Jurva-Finland
We decided it was time to go deeper into the country side, since we’d been in Moscow and St Petersburg and we were exhausted from all the city fun. The plan was to find some Couchsurfers with kids in the country so our kids could just be kids for a while. To my surprise Finland had a few Couchsurfing families that we decided to write to. We instantly got confirmation and invitations from two families. So we decided to go and stay with the Jarvinen family that had 5 kids and lived in a converted school in the country side. What a great choice that turned out to be for everybody. Firstly we had arrived at a kids heaven, toys everywhere, trampoline, Lego’s, Barbie’s, rollerblades and an entire climbing gym indoors and outdoors, as well as 5 little blond bambini’s to play with. Our kids where in heaven and the lack of understanding of the Finnish language didn’t seem to worry them at all. Juha and Mari were the best host to us,with their life’s already full with work, a large house and 5 children, I was amazed at how much time they still had for us and how they made us feel welcome. We spend the next 8 days picking all sorts of yummy berries, bushwalking with the kids to little huts and climbing towers. Making fires and cooking damper and marsh mellows on them, as well as sausages. Richard managed to catch an 8cm long fish, which turned out not enough to feed all of us. Finland is the land of the thousand lakes and so so beautiful at sunset.At home we ate delicious food cooked by Juha and Mari, and we just simply relaxed and learned much about the Finnish culture.
Richard helped Juha to get his website back up and running and it felt good to give something back. These guys were also extremely generous in lending us their car for the day, so we could have a drive around the coastline. These guys were awesome and we are definitely planning a trip back up, hopefully in Winter and up to Lapland to find a Moose and Santa Clause and search for the Northern Lights.
Helsinki-Finland
In 2005 I flew with Fin Air to Germany with Orlando(4 month) and my Mum. We had a 3 day stopover in Helsinki/Finland and I fell in love with this Scandinavian country. We did rock up in July and the sun was shining in Helsinki. What a beautiful city I thought. There where flowers blooming, street buskers, the sound of music everywhere which echoes around the city. It was simply beautiful and so different to Australia, that I swore that when I return to Europe, I will return with my family. So 6 years later we arrived in Helsinki at the end of August and guess what, it was pouring down, really wet and rainy and pretty cold and miserable. I think the weather has a lot to do with how you perceive a place. Anyway we made the most of it and put on our rain coats and boots and ventured out into the autumn world of Helsinki. We found an amazing Art exhibition and had lots of fun at the Museum. We also had to do some desperate winter clothe shopping, so all was right again with the world after my initial let down.
St Petersburg, Russia
Listvyanka Lake Baikal Russia
Ulan Bator Mongolia
Posted from Ulaanbaatar, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
The train to Mongolia.
We were finally ready to leave China and hop on another long train ride to Mongolia, 14 hr it would take the train, but it was sure worth it. The sky in Beijing is most of the time grey, full of smog and clouds, it’s horrible. As we exited Beijing, these gradually cleared and the train line followed a beautiful mountain river system. Once again we were rushing through tunnels then existing into amazing countryside. Wow, do the Chinese like corn and rice. They don’t grow it like in Australia, where the fields of one crop are massive. They grow small fields of each crop interwoven; even double cropping the same paddock with sunflowers and corn sometimes. Not very efficient if you are machine harvesting, but we never saw a machine harvester the whole time so we figured it was all handpicked. The Northern Chinese landscape was so dramatic and wonderful we were all so glad we hadn’t missed it. Night arrived and we were at the border to Mongolia and a 3 hour stop, as they change the trucks on the train. (Different track widths – one of the more stupid decisions of mankind to not standardize train track widths…. Even in Australia we have different widths in different states. It’s ludicrous. )
So… we just get off at 11 pm and wait for three hours with kids in the middle of the night. These are the only few times when we ask our self “are we mad”. We found a big supermarket with lots of chocolates for the kids and a couple of beers for us, which helped pass the time. It wasn’t so bad… but we were dreading the next part. Drive 500 meters on the train, get off and process entry visas into Mongolia. Coming into China we had to lug all our bags off, run them through a scanner, process our entry visas… not such a fun thing to do tired, with kids now back asleep. The train did drive 500 meters, and then someone came and asked for our passports. I dozed waiting for the fateful moment when we would have to do the lug stuff thing…. But it never came. About 40 minutes later our passports were handed back and we were on our way. The Chinese were more concerned about checking under our beds when leaving China to make sure no one was escaping, than the Mongolians were about us bringing in illegals or contraband.
