Big, Big City

I had always wanted to visit Chongqing, one of the largest cities in the world, but not truly ranked as such because it's its own province. It weighs in at almost 32 million people and I figured this would be as good a place as any to visit to try and cure my agoraphobia. For some reason, I'm only agoraphobic in the U.S, and never abroad. It's not that far from Chengdu, where I was staying, so I couldn't justify flying there. I decided to take the bus just for the experience. The bus was a little rough, but it was air conditioned and I got a good seat. A cute girl sat next to me and her friend sat in the row behind us. With her Mao hat on she sort of reminded me of the woman in David Bowie's China Girl video. As I had just been on that highway while traveling to a remote Tibetan community (see photos in earlier post) a few days earlier, I was not real interested in watching the scenery go by out the window again. So I got out my Sudoku book and went to work. My grandmother always told me to never go anywhere without a book and that's some of the best advice I've ever received. My friend in Chengdu, Dove, had given me Dan Brown's Deception Point in exchange for The DaVinci Code. But I was saving that for when I was really jonesing for a book. (I loved it!)

After the girl next to me seemed to run out of things to talk about with her friend behind us, I noticed she turned her attention to my Sudoku book. She'd obviously never seen anything like it before and was soon suggesting to me where to put certain numbers. My Mandarin is just good and bad enough to start a conversation and then frustrate all parties. But Sudoku is all about numbers and I can count well enough in Mandarin. While I knew most of her suggestions were wrong, it was impossible to explain to her how or why. She spoke a little English, but barely more than I did Mandarin. Her name was Candy (sure it was) and she was from Guangzhou, a city I had spent some time in and liked a lot. Correction - she went to school there and was really from Beijing, where I had not yet been, but was going soon.

After a while I just handed her the book and stared out the window as we got to an area I had not yet seen. She methodically went to work on the easier puzzles while I occasionally made suggestions and tried to explain my reasoning. After two hours we were bonafide friends. When we pulled into a rest stop, she told me to stick with her friend and her. They bought me a bottle of water and some food, declining my offer to pay. After that we spent the next few hours trying to tell each other about ourselves. Once we arrived in Chongqing, we exchanged cell phone numbers and agreed to meet up later that night.

I was meeting another friend (actually stranger) I had lined up as a tour guide through China Daily's BBS. Candy and her friend had other plans, and I felt alone and somewhat abandoned when they took off and I was left to fend for myself at the train station. You can't imagine what chaos really is until you've been all alone at a Chinese train station with no idea what to do.

No taxi driver would talk to me. They just didn't have the time (or patience) to deal with a foreigner. After about 15 min. of waiting in the crushing smog, heat and humidity, I finally did get one though. As soon as I knew he was taking me, I told him (in Mandarin) that I was calling my friend. I called my guide, Feng (I was thankful she hadn't taken an Anglicized name), and then handed the phone to the driver. Feng told him where to take me, which was a very nice and cheap hotel (The Square Hotel, around $32 a night) she had lined up for me right downtown. Once I'd gotten settled in the hotel, Feng came to meet me. I was a little surprised by how young she looked and then totally floored when I heard her perfect, accentless English. She was 19 and had gone to high school in Singapore. If you've done some traveling in China's interior, you know English is a rarity there. Feng's English was as good as mine. Unreal.

So we had a fine, dirt cheap dinner in what looked like a mall food court. Gawd, was it good. Chongqing, like Chengdu, is known for its incredibly spicy, Sichuan-style food. It did not disappoint.



Since Feng was only 19 and still lived at home with her folks, she could not stay out late. When she told me this, I was especially thankful I had gotten Candy's phone number. Feng had to go home, but it was only about 8:00pm. So I called Candy up. She said she and her friend (I don't think I ever got her friend's name, but she didn't speak a word of English anyway) were on the riverwalk at a bar. I gave the phone to a taxi driver and she told him where to bring me. What a thrilling ride over the Yangtze to that part of town. The spaghetti-junction of highways was lit by neon lights, each a different color according to the road. It was so cool. And sure enough, I found Candy and her friend sitting outside a bar along the Yangtze, across from which was the Chongqing skyline. It's BIG.



They were playing Chinese (what else?) checkers. I hung with them there for a while and had a few local beers. Then we all decided to go for foot massages. This is one my favorite things to do in China. For a pittance, perhaps $5, you get 60-90 minutes of pure heaven. These places are ubiquitous, but are kind of difficult for unaccompanied foreigners, since the folks who work there are almost all kids from the countryside who don't speak a word of English. In fact, their rural dialects are often unintelligible even for the native city-dwellers. I got a foot massage almost every night I was in China, but only did so once without a Chinese friend to help me out.



The next day Feng and I met up to go bumming around town. I had some shopping to do for friends and family back home. You probably know that in China no price is ever firm. It's all negotiable. And this is where it's so important to be able to count well in Mandarin. Looking like I do, I was an inviting target for all street vendors wanting to get full asking price. However, I had gotten pretty good at haggling and only got ripped off the few times I was too lazy or unwilling to argue or haggle. They say you can feel very proud if you come away paying what a Chinese person would pay. And I think I usually did so. That night, however, I did get taken to the cleaners, relatively speaking.



I had gone on a very long walk to do some exploring. I sort of wanted to get lost, find an Internet cafe to email some folks back home and then find my way back to the hotel. Well, lo and behold, after a few kilometers, I found myself near the train station again, this time around 10:00pm. It was deserted and there were no taxis to be found. Still, I decided to walk to where the cab line usually was, figuring a passing taxi would see the white guy and assume he could charge me double. And I was right.

A motorcycle taxi approached me. Wearing shorts and a golf shirt, I knew this was a dangerous way to go, not to mention the chaotic driving in China's cities. Chaos IS the rule there. But what the hell? Why not? I told the guy the name of my hotel and he motioned for me to hop on, no helmet offered, of course. What a ride! We went through a few traffic circles, a tunnel, over a few potholes, up some hills, around some twisties, pure adrenaline. When we got to my hotel, the fare was exactly twice what I had paid for the taxi there the previous day. But what's $2.50 when you're on vacation? I was too lazy to argue, but did comment that it seemed expensive. The driver said, "Yes, it is", smiled and went on his way.

The next morning it was raining pretty hard and, of course, I had no umbrella. I was jonesing for coffee, and while I never ever touch western food while in China, I draw the line at giving up coffee. Starbucks is just as expensive there as it is here, but I was always happy to pay it.....because coffee in Chinese hotels SUCKS. As I walked out of the hotel and surveyed the rain, a group of old ladies selling umbrellas rushed me. I guess I looked like an easy target. Silly me, I didn't realize they were all selling their own umbrellas and not working together. I could have easily bargained with them and gone with the lowest bidder. But I just went with the first one and got gouged at a whopping $2.

Later that day I met up with Candy and her friend for lunch, which was some of the best hot pot I'd ever had. Hot pot is Chengdu's signature dish and while there I'd had it sometimes for lunch and dinner in the same day. I was curious to see if it was any different in Chongqing. It was better!

Drang nach Osten!

Since Trier is located in the far western corner of Germany, on the border to Luxembourg, we figured we needed to make our way to Poland via Berlin, which was a loooonnngggg and expensive train ride from Trier. Luckily, even before the Internet and insanely high gas prices, German universities had a pretty decent carpool announcement bulletin board system. On the few days Bob and I made it up to the university, we'd scout out the available rides to eastern Germany. I had some really good friends near Halle, whom I wanted to visit on the way to Berlin and Bob had been with me on a visit there eariler in the year. So we really only needed a ride that far. Sure enough, we found a girl who was driving to Gotha on the very day we wanted to leave Trier. I forget the cost, but it was a nominal amount of money. I can't even remember the girl's name, but she was very cool, as I find most folks to be who grew up in the old East Germany. Such folks had little else to look forward to in those days, so they developed quite a sense of humor, the one thing the Communist government could not deny them.

We had a painless ride to the former East Germany and our driver let us off somewhere near Erfurt, where we started hitchiking. If I remember correctly, it took us two rides and a few miles of walking along the train tracks to make it to Naumburg, which was the next semi-major train station on the way to my friends' village. I called and they came to get us. Of course, we were treated to a fine homecooked meal and lots of great beer and conversation. As much as I always enjoy visiting Helmut and Ilse and their extended family, Bob and I wanted to get to Berlin the next day. Helmut and Ilse had relatives in Berlin (whom I knew well too) who were away on vacation and had told Helmut and Ilse to offer us their apartment for a few nights. Now things were starting to shape up. Klaus and Helma lived in a tiny flat in Schoeneweide, a neighborhood in the southeastern corner of the old East Berlin. I had been there before and was pretty sure I could find it again. So Bob and I got on the ratty bus to Halle, hopped the train to Berlin and then the S-Bahn to Berlin-Schoeneweide.

We spent two days in Berlin checking out the few areas I had not yet seen. Bob and I went to Sansoucci and then to Potsdam to see the site of the famous conference at Cecilienhof. I promise I will scan those photos someday and post them here. Anxious to get to Poland, which was less than an hour away by train, the next day we set out for Frankfurt/Oder, the last town in Germany. Once we got there, we were amazed to see a Burger King in the small train station, so far from the rest of Germany's cities. Figuring this might be the last "good" meal we'd get for a while, we decided to indulge in some American junk food before beginning the real adventure. Then we hopped in a taxi for the short ride to the bridge over the Oder River, which is the border. What a thrill it was to walk across that bridge. At the other end lay Slubice, Poland and real adventure.

