去哈尔滨旅行Merry Christmas O' lovely people! Hope you all had an amazing day - "amazing" of course meaning: cosy and edible
Ha'erbin 哈尔滨 was cool (literally and figuratively), hitting -30°C on Friday and gods know what other heathen temperature at night. A flight is just under 2 hours from Qingdao, ours flew quite low for 20 minutes so we got to see how much snow we'd be dealing with (alot, as it turned out). I am most definitely getting in to the swing of queueing Chinese-style, it basically involves pushing in front of whoever you want without physically touching them (well, no more than is necessary), impeding their progress is not a problem and, although all Chinese people will generally get pissed off at this, they all do it. So the situation is: as much as everyone likes to be treated respectfully themselves, no one wants to treat others this way because they probably won't receive the same treatment. It's an endless cycle of inconsiderate queue-pushing people! *British-spirit crumbles*
The hostel was called Little Fir International Hostel and it was pretty damn good It's on a side-street, so quite quiet and you go through a small gate in to a courtyard to get to it (very cute). We stayed in a female-dorm (cheapest), whose only other resident was a girl who seems to be living there on a pretty permanent basis (as the pans stuffed under her bed suggest). The receptionists/matrons were both very friendly and didn't seem that phazed that we were foreign (Often a hostel's "international" is a name used to suggest it's really good, not necessarily that it's international). They also gave us a sheet with the main tourist attractions, bus routes and prices on, which was more helpful than cellotape at Christmas.
After shedding the baggage we went to the main street in Ha'erbin called Zhongyang Road 中央大街. It's the centre of old Ha'erbin, but, unlike the centre of old Qingdao, is still in use as a pedestrian/shopping zone. It's also home to the St. Sophia, which is Ha'erbin's main tourist attraction. St Sophia's is an Orthodox cathedral (Yep, legit and everything), built over 100 years ago and based on Christ the Savior Cathedral in Borki, Ukraine. The outside was smashed to bits during the Cultural Revolution but the inside surived as a warehouse, as such there is still some original paintwork (tres exciting) inside and a museum of photographs from Ha'erbin's "glory days" as the final station of the Trans-Siberian rail network. (Have some history.)
When we got to Zhongyang Road we were struggling to adjust to the cold, so we fled in to and loitered inside a Japanese restaurant (which had been decorated to look like a Zen garden ). We made it to St Sophia's after dark and, as it's in quite a wide square, it's a quite impressive building (30 years ago it was surrounded by freight container flats). There was a giant inflatable Father Christmas in front of it and a record player tenuously delivering "Silent Night" - Santa eventually deflated and was dumped at the side of the road
On Christmas Day Lou snuck around the domitory early to leave presents for Sara and Boram. We got them some Beijing Opera figures, which were well pretty ^^ Turns out Koreans stop getting Christmas presents around high school, but they liked them anyway - We went back to St Sophia's to see the exhibition inside; lots of old pictures of life in Ha'erbin during the Qing dynasty, tres interesting - it seems to be an assumption among my flatmates that if they can't find me, I'll be where the old stuff is -__- Fair enough.
As lovely as Ha'erbin is, it's unbearably cold, so we ended up taking refuge in a Russian "cafe"/restaurant for a few hours. We only had coffee, which seemed to annoy the head waiter, but our waiter was so nice and polite! He said things like "You're welcome" when we said "Thank-you" On the bright side we went straight to Haagen-Daz after and had the most amazing ice-cream in existent - Twas a most merry Haagen-Daz Christmas ^____^
I leave you with pictures from the Confucian Temple in Ha'erbin - soooo pretty in the snow, admittedly the shrines weren't open, but there were no other people there and I had so much fun jumping off the ledges in to mounds of snow ^^
Layouts! | Photobucket
|
Loading...
