How I met bro.

November 13, 2011. Written in Chengdu, China

How I met Bro.

After my train left the station of Xinyang in the late night, I arrived in the city of Xi'an the next morning. I had a brochure of a youth hostel that was supposed to be near the main station of the city, and was able to find it without any problems. This youth hostel was crowned as the 6th best youth hostel of the world, and indeed it was a very cozy and confortable place to stay, although the WiFI connection was the slowest I have ever had in China. Only having slept for a few hours in the train, I arrived there exhausted, and went straight to bed after having checked in. I was staying in a 6 person dormitory, but it seemed that all the other guests in my room were Chinese people. 

 I woke up at around 11:30, and decided to start my day by washing my filthy clothes and having a nice shower. On my way to the shower, I saw a Japanese looking guy. If I was right, he was one of the first Japanese tourists in China I had seen so far. The shower was great, and kept the world's 6th youth hostel in it's honor. Never had I had so much hot water in China before. 

In the bar of the hotel, there was a WiFi connection, but as I mentioned before, the connection was not the best part of the hostel. That being said, the bar was a cozy place to hang out and meet new people. The Japanese looking guy I had seen before was sitting on a table reading a guide book in Japanese. So I had been right! I decided to approach him since I didn't know anyone in this place yet.

"You are Japanese, right?" I asked him.

The guy looked up from his guide book.

Nori was indeed a Japanese, but had been working as a cook in Europe for about 8 years, and was therefore not quite your ordinary guy. He looked maybe a few years older then me, and therefore it surprised me when he told me that he was already 36. 

He had been to Tibet on a tour, and just arrived in Xi'an yesterday night with some other people that had been on the same tour. From Lasa, they had taken the 44 hour train, so I was not the only exhausted person in the hostel. 

After a while, a young white guy with a large beard came to our table, and sat next to us. 

Collin, 22 from America had also been one of the Tibet tour members. He was polite, social guy and intelligent guy. 

We asked him if he wanted to come and have lunch, but he appeared to have come back from lunch just now, so Nori and I went outside just with the two of us. 

After having walked for a few minutes, we randomly headed into a restaurant, and ordered some simple dishes. Nori agreed with me that the food was pretty good, which is remarkable considering the fact that in China the difference between good and bad restaurants is pretty big. We talked about each others traveling plans and life back home. Nori had been living in Italy for 5 years, and now in Germany for about 3 years. He was not the kind of guy that worries about his future or thinks back about the past, and preferred to just enjoye the present. Therefore, he would never plan ahead while traveling either, and just goes were he feels like going at that moment. Although I do often think back in the past and have my worries about the future, we were in common when it comes to not planning things ahead, which could make us good traveling partners.

When we came back to the youth hostel, Collin invited us to join him in a game of billiards. After having ordered some beers, we went to the billiard table, and had a pool-game with the 3 of us (C knew rules to play with 3). We were all so bad at it though, that the game would hardly come to an end. After 30 minutes of play, almost all of the balls were still on the table. We were all getting enough of the game, and hoped it would soon come to an end, but somehow nobody was able to get their balls in the hole. I usually hate losing and want to win anything I can, but this time I didn't care about winning anymore, I just wanted the game to finally come to an end! 

Just a few minutes after Collin had finally won the match, a white couple approached us. They seemed to also have been members of the Tibet tour, and were a couple from the Netherlands. The blonde woman was about 1,95 Cm, and was a few centimeters taller then her boyfriend. Just like me, they were traveling around the world for about 1 year, and had started about 2 months ago. After taking the plane to India, they had come all the way to China by busses and trains. I talked some with the couple, and found out that the woman had practiced Kyokushin Karate as a kid, which is quite remarkable because Kyokushin is not such a big organization in the Netherlands.

That being said, in the evening, we went out to have dinner all together to the same restaurant as I had been with Nori in the afternoon. I wanted to order something different, but Nori decided to order the same thing, to make sure that our guests would have a nice dinner. While eating, we were pleasantly talking about each others adventures. Like me, the Dutch couple were also writing a blog on blogspot. I felt envious when I heard that their total amount of visitors was almost the double of mine! And that while I am writing in 3 languages and thus am supposed to have a much larger audience! 

Back in the bar of the hostel, an action movie with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz had just started. It was English spoken and had English subtitles at the same time. The unprofessional subtitles though, were so terrible that they were often so hilarious to read that it was hard to concentrate on the movie. 

For example, after having been unconscious, Cameron Diaz wakes up wearing a bikini. She then says to Tom Cruise "Why am I wearing a bikini?!"

The subtitles? 

"How do I wear a bikini?"

When the movie was finally finished, all of us had laughed so much that we were now exhausted.

"Good night, bro." I said to Nori, and headed into my room.