Thirteen years ago I spent two years studying at the Beijing Language and Culture University. I haven’t been back since so I’m really excited to be here.

The city has changed so much but one thing which has mostly stayed the same is the food. We’ve been eating really well. I’ve been taking Pete to small restaurants hidden around corners from the more expensive places on the main streets. We’ve been eating jiaozi (boiled pork dumplings), baozi (steamed pork dumplings), spicy tofu, spinach with peanuts, amazing aubergine in a Beijing style, hot and sour soup, sweet and sour pork…

The food is about all that’s stayed the same though. We visited the university where I studied and I didn’t really recognise anything. It was all a bit emotional and weird. I coudn’t find any of the buildings where I used to live and study. It wouldn’t surprise me if they knocked them down for health and safety reasons actually. It’s all very professional looking now.

The city has changed beyond recognition. It’s looking shiny and spotless for the Olympics. The flowerbeds are flawless and the street cleaners are out in droves. There are new subway lines and hundreds of volunteer helpers (young students I think) all over the city, eager to help tourists in any way they possibly can. Everyone you see is in a good mood; really friendly and really excited about the Olympics coming to town.

The TV has Olympic fever too. There are entertainment programmes featuring all the Olympic songs (of which there seem to be many, but they all sound the same to me), news programmes about how well the preparations are going and sports programmes about all the soon-to-be stars of the games.

The souvenir shops are very interesting and packed full of shoppers. There are official shops all over town where you can buy miniature golden sculptures of the main arenas, teddy bears of the mascots, souvenir medallions, Olympic torches made out of metal left over from the Olympic stadiums (apparently) and many, many, many other mementos.

Me and Pete have also been doing some touristy things. We spent a sweltering day in the Forbidden City and did a ten kilometre walk along the Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai (also sweltering but with a bit of a breeze at least). We met up with Jerome and Julie again (we first met them in Mongolia) to do the walk which was lovely.

Of all the things we’ve done my favourite has been our visit to Factory 798 – a huge, former electronics factory which has been taken over by galleries exhibiting contemporary Chinese art. It’s an absolutely huge complex, not just one factory – I guess because Chinese factories also used to include housing, hospitals, schools etc. It’s a really exciting place, full of interesting and contemporary exhibitions, and it’s still developing and expanding.

Finally, just a note on what Pete says below. I am really enjoying speaking Chinese again after years of not speaking a word. I’m also pleasantly surprised how much of the language is coming back to me. I was well taught! However, my vocabulary really is limited and I’m a long way from dreaming in Chinese.

We managed to squeeze in one more trip to the countryside before leaving Mongolia and spent one night in Hustai National Park with our Swiss friends Julie and Jérome.

The car we were in couldn’t take us all the way to the place we were sleeping (20 km from the main camp) because the road was too bad, so we walked with our gear up and down a good few hills for about an hour and a half to get to our ger. We’re certainly getting lots of exercise on this trip which is great. We saw lots of beautiful wild flowers along the way, more than in other places we’d been – maybe because there was less grazing of farm animals in the park.

In the evening we went for another walk, hoping to see Przewalski horses. They were extinct in the wild but are being reintroduced in the park. We didn’t see any, but did get to a place where we had a fantastic view over the valleys below. From there we could see some red deer feeding, until they ran away into the forest (we think maybe they were frightened by a wolf). We also had a beautiful sunset, saw more wild flowers and a gorgeous moon lit our way back to our ger.

Back in Ulaan Baatar, we finally managed to visit the history museum. I particularly liked the traditional costumes, covered in embroidery. I think that some of Queen Amidala’s clothes in one of the star wars films (can’t remember which one) are very similar to traditional Mongolian costumes – especially the headdresses she wears. I guess George Lucas liked them too.

Before we arrived in Mongolia we didn’t even know what Naadam was. A lot of tourists come here especially for Naadam, but we were just lucky to arrive unwittingly for the big event.

From what we understand Naadam is Mongolia’s national holiday. All over the country tournaments in the three national sports take place – wrestling, horse riding and archery. The winners of the regional games then go to Ulaan Baator for the big finals. We managed to coincide our visit to the Naadam festivities in Sansar, Bulgan province (about 500km west of Ulaan Baator) with a trek that involved staying with nomadic families in their gers.

We stayed with Mr Bambatogtoh’s family for two nights and on the second day they took us to the Naadam festival in Sansar. Also staying with the Byambatogtoh family were Julie and Jerome from Switzerland so we went to the Sansar Nadaam with them, and ended up hanging out with the governor of the province no less!

