5 October 1987

Travelling Asia - Departure

At dawn on a misty monday, october 1987. Very early, it is still dark, we stumble with our heavy backpacks on our back, down the stairs, through the door. This is the beginning, this is where it starts for real. We will travel for half a year through Asia and it starts with a short walk in the early morning darkness to the busstop and a 5 minute busride to the railwaystation of Groningen. It is hard to believe it can be so easy. And there's a fantastic feeling of freedom: while everywhere people wake up and prepare for another day at work we are leaving, by citybus and the first train to the airport Schiphol.

During the trainride the sky slowly lightens but the heavy mists remain. At Schiphol the Interflug plane to East-Berlin turns out to be delayed several hours by the mist. Rather bad, because this way we will miss our connection to Moscow. But, at East-Berlin it is arranged that we can board the Aeroflot flight to Moscow, so there is no trouble. In Berlin we meet the 6 other Dutch travellers, who, like us, booked (at various Dutch travelagencies) the journey on the Trans Mongolia Express (a version of the famous Trans Siberia Express) to Beijing: 2 men of about 50, from a village near Rotterdam, with a video-camera,who looked forward to this trip for a long time, 2 girls from Amsterdam who, like me and my friend, want to travel trough Asia for a while, and for the rest a boy and a girl on her way to Australia, who decide to share the hotelroom together and later share the traincabin with us. Except for our companions for the next week, we see the crew of the plane that is to take us to Moscow, rather discouragingly, they seem to try to drink as much as they can while waiting for the plane to get ready.

We continue the trip to Moscow trustingly. And everybody arrives savely, except for the backpack of one of the girls from Amsterdam that turns out not to have come along. This will be a problem because the train to Beijing will leave the next day, so she won't see her backpack again untill a week later in Beijing(at leat she hopes). When, at last, we have passed the Soviet customs we are met by Lydia, a Dutch speaking Intourist guide. We thought we just booked the transits, a night in a hotel and the Transmongolia Express (and some nights in Beijing) but guide and tour through Moscow appear to have been included automatically by the Soviet Tourist Board. Lydia leads us to a bus which takes us through the Moscovian night to our hotel, the large Kosmos-hotel, she arranges the rooms and tells us at what time to be ready the next morning for the "tour of Moscow". It is past midnight, we're dead-tired, our journey has begun.

Berlin Visum