Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Back in Northumberland
Well I am back here in Felton at my parents house. Arrived on time yesterday at North Shields Ferry Terminal and was metby my parents and Suzanne. Suzanne had bought a picnic for us to enjoy in the balmy British summer weather and so Sods law as soon as i arrived a huge thubnderstorm with torrential rain started! Instead we retreated to Coquet Vale and had an indoor picnic. Now we are about to set off on the final stage of the journey back up the A1 to Edinburgh. Nearly there now!
Well I am back here in Felton at my parents house. Arrived on time yesterday at North Shields Ferry Terminal and was metby my parents and Suzanne. Suzanne had bought a picnic for us to enjoy in the balmy British summer weather and so Sods law as soon as i arrived a huge thubnderstorm with torrential rain started! Instead we retreated to Coquet Vale and had an indoor picnic. Now we are about to set off on the final stage of the journey back up the A1 to Edinburgh. Nearly there now!
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Almost Home
Well I am in Gothenburg waiting for the ferry to leave this morning that will take me back to the UK. Yesterday the disaster that had been threatening all trip finally struck. Yes I left my hat behind in Stockholm at the interent cafe. I took it as a symbolic ending of the trip as I bought it the day before i left and wore it virtually every day, now its gone it seems a symbol of the trip ending (rather than just of me being an idiot) Of course the presence of a credit card in it created a slight panic but Suzanne sorted it all out for me by cancelling it. Hopefully no harm done. The X2000 train from Stockholm to Gothenburg was amazing, Extremely fast, tilting, Wirelass LAN, Enormous seats (2+1 like in UK First class but bigger) and all for £45 to travel across a whole country! Very enjoyable.
Just time for a quick update on what other people are up to. Pete and Betsy have made it back to the States and just emailed me to say they have taken another holiday! Obviously life at thome was too much like hard work. good news is the North Face jackets are genuine according to the boss himself. Also if you want to know how the boys are doing on their trip back... Charlie has already managed to hospitalise two of the passengers. Apparently they got severe dehydration on the Jinshanling - Simatai Great Wall walk! I think they recovered ok though and last I heard the boys were about to arrive in Xian and looking forward to their bacon sandwichs for breakfast. Also when i was in Beijing went out for a couple of meals with Claire and Barry, they seemed on good form and Barry is off back to Sydney while Claire enjoys herself in Japan.
If anyone else has any news email me and I will put it on the site!
Nearly home now!
Well I am in Gothenburg waiting for the ferry to leave this morning that will take me back to the UK. Yesterday the disaster that had been threatening all trip finally struck. Yes I left my hat behind in Stockholm at the interent cafe. I took it as a symbolic ending of the trip as I bought it the day before i left and wore it virtually every day, now its gone it seems a symbol of the trip ending (rather than just of me being an idiot) Of course the presence of a credit card in it created a slight panic but Suzanne sorted it all out for me by cancelling it. Hopefully no harm done. The X2000 train from Stockholm to Gothenburg was amazing, Extremely fast, tilting, Wirelass LAN, Enormous seats (2+1 like in UK First class but bigger) and all for £45 to travel across a whole country! Very enjoyable.
Just time for a quick update on what other people are up to. Pete and Betsy have made it back to the States and just emailed me to say they have taken another holiday! Obviously life at thome was too much like hard work. good news is the North Face jackets are genuine according to the boss himself. Also if you want to know how the boys are doing on their trip back... Charlie has already managed to hospitalise two of the passengers. Apparently they got severe dehydration on the Jinshanling - Simatai Great Wall walk! I think they recovered ok though and last I heard the boys were about to arrive in Xian and looking forward to their bacon sandwichs for breakfast. Also when i was in Beijing went out for a couple of meals with Claire and Barry, they seemed on good form and Barry is off back to Sydney while Claire enjoys herself in Japan.
If anyone else has any news email me and I will put it on the site!
Nearly home now!
Saturday, August 07, 2004
Swedish Meatballs
Well I have made it safely across the Baltic to the sunny city of Stockholm. I am just waiting for my train to Gothenburg now and taking advantage of an automatic staffless internet cafe in the railway station. Just buy a ticket from a machine and off you go! Perfect system. Spent yesterday visiting various museums including the naval museum, which had a big memorial to British Sailors who helped the Estonians in their war of independence in 1918-1920 and a memorial to the 1000 people who died when the Estonia ferry sank in 1993, the sister ship of the Regina Baltica that I was about to make the same crossing on. Hmm maybe not the best museum to visit before a ferry trip. Never mind I made it safely and am now only two days away from the UK.
