T138, Shanghai to Xian... 16 hours

Saturday morning... having made the decision to give myself a couple weeks before diving head-first into a fulltime teaaching job... plans for a trip to Xian began to materialize. Why Xian, you might ask? Long-story-short ... a friend I met in the hostel last month invited me to see her hometown. So I went to the train station to see what I could figure out, and what tickets might be available. As it turned out, just 4 hours later, I was on the train to Xian! The Shanghai Rail station is just 3 stops up from our apartment, so it was not a big production to get back and forth on the metro. We have an amazing location. So I raced home, took a shower, put together 2 backpacks full of stuff, and headed back to the train station. With 30 minutes to spare, I was on the train, and ready to ride.

I had booked a ticket which included a hard-sleeper, which is a mid-priced accomodation which allows you to be horizontal for most of the ride. Outside of that, there is not much extra room to sit, or get around. There are small fold-out seats across the aisle for looking out the window, but my big self didn't quite fit on the seat... so at most I could tolerate an hour at a time, then had to climb back into the sleeper space.

In this particular car, there were 6 beds to one small area. The beds themselves were maybe 2 feet wide, and 6 feet long. Being 6'3", my feet occassionally drifted beyond the end, and knocked a passerby or two in the head. Oooopps!