En route to Beijing at long last!

9/12: Left on 7:15 am train for China, a 32 hour journey, and saw our friends Dale, Debbie and Elaine again. They were in the same compartment as we were; you may recall from earlier blogs we had initially met them on the walking tour of Moscow our first day there and several times since as we all traveled on the Trans Siberian all across Russia.

New terrain for us: plains, plains and more plains, then a lengthy stop at Choyr (population of 10,100); saw a statue of the 1st Mongolian cosmonaut and a former Soviet air base, now closed.
Had a 4 plus hour stop at the Chinese border in part b/c the Chinese train gauge is different from that used in both Russia and Mongolia; since the Chinese axles or bogies are 3.5" narrower, each carriage had to be individually elevated, (while we were all in them), old bogies removed and new ones put on. Everyone took masses of pictures as you might imagine even though the whole process didn't start til after 9 pm.
Crossing the border, first thing we heard from a tannoy speaker was "Ladies and Gentlemen and Friends: You are about to have a new journey. Have a nice trip!"
Then blasting again from the tannoy, oodles of songs at incredibly high volume: Love is Blue was one of them we recognized.
Passports and immigration forms were collected but no one searched our compartment, our bags; we were all surprised how the border crossing was such a non issue in terms of security especially as compared to what we've become accustomed to in the States these days.
Had our first very hazy views of the Great Wall about 9 am on 9/12; couldn't wait to go hiking on it in a few days from Beijing! The whole terrain was very mountainous, so there were scads of train tunnels (one of them was several kms long) to go through as we neared Beijing. It seemed like everyone had their faces glued to the windows in the compartment's passageway to get a glimpse of what life was like beyond the train.
Had to say goodbye to Dale and Co. at the overwhelmingly huge Beijing train station as Beijing was the end of the road for them before returning to Florida
Our first experience with the craziness of the size of Beijing and thus its traffic was waiting a good 35 minutes to get a taxi to our hostel; well worth the wait as our hostel, Beijing Downtown Backpackers, was a real gem located in one of the capital's most famous hutongs, i.e. alleyways.
The alleyway was theoretically a pedestrian street although you could never walk more than a few steps without hearing car horns, the roar of motorcycles and mopeds, bicycle bells beeping.
I have never seen crowds like we saw and experienced in Beijing with people jostling for every inch of space on the roads, sidewalks, everywhere. We got used to do it very quickly in part because we had to, but it was a sea change from our days in the countryside of Mongolia!
Some pictures and I'll call it a day!