Rejoice with us! - Istanbul, Turkey
5 Stars This place was Amazing visited Sep 30, 2005
We have a house! After two weeks in the hotel looking at flats and rooms in sharehouses that were never suitable, we have found a wonderful place in a suburb called Nisantasi (Nish-AHN-tasher). The area is known for being a fancy shopping place, and rather chic area of Istanbul. Turkish people are all very impressed when we say we've moved in here. One friend instantly asked "near the Armani shop?" which gives you some idea of the type of place it is! Of course, it doesn't look it in our street, but it is a bit nicer than some other areas we've seen. The flat itself is the largest flat we have seen in Turkey so far, with 2 bedrooms, a study, a garden and an enormous living room. It also just happens to have a washing machine, dishwasher, satellite tv, and, more importantly, internet and a wireless hub. We're sharing it with one Australian woman, who just happens to be going back to Australia in early February. She'll be away 3 months, during which time we have the flat to ourselves. Very glad to be out of the hotel and have access to a kitchen and laundry again. It's been a while, and eating in restaurants and handwashing clothes was really getting a bit boring! We had some trouble leaving the hotel though - there was a bit of a dispute over the payment. It's all way to complicated and boring to explain, but there was a little matter of 75YTL (which is just under AU$75) which the school thought we should pay, and we thought was the hotel overcharging us. The confusion was all due to a little discount the school was getting, which the hotel was trying to make us pay. It took more than an hour of stressful arguing before I worked out that if I asked my Director of studies (an English woman who speaks turkish) to explain it to all the turks I was dealing with in turkish, then maybe it would be sorted. And low and behold it was. I think I really need to learn turkish. And properly enough to argue with hotel morons.

First Impressions - Istanbul, Turkey
4 Stars This place was Great visited Sep 15, 2005
First real döner in turkey: disappointing. We were starving and went into the first doorway we saw with a kebab spit out the front. Turned out to be a kebab joint that aspired to restaurant status, complete with red plush seats and leather menu holders. We ordered one overpriced dürüm döner and a drink to share. It was entirely without sauce and dry and horrible. We'll have another asap, from an ordinary street kebab joint this time. Real Turkish Delight: We have found a wondrous shop. They have every sort of turkish delight and halva that you could possibly imagine. We are already regulars, and it's only 24 hours since we found it. I started with plain, vanilla turkish delight. Much chewier than any I've had before, and strongly and deliciously flavoured. Turkish Icecream: I never knew it was different! We bought an icecream each today when in need of a sugar fix. I can honestly say I have never uttered the phrase "I still have icecream stuck in my teeth" before. Turkish icecream is thick and slightly chewy, and very strong in flavour. And the chocolate is a rich dark brown and actually tastes like cold, soft, chewy chocolate! Incredible! The Bazaar Quarter: See, this isn't all about food! We wandered into the bazaar quarter today pretty much by accident, while looking for a post office and internet. At first it was wonderful, although the crush of people and noise and hawkers trying to sell you things by practically pushing them up your nose was slightly worse than in most of the rest of this city. We thought we'd just try to get through to the other side. Bad idea. Several tiny streets and alleys and uphills (there are some serious hills in this town) and millions of people later, my agoraphobia is getting the better of me, and we turn for what I think is the quickest way out along the quietest streets. The variety and quantity and fascinatingness of the things for sale is amazing and fantastic and looks incredible, but I think I will have to be more psychologically prepared before I wander in there again!

