Transylvania

The town of Brasov is our home base for exploring Transylvania. It is a ski resort in the winter, and I imagine is quite picturesque with snow. There is some cool gothic architecture, like the "black church", here in the distance behind the town square.















There's a hill with a hollywood-style sign spelling out "Brasov" that you can take a cable car up. We took it up, and hiked down back to the town. Here's a view from up there. The "white tower" here provided defensive look-outs for the walled-in town. You can imagine them defending against the invading Turks here.
















In the square, there was a protest against embedding RFID chips in passports, as far as I can tell. They handed me a flyer, and I accepted with a "multumesc" (thank you), but it's in romanian and I can't read it.














One of the tourist stops in town is "rope street" here, which they say is the narrowest road in Europe. Perhaps. It's wide enough for two people to pass each other.



















We hung out last night with our hostess, who fed us some homemade wine and liquor. Apparently everybody around here makes their own wine. And many make palinca, a very strong liquor. It's pretty tough to shoot! She's a real world-traveler, and she loves being a hostess to people from all over the world.

Romania's a great place. It's off the radar of most tourists, which is kinda nice. Less people! Outside of old town, if you don't hear anyone speaking, you could imagine that you are in the US. Though there are some obviously communist-era apartment buildings. Things look like they are improving for the Romanian people. It's hard to imagine a bloody revolution just twenty years ago, or the roller-coaster ride of government changes they have had since then. Things look positive now.

Then, farther out from the towns, it gets very rural. I mostly witnessed it from the train. It would be interesting to see about staying in some of the rural areas. There are farm towns with very basic houses, and only dirt roads. They still use old-fashioned farming methods. You can see men using scythes, and people plowing their fields with horse power. Some people still use horse-drawn carriages as transport. It all seems a bit Amish.

It's nice to relax here. That's difficult to do in a city, or in an expensive place where you feel like you need to move on to keep the budget in line. We're gonna stay here longer than planned for sure.

24 hour journey

Arrived in Brasov, Romania today after taking transportation for a full 24 hours... ugh.
We had just a few lira left, and didn't want to go to the ATM again because we would be changing to a new currency, so we tried to get by with what we had. That meant two loaves of bread and two liters of water for the 24 hour journey. And we had various things in the food bag left over. I never thought a single packet of honey would be so valuable to me. The only thing left after arriving in Brasov was a bag of sugar, a packet of salt, and a bottle of olive oil. I'm malnourished and tired. Anyway, we're here now in Romania and it's awesome!

Here's me in the couchette car.















The train went through Bulgaria, though we didn't stop and explore anywhere. The only thing I can tell about Bulgaria is that their language uses the cyrillic alphabet and the landscape is nice. It seems to be mostly forests, which is a drastic change from the dry land I've seen for the last few weeks in Greece and Turkey. Romania is similar. After crossing the Danube, we were in a new country, and my passport is getting full of stamps!

Many tourists stay away from Romania because of its reputation for crime, but I feel much safer here than I have at most places I've been. Granted, I'm not in Bucharest. It just seems more comfortable here. Maybe it's the place we're staying, which is great. Sometimes the room you are staying in colors your experience in a new place, and this room is perfect. It's the guest house of a family that lives here, and they have a pool (though it's not filled yet.. too early). Also, there is the atmosphere of a small town here, though it's 200,000 people.

This is the first place since London that I would fit in as a local. There are more diverse ethnicities here, and some have light colored hair. Also, they're taller here. It's nice to have people attempt to talk to me in the local language rather than assume I'm a tourist. They also dress very casually here (kinda like 80's USA), so that's closer to me than the styles of, say, Italy where they are very concerned with fashion.

Here are my pre-conceptions of Romania:
There's lots of crime, and gypsies sometimes gas entire trains to steal all the wallets.
There are packs of stray dogs that roam around together, so stay away.

The crime thing is an exaggeration. And gypsies just look cool. The men wear old-fashioned suits and flat-brimmed hats. All black, almost amish. And the women wear long, colorful dresses and seem to walk in very long strides, with confidence. And some of them really are nomads that live in gypsy camps and roam with covered wagons. Check it out.















The other thing that surprised me is that I can decipher the language. It's a romance language, and very similar to Italian. It sounds like Italian spoken with a slavic accent.

I'm excited to check out the sights and see more of the culture here. I'm in Transylvania, with Dracula and all that. And I hear there's some awesome hiking around. Till next time.

