How to cook a Syrian visa


Istanbul :: Turkey

Straight puttin' it down for Anatol-I-Ay.

Places: Istanbul.

Coolest thing I did: Realised I'd missed the best bits of Istanbul last time and got to see them for the first time now.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Australias are the biggest beetroot consumers in the world (thanks Khim, you're a babe). We even beat Borsch land, or Russia as the locals call it.

Man, do I hate 22 hour bus rides or what? Thank God it only took 20 instead of the advertised 22 to go from Athens to Istanbul. Bring a very long book and don't expect too much in the way of sleep. Every 3 hours the stupid driver decided he was going to turn on the lights and stop the bus because he wanted a smoke. Bastard.

So, here I am, back in old Constantinople. The best thing about being here this time is I don't have to rush about and do all the touristy stuff like I did last time I was here. I've seen the Grand Bazaar, Palace and all the mosques, so I'm working more on my kebab eating skills, hookah pipe smoking skills and cosuming beer that is far cheaper than in Greece. Thanks to the fact they've slowed inflation from 120% last time I was here to a mere 30%, things still cost roughly the same as they did last time. Kebab is still 1,000,000. Viva life.

My big adventure so far has been attempting to aquire a Syrian visa. One of the blokes in the hostel wanted to do the same, so we split a cab as it's miles into the suburbs. Not only did the taxi driver decide by Syria we meant the Czech Republic, but no one on the street could tell us where the address was, even though it turned out to be on the next street. Not only that, but when we did find it, we discover that you need a "letter of introduction" from your embassy. So we catch a bus to the Australian consulate, which is even further away and managed to bay about 20 euros for a piece of paper that has exactly the same information on it as my passport. So by this time, it's too late to go back and I have to return to the Syrians tomorrow. Oh, how I love bureaucracy. I'm almost afriad to ask what extra I'll have to do to get a multiple entry one if I want to visit Lebanon and go back through Syria to Jordan. That may go into the "too hard" basket.

However, I'm loving Istanbul again. This time there's less being hassled on the street as I know it's ok to say "no thanks", then "I said no" and then swear if necessary. The usually give up after that. I've also, quite by accident, seen some of the best views of the huge Ottoman mosques rising out of the skyline over the Bosphorus, which I didn't see last time. I think this place is unique in that regard. I tried to see similar things all over Morocco, but nothing comes close to that silhouette of minaretes rising over urbania like this place has. It's made me decide to stay on a few more days and just do not too much. I may even go rile up the carpet sellers, just to see how small a price I can get. I don't want a carpet, just to play the haggling game.

So, if all goes well, I'll be off to Syria later this week. I've met an Aussie whose just done my trip backwards (Egypt up to Istanbul overland) and he's reassured me over my (slight) fears of suicide bombings in Israel (or Occupied Palestine as the Syrian visa form calls it). He said he felt "safe as houses" the whole time he was there, so I do feel a bit better. Before him, I'd not met anyone who'd been there in the last 2 years, and in the Middle East, that's a lifetime.

By staying at the world famous Orient Hostel, I'm surrounded by Aussies for the first time in recent memory. Besides a few token Kiwis and Canadians, I haven't seen anyone else (except the Korean dude I was on the bus with from Athens). I think this may be due to the fact Americans now have to pay USD$100 (!!!) to get into Turkey. Man, I bet you they vote for the other guy now (or girl, I'm putting money on Hillary Clinton running for president next year, mark my words).

Short, but not so much time has passed since last time. Right, I'm off to happy hour (which goes for 3 hours...God I love this place).

Lots of old stuff


Athens :: Greece

Theres alot of this Greek history stuff.

Places: Litohoro (Mt Olympus), Kalambaka (Meteora), Athens, Delphi, Nafplio, Mycenea, Sparta, Mystras & Olympia.

Coolest thing I did: Ran a lap of THE olympic track the ancient Greeks used. Don't ask my time.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The greeks have more than one word for love. Awww. Agape.

This has been a big couple of weeks. I won't go into the usual tirade but rather treat each spot separately. Here goes:

Litohoro: It appears that the Greek gods got sick of their old home on Mt Olympus and decided to leave it to hikers and skiers. While I didn't do the 2 day hike to the summit (time is starting to get the better of me) I did go half a day to the point where you can see all of the 7 peaks of the mountain. It was made a bit better by the fact that there were no other tourists that got off my bus, so I wasn't surrounded by flash bulbs everytime I turned a corner. This has become a problem in places I've been since.

