July 29 - Aug 2, 2010 - Goodbye China, Hello Germany

July 29 was my last day in China.  Frankly I was ready to go by the time my 3.5 months were complete - a lot of the little things that make China China, like the crazy traffic, the spitting, the lack of personal space and the special levels of pollution, dirt, heat and humidity were starting to wear me thin - but I truly had an amazing time there and one day I will be back to see more of what I missed.  I'm almost an expert now!  Germany was to prove the ideal medicine for a mild case of China-itis.  Clean, green, cool, organized, polite, English-speaking, it is almost the complete opposite of China.  10 hours on a comfy Lufthansa jet with food served and movies on demand seemed nothing compared to 11 hours on a bumpy hot bus on China's back roads and before I knew it Chris was greeting me at the airport, a bottle of the local Munich brew in hand of course (and even one for me!)  After a couple of days in Munich and around with Chris kindly putting me up in his flat, including ample sampling of the local beer we headed to Cologne to connect with our flight to Corsica to attempt the famed 180km GR20 trail.  Below are a few pics from the first few days in Germany.  The GR20 deserves its own post.

Of course the first photo of Munich is the inside of a beer hall - the famous Hofbrauhaus in the middle of the city.  We didn't drink there - way too many people, but it was very interesting to take a peek inside and see the tourists and locals alike gathering over a pint or 10.

Beer beer beer!  This is what Germany is all about - good, cheap beer by the crate-load.  (In all fairness this photo is taken in Erlangen, not too far from Munich)

Tourist shot of Munich - just to show that I wasn't drinking the whole time I was there (even though it felt like it)

Enjoying some of Munich's finest in a local bar.  You can tell that the smoking ban in bars and restaurants is working well by the fact that everybody just ignores it.  Das ist Deutchland, as they say.

Cologne cathedral - bloody hell are these Germans serious about religion!  This thing is truly mammoth (I apologise for the crap photo).

July 22-25, 2010 - Great Wall, Huairou, Beijing, China

The 3 days I spent out at the Great Wall were simply amazing.  I'd researched the location in the Huairou district about 2 hours from Beijing and the place was everything that I had hoped.  In the first photo you can see a clear ridgeline in the background.  That's where the wall is - directly above the little village where I stayed, and it loops around in a semi-cricle from the West to East.  The first night I got there it was too late to climb but just seeing it up there - the snaking wall and the watch towers are quite easy to see  when you're there - it was just begging to be climbed.  This part of the wall is officially closed - there are massive signs erected by the local government reminding you, but the local guest houses survive on the visitors to this "closed" section of wall and freely dispense advice.  There's no-one checking on you so for all intents and purposes it's open.  For the most part the wall in this area is completely un-restored but most of the wall is in good condition with the towers partly or mostly intact.  Some of the steeper sections (and some of them are quite ridiculously steep) have collapsed and climbing up or down (especially down) can be a bit exciting.  In 2 hiking days I explored just a couple of sections around the guest house where I stayed and was enthralled the entire time.  Getting the chance to climb on the China's most famous landmark, marveling at the immensity of the project and the physical difficulty of building on such rough terrain and with only a handful of other people around was an experience that I'll remember for a lifetime.

View from the guesthouse at dusk

First up-close view of the wall

Zhangbeilou tower - the first destination and one of the more intact towers

Shrouded into mist - I'm going in there!

The mist moved away and wow!  Pity the weather wasn't a bit clearer for the photos but look at the wall in the background!

It's even steeper than it looks - the remnants of an almost spiral staircase section of the wall over a precipitous drop

Nice steps, but steeeeeeep

One of the semi-intact towers

Another tower (or part of it)

Some of the going was a little tough - note the patch of green in the foreground - its not easy to see the path due to the collapse of this section of the wall

July 21 and 26-28, 2010 - Beijing, China

From Datong I took a fancy (and correspondingly expensive) bus to Beijing to find myself dropped somewhere on the outskirts, and not even at a damned bus terminal at near 11pm....bloody wonderful.  Accommodation in Beijing is far more expensive than the rest of China but everything else seems to cost about the same.  The heat, humidity and pollution seemed to be turned up to max the whole time I was there - 36 or 37 degrees everyday and haze like a brownish greyish fog hanging over the city.  No "blue sky days" for me - and this is the new and improved post-Olympics Beijing...must've been bad before!!  I did most of the major sights - Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Beihai and Houhai lakes/parks, Temple of Heaven, Olympic Park and hutongs.  I really liked the Forbidden City and a couple of hutongs I visited - they both have a lot of (very different) ambiance.  Some of the pics are below.  In between the days spent in Beijing city I spent 3 days out in the Huairou district exploring an un-restored section of the Great Wall.  The wall and the location were amazing and I will write a separate post about it.

The standard shot of me and Mr Mao

This place is BIG

One of the interior rooms - the fuzzy effect is kind of cool I thought

Almost evaporating as fast as she can paint...

Houhai

I'm trying to smile, I swear

Towels drying in a typical hutong street

Hutong birds

Typical delivery, Beijing style

The Mao mausoleum is not one of the more attractive buildings in the world

Watercube from the side

Watercube and Birdsnest all lit up

Was I the only one who didn't know it could do that - the colour changes sweep across the sides, it pulses and changes almost like it's alive

Close up to the Birdsnest

You could say that Beijing has a slight light pollution issue - not much chance for start spotting tonight

July 20, 2010 - Datong, Shanxi, China

From Pingyao to Datong to check out the famous caves...pretty cool really.  Frankly although they are less well-recognised, I liked these caves better than the Mogao caves in Gansu.  For me the 3D carving/sculpture approach in place of paintings was more interesting.