The rest of the trip was uneventful and we slept well until we arrived in sunny Ulan Batar. Nici had tried to book a hostel without much luck and also contacted a friend of her mum’s to try and sort some tours and accommodation. We’d pretty much not heard back from anyone so were a little surprised when someone tapped me on the shoulder at the train station asking if I was “Mr Bruckner”. I replied yes, he said come with me. We weren’t sure what the deal was, but a quick phone call later and we realized Nici’s mum’s friend had come through.
We stayed the first night in Nici’s mum’s friend’s friends’ guesthouse…. pretty basic but fine for us. We had thought we were leaving the next day at 7am to go into the countryside…. But 7am came and went, so did 8 and 9 and our lift did not arrive. Then we were told there would be a delay, and we were leaving at 2pm then not till tomorrow. Things were not looking so great anymore, but there was nothing we could do but wait. We used the time to buy some jackets for the coming European winter(awesome quality and prices) and some odd ends. We were not confidant we would in fact be leaving the next day but were hopeful. Our hostess who spoke about 50 words of English, offered to play tour guide for the afternoon. Apparently it never rains in Mongolia, but it bucketed down during our afternoon. We were unprepared and were soon getting pretty wet. If you want a cab in Ulan Bator, you just waive your arm at a any car. They might stop, if they do, you negotiate a price and then off you go,simple. We did this, and got to….. the former Mongolian Palace now museum.(Worth the trip) instead of the train station to buy tickets. Apparently our new friend the guide had been confused about this point and forgot we needed to buy tickets to Russia/Irkutsku. Oh well, it was not an emergency… yet.
The next morning none too early our driver arrived, with 3 others, an interpreter who was 16, a driver and a tour guide. Big crew just for us little Aussie family. We spent the next 45 minutes trying to work out what we would do and for how many days, and finally settled on 1 night at a tourist camp(still in a ger) and 2 nights with a local family at their ger(cheaper, not as swish but more authentic). Our new team took Nici shopping to the wholesale supermarket and to the train ticketing office(which was not at the train station, we would never have found it without them) and we got our onward journey tickets to Russia sorted and soon we were on our way to the Mongolian Steppe.
The trip out there was pretty straitforwad. Our driver spoke about 20 words of English, but was clearly a good guy. Traffic was a nightmare and I was in the front seat sans seatbelt so I was none to relaxed but everything went fine. When we explained to Orlando where we were going he was a bit concerned there would be nothing to do. I told him kids lived out in the countryside where we were going and we would find out what they did, and do it. He remained concerned he would be bored. On the way we stopped and the kids rode on double humped camels whilst I held a huge eagle (apparently his bigger friend was not around but this one was big enough!) and drank some fermented horse milk (tastes like a cross between blue vein cheese and feta cheese with a bitter after taste – takes a bit of getting used to but I Soon really liked it, I can’t say the same for Nici).
As we exited Ulan Bator the landscape became sparser and sparser in every way, less houses, less gers, less people, animals… less anything, just rolling grassy hills, no trees. People selling berries, furs and food of some kind. We arrived at the tourist camp and were suitably impressed. The trees had returned and the mountainous landscape was magnificent. I threatened to climb one, a threat which I never did make good on. Our hosts settle us in to our Ger (spacious and comfortable) and then announced we were going horse riding. Awesome! I had heard about Mongolian mountain ponies and was looking forward to riding one. Then oops, spanner in the words, Ayesha has brought no shoes. Sh….t. We went anyway, Ayesha in thongs… and she was presented with Chaps(not dudes, ankle leathers that buckled around her feet.) which meant she was going to be ok.
