Everything different. Always

And we thought that is so easy. I have this wonderfully brutal way to always remind myself  about my naivety. But sometimes it is really not my fault. To make the long story short: In order to recover after necessary operations we were forced to postpone our journey for about two months. So our next try is beginning of July. This gives us some time to take care of important things we postponed during our hospital odyssey …and to spend a little more from our savings. But one after the other…

Health Situation

So we came to Beijing to adopt our Changjiang 750, to drive her in a little bit and to organise the journey. Since our super-luxury health insurance (we like to make advertisement for something we like) which practically pays for everything will soon expire, we also planned an inspection for Kathy and Marcus. After an adventure hardly to describe with words about hospitals in Beijing, we found the Beijing United Family Hospital. As lovely as our health insurance. And as impertinently expensive. But awesome! We can absolutely and without restrictions recommend this hospital. Forget everything else and go there! Here we went to the OR and got the necessary repairs done. Everything worked very well but now we have to slow down a little in order to get fully recovered.

Global Village with Many Fences

Just before our hospital odyssey we also had a rude awakening about how much our “Global Village” really is one. With a German passport many doors are open for the holder. But beware of having a Chinese passport. Many countries don’t like to see you. Maybe except one belongs to this new class of Chinese who don’t know how to spend their money. Od course this does not change anything for the visa situation but money is welcome everywhere… What makes me thinking in this context is this delusion of control and insulation you can find everywhere now. Why does every stupid government have to bully people? Who do they think they are? God?

However. If we want to travel with an acceptable risk an effort we will have to obey. Unfortunately Kathy has to apply for a visa at the embassy in Beijing for every single country. That takes time and costs money and nerves. Some embassies only need the application form, others want to see an “invitation letter” issued from within the country. Of course we are welcome to pay for this service additionally. Most of the embassies want to see Kathy’s bank statements. I guess I have less money than my wife, but I am German and therefore everything is better…

So for now we hope that we would get at least a transit visa. Because we don’t have much of a choice. We do not want to travel through Russia. Therefore we can’t get around some “…stan” countries. Or we travel through very un-peaceful land, which we also do not want to choose.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *