East Coast

From Hualien we took the bus to the next city, Taitung. It would have been quicker to take a train – but the bus runs along the scenic road just next to the coast and we figured the views would be better than on the inland train tracks. And right we were! The east coast scenic road is a tourist attraction in Taiwan as a whole. It’s a long road right at the coast with lots of possibilities to stop along the way, at cliffs, beaches and view points. On the other side you can see the high mountains rising into the clouds. Taitung itself is a nice city with the typical set of shops along it’s streets, a night market and a cool park site built around the old railway station, with lanterns, live music and some bars.

From Taitung we did a few day trips, the best one to the East Rift Valley for a biking tour. The Valley is located between two mountain ranges and is covered by large rice paddies, flower fields, roads lined by palm trees and park areas. It as absolutely beautiful and so calm, the biking route was almost empty and we really could enjoy the ride. Some of us more than others – the bike sizes in Taiwain turned out to be about the same as in Japan, for me it was fine of course but for dad not so much… haha.

At one point the bike trail took us closer to the mountains and onto a small jungle road, where the scenery was completely different to the one described above. Huge green plants and trees, unfortunately some huge spiders too, and a relly lush forest greeted us upon entering. We rode along, I was just thinking that it would be cool to see some exciting animals (not spiders), we turned around a corner and a big red behind jumped from a tree to another. Monkeys! I have seen monkey before, but only in tourist areas or parks, never wild like this. They all disappeared the moment we came, but we stayed still for a while and slowly the monkeys came out again of the bushes. It was a bit scary at first, not seeing anything but hearing their voices somewhere in the forest. But when they came out the small ones started playing in the trees, the bigger ones were observing us from behind the leaves and being a bit more careful. Such a cool add on to our biking tour!

Another day trip took us to the town of Dulan, which was described as the hippie, artist and surfer hub of the east coast. Surfing is a big thing here and just after we left there was an international surfing competition on one of the beaches. In Dulan our mission was to find a nice guesthouse for the next days, since we were keen on finding something close to the beach where we could just relax for some time. We ended up finding a really nice place a bit up the hill in the outskirts of Dulan, with a view over the Pacific (even from the bed) and a big garden, a crazy puppy called Ika and the nicest landlady who cooked us breakfast every morning and served exotic local fruits. We had made some plans for day tripping but in the end the place was so comfortable and relaxing that most of our day trips ended up being walks to the nearest bay for a swim and through mountains roads into town for dinner – except for one longer hike into the mountains with a view over the ocean, some monkeys again and through the green jungle. Holiday at it’s best!

 

Taroko National Park

From the hassle of Taipei we took a southbound train to the city of Hualien. Our only aim for this stop was to visit the Taroko National Park, one of the biggest in Taiwan. There are several national parks in Taiwan, many of them with mountains over 3000 meters high and with spectacular hiking trails. We chose to visit Taroko as it is fairly easy to reach by public transport and also we heard that the views are awesome.

I found it a bit tricky to get a good overview of the park – which parts to visit and how to get there. There is a public bus that takes you from one station to another within the park and it’s worth to use it for the rides in between trails. Finally we succeeded in making a plan for the day and in the end it was super easy to navigate and reach the places – the information is just a bit hard to get beforehand.

We took the earlybird bus at 7am which turned out to be a really good choice. It was a Saturday and the park would fill up a bit later, in the early morning we had the first trail pretty much to ourselves. Our first stop was the so called Swallow Grotto Trail which runs about 600m along the Taroko gorge. It’s not possible to describe or catch in on pictures. It’s just huge walls that shoot into the sky with a river flowing on the bottom, the walking way carved right into the mountain side and occasionally going through caves. In the walls high over the water level you can see many holes caused by swirls of the water thousands and thousand of years ago.

Our second stop was the last one of the bus line deep inside the national park. From there we walked another kilometer until we stood in front of a long dark tunnel through the mountain which would lead us to the next trail. It was dark, damp and quite exciting to walk across to the other side. The way lined the gorge even here but with more vegetation. The trail lead us through eight tunnels in total and after about six the most spectacular view opened up before us, with water rushing under us through the gorge, the mountains rising in front of us dispaying two big waterfalls running straight down. In between there was a suspension bridge leading to a viewing platform. I could have stayed here for the whole day just watching the bright blue water running down the mountains and the gorge.

Another two tunnels away was a special tunnel, the rainy one. Tens of yellow rain coats were hanging on the rails before the tunnel and it was adviced to take off your shoes. I walked inside the pitch black hole and was met by water gushing through holes and cuts in the stone, it was like a small waterfall inside the tunnel that you could walk through in the dark. I’m glad i followed the advice of covering up!

