Istanbul

The bus lumbered down the highway in the pitch of night. Nothing could be seen to the right, for that was the Aegean Sea. Nothing to left, for this was Greece’s largely undeveloped northern provinces. It seemed sleep was to be my best option, but it was difficult as I had slept in late; I was out really late with Makis and Alex the night prior, drinking and raising hell.

I did eventually drift off, only to be shaken awake by the bus conductor. We had reached the Greco-Turkish border and it was time for passport/visa checks. The first thing I noticed when exiting the bus was a swarm of mosquitoes. I loathe mosquitoes with a passion, and they are my least favorite creature on the planet Earth. If I had the power, I would kill every last one of them, and damn the ecological consequences. What annoys me most about mosquitoes, besides their tenacious vampirisms, was the fact that they are still around. Mankind has made extinct many creatures before, often accidentally, but sometimes purposefully. What irks me is here, in the 21st century, these bloodsuckers are still around. Not only are the little bastards pests, but they carry diseases like West Nile virus and malaria, making them accomplices to the deaths of many people every year. To conclude this tangent, we should eliminate mosquitoes worldwide with the same determination that made polio a pestilence of the past.

The border check was complicated, in that passports were checked by Greek authorities before everyone had to re-board the bus, drive 100 feet, stop, and have them checked by Turkish authorities. It made no sense why the Greeks had to check people leaving their country, but thinking on it more, it might have something to do with Greece having 2-year compulsory military service. “Compulsory” might be a strong word for it, but, essentially, if a Greek national does not complete his/her service, they are not issued a passport by the government. Perhaps the Greek border guards are simply trying to keep their people from “defecting”. Anyway, I obtained a three-month visa for 15 Euro (~$23) and re-boarded the bus. As it drove away from the checkpoint, a pack of wild dogs chased us down the road until the bus picked up adequate speed.

The bus arrived at the Istanbul station a little after daybreak. It was a beautiful sight to see, coming into the outskirts of Istanbul and seeing the sun peaking over mosque minarets in the distance. The place was a little confusing to get a hold of, mostly because the language was a bit much to tackle, and also because the place was bustling. Istanbul is a very large city with a lot of people. It is the bridge between the East and the West, and it is here that a rich trading tradition lies. Just outside of the bus terminal there were present hundreds of small shops in a market, lined up to sell wares and trinkets to weary travelers.

After some difficulty in finding the hostel, I was checked in and needed the afternoon to relax. A few hours later, I arose from a restful nap. I was staying in the tourist district, mainly the southwestern corner nestled up against the coast. From the rooftop of my hostel I could look out far into the Sea of Marmara and see many super freighters making the crossing from it to the Black Sea. The sun had already set but the last rays of light could be seen to west. The sun was probably in the process of setting over Greece, and I remember seeing the most beautiful sunsets there since leaving Arizona.


I went to dinner at a rooftop restaurant. I had something called a Turkish pizza, accompanied by buttered pita bread. Upon exiting the restaurant, stuffed and feeling content, I felt like ending the night with a round of hookah, or narghile, as the Turks call it. While walking, I had gotten used to ignoring anyone who came up to say hello to me, as it usually involved them soliciting a sale. However, when passing one restaurant, a stout young man in a catchy gold waiter’s uniform came up to me and asked “What is it you want?” I couldn’t fault the guy for his directness, and casually said “Narghile” while still walking. He asked me to take a seat and said it would be but a 10 minute wait. The price seemed right, so I sat and ordered a Coke. Ten minutes went by, and then fifteen, before I started wondering what was taking so long. It then occurred to me that I was sitting at a restaurant where no one else was smoking a narghile. I was about to leave a couple lira on the table and leave when the waiter came hurrying around the corner with narghile in hand. He set it down, adjusted the coals, and I was soon smoking ripe green apple sheesha. While imbibing, it came to me that perhaps this restaurant did not serve narghiles at all, but rather that young man had ran to a hookah store he knew and asked to borrow a water pipe. Either way, for a fifteen minute wait in a comfortable setting, I was happy that he obliged my request. I finished the bowl, paid, and continued on my way.