On the third night we stayed with Otgon, his wife Delgersaihan and their children Udval and Renchinochir. They took us to an amazing sand dune on an ox-drawn cart.

For our final two nights we stayed with the Idertsogt family. Mr Idertsogt lives with his wife, children and his seventy-seven year old mother, who still works really hard from morning ’till night.

We had an amazing time and have gained a small amount of insight into how nomadic families live in Mongolia. The families that we stayed with weren’t even all that remote. We were surprised to see that they had mobile phones, solar panels and the odd satellite dish and we always knew that there was a road (of sorts) somewhere not too far away. Even with these modern additions to the ger, the families seemed pretty remote by our standards – but I think these families were pretty well “connected” compared to many others.

One difficult thing about the week was the food (the other was not washing as there’s no running water at the gers). We’re just not used to the food they eat. They have a drink which they love called airag – fermented horse milk. Luckily we just had to drink a little to be polite and it’s a drink for special occasions so we didn’t get loads of it. A staple drink is milk tea – salty, very milky tea.

For food we ate variations of mutton, potato, noodles and salt. I think one of the days we had some offal too but I try not to think about that. They seem to eat every bit of the animal. We had no fruit or other vegetables all week.

We’re back in Ulaan Baator now and have just been to a veggie restaurant to stock up on our vitamins. We’re doing fine but it might be a while though before I eat meat again.

We had a great train trip to Ulaan Baatar despite our nine hour wait at the Russian border.

For much of the trip we shared our four-bed compartment with Andrew, a lovely American guy who’d worked for the Peace Corp in Bulgaria and was travelling from Europe to Mongolia and linking up with cross-cultural organistions along the way. He also has a blog at www.supercross08.com.

At the Russian border town of Naushki a Mongolian police officer joined us in our compartment. He’d been in Novisibirsk taking part in an archery tournament and was heading home to Ulaan Baatar. He was really friendly and almost straight away he gave us his phone number in case we had any trouble in the city (so far we’ve not had to call him!)

Myself, Pete and Andrew had bought a small bottle of vodka in Naushki because we’d each realised that we’d been all the way through Russia without a drop touching our lips. We had a few sips while waiting for the immigration and customs people and our police officer friend seemed a bit worried about us drinking the vodka. He suggested we hide it and not drink it until after customs. We thought he was nervous about us drinking alcohol, but he had other reasons.

Finally after hours of waiting the Russian immigration and customs people arrived. None of us had overstayed our visas and none had anything illegal so that all went smoothly. Then we travelled a few miles down the tracks and went through the same process again with Mongolian customs and immigration.

Our police officer friend left the compartment for a time at the Mongolian side of the border and came back with a man with a ‘customs officer’ badge stuck to his chest. He then, quick as lightning, fished out our bottle of vodka. We thought he was dobbing us in, but instead he poured a very large glass of it into his mug and handed it to the senior customs officer, who was sitting happily at the end of our bed.

It’s a Mongolian tradition, we have since learned, to top up the glass after a sip has been taken. So, the police officer would hand the mug of vodka to the customs officer, he’d take and sip and hand it back to the police officer who would then top it up and handed it back to the customs officer. They then had a long, jolly conversation in Mongolian, drank much of the vodka and the customs officer left. We didn’t have a clue what was going on.

The deputy customs officer then came into the compartment and stamped our forms. Pete gave her a pen so that she could sign the relevant places and she liked the pen so much she asked if she could keep it. We weren’t going to say no to the friendly customs officer. She seemed to be keen to probe deeper into the belongings of our Mongolian friend, but then all of a sudden our vodka appeared again, another large mug was poured and the customs officer forgot about his bags.

We’d read that the bags of tourists are often not opened when entering Mongolia but that the bags of locals are usually checked thoroughly. He managed to keep them from checking his bags but we’ve still got no idea what he was afraid they’d find.

He offered us the rest of our vodka when we were safely on our way, so we had a few sips of what was left.

Eleven hours, one bottle of vodka and a pen later we were on our way and heading towards Ulaan Baatar.

We arrived in Irkutsk off our two-night train journey and headed straight to Listvyanka, a small village on the shores of lake Baikal. We stayed for four nights in an apartment with funky wallpaper and groovy lampshades. It also had beautiful views of the lake from the kitchen window.