Taroko used to be the living area for many indigenous tribes of Taiwan. In the era of Japanese rule the police built many adventurous roads through the park in order to keep an eye on the tribes. Why they would want to do that goes beyond my understanding since the tribes didn’t exit the park area, but I guess there’s no limit when it comes to feeling powerful. One of the shorter hikes lead us to one of these old roads, which went along the mountain wall and was just under a meter wide. Here we also got to see a bit of jungle and the views over the cloudy mountain tops were just amazing.

There were longer trails and day tours in the park as well, but in order to walk these you need a special permit. Normally you need to apply weeks in advance since there’s only a certain number of people allowed on these trails per day. So we skipped these, went for the smaller hikes and were extremely satisfied with that too. Highly recommended as a day tour for anyone visiting Taiwan even for a short time!

Taipei awakes

Ever since we decided to travel to Taiwan I have had one specific song on my mind: ”Daysleeper” of R.E.M. – Hong Kong is present, Taipei awakes, all talk of circadian rhythm…

Because of the song I have had a picture in my head of Taipei as a really busy Asian big city where people awake at dawn, the markets get alive and the sun is rising in the background over the horizon. Actually I still have no idea if this is the real picture – I never woke up in Taipei until the sun was already high and shining. But I’ll keep that picture in my mind and keep on believing that’s how it is when some of us are still sound asleep.

Our choice of accommodation was an ”adventurous choice” according to a friend of mine who lives in the city. We stayed in Xike, an living area just outside the city center, with an Enlish-Taiwanese couple and their puppy Mia. I didn’t find it so adventurous though but maybe my friend just hasn’t visited the area 😉 It was great to meet up with him though after almost 10 years of just social media contact. He took us to a really famous dumpling restaurant, Din Tai Fung, where people usually stand in line for an hour or two – we managed to get in after just about 20 minutes. The food was amazing and I had to change my opinions about dumplings completely as I’ve never really been a big fan. Thank you Jasper!

I didn’t experience Taipei in the early morning but even more during the day and evening – and it’s every bit as busy as I thought. In a really positive way! Huge signs, billboards, little shops, noodle restaurants, hinking mopeds and lots of cheap markets, selling everything imaginable and beyond. Where does all the stuff come from? The Ximending area reminded me a bit of some places in Japan where you’re met with a lot of blinking, singing, random shops and game halls. Just around the corner we suddenly found the evening market with never ending alleys that lead to a whole other place than where you entered. The famous nights markets are crowded and offer all kinds of food – some of it looks deliciuos, a lot of it seems a bit…undefinable. And the smell of stinky tofu (as pleasant as it sounds) is lingering all over the place.

A really pleasant thing about Taipei is all the greenery, there are many parks in the center and along the river and smaller ones in the middle of neighborhoods. Trees and bushes grow a bit everywhere and it’s always possible to find a shady spot. Also there’s an abundance of nice small coffee shops where you can get an iced tea or a coffee for next to nothing. The paople here are at least as nice and friendly as in Japan, a noticeable effect of the Japanese era, many of them offering help, asking us where we are from and smiling a lot. It’s going to be great exploring this island!

Last stop in Japan: Kyushu

While we were traveling in Russia it was quite hard to start planing our trip to Japan – there was enough planing to do with our Trans-Siberian route and somehow time just went by so quickly that we suddenly realized we’re leaving soon, without any ideas about what we want to do in the next destination. It was clear that we were going to fly directly to Tokyo. First, the plan was to take a ferry from Sakhalin to Wakkanai on Hokkaido, but as the ferries only run until September and flights to north Japan were extremely expensive, our first step toward Japan was decided for us. Also we had decided that we want to visit Taiwan after Japan and Fukuoka seemed to be the closest city – so we booked a flight from there to Taipei exactly 4 weeks after our arrival.

We didn’t know anything about our plans in between and figured everything out on the way – for example as we did for Shodoshima. Kyushu, the island where Fukuoka is located, was a big questionmark for us. I met some japanese people in Tokyo who were from Kyushu and they seemed to be super surprised about us going there – I understand it now, we didn’t see many tourist over there. So Kyushu was our destination, the only problem being that every single accomodation on the island seemed to be triple the price of the usual level. We didn’t manage to find out what exactly was going on but we managed to find a nice place to stay in a city called Kurume! Ever heard of it? Didn’t think so.

