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Published: January 20th 2009
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Snow.
Everywhere. I write this from Sabiha Gökçen airport, waiting for my flight to London to board. I got here two hours early and it was delayed an hour. I’ve only been in Istanbul for about 13 hours—Dan and I arrived from Sofia via bus at 5:30AM this morning. It’s been a strange day and an eventful week. Let’s start from the beginning.
On Monday morning Dan and I left for Edirne, which is, I believe, the westernmost city in Turkey—it used to be Adrianople. There isn’t much there to suggest that it used to be the second most important city of two empires except the
amazing Selimiye Mosque, which dominates the city. It is far, far more impressive than the Blue Mosque—it really feels like a place of worship given how few tourists (ie. none) there were and the space is much more impressive since it’s not cluttered by a million steel cables. You can also go up onto the mezzanine easily, which is a much better place to appreciate the architecture and space within a mosque like that in my opinion. Either way, Edirne was pretty if not just because it is covered in snow—I fell asleep on the ride
there and woke up to find the landscape suddenly a vast expanse of white, which held true for the rest of our trip. We explored Edirne and saw charming poorly-planned urban communities surrounding farms, large icicles, and a massive, totally derelict synagogue. After finding our hostel we had dinner where the nice b-boys we met on the main street directed us: to the fried calf liver—or tava ciğer, which Edirne is known for—restaurant. Unfortunately, despite giving it the old college try, we both realized we just don’t like the taste of liver much.
The next day we set out to cross the border to Bulgaria on foot—we had been under the impression that our hostel owner said it was a kilometer away. Unfortunately it was 60 kilometers away and the dolmuş station was probably what he was referring to. We walked about 8 kilometers before realizing we were wrong somehow and had to take a taxi from farmers who momentarily converted the vans they used to transport their chainsaws into human transports. The first one had no gas so we had to get in the red one. Either way, we arrived and crossed on foot through the almost Kafka-esque
never-ending massive complex of perpetually-under-construction…something, the intended use of which I could never quite figure out. After getting harassed a bit by a border guard who either was bored and wanted to talk to some one or felt like fucking with us, we went to the duty free shop. There was a bus full of Turks going from Istanbul to Haskova, Bulgaria. One of the men leading the expedition said to us “Are you going to Bulgaria?” When we answered in the affirmative, he said, “ONE MOMENT!” and ran off to go buy more cigarettes—he was already at the limit for the number of cartons he could buy on his passport, as was everyone else on the bus. Just before we could leave, he called us over so he could use Dan’s passport to buy more. In return they offered to give us a free ride to Sofia. So we got on this bus full of people who we later realized all knew each other. I don’t know what exactly was going on, but the guys running the bus got us through the border quickly with lots and lots of cigarettes presumably for resale. They dumped us off in Haskova
Fried liver
And a very beatific looking Dan. and not Sofia, though, which was kind of a disappointment. Our first hour in Bulgaria was spent eating
awesome non-Turkish (presumably Bulgarian traditional?) food—rice and stew for super cheap and realizing that every other person knew Turkish, which came in extremely handy. Thus began what would define much of the rest of our time in Bulgaria:
eating way too much good food for way too little money.
Either way, got to Plovdiv, wandered in the wrong direction for a while, saw the city center, found our hostel, went out to dinner at a decent Italian restaurant with decent beer for less than a dollar per half-liter, and went to bed. From there followed a terrifying and then hilarious adventure to the Bulgarian hospital at 5AM which involved an English-speaking doctor with a hilarious accent and great sense of humor, an ambulance, and us not having to pay a dime, and which will remain solely between Dan and I for the rest of forever. No I will not elaborate unless, perhaps, you are my mother.
Either way, in the next two days we saw Old Plovdiv—lots of beautiful 19th Century houses and museums, some ancient Roman-era ruins, including a
small Odeon that has an internet café situated over it. Strange. We also had more amazing food, including the ULTIMATE BULGARIAN DESSERT FOR TWO—I forget what it’s called but it was basically strips of crepe with ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate, chocolate sauce, sugar, caramel, and probably MSG or some shit all baked together—and dark beer, which I had for the first time in months. I spent some time smoking hookah and drinking cheap white russians and hanging out with a Bulgarian waitress who knew great English at the Buddha Bar for a while. Overall, Plovdiv got the thumbs up—a bit bleak and lonely, but worth a day or two’s visit at least.
Then on to Sofia. Dan’s father’s friend’s secretary put us up. Her name was Rayna (I don’t know exactly how to spell it in either Cyrillic or Roman script) and she almost smothered us in her hospitality—in a mostly good way. We only had 32 hours in Sofia and they were very well spent. Rayna lived reasonably close to the center of the city and, after a short tea, gave us the keys and showed us our room and told us to come back at whatever
hour we pleased, though preferably soon enough for us to eat the breakfast she was making us. We basically left and enjoyed the city for 10 hours—we saw the National Gallery, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (which was kind of like the Hagia Sofia but far more impressive on the outside and far, far less impressive on the inside), watched the end of an ongoing student protest outside the parliament against the corrupt government that apparently had ended earlier in the day in the arrest of 150 students by the police, enjoyed the massive Russian Imperial-style architecture that was pleasantly interspersed between bleak Soviet tenements and functional office buildings and modern retail space, gradually learned how to pronounce more and more Cyrillic letters, ate a ridiculous amount of food at first a Chinese and then a pizza restaurant, saw Sofia Central Park and the really amazing unfinished (and all the more beautiful for it) 1300 Year Monument (see pictures) that looks from the distance like a building partially destroyed by a giant monster, spent a lot of time admiring the literally
amazing collection at the Archeology Museum, and were finally taken out to dinner by Dan’s father’s friend Latchezar Popov (pronounced
like “Letcho Popov”), director of the internationally renowned Rule of Law Institute, who was amazingly gracious and enjoyable. Then we were taken back to the bus station by Latchezar’s young friend Stefan where I spent 10 hours mostly being uncomfortable and wishing I was asleep. Then we got out, got on the metro back to Hisarüstü, and I repacked, checked into my flight online, hung out with Emma and Gabby, had breakfast with my special friend Kendra, said goodbye to Gabby and potentially Dan (I might see him back in town before he leaves Istanbul for America on the morning of the 31st), and went on my merry way. And now I am here. My flight leaves in 50 minutes, I just received maybe the sweetest text message of my entire life, I feel pretty anxious in both good and bad ways, and I’m ready to go. In a number of hours I’ll be staying at my friend Kim’s house outside of London! More updates from this month to come.
To see the full galleries go to:
Edirne/Plovdiv:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2371755&l=67046&id=10738138
Sofia:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=41582553&l=4e095&id=10738138
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