Day 2. Temple of Heaven, silk factory, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden Palace, market.

Woke with a stiff and sore back, since the beds at our hotel are rock hard. Not just uncomfortable, but in my present state actually painful to sleep in. It’s a struggle just to turn from side to side (because lying on my back is out of the question in these beds).

The day was gray and hazy again, with the sun barely visible through the clouds in the morning, but nothing thereafter. Cool, under 20°C.

The Temple of Heaven is, despite its name, mostly a large park. It is lively and crowded, clearly a park for the citizens (especially the elderly) and not so much for tourists. Everywhere there were social activities going on: card games, mahjong, dominoes, opera singing, jianzi, tai chi, tango lessons, etc.

The main building, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, was monumental. As with most “old” buildings in Beijing, it has been rebuilt after burning down (in 1889). It is beautiful in shape, colour and detail, and chock full of symbolism.

In the silk factory we had a demonstration/talk about the silk-making process, which was quite interesting. We saw silk worm cocoons being soaked and reeled, and double cocoons (containing two worms), unfit for reeling, being stretched into “fluff” that was then used for making blankets and pillows. They also had a large shop (of course). Lots of fine clothes, but nothing that would fit me, even without the belly – Chinese women have no hips.

Tiananmen Square was vast and empty. Well there were people (tourists mostly, taking photos) but far from enough to fill it. If I recall correctly, our guide said it can take a million people. Apparently every day except today, much of it would be filled with a huge queue of people waiting to visit Mao’s mausoleum.

The Forbidden City was also vast. Scaled for an empire, it mostly seemed to consist of huge empty courtyards. It felt quite repetitive: the same shapes again and again. In style it was quite similar to the Temple of Heaven. I would have loved to stare at all the detail at close distance but the group (and Ingrid) didn’t give me much chance for that.

At the market the main impression was that of salesman attacking from all sides. Fake bags of fashionable brands, watches, jewellery – which we quickly passed. I bought silk handbags for Ingrid and myself, and a bowl. (I do like to take something home from a trip, but it has to be something I can use, not just a knickknack to put on a shelf.) Bargaining is de rigeur, and it was a good thing we had my mother with us: I hate haggling, she loves it, and she gets good prices.

Ingrid drew big crowds whenever we stopped; everyone wanted to touch and take pictures of her. (Tourists from the countryside, I guess: Beijingers would have seen at least a few foreigners by now.) Especially parents all wanted to take photos of their kid next to Ingrid. They clearly had different ideas about personal integrity than we do: pulling her close when she’s loudly telling them NO. (She now knows five words of English: Hello, Bye-bye, Yes, No, Thank you.)

Often they are surprised and a bit upset when she doesn’t want to be cuddled. What they don’t realize is that they are not the first, nor the second, but about the tenth person within the last hour who wants to do it – and that dozens of people have tried to hug her yesterday too.

One solution is, of course, to never stop walking. Another is for her to take photos of them while they photograph her: it makes her feel like less of a passive victim, and them less likely to crowd her (because a blonde girl with a camera is even cuter than just a blonde girl). But sometimes we had to resort to physically pushing them away from her.

Day 1: jet lag & first impressions.

Most of our first day in Beijing passed in a daze of sleepiness. The airplane crew thought it best to wake us early for breakfast, a good hour and a half before landing, i.e. 1.30 am body time, a scant 4 hours after lights-out.

We did a little bit of sightseeing before lunch. We were taken to see something the guide called “anti street” but I think meant “antiques street”, with little shops selling figurines, ink paintings, ink brushes, old books etc. (The real name is Liulichang.) Mostly it was a good chance to stretch our legs after a long time of sitting still, but also a gentle introduction to street life in Beijing.

After lunch we checked into our hotel. Some people in the group then went for a walk around the neighbourhood; I slept instead. Then, dinner and another little walk along some local street markets. The weather is warm this time of the year and the city is crowded, so quite a lot of life seems to take place in the streets: vegetable and fruit stalls, raw fish and meat, noodles, sidewalk restaurants, card games, just hanging out, etc. It reminded me of the residential back streets in Egypt, except that this was a lot cleaner. I wonder how they take care of their grocery shopping in winter.

Both lunch and dinner took place in large restaurants. The whole group (10 people) sat around a large table with a Lazy Susan in the middle, and that was then filled with rice and various dishes. At lunch I counted 10 different dishes for the 10 of us – and they weren’t small either, not single-person servings exactly. They must throw away A LOT of food. I hope it goes to some happy pigs somewhere.

I had expected the food to taste more foreign than it did. It was really quite similar to Chinese restaurants at home. I guess they must be mostly based on Beijing cuisine.

Beijing is vast. It seems that you always need to drive to get anywhere. It’s not like central London where the tourist sights are all crammed together – look left and you see one, look right and spot another. Here it’s a 15-minute drive to someplace, then another 15 minutes to lunch, then another 20 minutes to the hotel, etc.

Most areas looked and felt the same to me on a large scale – I got no feeling that different parts of the city had a different character. In fact the city as a whole lacks character, I think. It’s a spread-out mass of buildings, rather than a coherent whole.

The city was amazingly clean and tidy, with no litter and no dust anywhere. It was also unexpectedly green: almost every street was lined with trees, and there were greens and lawns along many larger roads. And despite what I’d heard, the air felt and smelled reasonably clean (although it looked hazy).

There weren’t as many bicycles as I’d expected. Most large streets have a wide bike lane, which hardly sees any use. Where are the hordes of cyclists I’ve read about? The car traffic is dense but orderly, no jams and no honking, but bicycles seem to drive all over the place pretty much as they please. And they apparently have right of way ahead of pedestrians. On smaller streets there are no sidewalks and pedestrians mix with the traffic, keeping a constant lookout for cars (which you can generally hear) and bikes and mopeds (which sneak up on you from behind).

I’m in Gothenburg for two days for ScanDevConf 2010. With a long train ride yesterday, and an evening in a hotel room today, you’d think I’d finally have time to blog… but no. I spent my hours on the train reading China Miéville’s The City and the City, and this evening at a bar/pub almost-watching football (yes, football) with some fellow developers I met at the conference.

I was also expecting to blog about the conference during the day. But access to power outlets was less than generous, so I couldn’t type my notes during the sessions themselves, meaning I’ll have to process them before they’re in a bloggable state. A real blog post will be coming soon.

… now available in the gallery.

I spent the last three days (Friday to Sunday) in Budapest, at our company’s annual conference/off-site. (Last year’s trip went to Berlin.) We spent most of our time in various social activities, including a lot of eating, so I didn’t have time to see as much of the city as I had hoped, but here are some brief notes:

• Warm. The temperature was around 15 to 20°C during daytime. After the +5°C we had in Stockholm, it was a bit of a shock. I’d forgotten what 20°C feels like, and wished I had brought sandals.
• “Continental,” with lots of outdoor cafes and restaurants, shops spreading their wares into the streets, street performers etc, and a lot of people out and about in the evening. Of course it’s easy to get people to hang around in sidewalk cafes when the weather outside is so balmy.
• Grey and beige, since almost all houses were clad in local sandstone. Made me think of central Paris, which was similarly grey.
• The Donau (Danube) is nowhere near blue.
• Buda and Pest are strikingly different. Buda is hilly, green, residential. Pest is flat, gray, commercial.

The most interesting sight I saw was the thermal baths of Szécsény. It’s a complex of indoor and outdoor pools, heated by natural hot springs. It was interesting to see bathing as a social activity: the crowd was mostly adults hanging around, conversing, and floating. There were hardly any children around, and I imagine they would have found the baths quite boring (although there were some fountains and a jet stream.) The coolest pool had a water temperature of 18°C and the hottest was 38°C – too warm for comfort, in my opinion. But the 34°C pools were quite pleasant, and the relaxing atmosphere was quite contagious, although I have to admit to getting slightly bored and impatient after an hour or so (at which point I fetched my camera and did some wandering).

Photos coming up soon, hopefully.

First I was happy to be here in Tartu, and had lots to do – people to meet, books to buy, etc.

After a week I was getting restless. I’m not used to doing nothing but hanging around at playgrounds, and occasionally shopping for groceries. I miss cycling, or some other kind of physical activity. I miss doing something productive.

Since then we’ve been slightly more active (longer walks, some visits to a beach) and had slightly more different people around us, and the restlessness has abated somewhat. And now that I have one more day left in Tartu, and two half-days in Tallinn, I’m already slightly sad about leaving.

But I’m thinking that next year I might rent a car (or perhaps a bike), so we can get out more.

We spent Sunday afternoon at Oliver’s three-year birthday party, out in the countryside. Ingrid met mosquitoes for the first time in memory, as well as stinging nettles, and was not happy about either experience. She also fell face first onto the arm of a wooden chair while climbing on it, hard enough for a big bruise. I think the other guests will remember her as “that kid who was screaming all the time”. Ingrid, on the other hand, will probably have more positive memories. She might remember the singing potty, or the digging in the dirt, or the book about Little Red Riding Hood with all the movable parts, or all the incessant snacking.

(By the way, she’s gotten used to mosquitoes by now and swats them away with barely a comment.)

Monday we were my father’s country house and it did not go too well, so we’ve been in Tartu since then. Unfortunately this has coincided with a heat wave, and Tartu lacks Stockholm’s wading pools, so I’ve really struggled to come up with things to do. We’ve ended up spending a lot of time with Rahel and Katariina, mostly on various playgrounds and at their place. Katariina is just that little bit ahead of Ingrid (in age and in development) that Ingrid is really interested in anything Katariina does, and likes to follow her around and copy her actions.

The boat trip to Tallinn was smooth but somewhat disappointing. Last year Ingrid really enjoyed the play room; this year there were far fewer toys because nobody had bothered to replace the ones that broke, so there wasn’t much to do there. But the whole thing was still a big event for her. First the trip to the harbour, then getting on the boat, then dinner in a restaurant, sleeping on the boat, and breakfast on the cabin floor.

We spent most of Friday morning in the Tallinn Zoo, so we wouldn’t have to begin our day with the two and a half hour car trip to Tartu. Most animals were interesting for about 2 minutes (Look, a tiger! OK, let’s go.) but Ingrid really enjoyed the petting zoo: goats, a pig, downy yellow chickens, rabbits etc. She was not too keen on getting too close to the mouth end of bigger animals (such as goats) but very interested in seeing them eat and drink.

Today looked set to be rainy (although in the end it didn’t rain at all) so we stayed in town, and I decided to start with my shopping plans: lots of children’s books in Estonian, and some movies too. Already I discovered that some books that were easily available last year, were hard to find this time, so now I’m preemptively buying books well above her age, just in case they’re not there when I want them. I am not looking forward to the task of packing my bags, or lugging them home.

We’ve also renewed our acquaintance with Oliver and Katariina, both just a few months older than Ingrid, both of whose mums I grew up with. Coming up tomorrow: Oliver’s birthday party.

We had a company offsite/conference this weekend, in Berlin. My first overnight trip without Ingrid.

The weekend was an interesting experience in many ways.
Interesting to spend almost three whole days in only adult company.
Interesting to be out on town after dark.
Interesting to sleep alone in a bed.
Interesting to meet my colleagues outside of work. Some of them turned out to be not at all like I had expected, in a very positive way.

On Friday we flew to Berlin, had a sightseeing bus tour, and dinner together. Saturday morning we had the official “conference” part of the weekend, and then a free afternoon, and then dinner again, plus nightclubbing for those who were interested. Sunday, a few free hours and then flying back home.

The free afternoon and morning were meant to be spent together, but 3 days of constant socialising would have been more work for me than my actual work, so I skipped that and wandered off on my own. I felt a bit guilty at first but only for a short while – I really enjoyed exploring Berlin on my own. (I suspect I wasn’t the only one doing that, there’s at least one other odd guy in the company.)

Mostly I did a lot of walking. The highlight of the trip was Hackeschen Höfe, an area with eight small linked courtyards, filled with small shops and cafés. I also had time to see

• quite a lot of the S-bahn
• the Holocaust memorial (which was sort of impressive but didn’t feel like much of a memorial)
• the park of Tiergarten
• a few remaining bits of the Wall
• the Siegessäule (that landmark pillar with a golden statue of Victory on top – the one in Wings of Desire), including climbing up to the top of it (285 steps)
• the quarters around the parliament, Brandenburger Tor, etc
• one nice church (St. Hedwig’s) and another nice church (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche)
• a replica of the world’s first traffic light

One afternoon and one short morning is far from enough to get a good feeling for a city, of course. But from what I had time to see, Berlin as a whole wasn’t really my kind of town. Too large, too flat. It’s full of broad straight boulevards, lined by flat facades. There were some interesting houses but even those had been placed in straight lines. And too much grey stone, too little colour.

The one thing that struck me about Berlin is how full it is of history. There are monuments, plaques, exhibitions in parks and along streets. There’s the Wall, of course. There is history everywhere, and it is so present, so close to the surface. I could not walk through the city without thinking about all that has happened there. I wonder if Berliners think as much about history all the time. After all, what’s history for me is just “the past” for many of them – they’ve lived through it themselves.

PS: Photos here.

A selection of photos from our vacation is now online. The general vacation pics are on Flickr (in Flickr’s usual reverse chronological order – it may make more sense to view them from last to first), and the pictures of Ingrid are in my gallery.