When in Rom...ania...

Braşov

I'm pretty surprised Aaron and I actually made it to Romania. Our entire trip was devoid of any plans whatsoever. We never booked a hostel, reserved a train, or knew where we were going to be at any given day. Luckily things worked out surprisingly well, and the lack of plans just fueled our sense of adventure. Our schedule was completely contingent on how we were feeling when we got up.

Anyway, after we finally got out of the dump (in our opinion) of Bucharest, we got to see some sweet sights on the way into Transylvania (which is the middle western part of Romania). The mountains were beautiful, and we picked the perfect time for a trip there. The leaves were all turning and it was pretty sweet. It was only 2.5 hours to Brasov, and we were extremely relieved to be on a nice train. We met a cool guy in the Brasov train station who worked for a local hostel. He said they only had a couple of beds left. We decided that it would be our best bet so we agreed and he arranged a cab for us.

The hostel, Kismet Dao, was actually one of the highlights of our trip. Here, we met a lot of people doing the "backpack across Europe" thing. They were mostly kids who were taking time off college, just graduated, or dudes just getting away from their wives. It was a lot of fun just to sit around and talk to these kids who have been traveling for months. They all have great stories to tell. Of course Aaron got into a couple arguments with some Canadians (and the French dude) about America. It seems like they get a lot of that around there. America is kind of a big deal.

After we got a chance to drop our stuff at the hostel, we did some exploring of our own. The "old city" has a real "European mountain town" feel to it. I think that mostly comes from the fact that it's a European Mountain town. One of the most prominent objects in the city is the huge "BRASOV" sign that is on the side of the big mountain. We definitely had to climb up to that. Other things were the Biserica Sf. Nicolae (Church of St. Nicholas) dating back to the 15th Century, the black church (I didn't get a good picture of it), and some other cool stuff. Romanian people were pretty friendly for the most part. Cab drivers would gladly help negotiate hotel rooms for you before they ripped you off for a $30 fare for just a few kilometers. At first I was surprised at how many people understood English. Then it made sense, in Eastern Europe where there are so many countries bordering each other each with their own language, the only way to communicate with other nationalities is English. And, Brasov is in a central location in Romania where trains going to Hungary, Czech Repub, Austria have to cross.

The second day we were in Brasov we decided to get out and do some hiking. There was a pretty sweet trail that went up the side of the mountain (with the big sign). It was about an hour hike to the summit...Okay, it wasn't a big enough mountain to warrant the use of the word "summit" so let's just say "top". Anyway, the view from the top was incredible. You could see all of the city and pretty much a lot of other stuff too. There was a little trail on the other side of the mountain (facing away from Brasov) that really showed off the surrounding mountains. There is some of the best skiing in Romania in Brasov in the Winter, which is something I would definitely like to check out sometime. Afterwards, we were pretty thrilled to finally eat some pork and a decent hamburger. While we didn't really experience anything which can be claimed as "Romanian Cuisine" we did get some good Italian food and other pork-laden products. Tuesday we decided to visit some of the nearby castles (but only made it to one).

View from the summit.

Bulgaria..

These pictures are from the 22 hour train ride from Istanbul to Bucharest, Romania. It wasn't as exciting as it looks.

This was one of the first things I saw in Bulgaria. There were many small, po-dunk, farming communities. The fog added to the depressing feeling.

One of the bigger cities we went through. There really wasn't much to look at. We did see livestock roaming through some of the towns.

AH! Finally we got to the mountains, which at first still looked dismal and foreboding. Oh well, it was an adventure.

The view from my small window. We were traveling with a man from New Zealand. He teaches English in Istanbul and was on a visa run for his break. A visa run is what a lot of foreigners have to do once every 3 months to renew their visa so they don't get arrested.

Ok, so Bulgaria didn't end up being that bad. Once we got into the mountains I spent a lot of time looking out the window. However, 22 hours with NO food was not much fun. We were happy to get to Bucharest, until we found out that there was pretty much no where cheap to sleep. We had to stay in a hotel at 30 euros a person, per night. Aaron slept on the floor and paid 10 euros. We got up super early after staying the night in Bucharest and got on a train to Brasov in the mountains of Transylvania.

romania

Finally I get a chance to update my blog. I was having internet troubles in the hostel, but i now have it under control. Unfortunately I did not bring the cable for my camera to upload photos. You will have to wait until next week. Okay, so I took a 22 hour train ride from Istanbul to Bucharest (the capitol of Romania). It was a miserable trip on a crap, po-dunk, train. Bulgaria wasn't too much to look at either.

