Unfortunately the payment of our flight to Beijing is still up in the air although we have tried two different websites now. Obviously there is something wrong with Nils’ and my credit cards even though the bank claims everything should be working just fine. Anyway, Nils has to take over now since I’ll be out of reach for some days. I hope we get this stuff booked somehow…otherwise we’ll probably have to stay in Hong Kong and actually do some studying .

But that’s not it: While the trip to Japan will be over on the 13th, the next flight leaves from Shenzen on the 14th and has its destination in Beijing. Hopefully anyways…because booking tickets in China seems to be far more complicated (but therefore cheaper) than in Japan. Actually we wanted to take a night train from Beijing to Xi’an as well but the railway company obviously wasn’t willing to take our money: Firstly the payment and booking process was unbelievably complicated – say bureaucracy – and secondly European credit cards appear not to be as common around the globe as one might think. But oh well, Beijing will be nice by itself. I just hope that we will finally get the flights booked tonight.