At the end all went fine, I booked flights, a hotel and started thursday 22th from Milan. After a short stop in Zurich I was on the plane to Beijing, my first time in China. The flight was quite good, meals were fine and after a couple of films and according to schedule we landed in Beijing at 5:20 in the morning. I took up my luggage and went to the Airport Express, which took me to the city. After another short trip with the subway I got off the train and went to my hotel. Ah yes, my hotel...
I decided to stay in another hotel, still quite good but less expensive, because I would have been reimbursed only partially for the flight. The problem was...I was not able to find it! Obviously I tried to ask but people were not really able to help me. The decision to print the address of my hotel in chinese turned out a very wise thought. At the end, and after more than 2 hours, a nice chinese girl accompanied me to the hotel and gave me also her business card. She was my salvation!
After I checked in I had the whole day to discover this amazing city, so I took a shower and went to the center.
Distances are quite big and I had to learn this first, but chinese people are very helpful, and although they often are not able to understand, they try to help you in every situation.
I decided to visit the Lama Temple (Yonghe Gong) and it was quite impressive, it's not a very big place but I enjoyed this temple. The big buddha statue, 18 m high, is a must when you come to Beijing.
My first lunch in Beijing also was very curious, I discovered a small place were a lot of chinese people was eating, so it was a promising place. I asked for the menu and got it after seconds, but it was only in chinese...never mind I thought, and indeed a chinese guy who also spoke a bit of english asked if he could order for me and I let him do so.
What I got was a spicy soup and a good and cold Tsingtao beer, 25CYN were ok and after it I returned to the hotel, because I wanted to relax a bit before FUDPub.
FUDPub
The first social event also means the start of every FUDCon, so I moved to the 雕刻时光, (Sculpture in Time Cafè), where I met some of the other Fedora guys and GNOME folks.
The evening was really good, we had pizza and rice with meat. Almost all of us wanted a beer, but unfortunately they had only a warm one...no problem, after FUDPub we took also a couple of well cooled beers in the hotel at 3CYN (!!!).
Subways in Beijing close at 23:00, so the evening was a bit short, but I was also very tired and I fell in the bed exhausted, looking forward to the first day of FUDCon APAC.