Our ponies were small, tough… and none too keen to do more than walk single file. Ayesha’s had a little spirit, mine less, Nici’s none and Orlando had the quietest pony by any measure. He was led at first, than had a little Mongolian girl sit on with him… him in the saddle, her on the horses back. He was well unimpressed but it looked cute. Oh, the saddles. Cushions on a metal frame over a piece of wood tied on with rope. Stirrups? Pieces of rope, and far too short at that. Riding hats. Bah. It was pretty basic. I don’t remember signing an insurance waiver which was reassuring… hehe.
I had a bit of excitement. We went with this group of Koreans, and most of them had never seen a live horse let alone ridden one. One of the girls lost her guide rope (you are supposed to hold it along with the reins…. Oh… then reins were just plain rope) and she was panicked because her horse was tripping on it. I tried to mime for her to pull on her reins to pull her horse up… but she just didn’t get it. Finally she worked it out and I grabbed her guide rope and passed it to her. An hour later and this young Korean guy who had no control of his horse(it was just following mine and I was booting mine on as fast as I could!) hit the dirt. We were going down a pretty steep hill and instead of leaning back, he tried to hang onto his horses neck. Over he went, spooking the horse which then proceeded to pig root, buck and kick only a meter or so from him. I tried to motion for him to roll away but he just sat there stunned. Finally his horse calmed down enough for me to ride over to it, dismount, make some calming noises, untangle it from its reins which were now around its front legs and motion to the Korean Guy to come and get back on. Then I noticed the saddle was almost off as the rope was loose, the horse guide guy tightened it and then rode off… leaving spooked Korean guy with spooked horse with about 70 metres of steep terrain to negotiate, then the final run for home(all trail horses bolt near the final paddock).
Was surprised when the young guy got back on but he seemed determined to get himself back to the paddock. I mimed for him to lean back instead of forward down the hill and he understood and we safely got down to the bottom. At the bottom I held my horse up for as long as possible to ensure he was down the hill and pointing in the right direction and gave my horse its head and off it went at a fast canter. I heard screaming and yelling from behind and a yelled out reassuring words whilst miming “hang on the saddle handle” which he did or didn’t do, but either way, we made it back to the final paddock both on our horses. He was clearly exhilarated by the experience at the end and it was all very funny.We had dinner that night at the campsite restaurant, food was meaty and good. At sunset, Nici and I climbed a steep rise up about 400m to overlook the valley, magnificent. The Koreans saw us doing it and all 15 followed, about 5 made it to the top. We had been warned the dogs in Mongolia are working life stock guardian dogs. They are nto treated as pets and do not necessarily respond well to attempt to pat them. Our kids had been warned not to approach them. The first exception to this rule was a black dog that presented itself to us for pats at our Ger, and then after receiving some Salami from Ayesha, proceeded to guard our ger and wait expectantly for more. We had juvenile Yaks all around our ger, some of whom let us pat them. They are very fluffy. SO FLUFFY I’M GONNA DIE!
Sleep came easily that night.
Please note. Mongolians don’t knock,if they want to come into your Ger, they do. The next morning housekeeping came in twice. Opened the door, and walked in. Not sure why, maybe to get us to leave… but there you go. We eventually arose, had breakfast, showers and went horse-riding again. This time, Ayesha in Nici’s shoes, Nici in mine, me in my crocs. We got far better horses and it was just us. Even Orlando’s horse had a bit of spunk and he was soon cantering across the plains, pretty amazing for a non-rider. I had been concerned but need not have been. We stopped for 15 minutes so our guide could chat to his mates. They were all in high spoirits and were mucking about. One lassoed me, and tried to lassoe Ayesha but she growled at him and he ran away. The ride back was even faster than the ride out so we finished the ride well pleased.
