SiMonica’s Voyage

About 7 hours after the wisdom tooth extraction (today it turned out that it was not actually impacted yet but was on its way), the pain subsided and we chatted with our roomates in our hostel and went to sleep. In the morning of my birthday, (our roomate who is bicycling around the world got me some lokum a.k.a. turkish delight) I ate some yogurt while Monica ate the staple Turkish breakfast of sliced tomato, hard-boiled egg, half a loaf of soft white bread, butter, cream cheese, jam, and tea. I felt well enough to do something and Monica was a little tired of entertaining me in our hostel room, so we embarked on a tour of Dolmabahçe Palace. As we walked, I felt every step as a thump in freshly stitched jaw. The palace was built in mid-19th century by a sultan to show that the Ottoman Empire was far from weak. It definitely showed this with its ornate stone carvings outside, grand ballrooms, crystal chandeliers, inlaid wood floors, and fine art on the walls. However, they still used turkish toilets (i.e.holes in the ground, though it was made of marble) and their beds didn’t seem that comfortable. However, it was a nice palace. They also had a crystal pavilion which housed a crystal upright piano (not inside but the outside) with a chair made with crystal as well. The best part of the palace was the clock museum with some wonderful pieces from the 18th and 19th centuries. After that we rested and called the relatives and then due to my being on a regiment of antibiotics we went to a bar and had hot chocolate. Much to our surprise, they ran out of tea. This sounds pretty unfathomable in Turkey, but I think that they just didn’t want to serve such a cheap drink. The hot chocolate cost more than a beer would have, but I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I drank it.

The next day, meaning yesterday, we a ferry ride up the Bosphorus almost to the mouth of the Black Sea. The day was rather grey at first and we were quite cold out on the deck, but it cleared up as we got to our destination where we spent a few hours looking at industrial fishing boats working from a cliff above the water. There’s a lot of traffic through this body of water. The ride back was beautiful as the sun was setting. In the evening we met our couch surfing host who is a very nice guy and was very helpful and open with us. For now there’s one more guy staying at his place, a Mexican who is working with a development organization in Armenia. Very interesting stuff.

Today, we lazed about in the morning and did the laundry in a washing machine. First time in a month. However, since it has been raining all day, we decided to just go to the hospital, pick up my x-ray and my invoice, and received booster shots of the Hepatitis A vaccine. Now we should be OK for the next 10 years.

My tooth is doing so well that I can even eat solid food now.

We made it to Istanbul safely on Monday night and thanks to the Bayram holiday all the public transportation was free for the following three days. We settled into our hostel in the Beyoglu area of the city which is across the Bosphorus from most of the tourist sites. The hostel is located right off this immensely bustling pedestrian street where we have been able to sample various types of food and see Turks shopping and strolling. There are lots of bars and live music places around as well so whenever we stray too far off the main street we can find our way again just by following the noise. One of the oddest things that we’ve eaten on the trip thus far was this Ottoman dessert called Asure which is made with grains, beans, chickpeas, dried fruit like figs, apricots and raisins, all on top and inside this gelatinous sugary substance. It was tasty once I got over the beans.

In our room there is a German guy who is biking for the next year all the way to Australia – with a little help of a boat for part of the way. It has been interesting to talk with him and hear about his route. He is planning on biking across the southern part of Turkey and then going through Iran. We have heard from other travellers that Iran is quite an amazing place to visit, unfortunately they never grant visas to Americans so I guess we’ll have to wait a long while to visit.

In the past few days we have managed to visit the Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque, travel to the outskirts of the city – twice – to get to the compound that is the American Consulate, and finally submit our application for our visa to the Indian Consulate. Hopefully that will be ready on Tuesday. For a moment yesterday it appeared that our rush for a visa was for nought as Simon had to go to a dentist yesterday as his cheek and jaw had been bothering him. It turned out that one of his wisdom teeth was stuck below the jaw and running into the bone, and bacteria was gathering around it. The oral surgeon wasn’t supposed to be back until next Wednesday, which would have made flying to India the next day impossible. While we were considering whether we should cancel our tickets and leave at a later date, or attempt to find a private clinic in Delhi, the doctor came back to tell us that there was another oral surgeon who could do the extraction the next day. Giving us very little time to deliberate, we shortly decided that we could try Indian dentistry another day, and Simon had his wisdom tooth removed this morning. We went to a clinic which was run under German administration and luckily the surgeon spoke English very well and the whole thing only took 20 minutes.