It’s located about 30 min. south of Fukuoka and we stayed with a young couple and their two adorable daughters. Kurume as a city was not very exciting but it was a good spot for exploring the surroundings and the Yamaguchis, who we stayed with, were really nice. They even cooked dinner for us one evening and made us taste local delicacies, such as fermented soy beans. Tastes as good as it sounds 😉

We traveled a bit outside of town to the countryside for a weekend getaway, to a small town called Oki. Our guesthouse had bikes which we used for two days and made amazing tours with – through neighboring villages with big old decorated japanese houses, over a famous red bridge all the way to the sea, past fishing boats and soy bean fields and shrines. The small roads crossed fields and towns here and there, making us get lost so many times. I guess biking tourists were not a very common sight out there, since people stopped to talk to us several times on the way – one guy even stopping his car, getting out to chat with the little english he knew and before taking off he gave us some cookies for the way! Again we met many really friendly people on the way.

Fukuoka is the sixth largest city in Japan and the first thing you see upon entering is the concrete jungle. However, within the huge walls of house blocks is a really cool, pleasant and easy city with a lot of shopping, food stalls and cafés. We even found a Moomin café with Moomin quotes in Finnish on the walls and full-on decoration, I got a little bit excited and spent too much time in there. Fukuoka is actually quite famous in Japan for it’s food stalls that open up every evening by the river, serving beer and yakitori, grilled chicken skewers. Unfortunately it was really cold on our last night when we wanted to visit, so we chose an inside izakaya instead…it was clearly time to leave for some warmer degrees!

Arigato gozaimasu Japan – these four weeks were full with so many new and quirky experiences and I really hope to see more of you someday!

 

An important piece of history, a bit of world heritage

I’m sure everybody knows the famous picture of a mushroom cloud rising up into the sky. I bet most of the people thinking about this picture have a feeling of something bad happening, something beyond normal events. Until now, when I heard or read the word Hiroshima, I had this cloud in my mind, but I have to admit I never really reflected over it more than acknowledging it was an atomic bomb and it was terrible.

The moment we walked over the bridge to the Peace Memorial park of Hiroshima and saw the A-bomb dome along the shore, I got goosebumps. I filled in my knowledge about the attack before our visit to Hiroshima and I knew what had happened in this building on the morning of August 6th 1945. But seeing the remains and being exactly there at the hypocenter of the events made me even more aware of what went on that day.

The Peace Memorial park area used to be completely full with traditional japanese houses, it was the hub of life back then in Hiroshima. Students and volunteers had gathered that morning to build a protection wall against bombings, people were getting ready for work and waking up their children to school. I won’t go into details about everything I read and saw at the Peace Memorial museum, it’s out there for everyone to find out on their own, but I have to say it made me so extremely angry at the ones responsible for the attack and sad for the ones affected. It was such an emotional but very important visit.

Before we went to Hiroshima I was wondering how the city looks like – and I didn’t think there would be so much to see except for the memorial sites. In the places we visited before a big part of the experience were the traditional japanese buildings and temples, which gave me a feeling of this country. But despite lacking any historical buildings, Hiroshima surprised me very positively! It’s not a very beautiful city, but feels like a pleasant place to visit and hang out in. There’s a lot of life in the streets, it’s colorful and vibrant and it’s interesting to just walk around and have a look. The Shukkeien park was by far the most beautiful I’ve seen in Japan. We almost didn’t get to see it as they were closing the gates right as we arrived – but sneaky as we are we found another way in (accidentally though) through the art museum next to it and had enough time for a stroll around. Also, the local tram made a big impression with the red velvet seats and ticket sellers in the wagons in stylish outfits, in perfect manner thanking every passenger leaving the car – which means about 20 arigato gozaimasu at every station.

Another famous and extremely popular place to visit in the area is the island of Miyajima. It’s ranked one of top three sights in Japan, mainly because of it’s shrines and the huge red torii gate which seems to be floating in the water. The island is also a world cultural heritage site. We lived right next to the the ferry stop and saw all the people getting there and back during the day – it was hundreds. Scared us a bit, but we encouraged ourselves and hopped on too.