The nights in Istanbul were cool compared to the hot and humid days, making an evening constitutional a particular delight. The district I was staying in featured the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, the most famous mosque in the world (second only to the one in Mecca). While the Hagia Sophia is tremendous, I found the Blue Mosque to be more beautiful, especially when lit up at night. While taking a moment at a small park to gaze up and stare at it’s blue essence, I was approached by a man. This man introduced himself, and asked me where I was from. At first, I was a little unnerved. I had some pretty bad preconceptions about coming to a predominantly Muslim country, especially with all the terrible things the US has been doing to those people, but being in an open, public place, I told him I was from America. I knew I was in the clear when a great smile crossed his face and his eyes opened very wide. He said, “Ah. America! Very good, very good. Where are you going tonight? Would you like to come with me to the Blue Mosque? I am on my way there now for the nightly prayer. I do not want any money from you, I simply want to show you a part of my country and its people. I want you to know that Turks do not hate America. We love America! America is our ally! Please do not think we hate America! Would you like to come to the Blue Mosque with me?” I was rather taken aback. I eyed the guy for a moment but could not find anything but sincerity in him. I do believe he was generally happy to have met an American and he really did want to show me the Blue Mosque. Had I not been tired out from travel that day, eating, and sucking a narghile hose for an hour, I might have taken a chance with him. However, it was almost midnight and I had promised myself an early morning to go out and see the Grand Bazaar. I thanked the man, but declined. He was not happy with this, but before he left he wished me luck in my travels, and wished that we would meet again, if not sooner, then later. This was the first real conversation I’ve had with a Muslim, and I was fortunate that it was a good encounter.

The next day I woke up early to go see the Grand Bazaar. The Bazaar is the world’s largest enclosed market space. I was astounded by what I found inside it. There was an entire section devoted to jewelry and gold, another to Turkish rugs, another to porcelain, another to spices, another to art, another to silks, and most random goods you could think of. It was all here! I went up to a narghile merchant to inquire the price of a small piece, and he broke out into full negotiation mode “My friend, I give you best price.” and offered a couple hundred lira. I had absolutely no intention of buying this thing, I was merely curious. I told him as such, and he asked me what I thought it was worth. I said “I dunno dude, like 70 lira?” And he said “Done!” and held out his hand. I backed away slowly, trying to apologize if I had given him the wrong impression, telling him I was a travel writer and that there was no physical way I could take the thing with me. He began cursing at me, and even called me a gypsy! I took exception to that, and showed the man my middle finger before promptly turning and backing away. That encounter really put me in a bad mood. I’m not used to high-pressure sales pitches, and don’t like being put on the spot like that, only to be called a damn gypsy! I consoled myself outside with a doner kebab, the one creature comfort I had developed over my excursion across Europe, and decided to pack it in for the day. Here are a couple pictures of the Grand Bazaar:


I got back to my district with some sunlight left, so I wandered around. I walked down to the Hagia Sophia to see what it was all about. To be honest, it was impressive, but it did look a little run down. That might be unfair, since it’s well over a thousand years old, but I would have thought that over the years it could have gotten a paint job or two. My personal favorite, however, was the Blue Mosque. Perhaps it was because blue is my favorite color, or maybe because it just looked a lot better. Either way, both are incredibly impressive buildings and a must see for anyone visiting Istanbul.
Hagia Sophia

Blue Mosque


Near this was the Hippodrome. Here it is, and it's underbelly:


And beside that, the Obelisk of Theodosius:


