Ok here goes…the first part of our trip. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long one!
So I am typing from an ancient computer in rural Romania and this computer is probably one of the slowest I’ve ever used, so let’s see if this even goes through…
I left Prague three weeks ago (feels like months!) and Wendi and Stephanie (two of my roommates from Prague) and I flew to Istanbul. We should have known how nuts our trip would be when we met some Turkish guys on the plane who owned a shoe store in Prague and were hysterically funny. The flight seemed like nothing.
The plan was to stay with a friend of a friend named Bill who is an American Foreign Service Employee at Ford in Istanbul, but at the last minute he had to return to the US for a funeral. He emailed me and (generously) offered that we could still stay at his apartment. I had never even met him! How nice is that?! He sent me directions by taxi to get to his apartment. Sounds simple, right?
Wrong! We landed in Istanbul and got a taxi. Bill lives on the Asian side of the city and the airport is on the European side. So our taxi driver, who looked all of 17 years old, wasn’t very knowledgeable about the Asian side. Thank god he liked us (he spoke no English but Wendi could communicate with him in French) and he spent almost two hours driving us around until we found the apartment. Driving in Istanbul entails speeding along roads with no lanes where there are people selling bread and other items in the middle of the street. Even the Ford foreign service employees don’t have cars! Well, Bill’s email said he would leave the key with the guards at the apartment complex. They had no idea who we were and they had no keys! We were feeling a bit stranded, but Ayup (our taxi driver) parked his taxi and took us to dinner – at BURGER KING! It was close by, but still, we couldn’t believe we were at BK in Istanbul. We hung out with him there for about an hour, and then I re-read Bill’s email which ACTUALLY said something like, “I will leave the keys with the guards or under the doormat”. I was just slightly embarrassed, just a bit, and we went back to the apartment and there was the key! So Ayup got to leave (our three hour excursion cost $30) and we went inside.
Bill’s friends, other 20-somethings who are engineers at Ford in Dearborn, MI are so nice. They took us out all weekend, taking us to their favorite club and showing us how to take the ferry across the Bosphorous to the European side of the city. We had a great time with them. We met some of their Turkish friends and they took us to a show called “Sultans of the Dance” which was kind of like “Lord of the Dance” but Middle Eastern. It was awesome. They took us to a leather store at one of the entrance’s to Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar where we met the nicest, most welcoming Turkish people who we ended up hanging out with the whole time we were there.
But before I get off track, Istanbul might be my favorite city in the world! First of all, the people are uber-friendly…always approaching you to talk, to hear how you like Turkey, and to tell you how sorry they are about 9/11. Turkey has a high percentage of Muslims but every single person expressed sorrow for Americans. We would stop to get a gyro on the street and the vendor would want to talk and tell us about his life…I have never met such talkers (no wonder I like them so much!). We spent a whole day at the Spice Bazaar and Grand Bazaar, which are two of the oldest bazaars in the world. There are something like 4,000 stores in the Grand Bazaar. They sell everything from carpets to jewelry to spices to belt buckles. If you need something they don’t have, they will send a boy running to find someone who does sell it! Their English is great, and they have good lines too, like, “Please help me to help you spend your money!” and “How can I rip you off today?”. Any street you walk down has people hawking perfume, spinning tops, clothes, shoes, evil eye charms…but we’ve held ourselves back because we are trying to conserve our travel fund and we have to carry everything on our backs!
We spent a few days visiting the tourist sites like the Aya Sophia and the Blue Mosque and all over Sultanahmet. It was sunny and warm every day. And of course Turkish food is delicious – kebabs and cucumber and yogurt and garlic and rice. The street food is great…we were eating $1 doner kebab sandwiches almost every day. We became a regular at the stands!
