One of the greatest joys of living abroad is the ability to meet friends around the world. That's precisely what happened on this particular weekend, as my friend Wanwan asked if I'd join her on a weekend trip to Beijing. As you know, I never miss out on an opportunity for travelling to China. So I accepted the offer with a lot of excitement! Having already been to Beijing a year ago, there were both new areas I was yet to explore, and ones that I've visited already that were worth a second look. Only this time, with a little help of an insider's.

Coming back from Nuremberg for a short four-day trip, I barely had time to touch base for 12 hours in Ho Chi Minh City that I had to head back to the airport for a business trip to Guangzhou, China. It’s funny how every time I plan vacation, there is always a business trip that places itself right after. Some might find it exhausting, but I actually enjoy flying and am always happy to travel. What gave it away, right? Besides, I haven’t set foot in China since last year’s short term assignment. I was quite excited to reconnect with the country that hosted me for three months in 2017. Despite all the beautiful places I had visited last year, there was still one on my list I had yet to discover.

Alejandro was a Mexican-American from the southern state of Georgia. He was on a two-month travel through Asia which started in Seoul a few days ago. He then made it to Beijing the same day I met him. He entered the hutong cantine the same way a Bandolero would step into a saloon in a Western Spaghetti. We shared a look and nodded at each other - a sign foreigners share between themselves while in an area predominantly frequented by locals. In China, although a lot of tourists come to see the wonders of this beautiful country, we foreigners are still highly outnumbered by the local population. Therefore, whenever we cross a "Western" (as they call us), we show some kind of acknowledgement.

As my short-term assignment is coming to an end, I finally got the chance to travel to Beijing. I only had two main sights I absolutely wanted to visit while travelling to the North Capital: The Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City. Based on my previous experiences while travelling through China, I knew that visiting the main sights during the Chinese summer vacations would guarantee large crowds, which would prevent me from fully enjoying my travel.

Zhangjiajie is about 12 hours away from Lushan - where I am currently located. This means the optimal way to get there was again the train. The first part of my commute was between Nanchang and Changsha and only took two hours on a G-Train - the Chinese bullet train. The second part was about 8 hours and left from a different train station. So I took a cab from the Changsha Railway Station to the Changsha South Railway Station for 30 minutes and 27 Yuan - a tiny detail which will be helpful toward the end of this post.

This weekend calls once more for adventure as I am travelling to Xi’an for two full days. This time, I rejected the option of commuting on a night train given my far-fetched experience from two weeks ago. Although, this well-thought-out change of strategy made me learn at my own expense that Chinese flights are rarely on time. Indeed, it is not uncommon to have flights delayed several hours.

This month, I had the opportunity to travel to China for a short term assignment at work. Murphy's Law being always faithful to itself, my preparation for this STA was far from easy. Of course, things being what they are in a large global organization, no one was really aware of the process to follow to support me in this preparation. Fingers were crosspointed at each department (e.g. home location pointing at host location and vice versa). On top of that, I am sure you can imagine how complex the administrative process to obtain a Chinese visa could be. Add to this the good old German bureaucracy and you got yourself a very elaborate cocktail of mayhem.