We left the tourist camp to go to the family guesthouse around the corner. Our new host(no English speaking man – name escapes me) and his daughter(Naming – spoke pretty passable English) collected us.
Our new Ger seemed fine but the beds? HARD. Harder than thin camping mattress hard. Our new host family were awesome. Showed us all the area, made us feal really welcome. They had their extended family staying so there were lots of kids for our kids to play with. There was a Mongolian boy of 6 who spoke no English and another of 4 who spoke even less somehow. But they spoke the international language of boy fun, so Orlando wrestled, played soccer, bows and arrows, Frisbee and all manor or fund games with them. Our English speak 11 year old translator was playing with Ayesha… but had to leave for a bit to round up the cows on her horse! She arrived back with a juvenile hedgehog which was very cute and entertained us for some time.
Our hosts had a large dog that was the 2nd exception to the rule re Mongolian viscous dogs. Could not have been sweeter and SOOO loved a pat. Still a livestock guardian dog… but a people friendly one. Nice.
Our first nite was a busy. Ayesha came down with a vomiting diarrhea bug, the beds were hard as rocks and some boys stayed up late drinking and singing near our Ger. Ayesha managed to projectile vomit across the Ger and needed several trips to the toilet. 100m in the dark across a cow paddock to a pit toilet, the squat variety. She almost fell in apparently as she was cramping.
The next day she was on the mend by lunchtime, but Nici and Orlando went for a walk without us anyway as she was a bit fagged. Ayesha and I were treated to the slaughter, and butchering of a goat. It was brutal, but without pain or mess. A quick blow to the head, then a cut below the heart and a hand reached in to stop it beating. The gut contents quickly emptied, separated and prepared by the women. Nothing was wasted. The Stomah was emptied, then the lining removed. Intenstines were emptied and cleaned, liver and kidneys separated. All the hair was burnt off with a blow torch, then the goat butchered and boiled. Pretty happy Orlando missed it, though he was disappointed. We sat around and admitted the work, and drank fermented horse milk.
Through our interpretor, we had a good chat with our matriarch host, and patriarch family patron who was staying in the Ger next to ours. He is a doctor in the local hospital and was charming and welcoming. We shared another fermented horse milk. Lucky I liked it.
It was so good. Meaty, fatty, gamey goodness. Our hosts proceeded to stuff us with massive meal after meal of wonderful food. Meat filled fried bread, eggs, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, pickles, dumplings, goat goat goat.. Oralndo who had been concerned about how we would fill out time was now making it clear he thought we should get ourselves a ger here, and stay forever. It was pretty much Orlando land. Boys to play roughhouse with, wild horses to ride, animals everywhere and meat with every meal. Warm blue skied days, then a fire to light and play in at night(though he did manage to burn his fingers at the end which was a bummer but he now does understand that fires are fun and dangerous as well so a hard lesson learned.)
We were very sad to leave it was way too short. Our hosts were sad to see us go too I think. We got a lift back to town, picked up our stuff from the guesthouse where we finally met Naptcha, who had organized our “team” who had put our wonderful adventure together. She had been worried that it had not worked out as she’d had no notice, got the wrong numbers for our final guides and could not contact us at all till we got back to the guesthouse. She was very pleased when we gushed about how wonderful it had been. Everything we had hoped it would be . Beautiful countryside, wonderful people, playtime for us and the kids, some real Mongolian people and living.
We did a final shop and made our way to the train station and all too soon were saying goodbye to Mongolia and on our way to Russia.
Beijing ( Mongolian Visa)- China
Posted from Beijing, Beijing, China.
Bullet train in China? They go like a bullet. Fast, and straight down a chamber. Sure, we did see some countryside on the way to Beijing but we also saw a hell of a lot of tunnels, some of them must have been many km’s long. The train was comfortable with nice beds, tv for every bed, power, aircon, pretty swish, well above our standard.
