, to x and then to b. should work, with inbetween a horse-trecking tour, a stop at a salt lake, in the middle of the mountains. maybe this time mountains... :)

Those Chinese trains and my spontaneous way of travelling (where to go tomorrow? let's think about that later ... cheers!) don't fit. however, tomorrow I'm going to the mt. qingcheng shan, for not staying at chengdu all the time. I had too much tourists once more ... who is crazy enough to visit one of the most important buddhistic monasteries of China right on the birthday of buddha? right, thats me... ignorance or stupidness? (Unwissenheit oder Dummheit) I don't know which is worse.... however, for me it was ignorance.

sorry for those scattered thoughts tonight. once more late. nevertheless, some more scattered thoughts will be added at miscellaneous.

at Xi'an, a giant soldier. looking right at me... or so...


some of the soldiers. they all were coloured and had arms ... once...


Sunrise at mt. huashan. the red ribbons...


wrong wb. needs to be adjusted. but the view... *sigh*


same time same station.


sometimes I manage to take a picture before people notice, I'm foreign. at Pengzhao. China doesn't care about cold chain. (Kuehlkette)


Pengzhao. Tina, volunteer, and chinese girl running for picking up some lotus to eat *yummie*


Sichuangrey clouds and moon.


still life at Pengzhao.


artistic section
strolling around chengdu today I was in photo-mood.


highlighted grass ontop of a roof. will be better in bigger size. promised. (still xi'an)


at the earthquake site.


still life at youth hostel


bamboochairs


hoppla










all at chengdu today.

hope you enjoy and good night

Maybe you were asking, if I got lost: the answer is: no, i'm fine.
didn't get lost nor in finland neither in norway and china, and not even in my thoughts ;)

I just killed the text I wrote, because of this stupid mouse with some too much buttons for navigating on Internet (back\forward). So once more...

Where to start? where to end?
Its hard, so much happend.

Just impressions, as it is already nearly 1am

Guangyuan: three hotels sent me away, for the first time I didn't feel welcome at China.
but Stanley changed this, she just started talking to me, while I was taking pictures and invited me to her home.
well, we made an appointment for next day, and spent a great night togehter.

Chengdu: Lorraine and Joseph picked me up, it was really nice meeting them again. Dinner. hotpot. finally :) I wanted to try it when I was at chongqing.

Pengzhao: Next day we picked up the team at the airport (the others were from Hongkong) and went to the city where we were going to teach english, where we should live the next 5days.
they were (and are) all so nice!

Teaching: quite a challenge as I don't speak mandarine. At the beginning less contact to the children, but the ice broke the third day, when I was teaching them some Origami. Yes, an austrian teaching origami to chinese :)

Visa and Bike: I skipped one day for fixing my visa (driving around in chengdu for 5 hours - more than annoying. driving to longchan. the family keeping my bike were happy to see me again - so dinner together.
all togehter: departure: 6am, return: 4am *yawn*

The goodbye yesterday was hard. :'( I really felt welcome during these days, even if we never met before. I enjoyed this experience, the whole group. it was something really special. I hope I will meet them again.
Thank you Lorraine for offering me this possibility, thank you to all others for accepting me without reservation, thank you for sharing some hobbies ;)

Now I am at Chengdu once more, and it seems to me I finally start to like this city. well, some more days.
Plans are beeing made for the next days.

I guess there will follow some more detailed stories, especially for the last week, but not now. I already sorted the pictures, was online on skype talking for a while, so its late... just to say I'm fine.

I guess on Monday I will return here, this Internet is quite comfortable. and the computers are fast!!!