Istanbul

Istanbul is an interesting city. It is physically and culturally divides Europe and Asia. The people here are progressive relative to the rest of Turkey, from what I've seen. Not all the women wear headscarves, and some walk around by themselves. The other side of the river here is technically Europe, while the picture's taken from Asia. The lower part of the bridge has businesses all along. You can see the fishing poles sticking out above. You have to be a little careful to not get hooked!













There are many mosques around town. Here is the Blue Mosque, the most important one, with the tomb of Sultan Ahmed I in the foreground.











Here it is inside.














I'm not really sure what this is, but people were taking pictures, so I did. The small thing in the foreground is called the serpent column.



















The entrance to Topkapi Palace. This is the nicest part of town. There is a big park with lots of grass where people go and picnic.


















And, here is the grand bazaar. It's crazy. People have been trading here for hundreds of years. There are a ton of shops inside the main area. It's strange to see street signs inside a building. Though it's not quite a building, just a covered market. This is probably the most hectic place I've ever been.













































Shops spill outside the covered market, and people are selling things all the way up the hill and down the other side to the ocean, near the spice market. There are stores for everything. There was an entire store devoted to plastic eyes for putting on stuffed animals, right next to a store that sold nothing but jean buttons. Honest.

Spices at the Egyptian spice market. It's just called that; they sell tons of stuff there, not just spices.

Ephesus

We took a bus to Selcuk, our home base for exploring Ephesus, an ancient city is fairly well preserved. Selcuk is nice. All the old guys in the city gather at a few spots and play rummikub every evening. Women seem to be absent, which was also the case in Bodrum, come to think of it. Except for the tourists.

Here are the ruins of the temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It's my second in two days!










It was destroyed and rebuilt a few times. The final time was by a christian saint who said it was evil and pagan. The stones were used to build, among other things, the basilica of St. John here. You can see, in the foundation, sideways greek letters. I imagine these stones were part of the temple originally, but I'm not sure. You can see an upside-down omega and a backwards epsilon here.














This mosque is pretty cool. Here's the courtyard, and Elaina in a headscarf. Women should wear them inside out of respect.















One of the cupboards in the hotel shad some random silly posters. We swapped them around with the ones already hanging, and the horses ended up in the hallway in a prominent position.



















The hotel was pretty sweet. All-you-can-eat barbecue dinner! All-you-can-eat is unheard of over here.

K, on to Ephesus. In Turkey, there are mini-busses called dolmus. They are like shared taxis, and are the cheap easy way to get around. You flag one down, like you're hailing a taxi, and jump in and pay the driver a few lira. They operate on fixed routes. This one was supposed to go to Ephesus, but it let us off about 3 km away. I guess his other passengers, going to the beach, were his priority. Walking there was fine, but the walk back didn't start out very good. Right when we were done looking around the ruins, it unexpectedly started to rain. Then, it started hailing huge chunks of ice. Very strange weather here. We hid under a tree, to see if it would let up. It didn't, so we started running, trying to protect our heads from the ice cubes falling out of the sky. We ended up hitch-hiking back to town with some people from Istanbul, so it ended up being a cool experience.

At ephesus, my favorite thing is the inscriptions on the rocks. There is a combination of greek and latin. The first one here is a milestone. You can see latin on the top and greek on bottom. The roman numeral "V" says where we are along the road.

















































Ephesus was a port town, but is now five miles inland because the river silted up.

Looking down the main road.














Library facade


































Gate of Augustus

New country, new culture

Everyday, I'm farther east than I've ever been before. And farther south than the day before. It's getting hotter. I was cold a week ago, as I remember. I finally bought a sweatshirt in Naxos when I was there because I was tired of being cold. I had lost mine somewhere in Spain. Now I don't need it at night even, and I need to search out shade in the day. BTW, here's a list of the things I think I've lost so far:
sweatshirt
nalgene water bottle
camera
wallet and all the stuff in it like my old student ID
contact case/solution
towel (I used a shirt for a week, then stole one from a hotel with a mean receptionist, then lost that. I'm towel-less again)
sunglasses
shampoo
about a third of my clothes (I don't know where they all go, but it's okay 'cause I'm accumulating new ones here)

To get to Bodrum, we took a ferry from Kos in the morning. It was supposed to go to Bodrum. It instead kicked us out at Turgetreis. A miscommunication? False advertising? I dunno, but it took us about 20 minutes to figure out that we weren't in fact in Bodrum. Turkish and English are pretty much not related at all, and most people don't speak a word of English here. Not even the words "yes" or "no". They don't even nod and shake their heads here for yes and no. No is tossing the head back and clucking your tongue. Yes is, I'm told, shaking the head like our "no", though I haven't seen it yet. It'll be worse in Bulgaria. It's completely reversed there. Shaking the head is yes and nodding is no.
The Greek word for "yes" is the Turkish word for "what?". I bet that's caused it's share of confusions.












