Our train ride was 6 hour long, and fairly uneventful. Once we got off the train, we decided to take a taxi to our hotel--actually a hostel-a youth hostel. Our taxi driver was a trip. Jorg kept talking to him in Chinese and he would just clamp his mouth shut and shake his head. He would nod yes and no to whatever Jorg would say to him, so he understood, but he couldn't process the fact that a non-Chinese person was speaking to him in Mandarin and that he could answer back in the same language. Finally, when he was near our hostel, he pulled over, pulled out his cell phone, talked into it, and the voice recognition translated what he said. Jorg had already understood what he said as he said it...but they guy said that he didn't know exactly where the hostel was, but that it was somewhere in this block, but that we would have to go look for it ourselves. We could do that-no problem.
We started walking down the block until we figured out the numbering system. Then, we noticed a doorway with a guard/gatekeeper kind of person sitting there. Jorg went and asked him where the address was, and he indicated that we should go into the doorway, down the hall, and take the elevator to the 5th floor. The building itself was a bit grim. Dark, old warn linoleum and carpet on the floor, wall paper that had been peeled and ripped off the walls, some bashed in places on the walls. We went up the 5th floor and at the end of a dark hallway, we saw our Hostel. Once we opened the door, we were greeted with hellos and Ni Haos, and a bunch of college aged kids were sitting around eating dinner. We checked in and were shown our rooms--the girls in a room with 2 beds and Jorg and I with a large bed. The rooms were clean and simple. We didn't know when we booked the room that we would have to share the bathrooms (girls and boys separated, several toilet stalls and 2 showers and 4 sinks), but we had done this before and it was only for one night, so it wasn't a big deal at all. The hostel also had cats-I think 4, but maybe only 3, it was hard to say. After going out to find some water and some snacks, we settled in, took a shower and went to bed. The morning was going to be an early one and we needed to sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment