This time leaving China for holiday became pretty turbulent. After party night with Olaf and Chinese friend ‘Summer’ in Tianjin, I already started a bit late in the morning. After traffic jam at airport expressway and the wrong information on my ticket about which terminal to start, I arrived at Lufthansa counter only 40 minutes before take off – too late! Discussion useless. Find Lh-office. Running through the maze of Beijing airport. Finally I found a 10 person cue in front of a room. Impatient discussions. It does not get better: ALL flights overbooked for the next WEEK! The clerk offers to put us on a waiting list. Oh my God!
Afterwards I joined the others to Air China office, where they wanted to complain for the late flight that made them miss their connection. 2 more hours, but finally most of them were booked into a Air China flight for the next day. For the night they offered accommodation and when they counted persons they missed that I had nothing to do with the Air China flight – I also got the voucher for the hotel….
…hotel was not actually correct. After more than one hour bus ride (where do they drive us??) we found ourselves in TRAINING CENTER OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA!! (re-education towards communist virtues??). Obviously Air China uses this accommodation as cheap lodging for their clients. Everybody appalled! Next disaster: 2 persons one room. Single room additional 30 €. We could not believe, but again discussion useless.
I checked in with Wolfgang from Traunstein (south of Munich). After dinner we (2 Polish, 1 Russian, 1 Croatian, 3 German, 1 British) wanted to make the best out of it and asked for a bar. But where are we? Outside 6th ringroad! Away from everywhere, but we were told that 10 minutes away there is a danceclub. Of course it was dead when we arrived at 8 pm. Leaning personnel still wiping the floor. Anyway that was the only choice, we went into the scurrile place and remained the only guests for 2 hours. After 10 pm more and more people came (of course no foreigners ever here!!), the DJ started playing Ibiza sounds, suddenly the club was vibrating. At the end of the day we had a ‘Great Wall’ of empty Corona bottles in front of us and where cheering for AIR CHINA, which made the adventure possible.
Sleeping was easy – I was dead tired. Next day I drove, together with the Croatian and the Polish to the airport. Early morning I registered for the waiting list. At 9:30 I went back to the counter for recheck. ‘You are on the flight’ – I was close to crying. | 
