Beijing, October 18, 2008, Saturday
Trip Start
Sep 26, 2008
1
31
Trip End
Oct 18, 2008
Beijing, China
Monday, September 14, 2009
PingPing joined me for breakfast. We took one of the tables in the hotel yard and it really felt like it would be a morning meal in a siheyuan. If you could pretend to forget you were in a hotel, than that was it. The night before I had asked the young guy, one of the two youngsters who seemed to be running the place, if they could have the breakfast ready for me at seven. Not later. He'd said they could. At seven ten this morning the breakfast was not there yet. I knew there was still enough time for everything, but I hated doing things in constant fear of stepping on deadlines on days when I had intercontinental flight ahead of me. If there was time to kill, I always preferred to kill it at the airport. That’s just me.
But the breakfast did arrive at quarter past. Which was still well within tolerable limits. Hence I said nothing and just smiled back at the ever-smiling lad. So I had my siheyuan breakfast, and once it was over, there was nothing more for me to do in town. PingPing and I got in her car and set out to the airport. We allowed for the heavy traffic on the way there, but for some inexplicable reason, against all our expectations, roads were pretty free. So we got to the airport full two hours before my departure. But I preferred it that way, anyway. I did the check-in and after that we were free to do whatever we wanted to do. We had a drink here, then an ice-cream there.
Which was in effect one long good-bye. I thanked PingPing for everything she did for me during my stay in Beijing and expressed my wish to see her soon again, wherever it would be. And then the Frankfurt-bound airplane was waiting for me.
