End of an Era

On this trip we had been keeping track of the various modes of transportation that we used. Every few days, or when we remembered, we'd think of all the metros, cabs, trains, and so on that we had ridden recently and put it all on a list in Auberon's notebook. We were, however, initially at a loss as to how we should record the journey to Denmark - as the train itself chugged onto a massive ferry and we were thus brought to Copenhagen by two methods of transportation at once. (It ended up in the logbook as three entries, train-ferry-train, due to the technicality that we were not allowed to remain on the train once it was off dry land.)

In Copenhagen we learned that our accommodations were Poland-style: far away. It was a long but pretty march to the fairly sterile business area where our hostel was located, across marshes and flatlands dotted with modern Nordic Design concrete ponds and benches. It was late when we arrived and the prospect of going all the way to the city and back for dinner wasn't great, so we ended up eating at an Indian place. I had fortunately not internalized the conversion rate for krøner to dollars, which consequently resulted in our most expensive dinner all trip.

Such is life in Denmark. We saw very high prices absolutely everywhere, the unfortunate opposite of the under-budget first weeks of the trip. But, we reasoned, we would still come in well under our estimates thanks to the Workaways and general miserliness throughout.

The next day we had a few boxes to tick. Auberon had seen the outline of a star fort on the map, which was conveniently next to my own goal of seeing the Little Mermaid statue in the harbor. The fort reminded us both strongly of colonial American architecture, though it dates to the late seventeenth century. We were unable to go into any of the buildings but it was very pleasant to walk around the grounds and along the ramparts. The weather was gorgeous. The suffocating heat of the first several weeks stayed with us in memory, so we didn't mind the chilly winds as much. And despite the grim warnings of a man on the train that we came at a bad time, the sun shone and the sky was clear.

On the way to the statue Auberon happened to glance into the harbor and notice that there were hundreds and hundreds of tiny jellyfish present among the boats. We sat and watched for a long time, picking out subtle color differences and particularly large ones, wondering aloud about the life of a jellyfish and how it perceives the world. Then to the statue, which we saw only briefly as dozens of other tourists were clamoring for their turn. I can only imagine the scene in the high season. As much as I talk about the wandering we do, I still have a soft spot for famous destinations like the mermaid statue, the terracotta warriors, and Red Square.

We next found the Design Museum, which impressed us first with its lenient admission rates (free) and then with its collections. There was a fantastic section on Japanese art and Danish artists who had been inspired by it, and I was enchanted with some of the Japanese paintings - a school of art I'd never given much thought to. A lot more of the museum was devoted to examples of Scandinavian design in furniture, architecture, and so on. It was a great museum, one of the best on the trip. The only problem was that I kept wanting to sit on the chairs.

That evening we saw the pedestrian street Strøget, a very long shopping plaza that, while pretty, didn't offer us anything we hadn't seen in other countries' versions. We had a Chinese buffet for dinner (far from the culinary high-water mark of Chengdu), a bowl of what claimed to be Sichuan noodles at another shop (ditto) and then headed for the metro home. At the station we noticed a family of tourists rush to get on and then leave two members of the party behind. This they fortunately found hilarious, and as they spoke together about it I was glad to hear Vietnamese again for the first time in months. It happened that they were on the wrong train line anyway, and we were able to set them straight. More bookends: we had started the trip quite confused in Vietnam, now in Denmark we were able to help some Vietnamese people on their own trip. I was hoping to hear them say something about their plans for traveling overland, from Denmark to Vietnam via Russia...

The day of departure soon arrived. Auberon had refused to pay Scandinavian prices for a meal on the plane, so we stocked him up with muffins and fruit at a grocery store. Then with plenty of time to spare we got to the airport. One last selfie, some parting words, and then Auberon was off.

As for me, I stayed in Denmark for a few more days, traveling around to some more very nice cities and setting fire to my remaining money. I'm writing this from Germany now, where I have another week planned. Then I'm off to China, where I'll return to my friends in Chengdu and do some more teaching, eventually getting to California in early December.

This blog is really about the trip before that: Auberon and Alex went Around the World. So I won't turn it into a personal diary, but I won't abandon it either. We collected a lot of information as we traveled, and some of it is useful but all of it should be relatively interesting. Data like steps walked per day, number of taxis taken, total trip mileage - these might interest a few readers, especially if you know us well or are my dad. There are thousands of photos on my camera that I fully intend to edit and share with the world, and those will make it on here some time after I get back to California. And I also collected a lot of knowledge that might be useful to tourists of the ten countries and 30+ cities we visited, like what transportation is like and how not to get scammed at ticket offices. All these things and more will appear, so stay tuned.

Until then, dear reader - thanks for coming along!

Retreat to Paradise

We realized fairly quickly that the new Workaway we had signed up for was squarely in the boonies. But that was part of the charm - it was billed as a meditation retreat and seminar center. Our work was simple. Auberon was to repair and expand the booking website, and I was to shoot and edit a series of short promotional videos.

The house was enormous. Auberon and I both tried and failed to name houses of friends or family that even approached it in size, plus it had a backyard orchard. When we arrived there was one long-term guest (a German medical student), one solo volunteer (a Lithuanian wanderer), and one volunteering couple (German/Bulgarian off-grid hippies).
After a few days we realized that we had actually had plenty of relaxation recently, and the tiny town seemed closed-in. So we took advantage of the ample free time offered us to go to Hamburg and Lübeck on separate day trips, plus regular long walks around the countryside. I use the word "countryside" because our host did, but in reality the little towns were all close together in car terms, and simply a longer walk by foot. There were great bike paths thanks to the dismantling of local train service half a century ago (a dilemma for me - train or bike?) and they led through wonderful tall forests.

Each day we cooked something, either with the other guests or alone. Our meals when living together in college were often somewhat bachelor chic, that is to say, unimaginative. Here, I did my best to stay vegetarian (all bets were off outside the home) and experimented with cooking all kinds of rice and vegetable dishes from scratch. It turns out rice is a lot easier and more versatile than I ever gave it credit for in college.

In Hamburg we saw the huge park and made fun of the street art for a while. It reminded me of both Frankfurt and Berlin, which isn't saying much as that's the rest of my big city Germany experience. Several of the attractions we walked by were closed, and the cutting wind made us walk past things faster. At night I sought out the Reeperbahn, years after reading a description of it by Bill Bryson. It was going downhill in his day, and from what I could gather the same was happening 26 years later. The red light district lure isn't enough to keep businesses running, and many of them are becoming ordinary bars or dance clubs to attract young people.

Lübeck was entirely different - a very old town that had the architecture history advantage of not being blown up in the war. For the first hour or so we walked in entirely the opposite direction from the central old town, seeing only suburbs and wondering what all the fuss was about. Once back on track, the majesty of the old town was wonderful and it was beautiful to see the ancient buildings and streets as the sun set. In the Yugoslavian restaurant where we stopped for dinner, we ordered an enormous and delicious plate of assorted meats and potatoes, which arrived on fire and inspired its order by at least two other tables.

Somewhat surprised by the closeness of the date to Auberon's departure, we finished up our work at the retreat and took the last train of the journey - to Copenhagen.

Pictured: one of my culinary creations, view of Germany from the ferry, and a scene that I found hilarious but that sadly doesn't come through in the photo: the foreground and background signs say you're entering and leaving the same town on a single empty stretch of road.