The first thing we saw on arrival was the famous torii gate and some cute brown-eyed deers trying to get some food off tourists. They were chilling around along the way, hanging around some shops and didn’t seem to be bothered at all by the crowds. There were so many people around the gate and the biggest shrine, my favourite was (again, so sorry, but of course) an american guy who asked me if I’d seen any pagodas around. Really? I hope he wasn’t serious, since there were at least two right next to us and with their 5 stories they’re hard to miss…

Our mission was to climb up to the top of mount Misen of course – where there’s a peak, there’s us! And the landscape was so amazing once we got out of the tourist street and started going uphill! Full autumn colors, beautiful temples and pagodas, a deer drinking out of a stream, the stream turning into a waterfall. We didn’t know though that it was stone steps all the way up and it was quite a long and sweaty hike. There was a big wooden platform on the top with views over the sea and islands. We took off our shoes, sat in the sun and enjoyed a sushi lunch (from 7/11, favourite shop in Japan) we had brought with us. My legs were shaking so much when we finally came back down again, I don’t even want to know how many stairs we walked up and down. But I forgot all about it once we sat by the beach with cold beers, watching the sun set behind the red gate.

Show! Do! Island

Anyone who has been to Japan must have noticed how for example signs are often written in quite funny English. Whether it’s just individual interpretations or Google Translate – I don’t know, but it has given me a good laugh a couple of times. For example when we visited the capital of Shodoshima (or Shodo Island) and spotted an ad poster for tourists saying ”Show! Do! Island”. Another great example is from an ad on Airbnb, under a picture of a bicycle that can be used by guests, stating about the bikes that ”both of them are motherfuckers”. Either the owner was just being brutally honest or it was the doings of a translator – which makes me wonder what exactly was the Japanese original? So many confusing moments like this. But I have to say in defence that I’m positively surprised by how easy it is to communicate here in English – my experience is the total opposite of what I’ve heard from friends.

We landed on Shodoshima randomly. Our aim was to find a house where we could spend a week, enjoy the nature and cook our own food. We wrote ”Japan” in the search field on Airbnb, set a price range and found this gem where we’ve spent the last 8 days. Our traditional japanese house with a terrace and sea view is located in Sakate, a small port village quite far from everything. I’ve seen more cats than people here and the quiet is amazing after more than a week in the big cities. Surprisingly, there is a small craft beer brewery right next to our place. It’s open almost every day and I’ve never seen any guests but us. Every evening at 6pm we hear an evening melody and at 7am in the morning a wake up call (”ohayo!”). First we thought this was coming from a nearby temple, imagining that the voice was reading passages of some holy verses. But later we found out that it’s just general announcements for the inhabitants and it has nothing to do with the temple. In the morning the voice tells the old people where they can get their bones checked and about coming events and weather forecasts. Not so romantic as we thought, but really nice anyway – how many places have public announcements like that?

The sun shines on our terrace in the mornings and after breakfast we’ve headed to explore the island for the day. The nature is amazing, with beaches at the shores, mountains in the middle, lush green and red forests, bamboos, palms and khaki trees. The villages consist mainly of old japanese style houses built really close together, with narrow alleys and small gardens in between.

We went hiking on the mountain closest to us and found amazing shrines and temples built deep into caves and a small buddha statue on top of a hill with a view over the mountains and smaller islands surrounding us. Later we found out that it’s actually a popular visiting spot – but we couldn’t have noticed since we were the only ones around. There is a pilgrimage route of almost 200 km and a whole lot of shrines and temples, the ones in the caves are the most famous. One of the deepest gorges in Japan is on Shodoshima, so we took the ropeway up, climbed on the highest peak, saw a snake on the way, and walked all the way downhill through the gorge with age old trees and stone formations. We rented bikes and rode around our area – for me it was a hilarious sight riding behind my dad, as the japanese standard sizes, even on bikes, do not really match his size. At the end we went to a local sake brewery and tried a few different ones to get some energy for the last kilometres.

Shodoshima is popular with Asian tourists, but as it’s off season we haven’t met too many other outsiders. It’s a special mix of traditional tourist sights, souvenir shops, trendy and very well decoreated hipster cafés & craft beer bars and completely abandoded roads, houses and cars. In the small centers of villages you find the former, when you wander off the usual paths you discover a lot of the latter. Maybe it’s because the population is very old and only a few young people move here – places get lost and forgotten.

The most famous things on Shodoshima are soy sauce and olives. There’s been soy sauce production for over 400 years and still more than 20 operating companies are producing it, mainly in the village next to ours and it’s hard not to notice, with a faint smell of soy sauce mixed with the sea breeze. You can buy pretty much anything with soy sauce here: ice cream, cake, pizza and all other food cooked with soy sauce that even has it’s own name: tsukudani. We got a peek into a soy sauce brewery, in an old wooden building with about 20 barrels, all of them about 2-3m in diameter, full with soy sauce. It takes about 2 years for it to get ready. The bacterias that form through fermenting make everything black, even the outsides of houses and trees close to the buildings. It’s super interesting, since I’ve never really thought about soy sauce production before and suddenly learned so much about it. And the soy sauce flavoured ice cream with soy syrup was actually really good!

