Yearly Archives: 2008
the messenger
You remember my dear Teacher Xie (Teacher Xie), right? Well, we had always been staying in touch, and a little while ago he had told me he was already on his way back from the West just now, planning to go south before it got too cold during the winter. That called for a reunion […]
walking from Beijing to Bad Nenndorf
I found some good things in Xingxingxia. First I found food, then I found a friend. Abdu was a cargo hygiene inspector and a photography enthusiast, and he immediately understood my wish to leave a graffito on the rocks and helped me come up with a can of spray paint. Yes, that’s right: We got […]
where’s my spray paint?
Of course I didn’t get a good night’s sleep tonight either. The reason: there was a mouse in my room. Mighty mouse, maker of noise, master of the plastic wrapping! – how the hell can an animal this small produce that much SOUND? At first, it seemed to be after my cookies – I woke […]
the goldmine
When I woke up, I was feeling a lot better. I hadn’t gotten that much sleep though, and so I was very much hoping for a better rest tonight. I had heard about an old mine of some sort that lay a day’s worth of walking ahead. I was going to ask for a place […]
“nach Westen gehen?”
I already had a perfect title for the day when I started walking this morning: I was going to call this one “into the great unknown”, because that’s what it really was: finally a walk into the real unknown. Let me explain: you might have noticed that 5 of the 6 major destinations on this […]
the boss with his big butt
This is the last place on this trip that I have been to before. It was in the summer of 2006, and I wanted to get to Dunhuang, but Dunhuang didn’t have a train station of its own at the time. So I had to take a train to here and then get in a […]
into the black mountains
…riding the cake knife again: I was getting pretty weary, counting every milestone next to the road, hoping for the number to get smaller… …until finally, at “0”, I would be in a place to rest my head and take a shower once again. An agonizing countdown, really. Then suddenly two black SUV’s stopped on […]
the quiet toe
Sometimes the highway seems just like a cake knife slicing the desert into two giant pieces. …and here I am, riding the knife, somewhere between those slices: Well not really riding, more like walking. Creeping, ever so slowly. … I had a good lunch of bread & beans: – plus there was this watermelon that […]
no lake at west lake
What a lovely night, spent with an approximate 1 billion million mosquitos that all seemed to have just barely survived from a famine. There I was in my tent – a sirloin steak for them, a large serving of kungpao chicken, their own personal party-size pizza with everything plus extra-cheese: What a horrible night – […]
camel – filterless
So I’m finally on my way again. The way… it was constantly changing its appearances today. After the city there was this: …then the trees went away: …and then everything else seemed to want to leave the scene as well: I was all alone – just me and the way I thought. But then the […]
“please close all the windows!”
I woke up and I couldn’t really see anything outside: Sandstorm, again (little miss sandstorm, the best of all melons). “Is it very bad?” I asked the receptionist, “will I be able to go outside?” “Oh, please don’t worry,” she replied, “it should be alright tomorrow!” Then a lady went through all the rooms reminding […]
how to lose weight
“Hey!” the receptionist had smiled at me when I arrived at the hotel, “looks like you’ve gained some weight there, haven’t you?” Uh… Actually, I am thinking about food almost all the time: Chinese people don’t seem to enjoy canned stuff as much as Germans do; I can’t seem to find anything decent in these […]
regret
There’s a pagoda in the city, it’s called White Horse Pagoda 白马塔: Having spent an entire day doing nothing, we felt that we owed it to ourselves to go on a final sightseeing tour… …because good things are always over too soon. We passed by the ancient city walls: …and we had to find our […]
sightseeing overkill
There were going to be some serious changes during the next couple of days, so we couldn’t just continue walking through the desert. Even though we would have liked to very much. We called up our favorite cab driver again (please please swallow) and devised a route that would take us to some places that […]
cucumbers for sale
It was about time to get rid of the broken Cucumber, so we went looking for some kind of second-hand market. We never made it there though. It was a long way, and we would often stop to make offers and listen to counter offers: We had originally paid 680rmb back in Yumen (Cucumber II), […]
Indiana Jones
My friend Steven from Canada had come to the motherland, so he decided to stop by for a visit: We had a good time checking out the Mogao Grottoes together: I had actually been to this place before in the summer of 2006: What a strange feeling. …I remember back in 2004, when I was […]
please please swallow!
I wanted the GPS-track that I had lost a couple of days ago (the best of all melons), so we took a cab and got it back. It’s a bit silly, I know that, but I just couldn’t stand the thought of my long red line showing a gap of 25km. We rode back to […]
Dunhuang
In the morning, Robozwerg‘s eyes were much better, but the bike was much worse. It seemed like it was just kind of slowly falling apart: The weather had changed for the better though – there was absolutely no wind today. So we joined in our efforts to push the Cucumber and the Caboose together: By […]
if you can’t fight it – jump on it
Yesterday had been a disaster, but little did we know that today was going to be even worse. Robozwerg‘s eyes were a mess: a funny pink color, all swollen up, and constantly watering. The poor dude couldn’t even blink. So we figured he best take some antibiotics and apply an ointment, and then put on […]