On my final day, I had decided to take part in a cultural activity called a Turkish bath. I had talked to the clerks at my hostel all week about it, had read many things about it, and finally decided to plunge in a give it a shot. I walked down the street, and found the bath. The attendant, a short, fat, grubby looking fellow, showed me to the change room. I had come prepared, dressed in my swimsuit and sandals, so I figured I would just take the towel, leave my shirt, and be off. When I exited the change room, he shoved me back in and gestured that I remove my trunks. After a brief pause, I re-emerged from the booth, ready for the next phase. I was taken into a large marble room that immediately felt like a sauna. It felt only slightly hotter in there than it had felt outside that day. The attendant instructed me to lay down on the marble floor, adjacent to another young man. In doing so, awkward does not even begin to describe what I felt at the moment. I couldn’t help but laugh a little to myself, and to my surprise, the guy next to me said, “Yea, I thought it was pretty funny too.” I struck up a conversation with the guy, laying on that hot marble floor. He was a student from Groningen, Holland, and was on vacation with his girlfriend. We exchanged pleasantries for almost fifteen minutes (where have you been, where are you going, what was that like, etc etc) and then the attendant re-entered the room wearing only his towel. He instructed me to follow him to the far wall where faucets and a tub sat. I sat down next to the tub, and he ran some warm water over what looked like a pillow covered in soap suds. He then sponged me head, my back, and my chest, adding a little extra elbow grease to make sure those dirty skin layers were removed, before filling a bowl with ice cold water and rinsing me clean. Next, he had me lay on a marble island in the middle of the room, where the massage began. I never knew whether massages were supposed to be hard or soft, but this guy preferred the hard method. He was forcing skin this way and pulling my legs that way and standing on the back of my hamstrings while pulling my arms back. Basically, I think he was trying to make me into a pretzel. The whole time the Dutch guy, now joined by his girlfriend, were looking at me and giving little chuckles, and I was laughing a little bit too. I mean, this situation was pretty ridiculous to begin with. After he was done, he washed me again, and told me to go sit down. He left, and I rejoined the Dutch, where we shared a good laugh at my expense. We settled into talking, eventually turning to politics, which at this point in my trip had become my least favorite thing to talk about. Whenever it comes up now, I just go straight to the gun issue, and that usually shuts people up. I liked the Dutch though, they were pretty cool. I had a cup of tea with them in the changing room when we were done, and wished them a good journey.


My time in Turkey was too short. Istanbul is an incredible city with much to see, and the rest of the country is a treasure just waiting to be discovered. The culture astounded me the most, being a near-perfect hybrid of Eastern and Western models. The country is 99% Muslim, yet the politics is adamantly secular. Turks are incredibly pro-American, and the over sense I got from them is that they wish Americans would take more time to understand what Islam is really all about. I can’t say that I did. I only saw the outsides of the mosques, and to be honest, the calls to prayer freaked me out a little bit. All in all though, they were really excellent hosts and make for some really good traders. They’ve been doing it for millennia and have perfected the art of commerce. Turkey is a land of contrast, but it was here that I had more eye-opening experiences than anywhere else in Europe. Here the surprises were delightful, not demoralizing. I think what excited me the most about it was I was at the doorstep of Asia three months after I had begun my European adventure. It was a whole new ballgame from here on out. This was truly my moment of stepping into uncharted territory occupied by people who were not like myself and who thought completely different than myself. From here I moved on, with only the distant light of the Olympic torch to guide my way. From Istanbul, I stepped into the unknown.

Thessaloniki

Makis had a fairly sizeable apartment for only two people. Two bedrooms, two living rooms, kitchen, two bathrooms (one with laundry facilities), and a full balcony. I awoke sweating as the screen door to the balcony was left open in the living room where the couch I was surfing was located, and the heat from the day was beginning to reach it’s peak. The humidity was almost unbearable.

Makis was already up, listening to emo music and rolling and smoking cigarettes. This was a very defining feature of the guy. He would roll a cigarette, light it, take a couple puffs, put it down, and then start rolling another one. Upon completing that, he would re-light his first cigarette, smoke it, and then repeat the process all over again. This was something which he did constantly the entire time I hung out with him. It made me wonder what made him so depressed that he had to smoke that much and listen to such terrible emo music, but I didn’t ask.

Makis was an art restorationist. In the spare room where Mike slept was a workbench filled with brushes, tools, and pieces he was working on. I knew he had to do something with art because his apartment was filled with a lot of pictures and paintings all over the walls. After making some incredibly strong coffee, Makis said he would call over his friend Alex who spoke better English than he did.

Alex arrived an hour or two later. Alex studied for a year in the US and spoke fairly good English. He was a huge fan of basketball and told me about how Greece was really good at it. He wished that the European teams would hurry up and step up to American standards of play. I thought it was a good thought, and could serve to promote different cultures within the US, something that is sorely needed. The problem is that European basketball has a few different rules and regulation, for instance, their quarters are ten minutes instead of twelve, ad the three point line is a little closer than in the NBA. I hope in the future basketball would take a greater hold in Western European countries to the point where they would create a European Basketball Association and start doing intercontinental games with the NBA.

That night Makis and Alex took me out on the town, to experience Thessaloniki from the locals’ point of view. We met up with a few of their friends at an open patio bar in a small plaza. We exchanged pleasantries over several rounds of Czech beer, with Alex mostly serving to translate. They all spoke spats of English, but for more complicated things Alex was a big help. Greek is a pretty hard language to wrap one’s head around, and next to the Slavic tongues was one of the strangest languages I had encountered to date. After wrapping up dinner and drinks, we then headed to see Thessaloniki’s most famous site: a coastal tower that is one of the last remnants of Byzantine presence.


