I'm doing my impersonation of a midget stuck inside a shoebox for 3 hours, when I'm rudely interrupted by a bash at the door and a yell "Passport Kontrol!". Catching a sleeper train from Istanbul to Sofia in Bulgaria was a much better option than another nightmare bus- At least this one has beds- big enough for something the size of a large pigeon anyway. My bed is just over 2m off the ground, and about 50 cm away from the roof so you can imagine the challenges of getting up at 4am for the passport control- just getting in is hard enough! Oh, the bed is about shoulder height in length so I have to precariously balance my feet off a nearby parcel shelf, the top half my body on the bed and pray I don't roll over in the night and go for an insurance claiming stack just to stretch out. About an hour ago my 20kg backpack fell off the parcel shelf and hit me in the head on the way down to the ground. Good times.
After getting up for the border check, we waited 20 mins for the train to actually stop, then another 20 mins for the copper to get to our passports. For some reason they withheld a small group of English speaking peoples passports and gave us forms. I assumed they were VISA forms for entry into Bulgaria- Nope! Satisfaction surveys for your stay in Turkey. It had great questions like "please write your entire trip budget on this spreadsheet", "Please list all countries and stay durations on your holiday here" and "please list each place you visited in Turkey, dates and itinerary". Needless to say, the form they got from me, The unemployed baker from Cocos Islands seeking political asylum in Turkey wont be much use to their statistics board. What the hell do you expect at 4am? The copper picked up on Lyns forms when she wrote she spent just $60 the entire duration of her stay in turkey haha. I got my passport back but I reckon the bloke there may have had the final laugh: although he stamped us for leaving Turkey theres no stamp or VISA for entering Bulgaria...?
Oh I see now... We have been woken up another 3 times for some blokes to storm through the train, half an hour later to have our passports checked again, then later to get our "welcome to Bulgaria" stamps. Normally I'd be loving the personal service but at 4:30 to 5:30am, I'm normally washing my hair so I'm unimpressed and sleep deprived. I'm just glad they didn't ask anything about the birth mark imprint on my face that says "Caribee Australia" from my parachuting backpack incident earlier.
The past few days in Istanbul were good- Its the first place the currency has been on par with the Aussie dollar which has made is easier to understand prices instead of having to convert everything mentally. Kebabs are $2, Pints are $3-5 (except for one hillside park cafe that was $12!) and prices are pretty cheap outside of the touristy areas, which in most cases are only a few metres from a main mall or touristy street. On our second day It pretty much consisted of: Jewellery shopping, clothes shopping, and looking for leather boots. All of my favourite things! Yeah - I lie. The day picked up though when I found a student cafe on the fourth floor of some random building and they had 750mL pints for $4. Awesome! After that we scouted around looking for a decent place for a Turkish coffee, and in between stopped to use the bathroom at Burger King. Its dead quiet with 5 blokes at the urinal, when the guy next to me lets out a ripper fart through his dick. Im glad I wasn't the only one that almost fell over laughing. From there we tried to get lost in the city and somehow managed to pass through most of the sights on the European continent side, and got in some great photos.
Istanbul is a city of 16 million, and they seem keen on the old siestas as well. The shops open late and close late, there are countless kebab/Pide (Turkish pizza) shops, electronics vendors and rug merchants. In the middle of town there is a district called Sultanahmet, where we stayed, that has all the huge attractions- Hagia Sofia, The blue Mosque, the giant cistern, the huge bazaar with 4500 shops and only 22 entrances in a maze of streets you will stay be orientated in, and the palace. Its also got backpacker alley- a street just chock a block with hostels and what appear to be cheap eateries, but are not really. They do a good feed though for when you are too worn down to leave the area, but instead of a local shop $2-4 for a burger, you'll pay $10. The City itself was conquered by the roman empire in the 2nd Century AD and renamed to Constantinople in AD 330 and it saw out the collapse of the Western roman empire, only to be taken again in 1204. During this time mosques and all sorts of buildings were built, torn down, modified and stolen from other religions which give a funny history to the city. eg: Hagia Sophia. Covered in mosaics during its 15 odd year construction when it was first a catholic cathedral, then every square inch was plastered up and painted to become a mosque because catholics had mosaics of animals which aren't allowed in the Muslim faith. Now theres a big renovation effort to strip the dodgy plastering job and re-expose the old mosaics.
Our hostel in Istanbul has been great and we have shared a room with a couple of cool girls- an American working in Darfur and a Perthite just exiled from Melbourne and they have been great company the past few days. It gave me a laugh hearing how the blokes that work at the bar here ply the birds they like with drinks till their memory fails then no one can recall what happened after a certain point- Its like a legal date-rape or something: I guess its not uncommon. I'm just a bit disappointed my free drinks stopped in Greece and the tradition didn't flow onto Turkey.
