Daniele Baroncelli, fondatore di alcuni dei più bei e innovativi siti di musica e cinema italiani (cinemaitaliano.info e rockit.it), è partito per un lungo viaggio on the road in Asia. Racconta la sua avventura su Facebook: per cercare di confrontarsi con il lontano e il diverso.
Questo il suo primo resoconto:
After 3 days, it’s about the time to write some impressions about Beijing. The atmosphere here is just amazing. My hostel is right in the centre, very close to Tienanmen Square. Despite the central location, it’s still very difficult to find foreigners on the street. What you see is just Chinese people, which often show much curiosity about seeing a foreigner and are pleased to interact with you. There is a big language barrier though, no one really speaks English apart from very few young people.
Yesterday with some travellers I met in the hostel I went to the 798 Art District, an old industrial area built in the 50s by East Germany for the Chinese cousins, which has now become a huge contemporary art exposition, with tens of galleries, holding some amazing art. You can really breathe there the whole creative potential of a huge nation like China!
As I happened to discover in my trips in South America, backpacking is mainly about 3 things: discovering new landscapes, be inspired by the local cultures, interacting with the travellers.
The travelling community I found in this hostel is very fascinating. Most people have a long experience travelling and have been in many different places in the world. Some people this morning even left for North Korea, holding one of the only 2,000 tourist visas North Korea issues every year. What really strikes you about these people who have been travelling a lot is their natural friendliness. You meet them and after a few hours it looks like you have been friends forever.
So far, I deliberately tried not to eat local food. I want my body to fully adapt to the new environment first, before getting any sick. But as Dave, a history teacher from Chicago, said “don’t worry man, it has to happen once, your body then gets the antibodies and it usually doesn’t happen again”.