Transportation in Istanbul is so interesting. First of all, they have one metro line (in a city of 14 million people) that goes in a straight line! Not terribly helpful. They also have a tram line. Not so helpful either. But the taxis are cheap and an even better option is the dolmus. This is a van that has a set route but lets people on and off wherever they want on the route. Dolmus actually means “full” in Turkish, and this is because these vans stuff themselves beyond capacity, and just sort of swerve to the side and slow down for people to get on and off. The sliding side door is automatic and you kind of climb out while the vehicle is still creeping along. It’s a trip!
We were sad when it came time to leave, especially since we hung out with the same group of Turkish people every night, but it was finally time to leave. The Ford boys were all leaving to travel due to a religious holiday in Turkey, where animals are slaughtered in the streets by veterinarians while the imam’s look on.
So Wendi, Steph and I hopped a train to Plovdiv, Bulgaria. We had no choice since we had bought the tickets days before we read an article in an English Turkish paper about RIOTS in Plovdiv’s Gybsy neighborhoods all that week! Evidently the electricity was turned off in those neighborhoods, which prompted the inhabitants to tear through the streets destroying buildings and cars. Hmm. We decided to avoid that part of the city.
I think our train left around 11 pm. We had a sleeping compartment (couchette) all to ourselves. Our toothless train conductor was very friendly and I was able to speak to him in Czech. We probably went to bed around 1 am, and from previous experience, we knew that passport control would kock on our door when we got to the border of Bulgaria. So we weren’t surprised when we heard the knock at 6 am, just a little disoriented. We were a little confused when no one came to look at our passports. After waiting a while, we went into the train hallway. It was deserted, and the doors to the outside were open. When we stepped off the train, it was like a scary movie. It was cold and foggy and there was one set of stairs leading underground with one bare lightbulb to see by. Hmm…we wondered what to do. We finally verntured down the stairs, through a tunnel, and up another set of stairs. It was a police line-up. At 6 am. The three of us and a few hundred poor Bulgarians. Police were walking along the train, shining their flashlights underneath (because so many Turks are trying to immigrate to Bulgaria?). Once they were sure the train had nothing attached to the bottom, the train PULLED AWAY! WHAT?! Our bags and everything were in our sleeping compartment. We were so confused. Our passports were all checked and the train returned from it’s quick jaunt to who knows where. We got back into bed and slept.
And slept and slept. The train got to Plovdiv four hours later than scheduled. We had a lot of trouble trying to find our hostel, and ended up along a highway with our bags until someone pointed us in the right direction. Too bad they did, cuz this place was a shithole. It was old, dusty and cold. No toilet paper (but there was a toilet and not just a hole in the ground with footpads). Oh, and there also wasn’t hot water. It felt like being back in Prague! One interesting thing about Bulgaria is that they don’t have bathtubs. Nope. They have a drain hole in the middle of the bathroom floor and a nozzle on the wall, and when you want to shower you kick the trash can to the side, close the toilet seat lid, and go to it!
Anyway, Plovdiv is supposed to be the cultural capital of Bulgaria , but we weren’t so impressed. It was a town. And a town where everyone was constantly trying to pickpocket us. So we hightailed it to Sofia, Bulgaria’s biggest city. The train ride was the saddest I’ve been on. There were shacks lined up along the tracks. Shack is actually too nice of a word. The “houses” were made of pieces of wood and sheet metal that don’t even connect at all corners. It must be freezing inside. There was garbage all over the place. Kids were playing in the garbage. Seeing the poverty was unbelievable. People were herding goats and sheeps alongside the tracks. Donkees and horses pulling carts are still common means of transportation in Bulgaria, although cars from the 1970s rank a close second. I thought every woman in Sophia was a prostitute until I realized that the style is literally worse than the 80s. Spandex adidas pants with white socks and pumps, faux fur coats, big bangs, jeans with bows and zippers at the bottom…
But in Sophia we had some random Bulgarian food. Since none of us can read Cyrilic, we can’t understand a word on the menu. We mimed chicken (flapped our arms like wings) at one restaurant and were served bowls of chicken liver. Um, yeah, we had bags of chips for dinner instead. We stayed at a decent hostel in Sophia, although we had to share our room with some French guy, some old British man, and an American Peace Corps volunteer. We got up early the next day to go to Rila Monastary, which is a gorgeous monastery in the mountains about 3 ½ hours outside of Sophia. It was definitely the highlight of the country, in my opinion. In fact, at the end of the day (after we had already spent seven hours on a bus) we decided to take an overnight train to Romania that very night. It had begun to snow and rain and it was freezing. We had such good weather until then that we can’t complain, however! But in hindsight, Bulgaria was one of my least favorite places I’ve ever visited.
