Leaving Lanzhou

I'm still alive, just a victim of the dreaded Chinese Internet firewall - which blocks access to blogspot (although, oddly, not Facebook). I've moved on to Europe, and am currently on a train heading from Bratislava out into the Slovakian countryside to present at a conference in Rezemberok. The countryside is beautiful and, not surprisingly, looks much like the Austrian and especially Hungarian areas that I'm more familiar with. I didn't see much of Bratislava, just a taxi ride from the airport to the train station, but it seemed pretty seedy - although, to be fair, don't all areas around all train stations seem seedy? It's a universal phenomenon.

It's amazing to think that yesterday at 4:30 Beijing time (and all of China, huge country that it is, is on Beijing time - which meant that in far western China it was still light at 11:30 at night, although they are "unofficially" on a two hour time difference, but I'll try and explain that one later) I was waking up in Lanzhou, China and now I'm on a train in the middle of Slovakia. It wasn't easy, of course. The trip from Beijing to Frankfurt was two hours late, which meant that I missed my connecting flight last night. However, Air China, not being an American airline, just apologized and paid for a hotel and a couple meals. This morning started out a little rough when Czech Airlines didn't have any record of my reservation from Prague to Bratislava (related somehow to me being late and missing my flight and Air China cancelling one flight and not the other, and it being my responsibility to cancel the second one - very confusing) and said there was nothing to be done other than buy a new ticket - so I just lapsed into my persona of large angry American and refused to move until they fixed the problem. Eventually I was granted some special dispensation and everything was taken care of, although took close to an hour and a half.

I'll fill in the China story, which was amazing, now that I'm free of the firewall.