From there we walked along the waterfront and saw many bars along the way that were almost completely empty. Alex explained to me that Thessaloniki was a college town, and that this was the main strip where all the students would normally be getting drunk and partying. Unfortunately, since I was here at the height of summer, everybody was still elsewhere, and barely anyone was around. More inland, we found a section of the coastal wall that was something like 1500 years old.


A little farther up from that, we found ourselves at a castle overlooking the city. The city was not large, per se, but the city lights twinkled in a dance mirroring the stars. It really was a pleasant town, not as big and bustly as Athens but not too small to be considered insignificant.
Here is a video panoramic:

I find it hilarious at the end where Makis wants to go smoke a cigarette. Nothing sums up the man more than that statement.

The next day Mike and I were to take a bus the rest of the way to Istanbul, a ten hour excursion at best. Makis and Alex took us to the bus depot and made sure we got the right ticket and were in the right place, because there was practically no English signs anywhere, everything was in cryptic Greek. I was very happy to have met Makis on the train. I was beginning to wonder whether something like this was going to happen on my trek across Europe. I was beginning to wonder if those tails of locals taking in backpackers was really true. So many of the preconceptions I had about backpacking across Europe were completely blown out of the water, but this one did ring. In my experience, it only happened this once, but I am sure it happens more often, with a little bit of luck. Alex and Makis were very nice to me, and I guaranteed them a place to stay should they ever come to visit Arizona. It seems only fitting that I introduce you to them. Here we are in a final photo: Makis in the middle (with a cigarette, of course), Alex on the far right:


Thanks for the good times, Greeks! Opa!

Athens

There was no plan upon arrival in Athens other than find the nearest cheap motel and book a room so that sleep could be had. After a bit of meandering, I settled on a two-star hotel and went immediately to bed. The day was pretty much blown on recovering from the trip in, and when I awoke toward early evening, I ventured out to familiarize myself with my surroundings.

Athens struck me as a very urban city. It had major congestion issues, in that every available space on the street was filled by a parked car. Traffic was atrocious and driving etiquette seemed non-existent. The streets were fairly clean with only some clutter here and there, and many shops were still open for business at 8 PM. I don’t know why but for some reason it felt like Mexico. Everyone had tanned skin, there were taco stands on every corner, except here they served pitas instead. I got one and it was finger-lickin’ good. All the buildings were uniform cement apartment blocks, but were not as drab as the ones I’d seen in the Eastern Bloc. The one thing that stood out was people were immediately friendly. Many would just come up and say hello and ask where I was from. This friendliness would be a trait I would come to recognize in the vast majority of Greeks I would come to meet.

The first full day in Athens was to be spent seeing the great sights. The Acropolis was first on my list, as it sat atop a large hill in the middle of town and I could easily see it from where I was staying. The Acropolis itself is an amazing structure surrounded by several others. On the way up to the top of the hill I passed the Theater of Dionysus:


The entire grounds upon which these ancient sites sat was well preserved for structures many thousands of years old. The Acropolis itself was simply an amazing structure, that is, what was left of it. It met its demise when occupying British forces decided to use it as an ammo dump and stored many drums of gunpowder there. The events that followed are lost to history, but it does not take a genius to realize that Murphy’s Law kicked in, and almost blew the entire structure into oblivion. Here is me at the Acropolis:




Here is a panoramic of Athens from the Acropolis:


At the bottom of the hill again, I went down the street, crossed to the other side, and I found myself in a park that used to be grounds where the great Temple of Zeus once stood. There were a couple pillars left, but the size of the surrounding square where the temple would have been left much to the imagination. Here is what is left of the temple and in front of it stands Hadrian‘s Gate:


A few hundred yards down the street from that I found the Greek parliament building.

I was very fortunate on the timing because I had arrived ten minutes before they were to do the changing of the guard, something I had read online was a must-see in Athens. I got most of it on a video from a decent vantage point, and I will share it with you now:


I liked most the little poufs on their shoes, and overall the whacky way in which they stepped.