Bucharest was not really a fun town to stay in. We had to walk around for like 2 hours at night looking for a place to stay, when we finally gave up and went to a Hotel and paid 30 euros a night, per person. We disliked bucharest so much that we got on the first train we could to go to Brasov, a fair sized city nestled in the Transylvanian mountains. We really really like Brasov. We've got a nice, cheap hostel and we have done some hiking, and today we went to the Castle Bran (the castle which inspired bram stoker or something). Okay, there are people waiting in line to use the computer, so I have to get off. I'll post some pictures real soon.

Gobble

It has been a long time since I have updated. I guess I got a little lazy. I, unlike some of my international friends, have not done any more traveling since I went to Antalya. I have been spending a lot of time doing nothing. And by nothing I mean the usual: class, nargile, cay, video games with Ben and James, reading, eating. There aren't usually many dull moments in Istanbul.

For the most part, my classes are pretty easy. My American Lit class is for sure going to be a cake walk, but it is still interesting because we are reading some things that I have never read and a lot of things that I haven't read in a long time. I need to choose a topic for my research paper. My hardest class, by far, is my Computer Networking class. Let's just say that it would be difficult if it were taught in all English, the fact that it is taught in about 60% Turkish, and the students ask their questions in Turkish, the professor responds in Turkish, I can't see the whiteboard because there are like 70 students in there and they have big heads, AND I can't buy the textbook because the bookstore on campus is sold out and they said it will be a MONTH or TWO before they can get it in. It's going to be a rough ride.

Good things:

1. I learned how to play backgammon
2. I'm staying in good shape via the track that is right next door
3. Last week I mailed 3 postcards and today I mailed 8
4. Friday (hopefully), I leave for Romania.
5. Aaron and I met Muhitten, who owns a nargile cafe and he hooked us up.
6. my Turkish is getting a lot better.
   

Bad things:

1. I miss my friends and family (and Baxter).
2. I don't have enough cold-weather gear.
3. milk tastes weird
4. I've been kind of sick
   

So yeah, starting Friday we have a week break which is because of the end of Ramadan. A group of us are taking a train into Romania, and from there head north-west...Maybe making it to Budapest in Hungary. The plan is to stop a couple of days in Transylvania and do some hiking maybe. Aaron and I are probably going to break off from the group and do our own thing for a while. I'll take plenty of pictures and pick up some cooler looking postcards.

Antalya, part 2

Day 2 started a little slower than we would have liked. Not one of the four of us managed to set alarm effectively. The result: almost missed breakfast and didn't get out of the door until 11. The plan for day 2: Hit up Lara (sandy) beach early and then drive to Aspendos. Unfortunately, like so many other parts of our trip, those plans didn't exactly work out well. We ended up spending the ENTIRE day on the beach, and that was alright too. We relaxed Saturday evening with a beautiful sunset. Aaron and I took the scooters out so that he could get used to driving and we could explore the city a little bit on our own. We left Craig and Katy in an internet cafe. We were looking for ataturk park but happened to come upon the Antalya Beach Park, which was a pretty cool place, different from most public parks I've been to in the sense that it was packed with clubs that had dance floors on the water. We walked around and looked at the beautiful people, listened to some live music, enjoyed some free (or not so free, I'm not sure) peanuts, and left.

Due to our event-less day on Saturday, we had a full plate of activities planned for Sunday. Among these are the Antalya Archaeology museum, the local cities of antiquity Perge and Aspendos. Due to time constraints we had to skip Termessos. Our scooters were due back to the rental place at 8 pm and our flight was scheduled to leave Antalya Intl. at 11:50 pm. First up was the Archaeology museum. We hit that up at 10 am (like I said, early day). The archaeology museum was great. It had tons and tons of artifacts excavated from the greco-roman ruins around the region. Most of the statues came from Perge, and they were in surprisingly good shape. You could see that many of them had to be reconstructed. The museum also housed a great collection of sarcophagi, many of which dated back thousands of years. It took us a good 2 hours to really experience the museum.


After the museum we hit the road to Aspendos, with our plan to hit up Perge on the way back (they are off the same highway), and maybe this waterfall thing too if we had time. The first thing you see when you get to Aspendos is the huge theatre, which is one of the best preserved theatres in the Mediterranean; they still hold concerts, plays, grease-wrestling events and other things there. Unfortunately we didn't get to attend the opera they had the previous Friday. Behind the theatre is the acropolis, which was pretty fallen apart, but it was still a blast to go off the beaten path and really explore the acropolis. In places like this you really have to use your imagination to see what the city would have looked like 2k years ago. It's amazing to think that people used to live there so long ago. It makes you wonder if in two thousand years will people be walking around our ruins? I think Aspendos was a pretty good site to start with, because it was impossible for me to be disappointed. If I had been to a place like Pompeii or Ephesus first I would be pretty disappointed by the ruins at Perge and Aspendos especially, but these places are amazing in their own way.