The Turkish here have surprised me again and again- Everyone is so happy and chirpy that it makes me wonder why. The second bus we jumped onto I had a can of pringles that I tried to wedge onto the parcel shelf. 20 minutes later it comes down with a crash and almost takes out an old blokes head. He laughs as I'm trying to apologise to him in English. To be nice, at the rest stop I let him and his wife off first and from then on we are best mates. When he goes to get off at his stop a few hours later he stands at the front of the bus saying bye and waving to me for a minute or two holding everyone up. Same situation with Lyn on the sleeper bus- After she dropped her ipod, bag and glasses on separate events, the oldies next to her are joking with her in Turkish and they are best mates, waving and saying bye to us as they go to get off the bus. Later in the trip, a cafe we ran into looking for a coffee and cake after our sub-$10 vego dinner feast of soups, entree, pide and drinks told us straight out we wouldn't find a cheap baklava in the area we were in (the touristy square in front of Hagia Sophia), and pointed us to the cheap area. After a chat he offered us a free tea or coffee anytime we come back. Its a pleasant change from the entry prices to all the museums and palaces around which are all $20! On the upside though, we have found almost everything can be bartered for, even on fixed menus.
Turkey on a gastronomic front has been all kinds of disappointing. Short of a Late night lamb sandwich, the food has been pretty average. For example: In the middle of our epic "Girls Leather boots, girls clothes and jewellery shopping" episode I sought refuge with a cheeky pint at a street side cafe. I ordered a beer, and was a bit hungry so went for the English menu's option of "Yoghurt, dill, cucumber" and some bread, thinking It was most of the ingredients of tzatziki dip. haha. NO. I should have guessed when the waiter gave me a dumb look after i ordered it. It came out in a bowl and resembled chunky milk with a shrub in it. I looked at it dumbly thinking "that's not tzatziki" and the waiter held back a laugh. After a minute he literally dug my spoon into it, held it to my lips and said "drink". I wasn't really into the romantic notion of being spoon fed by a waiter so nabbed the spoon off him and tried the chunky goo. It tasted how it looked- watered down yoghurt with a parsley and dill shrub blended in and lumps of cucumber thrown in for good measure. The waiter started to piss himself laughing at my facial expressions, and after the "meal" brought us around two free Turkish teas as compensation for my traumatic experience. Even after we paid and were leaving I could hear him laughing behind me.
Other meals we have cranked up here have been about as average- An exotic burger comes missing half the ingredients it is advertised with, every kind of fast food involves huge shreds of gherkins, Turkish coffees are weak as, theres no such thing as normal milk- its all UHT, all the spices seem to be dried, apart from parsley and dill, The seafood we ordered came dripping in oil and gave stomach aches... But I have to say this has all been offset by the cheap prices and the service that the stuff comes with. I think the pinnacle of bad food was on an island on the Bosphorus after a seafood meal, I ordered a "Nescafe" (coffee) and I swear my spoon could stand up in the coffee gravy that I was poured. I went to stir it, and I hit a good 1cm of chunks on the bottom- not sure whether it was the 5 tablespoons of coffee or half a cup of coffee mate whitener though... I just got an email about coffee mate having melamine in it- ah well if it plasticises my stomach I guess I can only benefit with the subsequent weight loss.
After getting up for the border check, we waited 20 mins for the train to actually stop, then another 20 mins for the copper to get to our passports. For some reason they withheld a small group of English speaking peoples passports and gave us forms. I assumed they were VISA forms for entry into Bulgaria- Nope! Satisfaction surveys for your stay in Turkey. It had great questions like "please write your entire trip budget on this spreadsheet", "Please list all countries and stay durations on your holiday here" and "please list each place you visited in Turkey, dates and itinerary". Needless to say, the form they got from me, The unemployed baker from Cocos Islands seeking political asylum in Turkey wont be much use to their statistics board. What the hell do you expect at 4am? The copper picked up on Lyns forms when she wrote she spent just $60 the entire duration of her stay in turkey haha. I got my passport back but I reckon the bloke there may have had the final laugh: although he stamped us for leaving Turkey theres no stamp or VISA for entering Bulgaria...?
Oh I see now... We have been woken up another 3 times for some blokes to storm through the train, half an hour later to have our passports checked again, then later to get our "welcome to Bulgaria" stamps. Normally I'd be loving the personal service but at 4:30 to 5:30am, I'm normally washing my hair so I'm unimpressed and sleep deprived. I'm just glad they didn't ask anything about the birth mark imprint on my face that says "Caribee Australia" from my parachuting backpack incident earlier.
The past few days in Istanbul were good- Its the first place the currency has been on par with the Aussie dollar which has made is easier to understand prices instead of having to convert everything mentally. Kebabs are $2, Pints are $3-5 (except for one hillside park cafe that was $12!) and prices are pretty cheap outside of the touristy areas, which in most cases are only a few metres from a main mall or touristy street. On our second day It pretty much consisted of: Jewellery shopping, clothes shopping, and looking for leather boots. All of my favourite things! Yeah - I lie. The day picked up though when I found a student cafe on the fourth floor of some random building and they had 750mL pints for $4. Awesome! After that we scouted around looking for a decent place for a Turkish coffee, and in between stopped to use the bathroom at Burger King. Its dead quiet with 5 blokes at the urinal, when the guy next to me lets out a ripper fart through his dick. Im glad I wasn't the only one that almost fell over laughing. From there we tried to get lost in the city and somehow managed to pass through most of the sights on the European continent side, and got in some great photos.
