Transportation

In The Metro Never To Return

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Our homestay in Moscow is in the “burbs.” Tanya works for a French men’s underwear company and later admits that her son is the wholesaler and she works for him under the table. When Bob says he wants her to bring home a red French thirty dollar thong for him, she giggles but doesn’t believe him.

She is lively and we love to make her laugh by telling her how good a cook she is…fried potatoes, boiled eggs, sauted chicken, toast and cucumber and tomato salad for breakfast! She says she taught herself English three years ago using a book and audio tapes. Her apartment is brand new IKEA and spotless…when she tells us her mother was German I said to Bob “I knew it!” We sleep in her comfortable living room on a couch made out into a bed…Liam, a 24 year old, from Vancouver B.C., traveling a similar route as we are sleeps in her bedroom and Tanya sleeps on a mat on the floor in the tiny kitchen–her guests supplant or probably exceed her income.

Our first foray into downtown Moscow is quite an adventure…we can’t read the Cyrillic words on the walls of the underground so we look closely at the first three letters…and even then ended up nowhere near where we wanted to go…so reasoning that if we just get back on the train going the way we came from we could start out again where we started out before. But of course there was no way this was going to work in Moscow. What started out to be a 30 minute trip ended up being 2 hours. All we could think of the whole time in the underground was the old MTA song by the Kingston Trio:

Well, let me tell you of the story of a man named [Bobby}
On a tragic and fateful day.
He put ten roubles in his pocket, took his family,
Went to ride on the M. T. A.

Well, did he ever return?
No, he never returned and his fate is still unknown.
(What a pity! Poor ole [Bobby.} Shame and scandal. He may ride forever. Just like Lenin and Trotsky.
He may ride forever ‘neath the streets of Moscow.
He [could have been] the man who never returned…

Ancestral Village In Poland

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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We take local electric trains three hours north from Warsaw to Ostroda where we book into the Park Hotel on a lovely lake that caters to German-speaking tourists many of whom are coming to the former East Prussia to revisit lost homes and distant relatives. In fact while there we get a glimpse of a crackly BBC news report of an organization of older Germans who are demanding recompense from Russia for lost land and money during WWII…comparing themselves to the victims of the holocaust! President Shroeder, of course, refuses to intervene on their behalf, reminding them that the whole mess was due to their own country in the first place.

We luck out and find a pretty English speaking taxi driver in the line-up outside the Ostroda train station who agrees to take us the next day on a 20 minute drive (with liberal European speed limits amounting to no limits at all) to my ancestral village of Szczepankowo. And by village I mean village. Besides three or four homes with cobble stone lanes leading away from the main road, there is one tiny market. The village and the surrounding lush farmland looks like an 18th century pastoral painting.

While I walk around taking pictures of cobbles and pigs, the driver notices what appears to be the remains of a compound-like rock wall in the trees and overgrown grass across from the market. When she asks the old man in the market who lived there the response came: “Oh a rich man used to live there a long time ago.” Since my great grandparents sold their land in order to bring their 10 children to America and since anyone in 1890 who owned land would have been considered rich, and since my ancestors lived in this village as far back as the early 1700’s, I’d like to think I found their home…even if it wasn’t.

Five minutes away is Pratnica, a small town where we visited the church that my ancestors attended. Two priests, one 82 years old and a younger one originally from Gdansk, came to the door to the well-maintained quite large rectory and welcomed us in…offering candy and a viewing of copies of church records since the original were sent to Germany during the war )and since have been photographed by the LDS Library).

They let us into the church, which burned down twice in the last century…with one huge original rock cemented in near the foundation. But a rector’s chair was dated 1602 and we are told that a large hollowed out stone standing just inside the front doors is the original baptismal font. A Polish descendent like myself from Wisconsin donated nice new church pews in the 1970’s. The older priest remembers that one old Mroczynski lived nearby but has been dead several years. We drive to the home nearest his old one to visit an old woman who might remember him but there is a big lock on the door and no one is at home except the chickens and ducks.

