ALIVE AND HOME.

We even made it back all in one piece!

THE END..... for now.

Next stop: home.

Finally.

It's been a great trip, but it's time.

ALIVE IN SYDNEY.

Yeah, so I lied. Turns out our next stop was Sydney after all..... after a slight change in plans due to headaches and finances, we opted to take the bus directly to Sydney instead of the scenic two-day drive.... another trip for another time...

So we arrived this morning, bright and early, 6:30AM at our hostel to meet the man who works there who is named..... BRUCE. Yes! Gen! Mike! (He doesn't bear a resemblance though...)

The bus we took was good, a nice, family run Australian company, cleaner than Greyhound, that's for sure, but there wasn't much sleeping to be had on there, so all we've done so far in Sydney is nap.

But, in other weird news and occurances, yesterday, during our extra day in Melbourne that we had instead of driving (we walked around more, looked at more of Melbourne's world famous graffiti, ate cupcakes Ami Li would love in a cafe, etc) we ran into (or more they yelled my name) Melina Chadbourne and Gordon Eccles from Nobles?!? ...... ??? This world is too, too, too small. That blew my mind.

Anyway, I'll let you know how the aquarium is since I think that is going to be our first stop obviously as all good Nashoba girls love a good aquarium.

Next stop: Sydney (sort of).

Via a random town along the coast of Meri's choosing whose name I forget at the moment because I am tired.

Melbourne is cooler than people give it credit for! It also has incredible coffee and chocolate cafes, so we spent the past few days in a caffienated sugared haze. Went to the top of the Eureka Skydeck last night, and yesterday went to the special Dali exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria and later saw "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" last night because we were so excited to be in a country with English language movies again. It was good, though leaving the movie theatre last night later, tired, confused, I could have sworn I was at the Framingham AMC. No, I am on the other side of the world in Melbourne. Oops. My bad.

ALIVE IN MELBOURNE.

Well this is certainly a mind fuck.

First of all, I haven't travelled anywhere by plane since February, so it felt fairly bizarre to instantly arrive somewhere completely different all at once... it seemed too easy, especially at the Narita airport in Tokyo which has to be the most easy, wonderful, calming airport in the world.... basically, just like all of Japan, which, I have decided, is pretty much utopia and the best country in the world. They have their shit together, that is for sure. And it was so simple traveling by planes and in airports that it was kind of funny.... it seemed like it should have been harder to get all the way to Australia...

Anyway, now we are here and we are super confused because it is their "winter" here which all the Australians are complaining about because it is soooooo cold and soooooooooo dark -- today was the most beautiful crisp, clear fall day which was a hugely welcomed changed after sweating our asses off in China and Japan for two weeks. I can wear my damn fake leather jacket and scarves I have been hauling around again! Wonderful!

That's it for now, but it looks like Australia is going to be great. Right now we're still just mainly confused though.... it feels a lot like being back in the U.S. but in a parallel universe kind of way.... everything is familiar but just a little bit different, a little off, a little cleaner or a little weirder.... not quite sure yet, but we'll see.

Next stop: Australia...?!?!

And this is where our trip gets really ridiculous.

The plane journeys begin!

We had a really great time in Tokyo -- we met up with not only Sam but also Coley last night, a little Nobles-in-Tokyo reunion -- that must be told about in greater detail later on as we are going to go get on the airport train now to get to Narita!

ALIVE IN TOKYO!

We made it to the pinnacle of our travel completely on the surface!

From SAINT-PETERSBURG, RUSSIA to TOKYO, JAPAN!

Using every form of transportation except for an airplane (and we'll soon add some of those into the mix starting on the 18th when we fly out of Narita!):

-- metro
-- bus
-- tram
-- trolleybus
-- minibus (marshrutka)
-- car
-- taxi
-- horse
-- bicycle
-- ship
-- ferry
-- little dinky rental boat
-- our feet
-- and trains of every kind, of course.