So our train took us to Bucharest uneventfully. No police line-up to report! We only spent a day in the capital (where again, people tried (unsuccessfully) to pickpocket me everywhere I went) before leaving for Brasov. Brasov is in the area of the country called Transylvania, and yes, yesterday we went to Dracula’s castle! Which is not actually very foreboding looking, and a myth anyway, but it was cool to go to Bran Castle anyway. The back story is that this guy Vlad “The Impaler” was from the town of Sigisoara. He was a crazy, ruthless man who used to impale people through their ASSHOLES and then plop them in a field. It was so gruesome that when the Turks came to conquer this area, they turned back. For years, Vlad lived in Bran Castle. The castle inspired Bram Stoker to do a Dracula movie. Kind of cool!
At the castle, poor Stephanie fell down the castle stairs, right after the women who worked at the entrance were harassing us to buy hand-woven hats and slippers (which we did because we were freezing and because we felt bad for the women who were obviously having trouble making ends meet). We had a man who drove us around all day in an antique car. He took us to Bran Castle and to Sinaia for $11 each. We learned that he can live for a week off of that $33. Romania is pretty cheap, but unfortunately it’s also pretty poor. Dirty, poorly clothed children beg for food and you can’t say no. We sometimes give them the food off of our plate at the restaurant, or smuggle food outside with us. We’ve learned that giving them actual food is better than giving them money that they then turn over to their parents. So we’ve started taking them to a small store and buying bread and cheese and fruit and milk.
A guy named Gabriel found us at the train station and we somehow ended up staying in his flat! He is an interesting character. He spent a good 30 minutes in his car at the train station showing us business cards from America of people who have stayed with him. Hello, obviously if we were in his car, we trusted him! But he insisted on showing us cards and pictures and talked a mile a minute. Very strange. He also seems to be in love with Wendi and strokes her hair at every possibility. Another Romanian man is also staying at Gabriel’s. He told us his American wife left him a few days ago and we had dinner with him. While we were waiting for him to meet us for dinner some Romanian kids started throwing snowballs at us! We didn’t know what to do (I mean, it’s not great PR for America if we kick their ass!). But some nice guy got them to stop – he could undoubtedly see how distressed we were. People here are pretty friendly.
Today we came to Sigisoara, a town in the Carpathinian Mountains that is beautiful. We fell asleep on the train ride and almost missed our stop! From here we are going to another small town near here and then up north to some monastaries. After that is the student center of Romania, Cluj-Napoca. Then we’ll probably head up to Hungary and then Slovakia and then return to Prague.
Before I go, here’s an interesting tidbit of history about Romania. In 1965 Nicolae Ceausescu came to power at the end of a long period of communism (1940s through early 1960s). During his reign there were some sketchy things going on (such as an experiment in the Pitesti Prison where a group of people were tortured). Ceausescu’s policies led to the impoverishment that we can see here in present day 2002 Romania. Finally, in 1989, there was a revolution in Romania and Ceausescu was overthrown and executed. Nothing about this is particularly interesting or different from other coups EXCEPT that he was executed on national TV on Christmas!!!
Anyway, the “Girls Week Out in Eastern Europe” is just a few weeks away and Wendi and I may head back to Turkey in April. I’ll keep everyone posted!
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Posted by: istanbul tours | October 10, 2011 at 06:55 AM