One night we noticed that the information office in our village – that was normally always closed – was open and decided to have a look. A japanese woman working in the building approached us as talked German to us – such a surprise! She had been studying in Germany and is planing on moving to Austria at the moment. We met up a few times after that, visited her favourite restaurants and she drove us around the island for the best scenic views. Needless to say the people you meet make the places you visit extra special, and it was so nice and easy to spend time with Miki. She has been living on the island for 6 years, is part of the artist community that meets up for art shows every few years and has painted many of the murals we had seen even before we met her. So we got a lot of interesting insider information about the island and it’s community and also a beginners lesson in cooking rice and making onigiris! I really hope she passes her test at the art school in Vienna, she’s definitely someone I’d like to meet again.

The contact with the islanders is something I will remember from Shodoshima. The people are open and friendly, everybody nods and says hello, many want to communicate and are interested in visitors. Walking down from the mountains the first day we got a ride down from a family, they stopped, instisted on us to get in, made space in the backseat and even the grandmom asked us questions in english. We had a nice talk and many laughs on the short ride and when we got out they wanted to take pictures with us. We met the lady from a souvenir shop at 7-eleven the day after we had visited the shop and she smiled and waved. An old lady waited for the bus with us, she was smiling broadly and telling us some story in Japanese, we just nodded and answered in German, which she found hilarious. Everyone seems to be all smiles here – or even uncontrolled laughter in some situations – and genuinly friendly, even if there’s no common language.

This amazing mural in Sakate port is painted by Miki Okamura.

Geisha here, geisha there

I’m pretty sure that traveling to Kyoto, renting a geisha-outfit for a day and visiting temples among other important sites is some kind of ritual for young japanese people – girls as well as boys. The colorful outfits, clacking of the wooden sandals taking small small steps, flowers in the hair, posing for countless pictures – it’s everywhere you go in this city. So the actual challenge becomes spotting a real geisha or maiko in the alleys of the traditional geisha quarter, Gion. This can get a bit embarrasing as geisha hunting tourists run after them as if they were pray trying to escape. I had already given up hope, wondering how you even recognize ”the real one” from all the dress-ups, but two of them walked past me in a narrow street. They were so beautiful in the full make-up and gown. And then the moment was ruined by two (sorry, but of course) Americans storming around the corner. Oh well, I had my moment.

Kyoto is a place where you really can imagine how Japan once was. In Gion there are still plenty of old wooden houses lining the alleys with either shops, restaurants or bars in them. Everything in miniature. Walking around is even better in the evening when all the lanterns are lit, it feels quite magical. It’s hard to choose from all the cozy looking izakayas, which are filled with people in the evenings when it gets dark.

During daytime it’s all about the temples – they are huge, beautiful and everywhere. And full. I chose to visit some of the less popular, as I hate queueing, but I really wanted to see the Fushimi Inari-taisha with the famous red gates – despite the crowds. The way got clearer the higher I climbed and in the end I even spent some time alone in the forest, it was cool and quiet and there were signs ”Boars sighted, please do not approach if you see one”. I had a photo shoot at a shrine with a guy from Argentina, we talked about traveling and relized we have the same destinations, just at different times.

I liked Kyoto a lot, but the masses of tourists turned me off some. It was clear that it’s a popular place to visit, I just hadn’t imagined it would be that bad. Some streets in the Gion area were basically jammed and it was impossible to move individually, you just have to flow with the masses. So I picked out a subway station on the map, quickly read that it’s popular with students and decided to spend an afternoon there. Win! Full of small cafés, shops, stands, a market, used book shops and an amazing temple with zero people (not quite, but that’s how it felt in comparison). If you’re heading to Kyoto and ask me nicely I might share this little gem with you. Might.

We stayed in a traditional japanese house, over 100 years old, with tatamis, squeaking floor boards and old fragile sliding glass doors. It felt right to live in a place like this in Kyoto where there’s so much history around. I visited a japanese café where guys in suits had lunch sitting on the floor and they played music of a local band. In a small library I looked at beautiful old japanese books and an old man on a bicycle in a side alley nodded and smiled happily while riding past. And at a temple japanese school girls were preparing an assignment and interviewed me (How is Japan? Do you like manga?) while their teacher was showing thumbs up in the background and took a group photo. As a thank you they gave me a self made book mark.

What I took with me from Kyoto are small memorable moments instead of the big picture. Of course that’s not unusual, but especially here it felt somehow important to create memories of my own, when it’s so easy to get lost in the ”things I should do” and go with the crowd.