We immediately changed over about $100, which got us almost more Polish Zloty than we could stuff in our pockets. And then we started walking with our thumbs out. This was a Sunday and, from the looks of it, church had just let out. There were a lot of cars on the road and it didn't take us more than about 10 minutes to get a ride. The driver spoke some German and told us he could take us as far as Poznan, about 150 km. inland. We were thrilled. Of course, he first had to make some stops, which Bob and I didn't mind. We hit a flea market and a roadside food stand. Our driver let us out at a train track crossing and pointed north, telling us to walk that way. Hmmmm. This was not what we'd expected when he said he could take us to Poznan. Our final destination (on this leg of the trip) was Malbork, site of the Marienburg, the world's largest castle. Malbork is in a part of Poland that used to be part of Germany, so we figured it would not be too hard to find German speakers there to help us. Our driver told us the trains in Poland run north, south, east and west and not diagonally at all. He said to get to Malbork, we needed to first get a train to Kutno from Poznan. After a walking along the tracks for less than an hour, we made it to the Poznan train station and quickly got a dirt cheap train to Kutno. Once in Kutno we had to wait a few hours for an overnight train to Malbork. Kutno has almost less than nothing. It was terrible, ratty, dirty, run down and, as with most European towns on a Sunday evening, not much was open. We did get some food in the train station, but it looked a few years behind even still-primative eastern Germany. There was nothing else to do but wait. And so we found an isolated bus stop and stretched out for a nap on the benches, keeping our bags' straps around one arm.

We made it to Malbork early the next morning and found a cheap hotel pretty quickly too. If you've done any traveling in eastern Europe while it was still communist, you know how things there look and smell. This hotel had definitely not been renovated or at all modernized. In fact, in our room was a painting of a Soviet fighter jet shooting down an American one. Ah, true art. But we didn't mind a little old propaganda for a whopping $8 per night. We then set off to find the awesome Marienburg Castle. And it did not disappoint.

I'd first heard about this castle from my dear friend Katrin, whose father was born there and escaped just before the Russians arrived on their drive to Berlin in 1945. In fact, her father had a stone from the castle on their mantlepiece, which I noticed on my first visit to their house years earlier. Once I got a look at a coffee table book on the place, I knew I had to go there.

Check that one off the list and so it was time to head to Warsaw.

What about Bob?

I was recently volunteered by the boss to go to the Republican National Convention this September in Minneapolis. I've never stepped foot in MN, but have heard a lot of great things about it. I also have three buddies there with whom I lived in Germany during my college junior year abroad in 1991-1992. Two of those guys, Mike and Bob, came to visit me in Virginia about 10 years ago, but we haven't kept in touch very well since then. Still, we had a LOT of crazy times together and I'm excited to see them when I go to MN soon.

This got me thinking of some of our adventures together in Germany. What an insane time! When the other Americans arrived in Trier to begin the semester, I had already been living near Cologne for six months, working at Bayer Leverkusen. I hadn't spoken a word of English in that time other than an occasional call home to the folks and once chatting with a few Mormon missionaries on a train. So I was very excited to finally meet up with a bunch of Americans and get back to the college way of life. Ironically, when those guys got to Trier, they were actually interested in speaking German, as it was the first visit for most of them. I had my German down to a native level by then and just wanted to speak English and catch up on how things were in the U.S., which I missed dearly.

Anyway, we all ended up getting stuck in this dormitory together called Martinskloster, which was on the Moselle River and not real close to the university. Sadly, the distance from the dorm to the university was not real conducive to getting up early, walking a mile to the bus stop and then heading up the mountain for morning classes. However, they did have a decent bar on campus once we got there and still decided to blow off class.

Lucky for me, I was not required to get grades. I just had to prove that I was registered for a certain number of classes per semester. The exchange program I was in had a deal with my university to carry over my GPA from my sophmore year to my senior year, while giving me 30 credits for my junior year in Trier. Pretty sweet deal, eh? More on Trier later.

Bob and I became pretty good friends and even managed to meet up during one of the long vacation breaks we had, when everyone usually went their separate ways. I went back to Bayer Leverkusen to earn some money. Luckily, Rush was on tour then and Bob was also a diehard fan. So we agreed to meet up for the show in Cologne-Deutz, a short ride away from where I was staying. Unlike the U.S., which had largely abolished general admission seating for big rock concerts after the deadly Who concert in Cincinnati, Germany still had it. So Bob and I just got there early and went to reserve our spaces. We were there several hours early to queue up and there were no security or even fans anywhere. So we wandered back to the loading area to watch the crew load in Rush's and Primus's equipment. While standing around, we saw a Mercedes wagon pull up. Out of the passenger seat climbed the Professor Neil Peart. What a sight. Our hero was right in front of us. Three other kids were hanging around back there. One called out to Neil, who completely ignored us all and walked briskly into the Sporthalle. What a buzzkill. But we snuck in another entrance a while later and sat undisturbed while watching Rush do their soundcheck in the empty arena. We eventually got kicked out, but that was fine by us. We got back in for the show and were front and second row for most of it. Killer!

That was April of 1992 and we had another three week break from school coming up in June. The Germans have a LOT of holidays on their calendar and that works out especially well for students. Bob and I wanted to go to Poland and Ukraine for this vacation. But at the time, the former Soviet Union was in a lot of disarray and we could not get a straight story on how to get a visa or if we even needed one for Ukraine. What if we had to pass through Belarus on the way in or out? I called my mom and asked her to call the mission at the U.N. in New York. She did and was told we could get a visa for $50 at the border. I wanted to confirm this with one or two more sources before we set out, but we figured we could still have a blast hitchiking to Berlin and then all around Poland. And what a blast it was. Stay tuned.