After our great farewell party (thank you guys for celebrating with us!) everything went very fast:

We were already exausted from packing and carrying all our furniture and tons of boxes around for the last two weeks, and without the help of our families and friends we would have probably not managed to get it done in time! Thank you so much! So after stuffing the final leftovers of our appartement into our storage room and handing over our appartement key in the very last second (Iza was just coming out the door without shoes, which got lost in some anonymous box, when our ex-landlady arrived) we finally got onto our bus to Prague on the 1st of August.

The beautiful house and garden of our friends in the center of Prague gave us the opportunity to regenerate and to shake off the work and stress of the past few weeks. Iza also got her hair dyed to a darker tone since we thought it would be advantageous to our nerves if she wouldn’t be a lighthouse among the dark haired asians and especially Indians later on. We had an amazing evening dinner thanks to Paya! However her’s and Ondra’s hospitality made leaving Europe not the easiest thing to do!

About 17 hours later, including a nice little high on Nikka’s champagne, a stopover in Moscow, a huge lack of sleep and an entertaining theatre with a drunken Russian who fell in love with one of the stewardesses, we finally landed on solid ground in the giant capital of China.

It was a rough start with strenuous long rides in absolutely overcrowded trains. We were trying to find our way through stuffy subway stations and busy Hutong-streets at the edge of the Tiananmen Square (“Gate of Heavenly Peace”). In the end we were able to throw our much too heavy backpacks into the corner of our hostel room, turn on the air-conditioner and dive into the fresh bedlinen of our soft beds.

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We spent a couple of days in the tourist city center of Beijing just a 20min walk away from the famous Forbidden City. Anyway we did not make it to visit the Forbidden City itself since the last entrance was at 15:30 p.m. and our jetlags forced us to sleep longer than expected but we had a few nice walks around the temple districts and gardens around the City. We discovered a few beautiful places and could even enjoy some secluded pavillons hidden within groves of ancient cypresses in the middle of this metropolis.

Our “365 Inn” – Hostel was located in a busy little alley near Meishi Street and housed a whole bunch of shops, fruit markets and restaurants. Throughout our stay we had excellent food and nearly any kind of service (cinema, chinese foot massage, chinese herbal pharmacies, banks, etc. ) just a stone’s throw away.

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The definite highlight was our visit to the Great Wall though. Our hostel had a special offer with a guided tour for about 300 Yuan (around 40€) per person but we decided to go low budget and to organise it ourselves. Considering that you could get a dinner for two for 20 – 30 Yuan in total and the expected lenght of our journey of approximately one and a half years we wanted to get used to safe as much money as possible. So we grabed the next subway train early in the morning and got off at Dong Zhi Men Station, a transport knot for the subway as well as the airport shuttle and the local bus hub. In search for the right bus to the Mutianyu segment of the Great Wall, which was not as crowded as other parts like Badaling, we ended up walking circles at one of the outher bus stations. As total chinese analphabets we were not able to figure out the right bus since the bus number we were searching for was not written anywhere. In addition a cheeky taxi driver smelled good business by taking us privately to the Wall for about 300 Yuan and therefore tried to lead us to the wrong bus. Fortunately a compassionate bus driver took us by the hand and finally pushed us into the right bus which was waiting inconspicuously just a few meters away. Our poor nice helper reaped a kick in his ass by an angry supporter of the taxi driver for destroying his business but we were happy to see that there are still honest people out there! So after a few more westerners just caught the bus in the last second (we called out to them through the window – which made the taxi driver and his minions even more angry) we finally set off to our 60km drive for 30 Yuan to one of the Seven World Wonders of Medieval times.

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“Study the past if you would define the future.”
― Confucius

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”
― Lao Tzu

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Due to traffic jams we had a lot of time to get to know some of these “last second- passengers”. One of them was Romar, a lively Argentinian who was on the road for about 4 months already and who published his experiences through his FaceBook page. He gave us many handy tips and recommendations for travelling in general and especially in South America. We also met a very nice couple from the Netherlands who were traveling through China before she will start to study at an university in Hong Kong. All of them had one important thing in common: They were using VPN to circumvent the chinese internet censorship of all Google- and Facebook- related websites. Well, I felt like a real noob not to have installed some VPN client

beforehand … that’s why you, dear reader, have to wait for some extra features on the blog which will be implemented once we enter one of Chinas neighbouring countries!

Anyway the five of us formed a small group and together we faced an uncomparable architectonic giant about 2 hours later. It was about 38°C under the sun when we climbed the steps high up to the ancient stone wall and we were wondering how little all these chinese people were sweating (some even wore jackets …) but the breathtaking view from the first tower (Nr. 10) of the Mutianyu segment of the Chinese Wall payed off for all our sufferings! In front of us was a net of narrow valleys underneath steep wood covered mountains stretching to the horizont, behind us the Mutianyu village leaning to the hillside underneath the Wall representing the entrance to the open range leading straight to Beijing. The village has grown a lot since I was here the last time in 2012 and the numbers of visitors too. At that time there was a small tourist center including a ticket office, a restaurant and one or two shops as well as only one cable car for the tourists who wanted to safe energy for the merely endless hike on the Wall itself. Now we passed a whole 1km long boulevard with one tourist trap after another until we reached a second ticket office for “ticket adjustments”, meaning that you were able to decide a second time whether you want to upgrade your entrance ticket with a ride on one of the two (!) cable cars, want to visit the China Stone Museum (wow – that sounds interesting) or even want to take the funny ride down on a summer toboggan run (WTF? Why doesn’t Innsbrucks Seegrube offer that too???).

Of course we did not adjust our tickets and just took the classic version of lurking around the huge stones, catching butterflies on our hands, taking tons of awesome selfies, groupies and viewies, chillin’ and snackin’ in the cooling shadows of the different towers along the Wall which meandered harmoniously along the rocks and mountains as far as your eyes could see, imagining how deterrent this bastion of defense might have looked like fully guarded (at least to some bandits – ironically it did not help anything against the mongolian hordes which took the wall easily by paying the right amount of money …). But one thing we did most of all: SWEATING! After an average water consumption of around 4 liters per person within 3 hours (thank you so much hydration pack!) you may can vaguely guess how fantastically the fresh beer was tasting afterwards in the village … Cheers Romar! You deserved it the most 😉

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On our way back we all were exhausted and slow and this time Iza and I also had to run to catch our bus back to Dong Zhi Men Station in the lastest of seconds right when it passed the barrier of the parking lot. This was the first night we nearly slept through since our arrival in China four days ago. The next morning we had to say goodbye to Beijing yet again since our next journey stop was already waiting: Xining, the capitol of the east tibetan region of Amdo (chin.: Quinghai) and with it the start of our Sorig Tibetan Medicine Tour …

To be continued!

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See also the related gallery for more pictures!