Speaking of trains of every kind, ours last night from Osaka (yesterday alone we took four trains: Kyoto --> Nara, Nara --> Kyoto, Kyoto --> Osaka, Osaka --> Tokyo) was by far the most beautiful -- the Sunrise Express! We had our own individual room-compartments we never wanted to leave. It was clean and wood and everything seemed new and smelled good and they gave us blue and white striped bathrobes and slippers and basically our lives have become the polar opposite of Russia. It's insane.

INSANE.

And Tokyo only promises to be crazier as soon as we can check into our hostel (it's 8AM and reception only just opened right now) and go out and explore.

ALIVE IN KYOTO.

But soon to be alive in Nara.

I don't even have time to check nmy email, we are about to scamper off, but we had the best day in Kyoto yesterday -- we rented bikes and went all over the place and then hiked up to the top of this gorgeous shrine -- so needless to say I was exhausted and fell asleep immediately upon arriving back to our hostel.

So, Nara today, train to Tokyo tonight, seeing Sam Dean tomorrow??!

ALIVE IN JAPAN! (Osaka specifically)

And using the most difficult keyboard of my life so if there are a lot of mistakes please ignore them, I am quite tired. The heat makes me a zombie at night, I need to go to bed in the next ten minutes.

So, first off, the boat was amazing. AMAZING. We were in 2nd class "Japanese style" which meant we were in a huge, spotlessly clean blue carpeted room (no shoes allowed! slippers provided!) meant for 16 people but there were only 3 of us in the room! We had so much room to spread out Meri did yoga and I repacked my entire backpack! Yes!

The boat also included FREE breakfast and FREE laundy! It was great to do laundry for the first time in over a month now, my t-shirt smells so good right now. Actually, no. It smelled better earlier before I sweated off my weight in water today (JAPAN IS EVEN MORE HUMID AND HOT THAN SHANGHAI, WHO KNEW), but that is besides the point.

We also met the NICEST JAPANESE PEOPLE IN THE WORLD on the boat. A girl named Marina who was teaching Japanese in Uzbekastan and an elderly man with a pet toy poodle named Ellis and a 30-something year old guy who was a hippie who had studied abroad in Seattle. The niceness continud through finding our way to the train station (another old man navigated us personally, leading us there, even though he spoke no English) and buying the actual train tickets (compare to buying trans-Siberian tickets in St. Petersburg) and dinner, served in a little grandma/grandpa place where they gave us wonderful peach for dessert and complimentary soup. Ahh, the nicest people. It:s such a good BREAK after dealing with so much rudness and pushing and aggressive behavior in so many countries. People actulaly care here. People actually want to help you here. I am at much more of an ease here than I ever was in Russia. It is wonderful.

Today we walked around mostly )thus the sweating) and went through a park and two temples, one of which had a huge pond of ONLY TURTLES. A hundred at least! It was the best day. The BEST day. A pond full of my spirit animal. Wonderful. I finished a 4GB memory card taking photos of the little guys. And what a day for turtles, look at the article Ms. Janna Herman shared with me via Facebook (which I have access to again in Jpaan, woohoo! as this blog too! updating it myself!).

Anyway, it:s been past 10 minutes and I need to sleep majorly, but our plan, for those of you concerned slash tracking our progress....

TOMORROW (7/14) -- early morning train to Kyoto
night of 7/14 in Kyoto
day of 7/15 going to Nara and back
night of the 15th we'll be on a train to Tokyo
nights of 7/16 and 7/17 we:ll be in Tokyo
7/18 -- FLIGHT OUT OF JAPAN IN THE MORNNINNNG TO FURTHER ADVENTURES.


as you can see I am losing it, so, good night.

Next stop: Japan!!!

"It is blowing my mind how we are already going to Japan tomorrow on our 2-day ferry. That's really nuts. I still can't fully believe we got all the way across Eurasia and are almost to our farthest non-airplane-flying point of our trip already. It seems like it should have taken us 6 months to cover that much distance. But it hasn't, thank god, and tomorrow we get on a boat to Japan, and we will be on it for two nights, arriving the morning of the 13th in Osaka.