Before leaving Pratnica, we stop for a bowl of soup at noon and our driver is happy to see Duck Blood Soup on the menu-a dish my grandparents always reserved for special occasions. We order our favorite made with rich dark smoky mushrooms from the forest.

On the way back to Ostroda our driver, in her early 30’s with two young daughters, tells us that there are few jobs in Poland and that her husband went to Ireland two years ago for work. She visited once, she says, but “things were not the same anymore so we must get a divorce.” (Skeptical Bob thinks there is more to the story.) But by this time we have made friends and she invites us to her parent’s home where she lives with her two girls on the top story. Her mother is in the hospital getting radiation and chemotherapy for breast cancer that she says is very common in Eastern Poland…due, everyone here thinks, to the Chernobl nuclear disaster in Russia about 25 years ago. We pick plums and apples from their backyard orchard. On the way out her father offers us Polish beer but we have already had coffee and cake in his daughter’s apartment and I feel bad turning him down.

My great grandmother was born in Radom…another visit to Poland some day.

Before leaving Poland we tank up one last time on pierogis..little savory pockets of noodle dough stuffed with mushrooms or other vegetables, meat or cottage cheese or sweet ones filled with blueberries or other fruit…just like my grandmother used to make at home. Oh, and I buy a CD that is popular in Poland right now…romantic songs sung by a thrilling Polish Zucchero. “I like very much,” says the young little blond in the music store. Read More

Krakow Poland

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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We are out of the unusually hot and humid Czech Republic. After an all night train we are in cool Krakow Poland. We accept an offer by a young English speaking man at the train depot and end up in a hostel…six flight up…”old building…no lift!”

The historic centre of Cracow, the former capital of Poland, is situated at the foot of the Royal Wawel Castle. The 13th-century merchants’ town has Europe’s largest market square and numerous historical houses, palaces and churches with their magnificent interiors. Further evidence of the town’s fascinating history is provided by the remnants of the 14th-century fortifications and the medieval site of Kazimierz with its ancient synagogues in the southern part of town, Jagellonian University and the Gothic cathedral where the kings of Poland were buried. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The first night out we look for Polish food and find ourselves in a Hungarian restaurant instead!

The next night we move to a nice little Jewish neighborhood-Kamimierz-with little cafes and jazz music up and down the street…and Internet hot spots to boot! There are fewer than 150 Jews in Krakow now. Most of the hotels in this neighborhood are full of young people from Israel visiting Auschwitz and Bzerzenka…surrounded by big burly bodyguards…

By the way In Poland, if you’re invited to dinner at someone’s house and you’ve had enough to eat, DO NOT clear your plate! This means that you want more, and your hosts will really get their feelings hurt if you refuse another helping. Same for drinking–always leave a little bit in the glass.

Ripped Off In Prague

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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My medications, that had gotten held up in Custums in Frankfurt, finally arrived in Berlin via fedex. We had planned on taking the train through Austria and Hungary but now we are out of time. We arrived in Prague on the 11th after a scenic train ride along the Labe River and through Dresdon. We had earlier also planned a stop in this town that was totally obliterated during WWII but we kept pushing on in order to make good our train reservations to St. Petersburg Russia.

Riding a hot crowded subway in Prague someone pushes against me from behind…pushes against my backpack…an underground train full of jostling young men…but at our stop the train doors won’t open…I am pushed again as unfamiliar sweaty hands and arms reach around me from behind and tug and pull at the jammed door…I am pushed again and again and finally squeeze through the barely open doors into the cool air of the underground…but something is wrong…I drop my backpack to the ground to find it open and my Mac laptop gone!

My best stuff has been ripped off and I am suddenly bereft…jangled…this woman on whose bathroom wall hangs a poster from the 60’s mandating us all to “Sell All Thou Hast and Buy a Flower!” The next 10 days are a frantic maze of memories of telephones that won’t respond to those free US 800 numbers, emails to banks heading off misused financial information, insurance companies..the American Express. After three days of looking we finally find a Mac wholesaler who agrees to sell us another laptop…but the Visa computers are down…so we return the next day with an American Express card.

