Many people take trains for their trips in China, because the train is fast and cheap. But there are many problems when people take trains. It’s not easy to take trains when it is a festival. Lots of people hope someone can solve (解决) the problems.

Then, the CRH (和谐号列车) trains come out. The first CRH train from Beijing to Tianjin runs in August, 2008. CRH1 and CRH2 can go up to 200 km/h, and CRH3 can run 300 km/h. Taking CRH trains is more expensive than taking a traditional train, but cheaper than taking a plane. Some people think the CRH trains and their workers are good, and they enjoy the trips by CRH train.

China starts to make a CRH train, 350 kilometres an hour from Beijing to Shanghai. It can save people more time than taking the traditional trains.

Can CRH trains solve the problems? “Of course not. There is still a long way to go,” about 80% of the people answer.

I was on a train in Switzerland (瑞士). Thirty minutes later, the train came to a stop and the conductor’s (乘务员) voice over the loudspeaker delivered a message in German, Italian and French. I’d made the mistake of not learning any of those languages before my vacation.

Everyone started getting off the train and an old woman saw that I was confused and stressed. (I had to catch an overnight train to Rome, and I was flying home from there). She could speak some English and told me that an accident had happened on the tracks (轨道). She asked me where I was trying to get to, then went and talked to some workers, and came back to tell me that we’d have to hop (换乘) trains three or four times to get there.

I was really glad she was heading the same way because it would have been impossible for me to figure it out on my own (自己弄清楚). So we went from one train station to the next, getting to know each other along the way. She was really the sweetest woman. It was a 2.5-hour journey in total, and when we made it to the final destination (目的地) , we got off and said our goodbyes. I had made it just in time to catch my train to Rome. She told me she had a train to catch as well. I asked her how much farther she had to go and it turned out (结果是) that her home was two hours back the other way. She had jumped from train to train and travelled the whole just to make sure that I made it. I was in shock. A woman spent her whole day sitting on trains and taking her hours away from her home just to help out a confused (迷惑的) tourist visiting her country.

No matter how many countries I visit, I’ll always say the most beautiful country in the world is Switzerland.

How do you go to school? Do you take a bus or ride a bike? For many students, it is easy to get to school. But for some children in one small village in Hunan, it is very difficult (困难的). There is no road (路) between the village and the school. The children have to climb down ladders (爬下梯子) to get to school.

Yu Xinxin is an 8-year-old girl. She climbs the ladders every day. “My parents are good at it and they tell me how to do it, and now I don’t think too much about how high they are,” she says.

It is hard for the villagers to get in and out of the village, too. Their dream is to have a road.