Berlin in six hours and 70 years

Berlin. Call me when it's finished.

Construction, renovation, scaffolding, fencing, cranes, detours, ugliness. Everywhere I walk there are new buildings going up and a new underground going down.

I'm on a mere six-hour layover en route to Corfu from Paris. I've never been to Berlin, and have heard so many proclamations of love for the city that I had to sample it.

I've never actually "got" Germany. I love German beer but I hate the stodgy food. I have no affinity for the language. I don't care for cars, Kraftwerk or cabaret.

Granted, this is only my second time in the country (well, third if we're counting such brief blitzes as these; I took a day trip from Salzburg to Berchtesgaden in 2009 to see the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's fascinating mountaintop teahouse) but a week-long trip by public ferry boat five years ago to see the castles, towns and villages of the Rhine left me alarmed at my indifference. Much of it either seemed pretend, like a kind of Disneyland, or sterile, where flat soulless malls and assembly pavers filled bombed out centres once graced with pinnacled churches and cobblestone streets.

Now I'm staring in disbelief at these horrendous, riveted industrial pipes that pop up all over Berlin. The size of tree trunks and painted blue or pink, they thrust into the air and twist around buildings and blocks and over streets like a giant Tinker Toy oil refinery. The only other such pragmatic disregard I've seen for urban aesthetics is the vital but ugly system to funnel heat from Ulaanbaatar's powerhouse into the city centre from the outskirts so the residents don't all die in the frigid Mongolian winters.

Yet there are pockets here of deep beauty. The cupolas of the Neo-Renaissance Berliner Dom and the ionic columns of the Altes Museum flanking the lime trees in the 16th-century Lustgarten. The enormous Baroque churches of the Gendarmenmarkt, mirroring each other across the grand plaza of the Konzerthaus, where Beethoven's ninth premiered.

It occurs to me as I return to the airport that I may be missing the point of Berlin. It buzzes with birth and growth and vitality as the fifth German republic in a hundred years adds its own signature to the city's eclectic blend of architecture while galleries of young artists sprout inside extinct factories.

Or maybe I'm just delirious inside this 45 degree oven masquerading as a 45-minute airport bus.


Two views of Berlin

The Trans-Mongolian Express to Beijing

It takes more than 33 hours to get from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing on the Trans-Mongolian Express, and the food is lousy.

The set menu in the dining car—where the barman smokes beneath the non-smoking sign—costs US$25 for salad, soup, a main and dessert. The salad is shredded carrot in a radioactively garlicky sauce topped with a triangle of processed cheese. The soup is cream-of-something. And the main is a few small slices of beef in gravy with three sides: rice with corn in it, a kind of ratatouille (my polite interpretation of indistinguishable vegetables in an unknown sauce), and sauerkraut that tastes like feet. Dessert is a packaged chocolate roll-up cake, served to me as the last in the plastic tray of six. I don't care to eat it, so the waiter does.

I have a "hard-sleeper" berth, a second-class, four-bunk cabin, which I share with a pleasant young Norwegian couple. There are TVs in each bunk, but I dare not turn on the single channel of what will invariably be a looped screening of the Russian circus, replete with fat old women dressed in tutus performing tired magic tricks involving scarves and wands and pigeons. Mercifully, when curiosity gets the better of me and I turn it on, it doesn't work.

I chat to a fellow Aussie in the next cabin. He's been on the train since Moscow, doing the full Trans-Siberian. It had been three days so far. He's happy staring out the window at the endless plains of the Gobi desert because through Russia it had been endless silver birch.

At the border of Mongolia and China we spend four-and-a-half hours between Mongolian immigration, Chinese immigration, and changing the trucks on the Mongolian train to fit the Chinese rail gauge. Once we finally get under way again it is 1am. I kill a solid eight hours to the gentle rocking of the train. When I wake up I'm still here, so I kill off another two.

I love train travel, and I enjoy the overnight sleepers, but honestly, I don't understand the romance of the Trans-Mongolian (and less so the Trans-Siberian). It's long and boring. I can only recommend to bring several books, your own pot noodles, and consider a flight instead.

So it is a relief, in the mid-afternoon of the second day, to finally reach Beijing. The Norwegians' hotel is apparently close to mine so we agree to share a taxi, but we first need to withdraw some Chinese yuan as we have only Mongolian tugrik. After twenty minutes of hunting for ATMs and failing to find any that will accept our Visa cards, we finally turn to a tourism office for help (as did everyone else on the train, it turns out) and are directed to the Construction Bank.

Yuan in pocket, we look for a taxi. There is no shortage, but not one will take us. They are parked at the taxi rank or pull up without fares but wave us away when we approach. We can't figure it. Just one driver is willing, but only through extortion: "Three people, three luggage... one hundred yuan." We scoff and walk away. My new friends have been advised by their hotel that it shouldn't cost more than twenty.

A fellow traveller from the train who speaks fluent Mandarin is having the same difficulty. "It's impossible," she says to us. "No one will take you!"

Such is the strange situation with Beijing taxis. Yet pedicabs and tuk-tuks will hound you. But they can't take luggage, so we opt for the subway (which, as it turns out, is excellent—easy, efficient and cheap) and part ways at Andingmen station to our respective digs in the hútòng district north of the Forbidden City.

The young lady at my hotel reception is pleasant and welcoming, as most Pekingese are, but difficult to understand with that heavy Beijing accent of R's and "sh" sounds.

"Your room has Black Forest," she says.

"Pardon me?"

"Your room has Black Forest."

It does? Will I be sharing it with wolves and sleeping in a gingerbread bed? Or do I get midnight snacks of cake?

"My room has what?" I ask.

"Black Forest. Black Forest. Morning dinner."

"Oh, breakfast!" I laugh as the penny drops. "That will be lovely."

As long as there's no Trans-Mongolian sauerkraut.

Mongolian toilette

Home comforts on the Mongolian steppe are hard to come by. The toilet, a necessity, is a hole dug in the ground. Bathing, however, is a luxury; you do it if you can.

Some days ago, after several in the saddle passed unwashed, I was craving being clean so found some privacy at camp where a little branch of a stream diverted behind some bushes. I stripped, scrambling a ferocious squadron of starving mosquitoes as my warm flesh announced an end to the colony's famine.

To outfox them I jumped into the water. I nearly spring out again like a pogo stick. It was frigid! I was only thigh-deep, but was ready to abandon hygiene and leap back into my warm and stinking clothes if I gave myself a moment to think.

I acted fast. I thrust my head under the surface, splashed my armpits and arse, and hopped onto the bank to soap. Before my mind had time to scream "I'm not getting back in there!" I plunged back in to rinse. My lungs popped full with a shocked gasp. I dunked my head, splashed my nethers, and bounced out again to don my mosquito overcoat. Looking up I noticed on the opposite bank an unmelted berm of snow. It is summer!

The Mongols must think Westerners have a strange fascination with weather, which is notoriously changeable in Mongolia, in the same way as they are obsessed with time, which Mongols give little consideration—a journey takes as long as it takes. Each morning we ask Dondov, the lead wrangler, if it will rain. At first he seems puzzled at our stupidity and answers in the vein of, "yes, it rains." Now I think he answers yes or no arbitrarily, which is as good a forecast on the steppe as you will get: it will either rain or it won't, and half the time he is right.

Today he isn't.

At nine we set off ahead of dark clouds, but sliding like a locomotive up the mountain pass they catch us by noon. The daylight dims. Suddenly we are being pelted with hail and freezing sleet.

Caught off guard on a brief break from the saddle, several of us remount. Annie kicks her horse into a tall thicket for shelter and disappears. I try to follow, but the thicket spooks my horse and he halts in front of it. I'm at a loss, feeling as a learner driver must when first confronted with a stick transmission on a hill. Isn't there something I should do, here?

I look around, water streaming off my hat, and see everyone at a standstill. Susan and Ercihan are warm and dry in their oilskins. I have on a thin windbreaker. It is keeping the wet out but insulates like a plastic bag, which is practically what it is. Paul is smart. He watches what the Mongols do, and follows suit: dismount, crouch under a bush, and entertain yourself watching the sodden idiot sitting on his horse out in the wet and cold.

It passes, and we trudge on through cold drizzle. My jeans and shoes are soaked and my fingers are like ice. That bastard Paul is wearing gloves. I think he's done this before. I plot to kill him and steal his gloves, but the group is too small and someone is bound to ask, "Where did Paul go? And why are you wearing his gloves?" In any case, my plan is moot by the time the climbing temperature on our descent of the mountain thaws my fingers to be sufficiently murderous.

We ride along a river on the valley floor and ascend again. As we mount a crest and the sun comes out, a row of charming blue-roofed huts on stilts appear out of nowhere, perched on the mountainside.

"It's a spa resort built by the Soviets," Jenya tells us. "One week a year, workers from farming collectives could relax here for free. There are hot springs."

Springs!

We dismount and, as the wranglers tie up the horses, we build a fire to dry off. Our support crew had arrived before us and prepared a lunch of sandwiches, which we scarf down with cups of tea before laying on the hillside in the sun, reading, chatting and dozing.

At last we summon the energy to find the springs. At the end of a winding trail through hillside scrub and over ice-surfaced patches of snow is a simple wooden construction—three connected huts built over top of a broad course of water spouting out of the mountain. The hot water flows into enamel tubs inside. I strip and ease my sore horse-riding muscles in.

Springs in summer. It is heaven.