My favourite moment during our days in Kyoto was when the shinkansen arrived from Kagoshima, bringing my Steffi and her boyfriend Henning for a short meet-up before taking them further to Tokyo. They were traveling in Japan for 3 weeks, arrived one week before us and were always a step ahead – but on their way back to Tokyo they managed to squeeze in a lunch in Kyoto!

Tokyo snapshots

The ticket machine speaks loud Japanese in the moment when everything is new and you’re feeling uncertain of how things work. With the ticket in your hand – which is just a small slip of paper – you get through the gates, hope that you just hopped on the right train and feel a moment of relief when you realize you have. Then again, feeling a slight moment of panic when you notice the second train you entered is going in the wrong direction. These small moments of confusion when you arrive in a new place, that you smile at a little when you have finally gotten the grip of the metro system (if that’s even fully possible in Tokyo) and ride here and there like that’s all you’ve ever done.

Little noodle restaurant in the outskirts of Tokyo, first time eating out, hoping to behave properly in this land of manners. You have to take a picture of the plastic food examples in the window outside to order anything, because in the menus you don’t even know what’s up and down or is it even the menu? Then getting a delicious ramen together with some green tea in a small cup, all placed neatly on a small tablet – they really value the esthetics here, even in small things. Bowing to the owner after finishing up – and he actually stares into the bowls, notices they are empty and gives a satisfied smile.

Strolling around in a quiet hipster area with neat cafés and sneaker shops, small alleys, cute gardens, cupcake & burger joints. Suddenly entering a street by accident you recognize from pictures, Harajuku girls, rainbows, unicorns, cream waffles, ponies. Then a park with ancient trees and large pathways, a temple. And a few moments later billboards, neon lights, singing trucks, music blaring from every shop, a crossing with up to 3000 people walking over at once in rush hours. No wonder your mind starts racing in the evening when you go to bed, there’s so many levels of Tokyo and the space insinde your head is limited.

Finding your childhood idol in the most unexpected places: Moomins are hot value and especially the best one, little My, is featuring signs and posters all around Tokyo. Finland is high value too – you get a special kind of ”ooooooh” when telling a japanese person you’re from Finland.

Walking into a restaurant with a machine at the door and realizing you have to order here. Pressing some buttons, everything’s in Japanese, how does this work? Ah, it says English here. The machine is still talking in Japanese, though. Happiness, when small white slips come out and you proudly hand them over to the waitress.

Visiting the restroom. Do I have to say more? So many buttons, noices, searching for ”flush” every time, because it’s always in a different place. On the plus side: spotlessly clean public toilets are everywhere. And some of the seats are heated.

A small bar in the evening, chatting with the owner and the waitress, their friends stumble in and take a seat next to me. I tell them that I’ve traveled by train from Finland (”ooooh”) all the way through Russia to Sakhalin. I’m not sure if they laughed of awe or at my craziness. Had to show them picture for them to believe. They showed me pictures of a sauna and northern lights and said they wanted to visit Finland. Told about their favourite baseball teams, showed their tattoos and gave me portugese cake that apparently is a big trend in Japan. A moment later a japanese couple comes in, it’s his birthday, sparkling wine for everyone! Climbing into the capsule later feeling all levels of happy at the same time.

Reaching goals can be tough business

When we arrived in Vanino early in the morning we rushed to the ticket counter. We were turned back though as they do not sell tickets in advance, so we had to come back in the evening, a couple of hours before the departure. Unknowning if we’d get a hold on any tickets we hit the town – it took us about an hour to walk through it. An back. This would be a long day. Waiting really is the downside of traveling, especially when you are used to everything being easily booked on the internet.

We walked around the small port town a little bit more, went to a café, walked some more still, found another café…went to the train station and read our books, had some lunch…anything to make the time pass. The tickets would be sold at 19.00 and at around 18.00 some people started lining up already, and so did we. The queueing culture in Russia is a bit different from ours – if you’ve had a place in the line you can go away and come back to your place. Which I think is totally fine. But I don’t really know if there’s a time limit? For example, if you have been in line in the morning – can you just come back to the front in the evening? Either that or some of the people thought they could screw over the tourists, since a few just smiled, said something and tried to squeeze themselves to the front. At this point we started to get really worried – if everyone was so agitated, it must mean getting tickets it’s not so easy after all?

