Our tickets were for the top bunk (out of three levels) in a "hard sleeper" train car. The beds were small but decent, and the top bunk was close to the ceiling. Our beds were closest to the end of the car and between cars is the smoking section. They leave those doors open the whole ride so the snack carts can move through, so I was basically sleeping in a cloud of smoke for the whole 14 hour journey.
The Chinese railway stations do not indicate which city you have arrived in (at least not in English), so when we arrived in Xi'an, the responses of the personnel confused us, and we ended up going up and down the train a few times before realizing none (!) of the railway employees could actually read Chinese.
We lugged our big backpacks to the number 14 bus station and we took it to the very last stop as instructed by our host. We then rested in a small park by the station and waited for our host R to pick us up. He came by with his smiley girlfriend F on a scooter, and took our bags for us while we walked back to the apartment with F. The apartment is large and beautiful and we get to sleep in R's guest room. We were his first couchsurfers in that apartment. We had a shower and a short rest before heading off to a nice hot pot restaurant for dinner with our hosts and their friend C.
The restaurant was said to be the best hot pot place in Xi'an and we believe that is true. We waited for a table while sipping plum juice and nasching some Chinese crackers before R arrived. R teaches English to kids in Xi'an and has been working and living in China for 5 years. His girlfriend F works at the airport. C turned out to be an artist/designer they met through Couchsurfing.
The food was pretty nice. A hot pot meal is normally a group meal and consists of one or two big boiling soup pots in the middle of the table with many types of food you can cook in it. We had beef, fish, mushrooms, various roots, shrimp balls and tofu cubes. Each one of us just picked whatever they liked and put it to cook in the boiling soup and then fished it out. It was a nice experience and we all enjoyed it. When we said we wanted noodles, a noodle making guy approached the table and was demonstrating noodle pulling, ninja style. We pulled noodles in Joyce's class the day before, but it was nothing like that.
After dinner we went to this night market type hutong to see a "city village", that is a village that the city grew around and swallowed. There were many food stalls and many tuk tuks driving around, but we only walked through it. In the end we took a tuk tuk to the apartment and we fell asleep without having a chance to play Settlers of Catan like F had wanted to.
The Chinese railway stations do not indicate which city you have arrived in (at least not in English), so when we arrived in Xi'an, the responses of the personnel confused us, and we ended up going up and down the train a few times before realizing none (!) of the railway employees could actually read Chinese.
We lugged our big backpacks to the number 14 bus station and we took it to the very last stop as instructed by our host. We then rested in a small park by the station and waited for our host R to pick us up. He came by with his smiley girlfriend F on a scooter, and took our bags for us while we walked back to the apartment with F. The apartment is large and beautiful and we get to sleep in R's guest room. We were his first couchsurfers in that apartment. We had a shower and a short rest before heading off to a nice hot pot restaurant for dinner with our hosts and their friend C.
The restaurant was said to be the best hot pot place in Xi'an and we believe that is true. We waited for a table while sipping plum juice and nasching some Chinese crackers before R arrived. R teaches English to kids in Xi'an and has been working and living in China for 5 years. His girlfriend F works at the airport. C turned out to be an artist/designer they met through Couchsurfing.
The food was pretty nice. A hot pot meal is normally a group meal and consists of one or two big boiling soup pots in the middle of the table with many types of food you can cook in it. We had beef, fish, mushrooms, various roots, shrimp balls and tofu cubes. Each one of us just picked whatever they liked and put it to cook in the boiling soup and then fished it out. It was a nice experience and we all enjoyed it. When we said we wanted noodles, a noodle making guy approached the table and was demonstrating noodle pulling, ninja style. We pulled noodles in Joyce's class the day before, but it was nothing like that.
After dinner we went to this night market type hutong to see a "city village", that is a village that the city grew around and swallowed. There were many food stalls and many tuk tuks driving around, but we only walked through it. In the end we took a tuk tuk to the apartment and we fell asleep without having a chance to play Settlers of Catan like F had wanted to.
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