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Since it was my birthday week we got to do a lot of really fun stuff. After all, you only turn 27 once! Mike decided to take me to the Beijing zoo to celebrate. With the new apartment I was hoping to get a cat but one of the room mates is allergic, so a trip to the zoo to see the giant cats there was a consolation.

In 2006 our visit to the zoo ultimately resulted in one of our friends yelling at a local child for tossing his empty coke bottle into the lion cage and yelling at the other animals. We were shocked at how people treated the caged animals, yelling, throwing things, banging on the glass and generally just being annoying and rude to the animals and other human visitors to the zoo. Now, 2010, things were a bit different. You still had the occasional asshole, but those are everywhere I suppose. At Como Park Zoo in Minnesota I saw a fourteen year old boy throw a hot dog into the monkey cage. So it goes.

A few memorable events happened while we were at the zoo. First, the boy throwing his coke bottle into the lion cage (lion helpfully pictured here). The lion jumped up and began to limp around the periphery of the cage. His front, right paw is seriously injured, you can see him holding it awkwardly in the picture. We watched for a while, but it looked like a recent injury. Hopefully they have resolved it by now!

The second event was when we were attacked by the Golden Monkey. The cage, to preface, is shaped like a giant metal mushroom. You can walk under the mushroom close to the ‘stem’ and look up and see the Golden Monkey flying around in his cage from branch to branch. I was looking up at three monkeys clinging to the sides of the mushroom cage when suddenly the male monkey became aware of our presence and jumped from where he was perched, falling around 12 -14 feet until he landed directly above our heads on the cage roof. He snarled and scared the hell out both of us! He rattled the cage and showed his teeth and even pounded on the grating. He was really angry! We backed up (honestly, we practically fell over backwards he terrified us so much) and a moment later the monkey was back on the wall, acting like nothing happened. Naturally, we moved back under the overhang area and watched. A minute later he noticed us standing there and free-fell from even higher, landing right above our heads and rattling the cage and making off monkey yelling noises. It was like Planet of the Apes!

Mike pretended to get mad at the monkey, yelling at it “Don’t you scare my girlfriend on her birthday, evil monkey!” it only takes about five seconds for a million Chinese people to gather whenever a commotion is detected. Mike’s fake taunting of the evil money quickly drew a crowd…. a very large crowd. The evil monkey climbed back up in the cage and ignored everyone, making Mike look like an evil spectator and the monkey like the innocent victim. This was one evil monkey we were dealing with, here. We shuffled away eventually, when it became obvious the monkey had one that round. Don’t worry, we’ll go back to the zoo again soon and see who wins round two!

After the zoo we went over to a friend’s apartment for taco night. They were friendly enough to invite us over and one of the room mates at our friend’s place even produced an extremely large birthday cake! They hit the lights and came out singing Happy Birthday. We played cards and chatted about old times, these friends having lived in beijing since 2006. All in all, and despite Evil Monkey, it was a great birthday!

Since we finally had an apartment we were free to start looking for jobs. We set about looking in the obvious places for expats living abroad, craigslist, the Beijinger, CityWeekend and other Beijing-specific websites with classified ads. In Shanghai in 2008 I found my job on Craigslist, proving that even legitimate,professional companies post on the plebeian forums. We began to stalk the classifieds in search of employment.

Harry, our British room mate, worked at a reputable English-teaching company across town. Andrew found one-on-one teaching gigs to fill his wallet. Mike and Lauren wanted to avoid teaching English if at all possible, having already experienced the joy of teaching in Beijing we were eager to try something new and also add a new skill set on the ol’ resume. They began to search for jobs in their desired fields, holding out for a decent paying opportunity. Lauren went to four interviews and turned down four jobs due to low pay or immoral practices. One job doing marketing for an online sales company was in the final phases of negotiating the contract when Lauren learned that the goods sold online were counterfeits being peddled as legitimate, she turned down a position paying $3,000 a month. Eventually, both found positions they could enjoy for a short time while refilling their bank accounts and learning new skills.

Teaching English in China is fairly simple and extremely straight forward. Most companies are seeking people who have a bachelors degree, though they will make exceptions. They are looking for native English speakers, though again, they make exceptions and are sometimes seeking Spanish, German and French native speakers. A TOFEL is not required, but it is helpful and in higher paying companies (like Wallstreet, Berlitz and EnglishFirst) it is a huge bargaining chip. You can find more information on our resources page about TOFEL programs.

To read how to apartment hunt in Beijing, check out our previous post on the issue!

We arrived in Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital, three hours after departing Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. The train was a lovely design with six seats to a cabin with a sliding glass door. We had an extremely friendly Croatian lady in our cabin who was visiting Ljubljana to lay flowers at her family grave plot. The train ride went quickly and the customs officials were extremely efficient and friendly, and we arrived without incident.

