train journey to xi'an

with my time in yining over, it was time to make some distance to cross china in 14 days. i had booked two connecting trains online (very happy it's that easy here). i'd spene more than 40 hours in the train seat, but i won't complain for 60€.

while waiting for a taxi by the street, i met a guy from the hostel who was also going to the train station, in fact he was on the same train as me, so we went together. he spoke a bit of english and was able to guide me through the boarding process, which sounds easy, but in china, taking the train, security-wise, is the same as flying.

they waved me out after x-raying my bag. firstly, one of my powerbanks was too strong, so i had to send it to my hostel via express delivery. it was pretty cheap though, so i'm alright with that. secondly, and this one was much more to my surprise, the officer told me to take "the bullet casing" out of my bag. after triple checking that it wasn't a translation issue, i pulled out my lighter, my pens, anything that resembled a bullet. he didn't want any of those, so i kept digging, and sure enough, pulled out a rusty bullet shell from my souvenir stash. i had completely forgotten i ever had it, i don't even remember where or when i had found it. needless to say, they didn't allow me to ship it to the hostel 😂

anyways, it was super helpful that the guy was there to help me. after going through another security layer, we finally made it to the platform, where the train departed in perfect chinese punctuality.

i came to find that even the chinese railway isn't as good as it's reputation. we arrived almost an hour too late in urumqi and then weren't allowed to board the next train for so long the that it almost left without us. finally, just four minutes before departure, we got on. this time, the train was much older with a lot more chaos inside. i luckily got a window seat though, so no complaints.

i didn't sleep much, instead i watched "gladiator", "where the crowdads sing", "atlas" plus all 7 episodes of "bodkin", listened through 8 entire albums, read a quarter of jane eyre (found it in the hostel in almaty) and ate 3 instant noodle cups. all chinese trains have hot water on board, and pretty much everyone was making good use of it.

one of those meals, i believe it must've been the one on the picture, caused the most excrutiating stomach cramps i've ever had and i had to resort to popping a painkiller after fighting for an hour. almost threw up as well, so i also threw in some fever medication and was back to normal pretty quickly.

i made good use of my window seat as well and got to see a lot of cities up close (and two buddhist monks, dressed in those cool orange robes). on the map, they're only minor stop offs on the way, but then you check the population and it turns out they're actually berlin sized. also, i realized the true scale of china. i don't need to tell you that it's huge, but it's sooooo huge with sooooo much cool nature and things to see. luckily, my fomo is long gone, so i was also quite content with skipping that much land.

the sun came up for second time just as we arrived in xi'an. it was still 5 in the morning and my check-in at 12, so i decided it would be best to just sleep in the train station until then. i was awoken a couple of hours later by a policeman who didn't like that idea as much as me.

i exited the station and found a taxi that took me to the adress i had on my phone. normally, i would've just taken the metro, but as i said, navigation apps aren't worth shit here, so i wouldn't have known where to go. the taxi driver didn't have any clue either, it seems, because he dropped me off in the wrong place, but after half an hour of asking around, i finally found the right door hidden away in a small hallway on the 6th floor of some semi abandoned office building. another one for the books.Meer informatie