Turkey & Romania

Hey guys, sorry about the long time writing but the internet is not all that readily available in eastern europe (weird huh?) and the places that it is available is really expensive. Actually I was pretty suprised overall about the cost of everything here (except beer - it is more expensive to get a small soft drink than a pint of beer!!). Anyways i had all these blogs written up but since nothing is in english and i can't figure out how to edit photos in other languages i shall just publish these things and will add some photos later ... sorry but otherwise i will forget what i am wanting to write so here goes.

well Turkey. ok so flew into Turkey and started my tour with Imaginative Traveller which is a tour group based out of London that I had never used before (and do not recommend to anyone either - stick with the aussie ones cos they are much better organised but anyways). Istanbul was pretty awesome, just so amazing how old everything was and the streets were tiny and cobble stoned paved so was really pretty although like most of the places i have been i was struck by how dirty everything is - really you could make a fortune selling high pressure cleaners around the world!). Went to the blue mosque which was as pretty as everyone says it is so that was good although the inside of it smells pretty bad which i found a little funny. you are not allowed to wear shoes inside similar to asia however the mosque i thort smelt like dirty feet so not the most pleasant ... mwahahaha.

Our hotel was right in the middle of everything about 5 minutes walk (ok probably 10 since it was straight up hill) from the blue mosque and the palaces and everything. We went to the grand bazaar and everything and managed to get superbly lost which was good fun as well. Istanbul was really nice but only there for a couple of days so didn't get to see very much but i suppose it was enough to say hey i've been there which i seem to be doing a lot of.

My tour group was consisted of 3 irish girls (1 who didn't drink at all and 1 who only had a drink one night the whole time we were there - i checked their passports and they were definately irish but a little strange really!) Fiona, Kathleen and Bridgit and they actually spoke Irish as a first language which was rather cool. Sally if you see Paul Gately around tell him "Pog mo thoin" (said pog mo hoin) which means kiss my ass ... mwahahaha i learnt a few other words as well but that is the only one i remember properly hehe. 2 people from Brazil, Riassa (said hiassa) who was a total crack up about my age and we had a great time together along with the irish girls. The others in the group were a couple from australia, 2 sisters from nz, 2 sisters from california, me and our tour leader who was from england. A bit of a united nations really but it was pretty fun group. The group was older than travelling with contiki or geckos (me, riassa, and the californian sisters lauren and mandy were in our twenties but that was it).

Now one of the reasons i wasn't impressed with im traveller was cos they weren't that organised for eg no day rooms. We checked out of our rooms in istanbul but there was no day room made available for us so we had to check out at 11am but then our train wasn't until 9pm so we spent all that time walking around in the heat and there was nowhere we could have a shower or anything AND THEN we had to get on an overnight train for 23 hours so not really good. This overnight train went from istanbul through to bucharest (going through bulgaria) so was pretty long and only had a squat toilet and people bloody smoked in train as well so not the most pleasant trip you could do. We had cabins of 6 so someone froze to death from having the window open on the middle bunks and someone boiled on the top bunk *grin* ahhh all part of the great travelling experience really.

ooops almost forgot to mention the other fun bit was the border crossings. All other places someone would get on the train to stamp your passport etc so no problem except for the turkey crossing which was about 3 in the morning where you actually have to get off the train to get stamped and there was only one person stamping passports and there were two trains worth so it was about 3 hours standing around in the middle of the night (a lot of ppl asked if i was alright so i don't know how grumpy i looked but must have been pretty bad :-)pretty inefficient really but it is alright now (i'm almost over it now)

Bucharest in romania was really interesting, i'm sure everyone has heard of the heatwave through eastern europe that is actually killing people - yup well it rained! hehe so we had a pretty good hotel right in the city (next door to mcdonalds which was good cos we got off the train, headed straight for the showers and then to mcd's for some dinner). Bucharest was quite an interesting city, a lot of beautiful old buildings, a lot of run down old buildings and a lot of those really ugly soviet blocks that were put up during the soviet regime and honestly i think they actually had to try harder to get buildings so ugly but they are all across the countries under the regime and are all really ugly. went wandering around the city which was good (drowning is also enjoyable and i had an umbrella not everyone did tho').

We went through this huge building which is the 2nd largest admin building or something (it is second only to the pentagon) that was built from some soviet leader where he made 70,000 people homeless and levelled one sixth of bucharest to build. this was of course during the time when people were starving to death in romania and he built this huge building and the romanian version of ... hmmm someone help me out the big boulevard in paris - champs e lysse or something you know what i mean. anyways the blvd in bucharest is like 1 metre wider and 2 metres longer than the paris one. hmm compensating much. anyways the building was amazing just huge and it used all romanian stuff so romania marble and wood and carpets with gold and silver threads etc etc. however only problem was this guy died before it was completed so half of the rooms are empty, the outside of the building was never completed and there are 3000 cleaning ladies for this place and they work in shifts 24 hours per day - strange huh. Bucharest was absolutely amazing tho' really fascinating and i would love to have had longer to wander around and see everything.

ohhh other cool thing was i saw romanian gypsies - they do actually have the covered wagon with the horse and stuff although apparently a lot of the gypsies steal so you have to be careful about your belonnings when they are around and stuff but still i saw them so cool.

Ok after bucharest we caught the train to brasov (don't worry only a couple of hours and this was a really nice train). Brasov is in transylvania and it was absolutely amazing!! i totally loved it thought it was fabulous wonderful gorgeous beautiful etc etc. the train goes through or up or something the carparthian mountains (that is where vampires originated don't ya know) and it was so beautiful and then brasov was this big town small city thing and it was so lovely. we wandered around and riassa and i went and brought some jewellery - i now own a cross from transylvania - hehe i am so sad but i love it.

hmmm well this is getting pretty long but basically the next day we went and checked out the castles around the area, bram stokers dracula was based on vlad the impaler and the castle was about an hour from brasov however it had been completely redone for the romanian queen so it was really old but not creepy at all which was kind of disappointing. It was really fabulous but i'll put the photos so you can see rather than me dribbling on about it. ohhh hehe please make note of my t-shirt - i am such a tacky tourist loving it!!!!

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