2014-08-22 12:22:52 +0200
It’s Koszalin and heading for Szczecin. I’m sitting in the corridor because some guys in my compartment have very wide legs and I can’t set up my laptop when I’m sitting next to them. I’m leaving for Beijing in less than three days and things are mostly settled. I even have my debit card so that I can waste money faster.

2014-08-24 13:35:17 +0200
I’m on the train and heading for Berlin Hbf. In less than six hours I’ll be boarding the plane to Beijing. At the moment I’m in a bilingual compartment, speaking both Polish and German. That reminds me of the joke about the Silesian guy who happened to be in Germany and wanted to buy a good ancug, but didn’t know how to say it in German.

2014-08-25 05:32:08 +0800
It’s somewhere over the magnificent Ural mountains (they must make a brilliant view at daytime, unfortunately I can’t see them now for the darkness) aboard an Airbus A330 and heading for Beijing (4500 km to go.) In China it’s almost 6:00 in the morning; in Poland, where I come from, midnight. The lame touch screen in front of me (not upgraded at all since I last took this flight, more than three years ago, on 8th Aug., 2011) indicates that my altitude is 37000 feet above the sea level (which I take to be around 12 km, speaking in human terms.) Yesterday I was in Szczecin and I managed to meet with a friend I met two years ago during my Zentrale Mittelstufenprüfung exam (i.e. C1 in German,) but only for a while. Meanwhile, my family was watching Grand Budapest Hotel back home. I wanted to make an image of the disc to watch the movie later on, but unfortunately I couldn’t (“unable to copy encrypted DVDs”.) Now guess what? The same movie was right in front of my nose, ready to be watched on the lame touch screen. It’s a good one.

My first encounters with ubiquitous Sinophone society are a bit surprising. First of all—my spoken Chinese must apparently have improved since my last visit in China. I remember the last time on the plane I couldn’t have long, elaborate conversations with native speakers of Mandarin, nor could I comprehend their fast and colloquial speech when they were talking about the main differences between Asian and Western women (not that I’m an expert in women after all.) Actually, I remember my aural comprehension used to be so bad everything the Chinese said was reduced to meaningless, guttural grunts and a bunch of misplaced vowels. Still, although the Chinese language is rich in picturesque adjectives and synonyms, I haven’t found a suitable word to express the European concept of a lover (as in a partner in an extramarital affair.)

I went to Berlin early and ended up waiting four hours at the airport with 2 € in my pocket. I exchanged 40 bucks at a very bad exchange rate to fix myself a proper grub, but as a result, I ended up with euros I didn’t need. My sinuses are a pain-in-the-neck and hurt badly. I wish I could come back to perfect health.

2014-08-25 19:57:32 +0800
Day 1 in China
I am somewhere above Xi’An (pronounced śi-an) and heading for Chengdu. I spent part of my day trying to get around in Beijing and I must admit it didn’t go as smoothly as I have anticipated. I got on the Beijing Airport Express (or 机场快轨) and arrived at the Dongzhimen station at about 1 p.m. I bought a bottle of jasmine ice tea that I love so much and tried in vain to find a bank. Then I just got on a random subway train and assumed it can’t be going that far if it’s just six stops. Then it turned out that these six stops to Lishuiqiao took me about 30 minutes and that I was slowly running out of time.

I went to the bank and sold whatever US$ I had left and hurried back to the airport. In desperation, I caught a cab, because I thought I wouldn’t manage to catch my flight if I were to go back to Dongzhimen and then take the Beijing Airport Express. The assistant at the bank told me that the airport was actually quite close, and it really was. The taxi driver told me the ride would probably cost about 100, maybe even 120 RMB. It was just 27 km, however, and it only cost 85 RMB (about $13.) Then it turned out that I went to the wrong terminal. Then my plane was late and I realized I could have taken the Express just as well.

I haven’t heard any Polish after departing from Tegel yesterday. The only signs of European presence were:

• a German who was exchanging some crazy amounts of euros at the airport (I joined his transaction and saved 60 RMB on commission)
• a Russian woman who was going to Tibet.
• and others.

Words for today:
气流 qi4liu2 — turbulence