Tip: Keep your backpack on the front of you instead of on your back.

U-2 in Berlin

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Coming up out of the U-2 line of the Zoo railway station and thinking of course of the Irish rock band we enter now-rich, Western, happening Berlin. We pore over maps trying to get our bearings once again. Ah, the pension is close…we check in and nervously wait for a friend to fedex 6 months worth of forgotten pharmaceuticals…missing Austria and Hungary for lack of time.

While Bob explores on his own, I savor raw oysters and beer on the 6th floor of the amazing Ka-De-Wa Department store, the largest of it’s kind in all Europe. I make friends with 3 generations of a German family sitting next to me…the smooth-faced 14 year old grandson will soon be off to a Chicago suburb on a rotary exchange program…his mother is worried…the grandmother is too…walking slowly away she waves goodbye and looks back at me twice with a smile…the second time nodding her head…in assent of our brief friendship I think.The grandfather gives me his business card. We know we will never see each other again.

Christmas In Patagonia 2003

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Bob begins his Patagonia leg…making his way through through Baliroche and Califate Argentina. He visited the Los Glaciares National Park by bus, which is an area of exceptional natural beauty, with rugged, towering mountains and numerous glacial lakes, including Lake Argentino, which is 160 km long. At its farthest end, three glaciers meet to dump their effluvia into the milky grey glacial water, launching massive igloo icebergs into the lake with thunderous splashes. Then he moved on through the Pampas to Puerto Montt, Chile.

The Magellanic “Jackass” penguins swimming out of the sea to mate were fascinating, he said.

It was cold, visibility was zero and tours into the Andes were expensive so Bob elected to take a lonely boat trip through the Fjords of Tierra del Fuego. He took a short hop down to Punta Arenas, the southernmost tip of Chile, at the strait of Magellan, where he spent Christmas watching it snow through his guesthouse window. Then two days on a boat chugging through the Fjords back up to Puerto Natales. Then flew back to Buenos Aires.

Zhangziajie

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Bob and I said goodbye to Jana who would leave later in the day on a train to Shanghai and then home from Hong Kong. The next day we took a train to Zhangjiajie in Hunan Province.

Zhangjiajie
At the Dragon International Hotel Coffee shop…Little Santas and Christmas trees hanging everywhere…like Cinco de Mayo at home…no one knows what the day really celebrates but it is an excuse for a party…Kenny G on the stereo as usual…Old Lang Syne and Winter Wonderland. Our waitress, Liu Wen Qin, is a smiling friendly 19 year old…”excuse me, can I ask you some questions?”…absolutely we say…where are you from…where is your tour group…you are by yourselves? And we quickly become friends. She is from Hubei Province near Yichang…has two sisters one of whom she lives with in a room costing 120 yuan a month ($15) with the husband of her sister and five year old child…the child having a heart condition, she said. When she gets off work at 11am she leads us to the bus that will take us to Zhangjiajie Village in the Wulingjuan Scenic Park about 40 minutes away…by ourselves we never would have found the bus, one of many that all look alike.

Zhangjiajie Village

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The Park is truly stunning with craggy cliffs and columns rising out of sub-tropical growth…the winter fog sitting low in the narrow canyons-a place that would be wonderful for hiking in the summer. Lonely Planet said the best hotel in the village was Minzu Shanzhuang, a thatched, Tujia-run (a Chinese minority group) hotel…but this was winter and it had snowed the night before. We buried ourselves under blankets and hot water bottles because the heater was lousy…and quit altogether during the night…

Back in Zhangjiajie City early the next morning we stumbled off the bus to the welcome-warm smile of Liu Wen Qin at the Dragon International Hotel Coffee Shop…glad for a place to park ourselves for the day until the train for Guangzhou at 6pm. We walked the streets awhile…a bookstore…Diary of Johann D. Rockefeller sitting right next to a book about Mao Tse Tung….in the window Bill Gates” Theories of Management and “How To Win Friends And Influence People.”

