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Saturday 2004-05-15 - Antakya, Turkey
A thunderous welcome
Today we cross the border to Turkey, where the city of Antakya is our first stop. Crossing the border (where we get our Turkish visa) is no problem but just after we are in, I see dark clouds on the horizon. Indeed, more rain is awaiting us, and soon we’re driving through a big thunderstorm. This one isn’t over quickly however, and when we arrive at our hotel it’s still pouring. We want to go out for lunch and then go to an Internet cafe but think we’ll wait a bit until the rain gets a bit lighter; one look out of the window a few minutes later tells us otherwise: not only is it still pouring, but the street has turned into a river! People pulling up their trousers to wade across the street, a cat making big jumps trying to get home without getting wet (unsuccessfully), bottles, crates and even a chair floating by.
When we finally go out we find a little restaurant for lunch and an Internet cafe on the way there where I am sitting now typing this — struggling with the layout of a Turkish keyboard where the ‘ı’ (i without a dot) is in the place where on our keyboards the i is, with the i somewhere else entirely — listening to the hum of people (this is a large room and it’s busy) and the clatter outside of the rain which has started again.
Saturday 2004-07-10 - Beijing, China
No. 107 isn’t leak-proof
I read somewhere that Beijing’s air is so heavily polluted that one rarely sees a blue sky and Beijing’s children have never seen a starry night. It’s believable: all morning it’s been dark and hazy (although it was much better yesterday — and I now regret not taking a picture of the view from our hotel window then). But when we venture out again after dropping off the morning’s purchases, the sky has become even darker. Our plan is to visit Tiantan: the Temple of Heaven, which I didn’t find yesterday. Just before where we think we should turn right, the sky gets inky; moments later very large drops of rain start to fall.
Together with others we flee to shelter under the overhanging roof of a small restaurant on the corner: No. 107 (I’m not sure whether it has a name or whether that is the name). But the stoop is narrow and the roof doesn’t give much protection: we’re getting wet so we flee inside. The woman who runs the restaurant is calm (as if she’s seen this many times before) and tolerant: she doesn’t come bothering anyone if they want to sit down or eat or drink anything. Carla and I sit down at a table, order a beer, and prepare to watch the fun from our safe vantage point at the window… We soon are reminded of the downpour in Antakya: the road turns into a river, almost knee-deep in places; cyclists suddenly are all wearing rain ponchos (are they always so prepared?), some wading through the water next to their bikes, others managing to cycle through the stream.
Crack! That was a direct hit of lightning nearby — the Friendship Hospital a bit back down the road still has power, but all around it’s suddenly very dark. The wind now becomes stormy, and across the street captures a huge parasol with a heavy foot and drops it in the middle of the street.
Splat! The roof of No. 107 starts to leak — just over our table. We move over to the next one with our beer. Puddles start to form on the floor. Splat! It’s not just water coming down any more: wet plaster is coming with it, leaving white marks all over the tables and chairs near the window. We have to give up our view and move again. At a large table next to us a family is eating together, enjoying themselves and seemingly oblivious to the weather. After half an hour it lightens up a bit and the water level is down, we can see the side walk again: it looks like we might be able to reach the hotel without getting wet feet. For the beer, we only pay 2 ¥ — not sure whether it’s normally that cheap or whether we got a discount for the wet-plaster rain.
Tomorrow we fly back. The Tiantan will be waiting for us to return to Beijing some time…
Saturday 2005-09-24 - Xi'an, China
Lazy day in Xi’an
I’m up late after yesterday’s busy day in Xi’an. I have a light breakfast at the cafeteria downstairs (two delicious balls of vegetables with a spicy sauce but to my surprise they have no tea today!). The rest of the morning I spend checking out, parking my luggage in the luggage room and catching up with my writing.
After lunch I go out with our tour companion Marie Josee to scout out another Internet cafe she spotted in the corner of the square across the street from the hotel. We find it’s very hot inside (in spite of the fans turning on the ceiling) and more expensive than yesterday’s Internet cafe to boot so we go back there. It’s been overcast, very dark today, and just when we arrive at the Internet cafe it starts to rain lightly. After two hours typing and (mostly) catching up I stop: I had planned to walk around anther area of the city that we saw from the taxi yesterday; I’m afraid it will be too dark if I continue typing any longer.
Alas, when I get out it’s not only raining harder but also much darker than I expected. I walk to the old quarter anyway. Once there I try to take some pictures, smuggling with exposure times otherwise it’s impossible to take any. The area is very interesting in terms of town planning: tree-lined streets without real sidewalks but the houses are all built on a much higher level than the streets: the difference of up to two meters is bridges with steps up to the entrances and oblique walls; sometimes there’s a path on the upper level to reach the mostly walled yards. It’s really hard to describe — I hope my pictures turn out.
I give up on my other plan to climb the North gate of the city wall and take more pictures from there — it’s really too dark now. Clearly I’ll have to come back to Xi’an once more: there’s still plenty of interesting things to see and do here.
At nine we go to the station again to catch the night train to Lanzhou.