Luckily, to distract Simon from the upcoming procedure, last night we went to a soccer game (Fenerbahce vs. Gaziantespor). Fenerbahce is one of Istanbul’s three teams so there were loads of fans there. We took a ferry over to the Asian side of the city, to a place called Kadikoy, where we got some dinner of Lamahcun (turkish pizza with meat that you put lemon juice and parsley on top of), and made our way to the stadium. We were surprised to not see hardly any other people going inside the stadium, but we learned why when we got inside and the clock was already at 46 minutes – somehow we were an hour late and had missed the first half. Simon thought that somehow we had missed daylight savings time, but we were on time at least according to our tickets. It is a still a mystery how everyone else knew to come an hour before the time on the tickets, but it was a great second half and we saw the two goals of the game that were scored (by Fenerbahce much to the fans delight). In fact, I don’t think we have ever seen such enthusiastic fans. They were cheering and singing and doing these call and response cheers for the entire second half. Unfortunately whenever someone screwed up or the ref made a bad call they also did this synchronized whistling which sounded like bats.

Provided Simon has a speedy recovery we hope to continue our tour of the city tomorrow or Sunday. On Sunday we’re moving out of our hostel in into our first couch surfing experience (couchsurfing.com). We’re staying with a local Istanbullu who lives in Besiktas which is about 10 minutes by bus from where we are now. I’m looking forward to having access to a kitchen as now Simon can only eat soft foods and without a fridge yogurt doesn’t keep so well. For the rest of our days here we are planning on taking a ferry all the way up the Bosphorus to the Black Sea, visiting the Topkapi and Dolmabahce Palaces, and going to a Turkish Bath. I can’t believe that in one week we’ll be in India!!

I have to go back to check on Simon now, luckily the surgeon gave him a double dose of Novocaine.

When we last left our heroes, we were in Konya, admittedly a little cold. We spent only one night in Konya, because the whirling dervishes were nowhere to be found. We visited the Mevlana museum, which contained the tomb of the Rumi (as he is known in English) or Mevlana, as he is known to Sufis. The museum also had a nice collection of old carpets and old Qu’rans of different shapes and sizes, some with gold letters and others of miniscule sizes. The Mevland museum is also an important pilgrimage site for Muslims because it houses a strand of Prophet Mohammed’s beard hair in a little box in the middle of a hall and people come to kiss it. After this museum, we walked around a little more, visited the Museum of Wood and Stone Carving. The most interesting aspect of this little place was the revelation that aslan means lion in Turkish. So for all the lovers of C.S. Lewis, take note. This reminded me of one time when we were around 17 and hanging out at Barrone’s in Menlo Park and a bassist from the youth orchestra where İ played was telling me about Anthony Burgess’s ”A Clockwork Orange” and about how Burgess invented a whole new language that the characters spoke. It was just slightly modified Russian.

After Konya we continued to the village of Göreme in Kapadokya (Cappadocia in English). Göreme is a small place located between a few beautiful valleys and close to the Open Air Museum. Cappadocia is known for its strange geological formations that look like giant penises (circumcised), and are officially called fairy chimney’s. This occured due to erosion of volcanic rock. The Open Air Museum is a collection of old, 9th to 13th century, churches carved out of the rock inside some large fairy chimney’s. Most of them contain frescoes of various quality. We visited this museum on our third day in Göreme, after Monica got over her slight cold. We spent the first night in one of these fairy chimney’s. It was very warm and cozy, though some of the places had low clearance and we hit our heads on the ceiling a few times and felt like giants overall. We had to move to a cheaper room for the next four nights because others reserved the cave room after us. As İ mentioned, Göreme is surrounded by various valleys, which we walked through. Also, on one of the days, when it was raining, we visited an underground city in Kaymakli. This was quite an amazing feat, as a city that could consievably house up to 2000 people on 8 underground floors was dug out of the semi-soft rock around the present-day city. They could live for up to 6 months underground. As you can imagine they were built to hide from invaders. They contained grainaries, wineries, living quarters, and protective doors. We decided against the guided tour, and just tagged along some small groups. İt was awesome to crawl around the unmarked areas. We would’ve explored more, but we forgot our flashlight, as not everything was lit.