Mongolian horses

As Jenya the Mongol was thrown from the horse, tumbling onto his back into the river, I caught an embarrassed smirk on his face. Just this morning this descendent of Genghis Khan's people had warned us: "Mongolian horses are half wild."

It is just our second day on horseback. Yesterday we didn't make any distance but just took a short ride, local to our cedar glen campsite by the wide river, to get acquainted with the horses. There are a few important differences between this stout, short-legged breed and domesticated hot-bloods like Arabs and Thoroughbreds. Never approach the horse from its right side. Control it by neck-reining. Don't jump when dismounting or you'll startle it (at 13 hands you can step off)! Stirrups tend to be ridden short and a rawhide lead is always attached to the bridle, even while riding, which should be held in the non-reining hand (the idea is that if you come off the horse the lead will trail so the horse can be caught, as it will make for the hills). It is like riding a semi-mustang. To ride Mongolian horses is to challenge yourself as a rider.

At camp I tried to feed my horse an apple, an otherwise universal equine delicacy, but he wouldn't touch it. Mongolian horses eat nought but grass and don't understand hand-feeding. The entire year they live outdoors, through the harsh -40°C winter, finding their own food. They are hardy animals with miles of stamina. During World War II, three thousand were pressed into pulling Soviet cannon when the winter temperatures were so low that diesel coagulated in the engines. Most of them died at Leningrad. Six made it to Berlin.

All we are demanding of our nameless beasts today is to pull us out of the river, the second of numerous streams to cross where the horses are sometimes belly-deep with our knees acutely bent to keep our feet dry. Most manage effortlessly but Jenya's horse has found itself in a hole. As it thrashes he decides it's safer to bail, and over he goes, clothes and pride thoroughly damped.

"You guys go on," he says, standing sheepishly in mid-stream. "I'll catch up with the support truck to get some dry clothes." In mid-June the temperatures here are in just the low twenties and the water is cold. Jenya hauls his sodden legs out of the water, remounts and, with a smile, rides off.

We continue on without a translator, but it proves not to be a problem. Ercihan, the master Turkish horseman in our group, manages effortless communication with Dondov, the Mongol lead wrangler, despite no common language. Perhaps they both speak equine.

Horses and yaks dot the spectacularly wide glacial valley. Flanked by foothills of cedar forests which rise to mountains still sporting patches of snow in summer, it stretches like a golf course for titans. Underfoot are carpets of white, orange and blue wildflowers. Overhead eagles screech and from the trees cuckoos sound off like broken clocks.

Suddenly we hit some sand and my horse drops to his knees. Any horse likes to roll in sand to scratch its back. I suspect my saddle was rubbing him, but he was about to roll on me. To visualise a horse rolling with your foot in the stirrup, imagine trapping a chicken bone under a rolling pin. Now picture this naïvely oblivious amateur seconds from disaster thinking his horse has a flat tyre.

"Kick it!" Ercihan screams from behind me. "Kick it kick it kick it!"

I kick it.

The horse pops back up onto his feet, the calamity neatly avoided. "Be careful," Ercihan warns me. "Watch your horse in sand." He grins.

Rivers too, I think. These things are half wild.

Horse riding on the Mongolian steppe

The last time I attempted a ride like this was the first time I'd been on a horse. Three years ago on a two-week ride through Cappadocia, Turkey, we rode alternate days and rested in between. On this ride—two weeks in Mongolia, and my second time on a horse—we are riding every day.

Horse riding uses muscles in your legs which you don't seem to use for any other purpose. You have to clamp onto the horse with your inner thighs, turning your toes out and your heels down.

I am in a small group of five riders—two friends I met on the Turkey ride, Susan and Ercihan, and two friends of theirs, Paul and Ann. We also have along a fluent translator, Jenya, who has a background in field anthropology.

From Ulaanbaatar we fly by Fokker 400 to Uliastai in the western province of Zavkhan, where we board a Russian-made furgon—a four-wheel drive van with a quilted interior that looks like a grey bread tin on wheels. The reason for the padded ceiling is soon apparent as we lurch over dusty tracks through vast, vast expanses of grassland, rolling as though on a gale-whipped ocean of scrub, for five hours.

This is nomad land. Dotted here and there like white pinheads stuck in a sprawling map are the traditional Mongolian gers—round tents like little big tops housing families, spilling wafts of smoke from the wood-fired stove's central stack. We pass their herds of goats, of sheep, and of course hundreds and hundreds of horses. But dominating all of this is the land. I have never seen anything so big.

Two hundred kilometres south of the Siberian border we move through the little towns of Telmen and Tosontsengel before meeting up with the ride crew—two wranglers, two kitchen staff and two drivers of support vehicles—and the horses. For the next two weeks it will be day-on-end riding for a hundred kilometres south.

And days on end of sore legs.