Yesterday we started on our “lets eat weird stuff today”, it wasn’t really planned but we met up our Italian friends from the train together with two Swiss girls, a Russian and a German and since they was looking forward to try some Chinese specialties we joined em and I have to say that barbecued octopus is really good, Scorpion tastes like bacon and those beetles, they just taste weird. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera but there will be more opportunities for pictures.
After all these starters we decided to go to a real restaurant and we ordered so much food. We came to the restaurant pretty late and just after we ordered our waitress told us that they were closing now but we can of course stay as long as we want but they will close the kitchen and the staff will go home. It felt a bit weird but we were a pretty big group and had a really nice time so we kind a forgot that they were closed. Instead we were reveled in food (Beijing duck is hard to eat with chop sticks, but worth it once you get any into your mouth). A couple of hours later and we decided to move out and then we realize that the whole restaurant is pitch dark except our VIP-room and there is no staff there, well there was one sleeping behind the bar. he looked kind a happy when we decided to leave so he could close down for real and go home but I mean come on, that is service mind!Today we were supposed to go on a guided tour in the forbidden city and the summer palace but because of bad weather (rain, fog and smog) our guide advised us to change it to tomorrow instead. For us that sounded good so instead we walked over to the railway station and tried to by tickets for our next stop, Shanghai. That was not as easy as you could think though, all signs were in Chinese, they only talked Chinese and we were totally lost. Sometimes I do use my brain thought so I ran over to the nearby McDonald’s and used their WIFI again, this time I used google translate, entered the text that I want to buy two tickets to Shanghai with the date and clock and pressed translate to Chinese. I then ran back to the counter and showed my phone for the girl and success, we got our tickets! A neat trip over 13000km which will take around five hours. That means no more slow trans-siberian rail, instead we go for Chinese high speed train!