Poor but sexy

The first time I went to Berlin, last year, I was admonished on the train for planning to spend only one day there. But that's what we did, thanks to lodging prices that were mysteriously three or four times higher than I had expected. So we planned to spend two nights in Berlin and then a week in a Workaway near Hamburg, giving me (I minored in German in college) lots of time in Germany at a fraction of the usual cost.

Our train arrived late in the day. The rail passes gave us unlimited travel on the wonderful Berlin transit system, so after dropping off our bags we went directly to Alexanderplatz, home of the TV tower. From there we walked haphazardly toward the Brandenburg Gate, illuminated at night and obscured somewhat by some odd fences. I love that in big touristy cities you can find the famous sights in a matter of minutes, all practically right next to one another.

In the morning we went off in a new direction and found a bakery for breakfast. For a reason I cannot understand, in several German bakeries I've been to there are wasps crawling over the pastries. Nobody seems to mind and in fact I question sometimes if I'm the only one who can see them. Then they fly around you as you eat and try to fall into your drink. This trip, so late in the year, we saw them only in Germany. I should have studied French instead.

In a little while we began to get some answers to the mysteries described earlier. Police erected more barricades in an intersection as we watched, and crews used rubber strips to cover up the tram rails. A crowd began to form, and almost immediately applause began as some men in Lycra roller-bladed toward us at high speed. We had arrived in time for the world-famous Berlin Marathon - which apparently has a skating component the day before. First dozens, then hundreds of skaters went by, ranging from individual to team with custom jerseys. I'd never seen anything like it.

I was very excited to show Auberon the fact that there are some streets and neighborhoods in Berlin where you can walk for an hour and see a constant stream of shops on either side of the road. The same distance in other big cities we visited might have put us into suburbs or outside the city entirely. I got to see new parts of the city I'd never been to, and although the weather was a bit warm we had fine energy all day. We spent a while at the Berlin wall memorials, something I hadn't seen as much of before. They're huge and sobering, and I was able to draw for once on my history knowledge rather than my linguistic knowledge in conversation.

A single day only lasts so long, and we had split it about 60-40 between simply walking and goal-oriented sightseeing. At night we visited the Holocaust memorial - even more powerful and haunting in the dark - and turned in late to the hostel. Then it was back to the train station the next morning, to our destination of Hoisdorf in the countryside outside Hamburg.

Pictured: Blurry skaters, my new business venture, and a total of one remaining bike.

Big city Poland

In Krakow we were immediately taken with our biggest city since Moscow. As we left the train station buses and trams whizzed by and advertisements flashed over the heads of the shoppers in the crowd. It was very much like those montages of people from the countryside coming to the big city for the first time ever.

We had rented a room in an apartment, and the landlady came to meet us with her young son. I played peekaboo with him as she filled out our rental forms (by hand in duplicate using the same information I provided on the booking website) and told us not to have too much fun. Then we got the keys and went off into the night.

We had become accustomed to seeing the cities we visited close up shops and restaurants around 8 PM. Thus we practically stopped in our tracks when the quiet and looming apartment buildings gave way suddenly to a wide square that was lit up beautifully and filled with people. In the center was a market hall selling furs and jewels, and surrounding it were fancy restaurants with outdoor seating, flaming heaters fighting the September cold. We walked down one of the side streets and soon saw the old city wall, which unlike Xi'an was closed to tourists at that time.

The next day we planned to see what the city could show us. We went back to the main square a few times as well as toward the outer areas, breaking in Auberon's shoes some more and working our way to the big commercial shopping centers.

I had left my sweater in Augustow and so had to layer three or four shirts to keep out the chilly autumn winds. Auberon, too, lacked a good fall layer. We went through a few stores with typical indecisiveness and stinginess, but eventually picked up a pretty heavy sweater for me and a thinner turtleneck for Auberon, with some made-in-Poland socks thrown in at the end.

Auberon wanted dearly to take the bus to the town of Zakopane, about an hour and a half south toward the Slovak border and famous for its mountain hiking. The next morning I accompanied him (he used the words "grumpy" and "dour" but I simply felt I had seen quite a few rocks and trees already) to a small diner in Zakopane where we waited out the rain and discovered that our hiking map was uselessly out of scale. We picked a mountainous direction and forged ahead, crossing little streams and seeing the town quickly disappear into forest. A gate and entrance fee indicated that we were on the right track. The rain had stopped completely and we surged ahead at the initial climb, finding ourselves in half an hour or so above a very picturesque valley. Here I learned that Auberon likes to see nature at speed, so we continued on for a good deal longer on another trail.

We had the park almost wholly to ourselves, and on the one occasion that some rain appeared we happened to be near a shelter anyway. We filled the time with academic discussions, talking about the machine learning and artificial intelligence work that Auberon is interested in as an engineer. In an hour or so we ended up underneath some impressive switchbacks, and once these were crested we found ourselves at an even better summit than before. On the one side, the red roofs of towns and cities on the plains. On the other, hills becoming craggy rocks stretching into the clouds. As the clouds shifted we saw a glimpse of snow on the highest peak - so far had we come from the hot days in Vietnam.

But a sun low in the sky told us that we'd better turn back, and we began to retrace our steps. The whole way back was almost more beautiful than before, as the golden sunset pierced the clouds and shone through patches of rain. We reached the bottom just as darkness fell, and put off dinner in favor of getting the first bus back to Krakow.

Two full days behind us, we arrived at the station early next morning for our train to Berlin.

Pictured: the Krakow main square and the mountains of Zakopane.

Small town Poland

We arrived after two hours or so in Augustow, a lakeside town I had booked way at the beginning of the trip. I didn't realize that the place we were actually staying (a guest house/cabin/resort sort of thing) was well removed from the town, shopping, transit, restaurants, and everything else. We had a quick dinner downtown near the bus station and called a cab to bring us to our lodgings.

The next day we walked for an hour or so to get into town and find something to eat, and resolved to buy groceries in the evening. We got some food at a place selling pierogi, then headed to a shoe store where Auberon sorrowfully parted with his beloved yet disintegrating sneakers in exchange for more substantial trail shoes.

Augustow is a very small place that is mostly suburb. A park and square forms the center near the bus station, and then a little further north is the lake and many places that will sell you boat tours in the high season. There were certainly people around, perhaps it was even one of the most bustling tiny cities we'd seen. But soon we'd seen what we needed to and took a cab back to the hotel.

There we set out for the woods, and quite some woods they were. We hiked through trails and paths all around the general area, meeting as I expected nobody else. The trails were clearly marked and I imagine that in the high season it's common to see other hikers enjoying the thick birch groves.

The next day saw an incredibly slow start as we stayed in the room well past noon. The initial goal was to buy some train tickets at the station, but once we got ourselves over there it was clear that the station itself had been closed for years, and passengers were expected to buy the tickets on the train. Later in Poland we saw more boarded-up stations, replaced entirely by mobile ticket machines carried by the conductors. We walked around the other side of the outskirts, soon chancing upon an abandoned factory.

I've seen a lot of great pictures from abandoned Soviet industry, and last time I was in Poland I saw some enticing buildings from a distance. It wasn't until one of the last buildings we went into that we discovered a huge forge and crane-like apparatus, which was extremely interesting to look at and climb around in. It looked like it had been partially disassembled a while ago, as there were strange holes in the floor and inaccessible catwalks near the ceiling. Nobody came in or disturbed us for the duration of our visit.

The partying Lithuanians next door did their best to prevent it, but we did in fact get some sleep before our very early train. A few hours and a few transfers later, and we found ourselves in Krakow.

Pictured: the Augustow lake and one of the buildings at the factory.

