Mutton Mania

So this post comes to you direct from Ulan Baatar. Since you probably don't know where that is, or of which country it is the capital, I will simply enlighten you: Mongolia. However, I will pick up the story from where I left off:

I never did find Charlotte in Shanghai, because she had already left for Qingdao, a place I couldn't get a bus ticket for. As it turns out, I was probably lucky since I ended up enjoying Shanghai, and they didn't like Qingdao, aside from the tour of the Tsingtao brewer, the largest in the world. While I was there, I was particularly impressed by the Shanghai Museum, which has an excellent collection of Chinese artifacts of many different time periods, and in a more frighteningly way, the Shanghai City Planning Museum. Essentially, the government is trying to grow a city of 20 million people by another 10+ percent in the coming years, all without explaining what public transportation will carry the already bursting city and the expanding surrounding cities. And of course, because it's a government that doesn't need to act accountably, there is absolutely not one mention of costs in the entire place, or environmental impact. the government just talks about "ecologically sound development" without any evidence or explanation of what that means to them.

Once I got to Beijing - this time a "soft sleeper" train, which was most excellent (they give you soft slippers to take home!), meeting Charlotte worked out beautifully and we went back to her place since it was really early in the morning.
Visiting in Beijing with Charlotte and Michal (her boyfriend) was wonderful, in part because it was their final days so that we went to all their favorite restaurants. Therefore, my time in Beijing was absolute the most delectable culinary experience of my trip: we ate at one amazing restaurant after the other, I was constantly full of wonderful food. It was almost like Thailand, except that the food was far more varied in terms of the types of food we were eating (Japanese, Yunnan, Persian, fish and chips - and that last one made no sense to me at the time or now, since we'll all be back in England soon, just like our Doner yesterday; however, I did enjoy both AND I realize that this use of the semi-colon was wrong). We also saw some cool sites, although I skipped the Great Wall. Firstly, it's not that cool a site to visit on your own, which I would have had to do, and second because I don't think it's going to pick up and leave anytime soon. On the day we went to the Temple of the Clouds, we actually had pretty much the best weather since Charlotte got to Beijing: as a result, we could see all of the skyline as well as the mountain ranges to the West and North, a rare event in a city so smog covered that even blue sky essentially never exists no matter how "clear" meteorologists say the weather is. Also, it's a really cool and important site that no one ever hears about until they get to Beijing, which i find quite strange.
Then, on Monday morning we boarded a train to Ulan Baatar, the first leg of our trans-Mongolian train journey. However close the two cities might look on a map, they are 28 hours apart. Unlike my first trip of that length though, I was in a sleeping car with Charlotte and Michal, plus their enormous amounts of luggage. As a result, we were in pretty tight, but it was a lot more comfortable than the other ride, believe me. However, Mongolian trains are not to be compared to Chinese soft sleepers: those are the best, as i found between Shanghai and Beijing.
The scenery between the two cities is quite amazing. My favorite parts were the Gobi desert, which was just a huge brown sand expanse that was coming in our window as I woke up in the morning and was covering everything with a thin layer of fine sand, as well as the steppes that came to the north thereof, with the wide valleys of green grass, occasional gers/yurts, and plenty of horses as well as some cattle.
The city itself has impressed me. I guess my expectations weren't that high, as I expected an old, dusty city of Soviet housing blocks (like Biysk) but with yurts scattered around. As it turns out, the city is very modern, people are really well dressed for the most part, by which I mean that the clothing styles are more akin to Europe due to the Russian influence here than in other parts of Asia. Basically, they are tasteful. Also, Mongolian women do not get the credit they deserve: I'm on the verge of declaring them the most attractive of the countries I've visited.

ok, I'm being kicked out of the internet cafe, leaving on the train tomorrow, I'll arrive in Moscow in 4 or 5 days, I think. we'll see how it works out with the luggage and us in the compartment.