Well I have made it safely across the Baltic to the sunny city of Stockholm. I am just waiting for my train to Gothenburg now and taking advantage of an automatic staffless internet cafe in the railway station. Just buy a ticket from a machine and off you go! Perfect system. Spent yesterday visiting various museums including the naval museum, which had a big memorial to British Sailors who helped the Estonians in their war of independence in 1918-1920 and a memorial to the 1000 people who died when the Estonia ferry sank in 1993, the sister ship of the Regina Baltica that I was about to make the same crossing on. Hmm maybe not the best museum to visit before a ferry trip. Never mind I made it safely and am now only two days away from the UK.
Friday, August 06, 2004
An impressive Organ and the biggest Horn I've ever seen.
But first things first. I had a great time in Moscow wandering round Red Square on Wednesday and have to say that in my opinion Lenin's Mausoleum is a lot nicer than Mao's one. Understated and elegant it is just the sort of place any communist despot would be glad to be buried in. So I was in a relaxed mood as an overpriced taxi ride in a souped up Lada dropped me at Leningradski station to await my train to Talinn. The first shock was the station bar which even by UK Ralway buffet prices seemed to be evercharging at $6(3pounds50) for a pint of beer! The night went a bit better then until reaching the Russian border at 3am, firstly the passport control people arrived, stamped my passport and left again, all was well, Then the customs man turned up. Employing the classic British holidaymaker tactic of thinking that if he shouted really loudly in Russian i would understand his instuctions he became increasingly frustrated by my lack of understanding him. I did all the right things smile politely open bags etc but he got more and more pissed off and culminated in him ripping my new (not a cheap rip off at all) North Face bag even more than it was already. As I went through my bag o Souvenirs showing him all the things I had bought in the ex soviet countries we had travelled through he appeared increasingly irate that i had bought nothing much in Russia, whether this was from nationalistic pride or the lack of opportunity to confiscate it I couldn't work out. Eventually he found a small wooden elephant that looks like its worth almost exactly what i paid for it $3, unfortunately the price tag on it said 80,000! This was seized on as being a rare and expensive piece of art that i should pay export duties on (this is all surmised from his facial expression) and my explanation that the price was in Turkmenistan Manat (rate 25,000 manat=$1) did not seem to make him any happier. Eventually he presented me with a customs form and asked me to fill in how much currency i had. When i put down 42 Estonian Kroon (about $3) and 10$ he became very angry indicating this was not enough money. At this point i realised where the discussion was going which was I pay or I stay. Unfortunately i was telling the truth on the form so did not have enough of the green passport vouchers to buy my way across the border. I apologised to the nice man and offered him my token $10 but he shouted some more Russian which the kindly estonian Babushka translated for me to "Nyet Eeski" or get off the train now. So i put on my boots and started packing up my bags (as i had not been allowed to repack after the earlier search) to get off the train. As i was packing though the train started to move and we were crossing the river bridge that led into Estonia! I realised of course that the instruction to get off the train had been his final bluff to get me to reveal my secret stash of dollars and it would probably have worked if I had had any on me, Never the less I had called his bluff and made it safely into Estonia none the poorer. As the Estonian border guard glanced at the Passport he smiled and said in English "Welcome to the European Union" never been a more relieving site. The Babushka then berated the Estonian customs man who wanted to check out my broken bag telling him in no uncertain terms it was the Russian customs who had caused the problem and he smiled apologetically and left my bags unsearched!
So as i arrived in Tallin with no map, no hotel booking and two very heavy bags, my feelings were a mixture of relief and exhaustion. 40 minutes wandering got me a hotel, another 30 minutes got me a ferry ticket on to Sweden and an hour on the internet confirmed my train ticket across Sweden and booked me a hotel for Saturday night in Gothenburg. Thus organised I wandered around the heart of old Talinn which is an exceptionally beautiful and well preserved medieval city. Then the highlight of the day (Finally returning to the subject of the title) which was discovering that I had arrived in town in the middle of the 18th Talinn Organ Festival! I snapped up a ticket for last nights performance of a number of works I had never heard of plus part of Dvorak's New World symphony which i had heard of. interestingly it promised accompanient by a horn solist. You can imagine my surprise on getting to the concert hall, a converted church, when it turned out the horn soloist was in fact a master of the Swiss Alpenhorn and it turned out to be a great concert partly because the Alphorn is one of only a few instruments that can really compete with a concert organ for depth and sheer volume of noise. You could at times feel the whole church vibrating.
Anyway I'm off for Lunch now and then its on the ferry tonight to cross the Baltic to Stockholm.
