im hungary, i need some turkey

last i left you we had stepped off the trans-siberian in to moscow. that whole "right of passage" as we walked away from the train platform was pretty powerful. 10 days and we had managed to cross some 6 time zones. we had crossed the whole of siberia-- pretty neat. in the end, we would have travelled overland from hong kong in china all the way to tallin in estonia by train or bus. now THAT sounds pretty cool. just a tiny bit of ground covered.

i am going to work backwards now from where i am in budapest, hungary to where i last left you in moscow.

so i had to get down to budapest by today-- 28 april-- to meet up with my sister who arrives today from the US of A. i am real excited for her to be here.. mostly because she is bringing me a stick of american deodorant-- good old speed stick man. hopefully my parents sent some green backs with her to keep me from living off of water and oats these next couple months.

the past couple weeks have been a big giant game of connect the dots. from moscow to where i am now in budapest i have stopped in the following cities (in order from most recent): budapest, stockholm (sweden), tallin (estonia), helsinki (finland), st petersburg (russia), moscow (russia). i will just give the highlights from each.

budapest.

i havent been here for very long so i will save my musings for later. initial sense is good: the flood plains have cleared (massive floods-- the largest in 150 years-- swept through a few weeks ago) and guns 'n roses just played a concert here not too long ago.

stochkolm.

fashion-- its a tough line to walk. having been travelling around for a bit now, i can guarantee you i have walked nowhere near, on or around that line. dirty trousers with shirts that are nearly worn through and have some pretty knarley pit stains are the norm at this point.

the urban hipsters of stockholm, however, certainly have a style all their own. 1983 reebok aerobic trainers, nylon jackets that you wore for your favorite sports team in '89, tapered jeans, chuck taylor sneakers galore-- this is no joke. the retro style is in dudes. im not done. stylish mullets were commonplace, many of the guys had facial hair sculptures and carvings that would make even prince (or the artist formerly known as) proud. i mean, from the DJ booth, christopher cross was playing in the bar for crying out loud! the hipsters were singing along! i couldnt believe it. i was trapped in retro heaven.

...and i loved it.

but that wasnt all the glam that stockholm had to offer. my stay was short, but from what my vantage point, sweden has a lot of character. as you look up, steeples litter the skyline, buildings are old but nicely kept. people are extremely friendly and speak english better than i do. islands are scattered all over throughout surrounding water. waxholm, a popular summertime spot, was nicely situated at the foot of the harbor. walking around the place was great, and i even got to try some swedish meatballs for lunch. to top it off, i was fortunate enough to crash with a friend at his place so i even managed to save a bit of money and see an old pal.

tallin.

i will forever have a soft spot in my heart for tallinn. its like the little up and coming medeival european city-- joining the ranks of the now overpopulated prague. when we rolled in, i was dead tired and quite ready to just sit and relax. russia had gotten the best of me and i needed some time to re-coop. bring it on!

cafes galore-- hell, even a mcdonalds-- a fine assortment of large parks and blue skies to boot, this place was getting an A+ in my book. my frustrations with prior stops were slowly fading from my memory. this was a place i could get used to.

the city itself is small with an old and new town. the old town is the medeival portion i suppose-- cobble-stone streets, a giant old square and traditional achitecture. the new town is a site for one of the biggest investment booms in eastern europe-- technology based for the most part. skyscrapers are being put up as we speak. the place is ready to take off.

helsinki.

what a sleeper of a city. i mean, come on! please erase this place from future plans and spend your time in stockholm instead. i could barely see straight as i walked off the overnight bus but that was ok because there really isnt much to look at.

clearly the prior night had been a big one (it was saturday morning, so we were seeing the last remnants of friday nights bar scene). as we walked walked to find a hostel there was a guy laying on the corner of an intersection passed out. he was a young kid, clearly had a bit too much to drink, and was just having a little snooze. truthfully, he looked dead. i dove right in to getting out my emergency paramedic kit-- time was wasting away. i got right to checking his vitals, hooked him up to an IV and got him back up in no time.

nope, i just checked to see if he was breathing and let him sleep away.

given it was now about 6 am, a cup of coffee was in order. roberts coffee was where we stopped. i would say i was one of seven people in the cafe at the time and a good solid 4 of the others in there were visibly drunk-- im talking one drooling while reading the newspaper, one face down in his pastry and another just shouting obscenities. i drank my coffee quickly. i still had the russian mentality in me that with this kind of drunken behavior, someone was going to get their ass kicked. that was enough for me to hop on the a-train out of there.