Istanbul is a city of 16 million, and they seem keen on the old siestas as well. The shops open late and close late, there are countless kebab/Pide (Turkish pizza) shops, electronics vendors and rug merchants. In the middle of town there is a district called Sultanahmet, where we stayed, that has all the huge attractions- Hagia Sofia, The blue Mosque, the giant cistern, the huge bazaar with 4500 shops and only 22 entrances in a maze of streets you will stay be orientated in, and the palace. Its also got backpacker alley- a street just chock a block with hostels and what appear to be cheap eateries, but are not really. They do a good feed though for when you are too worn down to leave the area, but instead of a local shop $2-4 for a burger, you'll pay $10. The City itself was conquered by the roman empire in the 2nd Century AD and renamed to Constantinople in AD 330 and it saw out the collapse of the Western roman empire, only to be taken again in 1204. During this time mosques and all sorts of buildings were built, torn down, modified and stolen from other religions which give a funny history to the city. eg: Hagia Sophia. Covered in mosaics during its 15 odd year construction when it was first a catholic cathedral, then every square inch was plastered up and painted to become a mosque because catholics had mosaics of animals which aren't allowed in the Muslim faith. Now theres a big renovation effort to strip the dodgy plastering job and re-expose the old mosaics.
Our hostel in Istanbul has been great and we have shared a room with a couple of cool girls- an American working in Darfur and a Perthite just exiled from Melbourne and they have been great company the past few days. It gave me a laugh hearing how the blokes that work at the bar here ply the birds they like with drinks till their memory fails then no one can recall what happened after a certain point- Its like a legal date-rape or something: I guess its not uncommon. I'm just a bit disappointed my free drinks stopped in Greece and the tradition didn't flow onto Turkey.
The Turkish here have surprised me again and again- Everyone is so happy and chirpy that it makes me wonder why. The second bus we jumped onto I had a can of pringles that I tried to wedge onto the parcel shelf. 20 minutes later it comes down with a crash and almost takes out an old blokes head. He laughs as I'm trying to apologise to him in English. To be nice, at the rest stop I let him and his wife off first and from then on we are best mates. When he goes to get off at his stop a few hours later he stands at the front of the bus saying bye and waving to me for a minute or two holding everyone up. Same situation with Lyn on the sleeper bus- After she dropped her ipod, bag and glasses on separate events, the oldies next to her are joking with her in Turkish and they are best mates, waving and saying bye to us as they go to get off the bus. Later in the trip, a cafe we ran into looking for a coffee and cake after our sub-$10 vego dinner feast of soups, entree, pide and drinks told us straight out we wouldn't find a cheap baklava in the area we were in (the touristy square in front of Hagia Sophia), and pointed us to the cheap area. After a chat he offered us a free tea or coffee anytime we come back. Its a pleasant change from the entry prices to all the museums and palaces around which are all $20! On the upside though, we have found almost everything can be bartered for, even on fixed menus.Turkey on a gastronomic front has been all kinds of disappointing. Short of a Late night lamb sandwich, the food has been pretty average. For example: In the middle of our epic "Girls Leather boots, girls clothes and jewellery shopping" episode I sought refuge with a cheeky pint at a street side cafe. I ordered a beer, and was a bit hungry so went for the English menu's option of "Yoghurt, dill, cucumber" and some bread, thinking It was most of the ingredients of tzatziki dip. haha. NO. I should have guessed when the waiter gave me a dumb look after i ordered it. It came out in a bowl and resembled chunky milk with a shrub in it. I looked at it dumbly thinking "that's not tzatziki" and the waiter held back a laugh. After a minute he literally dug my spoon into it, held it to my lips and said "drink". I wasn't really into the romantic notion of being spoon fed by a waiter so nabbed the spoon off him and tried the chunky goo. It tasted how it looked- watered down yoghurt with a parsley and dill shrub blended in and lumps of cucumber thrown in for good measure. The waiter started to piss himself laughing at my facial expressions, and after the "meal" brought us around two free Turkish teas as compensation for my traumatic experience. Even after we paid and were leaving I could hear him laughing behind me.Other meals we have cranked up here have been about as average- An exotic burger comes missing half the ingredients it is advertised with, every kind of fast food involves huge shreds of gherkins, Turkish coffees are weak as, theres no such thing as normal milk- its all UHT, all the spices seem to be dried, apart from parsley and dill, The seafood we ordered came dripping in oil and gave stomach aches... But I have to say this has all been offset by the cheap prices and the service that the stuff comes with. I think the pinnacle of bad food was on an island on the Bosphorus after a seafood meal, I ordered a "Nescafe" (coffee) and I swear my spoon could stand up in the coffee gravy that I was poured. I went to stir it, and I hit a good 1cm of chunks on the bottom- not sure whether it was the 5 tablespoons of coffee or half a cup of coffee mate whitener though... I just got an email about coffee mate having melamine in it- ah well if it plasticises my stomach I guess I can only benefit with the subsequent weight loss.
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