Klaipeda and Kaunas

At this point in the trip we were playing fast and loose with plans. We knew that we wanted to spend time in Latvia and Lithuania, but since we could hardly tell them apart before visiting there wasn't much that we were looking for specifically. After much debate and checking of transit routes we settled on going to the coastal town of Klaipeda in western Lithuania (eastern coastline being fairly hard to come by).

We had initially scheduled just two days, but soon realized that it was worth much more. Our guesthouse was relatively near the old town, but we covered it in an afternoon. For tight-pursed backpackers, old towns filled with jewelry or amber shops don't offer much excitement. If you're into amber, though, Klaipeda is the place to go. Apparently they find it on the beaches in huge chunks and then make elaborate ornaments out of it.

Instead we took the ferry to the Curonian Spit, a long and thin landmass that goes from Poland through Kaliningrad and up to the ferry terminal at Smiltyne where we got off. Sightly disappointed that it was more than a day's journey to get to the Russian border (not that our visas were valid anyway) we contented ourselves with the spit itself.

Auberon loved the beach and decided to spend much of his time there, while I walked through the forests. I was quickly and completely bewitched by their incredible beauty. The air was perfectly crisp, the grass was astonishingly green, and when I stopped walking I could just hear trees and wind. The main path branched off into smaller paths, and I saw dozens of huge orb weavers in their webs, evidence that the larger part of the tourists had stopped tramping about for the season. I saw very few people except when near the beaches, and surely only a fraction of those who come at the height of summer.

The next day we planned to go out again. Auberon would continue to enjoy the beach with a picnic lunch, and I would rent a bike and see the forests at a higher speed. Alas, I discovered that the bike rental shops were closed in the off season, and I only found this out after an hour or so of walking around town. But I had a map, and I was already on the north end of town, and so I decided to keep going north.

I found forests soon enough, as well as a huge and sprawling adventure park which looked far too fun to ever be constructed in the United States. There were ziplines, balance beams, tightropes, swings, and more dangerous playthings all suspended twenty feet or more off the ground. There was a ticket office with ropes and helmets but I knew that if I was a student at the nearby university, that park is the first place to go after a night of drinking in the dorms.

I reached a tiny beach suburb after an hour or so of walking around the port and railway depot. There was not much to see besides some strange and old concrete bunkers half-buried in the sand and clearly still used by enthusiastic drinkers and urinators. I popped into the tiny town library and had a halting Russian conversation with the kindly librarian, explaining that I had worked in a library and that I liked to see what libraries around the world looked like during my travels (many people speak Russian in Latvia and Lithuania, and the guesthouse owner was the only person to tell me I should have learned some Lithuanian).

Returning to home, Auberon and I had a pizza dinner and planned for the next day's trip to Kaunas.

Auberon had been told that Kaunas was worth three hours at most, but like Moscow we found it a very agreeable place. We stayed right in the old town, in a hostel connected to a church. Our room came with a crucifix and a shrink-wrapped picture of a saint plus literature inviting us to retrace the pilgrimage of John Paul II around Lithuania.

Apart from a small fort near the church, there was a long pedestrian street that formed the main attraction of the city, starting in the old town and leading far further into a wider shopping area. I walked a good distance by myself the first night owing to Auberon's now-tattered shoes making it uncomfortable to keep up the hard miles. I saw some people square dancing in a park to a drummer and accordionist, forming a beautiful and wholesome scene.

The next day we walked more in a different direction and wound up at a large art museum, where we were some of the only patrons present. It had a large selection of more classical European art in the upper floors, with seascapes and wildlife sketches next to fine silverware and furniture. Auberon noticed a couple of pictures by the same artist who had taken a few liberties with proportions, such that when you looked closely Mary's eyes were the size of teacups and her legs were folded in knots around the Christ child.

From Kaunas we found an evening bus to Augustow, and the rolling plains out the window soon gave way to the forests of Poland.

Pictured: The fairy tale forests of Klaipeda, concrete on the beach, and the Kaunas old town.

The Russian tongue

I had studied Russian in fits and starts before this year, but once I knew I was going to the country I put in more effort. Every time I study a new language I go about it in a different way, drawing from experience and new techniques that I constantly come across. With Russian I hoped that I could ignore the notoriously complicated grammar and focus on acquiring it more or less naturally. I studied it for six months, doing at least ten minutes a day but generally closer to half an hour on average. Say 90-100 hours in total.

Because of my love of phonetics I focused a lot on the sounds and the flow of the language. This paid off in a way, since people rarely switched to English on me and some guessed that I had Russian heritage. Someone that had spoken Russian with a grandparent once a week, maybe. Just a student, I said, though sometimes I mentioned that my grandmother was Polish.

Conversation was difficult. As nice as it is to speak with a good accent, it doesn't mean much without the words themselves. My method was to practice whole sentences at a time, thus internalizing some grammatical constructions easily while remaining fully ignorant of ones I hadn't come across. So I fumbled a lot, especially in the beginning, making sure adjectives matched nouns and pronouns were in the right case.

It was a bit stressful, as I mentioned previously. When you practice with a teacher or a Skype partner you don't quite feel the pressure that's palpable in a restaurant or a ticket line. To hear and understand my mp3s on my phone was great, to hear a string of jumbled syllables from my conversation partner was dismal.

Reading was nice. After a week or so the Cyrillic came back easily (having not looked at it since departing for Korea) and I generally knew what signs said. I still need a lot of practice to read books, but it's just something that will take time. It wasn't until years into studying German that it was truly easy to read average articles or books.

I grudgingly admit that Russian is a useful language and I should really put more effort into it. It really comes in handy in some places where German or English don't reach. I spoke it first on this trip in Vietnam and twice just today. I can function with it, and I can tell that with a few hundred more hours of studying it'll get to that wonderful point of being accessible at a moment's notice.

Big and small cities in an unfamiliar place

After a fairly nightmarish train ride (bunks smaller than we were and enthusiastic snorers) we arrived in Riga, the capital city of Latvia. I knew little to nothing about either. In a nice turn of events we had arrived well into the morning, and from the looks of the market outside the train station things were already in full swing. I had been getting intermittent blisters from walking eight hours a day in new shoes, so we decided not to explore and just walk straight to the hotel.

We had booked just two days in our hotel, which we figured would give us the same ability to combine wandering and targeted tourism. Sure enough, we saw a few museums and also got in a great deal of exploration of the old and new towns. The Occupation Museum was rated poorly by every Russian on TripAdvisor, which brought me back to the War Remnants Museum in Vietnam. It told the moving story of Latvia's struggle for independence against the Germans and later the Russians. A short video clip showed what I felt to be too little of the amazing nonviolent protests of 1989, when millions of people joined hands to create an unbroken line from Tallinn through Riga to Vilnius.

The state history museum deserves a mention too, since for a miniscule entrance fee we had four floors of exhibits to ourselves. It was much more of a traditional arrowheads-under-glass museum, and most of it was in Latvian, but I liked the atmosphere. They had several life size dioramas of typical rooms at different points in history, and the silence of the museum lent these exhibits an eerie edge.

There was definitely a beauty to Riga, but we reached a certain point quickly where we felt like moving on. In the train station I impulsively suggested that we take the next train to the coast, and after discovering the incredibly low price of the Latvian intercity rail, we did. We ended up in Vecaki, which was mostly a road leading to the beach with a few lucky restaurants on either side. Vecaki seemed like a fairly popular destination even in this off season, and we followed other tourists to the water's edge.