wandering the city povided really no satisfaction other than the "reindeer sandwich" i happened across. i just thought it was funny. in another food moment, i would say the highlight of the day was stumbling on an all-you-can-eat salad and pizza buffett. ohh dear. i knew as i walked through the double doors to this pizza metropolis that this would be a painful experience.

i ate there for a good 2 hours. i had pizza all over my shirt, remnants of my 10 salads all over my face and in my lap. i probably even had food in my hair. the fountain coke machine failed during the middle of my meal and i had to get that puppy back in order. i complained. they hated me. i continued to eat even though i wasnt even hungry. at a certain point, i was eating for the sport of it. a finnish couple chuckled as i continued-- "stupid american" must have come up at some point in their conversation. i walked out of there feeling sick, no doubt about it. my stomach hadnt seen this kind of over-satisfaction in weeks.

and that my friends was helsinki. big deal right?

saint petersburg.

everyone calls it the european city of russia. and sure, call it that if you will-- but there is no getting around its russian tendancies. cold looks and general introverted behavior were the norm in russia and i grew to expect that. st pete, in contrast to moscow, was just a tiny bit more welcoming despite the sot of 'russianisms' it still possessed.

the hermitage was something else-- a fine collection (MASSIVE really) of art, world renowned really. i enjoyed the 19th and 20th century european collections (mattisse, picasso, etc) and the early 14th and 15th century italian stuff (da vinci, raphael, etc).

the markets were kind of funny. everyone wanted to sell you those traditional russian dolls-- the wooden variety where you open the first doll and it contains another inside, and when you open that and it contains another one, etc. well, they had, of all things, a michigan state themed russian doll. that blew me away. gave me a good chuckle.

now for a little russell crowe violence-ridden story! we were walking home one night after having wandered around the city, and were making some noise as we crossed through the alley to get to our hostel-- a little too much noise to nobody but the federales.

the russian poooooooolice! ohh boy, things got interesting.

it took us a little too long to realize that it was the police that were telling us to stop dead in our tracks as we were walking down the alley. whistling away and shouting at one another, we kept walking. we stopped immediately right around the time igor raced up from behind bryan and sort of wussy-tackled him. omri was next, pinned up against the wall. i stood there wondering when the hell i was going to get attacked-- after all, history has usually handed me the ass-kicking card. i held out my beer for the cop to take but simply taking it was not enough. the overweight, bustling old guy decided to do a running drop kick to remove the beer from my possession. things went a bit sour when he missed the beer. i just dropped it instead to make him think he hit it. it was my turn to get slammed in to the wall. a few headshots later and a headache and we were off. apparently the american passports had scared them off-- or, it very well could have been my russell crowe-like badass moves. haha not really. who knows what they were after with us, but they got the best of us. we walked away frustrated and a bit sore from the mild beatings, but i think it took about 1.876 minutes before we were laughing at the oddball situations we managed to get in to.

moscow.

we wandered the red sqaure that first night in moscow with our mouths pretty wide open. standing before us was a pretty prominent spectacle historically. lenin's grave and mausoleum was to our right, st. basil's cathedral straight ahead. the night air was crisp and cool. i took pictures that will surely not give justice to the sort of "rush" that you get when you stand in front of such a scene.

you could feel the power of the red square grab a hold of you.

there is kind of an interesting little story about st basils cathedral (which sits at the foot of red square) and the architect who designed it way back in the 1500's. to begin, ivan the terrible decided to have the cathedral built to commemmorate the annexation to russia of the mongol states of kazan and astrakhan. upon completion, ivan was so impressed with the construction of it that he ordered that the architect's eyes be gouged out immediately. the reason, of course, so that only this sort of talent and style in architecture would stay in russia.

yeah, pretty crazy eh?

the kremlin, in moscow as well, should be noted as being equally as impressive. the collection of cathedrals within the enclosed walls are truly breathtaking. i mean, i use that term very sparingly as i travel along. and truly, looking up at the intricate painting and deisgns from top to bottom on the inside walls of these churches was amazing.

those were the "touristy" moments. there were other adventures to be had but im afraid i am running out of time... and i am going to be late to pick up emily at the airport-- not good. more to come soon on the adventures with her from hungay to turkey-- haha when i say it like that it has a funny sound.