Since it was winter and hardly anyone was in the hotel, we spent most of the afternoon speaking English with Liu Wen Qin…Bob teasing her and loving it when, laughing delightedly, she finally catches on. He’s good at flirting with Asian girls 😉 When it was time to leave we paid the bill and by the time we had our backpacks on she had disappeared…the rumor that the Chinese hate to say goodbye apparently true…my throat getting a catch as I write this.

We settled in for what Lonely Planet said was a 24 hour train ride south back toward Hong Kong in a hard sleeper. But 6am the next morning, after only 12 hrs, we were awakened by the train attendant…we are here, she said…Guangzhou…Guangzhou!

After a night in Hong Kong we flew to the Philippines to warm up on a beach. Then we flew back to Hong Kong to catch our flight back to the States.

This is the end of our first year of travel around the world.

New Years in Chengdu

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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The sleeper train from Kunming to Chengdu takes about 18 hours and passes through more than 200 tunnels. It took 10 years to build the railroad…mostly by political prisoners…and looking through the train windows many of their graves can be seen high on the hillsides.

New Year’s Eve
This is not cold compared to Omaha Nebraska in the winter…but it’s damn cold! We were in a triple in Sam’s Guesthouse…and it was damn cold!

After a good Western dinner at “Granmas,” giving homage to the Western New Year, (Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is on January 28 this year) Jana and I curled up in bed in our comforters and hot water bottles…no we weren’t in our hot water bottles but we would have been if we could have been…

Bob went out in search of the New Year in China and found himself the only reveler 20 minutes before midnight at a “party” in an empty room at the Holiday Inn complete with appetizers and favors. He didn�t stay long, lamenting “It’s hard to party by yourself.” But the evening quickly picked up as he walked into Mao Square to find several thousand Chinese counting down the New Year (in English) while watching the Square clock hanging on the side of a building just to the right of Mao’s head…then giving a short cheer and dispersing unsentimentally 30 seconds afterward…which, hating to say goodbye, is what the Chinese do after any social occasion. Bob was back home…yes, hotels have become home…twenty minutes after midnight.

Ruili China

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Coming down out of the mountains we were happy to see Ruili lying in the green lush valley below…a larger city than I thought…a Chinese/Burma border town with a mix of Han Chinese, minorities and Burmese traders hawking jade and various smoking substances. The streets were not all marked in Pinyin…the communist-designed phonetic romanization of the spelling of Chinese characters…and we spent half the afternoon looking for a hotel listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook before we finally registered at a hotel owned by the Chinese water and electric company, Li Shui, meaning Sweet Water.

That night we found a Burmese street restaurant and ordered five dishes and an alcoholic cherry drink all for a little over two dollars. Back at the hotel, we fell into bed exhausted…but were furiously wakened at various intervals during the night…by prostitutes hoping to find male foreigners!

December 26
The next day after eating breakfast noodles in the market we walked down an ancient cobblestone road to the old part of Riuli called Mengmao where a lovely old man fell into step with us along the way. He took us first to see the elaborate carving of the concrete grave monuments. Huge modular slabs of decorated concrete were being fitted together at one factory after another along the road for single and double graves. Then we walked up the hill to his own grave site where he waved us good-bye.

That night on the way from the Gem Market, five middle school students (about 17 years old) started talking to us as we walked along…hello…where are you from…what is your name…our English names are Zhong (John), Paul, Fantasy, Do Na and Steven…can we help you…listen to us…we have a good idea…all of us ending up eating delicious Burmese fried dumplings and egg cake and exchanging email addresses at a Burmese restaurant. About 10:00pm we were all on our way home when Zhong remembered it was his birthday…

listen to us…we have a good idea…catching up to us and bringing us all back to his parent’s home for cake with light delicious frosting. Then we all struck out for home again…the kids reassuring us that when their parents found out that they had been practicing their English with a couple of foreigners that the parents wouldn’t be angry about the late hour.

