Marc Wandschneider travels a lot - Marc goes Traveling

marcwan.com

Marc Wandschneider travels a lot

Welcome to marcwan.com. This is my little place on the Intarnets for showing people (mostly nervous family) where I've been and what I've been doing. I've traveled around the world a bunch over the last decade, visiting a couple dozen places, and even managing to live in a good 4-5 of them along the way.

I'm currently in Beijing, China, where I had only intended to spend six months, but am somehow now well into my fourth year here. I've set a goal of fluency in the local langauge before leaving, so who knows how long that will take!

A number of people were asking about the old motorcycle trip to Europe, in 1999. I've finally gone and reinstated that portion of the website. You can see it at europe99.marcwan.com.

As always, please feel free to send me messages and comments at

140 trip report(s) total. Showing items 1 - 25

		2010-01-15 A weekend up in Harbin, China (aka Brrr) (2 reports)
		Harbin is China's coldest provincial capital, and most famous for its annual Ice Festival. It's a bit tricky to get train tickets up here in the winter, since everybody wants to come and check it out, but we finally got everything organised enough this to do it.

		2009-11-01 Snow. In Beijing. Like, Lots of it!
		Every winter since I've been here in Beijing, it's snowed. Once (okay, one year 1.5x). About 1.5cm of snow falls down in late December, is black by day's end, and is gone by day 2. So, imagine our shock this year when not two days after the temperature had been about 18C, we suddenly got about 12cm of snow. Awesome!

		2009-10-06 Remnants of the National Day Parade
		Since most people didn't get to see the National Day parade personally on October 1st this year, they put a lot of the floats and remnants of the parade in Tiananmen Square for a month so the locals could see things in person. It seemed like a good idea to make a nice long walk of it down to the city centre to check things out.

		2009-10-01 热烈庆祝中华人民共和国成为60周年！ (China's 60th in Beijing)
		Today was the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and the city put on a big bash. Despite the fact that it was full-on impossible to get to see the actual parades and air shows down near Tiananmen, I still got to see a huge column of tanks and other military vehicles go rumbling past my apartment, and then I went on a long long walk around the city, seeing how people were celebrating the holiday.

		2009-09-16 Another Seattle area hike — Denny Creek
		Evidently the hike and subsequent leg trauma from two weeks ago wasn't sufficient, so, on this my last day of this visit to North America, I decided to go again. But my friends threw a curve ball at me, and we ended up going to longer, harder trail. This report is unique in that it is entirely taken with the iPhone (forgot my camera).

		2009-09-07 A quick trip to New York City
		Before heading to Toronto to visit family, I decided to visit New York City to meet up with various friends and business contacts. The weather was gorgeous there too, so I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge a coupla times and hit the MOMA again. The city never disappoints.

		2009-08-30 A hike up Mount Si — a dozen years in the making
		It's been about 12 years since I hiked up Mount Si, but with the nice, dry weather for my visit here in Seattle, I decided to make a trek up old faithful. The Sunday morning crowds weren't small, but were entirely manageable, and I had a great time.

		2009-08-29 An afternoon Sailing trip in Puget Sound
		We were to go for an afternoon sail out in Puget Sound today on my friend Susan's nice little sailboat. There was absolutely no wind, but we still had a wonderful time motoring around chatting and otherwise enjoying the beautiful weather.

		2009-07-25 An Imperial Meal at the Summer Palace
		Today was lunch, Imperial Style, in the Summer Palace in the northwest corner of Beijing. Tonnes of food and non-stop conversation in dialectal Chinese. At least I understood what the food was saying to me ("eat me, please").

		2009-07-22 Weirdness in front of my house.
		This is a silly little report to show some photos of when the normally very quiet street in front of my apartment turned into a madhouse for the better part of two days. Everybody was going to the local hospital at the end of the road for something, and traffic was a disaster.

		2009-07-11 A day of nothing but lotus flowers at Baiyangdian (白洋淀)
		Situated somewhat halfway between Beijing and Tianjian, in Hebei province, is a nature park called Baiyangdian. It's famous for being all about the lotus flowers. Some friends had an extra seat in their car, and invited me to tag along. And what resulted was a day that would best be described as: lotus-y.

		2009-07-05 Great Wall Beach Party 2009 （长城入海口山海关老龙头沙滩派对）
		For three years running now, there has been a big beach party in which you take a bus from Beijing to where the Great Wall of China meets the sea. Lots of good music (read: no hip-hop or R&B), plenty of food and booze, and dancing until well past dawn. Enough people I knew said they were going that I decided to tag along and check it out. It was unusual.

