The beer city

After my friends went to Qingdao and told me tales of great beer and sandy beaches, I have been dreaming of going there, so I jumped on a plane in Xi'an and left for the City of Beer. 

The journey to Qingdao was everything than easy; the flight was delayed, the airport bus was delayed, the bus stopped at the wrong stop, I asked for directions and was shown the wrong way and in the end I ended up taking the taxi, which brought me to the completely wrong place. The only positive thing was a lovely sun set on the bus and that I made it inside the hostel before the typhoon rain set in.

Obviously the only thing I wanted to do was cry when I arrived. I spent all my money on paying for the hostel, and there I was, hungry, thirsty and a typhoon outside the door. Luckily there are good people in this world. Tricia, the girl on the right, she offered to buy me food and some drink, which I gladly accepted.

The day after the typhoon had passed and the four of us, Tricia, Joe and Mel, decided to go to the brewery museum. We thought it would be this wonderful place with lots of free beer, but we thought wrong. The museum mainly consisted of pictures on the wall and empty bottles.

Here you can see my slight frustration over lack of beer in a brewery - I'm not very happy.

 

Beer is healthy, I'm just sayin'!

 

This was the amount of beer you got in the brewery museum, a deci liter of raw beer. However, out side there was a factory store, and bought myself a bottle of lovely stout.

One of the local specialities in Qingdao is beer in a bag, and it works as follows: You go across the street to the nearest bar, restaurant or place with beer barrels on the street, you smile, show one finger, smile again, and the lady, or the man, takes one bag down, attach it to a scale and start pouring beer into the bag, when the reaches one kilo, she, or he, stops pouring. The bag is tied up, a straw is put in, and voila - the beer is ready to drink. The price? Somewhere between four and six RMB.

You find lots of strange things in China, here, for instance, is a slogan which says "[China must] take the lead in science development".

New town skyline.



Me and a red thing. I don't know what it is, why it's there and no, I didn't ask, but the Chinese loved taking pics in front of it, with and without me.

No, I'm not an alcoholic, I just like bringing a beer in a bag wherever I go.

Let me present to you, the lovely, and slightly crazy, Jeremy. Jeremy is from New Zealand, but has decided to bike from London back home. I've never met anybody so hungry and able to eat so much, whenever we got out and I eat, I never finished my meals because I fill up so easily, and every single time his eyes lit up and he finished the rest. You can btw read his blog here.

In China you're never alone, and I think this picture illustrates that pretty well.

First, scroll up to the beer bottle, and look closely on the emblem right above where it says "TSING TAO". Do you see that little pagoda? That's the pagoda I'm standing right in front of. Think of that!

On the way back from the pagoda to the hostel I found this little temple in honour of the Empress of Heaven. Nice little spot with a lot of Chinese tourist passing by every five minutes.

In side the temple, these small red things was hung up with wishes for good luck, safety, fortune and anything else you can imagine.

After spent many days in Qingdao, where of four days in bed with sinusitis, I got to know the staff at the hostel very well, and they took me out for dinner (they also took me to the beach on their day of). Such a nice thing of them to do.

Jason, or Wang Yang, was the one that spoke English and asked me all the weird questions all the time. He also invited me to spend Spring festival with him and his parents in Chengdu. Did I mention he has a girl friend? 

The guy in the kitchen, who I never really picked up the name of. Really nice guy. He tried to speak English, but failed miserably.

That's it - next stop Shanghai!