"im hungary, i need some turkey."

ohh cheeseball.

trans sibby part dos

so we crawled in to irkutsk thankfully.

our first night out for dinner in the place we managed to get ourselves in a pickle with not having a single idea what was listed on the menu. we blindly chose a few dishes and crossed our fingers. i got some sort of creamy crab salad that tasted like bad cole slaw. not even sure what bryan had. we washed it down with a little beer and were joined by a random russian guy that spoke a little english.

three takeaways from that conversation:

1) it was nice to see americans in his town as he did not meet many.

2) america is a good country.

3) irkutsk is a "city of descendant criminals" he said. everyone has a family tree littered with crime. he mentioned we should be "very careful" in certain areas and not stay at that particular cafe too late. wonderful.

and about 30 seconds after him finishing the sentence regarding item number 3 above, a fight broke out in the cafe. the one guy got pretty lit up and we ran out of there like dogs with our tails between our legs.

we bought our train ticket that day for the remaining leg of the trans-siberian rail-- the 80 hour mother journey from irkutsk to moscow. 2300 russian roubles later (about 80 USD) and we were booked for train N9 and on our way.

about 6.4 minutes in to sitting on the train i noticed a guy walking by with just an absolutely absurd amount of instant noodles overflowing out of his bag. honestly though, the guy could survive in a bunker for 50 straight days with the amount he was carrying. i naturally gave a chuckle and kind of pointed at the bag. i must have made my snicker a little too obvious (surprise) because old sergei wanted to box me out with his cunning rambo-like expressions of stone cold stare-down.

i just sort of nervously laughed that one out.. i felt about the same as when you make a joke that has obviously really offended someone. you kind of get red and hot in the face and feel just a tiny bit out of place. well, after that the next 80 hours looked peachy keen. i had already made a fantastic friend only a handful of minutes in!

day 1 and i just had no idea how to kill time on the train. i was drinking coffee like a goddamn mad man. im talking about the sort of fervor towards coffee drinking you have when you are trying to pull off an all nighter or kill a nasty hangover.

i finally stopped drinking the stuff when my piss resembled the color of tree bark. it was right around then that i picked up some water and took care of that little issue.

as a side note, its amazing-- on the road you pick up some excellent standards of living. life can get really simple: you need 3 kebabs-- 1 for breakfast, lunch and dinner. add about 2 liters of water and you are living the high life.

ok, ok.. you say that sounds absurd when you get to a city with no kebab stand. no problems. hit the supermarket up for: 1 loaf of bread, 1 block of cheese (likely cheddar or brie) and one cucumber. make a sandwich for all three meals. done deal.

i bring my current habits of eating up, but sadly enough, i didnt follow those "simple" sort of standards on the train. in fact, i decided to simplify it even more. i chose-- god help me-- one box of instant oats and an assortment of shitty fruit.

you know, its no surprise though that i seriously botched up the whole grocery list for the train. see, i go grocery shopping and gets tons of really cool things that taste good, but never manage to construct one nice meal, but rather just a bunch of random pieces that dont fit together. super.

for the next two days i felt like mr. ed eating his horse feed. it tasted like wallpaper paste. water, oats, water, oats. maybe coffee?

ugggh, just awful.

by day two on the train i felt like i was really in the groove of things. no more evil glares from rambo down the way, i stopped drinking as much coffee and i even managed to grab a roll of salami and some fresh bread to alleviate my dietary issues. life was good.

i started a really excellent book called "red dirt-- a path through china." based on the true story of the author's (ma jian) 3 year trek through china in post cultural revolution china (early 80's). being a particularly interesting historical time for the country, it is filled with incredible stories about life on the road and the sleu of political issues that littered the country at the time.

i occupied other spare moments by what seemed like endless amounts of gin rummy with bryan. that little bastard can play the game, let me tell you. i won the first three games and got all high and mighty on myself, only to be repeatedly smacked by his carnivorous style of game play. he is just an animal with that card game.

we drank that evening with a new found amigo. he was a russian federation boxer named alexi. it was a really nice "pickup" honestly. we were riding pretty deep on the train now. any shots rambo wanted to make at me were now well accounted for now that i had alexi the boxing monster in my corner.