İn Göreme we stayed at a funky little pension (as bed and breakfasts are known here). The place was advertised as being operated by a Turkish-French couple, and all the notices were written in French and English at the place. As it turned out, Bekir, the owner, was recently separated from his French wife Isabelle, and was now running the place by himself. She left for France this past spring with their two children aged 7 and 9. This was sad, but then we met Bekir’s assistant, who helped prepare food and clean rooms. She was 24 years old and from eastern Turkey. As it turned out she already had an 8 year old son, was married at 16 (apparently quite common in that part of the country), was divorced from her husband and left her son with him in Kuşadası. Quite a story we thought. We also met a turk at the same place who was a civil engineer and told us about his unhappy marriage and his various girlfriends.

We left Göreme on Saturday morning and arrived in Ankara by early afternoon. Since this was the end of Ramazan and people were travelling a lot to visit their families for Bayram (the celebration that takes place the day after Ramazan ends, ı.e.today), we were only able to get tickets for our onward journey to the town of Safranbolu for 10 in the evening. We had eight hours to kill so we got on the clean new Ankaran metro and went to the center of this capital city. At first we walked along a large street, and for about 5 minutes we saw only men walking. Finally we reached a bustling center with vendors of everything and people shopping for Bayram (people get a lot of presents, it’s sort of like Christmas). We fought through the thick crowds and made it to the Museum of Anatolian Cultures. We read about this museum, and were not going to visit it. How wrong we would have been. This was quite a gem, and we highly recommend it. Everything from jewelry to statuettes of stags to cuneiform tablets to ancient wooden furniture housed in 15th century covered market building. Then we walked around the citadel that is perched upon the hill overlooking the city, got some dinner, walked around a bustling shopping and eating district in Kızılay and got on the bus that took us to Safranbolu. We got there quite late, around 1:30 in the morning. The next day, yesterday, we walked around this little town that is known for its well preserved Ottoman houses of the 18th and 19th centuries when the town was full of rich merchants. We visited one of these houses. Nice. Then we saw some more sights and had a wonderful dinner of pide stuffed with spinach and ground meat, lamb stew, and rice wıth small grapes.

Now we’re waiting for the bus to İstanbul where we will spend 11 days, procuring a visa for İndia. We’re also planning on going to a soccer match, going to a cooking class, visiting a hamam (turkish bath) and celebrating by 25th birthday in style.

We are now in Konya which is where the whirling dervish tradition started. Unfortunately due to Ramazan there are no performances, but hopefully we can see on in Istanbul. We didn’t realize that we wouldn’t be able to see the dervishes here until we had already bought our bus tickets, but there is supposed to be a wonderful museum called the Mevlana Museum, that we will be visiting tomorrow before we get a bus to Goreme in Cappadocia.

To recap, we visited the ancient city ruins of Efesus and the small town of Selcuk on Thursday. We lucked out and managed to meet up with a couple from Melbourne we met on the ferry over to Turkey amidst the cruise ship hoards in the ancient theater of Efesus. With them was a woman from Manchester, England, who had been travelling already for 2 years and there was no end in sight. She had been travelling partially as a crew on ships and gave us a website that maybe we will be able to use to find a ship that needs help somewhere off the coast of Australia. Back to the present, after walking about the ruins, which were quite impressive, we walked through some apple orchards to get a to recommended restaurant that served gozleme, a large crepe like pancake that is filled with a choice of cheese, spinach, eggplant, minced meat or potato. We kicked off our shoes and settled into the cushions and enjoyed these tasty treats which only cost about $1.50 US. After lunch we walked to Selcuk and checked out their mosque and the ruins of the church of St. John the Divine, where Simon was told he looked very muslim.