Kids wanted to immediately plug in and watch TV, play Nintendo’s etc. but we convinced them school was calling so we did almost 3 hours of school work. They grumbled at first being out of the swing of it, but soon got into it. I am doing year 7 math’s with Ayesha to make her entry back into school easier next year, Nici did a mix of writing, spelling, math’s and drawing with Orlando. Both of them did really well, note to self – more school work in Beijing. As I sign off I am not sure if its night, or we are in a tunnel, or both…. Oops… bam… lights outside on its night…. Lights out… bam… back in a tunnel.
Beijing here we come. We were going to do the terracotta warriors at Xian because its listed as one of the important things to do… but in end it didn’t fit with our schedule and having come from a country with so many terracotta painted marvels in people’s front yards we decided we would skip the warriors and spend more time on the wall, the forbidden city and get into Mongolia.
The night train arrived on time, to the minute. Very fast, very efficient. We decided with all our packs to catch a taxi to our hostel. Big mistake. Huge line in underground parking lot, no aircon, so about 40 degrees and 90% humidity. Lots of touts trying to sell us cabs for 200 rmb(we knew the fair would be closer to 40). Finally got to the front of the line, and the cab driver would not take us, too many bags so we needed to get 2 cabs. Neither driver spoke English, both seemed unsure where they were going but in the end got us there. Traffic was not quite stationary for most of the way.
Hostel (9 dragons) was average and cheap for Beijing, Tried to convince them we wanted a family room, they gave us a double with two portabeds and no floor space at all. We got rid of one of the portabeds and Orlando slept with Nici in a single. Oh well. It was cheapish at least. We really came to Beijing to visit some old friends from Australia, but as luck would have it they had returned to Australia and we couldn’t wait any longer in China because of our Russian Visa. So we went on to enjoy Beijing.
We started the process of getting train tickets and Mongolian Visas. Neither seemed hard at first, we sorted where tickets were bought from, raced to the Mongolian embassy but got there too late to be processed. Still, it seemed no real problem. We were leaving Wednesday, one day processing, we could get them Monday. We spent the afternoon almost buying junk in Simlim square… in the end we bought a little bit but MAN were their aggressive. Nici was called a “Black Mother” for not buying a watch she did not want, I was literally dragged into a handbag stall… I mean.. come on… do I look like I want a handbag? Damn… that’s right… I’ve been wearing earing in both ears lately… got to revisit that.
Ayesha bought a knockoff bag, we bargained from 350 down to 100 and still paid too much probably. The next day I worked whilst Nici and the kids went off to a science fair/amusement park and did a mix of science( fun schooling) and rides. Sort of my idea of a great day so was a bit miffed to have missed it. I did get some work done so that was fine. The day after we went to the part of the Great wall of China, the “not too touristy” part apparently but on arriving it was pretty touristy with lots of stall selling overpriced pap. I wanted 2 umbrellas and a hat, it started at 290rmb, we in the end paid 50. The wall itself was amazing. You can just imagine the guards awaiting the Mongolian Hordes from the North to come charging into view…. Or at least to come slowly climbing into view… the wall itself is pretty much always built in the most inaccessible areas. We took the cable car up, and the go cart/sled down. Going down would have been more fun if we did not have the damn sissies in front of us that wanted to hang onto their brakes the whole way. We gave them an enormous start but still caught up with them quickly. We kept waiting for them to pull ahead then went screaming after them (literally in every way) but we could not get them to speed up. Grr.
The next day(Monday) we went to the Mongolian Embassy again to try and get Visas. We got there with 2 hours to spare this time but were dismayed to see at least 50 people in the line ahead of us and there was no chance we were going to get through. Damn. Buying those $600 nonrefundable tickets was no longer seeming like a good idea. Nici kind of elbowed her way to the front after an hour or so and worked out what was going on. The embassy dude only spoke English and Mongolian, most of the applicants only spoke Chinese… and the process is not a simple one. He was processing about 1 visa every 15 mintues. Nici somehow got to the front to explain to the guy on the window our predicament. He remembered Nici from Friday so he cut us a break and said wait till the end, he would process out application and she did receive some very strange looks from other desperate travellers. Meanwhile I chatted to a Russian girl, trying to befriend her and trying to get her to hand our passports in. She was not keen for whatever reason…. And for whatever reason though she had waited for 3 hours she waited in vain, her visa application was rejected.
True to his word the window dude shut the window at 11.30am on the dot… and then nothing happened for 10 minutes. People started cursing, and walking away. Then the window opened briefly, the dude motioned to Nici to give him her visa applications which she did, and then the window closed again. A little while later, window opens, a receipt for the applications is handed over and we are told to come back tomorrow at 4 for our visas. We thought we were home free. But no, wait there is more.
The following day we went to see the Forbidden City. We recognized much of it from the movie the last emperor. We paid a guide to take us through, his English was average but it was OK. He also took us to a little café for lunch which was nice. We met up with a South African chap by the name of Hugo and chatted with him as we walked around. At 3.00pm we all said our goodbyes and we started on our way to the Mongolian Embassy. OK… so we were not sure where to go so we just started walking. Did not really matter where, every train station seemed to be about 2 km’s away. Our pace was slow, multiple toilet requirements, chatting with touts wanting to give us rides etc etc, Against our experiences, we decided to get a cab(the underground is fast, cheap and trains run every 2-5 minutes) and after 15 minutes hailed one. 3.50pm. Its all good, Mongolian embassy is open till 5.00.
20 minutes later, we had gone 3 blocks. We could have walked faster. 4.10 and we had been literally stationery for 10 minutes. Nici jumped out, and headed away to find a train station. I sat in the cab with the kids, stationary, for 15 more minutes then threw some money at the cab driver and headed off to also find a train station. The traffic of course started to move as soon as we got out(bugger) and somehow we raced past the entrance to the train station which was only 50m away and went 400m the wrong way before realizing(double bugger) but finally we were in a train station. Ayesha used her marvelous, new Beijing underground skills and got us on the right train, then the right transfer and we exited at the correct train station 12 minutes after entering the first one. Parched and dehydrated from running I bought a couple of bottles of water and we raced to the Mongolian Embassy to see Nici…. And our hearts fell when we saw she was not there and the line was again, lengthy.
We saw people in the line from the day before who told us Nici has raced to the bank to deposit the visa fee. Apparently, you can’t pay for your Visas at the Mongolian Embassy, probably too much corruption. You have to deposit the money into the bank. Great. The window dude failed to mention this yesterday and now the banks were likely closed. Nici had raced to the bank, her directions were less than ideal, then follow up directions from a cop on the street were in fact totally wrong. She made it to the “bank” just before close to be told at the counter… it was the wrong bank and that the right bank would be closed.
We saw her turn the corner about 150m away 10 minutes later, shoulders slumped and this told me everything I needed to know, and it was not good. Then good old corruption came to our rescue. A lady we had met at the ticket office, and again the day before in the line told me she could not personally help me… but if I really really wanted the visas processed there was a man in the line who could help. For 500rmb he could get around the deposit the money rule. This all sounded too good to be true. We were about to lose 4200 in tickets and be delayed a week… and for 500rmb our problems could be solved? It turned out to be true, and he didn’t even need the money in advance. He did it without any issues.
Look, it could have been one huge scam. Maybe we could have convinced the window guy to accept our cash instead, maybe the window guy didn’t tell us about the bank deposit requirement on purpose. Who knows? Who cares? We had out Mongolian Visa, which twice now we had all but given up hope of even getting when Mongolia was supposed to be one of our highlights. We were going to Mongolia!
