I have now for the first time during my journey the possibility to write on my blog. Since it looks terrible to write Swedish without the three specific letters, I write in English.
I am currently sitting at an intern center in Ulaan Baatar, the dirty, messy, noisy and wonderful capital of Mongolia. I love this country. We arrived three days ago with the train and were met at the station and driven to our hotel. It was rather nice to get a shower after five long days without it. The traffic is crazy in this city, green or red lights are only for recommendation. But still. You got to love a country were 45-65 percent of the populations (the information varies) are still nomads moving around throughout the year. People speak surprisingly good English, at least some of them. The city is under transformation, as the whole country. The atmosphere is good, we felt really welcome when we arrived here.
On the train from Moscow we shared our small compartment with a persons who is almost impossible to describe. It was a big Chinese man who spoke no English. We called him Kurt. He wore a SWAT vest the whole time, smelled bad, made noise constantly, had trousers and under wear with big holes (and brown spots) witch he gladly showed us. But well… you can not explain it, the person is a legend already but I guess you had to be there… did I mentioned that he spoke Chinese for himself and had only one leg…and put pieces of his smelly caviar and fish paste everywhere… Kurt made the train journey a bit different; I can not say if it was to the better or worse. At least we had something to talk and laugh about. Poor Kurt had no Visa for Mongolia, so the border officials took him off, but he could buy one there. We were a bit worried for him for a while...
In Mongolia we have made a trip to the countryside, staying in a traditional Ger (Jurta). First we visited a Mongolian nomad family. We could try their traditional outfit (yes, I have photos) and they gave us salty(!) tea, frozen yoghurt and bread. I kind of liked it. We thought we were going to stay with them for the night but obviously not. Our Ger was at a tourist camp and we were the only tourists. At least we could ride a tour on Mongolian horses. I had not been on a horse since I was five years old or something… but I survived.
I would like to write more, but I can not do it now. Probably I will write something in Beijing and then when I get back. Our train leaves tomorrow morning and we arrive in Beijing about 30 hours later. Four days there, then North Korea… :-)
# posted by O : 9:58 AM
