Our trip, so far...
(Internet is free in this hostel so we got some time to spend here)
Yesterday was another beautiful day in Xi'an. We didnt do so much but walk around. Again we went to the Muslim quarter, I spent too much money on sending a package to Germany and we had great food again.
At the Muslim quarter we took part at a tea ceremony. That is the part on a China journey where most people get ripped off. We didnt, I guess. We went into this really old building which basically consisted out of many buidlings, they looked like you imagine an old Japanese teakhouse. A girl explained all those teaceremony parts to us. First we got to chose 3 out of 6 teas- we went for Black tea with Lychee, Wuyan tea with Ginseng and Bittersweet Wuyan. The girl started to clean that really tiny, beautiful pottery with hot water- first the little tea pot, then the small cups.


She put quite a lot of tea inside the can and then poured hot water in it. First the tea was cleaned, the 2nd time she put water in it was what we drank. After the first tea (the bittersweet one) we got some hot water to drink which really made it taste bittersweet. We drank some more tea and more and more, by the way she introduced all of their products to us but we were strong and didnt buy anything.
We went on and met the 2 Czechs from the train again. We went to the Great Mosque. It really didnt look like a Mosque at all, only the people looked like Asian Muslims. And the moon on the roof. Its been so beautiful and mysterious with all the fog. It seems like Xian being the city of fog- we couldnt even see the sun today, but not due to clouds but to the fog.
Yepp, this is the Mosque...

Today, Thursday I guess, we got up early to go to see the famous Terracotta warriors. First we went to the train station and bought a ticket for tomorrow night to Chengdu. Yay, we got hard sleepers! No hard seats like we got for the 13hours trainride from Beijing to Xian... We actually wanted to go to some other place to go to those Taoist mountains, but there were only hard seats left so we decided to go to Chengdu.
Anyway.
After we finally found an ATM we took the bus for the Terracotta warriors. As we got there we first couldnt find the entrance as there were so many tourist shops... But we made it. They were really impressive but it was not like we were totally blown off. Those statues are over 2000 years old and huuuuge.
After we got back we went to THE quarter again and had some good food again. With lots of garlic. Here people dont put garlic into the sauce but they eat it pure. We tried it and its actually really really good!
We walked down the streets and saw a place for massages from blind people. That is more or less a tradition here, that blind people give the massages. We got one. Its been goooooood! Franzi got a little pain in her back afterwards but mine was just perfect.
Afterwards we had another one of these realloy good Islamic Rice Pudding Cakes or however they are called- its rice with sugar, caramel and jam , and some picture on it (just some colours) and then sugar and some nut stuff. Its so good.
And now we are back at the hostel. Good night!