Once more a few days in Tunisia.
It started with a while in Hammamet:

Then a trip to the market in Ksar Hellal – well, i just wanted to go to the Fripe there 🙂

 But before that, a break in a café in order to practise taking photos. And finally, it did work: the chairs behind the straw are not recognizable anymore.

And then a short trip to the beach near Mahdia:

Wen es interessieren darf, der kennt die Geschichte ja schon 🙂

Deshalb hier: kein Kommentar 🙂

different taxi companies have different colors 🙂

 they all cost the same.. but it looks funny when there are so many in the same place!

from the monorail going across the jumeirah palm, you can see the burj al arab.. even better when the train is almost empty.

the final destination is the hotel atlantis which is obviously a photo stop on every dubai bus tour.. at least a lot of buses stopped there while i was looking at it. and inside they had some great ice cream 🙂

the palm monorail is not connected to the rest of dubai metro.. though they re planning to connect them.. maybe 2014 😉

 so now the only way to get from one to the other is by taxi… and on the dubai-end of that monorail, there is a taxi station. however, as the security guy inside said: “Private taxi” .. haha! 🙂

 so i started walking to get a REAL taxi. they at least seem to work…. they happily switch on the counter (inside every taxi theres a sign saying “if the counter isnt working, your taxi ride is for free”)

and after 35° outside i went inside to watch people skiing and playing in the snow!

even less text than usually… I’ll have to get up early tomorrow to be at the mosque on time at 10 am 😉

Yesterday I visited China..

and Tunisia 😛

and then finally got to Dubai 🙂

It’s around 30° – probably much more in the sun.. and still 27° at midnight 🙂

 ..and it was raining yesterday afternoon! just a few raindrops.. but still! 😉

Interesting: People dont speak arabic! Taxi drivers and waiters in a restaurant dont understand arabic, only english!

every 7 years in Munich:

so, ich bin lebendig wieder in München angekommen!

Frohes neues Jahr…. :))

Yea!! It’s summer! Finally! 🙂

The flight was only a bit over 1 hour late. And when I found no tourist information at the airport, I just talked to the first person there with a “bus to hongkong” sign. First thing, I got a funny pink sticker on my arm – obviously that they could find me again.
Leaving China and entering Hongkong worked without problems (once I found the other half of my “arrival card” that I got a long long time ago).

After some searching I even found the hostel. People here do speak English, but that doesnt help much if they dont know where I want to go..

It might be around 20° outside.. and everywhere they use airconditiong.. well.. 😉

The view of the port, from the ferry coming from Lantau island

Looking down from the 14th floor (where the hostel is)..

A street at night 🙂

Since Xi’an weather got a bit warmer.. and since Yichang people no more have heating in their apartments 😉

In Yichang I didn’t do much.. some shopping, and a trip to the 3 gorges dam. Together with a bus full of Chinese tourists and a Chinese guide. So at least they left me alone. On entering the dam, there was the obligatory security check and they obviously didnt like my pocket knife! I got a number – and was told to get it later. If I had known that, I would have put it into my pocket!

In the afternoon, my bus to Chongqing should have left at 3:30. But it didnt. I was told its one hour late. At 4:30 they still didnt let me get through. And at about 5:15 the bus was finally there. A funny bus with beds! Or something like beds… However, it didnt go very fast: it stopped on a shopping center parking and nothing happened for a while. All people were peacefully waiting. A bit before 7, everyone started getting off – and we changed the bus – and finally started towards Chongqing.
Instead of 1 am as we were told when buying the ticket, the bus arrived at about 5 am. After taking a taxi, my trip ended infront of the “Case Filing Hall” 🙂

 And instead of a couch I got a bed!

The metro there worked like everywhere else. With the little difference that there was more chinese and less english. The green metro line had only a chinese network plan + information inside. The other lines – at least inside the train – were usually in both languages.

It was again a bit warmer than in Yichang, and the city has mountains and a lot of stairs! I saw one more temple 😉

 – the first one i happened to find when getting off the metro in the center..

and the old town. After leaving the main street there, it got quite empty and we could see that people actually live there! 🙂

People are preparing for chinese new year – the cities are decorated with red lanterns.. and markets sell all that red stuff.

From Datong, I took the train again. This time hard sleeper, departure at about 4 pm, and arrival in Xi’an around 9 the next morning. This time there was a group of russian students (studying chinese here) on the train.
The first observation upon arrival: no sun! and I thought weather would get better on moving towards the south! Lunch was homemade and for dinner we got Paomo for which Xian is famous. The next day I took the bus to see the terracotta army. “Finally” the vendors were as annoying as I had expected it! People offering to be my tour guide even threatened “You wont find the entrance without me!” and that almost seemed correct – you had to walk past so many souvenir stalls before finally arriving at the entrance! But I DID find it alone 😉

Dinner was Korean hotpot.. with korean chopsticks! they re even harder to use than chinese ones! and after that we went shopping (shoes..) – but as shops were already closing, we had to continue the next day.

Shopping part II made my phone look like a blue bear – I think I still need some time to get used to that 😉

And then it was already time to pack again: tomorrow I will spend all day on the train. From 8:50 until 23:45, when the train should arrive in “YichangDong” (written on the train ticket) which is hopefully the same as “Yichang” (where I want to go…).