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Perge, about 10 km outside of Antalya, was a metropolis in its time. After seen Aspendos, I was not expecting to find Perge to be in great shape. I was surprised, however to find what you can easily see as a city. Perge stretches really far out. There is the main part of city which is easily identifiable. There are huge roads, lined with columns that run through the main part of the city. Outside you can hike along sparse trails, or (like Aaron and I) make your own path and really explore how big the city is. We sat on the walls of the city and took some panoramic photos. I found 2 turtles too, but I don't think they would've made it home so I left them. There were vendors who lined the streets of the ancient city trying to sell us little trinkets that I've seen all over Turkey. I felt really bad, because they looked like they really needed us to buy something. However, if I bought something from everyone who needed me to buy something from them, eventually I would be out on the street selling trinkets. It was here, however, that we forced Craig the Scottish boy to buy an evil eye, because that poor kid had so many bad things happen to him on the trip.



We went out on a limb on the way back and a took the advice of the guy at our pension and visited a waterfall. Like almost everywhere we went, we really didn't know how to get there; we couldn't read street signs and did not have very good directions. Luckily, with my excellent sense of direction (or an amazing streak of good luck) we never got lost and actually managed to find this waterfall. I forget its name and probably wouldn't be able to spell it anyway. Nevertheless it was a cool waterfall, and here is a picture.

And....We finally made it back to Antalya, turned in the motorbikes and got some dinner. I finally was able to snap a photo of Hadrian's Gate, constructed in honor of the visit of Emperor Hadrianus (of which there are tons of statues in the archaeology museum). We chilled with Dude (we never learned his name so he became "Dude" for the duration of the trip) who owned the pension and he arranged a cab for us to the airport. He gave me a postcard for free (unfortunately I never was able to buy area-specific postcards)....Hopefully I can find some Antalya postcard somewhere in Istanbul. Speaking of postcards...I kind of need to mail some.... Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed reading about my trip. Stay tuned for more accounts of my exciting adventures.

Antalya, part 1

I really don't know how to begin to describe the trip to Antalya. What was expected to be a relaxing weekend lounging on the beaches of the mediterranean was just the opposite. It was not only the most intense 3 days of my life, but probably the most fun. Antalya is the kind of place that no one would believe unless I showed them pictures. Even then, pictures don't do it justice. Antalya is a city right on the Bay of Antalya on the Mediterranean. It is nestled in between a couple really big mountains. The population is around 1 million, and 3 million in the summer. Antalya is where the rich Europeans go to vacation. With miles of pristine pebble beaches and greek, lycian, and roman ruins all within an hour's drive, it's not a bad place to vacation. Luckily, Aaron, Katy, Craig the Scottish boy, and I timed our visit at the end of the tourist season, where the water was still warm.

I think the single craziest thing about our trip was that we really didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. In a way that turned out to be good. Since we didn't know what to expect, we were pleasantly surprised when we experienced things. The first thing we did when we got there was check into a pension in the old city of Antalya, Kaleici, and then find a cafe to relax. Friday morning we got up bright and early for a complimentary Turkish breakfast, and promptly rented 2 motorbikes (scooters). The rental was about $18 per day per scooter. The scooters were probably the single best idea we had other than actually going to Antalya. So, we decided to explore the city a bit. We succeeded in getting lost for a while. It took a while to get used to the agressive Asian driving, which is surprisingly similar to agressive European driving. We eventually made it to the pebble beaches of Konyaaltuh.

After the beaches, we decided it was a good idea to drive to Olympos. This turned out to be quite an ambitious undertaking. We thought it was only 45-50 kilometers. It turned out to be around 80 km. But, it was worth the drive at least. The road to olympos was a coastal/mountain highway. We were driving along the mediterranean, through mountain tunels and twisty, turny mountain swtichbacks. (The beach at Olympos) It was amazing. We skipped the chimaera due to time restraints, and went straight to the ruins of olympos. Olympos dates back to 100 B.C. where it was a member of the lycian league, then absorbed as a Roman Province. It is quite spread out, and requires a lot of hiking around to see everything.
The ruins are along a river/creek thing in a valley between huge mountains. We did a lot of hiking to get to the really good spots. We took a break at a nice overlook (that's aaron). I'm going to post one more picture and then save the story of the rest of the trip for another blog entry.




This is a picture of the gate to the temple at olympos: