Well, I rushed through the last post on here, and this one might be a little hurried too, but we'll see. Shannon and I are at a hostel in Krakow, Poland right now, and while the internet is free, it seems today (or tomorrow maybe) is a Polish holiday, and it's starting to get a little packed and panicky as people wait for the computer. Meh, let 'em wait.
So after Turkey, we hauled off to Bulgaria for a 4 night stay to pretty much sit still for a few days in a quiet Bulgarian town and spend some time doing laundry and short hikes around the town. Quite a neat place, Bulgaria, with heaps of antique shops selling old WWII artifacts, and super cheap food and beer. We found a moderately old church too, which wasn't really much to look at, but the basement was open, and going inside we found what I'm pretty sure is some kind of human remains storage area. It was pretty old and damaged, but there were shelves of human skulls all with dates and what we thought were names on them, along with a few dozen boxes filled with human bones. Yes, I did indeed open as many as I could to check them all out, though I stopped short of actually handling the bones, since I didn't really want to be responsible for breaking anyone's skull open, whether they were still using it or not.
We caught the train from Bulgaria to Romania, which right away had a different feel to it. For starters, the 3 hours to the border cost us about $4 a person, but the 3 hours past the border into Romania cost us $20. Kinda strange. Romania also seems to have a much stronger presence of uni-brows - people (men and women) whose eyebrows fail to make any form of discernible gap between them across their forehead. Lots of facial warts too.
We went straight to Brasov, into the heart of Transylvania. We hadn't initially planned on it, but our Romanian trip quickly turned into a sort of Dracula-hunting expedition, as vehicle rentals were quite cheap, and we picked up a car for a few days. The story about Dracula, as far as I can understand it, begins with a Romanian ruler called Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler. This guy was pretty bad-ass, and had a nasty habit of a) impaling those he thought were conspiring against him onto stakes and b) assuming everyone around him was conspiring against him. He was quite a ruler too, conquering lots of land and doing well for Romania. Anyway, sometime later, Bram Stoker writes a book about vampires, calling the vampire Count Dracula, already another nick-name taken by the now deceased (I think) Vlad Tepes. (Dracula I think comes from Dracul, which means either dragon or devil, not sure which. I really should research this as I write it).
Well, all that history basically meant we spent 4 days cruising around to old castles and citadels either used by Vlad Tepes or used as a setting in the original Dracula book. Pretty cool.
After all that, we made our way to Poland, which we're staying at now. We're hanging around in Krakow, a wonderfully gorgeous city that I know very little about. Oh, except for the nutty legend about the dragon that used to live here, and the shoe-maker who killed it by stuffing a fake sheep full of sulphur, causing the dragon to explode. Lots of cobble-stone roads, old churches, fancy town squares, real nice place to be. Auschuwitz is also right nearby, which we went to see. That was quite an experience, though it was rather lessened in its intensity by the 5000 or so high school students that were also on a trip there that day. Still, despite the crowds and the youngin's acting like fools all around us, it was definitely worth the trip.
Probably time to bugger off the computer now. Next stop on the agenda is Prague, followed by Berlin, hopefully I'll have some fun things to type about then.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Fairy Chimneys and Eternal Flames
Ahhh Turkey - either the stupidest bird alive, or one of the more exciting countries you could hope to visit. Shannon and I just finished up 9 days in Turkey, and I don't think we'll find much in Europe that will be as unusual as it was. It might not even be that it was all that amazing, but just that I didn't really expect much to come out of it, thinking it was going to be just another European stop with a lot of churches, historical sites and people trying to sell you stuff at drastically inflated tourist prices, often with a gut-wrenching sob story thrown in for free. Well, I suppose it was all that, but the places we stopped at along the way certainly had a lot more.
Istanbul was the first stop, and it was OK, but nothing super special. If you're into mosques, kebabs, or moustaches, then this is the place for you. We only stayed one night though, and spent more time organizing our way out of town than doing anything in it. Well, we did check out one mosque, but that took all of 15 minutes. Rather short compared to the 2 hours watching a Julia Roberts/Clive Owen movie while waiting for our bus out of town.
We took off to Cappadocia (or Kappadokya, however you want to spell it). We weren't sure where we wanted to go to at first, so we based it largely on the posters placed all over the tour agency walls we walked by. The options seemed to be between mosques, beaches, some kind of pancake waterfall bathing town, and the mushroom rocks chalk-full of caves. We chose the caves, and didn't regret it. Cappadicia was apparently home to some pretty intense volcanic activity several million years ago, and as things settled down, it left these bizarre mushroom pillars of rock throughout the region. Plus, it's all this really soft limestone rock, so the troglodytes back in the day used to make all sorts of cave dwellings and even underground cities in the soft crumbly rock. We walked for hours through valleys where the walls would be lined for kilometers with holes, windows and caves people used to live in (and sometimes still do).
We sadly chose the wrong hostel when getting to Cappadocia, and I cannot say I spent the night in a cave, but most places there have built their hotels and guesthouses right into the cliff walls, so getting a "cave room" is generally an easy thing to do, and something I hope anyone who makes it there will do themselves. We did manage to see a Whirling Dervish dance though, which is a strange Turkish religious dance, involving spinning on your left foot, one hand up to heaven, one hand down to earth. It sounds a little silly, but the show they put on was, cliche as it sounds, hypnotic. They don't even serve alcohol during it, as it's taken quite seriously by the Turks.
Following Cappadocia, we went to Olympos. Don't confuse this with Olympus in Greece, because then you'd be in Greece, and not Turkey. Olympos is one of the more unusual ruin sites I've ever seen, since there's very little done to any of them - they've been literally left right in the bush just as they were found. A few dirt paths have been cleared, and some moderately informative signage has been put up, but otherwise it feels like you're the first person to stumble onto these old Roman ruins ever. There's small water systems they build, an amphitheatre, some housing, ir's all quite impressively intact, yet still mostly overgrown and left just sitting there on the side of the path. Anyway, if you get sick and tired of ruins, you can just keep on walking down the path till you hit the beach.
Oh, running out of time here, so I gotta run. One other cool thing about Olympos - the fire. There's a small mountain that spurts out fire from its cracks. Strange. Anyway, in Transylvania now, but whao, no time. Bye!
Istanbul was the first stop, and it was OK, but nothing super special. If you're into mosques, kebabs, or moustaches, then this is the place for you. We only stayed one night though, and spent more time organizing our way out of town than doing anything in it. Well, we did check out one mosque, but that took all of 15 minutes. Rather short compared to the 2 hours watching a Julia Roberts/Clive Owen movie while waiting for our bus out of town.
We took off to Cappadocia (or Kappadokya, however you want to spell it). We weren't sure where we wanted to go to at first, so we based it largely on the posters placed all over the tour agency walls we walked by. The options seemed to be between mosques, beaches, some kind of pancake waterfall bathing town, and the mushroom rocks chalk-full of caves. We chose the caves, and didn't regret it. Cappadicia was apparently home to some pretty intense volcanic activity several million years ago, and as things settled down, it left these bizarre mushroom pillars of rock throughout the region. Plus, it's all this really soft limestone rock, so the troglodytes back in the day used to make all sorts of cave dwellings and even underground cities in the soft crumbly rock. We walked for hours through valleys where the walls would be lined for kilometers with holes, windows and caves people used to live in (and sometimes still do).
We sadly chose the wrong hostel when getting to Cappadocia, and I cannot say I spent the night in a cave, but most places there have built their hotels and guesthouses right into the cliff walls, so getting a "cave room" is generally an easy thing to do, and something I hope anyone who makes it there will do themselves. We did manage to see a Whirling Dervish dance though, which is a strange Turkish religious dance, involving spinning on your left foot, one hand up to heaven, one hand down to earth. It sounds a little silly, but the show they put on was, cliche as it sounds, hypnotic. They don't even serve alcohol during it, as it's taken quite seriously by the Turks.
Following Cappadocia, we went to Olympos. Don't confuse this with Olympus in Greece, because then you'd be in Greece, and not Turkey. Olympos is one of the more unusual ruin sites I've ever seen, since there's very little done to any of them - they've been literally left right in the bush just as they were found. A few dirt paths have been cleared, and some moderately informative signage has been put up, but otherwise it feels like you're the first person to stumble onto these old Roman ruins ever. There's small water systems they build, an amphitheatre, some housing, ir's all quite impressively intact, yet still mostly overgrown and left just sitting there on the side of the path. Anyway, if you get sick and tired of ruins, you can just keep on walking down the path till you hit the beach.
Oh, running out of time here, so I gotta run. One other cool thing about Olympos - the fire. There's a small mountain that spurts out fire from its cracks. Strange. Anyway, in Transylvania now, but whao, no time. Bye!
Monday, April 6, 2009
Unforeseen Events
Things are rolling along nicely on the world trip. Shannon and I are back in Greece for a moment now, just waiting for our train to Istanbul. And so, with not much exciting on the traveling with which to update, I'll take a few lines here to talk about other strange happenings.
Packing for an 8 1/2 month trip was a tough thing to get through, but I think I did pretty well back in October. I even was careful enough to consider my slightly excessive sweating problem (hooray for hyperhydrosis!) and pack 8 or 9 t-shirts instead of a more idealistic 4 or 5. Still, seems 8 or 9 just wasn't close to enough, and now, despite picking up and extra 4 shirts along our travels, I've pretty much ruined, to the point of not being wearable, all the shirts in my bag. Yep, between 24 hour train rides, hostels with no usable shower, long hikes in the hills and my own nasty sweaty-ness, it's reached the point where I'm just going to have to bit the bullet and purge my bag from every shirt in it and start from scratch.
So, why's this worth mentioning? Well, purchasing a new upper-body wardrobe wasn't really on the budget agenda at the start of this trip, so if in my photos (that I will one day upload) you notice a sudden switch to rather tacky-touristy shirts that no self-respecting person would wear, well that's just me pinching pennies in an effort to smell a little better.
