Preface: If you read this in Google's Buzz, I do not think the videos show up properly. Check out the actual link (because I think the videos are worth seeing).
Saturday morning: Wake up at 6, eat a quick breakfast, shower and say goodbye to your room. Know that the next time you set foot in it, you will have traversed The Great Wall, The Forbidden City and The Bird's Nest...among other Beijing sites. Catch the bus on time...no problems at the airport...take your first flight since you landed in Korea almost seven months ago.
Land in Beijing an hour and a half later...wonder through immigration...and then customs...but you do not see your friend Siri, whom arrived a half hour earlier. You had arranged to meet him immediately outside of customs. Fuck. You remember that you (and Siri) are supposed to meet your couchsurfing host, Mattia, at 5pm at Andingmen subway stop, Exit A. You feel better. You wait at customs for ten minutes and then decide to ask the information desk for help. Mentioning that your friend is 'lost,' you want an announcement over the PA system. Quickly, you decide to ask the lady to see a list of the planes that arrived from Seoul. Forgetting which flight Siri was on, you realize that all flights around his arrival time are at Terminal 2. You are in Terminal 3 (which, an aside, is incredibly nice). Fuck. You ask how to get there ASAP...you run to the bus, but the bus has just arrived and you are the first one on. You wait. Wait. Wait. Finally, the bus leaves and you hope Siri is still there.
You arrive sprinting through Terminal 2...you find the Arrivals section...but it is for domestic flights. Of course it is. You turn around and sprint to the International section and see the lone red head standing there, bumping to some K-Pop. You punch him in the arm and tell him the story.
Saturday afternoon: You walk out onto Tiananmen Square and are speechlessly awed, remembering the NYTimes article your read in June about the 20th anniversary of 'Tank Man' and how you are standing a few hundred meters from that spot.
After wondering around Tiananmen, you head towards where you are supposed to meet your couchsurfing host. It looks like a decent walk, you decide to walk it. A half hour later, you ask a hotel bellman to tell you where in the world you are. They give you another map and you realize you are maybe halfway and you have fifteen minutes to get there. Fuck. You begin to run through the hutongs. All the way, scaring Chinese people and being scared by their random fireworks (more to come on that). You ask two different Chinese people where you are on a map, they tell you two different things. Trusting your own instincts is the only answer. You run and run and run and eventually, you find the subway stop...and Mattia is there waiting. Only ten minutes late. He takes you back to his place, which is also a hutong.
Big sighs of relief after relaxing and getting to know Mattia for a while. He gives you a key to his room and you are off to meet other CSers for dinner just one subway stop away. You arrive on time. Success, for once something has gone smoothly. Conversations ensue, you meet people from all over. Dinner is delicious but greasy. The feeling comes back. The feeling you get when you realize how you know one language and only one language by heart. A typical feeling for an American. People fluent in at least two languages, perhaps more, amaze you.
The next place is a neat little bar with places to sit that are quiet, that are loud and that have a view (roof). Feeling exhausted, you just cruise through the night...looking forward to sleeping that night. Midnight comes and you find yourself on the roof with everyone else, trying to take in the incredible amount of fireworks.
While this is all happening, you and Siri start conversing with a couple of German girls, Katrin and Lisa, who are also part of the CS group. Katrin is visiting Lisa from Taiwan. They are both studying Chinese. They become your fleeting friends for the weekend; without the Internet, you would probably never hear from them again. The night progresses and you find yourself leaving for the night. After saying goodbyes, Siri and you are running home, literally. The cold is bitter.
Sunday morning: After a cold night, you wake up at 8a.m. with entirely too little sleep. Surprisingly, you feel great. You remember you are a morning person. Siri is not. You wake him not for the next ten minutes. Big plans for today...hiking The Great Wall, but first you must get there. How? Good question. You take the subway and try to meet other foreigners who supposedly are leaving from that subway stop in a pseudo-taxi. You take Exit C from the station as instructed. No one there, of course there is not, why were you expecting it to work. You wonder around into a bus station, realizing the futility of taking a bus to The Great Wall. But an elderly Chinese lady asks where you are going (or so you think that is what she said). You charade The Great Wall and she directs you to the bus. Realizing that this is the most trustworthy information you have, you get on the bus and take it an hour and a half to the end. You get off. Taxi drivers are fighting for your attention, they were pointing at you while you were sitting on the bus. You (mostly Siri) negotiate a price with the driver. After ten minutes of hilarious negotiation, you agree to pay 210yuan. The price includes 85km to The Great Wall--Jianshinling--and 85km back to the bus station from a different section of The Great Wall--Simatai. You pay him at the end. After conversion, this is ~$15 per person for a 170km ride. You learn the driving laws of China on the way to the wall.
The Great Wall is what you expected. Where you are is not exactly the touristy part and you enjoy this. It is truly a hike up and down and down and up a ridge. It is quite peaceful. You maybe see eight people on the whole ~10km hike.
You meet the taxi driver at Simatai...he is happy...you are happy. You pass out on the ride back in both the taxi and the bus.
Sunday evening: Only ~24 hours left in Beijing. You realize you are having a blast.
You meet Katrin and Lisa at a subway stop near Tiananmen called Qianmen. Again you operate on your own schedule, ten minutes late. Maybe Beijing is ten minutes bigger than Seoul. You wonder around looking for a duck roast restaurant that a fellow CSer referred to Siri the night before. Futility ensues, to no one's fault. You hop in a cab and learn how much Chinese Katrin and Lisa know. Impressed. You arrive at a restaurant and eat...it is a bit citchy but delicious. Good conversation ensues and you enjoy the night, playing cards at the bar. You also show the Germans your card trick and Lisa clearly wants to figure it out.
Monday morning: You get up at 9a.m. not quite as refreshed as the previous morning. Your plans are to visit the Bird's Nest and the Forbidden City. You are ambitious. After waking Siri up for a few minutes, you are on your way.
After three transfers, you arrive at the station. Leaving the station, you see the Bird's Nest and the sport nerd inside of you is awoken. Excitement. You wonder to it, avoiding random marching communists and manage to wiggle your way into a student ticket for a 'snow festival' going on inside. You could not care less about the snow festival...you only want to run inside.
The inner sport's nerd spends way too much time at the Bird's Nest and for the third time, you will be late--this time on an epic scale--to a prearranged meeting. You have fifteen minutes to get from the Bird's Nest to the Forbidden City to meet Katrin and Lisa for the final time. You find yourself running again.
Forty-five minutes later, a half-hour late, you are exiting the station. Remembering you never set a meeting-point, you send the red-head to Exit A and leave to explore Exit B and C. No luck. Dissapointed you will not have a chance at a proper good-bye with your German friends, you return to Exit A depressed. As soon as you tell Siri, he sees Lisa meandering her way towards us. You cannot believe how everything has worked out this trip. Happily, you await Katrin's arrival.
Grabbing a quick bite to eat inside The Forbidden City, you plan the day's actions. You explore the city. The temples impress you, not because of their Buddhist influence but because of their genuineness. They have incredibly not been preserved to a near spotless appearance. This is appreciated. You explore the city way too quickly but enjoy it. Fun pictures and fun experiences. Afterwards, you wonder out of the city and up a hill behind it. It has a fantastic view of the city and you begin to feel the weekend closing.
Katrin and Lisa help you get a taxi to a subway station and you say your goodbyes. You reflect on the weekend and are incredibly happy.
The End.
Postscript: The 'you' in the story does not always refer to me, but to Siri and I, as it made the story easier to tell.
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