Well, we were lucky and we got a cabin. Phew. Even one just for us. The ticket buying hassle was over at 19.30 and we were told to wait until 21.00. We waited for what felt like forever, until it was 21.00. Nothing happened. Waiting – did I already mention what a torture it is? At 23.00 we were called on the bus that would take us to the ferry. After about 10 meters we all had to get out, stand in line for the passport control, wait on the other side for the bus to drive about 3 meters and then we could get on again. All I could think about were a thousand more efficient ways to handle all this, but what do I know. At 1.27 we left the harbour and I turned off the light in my bunk bed.

The next day I was sea sick for the first time in my life. I got a little something against that from the boat lady, took it without questioning and passed out mid-sentence. Basically I slept all the way, except for a few trips to the deck, which ended in panicked runs back to my bunk.

In the evening we arrived in Kholmsk, Sakhalin! Such a great feeling to arrive at our main destination. We continued to Yuzhno-Sakhalinks, the capital of the Island, where we had rented an apartment for the next days. Our host turned out to be the most hospitable guy: Dima took us for a sight seeing tour the next day that lasted about six hours…! We took the ski lifts up a mountain, drove to the coast and to his favourite places along it, to the best cake shop in Korsakov, where he instisted on buying us two full boxes of cake. Breakfast, lunch and dinner – check! We wanted to invite him for lunch but instead he took us to his home and served us food. Really amazing. The best part about it though was all the things he told us about Sakhalin and the life there, the nature, people, buildings and main attractions.

The weather on the first day was terrible: it was pouring rain the whole day. But it was perfect for driving around in his warm car and looking out of the window, occasionally stopping and getting out at some special spots. The rain and fog made everything beautiful in it’s own way, adding a kind of spookiness to the surrounings that were pretty much empty of other people. At the southern part of the island the coast is mostly rocky and steep, with volcanic stone and also long stretches of sandy beaches. As the western side of the coast is the Pacific side, the hills are lush and green even now in the autumn. The mountains are filled with deep green pine trees (larches, to be exact) and birches now in all the autumn colors – it looked magical, especially with the fog hanging low.

We stayed on Sakhalin until Tuesday, the rest of the days were pure sunshine, a long walk at the beach (where we saw a bunch of hungry seals!), sightseeing in Yuzhno, japanese dinner and preparing ourselves for the next step. Having tickets to Tokyo in my pocket felt super exciting – on the other hand it felt a bit weird jumping from one world straight into another, a totally different one. But that’s how traveling is, eh? Getting a deeper insight to Russia was a great experience – spasiba & dasvidaniya!

Eastbound

It felt like a long time since we’d really been on a train (at this point, 15 hours don’t really count as a proper ride) and I was happy to jump on again. The start turned out to be a bit more adventurous, since the train station in Ulan-Ude didn’t have any display for departing trains and absolutely no one at the whole train station seemed to know which platfrom our train left from. The lady at the information desk, who seemed to be really sick and tired of her job, actually yelled at me through her microphone when I showed her my ticket. The departure time came and went, no train arrived and we had no clue of what was going on. Until we found two women who could speak a bit of German and kindly explained to us in a mix of languages and hand gestures that the train was delayed. An hour later we boarded and traveled 11 hours to Chita for a short stop-over to the next train, 30 hours to Tynda. This train was also delayed, by almost two hours, and we spent our time in a real soviet looking cantine and waiting outside for a long time – since we couldn’t understand the informations it was better to just hang around the platforms to be sure. And then we also realized why the eastbound trains were all late: we had seen a derailed train on our way around the Baikal, between Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude, which was causing long lines of passenger and cargo trains along the way. I guess it’s not so easy to clear a long dysfunctional train out of the way in the middle of the mountains.

Finally our train arrived and we got ready for the next day and a half on board. I had a small heart attack as my laptop wouldn’t turn on or even charge and just crept into bed and slept through the longest part of the journey. On the previous trains we were lucky enough to have no snoring issues, which unfortunately backfired on these rides where we were placed in the same car with the world champions. Thank heavens for effective ear plugs, I slept for 12 hours straight.

Sometime in the night our train got off the Trans-Siberian route on the so called ”little BAM”, a train line that connects the Trans-Siberian with the Baikal-Amur-Mainline (BAM). The BAM is a less frequented line that goes through extremely remote areas, crossing the endless taiga and straight through mountains, either with routes hacked in the stone or through tunnels – the longest one is 15 km! At our next stop, the truly Soviet town Tynda, we visited the BAM museum and got a feeling for the extreme effort of building this train line. It started in the 30’s when prisoners of war in the gulag camps were forced into labor. The work stopped when WWII started and wasn’t continued until the beginning of the 70’s. We saw pictures of workers trying to plunge their way through snow that was up to their necks (no kidding), hacking down forest and blasting away parts of mountains. No wonder it was called the ”Hero project of the century” back in the days when patriotic volunteers worked their way trough the permafrost. After seeing all the pictures from the construction and thinking about all the work that was put into this trainline – that for me actually just seems a mission impossible – made me appreciate the next part of our journey even more.