		2009-05-16 798 - The Beijing Art District
		Once upon a time there was a big socialist factory area called Joint Factory 718, near the Dashanzi neighbourhood and transportation links. One of the smaller units within this complex was the 798 Factory, which made electronics. As this factory complex was abandoned, artists moved in and the name 798 came to refer to the entire greater area. It's now a thriving area of art galleries, cafés, restaurants, and chintzy tourist trinket shops.

		2009-05-04 Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province (江苏徐州) : A 48 hour whirlwind tour (2 reports)
		A friend of mine from Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province (江苏徐州), has been trying for a very long time to get me to go and visit him, but I've always been too busy to go or just otherwise missing good chances. With the labour day long weekend upon us, I took the opportunity to hop the fast trian down to Xuzhou and hang there for a couple of days. At 4 million people, it's not one of China's bigger cities, and there are maybe 50 foreigners, total, but people are very friendly and take their food very seriously.

		2009-05-02 The Beijing Strawberry Music Festival and Labour Day Weekend
		The Labour Day weekend is upon us and there is a three day music festival on the outskirts of Beijing called the Strawberry Music Festival. I embarked on a 2 hour public transit odyssey to find the place and check it out. Fabulous way to spend a sunny day.

		2009-04-05 Chinese museums are so awesome.
		I've often felt guilty about the fact that I haven't been to visit more museums and galleries here in Beijing. In three years of living here, I have only been to a handful, and rarely bother to take photos of them. Today, I remembered why.

		2009-01-28 Spring Festival 2009
		Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year) is China's biggest holiday, and always a crazy time here in Beijing. This year, with the economic slow-down and all that, things were a bit calmer than in years past, but still crazy, and full of fireworks goodness.

		2008-12-06 The Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium and environs
		After a brief but brutal cold snap, Beijing warmed up a few degrees today to let me hop on the bicycle and work my way up to the Olympic Park, where the Bird's Nest stadium, water cube swimming auditorium, and other venus are located. On the way, I passed by Ditan park, which had some sort of shin-dig going on, so I stopped in to see what was going on.

		2008-11-30 A little bit more exploring Beijing
		Another gorgeous day that demanded outside-time, so I hopped on the bike and went to check out some of the newer areas in the middle-east of the city, just outside the Third Ring Road. My travels took me first to Nürenjie (女人街, or "Women's street"), and then to the huge new Solana complex in the northwest part of Chaoyang park. It's really big.

		2008-11-29 Deutscher Weihnachts-Charity Basar Peking
		One of the big events on the Beijing social calendar is the Deutscher Weihnachts-Charity Basar Peking, or German Embassy Charity Bazaar. It's like a real Kristkindlmarkt, but in Beijing. In an embassy compound. It was awesome, and the weather for it couldn't have been better (well, maybe it could have snowed).

		2008-11-21 Beihai Park on a gloriously sunny day (and some Ritan too)
		The autumn weather here in Beijing has been unbeatable of late — blue skies and mild weather. So, I decided to finally check out one of the last "big ticket" items in Beijing to which I had not yet been: Beihai Park. Being so nice out, I also went down to Ritan park to get some pictures of the lovely trees.

		2008-11-18 16 Hours in Nanjing
		Taking Guerilla Tourism to a whole new level, I took a night train down to Nanjing, spent the day wandering around the city and seeing whatever sights there were to see, and then spent another night going back to Beijing. An interesting way to travel, and a beautiful city to boot!

		2008-08-19 Two months in India doing Yoga (13 reports)
		I decided to spend a couple of months in India doing some yoga. My plans changed on account of a massive case of the plague, but I was still able to have an awesome time in Mumbai seeing the Ganesh festival and the beautiful sights of the Ganges River in Rishikesh, up in the Himalayas.

		2008-08-15 Back in Beijing for the Olympics
		Before heading to India for a few months of yoga, I decided to go back and spend a few days in Beijing checking out the Olympic fun. The city was beautifully clean and sunny the whole time, with perfect temperatures. I walked around the newly opened Sanlitun village with the Apple Store, and also checked out the newly renovated Qianmen neighbourhood.

		2008-08-13 Day trip to Port Townsend, WA
		I did a day trip up to Port Townsend, WA, to visit some old neighbours of mine. Lovely town, crazy weather, and a nice way to relax for a day. Surprisingly decent food, too!