we exchanged "gifts" with alexi. it was kind of sad-- we had pennies to share, but he still loved them and thought it was cool to hold a small piece of america in the palm of his hand. he wrote us a note in my journal that i will need about 10 years of russian language classes to understand. the thing is not only in cyrillic, but the old style scripted version. ill see what i can do.

by day 3 on the train i was getting itchy to pull in to moscow. i awoke that morning with a hellish sort of aching in my head. great.

omri and i-- in a pure state of desperation and boredom-- decided to begin playing hangman. now come on, thats pretty bad. the words that we made each other guess slowly got more and more grotesque and perverted to try and pick up the general spirit and morale. i guess it worked.

i tried to take photos from the train window. every time i saw something cool a huge bunch of pine trees would sprout up and cover up the scenery i wanted to shoot. now let me tell you, that just got unneccessarily frustrating. when it happened about 5 times in a row, a threw a childish frustration tantrum and damn near knocked a full cup of hot coffee in my lap.

...but then we pulled in to moscow. it was quite chilly, but that was to be expected.

i hadnt really heard anything positive about moscow. a work friend from a prior summer who was bord and raised in russia told me this:

"moscow is cold. russians are cold. if you dont speak the language, just stay inside so you dont get frustrated.. or cold."

i didnt have high expectations-- little did i know the nice little surprise that was on its way.

ruski's at last!

ok, here i sit in moscow. i will recount the events of the 10 day journey on the trans-siberian rail through a series of entries. im thinking it will take 2 or 3. i will begin with the ulan bator to irkutsk (russia) portion:

so we had become members of mongolia's elite trading association. association is surely an exaggeration of the "official" nature of our membership-- in fact, complete shit. however, the woman sitting with us in our train car from mongolia in to russia was in the ranks of "traders" (an underground name for goods smuggler within mongolia's black market) and mysteriously, and certainly not by choice-- we were a part of it as we tucked some of HER goods in to our bags to aid in her border crossing.

as the train began to slow down as we approached the border in to russia, the mongo trader jumped to her feet and began to fix her hair and makeup. this was no joke. the train came to a screeching halt. i looked at omri and bryan.

i imagine my face closely resembled that look when i would come home from elementary school having to tell my mom of my visit to the principles office earlier that day. not good.

"the russians are here" comments bryan. they had stepped on to the train car.

all the horror stories i had read about russian federales that demand money for a border crossing were racing through my head. corruption. ruski stone faced criminals. ohh dear.

"how do you do?" said the ruski guard. he looked like jean claude van damme at his scariest. seriously though, this guy looked like he could kill with his stone face stare. i sat there thinking of winnie the pooh to try and give me some rosy thoughts. yeah... i know.

none of us really replied or showed any sort of emotion-- hell, i dont think any of us had even took a breath since we saw this scary man. we took the forms that he handed us and dumfoundedly looked at each other wondering how in the hell we were going to fill them out (they were in cyrillic). our translator-- haphazard at that-- was the mongo trader. jesus, just the thought of all the crap she had stuffed in every nook and cranny of our cabin made me want to puke. i was sure she was going to get caught (and then i would incidentally get to keep the leather jacket that she had asked me to stuff in my bag to get it over the border.. haha).

...about 29 minutes later, the damn form was filled out.

(pointing at me) "out of the cabin" said jean claude. i think i poo'ed a little bit in my pants at that point. just a little though. i was at a loss of what to say to the guy. "yes sir"-- hell no. salute him? absolutely not.

all i wanted to do was the play the "lets see who can smile first" game. you know the one where you make funny faces at each other to see who will burst out in laughter first. i mean i was damn sure the guy didnt have the capacity to smile, but i wanted to give it a shot.

the mongo trader was clearly nerveous. the guards were moving throughout our cabin with the sort of fervor and persistence of the NYPD's K9 unit on a drug bust. seriously though, it was hilarious to see the way these ruskis searched our cabin. they were scaling the damn walls of our 12' x 7' room. i didnt even think that was possible. i could barely stand up in the thing but boris the climber was hovering around like spiderman.

i almost laughed out loud when, after that whole overly "official" acrobatic act search of the cabin, it appeared as though they came up with NOTHING.

or did they?

as we stood out in the hallway trying to see if the ruskis had come up with anything, the whole "hallway" scene was getting rather rambunctious. it was getting real hot in the train. the collective nerveousness of about 20 sweating mongo traders was really producing an oh-so familiar train stench that produced a blanket of smell and heat that you practically wear. hell, i thought the discomfort of our dear friends the russian guards was goddamn plenty.. but no. bring on the body odor!

