Haerbin Kazy International Youth Hostel 哈尔滨卡兹国际青年旅社

My last few visits to China were always accompanied by stays in Hostelling International affliated hostels. After all, it was more convenient to book with them since they have a website to facilitate booking. Besides, getting a Chinese visa necessitated me to book the hostel first. Anyway, the trip from the Haerbin Taiping International Airport wasn’t very interesting, I did notice a lot of tourism advertisements along the highways promoting Heilongjiang province, where Haerbin was, as a destination for nature lovers. This intrigued me, but I was wary of the weather, it was already close to winter and I don’t have enough warm clothes with me. I will have to see if I am up to it.

As we drew closer to Haerbin’s center, more and more apartment blocks came into view. Immediately, you can feel that this place was different. The design of the buildings here, even the new ones have a distinctly European feel. European with Chinese touches that is. Actually, it is more Russian inspired since this area was occupied by Russia several decades back. It was truly a unique feel to the city. Of course you will still have the mandatory Chinese style buildings but more of the blocks tend to fit with the general theme of the city.

My hostel was near the popular Zhongyang pedestrian street. I had a map with me and the challenge is where the bus will let me off. Zhongyang Street is basically their heritage area, which means that my hostel will be in the middle of it all. Actually, “middle of it all” is still an understatement. There was a large Jewish community back in the days of Russian occupation and they naturally built a synagogue for worship. My hostel, the Haerbin Kazy International Youth Hostel 哈尔滨卡兹国际青年旅社 was built out of the old synagogue, this was probably one of the most unique places to stay here in Haerbin. I can’t wait.

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