"Turkey" Day

One of the most important aspects of living abroad is sharing your cultural traditions with new people, and embracing the traditions of others. Luckily for me, I got the chance to share one of Americans' most important and time-honored traditions with my new Turkish friends. The opportunity to share Thanksgiving--a tradition the very purpose of which is to share food and culture--was too good to pass up. So about eight of the Americans whom I've been spending time with invited their Turkish roommates and friends to our feast, which we the Americans (and two Canadians) organized and prepared. One of the American girls' father owned a home right off campus overlooking the Bosphorus. It was huge and offered stunning views of Bebek and the Asian shore. You can tell from the pictures that Thanksgiving was definitely a success. After being in Turkey for almost three months, it was a good way for to reconnect to home and show my Turkish friends that there are some good things to share from across the pond.


The plate that almost did me in.

Erin and I are posing with our beautiful and tasty creation.

The gang of Turkey Day.
from left to right: Alex (got cut off), Adam, John, Kendall, Jill (hidden), amy?, Erin, Alex, Amy J., Onur, Rachel, Greg, Dean, Adam?, Max, Gorkan.

Me, with my haunch of meat that could feed a family of four.

The starting line-up.

No Thanksgiving is complete without football (American).

Because this is Булгариа....

Rila Monastery

For the weekend, 10 of us decided to take a nice relaxing trip to СОФИЯ (Sophia), Bulgaria. We grabbed the overnight train out of Istanbul on Thursday. After another harrowing experience on the international trains, we arrived in Sophia at about 11:30 A.M. Friday. Since my family is reading this blog, I won't be going into too much detail about the events of the night on the train. That being said, despite lingering effects of the train I was immediately aware of how polluted the city was in comparison to Istanbul. I had to ask Aaron if what I thought was a blanket of fog covering the city was actually covering my eyes. It was the city. It was gross.

It's a typical, depressing looking eastern European city. And, yes, I realize how ignorant that statement sounds, but it was honestly my first opinion of Sophia. I should point out, however, that it was better than my first impression of Bucharest! We probably walked two miles from the train station into the heart of the city, which was a very sobering experience. But despite the overwhelming amount of graffiti and homeless and dirt, there are some really nice parts of Sophia (they have a yellow-bricked road!).

We then checked into our hostel near the center of the city. The hostel was extremely nice. They offered free breakfast, laundry, dinner, internet, etc. We were lucky that they had open beds for 10 of us. Also, there were 3 other Americans also studying with us at Bogazici that were staying in the hostel, so we hung out with them too. After relaxing a bit, we got together to see some of the famous churches of the city. I didn't take my camera, so I missed out on pictures of that, but we did see some really beautiful Eastern Orthodox churches. We also walked through a bazaar of old Soviet and Nazi stuff. I didn't buy anything. Aaron bought a marmot.

On Saturday a group from the hostel assembled and traveled to the Rila Mountains to see the famous Rila Monastery. It was my first visit to a monastery, and it was nice. The monastery itself was pretty huge, and the chapel had some really cool mosaics covering the walls on the outside. I was more excited, however, just to be getting out of the city. It was nice to get some fresh(er) air. It was a 3 hour ride there by car, and we stayed for a couple hours. Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to do hiking (I heard there were nice trails nearby), but I did eat at a cool restaurant. Saturday night the group got together again and went to the student section of town where we heard there was a decent nightlife, and they were right.

Sunday everyone decided to do different things. A group of people stayed in Sophia, A group (including me) went to Plovdiv, and one person went to the Old Capitol. 7 of us arrived in Plovdiv (we acquired one extra member in the Hostel, a young man from Whales). Plovdiv was another poluted Bulgarian city, and I was definitely unimpressed by what I saw near the train station. However, my experiences have shown that train stations aren't typically located in the nicest part of town.

Plovdiv

We met a nice man in the train station and we walked to the center of town with us, where we ate at something not entirely that different from Applebee's. A little more inspection of the city yielded some really neat things. We saw a Roman Amphitheatre, a church, a mosque, and other neat things. We didn't really spend enough time to really explore the city. I'm sure there were a lot of good things going on in Plovdiv, but we only had the day because we were planning to take the night train to Istanbul).

Well we went to buy a train ticket and we found out that you cannot buy an international train ticket out of Plovdiv on Sundays. The ticket lady told us that we had to "buy" it on the train. Sound fishy? It was. Luckily one of us was turkish and thus speaks turkish and could communicate with the conductor. It was a really complicated situation which involved us buying a ticket from Plovdiv to the border then buying another ticket from the border to Istanbul. Well, i could only buy the first ticket because the only currency I had was Bulgarian Leva (I was told that was all I would need). and it was only 5 leva (3.5 dollars). I had to have someone else pay for my bed (16 turkish Lira), then we had to buy the other ticket to Istanbul (30 $US i think). On top of all this, when we got to the turkish border, the conductor gave us 60 Euros and made us buy him as many cartons of cigarettes at the duty-free shop as we could afford. I'm sure none of this was legal, but we were tired and did not want to be left at the Turkish Border in the middle of no-where. Luckily we were travelling first class, so I got a decent night's sleep. Now I'm stuck with 50 bulgarian Leva. I think that there is a girl that will buy it off me because she is planning to go to bulgaria sometime.

Bran

Yes, that is a castle.

On Wednesday we went with a big group of travellers from the hostel and took a bus to Bran to see the castle there. Aaron and I sat in the back of the bus and talked with the two dudes from England about the difference between American and British slang and insults. It was really fun. The British have some sweet insults. Anyway, it was a short 45 minute trip to Bran. Bran is a really small town that really only gets by on the insane amount of tourism they get from the Castle. They pitch the castle as "Dracula's Castle" for the tourism, but in reality Dracula (Vlad Tepes) probably never stepped foot in there. Outside of the castle is a small tourist trap area with a lot of vampire t-shirts and general tourist junk. I bought a sweet postcard for sarah carman, but I lost it in the hostel. Inside the gate there is a preserved farming community thing from the 1400s. Some log houses and stuff.

So, It is a 15th Century Castle, and we spent a long time walking around inside. I'm bored with this post so i'm going to just stop there. if you are curious about more, just email me or wait until I get back so i can show you some sweet pictures.

I'm leaving for Sofia, Bulgaria tonight. be back sometime next week. peace.

Halloween

Even though we are in Turkey, we must adhere to our traditions. Thus, we dressed up for the most fun holiday of the year, Halloween. I'm sure when we went out, the people on the street thought we had lost our minds (Turks don't celebrate this holiday). It was fun though.


From left to right:

MC Skidmark, Hottie Cop, Frat Boy, Miss America, Turkish Scarf Lady, and Retarded Ninja

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.