Our journey to the Beijing Olympics started Friday evening. While billions of people worldwide watched the Opening Ceremony live, we opted for the 12 hour overnight train to Beijing (don’t worry, we’ll download the video!). Our train tickets were a mere US$71/ea and allowed us to work a full day before catching the 7:30pm northbound Z-train. Since this was the first time we’d taken the train, everyone was worried about us. My admin sent 3 messages and Driver Shen tried to buy an “accompanying” ticket to ensure we boarded the right car. The train policy during Olympics stopped him from taking us to the gate, which made Shen very nervous about us. While appreciative of the concerns, we were pretty comfortable finding our way around with minimal language abilities given our adventurous spirit. We got there early enough to enjoy wandering the train station's snack food shops, which sold every imaginable packaged Chinese snack (nuts, dried fish, instant noodles, & a bunch of stuff we couldn't recognize).
Overall, the train was great – quick check-in, very clean, and on time! Although many had compared the train to a 5 star hotel, it felt more like a 3 star with very clean rooms and attentive English-speaking staff. Each cabin had 4 bunks, fresh flowers, small table, hot water service (for tea & instant noodles) and slippers. There’s another 2-bed “T” train, but we weren’t able to get on.
Two downsides of the train. First, our roommate for the night was a Chinese man who slept as soon as we departed the station, and didn’t wake up until his phone rang at 5:30am Saturday morning! The other was the lack of electricity in the room....and no, not for our notebooks (which were not opened during the trip thankyouverymuch). There were, however, outlets at each end of the car. Luckily Karl had bought a 5meter extension cord to power his CEPAP machine through the night. The extension cable required convincing the train staff to allow us to run cable down the hallway. Our cabin neighbor (Penny) was bilingual and built a “life or death” story around Karl’s need to run the wiring. The train staff lady was so freaked out that she sat outside our room all night making sure no one unplugged the machine. We gladly abided to her request: provide feedback about her customer-orientation in the train log. Ah! Foreign-friendly customer service points.
The real highlight of the journey was that Penny was an exchange student to the US about 10 years ago. She was traveling with her host sister and brother in law from Texas – both really fun lawyers. We had a wonderful time hanging out with them talking in the halls, then downing a few beers in the dining train. It was great until 1am, when the beer had run through Lila (who slept on the top bunk). Imagine climbing down in pitch black, then squatting over a Chinese toilet of a moving train in the middle of the night!?! Needless to say, the train was a fun adventure and a great way to start our Olympic journey.
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