Beijing (30/11 - 7/11)

Good evening everybody,

Just back from the big Chinese wall. Very nice, very smoggy, not a great view, but nevertheless worthwhile. Actually we would have gone yesterday but three couchsurfers let us down by not showing up at the meeting point. So we couldn't pay the driver. But yesterday evening I asked spontanious some Belgians in the street if the would like to join us for today and Hannes from Deinze has done so. Nice guy.... So we had a smooth ride in a small car to the wall where we did a walk for ten kilometers, after which the driver brought us back in the very smoggy Beijing center.

Suddenly I loose all my inspiration to write so I'll keep it short.

We were hosted by Rob, Dutch guy who lives here to study Chinese. We were lucky to sleep in his beautifull Hutong in a private room in a king size bed. We could use two of his bikes which made our Beijing experience much more nice. We felt free and home.

So the first thing we did was fix our camera which worked out very well. We payed 28 euro and got back a working camera!!!

On halloween I went to the big Yen halloween party in the art district. Very expensive, but very nice. I just wanted to dance so badly, so I left Saartje who was very tired at the hostel and took a taxi to the party. 80 percent of the people was dressed in the weirdest figures, which made the party very funny. I could experience some of the 'best' techno dj's of Beijing, who pleased me very much.
That night it started snowing for a full day. 16 million ton of snow covered Beijing and made it freezing cold.

This week we visited the park with the remains of the old Ming city wall, the temple of heaven, the Tian'anmen square, the forbidden city, the forest parc, the art district 798, the Jingshan park, the Olympic district and the museum of technology.

Many more to see....

Our impression of the Chinese people is that they are very disiplinated, often very kind and helpfull and less filthy as we expected. But still when they ruckle we can't get use to it.

Oke, we have to go catch our train to Datong.

cheers