So, I left home at about 7:30am on Friday morning, got to the aiport in around an hour, then checked in and had about 2-3 hours to kill. Terminal one of Manchester airport totally sucked, soooo boring. I managed to get a seat near the window, and broke out my zoom lens and shots ome planes. Such as:
Got talking to some nice people while waiting, we did the usual British thing of talking about the weather, and complaining about the terminal. I figured it would be one of my last conversations with a random Brit for a while, so I really got into it. :P
The flight from Manchester to Munich was really nice. Leather seats throughout economy class, really polite staff, and they kept throwing complimentary drinks at us. I endulged in a German beer, pretty nice!
After a short 2hr flight I arrived in Munich. On the plane from Manchester to Munich there was only one Chinese guy. This guy ended up waiting in the same place as me (I had 5hrs to kill until my flight to Beijing) I went up to him and asked "Beijing?" and he looked delighted to have someone to kill the time with, and we got talking. His name was Jindeanan, he told me he lives in Beijing and studies in Shanghai. Cue a random 5hr conversation on everything from the price of beer to autonomous states of China. Terminal 2 of Manchester was pretty swanky, and devoted entirely to Lufthansa. It was abandoned though, got a few lazy shots, but it was a super clean place.
Really, really long terminal.
The plane journey from Munich to Beijing was LONG and BORING. The films were rubbish, and the seats were appauling. No lower back support at all. I was so glad to get off that plane, however, not after two more German beers. While flying over northern China I took a few quick snaps out of the window...I wasn't impressed with the thick, black fumes the plane was spitting out:
More mountains!
Landing in Beijing was awesome. That city is huuuge from above. Although trying to see it all was pretty hard for all the polution. Beijing's new Terminal 3 is so impressive. I know how bad that sounds being impressed by a terminal, but even just watching their baggage trucks and how efficient their routes were from the planes to the carousel rear ends... everything about that terminal was super well thought out. Apparently its the biggest terminal in the world. There's a monorail going through it that has 3 stops. Three monorail stops in one terminal! Huuuuge! Inside the terminal was no less impressive. However, it was also here I encountered my first "NO PHOTOGRAPHY" sign... welcome to China.
I cleared immigration, and grabbed my bags, then re-checked them for my short flight to Xi'an. I was the only non-Chinese person on that plane. I landed in Xi'an, grabbed my case, and met Sheldon, the Chinese manager of Aston holding a sign that read "JOE". I can't blame him for not wanting to write "Whittingham" I guess.
Then it was the scariest taxi-ride ever, and a fun introduction to Chinese driving. I coud write an entire blog about transport in China, and future posts will go into that in more detail. But right now, I'm really tired, and have yet more posts to make.
I arrived in Weinan 28hrs after leaving Stafford, got out the taxi, saw Tim, and headed to his apartment.
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