But first things first. I had a great time in Moscow wandering round Red Square on Wednesday and have to say that in my opinion Lenin's Mausoleum is a lot nicer than Mao's one. Understated and elegant it is just the sort of place any communist despot would be glad to be buried in. So I was in a relaxed mood as an overpriced taxi ride in a souped up Lada dropped me at Leningradski station to await my train to Talinn. The first shock was the station bar which even by UK Ralway buffet prices seemed to be evercharging at $6(3pounds50) for a pint of beer! The night went a bit better then until reaching the Russian border at 3am, firstly the passport control people arrived, stamped my passport and left again, all was well, Then the customs man turned up. Employing the classic British holidaymaker tactic of thinking that if he shouted really loudly in Russian i would understand his instuctions he became increasingly frustrated by my lack of understanding him. I did all the right things smile politely open bags etc but he got more and more pissed off and culminated in him ripping my new (not a cheap rip off at all) North Face bag even more than it was already. As I went through my bag o Souvenirs showing him all the things I had bought in the ex soviet countries we had travelled through he appeared increasingly irate that i had bought nothing much in Russia, whether this was from nationalistic pride or the lack of opportunity to confiscate it I couldn't work out. Eventually he found a small wooden elephant that looks like its worth almost exactly what i paid for it $3, unfortunately the price tag on it said 80,000! This was seized on as being a rare and expensive piece of art that i should pay export duties on (this is all surmised from his facial expression) and my explanation that the price was in Turkmenistan Manat (rate 25,000 manat=$1) did not seem to make him any happier. Eventually he presented me with a customs form and asked me to fill in how much currency i had. When i put down 42 Estonian Kroon (about $3) and 10$ he became very angry indicating this was not enough money. At this point i realised where the discussion was going which was I pay or I stay. Unfortunately i was telling the truth on the form so did not have enough of the green passport vouchers to buy my way across the border. I apologised to the nice man and offered him my token $10 but he shouted some more Russian which the kindly estonian Babushka translated for me to "Nyet Eeski" or get off the train now. So i put on my boots and started packing up my bags (as i had not been allowed to repack after the earlier search) to get off the train. As i was packing though the train started to move and we were crossing the river bridge that led into Estonia! I realised of course that the instruction to get off the train had been his final bluff to get me to reveal my secret stash of dollars and it would probably have worked if I had had any on me, Never the less I had called his bluff and made it safely into Estonia none the poorer. As the Estonian border guard glanced at the Passport he smiled and said in English "Welcome to the European Union" never been a more relieving site. The Babushka then berated the Estonian customs man who wanted to check out my broken bag telling him in no uncertain terms it was the Russian customs who had caused the problem and he smiled apologetically and left my bags unsearched!
So as i arrived in Tallin with no map, no hotel booking and two very heavy bags, my feelings were a mixture of relief and exhaustion. 40 minutes wandering got me a hotel, another 30 minutes got me a ferry ticket on to Sweden and an hour on the internet confirmed my train ticket across Sweden and booked me a hotel for Saturday night in Gothenburg. Thus organised I wandered around the heart of old Talinn which is an exceptionally beautiful and well preserved medieval city. Then the highlight of the day (Finally returning to the subject of the title) which was discovering that I had arrived in town in the middle of the 18th Talinn Organ Festival! I snapped up a ticket for last nights performance of a number of works I had never heard of plus part of Dvorak's New World symphony which i had heard of. interestingly it promised accompanient by a horn solist. You can imagine my surprise on getting to the concert hall, a converted church, when it turned out the horn soloist was in fact a master of the Swiss Alpenhorn and it turned out to be a great concert partly because the Alphorn is one of only a few instruments that can really compete with a concert organ for depth and sheer volume of noise. You could at times feel the whole church vibrating.
Anyway I'm off for Lunch now and then its on the ferry tonight to cross the Baltic to Stockholm.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Omsk Tomsk and Tobermory
Well 7680km later and here I am in Moscow. The Post title is only slightly misleading as the railway bypasses Tomsk by about 70km, We went through Omsk at about 2am so i was asleep and i don't plan on going straight to Tobermory when i get home but it was still exciting to pass the sort of places that would normally remain in the realm of an old copy of the Times Atlas of the World. (PS do Americans have the Wombles? If not they may be confused at this point). The Trans Siberian railway was great fun and an entertaining way to pass a week if you are bored but the thing you notice is the way small events become important. The twice daily (for me at least some people just ate pot noodle) trip to the dining car became a highlight and when halfway through the trip it was moved from 4 to 8 carriages walk away it actually increased the amount of entertainment a trip there could provide. In each country there was a different dining car. In China the food was free! but terrible. In Mongolia the dining car was exquisitely furnished and had a wide menu but the only food actually available was Beef Stroganof. In Russia the staff were surly the exchange rate terrible and the food repetitive (Choice of Stroganov, Escalope, Beef Steak, Soup for 4 days) but the Vodka and Russian Champagne added immensely to the experience.
Trip Highlights were definitely Lake Baikal which is beautiful and Novisibirsk, the only city in Siberia where you can buy Irn Bru!
