Hello my fellow travellers! After a bumpy ride with no entertainment on it (man, I miss the Turkish buses already) I arrived in Bucharest at 8 am this morning. As I got off the bus I found myself in a very worn and run down neighbourhood despite being so close to the centre. The park nearby seemed to be the housing facility of a lot of homeless people and the buildings all bore witness to needing some serious loving attention. Still, I guess I had expected something after my seeing Sofia. Since I had just spent my second night in a row trying to sleep on a bus I was really tired and what followed was the worst introduction to a new country I've ever experienced. Here's a brief summary of how my first few moments ... read more

Hello my fellow travellers! After a short, yet good, night's sleep at Meltem's apartment in Canakkale I made my way down to the harbour together with Meltem and Halil who both decided to come along with me. They gave me the advice to go to Edirne from Eceabat instead of from Canakkale to save both time and money. Eceabat is a town on the other side of the Dardanelles that I passed through yesterday on my way to Canakkale. I remember seeing a very interesting memorial to the Gallipoli Battle there and figured that with some luck I might be able to pay it a visit. We walked all the way down, enjoying the cool morning breeze and early sun. On the way we stopped and checked out the Trojan Horse, I saw it yesterday but ... read more

Hello my fellow travellers! After a good nights sleep, or rather a dead man's sleep, I headed back out into the jewel of the middle east, Istanbul! I began by taking the train to the Galata area to check out the Galata Tower and then work my way back towards the centre to end with Topkapi Palace before meeting up with Abdullah. Galata Tower is a beautiful 6th century tower built by the Byzantine and from the observation deck you get a breathtaking panoramic view of Istanbul. It is one of the oldest towers in the world and it has filled many different purposes over the years. It stand 67 metres tall and is a real landmark in the city scape. As I looked at a map I saw that there was a Mevlevi Whirling Dervishes ... read more

Hello my fellow travelers! This is the second of 18 posts I'll make about my trip to Turkey and the Balkans in 2013 and it will cover my second day in Ankara. The first visit of the day was the magnificent Kocatepe Mosque, built between 1967 and 1987. It was located quite literally just around the corner from where I was staying and I definitely recommend visiting it. It's very large and intricately decorated, and even better there was hardly any people there. The inside is beautiful with a really ornamented minbar (pulpet) and mihrab (the wall facing Mecca). From the mosque I took a bus back to Ulus and made my way over to the Roman baths, it's quite well preserved and a nice open air museum. Entrance was only three lira and was well ... read more

Hello my fellow travelers! This is the third of four posts about my trip to Ireland with Uffe in 2006. For our third day in Dublin we decided to head to an area known as the Temple Bar which is a lively area filled with bars and other cultural establishments in the center of Dublin. While me and Uffe had certainly spent quite some time in pubs so far on this trip, this day would up that quite a few notches. We started our day in style with a couple of pints at the Oliver St. John Gogarty Bar, a beautiful bar and restaurant all clad in a bright green color that really felt Irish to me. It was a very lovely place but after a couple of pints we decided to continue on and went ... read more