We returned to Kusadasi and had some great seafood at a waterfront restaurant. I had sea bass and Simon had trout – the sea bass was way better. We called it an early evening and the next day, after having our last breakfast on the terrace of our hotel, we got a mini bus to Aydin, about 1.5 hours, then a proper coach where they served us tea and cakes to Antalya, 6 hours, and then another two mini buses to get to Olympos. We picked a tree house accommodation at random and it turned out to be a great choice as they served amazing food. We first started with the idea of staying in a tree house, but later switched to the bungalow as it was very cold. We saw an amazing amount of stars that night, and even saw the milky way! The next day was hiked through the ruins of Olympos to the beach and swam in the oddly warm Mediterranean Sea. That will most likely be our last swim until southern India! We lazed about our camp that afternoon and had a hearty dinner to prepare ourselves for the hike to see the Chimaera. The dinner, which was included in the cost of our bungalow, consisted of the following: yogurt with garlic, eggplant and hot peppers, stuffed cabbage, cauliflower with tomato sauce, fried cheese wrapped in dough – shaped like cigars, zucchini fritters, tomato soup, salad, pilaf and efes, the local beer. After some moments of digestion we set off with our headlamp to see the Chimaera – the rocky slope of Mt. Olympos where flames blaze out from crevices. Apparently in ancient times these flames were so big that people at sea could see them. The trek involved walking along the beach and then following some doubtful looking signs along a road for about an hour and a half. Once we arrived at the mountain there was a proper entrance, complete with a fee, and hike of 1 km up to the flames. They were really amazing – about 8 different blazes seeping out of the rocks. 7 now as Simon managed to extinguish one with water. He claims it will start again, but I think the gods will now be angry with us.

We left Olympos this morning and took another series of buses to arrive in Konya. The weather here is quite fall like and riding the tram into the center of the city I could imagine we were back in Brooklyn, then I opened my eyes and the amount of men in black leather jackets and women with headscarves brought me back to the present. After our brief tour of the city and its sights tomorrow we’ll head to Cappadocia where we’ll spend several days seeing the penis shaped rock formations and the underground cities. We expect to arrive in Istanbul by the 25 of October as we have to deal with some serious bureaucracy to get our visas for India – it will just be warm up for when we need to get our visas for Russia while in China.

Just to let everyone know, we have safely arrived in the city of Kuşadası, on the southern Aegean coast of Turkey. Not much to say yet, except that our first turkish lunch consisted of tasty lentil soup and döner kebap smeared in tomato sauce on top of lightly toasted pita bread with yogurt. It was very very tasty.

We woke up from our nap to hear the cannon firing, indicating that the sun had set and all those fasting for Ramazan (as Ramadan is called here) could eat. We are also getting used to the muezzin´s calls as our pension is next to three mosques. Tomorrow´s 4 am call to eat before sunrise, which is carried out by having men walk around banging on a drum, may not be as exciting for us as this cannon was… or maybe Simon will rekindle his love of drums and get a temporary job. We are going to Efesus tomorrow to visit what are supposed to be amazing ruins and then on Friday we will be taking a bus to Olympos where the Chimera can be found breathing fire from the mountain.

We apologize for not posting extensive thoughts on our trip in over two weeks, but lazing about on the beach just seemed like a better activity than sitting in an internet cafe. However, before we tell you about our experience in Greece, it is worth telling you how we got to Greece in the first place.

We were dropped off by Mike at the Catania Central Station on the evening of Monday, September 26th after spending the weekend with Mike and Gio in their microcosm of American life, including American furniture and hamburgers. It was great. Thank you to the US Navy. As we boarded the train, far in the distance over the Ionian Sea, the clouds were lighting up with intermittent lightning flashes and the clouds were dark and stormy. Finally, when it started to rain, we got a call from Mike, informing us that Mt. Etna was currently erupting and to look out the window of our train. Unfortunately, the bad weather and distance to the mountain by that time prevented us from seeing this natural phenomenon. I guess it’s good that it didn’t erupt while we were climbing up this monster. After some time, we made it to Messina, where the train was to be loaded on to a ferry, with the passengers inside, and transported across the Straits of Messina to Villa San Giovanni, on the mainland side of Italy. The process of breaking up our 12 car train into 3 4-carriage sections, sliding it into the hull of the ferry, going across the stormy waters with thunder and lightning all around us, and reassembly, took about 2 hours. (The distance between Sicily and the mainland is not that large, and a plan for a bridge has been around for years, but due to the fact that apparently the mafia controls the ferries, it has not been built yet.) After they reassembled the train, it continued north to the city of Paola, where we got off at the early hour of 2:30 in the morning, and were forced to spend the next three hours waiting for our next train. Monica cozied up behind some chairs in the waiting lounge, while I vigilantly guarded her like a (tired) lion against an old man who seemed to live in the train station, until I passed out as well. At 5:30 in the morning, it was still raining, and we boarded the train for Castiglone Cosana, a 25 minute ride. At Castiglone we waited a little, and boarded the train at 6:23 AM for Sibari, where we arrived 50 minutes later. At Sibari, we waited only 10 minutes for our train to Taranto. This ride was 2 hours long and we had another chance to sleep. As an aside, Taranto is known as the town where they still do the trance-inducing sweaty tarantula-poison-exfoliating dances called the Tarantella. At Taranto, we waited another 2.5 hours for our final train to Brindisi, which arrived at this empty and gloomy seaside town at 12:40 P.M. Upon our arrival in Brindisi, the sun peeked out and we walked through large puddles to find a ticket office for the ferry to Greece. After some searching, we found one and bought tickets to Patras, Greece for a ferry departing from Brindisi at 7 PM that evening. We had time to waste, and so we ate a light lunch, recommended to us by the guy at the ferry ticket counter, and walked around the downtown area and along the port. We saw a wonderful fascist fountain there. Suddenly a huge black cloud started rolling in above the city, but rain never came. We boarded the ferry rather early, and waited around until all the 18-wheelers were loaded up. This ferry was huge, with a capacity for about 1000 people, but only 40 were actually there that day. We left Italy half an hour late, and after some time sat down to eat our tuna sandwiches and drink a bottle of Italian wine. It started getting rocky, so much so that one had to hold on to the walls to walk down the halls. After finishing her sandwich and half a glass of wine, Monica bid me adieu and went to sleep. I cleaned up our dinner, and went outside to the deck to explore the situation. I couldn’t see the exact height of the waves because it was dark, but given that our giant ferry was being rocked to such a degree, they must’ve been huge. The spray was on the deck, and the driving rain made it unpleasant to stand outside. I sighted lightning in the distance. I was still not tired, so I went to the bar and watched some soccer game with a bunch of chain-smoking Greek truck drivers. Then I went to sleep.

We woke up in the morning, and while the sun was shining, and it was much calmer, it was still raining. However, we were now passing by some Greek Islands. Finally at 11:30 in the morning we made to Patras, on the far northwest tip of the Peloponnese peninsula. We followed a Greek woman that we befriended on the ferry, to the bus terminal, and bought tickets to Athens. We had a little time before the bus left, so we consumed a cheese pie and a spinach pie made of traditional filo dough. Finally the bus left, with us in tow, and three hours later we arrived at a bus station that was apparently in Athens. We had to take one more bus to the center of the city. Having not the slightest clue about accommodations or the availability of a tourist office, we embarked on a walking tour of the city, looking for a tourist office. After asking a few official-looking people and being led astray a few times, we finally found the tourist office, which recommended a few hostels. The first one we came to, seemed expensive, so we went to the second one, located in the fashionable neighborhood of Plaka, and being located right next to the entrance to the Acropolis, we settled there.

We came to our room, which had four nice-looking faux-wood bunk beds and settled in. We were greeted by Manuel, from Austria, who told us of his adventures, which paled ours and are thus also worth recounting. Manuel, who spoke very good English, was going to go on vacation to Greece for 5 weeks. However, a few days into his trip, he found himself in the hospital on the island of Santorini. The reason for his hospitalization was that he decided that he was going to do some mountain climbing, without water. After all, it was going to take only a couple hours. However, it was hot and sunny in Santorini at the time, and he got severely dehydrated and passed out. Fortunately, a couple of Canadians stumbled upon his body and brought him to the hospital. Upon his reawakening, he had no recollection of anything, not his name, not where he was, or what happened to him. Over the next 3 days, his amnesia faded and he realized that he lost his passport with all his credit cards and money. He was in quite a predicament, and after recovering enough, was escorted by the police to Athens where he was to go to the Austrian embassy and try to figure out what to do next. However, the embassy was closed, and since he was under the wing of the police, he had to spend the night sleeping on the floor of the police station while various prostitutes were being paraded into the cell next to him. The next day, the embassy loaned him 50 euros, he got in touch with his parents, and they promised to wire him a sum of money in order for him to return to Austria. With the loaned money, he found a bed at the hostel, visited the Acropolis, did his laundry, bought a huge bottle of baby shampoo, and was left with nothing to buy food with. We listened to this amazing story with our mouths wide open, and fed him that night. The next day, he went to the embassy which was able to put him on a flight to Austria. Seems that he made it there alive. That night, we also met a family of four at the hostel from New Zealand who was travelling with their 11 and 8 year old children around Europe and Turkey since April. And they were still on speaking terms.

