The Things We Do...

So. After finally bidding farewell to Mete & Marianna after my 3 weeks of lounging indolence (well, the last week actually saw me quite busy, developing a taste for raki) I jumped back on the bandwagon and proceeded through Koycegiz and Fethiye, 2 small mediterranean towns, to a place called Olympos...



Olympos is a small area located on the Mediterranean just south of Antalya, where back in the day some Turkish hippy named Kadir forayed out and began building the first of the now multitudinous tree-houses around 2 kilometers from the beach. These tree-houses now exist as collected backpacker and holiday-maker retreats, where the days are spent as lizards on the rocks in 40° heat and the nights spent as semi-alcoholic lizards (on the rocks, or with cola) at the local party bars. A real Thailand-islands-esque feel to the place.



After Olympos it was a sleepless, restless, joyless overnight busride up to Capadoccia, an incredible valley full of bizarre volcanic rock formations and underground cities dating thousands of years back...



One thing I've noticed about Turkey, is that any and all of its tour guides that do English-language tours have the worst English in all of Turkey, worse than the street vendors that sell trinkets and bread. Our day-guide through Capadoccia was no exception to this: a young girl perhaps in her early twenties who spoke without grammar or tonal inflection, and who broke up her strings of gibberish with barked commands "QUESTION!", "HURRY UP!!". For whatever reason she also decided to pick on me personally, saying "Do you like it here? Want to stay forever?!" where a simple "Time to go" would have sufficed...



Fortunately I was being trained in the use of polite Turkish phrases during my stay in Bodrum, by a sweet little old lady named Rashan. One of the most inspirationally polite Turkish phrases helped me defuse this situation with my charming tour guide: "Orospo, lütfen, siktir git". (Look it up)


Anyhoo... Another overnight on the Fez bus and it was back to Istanbul for my final 2 days of Turkey-time. After wandering the fantastic and completely un-tourist-shark-infested streets of Nisantasi, and saying farewell to my Melbournite companion (hi Anna!) I went with local friend Berk to bargain down a leather jacket in the Grand Bazaar, and purchase my train ticket out of here: a 34 hour-long ride to Budapest, through Bulgaria and Romania, for the next section of my trip: meeting up with Max again and hitting the Sziget music festival.



Point of note about the following photo: Turkey has bestowed me with 2 truly great articles of fashion sense. The first is, as mentioned, the leather jacket. The second is, of course, the undeniable, the sensational, the moustache. Both of which, as you can see, sit together like.. like peas and carrots.



So, final story for this blog. My train ride to Budapest started out well enough, with a last minute mad rush to the train, then from the train to the nearest food-stall upon the discovery that the train has no food or water facilities, then back to the train to search desperately for the correct carriage, cabin and seat. The first night passed fairly swiftly, then the following day was a hugely slow and pleasant trip through some beautiful Bulgarian landscapes, until in the evening we reached the Romanian border.

"What do you mean, I need a visa?"

Midnight.
Kicked from the train in some random outpost in Romania and onto an extremely fortunately positioned train back to Sophia.
Questioned 2 hours later for my train ticket, which of course doesn't exist in my pocket, by non-English-speaking Bulgarians, the alternative being Bulgarian cash, which of course doesn't exist in my pocket, the alternative being the Bulgarian countryside (a helpful finger points to the carriage door.)
Finding an extremely fortunately positioned English tourist who supplies with the much prayed-for cash.
Arriving in Sophia 6am the following morning, taxiing to the airport, shelling out another 200 euros for the afternoon plane out to Budapest.

The things we do.