As for Shanghai, it has been good, but I won't be that sad to leave. The heat here is unbearable. Meri is more used to it from living in DC for three years, but I have become used to colder climates, especially after Russia. The air is so hot and humid you can feel it sitting on your skin. It's pointless to shower because you sweat so much the minute you get out it's like you didn't even try. We've had a nice time walking around though -- there isn't a ton much else to do in Shanghai besides shopping.... it's a very Western, European/American kind of shopping, materialistic city full of expat business men..... but it's beautiful and flashy and colorful and last night we went to the top of the Jin Mao Tower (home of the highest post office in the world) and saw the view of all the lights. So that was snazzy.

Anyway, you'll hear from me next in Japan where hopefully I can update my blog myself again!"

-- e.b.

e l i z a b e t h a n d e r s e n b a r t e l sr u s s i a n l a n g u a g e & s t u d i o a r t

ALIVE IN SHANGHAI

Meri and I almost had a heart attack last night, certain we must have died somewhere along the way from Mongolia to China because the train last night was heaven. It made my head explode, the stark comparison to the Russian trains we'd been riding on. THE TRAIN LAST NIGHT WAS NICER THAN MOST AIRPLANES I HAVE TAKEN. Everything was WHITE and CLEAN and NEW and smelled good and was synthetic duvets and not 8,923,979,238 goose feather mattresses that smell of the babushka who slept on it before you and it was COOL and they a gave you complimentary water and slippers and there were MINI TVS WITH HEADPHONES...????? We were in a state of hysterical shock. China is nuts. But I love it. We've met a couple of people -- one guy from Maine, about Genny's age -- who have just up and moved to China without knowing any Chinese and they love it..... new life plan for after Wellesley??? I could probably use my Russian in China somewhere, right? We've now seen a total of SIX Russian tourists here and each time it blows my mind -- two women in a nail salon, one of whom was of Chinese descent, then an old man climbing the Great Wall by himself, and then a younger shirtless (of course) Russian man on the top of the Great Wall who asked us to take his photo for him and then we got him to take our photo (ON TOP OF THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA AND OUR PHOTO WAS TAKEN BY A RUSSIAN, HOW APPROPRIATE) and before doing so he didn't know where to put his empty water bottle so he just chucked it over the side of the Great Wall (typical) and then three women in the Summer Palace, strolling and chatting in Russian.... anyway, now we are in Shanghai, as I said. It's different from Beijing -- fewer Russian-Soviet vibes, much more vertical, much more like New York or a big Western City, while only parts of Beijing were like that while the rest was one storey small houses like Irkutsk or Ulan-Udye -- and full of banks and seems less artsy, but it should still be good despite the fact that it is even HOTTER and even more HUMID than Beijing. After Russia, this is a huge huge HUGE change. Anyway, that is all for now. Thanks again to Mr. C.R. Bartels, Jr. for posting again... soon enough I'll be out and then can post again on my own, seeing what they are like in Japan...

-- e.b.

Next stop: Shanghai!

After three wonderful, busy, insane days in Beijing, we are leaving on a train for Shanghai in an hour -- I have to go soon! But we had a great time -- just some activities included seeing the Great Wall, Chairman Mao (as part of our tour of "Dead Communist Leaders Whose Bodies Are On Display"), the Summer Palace, chinese massages, and the Forbidden City. There was so much more we wanted to do as well but ran out of time. I guess I'll just have to come back to Beijing. Until tomorrow night in Shanghai --

--e.b.



e l i z a b e t h a n d e r s e n b a r t e l sr u s s i a n l a n g u a g e & s t u d i o a r t

