moscow

the hostel of residence is full of unique characters such as the roomate who sits in bed all day and types things on his strange electronic device giggling to himself, he is a veritable creep doctor. there is the large german who talks to you incessantly, and a russian who gave ben an unsolicited massage then explained to him the importance of timothy leary. moscow is full of unbearably beautiful women, but i don't speak russian so i have no way of communicating my adoration to them. in red square their is a man with a monkey dressed up like a child and a giant golden eagle. people give him money to make the eagle flap its wings. thats all for now,

trainsliteration

oh to be off the train, yet i still haven't loosed its remnants from my system. i still catch myself rocking about at times like a consistently did for ninety six hours of my life. i succesfully broke my record for travel distance in one swoop. the last was three days spent on a greyhound bus from portland to new orleans, this was four days from ulanbataar to moscow. at one point we found ourselves in the dining cart(see picture) and we were soon surrounded by amicable but persuasive russians and mongolians. they bought bottle after bottle of vodka. i didn't keep track of how many times we shot a drink, but it was plenty. after a while i was cheersing to ghengis khan too the delight of the mongolians, who gave me mongolian money and ordered me two beers at once. eventually i escaped, after four more shots coupled with that feeling of danger i knew i had to dissapear if was going to survive the train. the next day i spent attempting to keep care of the hangover and vowed never to go into the dining cart again. someone stole our own personal cache of vodka from our cabin while we were out, which was just as well, we suspected our sneaky neighbor. now i am in moscow, i am told the police will fine you for bueracratic reasons, i spent the day walking around and attempting to look very serious and russian so as not to be stopped, it worked well enough. they have face control here at the bars and clubs, meaning, you are not allowed to go in if you are unnatractive, unkempt, or don't appear rich. we got denied a few places and given a rather dubious table in a bad part of a sports bar. its alright i still find myself attractive enough, even if the russian bouncers don't

train living

continuity

beijing was incredibly interesting but also very dirty and depressing in ways. i have talked to a lot of other travelers who are coming and going from there, and they seem to like it much better than i; so don't take my opinion as definitive. the great wall was sincerely a pleasure to see, but the city of beijing feels stifling alot of the time, the smog is opressive, the black soot collects in your nostrils, i saw a blue sky once, briefly, everyone spits everywhere and blows snot rockets, the food is good, people push you, they yell at you to buy things. granted i was only there for a short time, and the focus of this trip is mainly on russia and eastern europe,and i was also in beijing in the winter so it wasn't as hospitable. i still had a nice time there, but i've liked mongolia much better. tomorrow the train leaves for moscow, i'll be on it. i bought some leather mongoliaslashbiker boots with camel hair lining, that are warm, the steel in my other boots would refrigerate my toes to the point of complete numbness, these boots do the trick. my beard has ice caked on it when i walk outside, this is the coldest weather i have ever seen.

border crossing

finally found a ticket to the border of china mongolia via overnight bus. the bus was made up of short beds instead of seats and it was completly full. i had an ok sleep though, not one of my worst bus journies. at the border town of ehrlian it was a walk down this solitary road\. my hands had never been so cold, they ached they were so cold. the gloves didn't do a damn thing. the border guards said we couldn't walk across and that we would have to take a minibus over. so we started to trudge back until a mongolian man with his family pulled over and kicked his family out-they weren't upset- and offered to take us. the border crossing took about an hour with a lot of driving around huge trucks and snow piles and over curbs in the all terrain vehicle we were in. after the chinese border we looked behind us and realized we'd just smuggled some girl across behind our luggage. she and the driver laughed, "stupid china". spent the rest of the day waiting for the train to come at ten at night. the desert surrounded the whole town, it seemed an inhospitable place for civilization. we had lunch at a cafe and a local worker who was missing a finger bought us a round of beers and we toasted a few times. i learned quick that when you cheers, you have to slam the whole beer, so we did that until the train came. ullanbataar is very cold its negative 10 degrees. there is an ice sculpture slide that sits in the park and i slid down it with the local kids for a few hours, the people here are lovely, most people are nice and trusting, i'd stay here longer if it wasn't so damn cold. leaving for russia on tuesday. i'll update later on some of my thoughts on china, not all favorable,i'll explain.

aarg

second trip to buy tickets out of beijing was a failure this morning. i got up early and took the metro with foggy eyes out to the beijing international hotel. the ticket center is on the second floor and ridiculously tiny, even moreso when i realized how many locals were packed into it. i got into what i thought was a line, only to be shouldered out of the way numerous times by people. finally i decided to push back and made my way to the front, the guy at the desk told me that that the tickets were 5000 rmb per person. (about six hundred fifty US) which is about 500 times more than the other prices we had been stated. i have also been told that the train leaves only twice a week, that it leaves three times a week and one time, that it leaves on mon tues wed and that it leaves on saturday sunday. so, none of that can be completely right i'm sure, but im irratated and cold. its twenty degrees here. and i'm quite tired of beijing already. i'll let you know how it all works out.

well..

the chinese internet system is somewhat bogus, i can publish things on the blog but unfortunately i cannot read my beautiful musings of yesteryear. so i hope i dont repeat anything. did i tell you mayhaps...that i held a live scorpion??! and it started to crawl up my sleeve but the man who handed it to me grabbed it by the tail before it could. then they fried it and i ate it. the stinger stuck the roof of my mouth but apparently the frying proccess demolishes any truculent poisonous qualities, so never fear, i was unharmed. there were a lot of other things that i did not try, such as beetle, squid and grasshopper, my favorite was sea horses which still looked quite elegant even when skewered through with a toothpick and dried up eyes, i couldn't bring myself to nosh on such beauty. my traveling companions at the moment have fallen in with some gypsies, leaving me to the sidelines with their talk of gypsy dates and gypsie parties. that is no concern of mine though, i suppose i'll pat them on the back with some vague words of encouragement as they undoubtedly face some weird times ahead. trying to get to mongolia this week, hopefully all will work out.

aha!

well, for the past couple of days i had thought that blogspot was restricted in china, as every time i tried to go to the domain i would get a screen full of chinese characters that seemed to say blogspot did not exist in china, but here i am, fourth attempt back on. i've been staying in a hostel about five minutes from tianemen square(guy in front of tank) the city is cold and crowded. its been around twenty degrees here at different points in the day. i bundle up accordingly but after about a half hour of walking i'm so sweaty from al the layers i take some off, then the sweat is dramatically cold, its a fluctuation of uncomfort. but not unbearable. when i arrived at the sanfrancisco airport i realized that i had forgotten my passport. after going back to the house and getting it the line was amazingly long and there was only an hour to flight, cutting in front of the line works beautifully however, made it to the plane with five minutes to spare. yesterday i hiked to a hidden part of the great wall, run down and completely seemingly completely ignored since it was built, me and a group hiked along its curvy spine, scrambling over stairs that disintegrated under our feet and peering out of castle like windows in the different look outs we came to. my chopstick skills are back, i bet i could peel an orange with them already, the food is good unless you order a western dish, and in that case it is very bad. i've seen to very intense fights in the neighborhood i am in. a man got a chair smashed over his head and then he fought a girl and a guy, lots of blood, then last night when i was reading before bed i heard a fight outside. i could just see it out of the corner of my window, they were yelling at eachother and tussling til the sound of one of the mens heads hitting the concrete reverberated off of the hutong walls. the locals around were meandering past stoically seemingly unimpressed. i was lost in the hutongs, which are labyrinth chinese neighborhoods for hours today after unsuccesfully attempting to buy train tickets to mongolia at four different places, i have a plane ticket out of moscow on the sixteenth of february to vienna, so i have to get out of asia to there somehow. we'll see.

last evening

i'm about to eat some cheese toast and pasta at bens grandparents house, i'm planning on eating about four bowls. i'm packed up now, initially i told myself i would bring only two books, but now i'm bringin upwards of seven or eight for fear of lack of bookshops. it is twenty degrees in beijing, i will be there the day after tommorow. its a sixteen hour flight from here soi'm going to drink free beer and try to read an entire book so i can get rid of it. i just read martin amis's House Of Meetings, its about a man and his brother in a russian gulag, its intense and you never quite understand if you like the narrator, but its beautiful, made me miss my brothers. i'll write you all when i get there.

santafrancisco

i went to the chinese visa place today and the woman at the counter scolded me for having a dirty passport. its been traveling with me for a couple of years, mostly saddled tightly up to my stomach slash crotch area in a valiant attemt to avoid pickpockets. so its seen the view from my pants mostly, but its been around i assure you. i'm currently at my friend charlies house, whom i havent seen in three or so years since we lived together in santa cruz, actually its been five, i'm old now. i really do love california, its like washington with less mold, even when its cold and polluted here it smells fresh to me. yesterday ben gave me some lamb curry from his restaurant and it was exquisite, afterwards i sat and watched the bay and read a book. not having a job is almost too much freedom to bear. hopefully the visa application will go through so i can actually start this trip, i keep having odious daydreams of the consulate barring my admission, but i'm sure thats just needless rumination. my friend honora told me she hopes wolves with genital warts attack me in russia, you can hold that mental image of me for a while until my next update. theres not much more to say, me and a pack of friends will burn around the city tonight listening to rag time jams and drinking prohibition rag time city whiskey.

love to all