The last couple nights in Athens were spent in an Irish pub called Mike’s. I had found it serendipitous that within the course of a week Mike and I had visited pubs featuring our respective names. The bar was tended by a big Greek-Canadian by the name of Tito. Tito was born in Vancouver to Greek parents and had served in the Canadian Special Forces before moving to Athens to live. With him was Myrtle, the other barkeep, a Greek-American expat living in Athens to re-establish her roots. Tito was a funny guy, and we both shared an active interest in ice hockey. Myrtle was the more introspective type, often coming over to Mike and I to shoot the breeze about life philosophy and the way things appeared to be to her. We spent hours at that pub, drinking overpriced Guinness and Irish stout and listening to funny stories about Greek life; it appears that the stereotypes portrayed in My Big Fat Greek Wedding were based in some truth, as most stereotypes often are. I was really glad to have met some cool people after a few days of hard travel, and they enjoyed us livening up an otherwise dead pub in the middle of the week. After what seemed to be an informal interview, we exchanged emails and they said that if I ever wanted a job in Athens, they could always use more young, energetic workers. I took this to heart, and stored it in the back of my mind for future consideration.

The train to Istanbul was to be sixteen hours. I boarded it at just past 10 PM and was expecting to get in at 4 PM the next day. The train was packed to overcapacity and there was no air conditioning, as usual. I did not even get a seat, and found myself standing next to the bathroom in the section between cars. After an hour of that, my feet got tired and decided to take the only seat afforded me. I opened the bathroom door, put the lid down, and took a seat. Every time someone had to use it, I got up, exited, waited for them to finish, and resumed my position as soon as they left. Needless to say the smells were ones I would not wish to visit the nostrils of my worst enemies. My only consolation was that I was next to the sink which provided me with water to dowse my hair, face, and arms in an attempt to keep my body temperature in check. I was low on drinking water so that faucet saved me through the wonderful process known as osmosis. Look it up.

As the train lumbered on, I did make some friends with some of the other people stuck in the in-between with me. A young girl began talking to me in broken English, and I do not know whether it is offensive or not for me to speak back in broken English as well, but I feel when communicating with a non-native speaker to talk in a way that they can understand without too much difficulty. From there two young guys jumped into the fray, and we began talking about, of all things, the NBA. Apparently basketball was a huge sport in Greece and they field one of the best teams in all of Europe. One of the guys was ex-military, and told me how Greece has a kind of compulsory military. Essentially, if a Greek national wishes to obtain a passport to leave the country, they must serve two years in the military. I thought that was pretty messed up, but it did go far in explaining why at one stop the train picked up an entire platoon of soldiers. This made me comment to him that the Greek military was very present in Greece. He asked me if it was in the same in America, and I told him that it was quite the contrary, that instead of the American military being in America, it was always somewhere else. He said this was a problem; I concurred.

The other guy was named Makis (Greek for Mike). Mike rolls his own cigarettes and during the course of the trip he must’ve rolled and smoked two packs worth. He was a nice guy though, especially after he went to the galley to obtain four plastic cups. As soon as he returned with them filled with ice, he produced a bottle Ouzo, the famous Greek liquor. After an “Opa!” or two, we had finished most of the bottle, and my throat was now burning from the Ouzo’s licorishy deliciousness.

I talked with Mike the most over the course of the first few hours, because his English, while still broken, was the best out of the three. He produced a laptop and introduced me to a few bands that he liked, ranging from crappy emo bands from San Diego (Black Heart Procession/Placebo) to a Spanish minstrel by the name of Manu Chau to Greek hip-hop/rap group Active Member. He was generally being a cool guy and even teaching me a few Greek phrases. After an hour longer of talking, he asked me if Mike and I would like to surf his couch for the day and then he would take me out to show me his town. We were about to pull up to the halfway point which was the city of Thessaloniki and my sleep schedule had been completely out of sync and I was feeling extremely tired. The offer was very tempting. I had a quick discussion with Mike about it and he agreed that it would be a good thing to postpone our arrival to Istanbul by a day and rest up a bit. At the Thessaloniki stop, we got off the train and followed Makis to an apartment he shared with his older brother. Mike crashed in the spare room while I took the couch in the living room. It was so good to lay down and go to sleep, and I was looking forward to that night when we would go out on the town and party with some Greeks!

Venice to Patras

It was just after 4 AM when the train pulled into Venice station. The entire place was deserted save for a night watchman who walked up and down the tracks, presumably to keep the Roma from stripping the place of everything of value. There was no information desk, no 24 hour McDonalds, nothing was open. I walked out to the street to see if there were any signs of life, and none could be found. It was the dead of night, and everything was still and silent. With no other choice afforded me, I went back into the train station and got cozy in a corner on the cold marble floor.

