Animal agony and Russian rehearsing (7.9.2009)

Yesterday evening we rolled the dice regarding the upcoming program before heading back to Beijing. It shalt be so that we would leave on wednesday 9.9 to Hangzhou in the morning by a train, spend a few days there and finally go to Mt. Huang Shan for a few days of agony in the form of mountain climbing in exchange for breathtaking sights.

Today we used taxi for the first time in China to get to the Shanghai zoo. Everything went just fine, there were no attempts of abuse FYI all grannies and granny-minded out there :). Anywheys, the zoo was about 15 km from our hostel and was pretty huge, although I don't know how to compare it to e.g. Korkeasaari zoo, because I was there too long ago. Let's just say that every animal type was somehow on display. Mixed feelings about the whole place: lots of animals I have never seen and especially the monkeys were playsome. The darker side was e.g. the dogs, who were even sometimes alone in their very ascetic prison somewhere in the grim corners of the zoo, where hardly anybody visited.. They looked as though they would rather be slaughtered than stand there for people to be gazed at like some fools. Some of the animals we missed, like hippo or rhino, and some were just so bored and/or baked in the sun that they did not move at all and were (surprisingly..) in the hardest-to-see corner of their perimeter (I'd do the same thing actually, if I was imprisoned there).

Later that evening we met at our hostel some Russian people, on which we could practice our 2 weeks old Russian skills. They were amazed of my skills and told me that I should speak Russian to them instead of English :); I was of course flattered as much as delighted, as Russian is a language I somehow like... They offered me tea and some sweet cake to easen the pain of 7 hours of walking in the zoo. Ivan - the guy - gave me his contact info and introduced her mother to us. They were from Krasnoyarsk and had traveled through 8 cities in China in just 14 days, including Beijing and Guangzhou. They've seen many places I'd say! I heard there is a great big waterpark in Guangzhou - this place I must go to someday!