Room service... Room Service... - Istanbul, Turkey
4 Stars This place was Great visited Sep 13, 2005
Well, I think I'm in Istanbul. We've just spent two days and nights in a truck, so perhaps after a shower all will be clearer. We arrived last night, and were taken to Kadiköy (one of the major suburbs on the asian side of Istanbul) to our truck driver's company site, given a truck to sleep in for the night, and this morning were dropped off in a place that may or may not be called Saragoza. Our first necessity was money, so we looked for a bankomat, and found this net cafe just near it. As it's only 10am, we thought checking email for the first time since poland might be a good idea. I thought I had better see if my school had been trying to contact me before I contact them today and break the news that I have arrived without giving them any notice! This blog was planned as an up-to-date day by day account of our travels, but lack of internet access and time in the last 2 and a half weeks has made that hard. Over the next few days I'll go back and fill in all the blanks in this blog - we've definitely been having adventures, so there is lots to tell!

Arriving home? - Istanbul, Turkey
3 Stars This place was Average visited Sep 12, 2005
Driving towards Istanbul, I am reading the Salman Rushdie article in the book of travel stories i've been carrying for months. He writes about returning to India after more than 12 years away - after the Satanic Verses brouhaha. It's interesting to read something about going home while driving towards what will be my new home. At least for a while! The European Turkish countryside is noticeably different from Bulgaria and Romania. For a start, the roads improved the moment we crossed the border, and we are travelling on a 6 lane engineered marvel - better than we've seen since Hungary, I should think, and more of it too. The landscape consists of gently rolling hills, but the road doesn't go up and down much - instead there are long viaducts built over the valleys - each with a sign at the beginning to tell you the name of the bridge and exactly how many metres long it is. Without these signs I might not have noticed, as the bridges are no different to the roads, and unless you are looking at the side of the road, you don't notice that the tree tops are suddenly at road height! Another major difference is a lack of people. Instad of the road winding through constant villages, we have nothing but the occasional town huddled on a distant hillside. The fields are huge, obviously worked by machine (unlike Romania) and currently burnt to the colour of dust. The heat and dust haze means the sky is almost the same colour. 30 Km from Istanbul, according to the signs, and it feels like we are on the outskirts of a big city. 25 Km from Istanbul, I see a corpse. The traffic stops all of a sudden, an ambulance races past us on the hard shoulder, and everyone is changing into the far inside lane. When we get to the accident, there is a body lying in an unnatural heap with a few sheets of newspaper over the head and shoulders, and a growing bright red pool of blood seeping out from under it. The ambulance is already there, but the paramedics are just standing around. A few metres further on, an old beaten up truck with what looks like a scrape of red paint on one corner has stopped at the end of a long pair of skid marks. Maybe we won't stand on the side of major roads and wave our thumbs at passing traffic in Istanbul...

Friendly border guards!?! - Istanbul, Turkey
5 Stars This place was Amazing visited Sep 11, 2005
We crossed the Turkish border at about lunchtime today. Borders have been getting more and more complicated lately, and this one needed a map and directions. For some reason we couldn't just stay in the truck and have our passports checked there, but had to walk half a mile through no-man's land to the a gi-normous parking lot with a few little booths in it. There were no signs, so we lined up with everyone else, who seemed to be clutching bits of paper along with their passport, which worried us. When we finally got to the window we were utterly astonished to find a helpful border guard! After barking an initial impatient 'paper?' question at us, he realised we had no idea what we were doing, and came out of his little booth to point us toward the border police booths. Turns out we were lining up to declare our cars or something. Oops. Amazingly, the next border guard was also helpful and friendly. I presented my passport at a booth that had no line (turns out it was for turkish people only, or something). The guy took it, looked up my name, and then used it, nicely, while pointing us to the office where I had to buy my visa. And even that was easy. We returned, en-visa'd, to the next booth (which now had a shorter line than the first) and were shown yet more displays of amiability! My visa was stamped without comment, but Kate's student visa earned her a nod of respect! And then we had to explain that we were walking back the way we came to find our truck, which got more surprised and impressed noises from both the guards (the man from the first booth had come over to chat with his colleague while we were still there). Wonders will never cease.

