Istanbul'a geliyorum

So, here I am finally in Turkiye - my father's homeland!


Landed in Istanbul after an uneventful flight...
Well, there was one interesting moment after landing... You know the bit where they say "Please remain seated until the seatbelt light disappears"? The second we land relieved applause rings out from throughout the plane and then about 60 people jump out of their seats and start grabbing their luggage hastily from the overhead compartments - all the while with the plane still hurtling at 200 kph down the runway. The businessman sitting next to me said to me "I think we Turks can be very impatient people. They probably saved themselves about 20 seconds of time!"





My first wander through the streets of Istanbul was completely surreal. 10 o'clock at night, getting off the tram by the great Blue Mosque (which isn't blue) and entering the world of Aladdins lamp - minarets and fountains, uneven streets and hassling shisha salesmen, a "whirling dervish" performing in the middle of a crowded outdoors restaurant...

Istanbul is a wonderous beast with a palpably ancient history. And unfortunately a lot of incredibly irritating tourist-hasslers and scammers which put Bangkok tuktuk drivers to shame! Wandering the completely english-free suburbs was delightful, but suffice it to say I'm glad to be a male as I wander the more touristy parts of the city...





After 4 nights in Istanbul I jumped on the bus south to Gallipoli for the first leg of my round trip of Turkey.
I must admit to never really feeling anything special regarding Anzac day before now, but seeing Gallipoli with our 71 year-old day-tour guide Submarine Captain Ali really left a strong impression of the importance to both Turkish and Kiwi/Aussie history. 8 months of staring at each other from the trenches, 8 months in which the anzacs gained a mere 1.2 kilometres of ground to appaling losses on both sides, by the end of which the young men on both sides begin to actually pass each other gifts of tobacco and fruit and finally purposefully start missing with their bullets, because who could shoot a friend?...



Later tours of Troy, Pergamum and Ephesus were amazing - to imagine yourself thousands of years in the past standing as some emperor to look out over the mountain vistas from your marble columned palaces... however the best ruin I've seen so far is definitely the castle in Selcuk, to which entrance was gained by happily climbing over a wall, sneaking around the signs which read "Access forbidden" and clambering perilously along the ancient battlements and towers for a spectacular view of the town below...





Next stop - the beach town of Bodrum. But for now, I'm going to play some poolside pool and maybe have a beer. It's way too hot here to be sitting at the internet. :P

What the Hell is Fußball?

Right...
Before I get to the football: Prague..



Prague itself was hot and humid, my hostel dorm room (1 room for 33 people!) covered from top to toe in graffiti (ok, that was kind of cool), and the Czech people (with a few exceptions) stony faced and passively un-warm. But the food and beer are cheap and hey... the weather was grand!



Driving in to Czech republic by bus through all the industrial little towns, all of the images I have in my head of eastern bloc countries (thanks to the countless BBC documentaries I watched from my hotel rooms in Australia) seemed to be true - in a word, ghetto.

Riding out by train, however, was completely another story; wending along a river dotted with small smokey villages, and a mountainous backdrop that often reminded me a little of home...


So anyway,

Berlin!




Berlin is awesome, especially in 30 degree heat and especially during this particular football season, World Cup 2006 in Germany. You would be forgiven for thinking that nothing else existed in the cosmos besides football, sunshine, beer, and oddly enough, Brazilian fans. 3 games per day and for an hour and a half (plus) per game, fans line the streets of Berlin to view the matches from open-air cafes, pubs, apartment windows, ice-cream shops, and the massive "Fan Mile", a major street in the centre of Berlin (Straße des 17 Juni) which has been closed for the whole month and filled with beer stands and gargantuan screens.



As I booked my hostel quite late, I only managed to score my first 3 nights here before the city became booked out for various football matches. Lucky, then, that Berliners are such warm people; going in to buy an icecream at about 10:30pm Monday night, I entered into a lively conversation with the girl behind the counter about New Zealand, and upon explaining my position was promptly given a warm sofa to sleep on and an unofficial tour-guide of Berlin!





So, after watching quite a few games of football in the streets and pubs, I must say I´ve been enjoying it like I never enjoyed rugby back home. The atmosphere here can be quite amazing sometimes...



Germany vs Poland, 0-0 and about 88 minutes in when Germany finally scores a goal.

The entire pub cheers and screams!
The entire street outside cheers and screams!!
86 million Germans all over Germany cheer and scream at exactly the same time!!!

And despite it being a Wednsday night, the entire city of Berlin for the entire night goes BALLISTIC.


You can´t buy tickets to events like this. The tooting, screaming cars with German (and assorted other) flags hanging out of every window. The cheering, singing fans stamping and bashing their hands on the metros and trams so hard you´re afraid you´re going to derail. Me with my German flag smeared across my cheek singing in "German" with every flag-clad and swerving young German gentleman walking the same street as me.
(Pity that I left my camera behind!)

And as a few people pointed out, if thats what happens when Germany win a match, what´s going to happen if they win the tournament?...



Well, football aside, this ends my German section of my travels. Tuesday afternoon I fly to a very different lifestyle for the next 6 weeks or so - Turkey!



So till then - auf wiedersehen.

Rock im park, bitte

Hello!

Rock im Park, Nurnberg 2006, so much fun! Around 100 bands musicians and DJs played for 3 days and nights, foremost among them being Tool, Metallica, Depeche Mode, Franz Ferdinand... The rain stayed away for the mostpart, and the atmosphere was simply happy-happy-joy-joy.



In the meantime we (Max, Jenz, and I) had ourselves booked into a hostel room for purposes of sleeping during the festival - no more stinky tents and entire weekends of filth, portaloos used by thousands of people per hour, and cold baked-bean sandwiches for me!



The hostel was, however, a very special kind of hostel. A better name for it would probably be "German Highschool Camp".

I'll explain. Our German hostel had the following friendly features:

1. No kitchen
2. No internet
3. Curfew of 1am
4. Check out at precisely 9:15am
5. No alcoholic beverages to be brought through the front door (did I spend too long in Holland?)

On the other hand, they did serve a free breakfast, from 7am until 8:45am.



So on Monday as Max and Jenz drove back west, I made the change to another hostel, this one with the usual kitchen, internet, and checkout time of 12pm for the remainder of my stay in Nurnberg.

Nurnberg is fascinating. Despite having been 90% bombed in the war, it still has a medieval quality that I haven't seen since leaving Holland. Going on a tour around the uncompleted Nazi colloseum was an eye-opener as well.



The colloseum was only half built before economy and war brought a halt to construction, but it's still a monstrosity of a building. Some of Hitler's architectural plans which never got off the ground were completely implausible - one stadium at 90 metres high by the top level seats was to hold 400,000 people at once - the entire population of Christchurch. Apparently this would have meant that from the top levels you would need binoculars just to see what was going on on the ground!



So, on yet another whim I decided to go to Prague on my way to Berlin for a few days, just to check out the czechs and their famously cheap beer... will post some photos of Prague next time!

I just arrived in Berlin today after an amazing morning - got up at 8 after 4 hours sleep (in my 33 bed dormroom in Prague) to catch my bus at 10am. Sat around at the bus station looking dumb for an hour, waiting until it became clear that I had in fact missed the bus, so I trudged through the streets to the train station to buy a train ticket to Berlin. Bought that one, caught a tram to the correct train station and underway lost the train tricket I´d just bought so after scratching my head for a while and being hit on by prostitutes I bought my third ticket for the day and successfully made my way to the wonderful city of Berlin!

Oh and on another note, I found yesterday that I´ve won a scholarship for my first year of studies in Amsterdam - PRIMO!!
Till next time...