It feels like home

Topic of the day: Weekend trip up north

Every year in China, there's a huge ice carving festival in the northern city of Haerbin. Located about 1,000 kilometers south of Siberia, Russia, the city was originally built by the Russians, later taken over by the Japanese, and then given back to China. Once a mecca for Russian Jews, the city is now very much Chinese influenced. However, a few traits of the city's Russian past still remains, like a few Russian styled buildings, the famous red Russian sausages, and its famous annual ice carving festival.

As a nice little weekend getaway, I traveled with a group of friends from Beijing to Haerbin to go meet up with the grandaddy of all POSes and go see the ice festival. After a night of debauchery on the overnight train, which involved many bottles of beer, cards, and songs, we woke up to the blistering cold city of Haerbin.

How cold was it? About minus 20 Celcius with no sun. Literally It hurt to breath. After a nap and a jaunt around our hostel, we made our way to a very good and rib sticking hot pot lunch. What do you get when you get a bunch of hungry people together? 7 plates of meat, a whole bunch of vegetables, and then Devrim saying: "I'm still kind of hungry".

We walked around the town for a bit, and then discovered our little Haerbin jewel: Russian Coffee & Tea. It's a great little cozy joint that serves good Russian food...and vodka. Lots and lots of vodka.

One thing I learned this weekend is that Vodka is NOT your friend. Never. Although it does go down pretty smoothly with pickles, but not really the point. Anyway, Vodka will never be your friend.

Along the same line, we did give fabulous business to the Russian cafe - 3 visits in 24 hours. The funny thing was, they were actually out of vodka by our 3rd visit. Scary.

Between eating and drinking, we did make it to the actual ice festival. I'm glad to say the festival surprised us all. We were all very impressed at how great everything looked and how beautiful it was. Huge castles, churches, and buildings were made out of blocks of ice. The highlight of the festival was an ice toboggan run that ran from the steps of the castle onto a pile of snow below. Great fun.

The next day, the whole group went to the tiger park. They about 100 Siberian tigers, lions, and ligers there. While there, Simon fulfilled his life long dream of watching a tiger kill a goat (we bought the goat). Another highlight was when some other people bought a live chicken to feed the tigers. The chicken was so scared that it laid an egg just as the tiger grabbed it. I hate to sound very cruel, but I think the more warped thing was that despite the cruelty of the acts, everyone enjoyed it. And you have to admit the chicken laying an egg was pretty funny...

So overall, it was a lovely weekend spent eating, drinking, and taking pictures, all in the company of friends and in minus 20 celcius weather!