After grappling with Twitter, Facebook pages and finding my way around the blog, most of the teething problems have been ironed out. The Facebook page is talking to Twitter but not vice versa. I think Twitter are having technical issues. Either that or I'm just not doing it right! Hopefully all this work now will make updating and uploading photographs much easier once we're on the road.
Our accommodation in Cologne, Warsaw and Vilnius for the European leg. Booking.com and Hostelbookers have been invaluable for this although Hostelbookers does require a small non-refundable deposit.
Train tickets cannot be purchased until 90 days before departure but once that has been done, the whole route from London to Beijing will be organised.
China and beyond is still an adventure into the unknown and more research is needed to plan a realistic route for 8 weeks in China. There is so much to see but we don't want to spend days unnecessarily travelling from one end of China and back again. Neither do we want to be too rigid so any planned route will not be set in stone and we will use the travel agent services seemingly offered at all hotels and hostels for a small fee.
Russian and Mandarin lessons are coming along. Mandarin in particular is beginning to flow but we still doubt anyone in China will be able to understand a word we are saying. I think maybe we should nip down the local Chinese takeaway and test it out!
And the Australian visa application is just about ready to submit. We shall sit down tomorrow morning with a Baileys coffee, checking and signing before the whole lot is sent by Special Delivery to the Australian High Commission. Dawn will have to undergo a medical exam and after that we just wait. And wait. Processing times are 5-6 months so we probably won't know whether the visa has been granted until after we have left.
Finally, we have had some positive feedback about the blog and a big thank you to all who have shared, posted and tweeted.
Right, I think I need a little word here! This is starting to read as if we're planning it with military precision :-).....'plan a realistic route for China', hmmmmm, well, I can reliably inform anyone reading this that the planning consists of us finding somewhere that looks interesting and the conversation goes thus - 'Fuck me, look at that mountain/river/sea scene/pair of tits, whaddya reckon'? - consult map - discover place/person of interest is within 2000 miles of the vague vicinity we think we might, perhaps be somewhere near - 'Yeah, can't be that hard, stick it on the list and we'll see what happens' - Wake up next day, 'Where the fuck was that mountain/river/sea scene/pair of tits'? - 'Dunno, can you remember how to spell it' - 'Nope, that's your job' - 'Oh well, turn the computer on and we'll find..........fuck me, look at that mountain/river/sea scene/pair of tits' Repeat process until we have lines on a map that resemble a particularly highly involved game of cat's cradle!
We're not over planning this by a long stretch as, in my experience, no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, no travel plan survives first contact with an unexpected, attractive mountain/river/sea scene/pair of tits. That's kinda how it should be, in my opinion, we wouldn't have an itinerary as such in Russia if the bureaucracy wasn't quite so confusing and we could get a longer visa than a month. As we can't, if we didn't have a little assistance in organising the train tickets, after a month the odds would be high that we'd find ourselves out of time and still sitting at the bar in Moscow :-)
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Our accommodation in Cologne, Warsaw and Vilnius for the European leg. Booking.com and Hostelbookers have been invaluable for this although Hostelbookers does require a small non-refundable deposit.
Train tickets cannot be purchased until 90 days before departure but once that has been done, the whole route from London to Beijing will be organised.
China and beyond is still an adventure into the unknown and more research is needed to plan a realistic route for 8 weeks in China. There is so much to see but we don't want to spend days unnecessarily travelling from one end of China and back again. Neither do we want to be too rigid so any planned route will not be set in stone and we will use the travel agent services seemingly offered at all hotels and hostels for a small fee.
Russian and Mandarin lessons are coming along. Mandarin in particular is beginning to flow but we still doubt anyone in China will be able to understand a word we are saying. I think maybe we should nip down the local Chinese takeaway and test it out!
And the Australian visa application is just about ready to submit. We shall sit down tomorrow morning with a Baileys coffee, checking and signing before the whole lot is sent by Special Delivery to the Australian High Commission. Dawn will have to undergo a medical exam and after that we just wait. And wait. Processing times are 5-6 months so we probably won't know whether the visa has been granted until after we have left.
Finally, we have had some positive feedback about the blog and a big thank you to all who have shared, posted and tweeted.
Right, I think I need a little word here! This is starting to read as if we're planning it with military precision :-).....'plan a realistic route for China', hmmmmm, well, I can reliably inform anyone reading this that the planning consists of us finding somewhere that looks interesting and the conversation goes thus - 'Fuck me, look at that mountain/river/sea scene/pair of tits, whaddya reckon'? - consult map - discover place/person of interest is within 2000 miles of the vague vicinity we think we might, perhaps be somewhere near - 'Yeah, can't be that hard, stick it on the list and we'll see what happens' - Wake up next day, 'Where the fuck was that mountain/river/sea scene/pair of tits'? - 'Dunno, can you remember how to spell it' - 'Nope, that's your job' - 'Oh well, turn the computer on and we'll find..........fuck me, look at that mountain/river/sea scene/pair of tits' Repeat process until we have lines on a map that resemble a particularly highly involved game of cat's cradle!
We're not over planning this by a long stretch as, in my experience, no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, no travel plan survives first contact with an unexpected, attractive mountain/river/sea scene/pair of tits. That's kinda how it should be, in my opinion, we wouldn't have an itinerary as such in Russia if the bureaucracy wasn't quite so confusing and we could get a longer visa than a month. As we can't, if we didn't have a little assistance in organising the train tickets, after a month the odds would be high that we'd find ourselves out of time and still sitting at the bar in Moscow :-)
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