Beijing

Last week I finally left Germany to attend the BayChina summer university in Qingdao. However, before my classes began I had two days to explore China's capital Beijing. I stayed with three friends in the Happy Dragon Hostel, which is a nice and affordable place. The staff was very helpful and their English was quite good too. For a bed in a four bed dormitory we paid 80 yuan (around 8 Euro). The hostel was quite close to the Dongsi subway station so we could easily go around the city. The first day we visited the forbidden city (palace museum, entrace fee 60 yuan). The whole area was larger than I expected but what impressed me the most were the people. We were surrounded by thousands of Chinese tourists and I think I have never seen that many people in one place before.
For the next day I had booked a tour to the great wall. My hostel offered different packages starting from 180 yuan until 260 yuan. The cheaper tour was to the Badaling wall and included shopping. This part of the wall can also be reached by public transportation which is a lot cheaper than taking a tour. Some friends of mine visited this place and said that it's full of tourists and that it's quite difficult to get a nice picture of the wall without heaps of people. I decided to visit the Mutianyu wall (260 yuan). This part of the great wall is further away from Beijing and there are less tourists. For me it was the right decision. The wall was not too crowded and the landscape in that area was breathtaking.



The next day I had to leave Beijing to catch the train to Qingdao were the summer university will be held. My hostel had booked the ticket for me and I paid 250 yuan for the 5.30 h long journey. The train was new, the seats very comfortable and all trains were on time. The only difficulty was that noone spoke English. But I arrived early at the train station so I had enough time to figure things out. After this experience I can really recommend taking the train in China.