(glaring at us) "back in the cabin" whispered the guard.

we sprinted back in to our little home. omri pulled some carl lewis shit as he lept up to his top bunk spot. bryan echoed his moves with a spinning finish like those russian figure skaters. the mongo trader plopped her ass on the lower bunk spot across from me. she gave me a wink and a smile..

EWWWW! haha. she was just trying to convey that we were ok.

and just then, the train moved. off we were! ruski's at last! high fives and a hand pound for the mongo trader. bring on the vodka.

not so fast. the train stopped. we had moved about 20 feet. the guards were back. dear god, not another encounter with jean claude. a much more pleasant female guard approached our cabin.

"step out of cabin" (and a whole myriad of bantering in russian took place between the female guard and the mongo trader. no berlitz audio crash course in russian could prepare me for this fiery encounter. i tried not to smile at the funny faces the two of them were making).

we were now back in the hallway. thoughts of russian prisons eclipsed my mind as they pulled ouf a few of the mongo trader's goods. they searched more. they found more. it was like all of the sudden the mongo trader had given up and told them all her secrets. what the hell was going on? the ruski guard was hitting home runs with her finds. surely she was going for 'border employee of the month' with this sort of magnum PI work.

i was a mix between shitting bricks and laughing at this point.

they found a few of her leather jackets and some other odds and ends. the mongo trader gave me a look of disgust as she put up a fist towards the ruski guard. i smiled back as if to say "you're screwed" in a pleasant way-- haha just kidding. more of a comforting smile. but i did indeed think she was done.

au contraire amigo. how in the hell she worked her way out of that little situation is beyond me. they ended up taking some of her stuff but she managed to conceal a lot more. the fact that she did surrender some of her contraband is probably part of the game. who knows?

jean claude returned our passports shortly after and that made me happier than a 5 year old on christmas morning.

the ruskis got off and the train chugged on through past the border. a big smile erupted from our mongo trading compadre and things were looking pretty good.

welp, we were now in russia! on to irkutsk.

horses in the land of genghis khan

so we finally managed to get our constipated bums in and out of mongolia despite 1 missed train (in to the country) and a few brushes with some thievery (prior to leaving). oh yes, now we're talking.

strangely enough, the land of genghis khan felt incredibly welcoming as we tiredly walked off of the train platform. the 30+ hours had taken its toll but we were all anxious to see a country other than china. it was snowing which immediately made me wince. how the hell was this happening?

three strange things greeted as we walked down the streets of ulan bator: 1) a spray painted graffiti creation that read DETROIT. HAH! lovely. 2) a drinking hole that was aptly named "DETROIT AMERICAN BAR." 3) a goddamn mongolian barbeque. what was the world coming to? i found this quite ironic after my tongue in cheek comment about finding one when we arrived. it was the same "BD's" sign that we are all accustomed to in the US of A but the cuisine was ACTUALLY mongolian. funny how that works.

wonderful! home we were.

mongolia is an interesting place. historically, these pups were hard as rocks when old ghengis was in power. they had the strongest empire around, but sadly enough you see no traces of that robust image today.

the capital city, ulan bator, has a population of about 1 million. half of which live in fun little "tents" called gers (rhymes with bears). another large portion of which drink yaks milk for breakfast. sadly enough, we never got to have a try.

they love their mutton, which i still dont really know what the hell that stuff is. from what i gathered, basically it is a shitty portion of the lamb that they pawn off as a national meat. go figure. but after chewing through lots of fat and a few tendons and such, the meat is quite tasty. and trust me when i say that they LOVE it-- it is the basis of every meal. mutton soup, noodles with mutton, mutton balls, mutton salad. you get the point.

having enough of the city, we decided to kick it in the rural parts. oh yes. three americans in rural mongolia. this has got to be good, right?

about 2 hours in a mini-bus and we pulled in to terelj national park. after getting outside the city it was like barren, cold desert.

nothingness is probably a better word.

there were rolling hills, some "mini-mountains" and lots and lots of animals running about (horses, camels, sheep, dogs).