Other tourists stayed in the three-bedroom apartment for a night at a time, but most seemed keen to get back to the city, whereas, we were very happy to stay by the lake. We did very little – most days we walked along the lake towards the village (about 1.5km walk) and found a place for Pete to skim stones along the way, I liked to sit down and just stare out at the great expanse of water and all the different shades of blue. In the village we bought provisions and then took them back and cooked.

We managed to feed a couple of hungry vegetarians on our second night. On our final night we bought some whole, smoked omul fish at the market and cooked them with some vegetables, lemon juice and rice. The omul fish is native to the lake. It has a mild flavour and is really popular in all the restaurants. Sitting having our dinner in the kitchen overlooking the lake was perfect.

One afternoon, on our ramble along the lake, we came across the most amazing picnic I’ve ever seen. They had flowers in the middle of the table and three-tiers of fruit on one of those cake stands that if you’re lucky you’ll find in English tea-shops. The happy group was willing to have a photo taken.

I was also excited to see some stars; more than I’ve seen for a long time. It doesn’t get dark until after midnight but we made a special effort one evening and were greatly rewarded.

It has been fantastic to get away from the cities and I’m keen over the rest of our journey to keep doing that whenever we can.

Me and Pete often joke that there’s an Irish pub in almost every town we visit. But Omsk is currently bereft of such an establishment.

What Omsk does enjoy is a veritable host of expensive hotels. We spent our first night there in the most expensive hotel of our trip so far. It was great to have a good shower after spending two nights on the train, but I can’t work out why the hotels here are so expensive. Maybe lots of business people visit. There didn’t seem to be very many tourists wandering around.

After our first night we moved to the much cheaper, more atmospheric, Hotel Omsk. There was a long orange-carpeted-corridor to our much less glitzy room and there was NO HOT WATER!! It was written this way on a piece of paper by the receptionists (after they found the words in a Russian-English dictionary) so that there was no mistake. It seems that in Russia in the summer it’s quite common for the hot water to be switched off so that maintenance work can be done on the system. The friendly receptionists probably presumed that the note would send us running, but with the even cheaper hotel around the corner closed for renovations, we did our bit to undo the stereotype that westerners are soft, and we took the room. It worked out fine. The water wasn’t too cold and the hotel certainly had a lot of character – but don’t even ask about the breakfast.

Despite the water and breakfast situation I’m really glad we’ve stopped in Omsk. It’s been great to be in what seems to be just a regular town in Siberia. It’s an industrial town but it also has lots of parks and public sculptures. There’s a big river running through it, which people were making the most of in the hot summer sunshine.

We’ve stayed a bit longer in Omsk than we planned to because the trains out don’t run every day. It’s meant we can take things at a relaxed pace rather than rush around seeing the sights. Now we’re back on the train to continue our leisurely journey through to eastern Siberia.

We arrived in Moscow after an overnight train journey where nobody really spoke to anybody else. We went to bed pretty much straight away and woke up in Moscow – now that’s a nice way to travel.

The most amazing thing about Moscow for me was that the Kremlin has four cathedrals inside it. In my ignorance I thought it was just a big, probably grim, government building. The churches were beautiful, with paintings all over their insides (I overheard a guide saying that this was because when they were built most of the population was illiterate). We didn’t see much of the government buildings in the Kremlin. There were guards everywhere with whistles and if you went anywhere near anywhere you weren’t supposed to be, they’d blow very hard in your direction.

Yesterday we met up with Nastya, a friend of my friend Helena. We went for a lovely walk around a little bit of the city and had a cup of tea in a very pleasant cafe. It was really great to get a chance to meet up with someone who actually lives in Moscow and to talk about Russia, China, Europe and our different experiences and perceptions of them.

Another amazing thing about Moscow is the metro. Some of the stations are like cathedrals, or palaces. We visited a bunch of them today – all for the price of a metro ticket (about 50 cents). Some had stained glass windows, others had mosaics featuring Soviet history, and another had life sized statues in a communist style. We were a bit nervous taking photos but then a tour group showed up, at the metro staton. It could only happen in Moscow I think.

We start our trains-Mongolian train trip tomorrow. We’ll be about forty-eight hours in a 3rd class compartment (platskartny) heading to Omsk, Siberia! We’ll let you know how we get on.

Our overnight train journey from Vilnius to St Petersburg was good fun because we shared our compartment with two lovely Russian women. They were heading back to St Petersburg after a holiday in Lithuania and were very happy to help us learn some Russian words and suggest some places to visit. They spoke really good English and shared with us some very nice cognac.