It was gorgeous, especially so because of the flat shore and flat surf, surely the most gentle I've seen. The sun was slowly setting to the west, though the ocean horizon stretched out northward. We had come from the Pacific coast in Nha Trang across desert, forest, grassland, and more to make it to the shore of the Baltic Sea halfway around the world.

The next day we took another train to Sigulda, a smaller town at the edge of a national park. Our guesthouse was on the outskirts, a huge log house that had a dining hall for fifty people or more. But in this in-between season (past summer and not yet to snowfall) it was not only cheap but ours entirely. We walked for a while in both directions of the road, raising the attention of a neighbor's friendly dog who accompanied us into some small woods. The other dogs were less pleased to see us, but there was no trouble. I wonder if they can tell how far we've come.

Sigulda is a few hours' hike from another town, Turaida, known chiefly for its castle. We walked through some very nice forest, past a malfunctioning cable car, and over a few flights of nice new wooden stairs to get to this castle, stopping at a lovely little café for nourishment. The castle was red, clearly a bit different from the classic Western European stone towers. Inside there were a few guides in period costume and some brief descriptions of the restoration efforts. Only the main tower was accessible to the public, but the view over the forested countryside was very fine. Back in the courtyard I surprised all present by paying a euro and scoring a bullseye with my first shot from a bow and arrow. This feat earned me another free shot, where it was revealed that the first was entirely luck and I had no idea how to handle a bow.

We took a bus back to Sigulda after seeing a small sculpture park next to the castle (known as Folk Song Park but with hills that remained silent). By then some other guests had moved into the house, though we hardly saw any of them. The next morning we went off to Riga again, headed for the bus station and a route south to Lithuania.

Pictured: Auberon exploring the Baltic Sea, Riga from a rooftop, and Turaida Castle.

The capital of Russia

The train to Moscow was very comfortable, though I caught a bit of a sore throat. We had our compartment mostly to ourselves and the journey was just a bit more than overnight. In keeping with the general Russian theme we arrived around sunrise and braced ourselves.

I had studied Russian language and culture for a while, and something I had seen over and over was that Moscow was not a fun place. From the man at the embassy to our hostel mate in Yekaterinburg, I had been told I would have no fun. But Moscow was beginning to shine in the morning sunlight. As a capital city it was enormous, and just getting to the hostel brought us past three or four incredibly large buildings. Architecture ranged from 1940s New York to big wide Soviet glass and concrete blocks.

Our hostel was right next to Red Square and even closer to the Lenin Library. But the staff seemed not to be feeling the communal spirit and wouldn't let us occupy our room until later. This didn't change the general plan much, so we dropped off our bags and walked. Adding on to our head start from sunrise, we walked another 30 miles or so that day from corner to corner of the city and back. What we saw was far from the dismal description I had been given, rather, the city was clean, full of art installations, and vibrant. There was even a whole section of skyscrapers, cordoned off on their own little island of high-powered business deals. Unfortunately the Russians were less welcoming than the Chinese and we weren't allowed to the tops of any of them.

During the day of walking we went back to the train station and bought a ticket to Riga, Latvia - for the wrong day. Upon discovering this in the evening we decided to kick our habit of wandering around and throw regular tourism into high gear. That night we made a list of museums and attractions that would please even my dad, noted trip-planning enthusiast.

We aimed for Red Square first. It was easy enough to find, and then by joining a group of Chinese tourists we got in line for something unknown. Within a minute or so it became clear: we were accidentally visiting Lenin's mausoleum. The Chinese tourists bowed to the body three times out of respect, but I was more transfixed with how small he looked. The line was kept moving constantly and soon we were out in the sunlight again, laughing after noticing the big sign we had been standing under that read "to the mausoleum."

Next was the museum of Soviet arcade machines, which was just what it sounds like. All the machines were in working order, though that didn't mean it was easy to win. The ingenious yet clumsy analog controls combined with a general habit of older games being difficult meant every game was diabolically hard. I enjoyed the two player games: strange foosball variations of basketball and hockey. There was a little library on the second floor with dusty Soviet magazines, a sort of parallel to old Analog issues.

We kept going on the pedestrian street Arbat until a small bookstore caught my eye. Inside I browsed art books until sufficiently rested and inspired, then crossed the street to a small gallery. The receptionist noticed that we cheapskates were wrestling with the idea of paying any admission at all, so with a wink she let us in for free. It was a wide and open space whose main exhibit was a series on typography and logo design. Much of it reminded me of things I had seen back at school, in the library or in the school's gallery.

We set out for Gorky Park, and once there played a brief bit of outdoor chess (Western this time instead of Chinese) on the type of jumbo board for which I have always had a weakness. Then we went to the Garage, a new and trendy modern art museum that would not look out of place in Amsterdam or San Francisco. The number of exhibits was pretty low but they had a lot of critique and interpretation about each piece, as well as all relevant text in Russian Sign Language on a monitor. Auberon chatted to one of the docents as I lost myself in huge and expensive coffee-table books on photography.

Since the train to Riga didn't leave until the evening and we had accidentally booked a day extra at the hostel, the following day was another excellent one where we didn't have to carry our bags. It rained on and off, and I went off on my own as Auberon explored with his new friend from the museum. I popped into the very large gold-domed church (I've got to start remembering these names) and then to an excellent little photography gallery. By way of return I went to the Lenin library, which I wholly misunderstood. It seemed to be entirely reading rooms and no actual books, though it was enormous. Plus the entrance was under construction, so I had to do a lap around the block to find it. But in the end I got another cool ID card.

I met back with Auberon and we headed off to the train station, hoping that I had correctly used the ticket machine and our expensive new tickets were for the right place.

Pictured: Moscow sunrise, a tasty brunch, the church, and chess in the park.

A few days in Yekaterinburg

Arriving as usual in the early morning, we continued the theme of heading roughly toward the city center. We were told by the hostel not to check in until noon. Given that we had no idea where it was, it was generally accepted that we should wander for a while to kill time and then maybe take a taxi once we were tired.

Again we saw the night turn into early sunrise, and again we were mystified that absolutely nothing was open around six in the morning. No 24-hour cafes, diners, grocery stores, anything. It was clear that this city was much larger and richer than Irkutsk, with a small collection of actual skyscrapers creating a skyline over the river.

Eventually we found a little pastry shop that had just opened. Quite hungry by now, we became early and valuable customers, staying and resting perhaps a bit more than necessary. I was excited by the presence of a particular Georgian cheese pastry known as khachapuri. I went to a wonderful Georgian restaurant last summer in Budapest, and I've wanted to visit the country for years. Sadly the pastries in the shop were too cold and too salty to remind me of the ones I'd had before.

Our hostel was a bit hard to find, but once there we got into our shared 12-person dorm and dropped our luggage next to the very creaky bunk beds. There was a woman in the staircase later who was very skillfully painting someone's portrait. Seeing our interest, her friends told her спроси! спроси! - ask! ask! She hesitantly posed the question: would we like to sit for oil portraits so she could practice for art school? Would we! We made plans to meet the next morning.

I didn't realize how hard it was to be a model. I got pretty chilly in the shade and regretted choosing an awkward, twisting three-quarter angle. We talked about art and artists, and how the low rent in Yekaterinburg made it easier than other Russian cities to live and paint. She enjoyed portraits and had even hitched around Russia with a friend to do portraits of strangers in other places. Soon she switched to Auberon's painting and I was happy to stretch my legs, wander and explore.

The city was, as expected, much larger than Irkutsk. It had a younger energy too, with lots of young students seen walking around or working in cafes. Many sculptures in a sort of caricature style, mostly unlabeled, dotted the streets. There was a big pedestrian walkway near a super-sized mall and shopping center, where street performers pounded acoustic guitars to Russian pop melodies.

Breaking with our tradition of wandering through malls and buying nothing, I got myself some new shoes and a lovely shirt. My shoes were new around April, but walking hundreds of miles over the previous two months had taken its toll and they were now toast. In Asia I saw many great shirts capitalizing on the popularity of English, with no regard at all paid to the actual content of the words. Nonsense was common, and near-nonsense veered into hilarity. In Russia these were less common but I think the shirt I got fits the theme well: "University & National Sport Team."

I used to be much more into photography, especially older film methods. Back home I have twenty or so older cameras and a small library of photography books. I was thus glad to find a little museum of photography with art gallery on the second floor. I always get a little bit more inspired when I see works by other artists. The main exhibit seemed to be about Central Asian villages in the Soviet Union, though the captions were all in Russian. Auberon identified with a note written in Spanish in the visitor's book: "Nice pictures. I don't understand any Russian at all. It's very hard to get by."

In my solo wanderings I found a great library. They gave me a Russian ID card, which I will certainly use to pretend to be a foreign student in the future, and let me loose in the languages section. Auberon and I had been contemplating the physics of a central fountain in a square, and as he put it, that conversation scratched an intellectual itch but only made it worse. So we bought notebooks and went back to the library together, where I read about languages and teaching theories and he read about physics and computer science. It was a great library and we both shared with the other what we'd learned after it closed.

Then we went to Moscow.

When we stay in hostels I'm much more likely to take my actual camera with me, so not too much ends up easily postable from the phone. Thus all I can offer is the inside of the library and me in my new shirt next to an array of plastic-wrapped shopping carts.

The long train

In Irkutsk we got on the train and didn't get off for three days.

It was a lovely journey, really. I believe I've mentioned before that I find it very relaxing to lie down on a sleeper bed and watch the world pass by. We were served a single free meal at the very beginning, some very acceptable crepes with jam. Unlike the last train, we had no English speakers in our carriage and so spent much of the time in silence or talking to each other. My Russian never got particularly conversational, so I didn't want to go through the stress of almost understanding social interactions over and over. But that seemed to suit the Russians fine.

It's easy and enjoyable to slip in and out of sleep on the rails, and we all wrecked any kind of 24-hour sleep cycle we might have had. The beds were very comfortable, especially coming off of six weeks in Asia. Four to a compartment, with space for baggage above and below. You're provided with sheets and small towel and left totally unbothered by the staff for the duration.

The restaurant car, present for the first time now that we were properly on the Siberian route, served the expected fare. Thanks to a strong dollar we ate there more than we expected. They frowned upon too much loitering at first, but after the hours slid by we were allowed to sit and play Chinese chess for some time. I think Auberon won almost every game, even though we're pretty well matched. Like I said, the train puts me in a nice stupor.

I'd gotten to see great rivers and lakes on the first train leg. This time it was almost entirely forest, punctuated with villages and open fields. Slowly the architecture changed from the hardier log cabins of the eastern regions to tin-roofed buildings and small farms, sometimes with a church spire poking out above. At night, since we were constantly traveling west, the sunset stretched out into twilights almost eerie in their length. Perhaps my favorite view was seeing a copse of birch trees, denuded somehow, nearly the same color as the fading sky and with a small campfire adding a splash of orange in between them.

In what seemed like nothing near 53 hours, we had arrived at Yekaterinburg.

Pictured: Yekaterinburg in the morning light and the author several days after last seeing a shower.

Middle Siberia

Outside the station we grew a little nervous at the presence of the bad guy from every action film ever made. You could cast a gangster movie in ten seconds. But of course they paid us no mind, even after I set off a car alarm, and eventually we found a big bridge and decided to cross it. Both of us were in fine spirits and ready for more walking after our longest train ride to date.

We did some circuits around the parks and squares of Irkutsk, without much of an idea of where we were or where we were headed. The city instantly reminded me of my time in Poland last summer, and so I was struck with excitement to wander the streets as I had done back then. At this time of day, though, the streets were almost entirely empty. It was very strange to both of us that it was about seven in the morning and that nobody was beginning the bustle of the day. We had been used to waking up later, sure, but in the morning in China and Vietnam people were up and starting the day early. After about an hour of this confusion we had grown tireder and hungrier and paid a taxi too much to bring us to our very nearby hostel.

This was actually our first time in that backpacker mainstay, the hostel. We had shared rooms before when volunteering, but when buying accommodation it was well within budget to just get private rooms. Things were a bit tighter in Russia, so for all of Russia we booked hostels in an effort to force us into being social.

At this point actually, we were a bit cynical at the prospect of repeating The Script for the thousandth time: I'm from California, I'll be staying in your country this long, funny story actually we came from Vietnam, haha yes it's a long way to Denmark, Alex, Auberon, Au-be-ron, yes it's a hard name for Americans too... We'd started saying these things in Ho Chi Minh City and hadn't really stopped. In China it was especially frequent because of all the English teaching. Auberon declared that if he met a girl that went off script he'd have to marry her. He's still single.

After such cynicism you'll be happy to hear that we met a cool Mongolian guy named Timin (spelling uncertain) and went around with him for most of the day. He was there on business, coordinating international shipments of construction materials between Russia and Mongolia. He matched us in walking enthusiasm and his Russian blew mine out of the water. We wandered to a nice restaurant and then to the parks on the south side of the city, then back to the center where he departed for a bus ride out of town.

The next day we found passage to the nearby town of Listvianka, a popular and easy to access day trip. Jumping on the chance to collect another method of transportation, we traveled by speedboat. It was very fast and didn't offer too many opportunities for photography since the decks were crowded with Russians at all times. I find it very easy to fall asleep at the beginning of car or bus rides, and the boat was no different. In no time we had arrived at Lake Baikal.

Lake Baikal is huge, and the destination for throngs of Russian and international tourists. We were really there because we'd seen big cities for a long time and needed a good hike in the woods. We found a nice path leading away from the souvenir shops and started off. In seconds we were alone on the path. Apart from some women gathering mushrooms we had the woods to ourselves. They were wonderfully European woods, broad and dense and filled with roots and birches and ivy. Bright red mushrooms peeked out of the leaves here and there, and though the path was clear it was far from the paved trails of China.

After a solid climb we reached one rocky summit and were immediately covered in flies. Not biting or stinging, just aggravating and persistent. Even though the temperature is dropping in Siberia it's still bug season. After a minute or so of selfies we reluctantly pushed on. It turned out there wasn't much of a view from the actual summit, but at least we had a lively scramble down the very steep mountainside to the town.

Back in Irkutsk we felt pretty complete with our time. There wasn't a ton more to see and our train left very late at night, so we had just one more goal for the day: vandalism. Irkutsk is a territory in the board game Risk, and months ago over a game with some friends we decided that we would take one of the little Red Guard game pieces and secure our control over the area by supergluing him to the city. We did. If you find him and send me a picture, I will personally mail you a card of congratulations and all of the remaining Russian coins I have in my possession - a sizeable stack by now.

Pictured: a boat on Baikal and a very large church.

The Trans-Mongolian line

As we boarded the train to Irkutsk, we realized that nearly everyone else in the carriage was an English-speaking tourist. The majority of the compartments were occupied by an Australian-based tour group, evidently all retirees going from Beijing to Moscow. Our roommates (for we were four to a room) were a newly engaged couple in the middle of a year's journey from southeast Asia to Italy. They were kind and pleasant people, and they talked with us for a long time over the next 36 hours, sharing tales about their journey and their lives in Hawaii before traveling.

A bed makes a world of difference. The hours really did fly by, and it seemed like we reached the border in minutes. Rick from our compartment performed a bit of a song and dance for the border guard, as he had changed significantly since his picture was taken. "Tilt your head. No, to the left. Open your eyes more. Hmm..."

But we were eventually let through and we watched with amusement as some minor smuggling ring was broken and about a dozen bottles of vodka were confiscated. The customs agents had been extremely thorough, shining flashlights into air vents and pulling back rugs, even though they didn't open any of our bags. I found out later that it was actually the railway workers that had tried to sell it, and all they had to do was pay a small fine. The forests of northern Mongolia became the (very similar) forests of Siberia, and we continued into our third country of the trip.

When you're on a long sleeper train ride, you get to know the others in your carriage, first by voice, then by sight. I first spoke to some of the others when I caused a minor incident by unplugging somebody's charging iPad so I could snag one of the precious electrical outlets on the train. But of course it was fine, and now that the silence was broken we said hello when we passed in the hall. I talked to one couple and shared my same story about where I had come from and where I was going, finding it a bit new and different to deliver this speech in English to other native speakers. They were very unsatisfied with their trip so far, which told me immediately that they were used to the kind of travel pampering rarely experienced by young people like me.

Later, though, I chanced upon a woman, Allison, staring out the window in a kind of rapture. She was in Siberia and amazed by this fact. In talking to her it became clear that she was quite different from the other couple I talked to. She looked perfectly ordinary, like someone you'd see in a grocery store, and so as she revealed how much of a lifetime adventurer she was I was amazed. She told me about selling cigarettes on the black market in Burma in the 1980s, and then another woman who had done the same thing joined in with her own stories. Allison's husband walked by and was dragged in with the introduction "Pete got stabbed in Indonesia," which was about the point that I realized my own adventures were terribly boring. I stood and listened for half an hour to tales from the 1970s and 80s about bribing border guards in Pakistan, motorcycling to Iran, meeting Thai drug kingpins, refusing to smuggle hashish in Morocco, and more. I had started the train ride thinking of myself as the Paul Theroux figure next to the more ordinary travelers (this is a feature of his books), but as it happened I was very small potatoes indeed.

The hours kept flying by, and in no time at all it was early morning in Irkutsk. We shook hands, said goodbye, chose a direction, and walked off again.

Pictured: Siberia.

A snippet of Mongolia, part 2

Also inside the park was a Buddhist temple complex. We paid an inflated foreigner price ($2 instead of $1) and started our climb up the mountain. It should really go without saying that the temple was on a mountain. The path was clear and easy, and marked by scores of Buddhist teachings on signs along the way. Roughly halfway up there were prayer wheels and then additional signs started, 150 thoughts on the nature of enlightenment and how to reach it. This path led to a stairway with 8 black steps and 108 white steps (the symbolism of which I've forgotten) leading up to the temple doors. This number was convenient for me as it was the exact number of times that a nearby sign told me to repeat a mantra. At the top I marveled at the view and meditated in the temple while a monk was teaching a group of children, easily ignoring the tourists. After the pensive walk it was very easy to meditate, and I found the whole experience very fulfilling.

Our guide took us to a river for our next stop, the Terelj where the park takes its name. It reminded me strongly of scenery in northern California, with a wide, cold river cutting through stony banks and forests. There weren't too many tourists around -hardly any people at all, actually- and so Auberon and I walked around as our guide kept up behind us. One thing that sadly stuck out was the trash. Heaps and heaps of it, some clearly measuring years' worth and others hinting at a picnic recently concluded. It didn't seem like anyone was coming by to straighten up anytime soon. On the bright side, the water remained very clear and the trash seemed confined to the banks, several yards away from the river's edge. We took pictures and soon walked off.

On the way back we stopped at a large gravel mound with a sort of pole erected on top, draped with scraps of blue cloth. This was a traditional Mongolian shrine, predating Buddhism in the country. It was used by shamans to communicate with the heavens, and in their absence, ordinary people could make contributions. The taller the rock pile the better, so we found some spare stones along the road and walked slowly around the shrine three times in order to bring good fortune on our travels. As we left we heard another car honk three times - the symbol of respect for people too busy to contribute to the shrine.

Back in the city we found a Korean restaurant and reflected on the day after Auberon managed to select a dish that the restaurant wasn't out of. We had little else to see in the city, having discovered through vigorous wandering that it was actually quite small. I wanted to find some more socks, so we resolved to make the next day a shopping day.

Actually it was another wandering day, but we did chance upon a magnificent street market. This was apparently where all the people were. It was a densely packed market the likes of which we hadn't seen even in Vietnam, for it sprawled out on all sides of a dedicated covered area and had hundreds of stalls selling most everything you could imagine. I say most everything because Mongolia was sadly devoid of the easy access to street food that we'd gotten used to over the last month. Only one little kebab stand offered hot food, and nobody was eager to try it. But the market perfectly satisfied that desire for a bit more chaos and unpredictability. I overpaid handsomely for some beads and got a pair of Mongolian socks (they say "Mongol" in traditional script) for a song. I got some red and yellow Chinese socks in China and I have a vague goal to get socks representing each country as I continue. Other than that I'm really not one for souvenirs, though I've been carrying around a wonderful calligraphy scroll I was gifted in Vietnam.

Our train would depart late the following evening, and we were unable to store our bags in the hostel. So we resolved not to walk overmuch the next day, and set out for the national library. After brief confusion about whether we were allowed in, we passed some enormous and beautiful calligraphy and sat down in a silent reading room. Auberon switched between his Kindle and a book on ethics, and I updated my journal and nearly finished a book on Uzbekistan. It was very peaceful and the students took no mind of the out-of-place tourists. After a few hours we found another empty yet tasty restaurant, then after we had overstayed our welcome by some time we again set off in the direction of the train station. There I read every single issue present of the English-language government magazine, and increased my general knowledge of Mongolia by about a thousandfold. Did you know that there are 25,000 Mongolians living in the United States, and slightly more than that in South Korea? How about the fact that the Indonesian government recently removed visa restrictions for Mongolians in order to boost tourism? Or that child labor laws are cracking down on the tradition of using children as jockeys during the Naadam festival races?

When the train arrived I was essentially an expert. We collected our bags, hoped that it was the right train, and climbed on for our ride to the north.

Pictured: two things most people would not expect in Ulaanbaatar.

A snippet of Mongolia, part 1

I had done only the vaguest of research about the border crossing from China to Mongolia. I knew that thanks to a strange immigration law, it was mandatory to cross in a vehicle, and a train crossing didn't work with our timetable. So we decided to go with one of the locals making a killing renting themselves out as drivers for quick border hops. Because we had arrived remarkably early, we were ready to go well before the border opened and thus well before any touts were awake.

Erlian (also Erlianhaote or Erenhot or Ereen depending on how you feel) is a small city but with a bit more life than we expected. At five thirty in the morning people were setting up vegetable stalls, opening shops, dancing in the park, cracking whips in the park (for very loud exercise, I imagine), and erecting a huge sound system and stage for a music festival.

We harangued the earliest tout until he took us to be the first people of the day to cross into Mongolia, then at the border we were given free passage to the nearby town of Zamyn Uud. There we changed money and became aware that there was no cheap bus to the capital and that it was about twelve hours until the train left. This information was provided by a crowd of thirty or forty drivers all begging us to part with a large pile of bills in order to hire them. One highly multilingual woman (surely hired by the drivers) came over and told us in fine English about all the advantages of the car over other modes of transport - we could drink beer, stop for selfies, and listen to the radio. We bargained down to $10 more than the train and got in. As it happened, there was no beer, very few selfies, and the radio was Mongolian NPR.

If asked to guess the most popular car in the harsh climate of Mongolia, the Toyota Prius might never even enter your mind. But this was the vehicle whose middle seat I occupied for six hours to Ulaanbaatar, and the vehicle which filled the streets once we got there. Due to certain import regulations and pricing schemes, it is actually preposterously cheap to import unsold older Priuses from Japan to Mongolia. Although the average salary is very low, workers abroad can send back enough remittances to buy the car outright in a few months.

Another interesting thing about this is that they're all right-hand drive. About a third of non-Prius cars are also right-hand drive. Thus, on the drive-on-the-right roads of Mongolia, our driver tried out both lanes until he found one he liked best or other traffic forced him to change his mind. But on the whole we found Mongolian drivers incredibly polite and deferent, especially in light of six weeks in China and Vietnam.

Our guesthouse was easy enough to find and surprisingly close to the central square. The rest of the people living there seemed to be in various yet constant states of arrival and departure, filling the hall with luggage more often than not. The majority of budget accommodations in the city also offer tours, since practically every tourist wants to go to a park or desert at some point. Our host seemed impossibly busy at all times yet managed to be our guide for a day trip a few days into our stay, which I will detail soon.

The city of Ulaanbaatar gave us kind of a shock. It has much more of a Western feel to it, visible in architecture and advertisement and cars and food and everything - at every turn we were reminded that we were not in China. There was also not very much going on, at least not that we discovered at first. Outside the main avenues, restaurants were empty all day and streets were essentially silent. Tourists stuck out everywhere, perhaps more than we'd ever seen in one place. Even with the low turnout, prices were more expensive than I expected. These things kind of made us pine for the more familiar cities of China.

But then we took a day trip to one of the nearby national parks, and everything was better. I am a miserly person, and on this trip we've been especially tight-fisted, very often sacrificing our comfort for a few extra dollars. So when our host told us the price of the day trip he'd planned, we discussed it at length before agreeing. I'm very glad we went through with it, since he was a wonderful guide and filled the day with things to see and do.

We first went to a museum built under an enormous statue of Genghis Khan (who else), with sparse yet pretty exhibits about the Mongols and those who came before. You could climb out onto the statue a ways, but it was foggy and we couldn't see much. Near the base was a small collection of life size metal cavalry warriors. Our host said that the museum plans to eventually have ten thousand of them, which would just be hilariously oversized and cost a fortune. Apparently there are plans to charge people to put their own likeness on the soldier to help fund it - any takers?

Then we drove into the Gorkhi-Terelj park itself. Gorkhi means "wellspring" in Mongolian, and I suppose the Terelj river has its origin somewhere in the park. The first stop was on a stunning meadow with grazing yaks, shaded by mountains as the sun peeked through the mist. It was phenomenal. I ran from place to place taking photos under the amused looks of the farmers who had undoubtedly seen the same excitement hundreds of times.

Our next stop was Turtle Rock. Months ago as this trip was being planned, Auberon and I read about and saw pictures of this rock in the park that looked like a turtle. It stuck in our minds as the secret true goal of the trip - to travel thousands of miles over months to see a big rock. It was silliness of course but as the big moment drew near the excitement was real. The best thing was that this rock really did look like a turtle, and it was far larger than we thought. Many selfies were taken and we were thoroughly satisfied Right next to the rock was a tiny camp where we gladly parted with $5 to be led around on camelback for a few minutes. Then it was lunchtime, and after that we continued on into the park.

Pictured: Ulaanbaatar from an apartment building roof, Turtle Rock, and camel riders.

Footnote: the Mongolian name for Turtle Rock actually translates to Frog Rock, but everyone agrees that this is ridiculous.

The land and language of many

My China travel posts were more in-depth than my Vietnam ones, so I don't think a full China retrospective is very necessary. Suffice it to say that Auberon and I both really enjoyed our time there. We both had expectations about what "China" would be like (he had visited 9 years ago on a very organized tour bus trip) and some were true and some were not. For one, it's a lot cleaner and more orderly than I thought it would be. I think Westerners have a tendency to stereotype mainland China outside the powerhouse cities as poor and dirty, and perhaps the people as rude or uneducated. Nothing could be further from our experience. Everywhere we were greeted with gleaming streets and amazing hospitality, and I've already written about the excellent people we met. Americans can easily apply and obtain a ten year multiple entry visa now, and I'm glad I have mine.

Now for the language. People say that Chinese is very hard. It is. But it's not impossible. I started my self study of the language in January 2015, and then a year later started classes at the intermediate level in college. The classes were immensely helpful and I worked hard to catch up to my classmates, focusing really on pronunciation. When I finished classes I didn't really self study much during the short break before travel, instead cranking up the study of Russian and Vietnamese.

Arriving in China, I initially felt way out of my depth. I could communicate much easier than in Vietnam, but my knowledge of the written language was limited to the most common characters in the textbook dialogues. But there's an interesting thing I've learned about immersion in country. Dear reader, if you've ever studied a foreign language, try to think of a few words: Wet floor, to pull, caution, garage, repair, exit, center. A strange list, but these are the type of words that you see every day, a dozen times or more, when walking around a city. They're not really what the beginner learns in a phrasebook or classes, but instead what is so common to the native speaker that it blends into the background. Thus as a language minded tourist, I noticed this repetition and then noticed myself acquiring the words without ever studying them.

Of course I studied too. I got the excellent Chinese learner's dictionary app called Pleco, and filled several pages in my tiny notebook with characters and pronunciations. Forcing myself to try and read Chinese around me day after day got me used to it, and (though it took me longer than I expected) I eventually became relatively literate in terms of signs and menus.

Speaking was interesting. Once I came to Chengdu I really started using a lot more Mandarin* throughout the day, and it came more naturally by and by. Every day I used Mandarin to buy food, ask directions, use public transport, and chat. I rarely asked whether someone could speak English, and in any case the answer was usually no. The locals loved it, praising me for using the simplest of words and always being generally patient while I spoke.

I'm still not fully satisfied with my conversation performance, because I quickly grind to a halt when I'm not sure of a word or I mishear something. I was also surprised that I got frustrated and disheartened (and tired!) when I couldn't keep up, I guess because I felt a certain pressure to be able to say more than the basics.

But the constant practice did have an effect. At the end of my last Chinese class we made a video, and I showed it to my Chengdu hosts for a laugh. Laugh they did, but they also said that my Chinese had improved since the video - even after the classes stopped and I hardly thought about Chinese until I arrived. Language learning takes time, and skills like speaking and listening settle into muscle memory in a process that can't really be rushed. Consistent, regular practice is the best path to good results.

Pictured: A sign in Xi'an advertising milk of all things.

