Date: 2018-10-09
Wei and I decided to meet again in Beijing to hike the Great Wall together. We selected a part where we had not to much tourists, but which is beautiful because of the lake near the wall.
Well everyone knows hiking with me keeps always some surprises, because I like to take the off beaten tracks. So we took a nice tour along partly closed areas of the wall an even climbed up a construction site.
Thank you Wei for your confidence in my route.
Date: 2018-10-05 to 2018-10-12
Beijing was quite a surprise to me, because I heard really bad things about air quality and pollution there. But I stayed there for one week and hat clear sunny weather – no smog. The cars in the city looked very modern.
I lived there in a hotel in the middle of the hutongs. I expected to see a lot of poor people there, but most people living there nowadays count more to middle class. Some streets in the hutongs are becoming more and more a tourist attraction with a lit of food shops, restaurants and small tourist shops.
On 6th of October the last day of “National day” I went to forbidden city and summer palace. But even the tickets of forbidden city where sold out. So I took some pictures of it from a park with a hill in the north of it. In summer palace too where many people, so that taking pictures of some spots was quite hard.
Later this week it was a little bit better, so I went back to the Forbidden City on Wednesday. Still many people, but it was really great to see all the small palaces and squares.
Beijing has several big parks and palaces, so I visited too Tiantan park with the Temple of Good Harvest, one interesting Temple of Confucius, where they had an exhibition too about his life and work.
Date: 2018-10-03 to 2018-10-05
Shenyang is a modern city, but in the centre there is the old forbidden city of emperor’s times.
In Shenyang I slept in a capsule. The hostel I really cannot recommend: one dirty bathroom for many people, hard to find, staff smoked and I was sleeping in the entrance room. But the capsule was nice:
I was in Shenyang during National Day (actually it is a national week – 6 days of festivity), where a lot of Chinese Tourists as well were in the forbidden city palace. It was sometimes like kung fu fighting for a good picture.
Date: 2018-10-01 to 2018-10-03
Harbin was a nice start for China. Even more that Wei, the Taiwanese woman who I met at the border, helped me to get comfortable with Chinese customs and the language. Harbin is a nice town with a small old town city center, and lies on the shores of a river with an island in the middle. On the island there is an amusement park. You can get their either by cable car or ship.
On Tuesday we went with a friend of hers from Harbin to the site of Unit 731, which was the name of Japanese army base near Harbin during Second World War. The site was used as test an experiment base on biological warfare. They did tests on plague, anthrax, cholera bacterias including field test on local population. Very hard and sad stuff.
It showed up that leaving Russia was not so easy. The bus I wanted to take was not going on Sundays. So on the 30th I went with a night train to the tow Ussurirsk, because I found out that there are daily busses to China. Well when I was there it was far too early, so I had to wait until the bus station opened.
Finally, at 7 am the counter opened, but the woman said just in rude Russian that she does not have any tickets. Well I was really frustrated, but a Chinese man and woman, who were as well there told me I just have to wait. I was just thinking of going by taxi to the border and see how I can come across to China, because it was the last day of my visa period.
Suddenly at 11 am there suddenly were tickets available. I was so happy to get one.
First we drove to the border town Pogranichny, made a short stop and then got to the Russian border station. There we had to leave the bus and walked through the exit procedure.
Well the Russians had some problems with my last name, but finally I got through. Then we went on with bus to the Chinese border station, which was actually looking more like an entrance to a big hotel. Again my passport was very interesting, but they were nice and friendly. When I finally got through I found out that the bus was not waiting for me any more. But a woman from Taiwan, who I met on the bus before, did and helped me to catch a taxi together with her to the train station of the Chinese border town Suifenhe. I had pre-booked the tickets through a Chinese travel agency and only had to request at the counter that they may print my ticket. It worked well. She bought as well a ticket for the same train and after 7 hours on the train we arrived in Harbin and one hour later we finally reached the hostel. I was so tired, but happy to be there.
Date: 2018-09-28
Finally after three days on train from Irkutsk I have reached Vladivostok.
A freight-tain derailed on Wednesday just before my train an destroyed the tracks, so we had to wait 12 hours until the problem was fixed.
Video of site of the accident when my train finally passed:
So what’s coming up next?
I have to leave Russia on the 30th og September, because my tourist visa ends. So I will go to China!
Stay tuned!
Date: 2018-09-22
Circum-Baikal is an old part of the Trans-Siberian railway. It was once famous for the nice path along the Baikal lake and lots of tunnels.
As one part was flooded due to better protection of Irkutsk against floodings, there is only the part remaining from Sludyanka to Port Baikal.
I did a round trip by train, steam-train, boat and bus from Irkutsk organized by Tutu-Baikal.
Date: 2018-09-20 to 2018-09-25
Irkutsk is my favourite city in Siberia, it has some flair with a mixture of old and new buildings, nice Squares, nice paths along the riverbank.
And it has nice restaurants, bars – I really can recommend to visit the Edison Craft Bar.
I had a good time there.
Date: 2018-09-17 to 2018-09-19
Novosibirsk is the capital of Siberia an has some representative buildings like the opera. During the time I was there, there have been a lot of construction sites, so walking in the city centre was more an obstacle run with lots of dust and smoke.
Date: 2018-09-15 to 2018-09-17
If the cities are not that big I usually decide to hike to the hotel. Just to see the city and get more of the people who live here. Well Omsk with 10 km to the hotel was really a hard hike with a big backpack. I nearly twisted my ankle so I got to know Omsk the hard way.
The other thing is that I had to give up some hope and my girlfriend and I ended our relationship.
Not the best memories bound to that town.
Well Omsk itself has a nice historic and good renovated city center with a cathedral, a theater and some museums. But the center is rather small. In Omsk there are several bridges – one was modernized so not useable, because in Omsk is the junction of river Irtysch and Om.
