sofasurfers

Forgive me for I have cheated. Forgive me for I have given myself a couple of days off couchsurfing to find my Chinese feet. Forgive me for I have checked into a five-star hotel, the three-week-old Park Hyatt in Beijing. My body was starting to feel like a Bernard Matthews chicken after sleeping on the floor, all squished out of joint, vacuum packed into tiny pockets, and, in a word, battered. I am now on my first sprung mattress in a month. I woke feeling like an angel on a cloud, in my crisply dressed, pure white, kingsize bed – with none of my bones forced off-form by a floor, the bare ground or a hardwood mattress, I felt weightless and suspended in air.

My cloud of comfort in the Park Hyatt

Hello all. Ollie here.

Well, the leg’s rested up a bit [squeamish people might like to skip the next sentence...right...about...now] and my surgeon in London has now sewn-up the holes made in Rio de Novosibirsk (!) so here’s the 1st photo-set to celebrate. (Don’t worry…there’s no photos of the leg). No, these 1st pics are from our 2nd stop-off - Yekaterinberg. Well, when you’re on and off the rails, sometimes it just happens that way round! Gawd I wish I was still out there. But Fleur is in touch regularly and it sounds like she’s definitely sofasurfer-ambassader-ing for the both of us Go Fleur!

The photos try to tell the story of our journey into, around and about Yekaterinberg. And it’s gargantuan Godly glinting golden globules. With perky Polly and her friends. (It’s a Russian tongue twister I made up, to make sure you’ve not had too much vodka with breakfast). And then of course, there’s the inevitable farewell that takes place all too often on a 12,000 km overland sofa-surf in less than 12 weeks. As Fleur wrote previously - there was quite a build-up waiting for Polly to arrive…as she was abroad in Turkey for the first day and night that we stayed at her house. (That’s the ultimate gesture in sofarific-philanthropy for you.) I look forward to the build up of her arrival again - when Polly hopefully comes to couch in London in 2009. (We’ll try not to be away when she does ;-))

Moscow pictures to follow shortly too, as well as a set on Flickr.com.

And so…Enjoy! Click here!

http://www.digitoli.com/sofasurfers/on-and-off-the-rails/

(There’s a slideshow, with captions, if you press the ‘ > ‘ play button that loads. It takes about 5 minutes to watch, so brew a cuppa, sit forward, and as they say in Russia … “dos vidania”

Ollie

All aboard the Vladivostok Express! I’ve had to pull out my China guide early, as my cabin companions are a young Chinese couple. So far i’ve only grasped ‘hello’, ‘what’s your name?’ and ‘thank you’ - not enough to confirm that they have traveled from Moscow, but they seem fully literate in the Russian practice of sharing all one’s provisions (here an egg, some melon and an apple). Or perhaps one can also hope for such kindness in China…