bye
Angi

Hi there,

so, finally I am at Xi'an again. Two days ago I left it, and was glad about this, and went to mount Hua Shan, one of the hol y mountains in China. There are several possibilities, (cablecar, climbing path, looooooong foot path with dont now how many 1000 steps).
In the bus going there I met Richard from Canada, we were the only not-chinese tourists in this bus. Finally, after long questions and answers to the guide and the one at the ticketoffice, we decided to start our trip at 23.00 for to be on the east peak for sunrise. So we had dinner together, and ist was much fun, talking about chinese letters, symbols, menus, and so on. At 23.00 we went back to the ticketoffice, and I heard about there were 'natives' doing the same, but I didn't imagine that it was that much! Well, it was natives doing this, and Richard and me, and I saw another non-chinese tourist. The path (the whole way was surfaced, so no footpath like I know at 2100m altitude in the alps...) was steep, narrow, exposed (and at night you couldn't see how deep it's going down at the side), and so crowded!
At the beginning, all chinese were passing by, they had quite a kind of a hurry coming up, but I wanted to go more slowly for not wasting my energy too careless (see, I learnt :). Good Girl! Some hours later, some star-watching-rests later, we started passing all the chinese, that finally were too exhausted to reach the peak. At the top there were about one hundred (or less) people, compared with numbers of people who began the trip... peanuts.
Sunrise was amazing, but cold! well, at least I kept some typical properties: I went up the mountain without windjacket, long trousers and pullover. But as soon as the sun appeared (+ half an hour) it got warmer, and as soon as the sun appeared, the crwod disappeared. lucky us. we just passed strolling the several peaks, and finally we wanted to go down.
The downpath wasn't that much fun, because of steep, slippy, and too small steps (we did kms of tip-toe-trekking ;). But as we both wanted to see the aera sorrounding the stairway (and we didn't see anything at night) we chose this way back as well. The end was really hard. I'm not demure (zimperlich), but it really was exhausting, I think mainly because of no sleep. my knees were shivering/shaking.
The thing that astonished me the most, were the tons of red ribbons and golden locks, that lovers put along the road. They go up togehter, lock the lock at a chain, and then throw away the key.
As this one astounded me that much (not because of the meaning, but because of the pictures), my chinese souvenir this year is one of the red ribbons :)
We arrived Hua Shan Village only at about 4 pm, so we were wandering the mountain for nearly 17 hours - and without sleep. I tried to be really carefully, as I now myself and - miracle! - I didn't get hurt :)
Back at Xi'an (much later than inteded) I found out, that my next aim is too far away to reach it today. so, changing plans, staying the night at a youth hostel (another one. The first was cosy, nice, and friendly. This one is dirty, dinky (schaebig) but at least friendly).
The row for trainticket was approximatly 2 hrs, so back and to bed. I fell asleep at 22 pm...
Today I got up early at 7 am to buy my trainticket. everybody told me it's going to be impossible (and kind of it is - its always really a challenge to try to make myself understood by a chinese clerk, with all that possibilities: hard seats, soft seats, hard bed, soft bed, upper bed, middle bed, lower bed), because I'm using one of the main routes, and there won't be any seats. Well, I have a Ticket now, my train leaves at 17.30 (so one more day to spend at Xi'an), but I don't know if it is a seat or a bed...
Now I'm going for a small place, maybe to rent a bicycle to see something not-touristig: a place you can't find in the lonley planet, but on my chinese roadmap, that I still have and use...
After I'm going to teach english to chinese childre at an english language camp (like the one I went to 15 years ago - guys, I'm getting old... ;), Lorraine organizes this cours (but I think I told this already, right?).
When I am at Chengdu, I finally have some plans:
a) I have to prolong my Visa
b) I need to get back my bike
c) I want to try to get a Visa for Tibet. I changed plans. Maybe it's possible to take the train to Lhasa - must be a great occasion to see the mountains as close as possible, even if Anna and Julius told me the amazing view from the airplane...

as I'm not interested in the giant cities of china (somehow they are all the same) I try to stay a little bit longer here in the montains, so sichuan, qinghai and gansu provinces. Maybe it's possible to do a more-day-hike around somewhere here. I know there are possibilites to do horse-trekking, maybe also this is a good possibility. To Beijing I really want to go at hte last possibility - even if I'm looking forward to see He Xin again, and to learn how to play Mahjong. I think China is a better place than Simmering ;) .
I also wanted to go more to the south, where I didn't intended going at the beginning, but, for telling the truth, I'm a little scared of Malaria... Well, Julius told me, that it is possible here in China to get the Medication at the pharmacy for about 20 Euro, without prescription of a medic... but still I'm not sure.
Susa told me: "against malaria? just don't let you bite"... but as I found out at Chengdu, I'm not so consistent to do this. even if I tried the Nobite(R), i wasn't happy, because my face hurted, when I applied it. so... well, let's see.

So, you see I'm fine.
No pics today, I'm not in a mood for doing this now.
Just off to pack my things, stroll around the city, looking for some inspiring places (as I found one right after the day I wrote I don't like the city) and do a kind of relax today.

At your place it's 3am, so: good night! my day starts right after that point.