ALIVE IN BEIJING

So, funny story how China has this thing called "censorship" which seems to prevent you from reading news articles online like "tibet, story of tragedy" or go to free-speechy-websites such as..... blogs.So let's all thank my tech-savvy father, Mr. Rich Bartels, for posting this for me via-email.BUT BESIDES THAT BEIJING IS SO COOL!We got here this afternoon after spending 30 hours on a train from Ulaanbaatar. Getting out of Mongolia was an experience, including our (and by "our" I mean "my") one major fuck up so far which was having my wallet fall out of my pocket when were were in a slightly chaotic rush getting to the train station.... at least there was only about $5 of Mongolian currency in it... and my debit card.... but my lovely parents have already taken care of canceling that shit for me and I have a back up. So, it pays to plan ahead. Getting out of Mongolia was also interesting because Russia and Mongolia have special train tracks that are slightly wider than the rest of the world's, so we spent easily about 6 hours of our train "ride" just sitting at the border as hammers and things slammed and our wagon was crashed repeatedly into the one before it and after it to reconnect it after changing the wheels (you would think they would let us get off for that experience, but apparently not).... when we finally reached the Chinese border at 1:00AM (1:00PM your time, still exactly 24 hours ahead) there was strangely nationalistic muzak-like music being piped through speakers and a weird dark calm. But arriving in Beijing today was NUTS. We stepped off the train and it was like getting off of a plane to the Carribbean. This wall of HEAT and HUMIDITY smacked us in the face and we sweated off about ten pounds of water weight just getting to the taxi that navigated us to our hostel. And compared to Beijing, Ulaanbaatar was all Russia. Beijing is just a whole different story.... huge and modern and CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN and bicycles everywhere and green and trees and another huge fucking rain storm we got caught in (now our 3rd, one for every country so far) and everything is just so DIFFERENT. I love it. It's great. And it's so crowded and crazy! This whole city is St. Petersburg at rush hour, or on any given holiday. Anyway, Meri and I had a great first evening. We just wandered a bit, had a really delicious dinner of Peking duck (seemed appropriate) as recommended by this awesome Indian man who we got to know as he and his extended family were on both of our trains to and from Ulaanbaatar, and we ran into them at a pizza place at Ulaanbaatar on Friday night. It's going to be great though. CHINA. I can't believe we made it all the way from ST. PETERSBURG, COMPLETELY ON THE GROUND. NUTS. Man, and Mongolia was awesome. Mongolia seems all Russia now in comparison to this crazy, amazing place. SO EXCITED.Ok, that's all for now. Another post via-Rich before we take off.-- e.b.e l i z a b e t h a n d e r s e n b a r t e l sr u s s i a n l a n g u a g e & s t u d i o a r t

Next stop: China!!

Our train to Beijing leaves tomorrow at 8:05AM and we arrive at 2:05PM on July 5th. So we will be celebrating our nation's birthday by wearing red, white and blue on the train. Maybe drinking an American brand beer if we can find one. We'll see.

ALSO, a time update: Lonely Planet, that sucky book, LIED to us. Ulaanbaatar is Moscow time plus 4 hours, meaning we went back an hour from Ulan-Udye and are exactly TWELVE hours ahead of you now! Who knows what the time will be in China though! Lonely Planet certainly hasn't a clue!

ALIVE IN ULAANBAATAR.

Happy (almost!) 4th of July! We will be celebrating on a train to China, woohoo!

Meri and I had a great few days outside of Ulaanbaatar in the country. Mongolia is fucking GORGEOUS. It basically looks like Lake Baikal minus the huge lake. We stayed with this great company (really just one big family that owns a bunch of yerts and horses) called STEPPERIDERS in their yert camp about 40 minutes outside of Ulaanbaatar. We didn't make it all the way out to the Gobi Dessert or the National Park, but there is no need. Mongolia becomes insanely and completely rural maybe 10 minutes outside of the city. It's nuts. Our guides told us that everyone in Mongolia is either a nomad or lives in Ulaanbaatar. Anyway, everyone who works for Stepperiders was wonderful, we had the best time. We spent one night in one of their yerts and two nights camping out in the steppe and in the forest. And they even taught me how to ride a horse! I was led 90% of the time on a rope by another guide, but they were great. I even got up to a fast-paced run for maybe 2 seconds! Be proud! (AND nothing fatal happened, so be unworried!) We had a great, great time and were very pleased that it turned out we couldn't get our tickets for the train to Beijing for the 3rd but the 4th instead so we got an extra night out in the steppe and country. It was great. Everything works out for a reason, that is for sure.

So, in summary: GO TO MONGOLIA! Most highly underrated country in the world! The people are friendly, wonderful, and it is the most amazing combination of China and Russia together in one!