Meteora: This has to rate as one of the best places I've been, ever. Full stop. Scientists think (how come they never know, always think?) that the huge stone pillars that make the place unique were formed by the rushing water of an ancient sea that isn't there anymore. Thanks to the marauding Turks (always marauding those pesky Turks) the Byzantines decided it would be a cool idea to put their monestaries places that were hard to get at. So they built them on the top of the sheer stone pillars that dot the landscape at Meteora. If you are a photographer, you'll be in heaven when you see this place. Turn a corner and you see something that looks just a whole lot cooler than the very cool thing you just saw. I can't do this place justice in words, you have to see it. It is, however,easily accesed by tour busses. I walked the 17 km round trip to see all the 6 monestaries that still work, but it involves sharing it with the teeming hordes who caught the bus up. I don't usually get on my high horse about mass tourism, but this place would be so much cooler if it was only accessible by foot trail. At least my photos the stones wouldn't look like anthills.

Athens: Last time I came to Greece for my go-to-the-islands-and-get-drunk trip, I was in Athens for a total of 6 hours. It managed to leave me with a severe dislike of the place. That has now moved up a couple of notches into the low hatred level. How on Earth this place expects to host an Olympics next year is beyond me. The roads are chaos, there are two seperate bus stations linked by suburban busses where the signs are only in Greek (which most tourists that show up next year won't speak) and take a good 30 to 40 mins to reach from the centre. Add to this the fact there seems to have been super inflation since drachmas became euros and I'm not real enamoured of the place. Still, I only stopped here due to the fact it's the transport hub for the rest of the country.

Delphi: This was the best classical site I saw, despite promises of Olympia being better. You just can't beat it for location. The main temples and stuff overlook a huge rift in the mountains that open up to the sea. Even if there was nothing old and Greek here, this would be the place to come for scenery. The temple of Athena, where the Oracle used to do her thing is the pick of the bunch. I like the story of the oracle. Just say you're an ancient greek bloke, let's call you Jason. You want to go nick some golden fleece, but your mates, the Argonauts, aren't so keen. The best thing you could have done is gone to the Oracle and asked to check out if the trip would all be cool. She'd then gut a chicken, read the bits inside and say yay or nay. For the rest, read the ramblings of an old blind Greek guy called Homer. Who is not Bart's Dad.

Nafplio/Mycenea: This is a nice combo. Nafplio is an old Byzantine/Venetian town that has been restored to tourism level pristinedness. It's nice, but not somewhere you'd stay unless it wasn't the best place to stay to see Mycenea. Crete was the first place in Europe to have culture, but Mycenea was the first place on the mainland to do so. Now it's been stripped of most of it's treasures, which are in musemums, but it's a pretty cool place to visit none the less. It's the supposed home of Agamemnon, who was the bloke who led the Greek armies to attack Troy. Don't worry if you don't know the story, it's going to be a movie staring Brad Pitt next year. Urgh.

Sparta/Mystras: Sparta was the other big city state in ancient Greece, alongside Athens. While Athens is now the capital of the new country, Sparta hasn't got much to offer. No real ruins either. But it's 30 mins from Mystras, which is way cool. It was an old hill fort and town during Byzantine times and was the last place to fall to the Turks, even outlasting the old Captial Constantinople (Istanbul today). What's left is an impressive amount of ruins clinging to a hillside with one restored, operating Nunnery. Again, only pictures can do it justice.

Olympia: Prepare to be underwhelmed. It is a good site with some interesting things, but overall it's alot of rocks arranged with some imagination. The best bits were the coloums that used to line the temple of Zeus, which have been lefted in their toppled state, and the cleared olympic track, which, as I said earlier, I ran around. Man, you don't run for 6 months and this can be very tiring. I think I've lost alot of fitness. OK, maybe I'm being a girl. Anyway, the town of Olympia is a single street of tourist shops. This dosen't make for a huge Saturday night. I spent most of it playing the card game arsehole and talking about things travelers seem to talk about. These consist of where I've been, where I'm going, visas, train passes, showering in your thongs (flip flops for you Northern Hemispherers, not underpants) and tales of extreme stinginess. While this can been cool for your first month on the road, it's now approaching 6 months and I'd love to have just one conversation about something more meaningful, or even just different.

So, here I am, back in Athens. I have felt the bruising pace of the last couple of weeks should have been taking more toll on me, but if anything I feel better than I have in at least a month or so. I think it's been helped by the endless supply of Greeks who have been willing to talk to me about their life, even with no provocation at all. I've met expat Greeks who live all over Europe, North America and Oceania, most of them well over 50. I've found the expats to be rather open minded, in contrast to the younger types I met in Thessas, most of whom had never been overseas before. More proof that travel broadens the mind. However, the reality of the whole trip is now reaching me. I have now fixed dates for when I will be in Egypt and when I'm flying back to the UK, so I know exactly how much time I have left. I've also decided to go overland to Egypt, as Syria, Lebanon and Jordan sound safe enough. I'm a little concerned about the regular suicide bombings in Israel, but I'm going to take that decision much closer to the time. At the moment I'm leaning towards going there, leaving enough time to do so. We shall see. Now it gets pretty interesting. Tomorrow I'm off to Istanbul, so I should be out of Europe by the time you next see something here.