China - Shanghai

From Beijing, we took a train to Shanghai. It took us about 12 hours to get there by night train. No problems there, we slept well (just as good as you can sleep with snoring people in your cabin) and everything was clean.



We went to the Bund. The TV tower is 467,9 metres high.



Shanghai is a beautiful city with a lot of extremes - modern buildings and simple houses.



There is this prejudice about Chinese eating all strange kinds of food - snakes, monkeys, even dogs. This proofed to be true, we tried only to eat dishes where we knew the ingredients. Naturally, this was not so easy, for example this we-don't-wanna-know-beef-soup.



I came across a yarn shop (yay!) and the friendly ladies there sold me some yarn though we did not understand a word of each other. Knitters don't need a common language to get along.



Close-up of the TV tower.



Inside the TV tower in the evening, picture taken from the middle bubble.



A nice market, seemed to be from locals for locals.



Another dangerous working place.



We finally found what we were looking for: the clothes market. I got two Chinese costumes tailored, this is my tailor. Hats off! This guy knows what he his doing.



I loved these signs.



The view from our hotel, 19th floor.



Maybe I was so interested in other people working because I was on holiday - here is another pic, showing some men performing a serious cleaning job, I suppose.

China - Beijing

We started our trip in Beijing. It was not too hot, about 26°C. This is the view from our first hotel.



In the first days, everything was stunning: unreadable traffic signs, loads of people and a language that could not be more different from ours.



Most of the Chinese - even in the big cities - don't speak much English. It turned out to be very difficult to organize things that were more complicated than eating or sleeping. Staying in a proper hotel is a very good idea, mainly because the chief manager and the higher educated staff speak better English. We got around by going to the reception, telling them the place we wanted to go, they wrote the name of the place in Chinese on a piece of paper - then we showed this expression to the taxi driver.

This drink is "Green Tea Latte" from Starbucks, tasted really great, though my boyfriend thought of it as disgusting.



A Chinese working site. They are building a lot right now, mostly trying to prepare for the Olympics in 2008. This guy is welding without wearing glasses.



The traffic was not too bad concerning the number of the cars, but the driving manners are the worst. Very aggressive, they have a lot of accidents and drive without regard to pedestrians or cyclists.



We visited the Gate of Heavenly Peace (天安门广场/天安門廣場, Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng). It is the biggest square in the world with a brutal past.



Naturally, we also walked on the Great Wall, a truly terrific experience.



I would have enjoyed it even more without all the tourists. After a while in China , I got used to being among people and noise all the time.



Close-up of the Great Wall:



I have no idea what this sign on the garbage bin on the Great Wall means - probably just a bad translation to English (they have a lot of those, sometimes the meaning is not understandable any more), but I thought that it is still very funny.



I'll post about the other destinations day by day - and there won't be any German report about the holiday!

In dem Fall bitte ich mit dem englischen Bericht Vorlieb zu nehmen, einen deutschen wird es nicht geben. :)

Back from Holiday

In case you were wondering why it was so quiet on my blog the last three weeks - I have been to China! I thought about announcing the reason for the hiatus here, but it does not seem smart to me to post on a public site that my apartment will be vacant for such a long time.

It was exciting to be there, I did a lot of sightseeing and a LOT of shopping. I even managed to find some yarn. Everything is painfully cheap - I would have liked to bring home the whole shop!
Of course, I also bought some silk and got some tailored garments ...

So, without further ado, here is what I bought on my trip:

The bag of wooden needles was 2 Euros (I could not believe it) ...



... this yarn is 100% wool, no idea about yardage (it is all in Chinese) and smells like chemicals.



Beautiful silk:








I'll post a summary of the trip itself and knitting I got done in the meantime on the weekend! I am just too tired and jet-lagged now.


Auf meinem Blog hat sich jetzt ein paar Wochen nichts getan, weil ich in China war! Ja stimmt, ich hab das verschwiegen, aber ich wollte ja nicht jedem sagen dass meine Wohnung drei Wochen lang leer steht :).

Der Urlaub war super, spannend, ich hab mir viele Sehenswürdigkeiten angesehen und VIEL eingekauft. Ich hab sogar Wolle gefunden, das hätte ich ja gar nicht gehofft. Alles mögliche ist dort so billig, da habe ich mir sehr schwer getan zu entscheiden, was ich wohl mitnehmen soll ... am liebsten hätte ich den ganzen Shop eingepackt! Natürlich habe ich auch chinesische Seide gekauft. Und weils so preiswert war, hab ich mir auch zwei chinesische Kleidungsstücke schneidern lassen!

Sobald ich am Wochenende den Jetlag überwunden habe, gibts eine Zusammenfassung der Reise und ein Update meiner Strickwerke.