bryan, omri and i settled in with a family below a couple mini-mountains. there was a nice little ger with our name on it. it was nicely outfitted with a wood stove and three beds. the thing looked strikingly similar to an igloo.

we got by with a little broken english-- apparently there were horses to ride and some views to take in.

horses? jesus, i hate horses. but the views sounded nice. looks like the indiana jones shoes were coming out again.

turns out henry and i got along real well. henry was in fact my horse for the afternoon, thank you. the wind was blowing particularly harder than normal, i had about 18 layers of clothing on, but still managed to enjoy the hell out of trotting around the countyrside.

it was scary. historically i am not an animal person. i hate cats. not a huge dog fan. guinea pigs and the like i find to be useless. i never enjoyed pet goldfish-- they always died after about day 3 and i never got my money back. the petting zoo was never a fun place for me as a young boy, it always smelled like ass from my point of view.

see, i am the person that enters someones home who has a dog and just cringes when old "scruffy" jumps in my lap for a little play time. its always an awkward situation, and for those that pay attention to my body language, it appears as though i am deathly ill as i sit trying to "appear" as though i am playing with my new furry friend. what's really happening couldnt be any further from the truth. in fact, i usually end up inflicting pain on the critter to get it away from me and then things usually end up in the gutter from there.

anyway, so the real irony of the situation is that this horse and i were getting along quite well. i felt like i was straight out of a john wayne film as i rounded up stray cattle and trotted bare back through the great terrain of mongolia.

ok, so i didnt get much past a slow trot on the thing, but how about a little exaggeration?

the landscape was stunning really (i would share photos, but i think thats illegal in russia. haha only kidding, the ruskis are nice people but lord knows how i would even manage to get them on the computer with this setup). well at least i thought it was at the time. as i sit here now, part of me thinks i was enjoying it only because old henry the horse was doing all the work.

the following day we rode horses again. this time i managed to take some risks with a full-on gallop. good fun.

late the second evening after a few cocktails, i woke up in the middle of the night having to take a leak. i stumbled out of our ger in to the extreme cold and i damn near pissed on myself. i stood without shoes in the middle of the frozen desert and was staring dumbfounded out around me. it had snowed during the night-- and holy shit, there was a decent amount of it. i was not expecting such an event to occur. i ran ferociously back to my bed.

needless to say it made for some nice mongo landscape views the next day. snow capped mini-mountains and trees covered with a light dusting of snow. kind of cool, i guess.

we were off that day on the train to russia (that will be the next blog post after i get off in moscow. right now we are in irkutsk-- the eastern capital of siberia. look it up on the map. tomorrow we leave to take the 80 hour train to moscow. if you connect the dots from irkutsk to moscow, you can see we will be cruising along the railtracks in the absolute middle of nowhere.. somehow that is kind of cool to me).

more on that! promise. there are good stories already.

in other news, my sister emily is coming out for a visit in europe! she will be meeting up with me in budapest and we will trek on through to istanbul. i have been quite lucky with the visits from my pals back home! two of my favorite girls in the whole world will have joined me on this little adventure when it is all said and done.

pictures will come from the mongolian excursions when the time is right. they will surely paint a better picture than my words i imagine.

chillout sessions and beijing follies

hidy ho, neighbor.

back in action here. so we have been in beijing the past 6 days or so, but let me back up to our time in shnghai-- continuing from the last post.

shanghai is known for its thunderous nighttime activity on a little old street called mao ming loo. naturally, it was necessary that we sample the evening activities and really see what china's favorite up and growing child had to offer.

we did ok, in fact we had a great time (cue the pointless picture of omri and i). hearing western rap favorites-- nelly, 50 cent and eminem-- never felt so good. it had been a while since we had all heard a little "up in the club" shit. everybody has to know what i am talking about here. its like those days when you are driving in your car and one of those god awful rap songs comes on. you pause, look around to see who is watching and then somehow, some way really get in to the song and sing your heart out-- a guilty pleasure if you will.

well, ill tell you what-- that was our night in shanghai: a guilty western hip hop pleasure.

welp, thats about all it took to really bring me to my knees the next day. i was about done for. it was the cumulative effect of a hangover, 3 weeks of constant movement and just being plain tired. i just had to take a break. there was no way i was going to be able to leave shanghai the next day as we had planned.