“Listen to us…we have a good idea!” So early the next morning the kids picked us up at the hotel and took us in the fog to their school to show us around but the headmaster was already visiting with some Japanese visitors so the guard wouldn’t let us enter. The school was out that day so the students could practice their dances in preparation for the “city party” which would celebrate the tenth year that Ruili had been designated as a “city.”

We asked the kids why the schools always had the names written on them in English…the country had joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) they said and wanted foreigners to come visit the schools.

Then again…listen to us…we have a good idea…as we went to a brand new internet room that was offering free internet on this it’s first day in operation…on the way buying us french fries with chili and a little plastic sack full of Asian Pear relish. We ate Over The Bridge Noodles for lunch…the waitress bringing to the table a tray of thin sliced meats and vegetables and noodles to be “cooked” in a very hot bowl of broth. That afternoon we all took a taxi to the Ruili City Park near the Ruili River (or the Irrawaddy River to the Burmese) where you could see Burma across the river.

While watching hundreds of students acting out various Chinese stories in the dances and music, Jana and I think we must have talked to every young person in Ruili who wanted to practice their English…do you like music…what is your favorite rock band…our favorite band is HOT (High-five Teenagers) from Korea…do you know what high-five means…then I showed them high-five which they liked..then I asked do you know the “brother” handshake like most young people give each other in America but this was met with blank faces and was going nowhere…we like American country-western music they said…we like John Denver and in our last English class we learned about The Carpenters…do you like pets…dogs or cats…do you like sports…we like sand volleyball…and tennis…and PingPong…Paul saying the Chinese weren’t as good at PingPong as they used to be…I like swimming…Jana said she liked running…Fantasy saying oh, that’s too hard…

listen to us…we have a good idea…

But we fled back to our hotel in a tuk-tuk before the afternoon was over…our throats hoarse from talking…and drank a Budweiser with a Chinese label in the warm sun in the backyard patio of the hotel.

The next morning, relieved not to be traveling by bus, we caught a plane to meet Bob in Kunming where we would proceed on to Chengdu Sichuan Province the next day by train. The only event of note on the train was my losing my sixth pair of reading glasses while bending over the squat toilet…hearing the clink and catching a glimpse of tortoise shell as they clinked down the metal pipe to the tracks below.

Big Noses In The Back Again!

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Bus to Dali
As we pulled ourselves up into the luxury express bus we felt that we were living large…we wouldn’t have local color but we would have comfort for a change. Jana, looking at the TV monitor up front says, oh we’ll have a TV. Oh goody I said sarcastically…another Chinese movie. Then Jana said, “Guess where we are sitting?” Where, I asked looking around? The “Big Noses” are in the back again, Jana gasped!!!

But the road was good and we enjoyed the three hour trip through beautiful terraced valleys dotted with Naxi villages with red brick houses and swooping rooflines. Most houses had big double gate/doors with brass handpulls. We noticed some solar panels and saw one satellite dish on top of an official looking building. Listening to Hotel California by the Eagles, we incongruently flew past women walking slowly by the sides of the road carrying heavy loads of wood and brush on their backs.

The bus dropped us off by the highway near Old Dali before it proceeded up the road five miles to the New Town. Horse carts waited to pick up travelers…we asked to be taken to Yu’an Garden or Guesthouse Number 4 as it is called by the locals…a lovely compound with garden, free internet, homey laundry lines and showers and squat toilets down the walkway. The first chilly night we walked down the street to Marley’s Cafe and, huddled next to a charcoal fire with two other tables of western travelers, ate a delicious chicken soup.

We have discovered that after a day of bumpy bus rides, smelly squat toilets, freezing showers, hard beds in unheated guesthouses, frustrating efforts to communicate, hacking and spitting, ever present acidic gas that burns your nostrils and throats from the burning charcoal used for cooking and heat, a bed will do wonders.