For me the highlight of our stay in St Petersburg, without a doubt, was the Hermitage. I could have gone there everyday for a week, at least. First of all the palace itself is absolutely gorgeous. I watched a film a few years ago, at the Hyde Park cinema in Leeds, a completely silent film, set inside the building. I think the film was just called The Hermitage. Anyway, I was thinking of it as I was walking around the gold room, the red room and the very extravagant staircase, all built during the reign of Catherine the Great.

Luckily for me I stumbled across the Rembrandt room and spent a few hours there. I think they were the most beautiful and most moving paintings I’ve ever seen. I kind of wish I’d stayed in that room all day but after a break for some overpriced pizza and a cup of tea I went upstairs to a room of Picasso, two rooms of Matisse and a room full of Gaugin paintings. I was especially delighted to see the Gaugin paintings. I read a book about his amazing life a few years back.

The next day I was tempted to go back, but instead went to a museum dedicated to the poet Anna Akhmatova. There are lots of museums in St Petersburg dedicated to writers – Pushkin, Dostoyevsky… all men except for Anna, so I chose her (Pete went to the Pushkin museum).

The Anna Akhmatova museum was in her old apartment, where she lived for 30 years. She had lots of interesting artist and author friends but they all had very hard lives. Many of her friends and family were sent to Siberia. I read a little bit of her poetry at the museum and will read more. beautiful stuff.

I’ve really enjoyed all the painting a poetry and really hope I can get back to the Hermitage again sometime, even if I have to wait until I’m 80.

We got our visas! We are so so lucky.

After our trip to the embassy, we took ourselves to the main post office and sorted out posting our tent and cooking stove and a few other bits (altogether about 10 kilos) to Ireland. Pete admitted in the end that he got a bit of a kick out of the packing…

We’ll miss the autonomy our tent and stove gave us. We won’t find accommodation as cheap and cosy as the tent. We’ll probably find food that’s just as delicious as our own though. It’ll be good to be 10 kilos lighter when we’re getting on and off trains in Russia.

We took an overnight bus from Warsaw to Vilnius. This wasn’t so bad for me and I got some sleep, but Pete, being a good bit taller, struggles a bit on overnight buses.

We found a fantastic place to stay in Vilnius – an apartment sized room with a big sofa, tv and a hob so we could do a little bit of cooking. We practiced our noodles which we’re planning on making on the trains in Russia – instant noodles, some greens (such as spinach), vegetable stock, tabasco, pepper, some slices of ginger, boiling water and a squeeze of lime (for vitamin c)! Good noodles and good to have a nice place to chill out for a couple of days.

Vilnius is a beautiful and friendly city. The old town is fairly small and traffic-free. A highlight for me was the big Francisan church we came across (where one of the recordings is from). I’d read that lots of the churches in the city had been used as warehouses during the communist times. This meant that they were left to the elements really and not looked after. Mass was on when we came across this church and it looked really amazing because inside was just bare stone, all the paintings and frescoes were mostly completely faded, there were really simple benches for pews and just really bare, crumbling, walls.

Another thing we learned was that in 1989 there was a human chain which started in Vilnius and stretched through the whole of Lithuania, into Latvia and on to Tallinn in Estonia – millions of people over an astonishing 650km. It was the anniversary of a deal between Hitler and Stalin to divide up Europe – which led to the Baltic states being included in the USSR, and people were bravely protesting.

There’s a glass covered paving stone, with the Lithuanian word for miracle, Stebuklas, written in a circle, on the spot where the hand-holding started. As we were standing looking at it we met a Lituanian woman who was 6-years old at the time, and took part in the protest.

Keen to get out of the city for a while we’ve taken ourselves to the Masurian Lakes in the northeast of Poland where there are lots of beautiful glacial lakes all linked together by canals. We didn’t realise that there was the all-Europe motor rally on this same weekend in the small village that we thought we’d base ourselves.

We spent one night at a campsite in Gi?ycko. It was very cheap, but you had to pay each time you wanted to use the toilet so we decided to move on to an even smaller village, Miko?ajki, which is where the motor rally is taking place.

The campsite is fairly packed with rally revelers, and we’ve heard some fast car noises, but that’s all we’ve experienced of the rally. We’ve had some nice times walking in the countryside and sitting beside lakes. The weather is still baking hot. We had a lot of rain in Budapest but not a drop since. Not sure if this is normal for Poland or not, I suspect it’s not.