In the train from Haerbin back to Beijing I only had a soft seat – time to save some money 🙂

It was not terribly comfortable but I met a girl from HongKong on the train so it was quite funny. In the morning we went to a chinese fast-food place, just between McDonalds and KFC, and got dumplings and no idea what else for breakfast. Then I took the bus to Datong.
In Datong, it just stopped somewhere on the street and all people got off.. so I did the same.. and even found the bus terminal a few metres away. So there i stood, waiting for my next host, Dachuan, and trying to ignore the 3 people trying to take me somwhere by taxi or to sell me a tour.
After homemade dinner by his dad, we saw the rebuilt old town and today I went on a tour to the hanging temple and yungang grottoes.

funny: here people are actually excited to see a foreigner! but they wont talk. just look.. 😉

harbin was – and is – cold! 🙂

the overnight train was quite nice: the soft sleeper cabin has 4 beds. the pillow was strange, but at least it was warm! fascinating was the difference in temperature between the bottom and top bed! i will always want the top!
with me, there was a chinese woman with her little girl.. and an australian man together with his chinese girlfriend. so at least i had someone to show me where to get hot water.
yesterday morning, i arrived here at about 7, and didnt really do anything till the evening. lucy obviously didnt trust my second jacket and gave me her husbands coat to wear on top of it. i couldnt really move anymore.. but i didnt feel cold! i hadnt thought that would be possible! so i went into the city. i even found the right bus to take me to the ice&snow; festival, and instead of paying for the bus, i was sold an entrance ticket as soon as i got in. then i walked around all the ice sculptures for a while… with a little break in some inside fast food place. but even that couldnt help anymore, my feet stayed cold 🙂

we had checked the program before to see when there would be fireworks. internet said 7:30. when there was still nothing at 8, i decided to leave. the last bus should be at 8:30. while waiting for the bus, at about 8:10 the firework started. it wasnt so big. there was a funny loooong line at the bus stop – obviously everyone was waiting to enter the bus. i decided i’m a foreigner, i dont understand how that works.. and just walked to the front of the line. some chinese – even before me – did the same.. and nobody really cared. i will remember that!
today i walked around the city during the day. now we just had chinese dinner.. and soon i’ll leave to take the train back to beijing. this time “soft seat”. lets see what that will be like.

btw.. internet is terribly slow here, i havent been able to open bomfrit.com since yesterday! so it is impossible to upload photos. maybe datong will be better? at least it cannot be worse.

update:

Happy new year! 🙂

We had a little couchsurfing party.
On the first, after a chinese breakfast, I went to see the temple of heaven…

in the afternoon I met Romesh, we got lunch somewhere and then walked around in the hutongs.
wikipedia says: “Hutongs (simplified Chinese: 胡同; traditional Chinese: 衚衕; pinyin: hútòng) are a type of narrow streets or alleys, most commonly associated with Beijing, China. In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. The word hutong is also used to refer to such neighbourhoods.”

in the evening we looked for – and found – the night food market, selling all the strange food YOU think of when china is mentioned 😉

 but.. trying it alone is boring.. so i didnt..

on january 1st in the evening, my couch changed a bit 😉

it suddenly had 3 stars more…
but the plan stayed: going to see the great wall the next day. we finally decided to go to mutianyu 😉

or however it is written.. and we found out what bus to take. it didnt go right to the great wall but to some village 15km before. my book says at what station to get off – and already before that, car/taxi drivers were standing outside the bus doors trying to make us get off and go with them. sure 😉

at the “right” station it was the same and after ignoring two of them, we went with the 3rd one.
along the street, there were many closed restaurants and shops (obviously it IS winter and there are not enough tourists), but once we got to the parking, we had enough souvenir shops.

we went up and walked around a bit.. and when we decided to go back down, most people had already left and we had the wall almost to ourselves 🙂

My place on the plane was not reserved, seems something went wrong.. but I did get another one. and the plane was at least half empty! i had two chairs for myself! but of course there were some children… and sleeping at 3 in the afternoon wasnt sooo easy.

After arriving in Beijing, taking the bus from the airport to Zhongguancun worked.. only problem: that was not the subway station Zhongguancun.. I was told it is about 20 minutes walking.. but I was offered to share a taxi as the guy i asked was already going in that direction. perfect! so i made it and mark met me at the station like promised 🙂

I got a simcard: 13718814246. up to you to find out how to reach china.. i am not able to call anyone outside here for now. it would be necessary to unlock the card. but the people in the shop seemed not to know how to get it to work. they just said we would have to do that somewhere else.. by the way, the more often the “4” appears in the number, the more unlucky and thus cheaper it is.. while a lot of “8”s should make it more lucky/expensive 😉

but seems 4s are more powerful, it was the cheapest number they had!

then i had my first real chinese lunch.. with chopsticks but also a spoon for the soup.
interesting detail: people here drink hot water… not tea.. just water.. hot! 🙂

in the afternoon, we went to the city center and visited the forbidden city. we were a bit late, but thus most people left before us and we got to see the place almost empty.

Departure is coming closer :))

und wir waren natürlich auch bei den Pyramiden:

Zuerst ein Teil der kostenlosen München-Stadtführung …

Wir haben aber nicht bis zum Ende mitgemacht – wir wollten noch was Essen bevor es dann weiter ging.
Nachmittags waren wir in Dachau im Konzentrationslager: