Peking

On October 6th, we landed in Beijing late in the evening and stayed in the same hostel as four months ago. I already described the room in the last entry =)

After we had recovered from the flight and slept for about 13 hours, we took the subway into the city. Once you get the hang of it (and find an English subway map), it's just as easy as any European city. The only difference is that there are security checks at every station, just like at the airport. While I had to give up my deodorant right away, Jonas' matches have still not been discovered.

In the city, we visited the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Here, too, there were security checks everywhere, as we later found out at all major tourist attractions. The size and dimensions of the entire complex were impressive. As were the thousands of Chinese people with their cell phones and selfie sticks. Surprisingly, there are very few "non-Asians" here.

Overall, Beijing is a beautiful, cozy city and I felt very safe here all the time. However, the Chinese themselves are a people of their own... You can't be squeamish when someone spits on the street in front of you, coughs in your neck, or someone vomits next to a trash can. The smell is also unique. A mixture of exhaust fumes, fried noodles, drains, spices, and sewage... I even doubt to this day that the Chinese even know the sun and the blue sky.

On our last evening in Beijing, we really wanted to eat a proper Peking duck. Jonas had chosen a good restaurant and we were really looking forward to it. However, it turned out to be much more difficult than expected to place our order with the nice Chinese lady. She didn't understand a word of English, and I used my "phrasebook" for the first time. Thank you again, girls =) We were never sure if she really understood what we wanted, finally gave up, and let ourselves be surprised. We ordered two waters and got two beers!! =) There was also vegetables, rice, cucumber, and something like cut chives and dough pancakes with the huge duck. In retrospect, it turned out that we did eat a proper Peking duck, which was really delicious and incredibly tender.

If you wondered why we haven't heard from us for so long, the Chinese block all websites. We were aware that Facebook and Google wouldn't work, but we didn't realize that even WhatsApp has now been blocked (it still worked four months ago). We lived for 10 days without contact with the outside world (writing emails was the only way to communicate)... I couldn't even open our blog page =(

But these are all valuable experiences!

Greetings from us to everyone!!!