Anyway, they're friendly here, and pointed us in the direction of the bus station. So, we made our way to Bodrum. It is the site of Halicarnassus, an ancient Greek city. It was under Persian rule by king Mausolus starting the 4th century BC. The mausoleum here was built in his honor, and is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The word mausoleum comes from this place. It was unfortunately destroyed in an earthquake about 400 years ago, and only ruins remain.
20 years later, Alexander the Great captured the city from the Persian Empire in a battle that destroyed most of the city.

Crusader knights built the other main historic attraction here: the castle. There are about 250 carved coats of arms on the outer wall of the castle representing important people of the time. I wish I had a coat of arms!












People are ruthless about hassling tourists here for their business. It was the same in the touristy parts of Greece. It's worse than in Mexico. There, as you drive up to an intersection, guys run at your car, squirting bottles of soap an your windshield, then jump on your hood like they're training to be in the army or something. They wash your windshield even though you're yelling "no, no, it's clean already". Then, when you drive off, they cuss at you and threaten to key your car because you didn't pay them. Nice. And at the next red light, it happens again. The guys trying to get you into their restaurants here in Turkey are worse. They pretend to be nice at first, but they're not. I don't know why the city allows it. If they banned those guys, it would be an incredibly more pleasant stay. Here's my routine for selecting a place to eat: Walk past the candidate restaurants and determine which one hassles less. Then go back to that one that passed the test.

From a distance, Turkey looks just like Greece. The languages even sound similar to my ignorant ear. At first, the main difference was that the blue Greek flag frown everywhere was replaced with the red Turkish flag, which is also flown everywhere. People fly their country flag more in Greece than any other country I've been to so far. The religion makes a big difference in the feel of Turkey. Muslims pray five times a day, and the prayer time is announced by a recording of chanting from the mosques around town. This place seems like a good way to ease into the culture. It's far enough west that they accept westerners, and the government is secular, but it certainly feels middle eastern.

This town is where many turks vacation. The beaches are questionable, but the weather's warm. People lounge on pillows on the beach smoking hookahs and drinking. At night, the main street along the beach is crammed with people looking at the shops and ending up at some club or restaurant. The other activity to do here is to take a traditional turkish bath, but I think having some guy rubbing me down would be too much of a culture shock.

Here's the view off the rooftop terrace of the hostel. Everyone here has these solar powered hot water heaters, just like in Greece.

Cats love ruins

Arriving in port at 4am, I first noticed the castle that seems to guard the harbor. At night, it is lit up and the view of it reflecting off the water is nice. The castle was once on an island, with the sea as a natural moat and a drawbridge connecting it to the mainland.

It was great to take the night ferry and not have to pay for a hotel for one night, though it is a bit tiring traveling for such a long time and not having the "home base" of a room somewhere. Ferries are really slow, but I like taking them because you can always go up to the deck and look around to see what islands are near. Islands are packed into the Aegean sea. At any point on my travels, I could see at least four islands just by looking around. The sun never set over water because there was always the next island in the way.

The castle, with Turkey in the background.











Kos has it all: ruins, beaches and nightlife. If there weren't hundreds of people employed to annoy you into looking at the menu for their restaurant, and if the beaches had nice sand, it would be perfect. I suppose I didn't experience any real Greek culture here either, though, because Kos Town is so touristy. But, you can just rent a quad or something and head off to the more remote parts of the island if you want to see what laid-back island life is like.

My expectations for beaches in Greece (and the Mediterranean in general) were far too high. I've only found one so far that has nice sand. It's on Naxos, south of town. Isn't Greece supposed to be full of beautiful beaches? I must be spoiled. The people here lay out on the rockiest shores, with sharp things poking through their towels and plastic trash all over the beach. Better than the beaches in England I guess. Not idyllic enough for me! Anyway, the beaches in Kos aren't THAT bad.

People seemed surprised that Americans made it all the way to Kos. It's a German and English tourist destination, but I guess we don't make it a point to go there. And it's not really on the way to anywhere unless you do a weird trip like mine. In any case, there is a lot of English spoken here on Kos, perhaps more than back home even.