The next day we visited the Acropolis, ate some tasty souvlaki, and went to a very cool bar where tall shelves with different colored bottles were lit up from the back. There we met 2 couples on their honeymoon. On our last day in Athens, the 29th of September, we walked around the National Garden, saw the 1896 Olympic Stadium, and took the tram to the beach. At 10 in the evening, we departed from the port of Piraeus for Santorini. We arrived in Santorini in the morning, were assailed by hotel owners vying for our company, and chose a nice guy from the city of Perissa, who was called Yorgos. In addition to running the hotel, he worked the night-shift as an engineer somewhere on the island. Unfortunately, I had some problems with my stomach that day, so I spent our first day on the island of Santorini shuttling between the bed and the bathroom. The next day, we rented a bright lime green scooter, and went to the Red Beach, where due to lava rock sediment the beach is literally red colored. Then we rode to the large town of Fira, ate some more souvlaki, and then rode to Oia (it’s pronounced differently than it’s written, but we couldn’t figure it out) which is known for spectacular sunsets. The sunset was nice, but we’ve seen better in Tropea. Plus, it seemed that all the tourists that were on the island congregated at that spot to view this sunset. As soon as the sunset was over, we got on our scooter and scooted home. We got only a little lost on the way. The next day, we swam on the black sand beach next to our hotel, rode to the highest mountain of the island in search of a famous monastery (we didn’t find it, but found some other ruin) and then attempted to watch a sunset from a different spot on the island.

The 3rd of October was spent in transit from Santorini to Naxos and then from Naxos to the little Cycladic island of Koufonissia. Koufonissia, with a population of around 300 people, is a little fishing island, with very little to offer other than a few beaches and coves where you can swim. The water is absolutely clear, with little fish swiming around. Despite not having running water for 2 days, we nevertheless had a wonderful time on the island. There were hardly any tourists there, and there was nothing to do other than lie on the beach and hike around the island. We also had some tasty fresh grilled fish called melanouri, baked pasta with bacon, and had some raki, among other things. As another aside, the food in Greece is not as good as in Italy. They just don’t care as much about it, I don’t think. Plus, a lot of it is cooked in with some strong flavoured oily tomato sauce. We also met our first American long-term traveller in Koufonissia. He was from Oregon and is going on to Egypt, India, and Southeast and North Asia after this. We might see him again on our trip.

After four days on wonderful Koufonissia, we came to the largest of the Cycladic islands, Naxos. The reason we came to Naxos was because we are trying to get to the island of Samos, and from there it’s only a short ferry ride to Kusadasi, Turkey. So, now we’ve been in Naxos for 3 days, and are departing for Samos tonight, and should be in Turkey tomorrow evening.

Naxos has been a mixed bag. Two days ago, we rented a scooter and rode to see the 6 century B.C. “Kouros”, unfinished marble statues of naked youth in a few locations on the island. Then we rode through the center of the island, and ended up on a road along the sea. That evening we had the misfortune of being suckered in to a cheap and very mediocre restaurant along the water where Monica had a stuffed tomato that tasted like the stuffed grape leaves from a can. I had some Naxian sausage stew which unfortunately was cooked in the funky Greek sauce. However, the ice cream here is great as is the local cheese!

Well, that’s about for now. We will be in Turkey until the 3rd of November and then on to India.

Just a quick post to say we’re still alive and thriving on the Greek Islands. We arrived in Athens safely and spent three days touring around the Acropolis, the Agoras and the flea market. Much to Simon’s delight we also took a tram ride down to the local beach. We took the night ferry to Santorini and spent three nights there and then hopped over to the tiny and idyllic island of Koufinissia. We spent four nights there and spent our days on the various beaches and exploring the island. We arrived back in Naxos today and hope to be in Turkey by next Wednesday.

I’ll be more descriptive when my eyes don’t hurt so much from researching Istanbul apartments.