the following events just beautifully fell in to place. a while back, a friend from MSU gave me the name of his buddy just outside shanghai. it sounded perfect! my train of thought: "my buddy chris has a buddy in shanghai-- he lives there-- so he probably has a couch-- a couch that i could easily sit on-- maybe for about 4 days straight-- and just not move"

and amazingly enough, i got just that. so i crashed in kunshan without the other 2 muskateers for a day and then we met up later. but holy crap. those days on the couch were much needed and excellent. i even managed to watch 5 movies in one day-- for those are in the loop, thats just goddamn unheard of for me.

so staying at eddie's place was cool-- no doubt. but it got slightly cooler when we managed to finagle (sp?) our way in to a nice little chinese wedding. ohhh dear. we were thinking open bar, food, dancing, the whole nine yards, right?

...haha, and we got just that.

its unfortunate that i didnt bring my camera that evening, but i am pretty sure omri has some snaps from the events of that evening on his blog (omribloch.blogspot.com).

the whole typical chinese wedding experience is pretty cool-- they skip the whole ceremonial bologna and cheese and just get right to the booze and food. by booze, im talking one bottle of this rice licquor (that clears your sinuses up in about 1.3 seconds upon ingestion) and all the beer and red wine you can ask for over the course of the evening. oh man, we really had it tough didnt we?

we began making toasts for the groom with the help of eddie who was trying to tell us what to say in mandarin. oddly enough, everyone loved our efforts even though we most definetely butchered every word we spoke. hell, who even knows what we were saying-- but when shouted out our toasting words, all our new chinese buddies drank. holy crap, they sure did.

what an evening. and things didnt end there. we kicked it pretty slick at the "disco" later that evening. i think i recognized one song at the place, but that wasnt necessary. i think at that point the people of china got a little nerveous, but we eventually had them dancing on the tables at this place-- really enjoying themselves. good fun.

the next day we all did a lot of sitting. lots.

it was time to move on to beijing after a few more of those lazy shanghai days. i managed to peel myself off the couch and hop on the train.

that train to bejing, by the way, made the entire bottom half of my body numb. we werent able to get a sleeper car so we had to be upright for the 13 hour journey. darn. the upside of not having a sleeper car was that everyone around you didnt find it necessary to shed their shoes for the evening slumber. instead, the air remained fairly pure-- untouched by the collective smell of about 65 pairs of stinky feet.

we pulled in to beijing town early in the morning walking through the famous tianneman square-- the site in '89 where the communists party mowed down and killed a large number of the demonstrators who were pushing the government to move towards democracy. kind of interesting to see really.

we checked in to a nice little establishment called "leo's hostel."

our time in beijing has really been marked by two things: 1) sightseeing 2) eating noodles at our favorite little hole in the wall 3) searching for obscure DVD titles at any one of the billion DVD huts.

sightseeing-- the summer palace for starters. it was nothing to go home to mom about. i mean, it was the damn summer home for the old emperors and his homies. if the place hadnt been leveled by the "anglo-french soldiers" about a milion times, it may have some of its ancient glory still left. to say it is devoid of its heritage is foolish because there is still plenty of old glam left. the lake that sits in the middle is quite peaceful. at the sight of an opportunity to rent a paddle boat and have some time on the water, omri and i were in. in full american fashion, we took a few cold ones out and really enjoyed the time peddling our asses around the lake.

more sightseeing-- the great wall of china. now this, ladies and gentleman takes the cake for having that sort of "feeling" associated with it. you see the thing and it just speaks to you. there is so much history in the thing. for years and years, the chinese were constructing it to prevent northern enemies from infilitrating in to their parts. it ultimately remained inneffective for a short time when genghis khan and his boys climbed through-- but still. it is just a spectacular site to see this undulating wall meander over all these mountains. seriously though, there are 500 meter drops and 70 degree slopes but the wall still stands-- a true gem and sign of the chinese persistence back in the day.

so we climbed a portion of the wall in an area called simatai. you can see a picture of the boys and i at left. the new kid in town is brad, a friend i made in bangkok. he joined us here in beijing and will be with us through to eastern europe. real solid guy (and you can read his blog at www.braddiggans.com).

so simatai, the area we went to is known as one of the more dangerous parts of the wall. we had grandiose plans for an overnight camping hike on the wall for roughly two days. we were more than ready for the adventure.

water? check. food? check. extra layers? check.

