Train of Thought: You Can't Be There if You Can't Get There

My next story is about our quest to purchase train tickets to BeiJing. I've given you a preview of some of the travel challenges here during the Olympics. While train tickets can normally be purchased 14 days in advance, this summer, most trains have a five day advance sale and trains heading to BeiJing have only a three day advance (more about that soon). I won't repeat about my previous blog, so i'll start in the present.

Today is three days before we hope to leave for Beijing (today was Monday and we leave Thursday). We already have our tickets to Shaghai to pick up Christopher and our plans are to purchase three overnight train tickets from Shanghai to Beigjing leaving at 8:42pm thursday and arriving about 10am the next day. (It's a really long trip, the equavalent of riding from Modesto to Seattle). Mia's son JiaWei will leave separately from Nanjing and his train will arrive 10 minutes after ours.

This morning we had reservations to play tennis from 7am to 9am at the local courts. Mia's plan was to leave just before 8am, walk five minutes to the ticket office by our house, and purchase the tickets. Strangely, she was told that tickets weren't on sale and that the "three days" included the date of sale. Now, this confused me greatly (and i'm certain my questions drove Mia nuts), because the "five day advance" for the other tickets didn't include the date of sale. She returned to the tennis courts with her story and we talked strategy on the way home. We were both a bit nervous (OK, I was the nervous one) since we're getting a little too close to thursday and if we can't get tickets our options are fairly slim.

After showering, we took a taxi to the Nanjing train station, a 20 yuan ride ($3). If you've ever taken Amtrack, you would think you're on another planet here. The Chinese do transportation right. The train station is as large as some airports and was recently rebuilt so that taxis and busses have clear and quick access and egress. It's an incredibly busy station with 30 (count 'em 30) ticket counters on one floor and two separate ticket areas on the left and right sides of the station. More than 100 trains leave each day, most of them packed. it's really an airport on tracks. We waited in the line labeled (olympics) and our line, like all of them, were 15-20 people long. After waiting only about 8 minutes, we were told to go to line 30 which was the information line (but also sold tickets). Another wait and this time we were also told that tickets didn't go on sale until tomorrow (8:30am). we could reserve a ticket today for JiaWei, but couldn't because they wanted his ID number. This is one of the security measures put in place because of the Olympics, one which has scared away a number of tourists, but not enough to make it easier to get train tickets. Evidently, you can reserve tickets if you're leaving from a specific station but you have purchase them AT that station. Since we can't go to Shanghai today to reserve tickets, Mia called a travel agent in Shanghai. yes, he could reserve tickets for us, but we would have to pick them up tomorrow.

Huh?

And this just added to our paranoia. Tons of people must be reserving tickets in advance using these methods which could severly limit our ability to purchase tickets tomorrow.

A side note. The other day when we purchased tickets to Shaghai, the gentleman in front of us was attempting to purchase tickets to a far away destination, one that was a full two-day train ride. The ticket office could only offer him standing room. Let me say that again. Standing room.

We left the station knowing we'd need to call my son back in Modesto to get his passport number and planning to get in line early Tuesday morning (just 12 hours away now), hoping for the best. We have several plans outlined, including taking the train from Shangahi to Nanjing followed by taking the 1am train to Beijing. Things are just hopping around here.