Once in Ljubljana, however, things took a nasty turn. The information center at the train station gave us a map and a “good luck!” wave as we walked out the door. It felt a bit odd at the moment but we set off with our bags in the direction indicated on the map towards our hostel. After a grueling walk (our bags now way around 50lbs each) we arrived in the embassy district to discover the map was wrong, and we were now in the outskirts of town without local currency to take a cab or bus, and with no idea where to go. I sat on the ground and took off my bag. A cat jumped out of the bushes next to me and sat on my lap, cheering me up, while Mike consulted the map from the info center and compared it with the already miniscule and incomplete map in the Lonely Planet book. There was nothing to do but attempt to follow main roads until we found signs for old town, and then ask around from there.

The walk was made more humorous by the sheer ridiculousness of it. Mike had his large backpack on his back, which has a red shell on it for waterproofing. On his front he had a smaller backpack that also had a plastic red shell, he looked like a man smashed between two giant ladybugs. I had my pack, and my camera bag and our books in my arms, so that between the two of us we had not one free hand. Perhaps because of our pathetic appearance, we were approached by two travelers who suggested we go to their hostel. Seeing as we had no other option whatsoever, we followed their apt directions and arrived in time to grab two bunk-beds in the 6 man dorm. The dorm had a kitchenette, so we dropped our stuff and went across the river to the shop to grab some fresh veggies to cook with our seemingly endless supply of ramen. Other tenants came and went as we ate, warmed up, and enjoyed the hostel’s atmosphere.

The next morning we walked around Ljubljana in the rain. For us it is hard to imagine any country in Eastern Europe without rain now. We walked up the hill overlooking the city to the Ljubljana Castle, parts of which date from the 15th century. We expected an ancient, Dracula-like castle shrouded in mist and mystery, but were shocked to find a very modern structure that has obviously been erected over the older buildings. In one of the towers there was a modern art exhibit, which was so confusing it left us a bit rattled. There was a chair in the corner which you could sit on while a screen before you showed a spiraling hole, as if you were always falling but never reaching the bottom. Across the tower was a TV showing a play of an old man positioning models to paint them, but never quite getting it right. In the center of the tower was a chandelier which had been lowered all the way to the floor so you were looking down on it. We didn’t stay long in the tower, obviously, but once we mounted the steps in the adjacent building we found another art exhibit full of neon nude women petting various animals. We followed signs to a National Geographic exhibit to find a basement room filled with pictures of animals in yellow frames, rounding the corner we found a circular room filled with lights shaped like worms that glowed just brightly enough to make it extremely creepy. We left the castle after that.

We saw several of the city’s highlight sites, including the dragon bridge and the Franciscan Church, all of which were enjoyable. Our train left at 3:20am. We would arrive in Venice, Italy, at 7am. No matter how we try to resist night transportation, the logic of it always outweighs the discomfort it comes with and we jump right aboard!

Ulus, Ankara

Having enjoyed our time in Safranbolu, but eager to get out of a town that was little more than a giant tourist trap complete with cliché souvenirs and overly friendly people trying to rip off any traveler who isn’t used to be wary every waking moment. It was the only town, thus far in Turkey, where people have been rude, tried to swindle us, and have generally left a bad taste in our mouth.

The bus to Ankara was small, and the people on board not particularly friendly. We settled in and put some comedy on the i-pod to liven up our moods. A little bit of laughter goes a long way, and soon we were revived and excited about Ankara.

We arrived in the city and were immediately shocked that it is the capital of Turkey. The city is dirty, expensive, and according to the Lonely Planet, dangerous. The city is divided into three main parts, the cheap part, the party part, and the diplomatic quarter. We went, obviously, to the cheap part, which is also where the Lonely Planet advises against going. The area was safe enough, and we checked into a hotel that smelled of cat urine and cigarette butts. This place makes Hotel California look good. The owner was an old man who had a gentle smile and was affectionately polite. We deposited our belongings in the room (30 TL because it has a bathroom you share with the whole hotel, and no showers at all) and half expected never to see our bags again. We walked around the nearby park, which has been restored and is now clean, nice and heavily guarded. We bought donar kebabs at a booth from a friendly-looking man who told us his brother is in Philadelphia. We had not eaten a real meal in a while, and he gave us a discount when we went to pay—a rare treat when someone loves American travelers, so we relished in it as we walked back through the park.

We spent the next several days in Ankara waiting for our new traveling companion, Matt, to arrive. We saw the Ataturk Mausoleaum and monuments, the Ankara Museum and Citadel and spent hours walking the back alleys and major arteries of Ulus, in Northern Ankara. It is a rather plain and bland city but an expensive one, and we were eager to move on to Cappadocia.