oops, guess we forgot to check in the whole "legality" of this scheme we had planned. the old chinese federales wanted nothing to do with our little "sleeping" idea. we tried to bribe them with food, candy, cigarettes, even money! nothing.. we got nowhere. they hiked our asses straight back to the starting point and watched us get out of there. looked like we would be prematurely heading back to beijing.

on to the other "happenings" in beijing-- noodles. we found this little diamond in the rough just around the corner of our hostel. they serve a handrolled noodle soup that is just to die for. omri and i have been there about 7 times in the past 4 days. for 5 yuan (roughly50 cents) we get a giant bowl of noodles. throw in another 3.5 yuan and we get a big bottle of beer.

speaking of beer-- after a night of drinking and then showing up at the place for a late-night bowl of noodles, i decided it was necessary to take up a little bet from bryan and omri. the stakes were real high folks: 100 yuan would be in my pocket if i were to eat my entire bowl of noodles with another entire bowl of chili. dear god, i took the bet.

the next morning, i was so full of chili it even burned to take a piss. i wont even go in the events that occured when i went "number two."

despite a new love for beijing, we must move on. i cant say i am devastated to leave china, but i will certainly be back. i am working up ideas for a western excursion out to tibet from nepal and the kathmandu area.

..but before that, we have some slightly more pressing issues of getting to mongolia. we leave tomorrow via the trans-mongolian train (30 hour ride) for the frozen desert area that will be. we have plans to get to ulan bator and sleep in a tent in and around that there gobi desert and drink some yaks milk for a few days. i really want to have a go at some true-blue mongolian dog sledding. seriously, how cool would that be? i also cant wait to get there and have a nice meal at the local mongolian barbeque. oh, that will be just great!

kidding! none of those out there.

in fact, word is that in mongolia its mostly tents that people live in. and when you get short on change for your meal, just throw in a stick of gum-- its accepted as currency over there. excellent!

before i take off here though, i would like to just make a few comments (that are strictly my opinion-- duh!) about china as a whole amidst all this chatter about world power and the rise of the east vis-a-vis the western powers that be.

all through college, being a business student, the power of the chinese was dumped down my throat by the truckloads. from manufacturing (CHEAP!) and production (the largest active work force in the world) perspective, this place was a gold mine. throw in the articles that you read every damn day on your favorite news website about "the rise of china," and i was a believer.

not so fast, grasshopper.

see, from what i have experienced here in china i feel is different. this isnt a country that is ready to take over the world. this is not a country that has the type of "maturity" to really step up and be the next world power. and i say this not as a deregotary type of statement-- there is nothing wrong with their position.

they are locked in their communist ways really. websites are blocked by the government (bbcnews.com), religion is suppressed (falun gong) and the government has a strong-hold on the citizens. theres an extreme poverty issue-- the gap between the rich and poor amidst a GINORMOUS (1.25+ billion) population is just constantly nipping at the heels of this nation. and amidst all this, there is a sort of naive belief in the fact that things will fix themselves with the implementation of "improvement" plans and certain drastic measures (think cultural revolution back in the mao days-- on paper this was a fine idea, but given the 10 million peasants that died in the country side becasue of starvation-- it was AWFUL. yet blindly, even elder chinese people we talked with will tell you that the cultural revolution fixed china and mao is a hero).

these characteristics of china and their sort of policy, however, should not be completely looked down upon. given their persistent increase in GDP and other figures (the united states would kill to have a piece of china's growth numbers), something is going right. i just dont think the sort of systems and policy that china upholds and supports with its domestic policy would transfer over so well in the international arena.

ok, off the soap box. done.

but i believe part of this whole travel deal is putting pieces like that in to perspective, right?

moving on to a lighter topic, how about a look at this cute little dude i took a picture of in tianneman square?

the game plan from here is to move on to mongolia as stated before. we spend a bit of time there in a tent and then hit the rail tracks to connect with the trans-siberian rail (the world's longest straight track of rail) and enter in to russia for some vodka and big furry hats. we plan to make our first stop in russia in a place called irkutsk where we will take a gander at lake baikal (worlds deepest freshwater lake). from there, we arent really sure but we are thinking we will be in moscow within a week after that. we spend a few days in moscow and then up to st. petersburgh.

armed with tons and tons (and tons) of reading material, a fully charged ipod and a nose mask to take care of late-night foot odor-- i enter the two week rail journey to moscow!