From the North to the South - Day 16 to 17

Bei means north in Chinese, while Nan means south... so that's right, at the moment we are writing to you from Nanjing!
Couldn't write a thing yesterday, since our hostel computers don't like us visiting forbidden pages (like blogger) through proxys... but sneaky as we are, we found a way to get around all the blocks and tadaa! Let's hope this will post...

So, we arrived yesterday morning, after an interesting night on train T65.
At around 9 pm we started heading for Beijing Main Railway station. When we bought the tickets, mid-day, the huge hall inside the train station was almost empty.. now, late in the evening; the place was packed. People sleeping and sitting wherever they found some empty space on the floor. After walking through security and finding the waiting hall we where supposed to be in (It's quite easy as long as you know your train number, which is wirtten on the ticket. Large boards everywhere, and even though they are in Chinese the numbers are not, so first number - waiting hall for soft seat, second number - waiting hall for hard seat. So the second number, hall 6, in our case) we decided to follow everybody else's example, and set up camp on the floor. We figured we'd have to spend quite some time here, but we didn't mind, there where shops to be explored and post cards to be posted. This was, however, not the case, and "boarding" started almost an hour before the train left, so be on time!
With everyone else in the huge waiting hall, we started moving slowly towards our platform (says what platform on the board, but just follow the hoards of people heading the same direction). Turns out we should have ran as some of them did - there was no space to put our rinkkas by the time we got to the train!
We need not worry though, being the only young girls, and definitely the only foreigners, we soon had help, and our rinkkas fit without problem.

We had settled in for a long, boring train ride, and brought with us books and neck-pillows. Well, we never opened our books, since when the train left, at 10.54 pm, the only one speaking any English in our wagon had already forced the Chinese sitting opposite to us to move, and now sat at our table teaching us complicated Chinese card games.
Or well, tried to teach us. Everyone around us in the wagon decided we were lousy at the games we played (I still have no idea what the rules of any of the games we played were? Or the point with the games? As said, complicated.) so the three of us all had a personal coach (and a huge audience) telling us what card we should put next. Ruut's coach gave up, while mine was on fire - ie. I kept winning and Ruut loosing. This should give you a picture of how much WE actually played, mainly we where just card holders, but laughing along with all the Chinese in the vagon (probably laughing at us) was fun.
We then decided it was our turn to teach them some Finnish games, but apparently they were all too simple for their liking.

After spending most of the night speaking to the one guy who spoke English (well except for Sophia, who had her ipod with her and happily slept most of the night) and trying to sleep in awkward positions. (It's not that we found the hardseats that hard, but small, very small...) suddenly 10 hours had passed, and we would soon arrive in Nanjing.

All of us tired and hungry, with aching backs and feet (my feet honestly swelled to double the size... the pain. I guess that's why it's not reccomended to sit 10 hours without getting up once... Au, au, au.) we still felt we had no right to complain. At least we had seats. There were a whole lot of people with only tickets to the train, no seats, and they honestly stood most of the night, except for when someone was kind enough to give them their seat for a while or the whole row squeezed in an extra passanger.

During the whole train ride we were treated like princess's, no one ever wanted our seats, they let us change seats freely to better seats (window seats!) and even keep our feet on their seats... and the princess treatment didn't stop when getting of; they wanted to help carry our stuff (and of course we could not take our rinkkas down from the shelves ourselves...), followed us to the metro, helped us buy metro tickets, and asked if we wanted them to follow us to the hostel, so we could be sure we'd find. After being rather DIY the whole trip, all this kindness and helpfullness was a bit overwhelming, but very welcome considering how tired we were.

Even though the man who helped us with the metro tickets (he and his wife got on a couple stops before Nanjing. He spoke good English and had been in Sweden) thought we should buy better tickets than hard seat tickets, I disagree, since it was truly an experience! Can't imagine another way to get closer to the average Chinese (although don't expect to fit in... we where definitely the objects of amusement in our vagon, with people honestly staring at you everytime you opened your eyes, since the ones without seats really had nothing better to do... but you'd think they'd get tired of staring after 10 hours!).
However, we only recomend hard seat for 10-hour journeys (or over) for masochists (and if you're really hard core you don't even buy a seat ticket, of course) since we didn't feel all too awesome in the end, and sleeping was left at a minimum. (Sleeping was so uncomfortable, and the Chinese were all too eager to talk with us. Yes, even although only one of them could speak English)
But as said, it was truly an unique experience, and we arrived in Nanjing yesterday, at around 10.30 am, happy, although very tired.
//H