When thinking about Qingdao, I automatically think of a Chinese city, mixed with German architecture, famous for its relaxing beaches and infamous for its well known beer. So when Lizzy called me on Wednesday, saying she and some friends were leaving to Qingdao on Thursday, I agreed. I was hesitant at first, since that was my birthday weekend and I originally wanted to spend it in Nanjing. But a weekend of spontaneous fun, beaches and beer did sound very appealing! And it turned out to be a weekend of awesomeness indeed!

So on thursday Liz, Pema, Nic, Laeticia, Chiara and I embarked on a 12 hour train ride from Nanjing to Qingdao. To keep it cheap, we got hard seats. Hard seats on Chinese trains. This was going to be an adventure. The very instant we got on the train, we caught everyone’s attention: 6 Laowai’s on their train! The train finally left Nanjing. Our 12 hour journey could begin! Loud music was pounding through the cell phones of the people behind us, next to us, in front of us. Musical Chaos. The first hours passed away quite quickly and around midnight we decided to get some sleep. Unfortunately, the music was still pounding and the train lights were still very bright. Finding the perfect position to sleep in seemed an impossible task. Head against the window, head on the table, feet on the table, feet on the seat in front of me. Once you taught you had found the perfect way to sleep, your back would start to hurt again. Time passed very very slowly.

Chinese people though, have the ability to sleep everywhere they can. They sit, they close their eyes, they sleep => “Instasleep”. Around us, people were snoring peacefully, probably dreaming of Qingdao’s beaches and beer. For us, that place was still hours away!

So when we arrived in Qingdao, tired and body aching, only to find a thick, cold mist and no sun at all, I was quite pissed off. Horror images flashed through my mind: no sun, no beach, nothing to do… on my birthday…  I continued to be pissed throughout our bus ride to the ‘wine museum’. Once we got there and entered the gate, a Chinese official stopped us and said the museum didn’t exist any more. We visited the Beer Museum instead. After the visit, the sun started to break through the thick misty clouds and my mood gradually lightened up! In Qingdao, almost everything revolves around Tsingtao Beer. There’s even a Beer Street, with chairs and street lights in the shape of beer bottles!

Around dinner time, Timo, a Chinese friend of Nic’s picked us up and took us around town. We walked through narrow streets with food stalls. Each stall had its own delicacy, ranging from crab to fish, to even silk worms and scorpions. We ate delicious barbecued seafood and off course, we drank Tsingtao beer. After dinner, Timo suddenly took off. He reappeared after 5 minutes, carrying a plastic bag of beer. You read that correctly indeed. We shared the bag and walked around town, laughing at this amazing idea of beer bags. Off course, drinking out of a bag requires some skill. First attempts resulted in beer running all over my face and shirt. A second attempt left me almost chocking on too much beer.

We ended our night in a bar across our hostel. The owner was extremely friendly, entertaining us with magic tricks. With each trick he toyed with our minds (or maybe it was the beer?) and left us confused at our table, only to come back again with another trick. We played card games, drank some more beer (in a glass this time) and at midnight we celebrated my birthday. 23 in China!

The next day, Timo took us to a beach far out of town. We were the only foreigners there and off course, attracted attention again. People were barbecuing, playing volleyball, swimming. Behind us, green hills dominated the scenery, while in front of us, the wild grey ocean stretched into the horizon.

At night, we ate a special kind of Hot Pot, bought some more of those beer bags and went to a beach bar, where we were surprised by the amount of foreigners all together in one place. We hadn’t seen any the entire day or the day before and suddenly, they were all there!

Qingdao was treating us well and we were not ready to leave yet. So when it was time to go, we decided to exchange our Sunday train tickets to Monday bus tickets. This gave us the entire Sunday in Qingdao and the advantage of only an 8 hour bus ride instead of a 14 hour train ride. The only problem though, was that there was no hostel available any more. And thus, after a lot of arguing and doubting, we decided to go crazy and crash the night at McDonalds. McDonalds in China is open 24/7 and a lot of Chinese people occasionally crash the night there.

Shopping in Qingdao is lots of fun! We went into a building which at first looked like a regular Chinese wholesale market. Narrow alleyways with little stalls selling earrings, belts, make-up, bags… anything you want. But on the second floor, the building looks like the fake market in Shanghai. Bargaining didn’t go as easy as usual, but we still managed to get some good deals, thanks to Timo’s help!Qingdao also has an amazing night market, apparently one of the biggest in China. Walking past the stalls made me wish we had this kind of night market in Nanjing. Ours are nice, but pretty small and the goods aren’t that diverse. The shopaholic in me had lots of fun!

After our little shopping spree we went to see Kungfu Panda 2. We bought snacks, sat down and waited for the movie to begin. To our surprise, the entire movie was in Chinese. We figured it would be in English with Chinese subtitles, or at least Chinese with Chinese subs. But no, it was completely in Chinese, dialects and accents included. I understood most of what was being said, but occasionally the audience would start to laugh, leaving me and my friends utterly confused 🙂

It was 11PM and we were getting ready for our night. We spent some time chatting with other guests at our hostel when it was getting time to go crash at McDonalds. We got our bags and went down the stairs, when suddenly the owner of the hostel urged us to stay. He would make some room, no charge! Pema, Liz and I shared one big mattress, which was actually where the owner would sleep. Nic slept on the couch and Chiara could sleep in a dorm bed. We were overwhelmed by so much friendliness!

At 6.30AM, our bus drove out of Qingdao, back to Nanjing. It turned out to be a really cool weekend, with very nice company and I’m hoping more weekends like these will follow, before we all go back home!