*I use the words Chinese and Mandarin interchangeably here, though some people make a distinction. Mandarin refers to the standard spoken language of China, based on the Beijing and northeast accent, used on TV and in school and understood by everyone. The written language is Mandarin save for some special usages too detailed to write about here, though I could fill hours on the subject. I, like all university students outside of special programs, studied Mandarin.
Though there is a common language, there are also innumerable dialects and local varieties. They all fall under the broad banner of Chinese, though most of them are mutually unintelligible. Therefore on the train from Chengdu to Xi'an, I sat next to a woman from Beijing who told me in Mandarin that she couldn't understand the man across from us at all when he spoke Chengdu dialect to his friends. He overheard and began to speak with us in Mandarin.
Or a specific example: on a Hohhot bus, a woman was asked a question and replied meidei, which I had learned was Sichuan dialect for I don't have any. Her questioner was confused until she repeated the answer in Mandarin: meiyou.
The concept of so many different local languages is fascinating to me, especially how different ones get used in different social contexts. Most Chinese people can speak two or three varieties of Chinese, and more if they've spent time living in different cities. You can see why this country would appeal to me.

Warmly welcomed in Hohhot

We left Xi'an late at night but planned to arrive in Hohhot at a leisurely late morning hour. The railway had different plans, and we ended up stopped instead for five hours on some lonely tracks. Eventually it was revealed that passengers would receive a tiny refund and would be on their own for additional transport. Fortunately a woman nearby translated the announcements into more understandable Mandarin for me, and accompanied us in a taxi to the city bus station. There we greatly annoyed a woman asking for donations by not giving her money - making perhaps our only enemy in China. But she got off the bus and we got on the road to Hohhot, arriving slightly before sundown. Accustomed to walking, it was a wonderful surprise to see that we were about a minute from our hotel, itself right across the street from the train station.

The next morning we wrote down some cool looking sights nearby and asked the front desk about how to get there. In an interesting twist on a common theme, the porter decided I probably couldn't understand his spoken directions and so instead presented them to me in handwritten Chinese characters. This was in fact much harder than understanding him directly, but I determined that there was no bus to the meadow, the ancient fortress was six hours away, and bus 2 went directly to the mountain. We went to the mountain.

Eventually. 大青山 (Da Qing Shan) turned out to be the name of both the mountain and a safari park, the latter of which was the destination for bus 2. We didn't realize it was a zoo until we had already entered, and just after entering we had look-at-the-westerner selfies taken with three or four families. So we decided to just go with it. I talked to a young Chinese couple who turned out to also be looking for the mountain, and thus we felt a bit less foolish for wandering into a zoo. Actually, it was my second time this trip wandering into a zoo, the first being in Hanoi on a long walk looking for noodles.

The park was nearly deserted, at least as close as any tourist attraction can be in China. The weather was very pleasant after the hot days of Xi'an, with some warm sun occasionally peeking past the clouds. So we spent an hour or so strolling from monkey house to bird cages to yak enclosure. I'm afraid I don't have any tales of wacky Chinese zoo antics, just animals and people doing their thing.

We met up on the other side of the yaks with the other potential mountaineers, and they had new information directing us to another area about half a mile down the road. There we found another large park with some sort of traditional Mongolian building at the far end. Auberon and I made a beeline to it and saw that there was some sort of car show set up. We had seen dozens of rally cars already, with maps and city names on the rear windows. Could this be a race related event?

As usual we walked straight up to the staff booth to find out. Unusually, we heard a voice call out to us in perfect English, "Hey guys, what are you doing?" One of the staff came up to us and let us know that the area was off limits to guests. But she was interested in our story, and as more details emerged about who we were, where we had come from, and where were going, she became more and more excited. She offered to drive us to the mountain personally (for we were still far away) as an excuse to get away from work and to hear more about us. It turned out that she, at 21, was running a media company and coordinating the models for this upcoming Audi exhibition. She had studied in Canada for six years and had only recently returned, shocking us at just how fast she was growing this business. We arrived at the mountain in twenty minutes or so and were told to call for a pickup later. Shaking our heads at our good fortune, we started up the ascent.

I'm going with the local use of the word 'mountain' but it really wasn't that big. More of a peak. The Chinese had thoughtfully built wooden steps into the side to help us along, and in no time at all we arrived at the summit. It was gorgeous and much cooler than the walk had been. From the top the buildings of Hohhot were clearly visible, as were some smaller settlements receding into the distant green hills. We took many pictures and then turned down again, using a second path that took us past some pagodas and cairns adorned with Tibetan prayer flags.

Grace, our new friend, returned soon and took us into the city. Continuing our stroke of luck, it happened to be her mom's birthday and we were invited to a hot pot dinner. This was different from the hot pot we'd had in Chengdu, with more peanuts and less spicy oil. It was still excellent and with Grace as interpreter we talked about China, America, and the world until we were all full. Afterward we saw the very closed Buddhist temple complex and took part in one of the constant Chinese choreographed dances organized by women in parks. It was a wonderful day made possible only by the lovely hospitality of Grace and her family.

Since our train left at 10 the next night, we left our bags with the endlessly patient receptionist and set out again. Grace mentioned the city's famous mosques (there is a large Muslim community with many restaurants sporting the halal sign) and our general goal was to find some of these. Find them we did, in and around a street market with a wonderfully different feel than ones we'd seen before. There was a service going on, so we didn't enter or stay very long. The architecture of the area combined the mosaics I associate with Iran and the now-familiar flared and tiled Chinese roofs. Also of note was the way the Arabic script was fit into the Chinese design, broken up like characters and stacked vertically. I got some fried things at the market that were essentially donut holes, and we ate them as we continued on.

We then came to a shopping center and found a bookstore after winding through the first few stories. It was surprisingly expansive and we found a few Chinese editions of familiar children's books. I got a Tintin story to give myself something to carry and a reminder to keep up my Chinese after leaving the country. Soon we found some small snack shop and sat, a bit wiped out from the days of wandering.

But there was another surprise in store. We picked a building at random and, as we often do, headed for the panoramic views at the top. In the elevator there was a short-haired young woman who clearly had places to be, as evidenced by the effort she expended in pressing the Door Close button after every passenger got in. Once on the top floor we looked for a window but wandered accidentally into a section of the floor that was being remodeled. A worker looked up, decided for some reason that we probably belonged, and led us to an office door where he knocked and left us. Forging ahead, I asked if we could take a picture out the window. To our delight, the managers were perfectly willing to let us in the office (also being remodeled) and happily posed with us and the other employees that had begun to file in. Soon we were drinking fancy tea, chatting about our trip, and looking out over the city, marveling once more at our good fortune while traveling.

The managers recommended a nice Mongolian restaurant, visible from the window. It turned out to be a bit too popular for its own good - they had run out of lamb, perhaps the staple dish of Inner Mongolian cuisine. We had camel instead, served in a pita-like arrangement that in Outer Mongolia is called khooshoor. For dessert, an excellent cheese pastry upon which we actually melted more cheese, reveling in the return to food for people who are not lactose intolerant.

The evening was drawing to a close. On our way back to the hotel we heard nearby fireworks, and though we rushed to see them we caught only a glimpse behind some buildings. Auberon waxed poetic on the theme: on our first night in Yangshuo some students had set off fireworks that burst directly next to our balcony. Those marked the beginning of our trip to China, a huge explosion of new experiences. Now the fireworks were further away as we left China, showing that there is always more to see, and that traveling the way we do means that there will always be things we can't fit in.

Our bags collected, we walked to the station and settled into our bunks for the overnight ride to the border, where we'd go through customs and carry on into Mongolia.

Pictured: The summit of Da Qing Shan, the mosque complex, and the view from the manager's office.