Our next bigger stop was Komsomolsk-na-Amur, 36 hours from Tynda, so we decided to stay in Tynda for a night to have a small break, take a shower, eat something else than noodles. Lonely planet describes Tynda as a ”nondescript town” and tells travelers to ”not expect quaint” and this made my expectations real low. I can see how they would write that, since Tynda is absolutely no beauty and on the first look seems like nothing you’d have to put on your check-list – but as one of the only bigger towns along the train line it’s a decent place to have a short layover. My guess is the authors didn’t really have a proper look at the town – or maybe didn’t even want to. The only accommodation recommended in the book is an old school shabby hotel, that doesn’t really have positive comments on Google. And probably the travelers often rely on their guidebook, go to this hotel and place their entire opinion of the town on it. I’m glad we took our time to get oriented, since it made us find a really modern, spotlessly clean hotel with a large room and bathroom, great breakfast and friendly staff. As a bonus the whole place was decorated with pictures of wolves, bears and huskies, even on carpets and towels. Instead of seeing the ”dark side” of Tyndas soviet style we felt it’s charme and talking to the English speaking guide at the museum – who was an older, funny and talkative lady – we got a little glimpse into the lives of people there. Some school boys on the street told us all the words they knew in English and suddenly the ugly facade showed us it’s very symphatic insides. Also, the history of Tynda is interesting: it used to be a tiny collection of wooden houses in the middle of nowhere way back in time, until the construction of the BAM, when housing started to rise for the workers and many of them just stayed. Despite the old and a bit shattered look of everything the city is spotlessly clean and it made an impression on us. Lesson of the day: don’t believe everything your guidebook tells you.

Happy after our eye-opening visit in this town in the middle of the forest we hopped on the train again for 36 hours. There had been a circus in town the night before and it seemed like the staff – including a parrot, some dogs and a thousand boxes – was on the same train with us. I think that the two old guys in our car, who snored like it was the end of the world, would have been perfect for the circus freak show. Out came the earplugs again…

Unfortunately we missed the most epic part of the BAM, which runs north of the Baikal and all the way to Tynda. We got on in Tynda, so the views we’re not as spectacular as getting through mountains of 3000 m and the tunnel of 15 km, but it was still amazing. The definition of endless was most likely invented here in the taiga: most of the time there was only flat land, swamps and woods that seemed to go on as far as the eye can see. I have never seen birch trees as white as here and there were thousands of them. Every once in a while some mountains could be glimpsed in the horizon and a few times the train rose from the valley over hilltops. There were little wooden shacks along the tracks, some of them collapsed or burnt, they probably served as shelters for either workers or passengers waiting for the next train. I was happy to be on the train – hanging in these forests waiting around would be tough.

The train ride took us 2 nights and 1 whole day during which I had planned to write and read – instead I just stared out of the window for ages, had a nap and just fell into the train hypnoze. It’s amazing how time seems to pass in a flash just sleeping or daydreaming, reading and observing the other passengers. This time we had a few drunks on board who quarreled amongst themselves, a mother with two small children trying to keep them occupied (by painting books with military tanks in them) and dayriders who got on and off at some small stations in the forest.

We got off in Komsomolsk-na-Amur and were pleasantly surprised: the city center has lots of old beautiful buildings in pastel colors (pink seemed to be the thing back in the days), soviet time mosaic murals and a really pleasant atmosphere. It was confusing though, since it felt like any Russian or European city but actually we were in Asia already. I wondered if the people here feel European or Asian – or just Russian? The waitress at the café couldn’t answer to that. But she could speak some English and told us that the tradition of their café is to invite the guests who come there for the first time – nice tradition!

We thought we could find out something about the ferry from the next city Vanino to the island of Sakhalin but that was not really possible. Apparently it’s not possible to book any tickets in advance and the ferry timetables were completely dependent on the conditions in the Tartary straight, so our only option was to book train tickets to Vanino and find out. As Sakhalin was our goal all along we couldn’t give up now. The train ride of 500 km took 13 hours and when I woke up in the morning I saw the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean – quite a view! And quite a feeling for that matter – I realized suddenly very clearly that I had traveled all the way from Finland to the Pacific over land.