Two days in the life of a Turkish Truck Driver. - Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria
This place was Amazing visited Sep 10, 2005
Rides: 2 cars and a truck Countries: +1! (even though all we saw of Bulgaria was its Turkish truck stops) Drive 2 hours, stop for tea in a turkish truck stop (even in Bulgaria). Drive two hours, bribe a border guard or 6 - either with chocolate or euros. Lunch in a turkish truck stop. More tea. Drive two hours, drink more tea - yes, again in a turkish truck stop, even in Bulgaria. There seems to be a whole network of truck stops run by turks and catering exclusively to turks spaced a neat 2 hours apart all along what passes for the highway through Bulgaria. Sleep 7 or so hours (outside a turkish truck stop, after drinking copious quantities of tea), repeat. Leaving Bucharest, we caught buses and a tram and a minibus to the edge of town (which took about 2 hours longer than it should due to trams marked on the map no longer existing...), then stood on the side of a road in what seemed to be a small satellite village. Although it wasn't marked, I think we were standing at the local bus stop, and a few other people came and stood about waiting too, including an elderly woman, who did her best to chat to us. My Romanian was better than it had been a week earlier, but still pretty minimal, so it was fun attempting to communicate. She, and another lady who was also waiting, explained that we should take a bus, or a train. And we explained that we prefer to hitch. And they explained there was a bus, and a train. And we explained we wanted to hitch! Random side of the road conversations can be fun! And the old lady explained how she wanted to be as big as me, and that both she and Kate were two skinny, and that her sister was a big woman, but she herself never managed it. Eventually we were picked up by a young stockbroker in a tiny trendy-yellow car. He was off to play paintball about 20km up the road with a friend in the purple convertible that was following. After an in depth discussion of Romanian economy and all the countries he had travelled to on business and holidays, he dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, where another car pulled up to pick us up almost before we had got out of the first one! The second lift was an ancient battered 4WD with sideways bench seats in the back and four grubby, smoking men in it. It was towing a trailer that had in it, among the junk, a couple of live geese. We were squeezed into the back with two of the guys, and were taken to what we were told was the border, which runs through the town of Giurgiu. It didn't look very open - there were fences across the road, and when we we wandered towards a guard he waved us to left. So we tried the left side of the building. Another guard waved us to keep going. There seemed to be nothing to the left but a street with houses along it, so I turned back to the guard in confusion, and he made a big waving gesture as if to say it wasn't close. After studing the passing traffic of buses and trucks, we determined that the buses with "Istanbul" on the front were indeed going left and disappearing around a far corner. So we followed. Around the corner we could at least see the border station they were going to - a kilometre or two away. We had cut a corner in our efforts to see further, so we made our way back to the road, waving our tumbs at the trucks as we got close, and although we weren't exactly expecting them to see us until we were actually on the road, one stopped before we even got there! The truck was driven by Hasan, a middle aged turkish truck driver, who lived in Istanbul, but he and his colleague in the next truck were delivering a load of timber from Germany to the Iraqi border for the US Army, and planned to spend a night in Istanbul on the way. He spoke about 20 words of German, which was useful. Over the next 2 days he looked after us very well: refusing to let us pay for our meals and letting us sleep in his truck alone (at a turkish truck stop somewhere in Bulgaria), while he took the spare bed in his colleague's truck. We hadn't planned to spend a night with them - we had planned to stop in Veliko Tarnovo, but just as I was thinking "it should be close now, we should tell him we want to get off" I saw a sign for the turn off go past. We'd missed it! It wasn't much of a problem, as we'd been debating whether or not to stop, anyway. Kate wanted to get to Istanbul a few days earlier than planned, and we knew that it would be easy to return to Bulgaria from Istanbul. At least, easier than, say, Estonia. There were a few eye-openers on this trip, such as the state of the average truck stop toilet (actually, that wasn't a surprise at all). The fact that there are cleverly placed truck stops run by turks every two hours along the highway, so that the drivers never have to miss their teabreaks. The fact that they ate lentil soup for breakfast. The number of bribes of german chocolate or 5 euro notes it took Hasan to get his truck easily and relatively quickly through the bulgarian border. The fact that a truck driver existed who wouldn't try something inapropriate on Kate! Hasan was the model of decency. Unfortunately, his mate wasn't so good. At one of the stops, Hasan had suggested that one of us travel with his colleague, but we had refused as we always prefer to stick together, of course. Also, the colleague seemed like a bit of a dunce. We felt really bad when the bulgarian police stopped us late on the first night and Hasan had to give him a 10 euro bribe to not fine us for having more people than seatbelts. After that, Kate travelled with the colleague most of the time. As he spoke a few words of russian (about as many as Kate, really) and no german, it seemed to make sense that she went with him, and I stayed with our friend Hasan. Unfortunately, by midday on the second day, he was getting creepy, and holding her hand and that sort of thing. The usual. Somehow I'm exempt from the usual truck driver attentions, but my presence never seemed to stop them trying for Kate. For these reasons, we were very grateful when Hasan offered his truck for our first night. Unfotunately, unlike most trucks, his only had one bunk, and a very narrow one at that. Kate and I did, however, manage to get some sleep while sharing it. We probably would have been more comfortable in our tent, but safer in the truck! Hasan even gave us his keys and told us to lock the doors. Spending two days with a decent and hospitable turk was a great introduction to Turkey. Although he gave us his phone number, we never did contact him afterwards, which I still feel slightly bad about. I think he might have been hoping that we'd sponsor him to come to Australia or something, though, and I didn't really want to get into that. Still, I'm very grateful to him, and hope he doesn't think badly of us for not getting in touch after he looked after us so well!

