One of the most difficult things to plan when traveling in China is find long distance buses. This is especially true if you do not speak Chinese. There is an online bus search tool. But unfortunately is is Chinese only.
We wanted to book a bus from NanJing (南京) to Huang Shan (黄山). There are only a few results you get when using Google. So, I'll share the details about the bus we finally took on our trip.
This article explains how you can search a train in China and buy a ticket.
I found a nice site that allows you to create a map of all your visited countries. Check out mine...
create your own visited countries map or vertaling Duits Nederlands
I'm currently attending a seminar at my university called Intercultural Social Competence. This course is quite interesting by itself. But for me it's just the thing I have been looking for - or better, it has found me.
It's like all my thoughts and experiences of the past half year coming together. I can relate to many intercultural differences because I have seen them in India myself this winter.
I started to love this seminar right from the beginning. It started with a quote from Sound Of Music. That shows how people from all over the world might perceive Austria, while most don't know how old that movie is or that not all Austria is that way.
Also, today we started the course with the first 15 minutes of Lost In Translation, a great movie about people traveling to Tokyo by themselves. I saw the whole movie about a month ago and it I loved it due to my Indian memories. But even more than that, today I learned to realize all the small details the movie offers. In the first 15 minutes Bill Murray arrives in a totally strange country. He has no idea what the local behaviors are.
This course teaches us all these little differences. For example, it's amazing how cultures differ in simple things such as greeting. While in southern countries you are almost hugged an kissed by everyone, in Asian countries a handshake is all that is accepted. If you are not aware of these things, you might screw up right at the beginning of a visit to another country.
I probably will post more impressions about this course during the week or next weekend, when the second half will take place.
