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Published: September 10th 2006
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one of the first things that i did when i arrived in xi'an was to organise ticket. at the reception of my hotel they told me that it would be best to go now, if i wanted to have a ticket for the next day. that i knew and went to the train station with the information where i could find some english-speaking clerks. when you can start with your request to the clerk everything has to go fast since there are always waiting a lot of people behind you who get impatient after a while. i was told tht there are no hard sleeper tickets left and so i thought that hard seat can't be so bad and so i took a hard seat ticket. it was pretty cheap.
when i met paul (a british dvd-maniac) for the first time i told him that i had a hard seat ticket and he told me that i would be dead afterwards. he said, that he had done it once for about 8 hours and that it had been hell. i became anxious, the journey from xi'an to chengdu would take 16 hours. still i thought it's worth a try.
before i
got on the train i bought 3 beers, a very whise decision indeed. the train was crowded. the seat people had benches for 2 on the one side and for 3 people on the other side, always 2 and 2 or 3 and 3 would sit opposite each other with a small table in between. in the hallway the people would stand who weren't able to get or could not afford a seat ticket. i had a place on a 2 seats bench at the window. that was good. i was sitting in the direction in which the train drove. that was bad because the window would be open most of the time since it was petty hot inside. my neck was still hurting and i could not turn my head fully without some pain running down my shoulder and up to my head. anyway, after one hour or so we closed the window, so that was ok.
it was also after this first hour that i started my first bee to celebrate that i had already accomplised 1/16 of the journey. after the beer i leaned on the table and fell asleep. i got woken up half an hour
later because we were in a station and the couple opposite to me wanted to open the window to buy some chicken legs, which were offered by women on the platform. for a short moment i also thought about buying one but i was afraid that they would be partly raw.
two hors later i started my second beer and became cheerfull somehow. i was happy that i was sitting here in this train next to all the other chinese people and once more i really could feel that i'm in chena. i mean of course i know all the time that i'm in china but there are these few moments when i suddenly realize it and i'm just happy about it. this alone makes all the effort of such a travel pay off. however after this beer i had again a short nap and 3 hours later i had my last beer. at this moment i still was in good mood. i listened to music sometimes, smoked a lot and had nice moments with other people tricking the conductor since smoking was not allowed there.
it was a hard moment when i realized at 9:30 the next day -
the time we should arrive - that we were late and it was even harder when i realized that we were about 4 hours late. pretty desperate feelings came up in me i must say. but finally i made it, pretty exhausted, but i made it. in the railway station i met paul again. he was being picked up to stay at a hostel and i went with him since he said it was the best hostel he knew in china. it was indeed nice there. a lot of backpackers hanging around there, and a few of them even nice ones. i bought a ticket for two days later to kunming and was just sitting around there the rest of the day.
on the next day i went to the panda breeding station. it was nice there, a lot of pandas i've seen very closely and they seemed to be qute satisfied, just eating and sleeping there. my neck was still hurting pretty badly on this day so afterwards i went to the pharmacy to get something. i got big plasters with what i think was tiger balsam on it. then i went into town to buy a scarf for
the nights. i walked through the whole town, indeed got myself a scarf and enjoyed chengdu. a nice place actually.
the next day my train would leave at 16:00 or so, so i did not really much the whole day. when i arrived at the train station and wanted to get on the platform i was rejected. that was when i realized that my ticket was for the day before. thus i went back to mix, got back half of my ticket fee and organized a new ticket for the next day. i was pissed got myself one of these noodle meals and watched "the manchurian candidate". afterwards i talked with some people and started drinking beer. the rest of the evening i spent on one chair. from time to time people would sit next to me and start talking to me. i would just sit there and give the same answers to the same questions. i remember a nice japanese and a nice french girl.
the next day i got on the train to kunming at 13:00.
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