Erk - Bucharest, Romania
1 Stars This place was Awful visited Sep 10, 2005
Bucharest was a horrible city. WE had been warned that we might not like it, and that we shouldn't plan to spend more than a day or two there, but that hadn't prepared us for the reality of Bucharest. After loving the rest of Romania, and appreciating the countryside and rural scenes and fresh air, Bucharest was a horrible shock. Dirty, dusty, even their big impressive buildings look run down and unimpressive. The so called historical quarter wasn't, and the ginormous "Palace of the People" that Ceausescu (the second and last of their communist era megalomaniacs) bulldozed a 6th of the city to build was hard to get to, hard to find the right entrance to, and they wanted a ridiculously overpriced entry fee to see inside. To improve our impression of the place, our hostel was grotty and felt dodgy, and with reason. We left some things in the fridge while we went sightseeing all day, and they got nicked. Including about half our dinner ingredients, and things that were in a plastic box tied up in a plastic bag (about as secure and "owned" as you can get in a hostel fridge). Luckily some friendly germans helped us out with a couple of ingredients and we were able to make dinner. A few hours after we left the hostel, I discovered my camera was missing. I like my camera, and it's the only one I've got, but the 100 photos on it are all the photos we had of Romania, as we weren't really using kate's camera at all. I was going to download them in that hostel but felt the place wasn't secure enough to display that I was carrying a laptop, and so I didn't want to get it out). So annoyed. Don't bother with Bucharest, just spend all your time in the rest of Romania.

Even worse... - Bucharest, Romania
1 Stars This place was Awful visited Sep 10, 2005
Just to top off our wonderful experience of Bucharest: a few hours after leaving, I happened to be rumaging around in my day pack, and for some reason noticed there was something missing. Namely, my camera. Yes, after years of not having anything much stolen (nothing but a dictaphone and expensive sleeping bag in Italy in 2003 and a travel-sized bottle of sunscreen in Oradea a week before Bucharest) I have had my camera stolen from my day pack in a hostel room. It must have been while we were cooking dinner (with half the ingredients as the rest had been stolen as well), which is, I think the only time it was out of my sight and unlocked. Pretty silly to leave it unlocked, but I had met many of the people in the dorm by then, and they all seemed trustworthy. The camera itself is a loss - I had got quite used to it - but Kate has a digital camera with better resolution, so I'll just have to work out how to use hers properly, and borrow it often. More of a loss are the 100 or so photos that were on the camera. I had noticed the day before that the card was nearly full, but didn't download them to my laptop, because I didn't feel the hostel was secure enough to display the fact that I was travelling with a computer. Those 100 photos were almost all the photos we had of Romania. We hadn't been using Kate's camera at all. There are a few of Oradea, which I will upload when I get around to writing that blog post, but apart from that, I have no photographic record of our time in Romania - the country I think I have enjoyed most this trip. I bet it was the same git who stole our dinner too.

