Qingdao

Our last night in Shanghai was spent at the Women's Football World Cup Final. The third/fourth place game between Norway and USA took place before the final and was utterly turgid. The stadium was half-empty and the occasional shouts of 'Go Ladies' and 'Yeah, way to go dee-fence' made for a strange atmosphere. The best thing about the game was watching the three or four bats that were happily flapping around the stadium hoovering up insects. The final itself was completely different: packed stadium, fantastic atmosphere and a really good game. Brazil completely outplayed Germany for most of the match except for a brief period at the start of the second half when Germany scored both of their goals to win, which upset me quite a lot. A really enjoyable evening despite leaving the stadium to chants of 'Deutschland. Deutschland.'.





We arrived at the coastal town of Qingdao on Monday morning. There weren't any train tickets available from Shanghai to Qingdao so we were forced to travel here by plane. Very fast but very expensive. To make sure we could get train tickets back to Beijing, we went to the train station on Monday afternoon, well in advance of our date of travel (today). My guide book talks about 'the marvellous ticket office at the train station - German built with a clock tower, red tiles and practically a sight in itself'. Unfortunately, we found a massive building site where the station should be. No trains, then. It looks like they are redeveloping the station in time for next year's Olympics (the sailing events are to be held here). Luckily, we managed to book seats on an overnight bus for Beijing leaving tonight, which should be an altogether different experience.

Our experience with food and menus has moved from challenging to comical. After having bought our bus tickets we treated ourselves to lunch in a nice-looking restaurant near our youth hostel. An English menu! Cathy's meal arrived promptly and was very tasty. Thirty minutes later and my order (Chilli Chicken) had still not turned up. When it did arrive, it turned out to be a large pile of chopped and fried red chillis with what looked liked chicken nuggets on top. On closer inspection, the nuggets turned out to each have two chicken bones sticking through them. The reason that the food took so long to arrive is that the chef needed time to get the bones nice and soft, ready to be eaten. I like a challenge and managed to chew my way through most of the meal but even I can't eat that many chillis or that much bone. Has my diet been lacking in marrow-bone?



Qingdao was occupied by the Germans for several years so many of the buildings in the centre have a very European feel and there are even a couple of very large churches. The most interesting place however, is the Tsingtao brewery which we saw yesterday afternon. It has a surprisingly good museum showing much of the old brewing equipment and includes a tour through the modern factory. We spent several hours here and stopped off for 'a while' at the bar before leaving. Much of last night was spent trying to get rid of our hangovers.