The ruins here are awesome. They aren't the most historically important, but they are so unkempt and free of people that you feel like you are discovering the ruins yourself for the first time. They are overgrown with weeds, and you have to forge your own path through. You will often come across columns on their side or decorative reliefs hidden in the weeds. There are certainly not any plaques describing what you are seeing.

Here is the Xystos, which was a gym. It seems strange that the floor mosaics are left out in the elements. They are half covered with gravel, and it seems that people stepping on them would slowly destroy them.














Ruins of the public baths.














The odeon.












Kos' main historical claim to fame is that it was where Hippocrates lived. He was perhaps the first real doctor.

There is a complex of temples up the hill called the Asclepion built on the site of a sacred spring in a cypress grove. The water from the spring is said to have healing powers. Sick people would bathe in the water and drink it, then sleep in the temple until they received a vision from Asclepios, with instructions on how to get well. This is where Hippocrates studied and defined modern medicine.
































Here's me in the sacred spring. I seem to have a lot of pictures of me in dank dark places, don't I? This spring is down a stairwell at the back corner of the temple of Asclepios, and if you crouch down you can see that a tunnel goes east and a tunnel goes north. They are almost too small for a person to squeeze through. I didn't explore enough to see where they went. Too many spiders.
















This is my buddy "three-out-of-four". He likes to explore the ruins too.















What we call grilled cheese, the Greek call toast. Looks like Mickey-D's caught on.














Looking at a map of Kos Town.

Ferry hoppin

The plan is next to try to get to Turkey. It seems the best way is to take ferries. Iraklia to Naxos to Santorini to Kos to Bodrum, Turkey. No sleep till Kos!
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Fira, Santorini

























I'm glad we didn't stay a night in Santorini. It's an island chain where there was a huge volcanic eruption about 4000 years ago that destroyed civilization all around and probably caused a tsunami that wiped out the civilization as far as Crete.
We had a layover there. The outgoing ferry left at midnight, so we had to kill some time. There is a great view of the volcanic islands from the main town of Fira, though I don't see why the place is touted so much. It's way too expensive there. I would have liked to descend the cliff from Fira down to the water, and take the cable car back up or something, but we were lugging our huge backpacks around the whole time in Santorini, so that would have been a little too much for the back. We found a bench where we could hang out and mooch unsecured wireless off someone, and we booked rooms and blogged.

A view looking out from Fira over the caldera.















Yogurt and honey. This kind of yogurt in Greece, with honey and walnuts makes a great breakfast or dessert. The yogurt is so rich it tastes like cheese.

Caving on Iraklia

We picked a random little island that looked interesting. Iraklia. It's in the chain called the small cyclades. Unlike Apollon, it was easy to get a room here even though it is relatively deserted. In the summer, it probably has its share of tourists, but there are maybe a total of six here now. And the number of residents on the island is currently somewhere around sixty, and everyone knows everyone. I don't think anyone locks doors. You can count the number of children on the island: eight I think. And there are six cars, one "island truck", a few scooters and four dogs. Plenty of stray cats though. Families of goats roam the island, and whenever they are needed, I imagine a herder goes out and scrounges one up. The cars and scooters are used to get between the port town and the inland town, though it's in walkable distance. There is only one open restaurant now, and it seems to be the local hang out. Locals lounge on the veranda and play backgammon drinking coffee. The other town, Panagia, has the bakery, which is also the shop and taverna and post office.

There seems to be a church here for every five people.

















There is a huge cave system on Iraklia, and the main entrance is a hike to the far other side of the island. We went there yesterday, and I think I hiked more than I ever have in my life in one day. On top of exploring the cave, we explored almost the entire island on foot, starting in the morning and arriving back at the hotel a little after sunset.
















The cave entrance is small; you have to crawl through.

















Here is the main chamber. Every year, there is a festival held here. There are the remains of lots of tea lights here. I wish we had bought a bag. I imagine the look of the cave lit by many little candles would be awesome and spooky.















There are many interesting formations in the cave.






























I had a spool of string, one end tied to a tree outside. As we descended deeper, more string was let out from my backpack. I'm pretty sure we would have gotten lost and disoriented without this.




















There are many chambers in the cave. Sometimes you can see a hole between the rocks and make out a chamber below, though there is not always an easy way down. The deepest chambers have no oxygen, so we turned around after we had enough.