Sighisoara, Romania

3 Stars This place was Average visited Sep 5, 2005
We arrived in Vienna around lunchtime, and were dropped miles from the centre, which isn't a problem, and not in sight of any form of public transport, which was. After walking a mile or three, we found a tram stop, and hopped on the next tram heading to the centre. We had managed to contact Kate's friendBojana, whom she had met in Russia, and after depositing our packs in a locker in West Bahnhof, we managed to meet her, and spend a lovely afternoon wandering about, sitting in a park, and exploring the international food festival that happened to be on (without actually eating any of it, as it was all extremely overpriced). As Bratislava was not far away, and we wanted to have time to spend with Bojana in Vienna, we decided to take a train rather than hitch. It also meant we didn't have to spend a night paying for accomodation in expensive Euroland, but could retreat back to Eastern Europe as quickly as possible!

Well, a campsite outside Cluj, anyway... - Cluj-Napoca, Romania

3 Stars This place was Average visited Sep 4, 2005
We arrived in Vienna around lunchtime, and were dropped miles from the centre, which isn't a problem, and not in sight of any form of public transport, which was. After walking a mile or three, we found a tram stop, and hopped on the next tram heading to the centre. We had managed to contact Kate's friendBojana, whom she had met in Russia, and after depositing our packs in a locker in West Bahnhof, we managed to meet her, and spend a lovely afternoon wandering about, sitting in a park, and exploring the international food festival that happened to be on (without actually eating any of it, as it was all extremely overpriced). As Bratislava was not far away, and we wanted to have time to spend with Bojana in Vienna, we decided to take a train rather than hitch. It also meant we didn't have to spend a night paying for accomodation in expensive Euroland, but could retreat back to Eastern Europe as quickly as possible!

Oradea - Nagy-Varad, Romania
This place was Amazing visited Sep 3, 2005
I have finally worked out what this website calls Oradea! I'm gradually adding photos and more writing to the (recently renamed) "Helsinki to Istanbul" itinerary. I just have Hungary and Romania to write now, and I'm nearly finished uploading photos for it! Unfortunately, these are the only photos of Romania that I have, as my camera was stolen in Bucharest, and I hadn't downloaded the hundred or so photos I had taken. Of all the countries we went on this trip, Romania was probably the most interesting and most beautiful. The loss of the camera was annoying, but the loss of the photos was far worse. I will write more about this later when I fill in the rest of the writing that needs doing. Just as well I have a good memory!

- Budapest, Hungary
4 Stars This place was Great visited Sep 2, 2005
We arrived in Vienna around lunchtime, and were dropped miles from the centre, which isn't a problem, and not in sight of any form of public transport, which was. After walking a mile or three, we found a tram stop, and hopped on the next tram heading to the centre. We had managed to contact Kate's friendBojana, whom she had met in Russia, and after depositing our packs in a locker in West Bahnhof, we managed to meet her, and spend a lovely afternoon wandering about, sitting in a park, and exploring the international food festival that happened to be on (without actually eating any of it, as it was all extremely overpriced). As Bratislava was not far away, and we wanted to have time to spend with Bojana in Vienna, we decided to take a train rather than hitch. It also meant we didn't have to spend a night paying for accomodation in expensive Euroland, but could retreat back to Eastern Europe as quickly as possible!