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Tuesday, July 27, 2004
And Back
Well the journey home starts in 7 hours time. At 6am tomorrow morning it is off to the station to catch the trans mongolian home. I have been enjoying Beijings expat bars to the full watching NZ beat SA in the rugby and England beat WI in the cricket as well as consuming lots of overpriced Lager. The nice people at Monkeybusiness who arranged the Train section of the trip for me supply you with details of all the best bars as well as some drinking vouchers to get you started. Heres to sixdays and five nights on the train
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Sunday, July 25, 2004
It sure is a Great Wall
As Richard Nixon once said and you have to agree with him. I am now back in Beijing after my jaunt to North Korea but on the way back I stopped to look at Shanhaiguan where the great wall reaches its Eastern end in the sea. It is also several thousand (exact answers on a postcard) from Jiayoguan the western end we passed through several weeks ago so it provided a nice sense of completion. Despite it being foggy and 6.30 in the evening i went for my first dip in the Pacific Ocean and greatly amused the locals. The wall itself is very atmospheric although largely reconstructed and the point it enters the sea dramatic with big breakers crashing onto it.
It was not my first experience with the great wall in the last few days. We also visited it at a palce called Mutianyu where the wall itself is in classic wooded hills and looks just as you would imagine it although it is overshadowed by the extreme excitement of the 1500m long toboggan run featuring a 100 foot high bridge amongst other delights, It was so good we went straight up the chairlift to do it again and forgot all about the wall. Perhaps this was because we had already walked an extremely hilly 10km section of the wall from Jinshanling to Simatai that morning which had excellent scenery and featured some more genuine unrestored sections. However when you reach the dodgy looking ticket salesmen half way along who demand money for out of date tickets and boast 1 uniform and 2 name badges between three of them my advice is... JUST PAY THEM. I have the bruises on my arm from being nipped and punched by the "Official ticket collectors" Who tell you to F off and then offer to sell you the tickets on "3 for 2" We checked the veracity of their credentials when we got down the bottom and were assured they were genuine and there is no choice but to pay. However it has to be said the whole episode left a nasty taste in the mouth even by the usual Chinese "screw foreigners for every penny you can" attitude.
And Finally it is one year today to the date i get married (25 July 2005 put it in your diaries now). I have really enjoyed blogging to you all from across the world and it has become quite a habit, my plan however was always to "retire" the site to be kind of a record of what happened on the trip, although i may put occasional updates on of what the ex passengers are up to (so you all need to email me things i can post)
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Greetings From North Korea!
Well not quite but I amin Dandong on the North Korean border and have just been on a boat trip in North Korean territorial waters to within 5m of the shore. Also visited the Museum to commemorate aiding Korea against US Aggression. It is a fantastic museum with lots of detail and relics of the war although as may be expected from the name it is somewhat one sided! The UK involvement is only alluded to as "Running dogs of the corrupt US Administration" So very little changes there then! All in all it was worth the 14 hour overnight train trip to get here. Tonight we are heading back to the provincial capital Shenyang.
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Tuesday, July 20, 2004
20790km and back.
Well we have arrived in Beijing after three and a half months and 20790km of Driving. Five of us Claire, Allan myself and the drivers Ben and Charlie have made the whole trip. it has been quite a journey and we have seen a hell of a lot. Yesterday as we arrived in Beijing we drove the truck through Tian'anmen Square and it really sunk in just what it was we had achieved. We were the first foreign vehicle to cross the Torugart Pass into China, The first trip Dragoman has run in China and the first ever group to arrive in Beijing in their own transport. Today we visited the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City with our new local guide Michael, he couldn't quite believe how long we had travelled for or how far we had come! Tonight we are off for a group meal to celebrate the achievement before we gear up for the next leg of the journey. Danielle and I have booked train tickets to Dandong and we leave tomorrow afternoon. Will update you on where it is and why we are there when we get there.
Now I'm off to get extremely drunk!
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Saturday, July 17, 2004
Semi Naked men with Iron Bars
Well I always thought the only place I would see men stripped to their waists hitting each other with Iron Bars was at a professional wrestling event but yesterday we got the live show. We could of done without it however as we had 563km of driving to do which in the end took us 14 hours! The bars were being wielded by some angry truckers who chased another trucker and threw rocks at him before setting about him with the bars. We never really worked out what caused the fight but the lorries of the fighting truckers blocked the road for around an hour until the police turned up and arrested them all. The victim seemed to escape with just bruising but it was all fairly scary.
Today we have been in Chengde visiting the palaces of the Manchu emperors and a variety of bizarre temples built to mimic Tibetan monasteries to make visiting dignitaries like the 6th Panchen Lama feel at home. Sadly for him after his visit he died of Smallpox (or poison) before making it back to Tibet. Tomorrow we head off for the great wall for a 10km walk before heading into Beijing! on Monday. Starting to feel like we are nearly there.
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