There was a big earthquake in Italy last night, happening just hours after Shannon and I left the country. Like the Mumbai attacks in India and the airport closure in Thailand, we were close to this incident and had somewhat planned to be traveling through the area, but I don't think realistically there was much of a chance of us being there when it all went down. Still, it's neat being so much closer to all these freaky big events as they're actually happening.
On our big trip here, Shannon's applied to do her Masters in Environmental Resource Management, which she just got accepted to the other day. Pretty good on her too, since she basically put the application package together while tinkering at internet cafes in various countries.
Hmmm, seems I've got time to kill now, rather than my usual rush-rush get-it-done kinda blogging. We're catching the night train to Istanbul, in a sleeping car too. A little more costly than the 2nd class one, but we've spent a few crappy nights on trains and boats, so it's time for a treat. Oh, but speaking of train tickets, I've got a little beef to rant on about here. We were traveling from Patras to Thessaloniki in Greece (check it out on a map http://www.greece-map.net/images/greece-map.gif) and the bus was rather expensive, 40 euro a ticket. So, I figure the train, while longer, will be a better deal. Turns out it is, only 20 euro a ticket, and so I try to book it, but I have to speak to a different lady to book, and she tells me there's no cheap seats available. This doesn't seem right though, as it was one of those times you just know you're being lied to. So I leave the train station and tell Shannon to go try, cause the lady's being horrible to me. Shannon heads to the train station, finds a nice lady to deal with, is about to have the tickets booked, when bitchy lady shows up again, and the nice lady and bitchy lady start bickering about things in Greek. Who knows what exactly was said, but now the nice lady has to apologize for the fact that there are no cheap tickets available for us. And so we bought the expensive bus tickets. I hate, hate, HATE losing money when people are being jerks to you. I don't mind getting ripped off sometimes, or splurging on a meal or dessert I want, but when someone just refuses to help you when you need to get something done (generally transportation), I lose my mind.
All right, I think I've had enough computeral diarrhea for a while now. Hope everyone out there's doing well!
Packing for an 8 1/2 month trip was a tough thing to get through, but I think I did pretty well back in October. I even was careful enough to consider my slightly excessive sweating problem (hooray for hyperhydrosis!) and pack 8 or 9 t-shirts instead of a more idealistic 4 or 5. Still, seems 8 or 9 just wasn't close to enough, and now, despite picking up and extra 4 shirts along our travels, I've pretty much ruined, to the point of not being wearable, all the shirts in my bag. Yep, between 24 hour train rides, hostels with no usable shower, long hikes in the hills and my own nasty sweaty-ness, it's reached the point where I'm just going to have to bit the bullet and purge my bag from every shirt in it and start from scratch.
So, why's this worth mentioning? Well, purchasing a new upper-body wardrobe wasn't really on the budget agenda at the start of this trip, so if in my photos (that I will one day upload) you notice a sudden switch to rather tacky-touristy shirts that no self-respecting person would wear, well that's just me pinching pennies in an effort to smell a little better.
There was a big earthquake in Italy last night, happening just hours after Shannon and I left the country. Like the Mumbai attacks in India and the airport closure in Thailand, we were close to this incident and had somewhat planned to be traveling through the area, but I don't think realistically there was much of a chance of us being there when it all went down. Still, it's neat being so much closer to all these freaky big events as they're actually happening.
On our big trip here, Shannon's applied to do her Masters in Environmental Resource Management, which she just got accepted to the other day. Pretty good on her too, since she basically put the application package together while tinkering at internet cafes in various countries.
Hmmm, seems I've got time to kill now, rather than my usual rush-rush get-it-done kinda blogging. We're catching the night train to Istanbul, in a sleeping car too. A little more costly than the 2nd class one, but we've spent a few crappy nights on trains and boats, so it's time for a treat. Oh, but speaking of train tickets, I've got a little beef to rant on about here. We were traveling from Patras to Thessaloniki in Greece (check it out on a map http://www.greece-map.net/images/greece-map.gif) and the bus was rather expensive, 40 euro a ticket. So, I figure the train, while longer, will be a better deal. Turns out it is, only 20 euro a ticket, and so I try to book it, but I have to speak to a different lady to book, and she tells me there's no cheap seats available. This doesn't seem right though, as it was one of those times you just know you're being lied to. So I leave the train station and tell Shannon to go try, cause the lady's being horrible to me. Shannon heads to the train station, finds a nice lady to deal with, is about to have the tickets booked, when bitchy lady shows up again, and the nice lady and bitchy lady start bickering about things in Greek. Who knows what exactly was said, but now the nice lady has to apologize for the fact that there are no cheap tickets available for us. And so we bought the expensive bus tickets. I hate, hate, HATE losing money when people are being jerks to you. I don't mind getting ripped off sometimes, or splurging on a meal or dessert I want, but when someone just refuses to help you when you need to get something done (generally transportation), I lose my mind.
All right, I think I've had enough computeral diarrhea for a while now. Hope everyone out there's doing well!
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