Well anyway… Amy and I decided to take a mini vacation of National Holiday Break. We had an entire week off, but unfortunately, we were ballers on a budget, so we had to stay cheap and close. We decided on Nanjing. Although I have been there before, I did not get to do a whole lot because it was Chinese New Year and everything was closed down. I figured a second round was in order so that I could really enjoy the city. To be honest, there is so much history behind Nanjing and so much to see that I feel I was cheated on my first trip.
So Amy and I decided on Nanjing, so one day after school we headed to the train station to purchase our tickets. See the thing about buying train tickets here is that we have no way of looking up train times or prices or anything because the websites are only in Chinese. However, even if I could look up the information on line, we still have to actually purchase them at the train station because they cannot be purchased on line. We wanted to go as soon as possible because everyone in China travels during National Holiday Break (it is like our spring break) so tickets go fast!
Upon our first trip to the train station, as soon as we were getting off the metro, I realized that we did not have our passports. Of course, in China we cannot buy anything without our passports and because our trip to the metro was not planned before we were already at work, neither of us thought about it. The next day (passports in hand), we made our second journey back to the train station. Upon our second attempt we were told that tickets were not being sold prior to six days out from departure. Although the rule is usually ten, during holidays the government changes it to six to keep people from buying up all the tickets. Frustrated, we headed back home empty handed, yet again. On the third attempt, less than a week out from our departure day, we decided to give a travel dealer a try… there was an office much closer to our apartment than the train station is, and we figured we already had some failed attempts, what’s one more? The thing about dealers is that they only get a certain amount of tickets for each train trip, so the dealers could be sold out, but the station still have some available, and vice versa.
We waited in line for nearly an hour. While I ran to the store to grab some water, Amy suddenly advanced in line to the front window and panicked! She doesn’t speak any Chinese and the women behind the window didn’t speak any English so she yelled at her the next person pushed her aside. When I got back, I called my Chinese speaking friend so that she could relay our ticket arrangements to the lady, but they ticket lady was less than helpful and refused to talk on the phone. Again, the next person in line, push me aside to buy her tickets. Finally, I jumped in front and pulled together every word of Chinese I knew to communicate what I needed to this lady, and low and behold, she actually understood and we were actually able to buy our tickets to Nanjing.
The other thing about buying train tickets is that you can only buy tickets from your departure station because the stations are not linked. So I can buy my ticket from Shanghai to Nanjing from the Shanghai station, but I cannot buy my tickets from Nanjing back to Shanghai until I am in Nanjing…. So there was a good chance that we would not make it back due to the heavy traffic during the weekend returning from Nanjing. We shall see….
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