At this point in the trip my spirits had hit an all time low. I had surpassed the three month mark being outside the US, I had yet to get out of the melancholy that had been haunting me since the Fourth of July a few days prior. Mike too was not in particularly high spirits. During our night stay in Ljubljana, he was attacked by hundreds of bedbugs and had bites up and down all of his arms, legs, torso, and even a couple on his face. And now we were in Venice, with no place to go, and no idea where the port would be to catch our ferry to Greece.

The trains started running again at half past five, and I thought it would be good to get into the city and try to find more information about where to catch the boat. Shortly after arrival, and armed with vague directions from a hotel bellhop, I began to make my way through the wacky canals of Venice. Many people often boast about the beauty of Venice and it’s gondolas and how it is a very romantic city blahblahblah, but it is only a half truth. Yes the gondolas are pretty and the canals are novel for a sinking city, but all that standing water makes the town reek of rot. The smell is absolutely horrible, especially at the height of summer. It’s hard to be romantic with a smell like that. This was the only shot I got of it all, and I also got one of the Venetian sunrise:


After coming to a bus depot I was told to take a bus to its first stop and to get off and follow the signs to the port departure area. It seemed simple enough, except the signs were either non-existent or cryptic. I spent the next five hours walking up and down a stretch of highway along the waterfront trying to find the place, crossing through industrial sectors and even stopping into a workers’ café to have a bite, drink a beer, cool off, and re-center my chi. After winding back at the bus depot for the third time, I was at the point of catching a cab but instead sought directions again. This time, I got a more clear definition of where to go, and indeed found a road that was clearly marked. Although I had found the right way, I still wound up at the wrong place. Instead of finding the ferry line’s ticket office, I found it’s administration building. I then found out the ticket office and boat were on the other side of the wharf. Long story short (I know, too late), I did find the ticket office, secured my boarding pass, and after waiting in line for half an hour, boarded the ferry.

The ferry I was on was the first real boat I’d ever been on. My Eurail pass allowed me discounted access to the ship, and since it was the warm summer, the ship allowed people to camp out on the deck for a small fee instead of having to rent berths below deck. This appeared to be a popular option because when I got up to the deck nearly every square inch of it was covered with people laying down bedding and preparing for the voyage. I grabbed a piece of floor and started weighing my options. While it would cost me more for a berth beneath deck, the room came with it’s own personal bathroom including toilet and shower and it was air conditioned. These conditions seemed suitable to me, being filthy from the morning’s aimless wandering. After a brief discussion with Mike, we went to book our room. The shower immediately bettered my mood, and I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

The room did not have any portholes, so when I woke up feeling hungry I had figured it was around dinnertime. After all, the boat left the dock at about noon and I usually cannot sleep more than eight hours at a time. I went outside and it was dark out. No one was to be found in the bar areas or the restaurant or the game rooms. I went up on deck and found everyone asleep. Back in the bar, I tried to find a bartender, and couldn’t. I then spied a clock on the wall, and it read 2 AM. I had slept almost fourteen hours! Still hungry, I was able to find a vending machine and bought a sandwich. It tasted stale but it did the job.

The entire trip to Patras, Greece lasted about thirty-six hours. It was an uneventful thirty-six hours, spent mostly sleeping. Finally arriving in Patras, it felt ten times more humid here than in Venice. The sun was just setting over the Mediterranean, and it was bouncing beams off the water, making the waves glisten. The train stop was about 300 yards from the port, and was reached after a fifteen minute walk. The time was 8 PM. At the train station, I learned that the next train to Athens did not leave until 3 AM and would arrive shortly after 8. I was really becoming frustrated with the lack of train options and the late hours of their operation, not to the point of blackout rage, but pretty damn close. My first inclination was to find a market and secure some food, as I had eaten very little on the boat. After having done this, my next thought was to find a bar. Talking to the ticket counter lady, I was told that most bars within the area closed at 10. This meant that I would not have enough time to inebriate myself adequately to then wait another five hours for my train to arrive. I planted myself in a seat in the waiting area, ate cheese sandwiches, and dove into a book.

The train eventually arrived shortly after three in the morning. I boarded it and, as usual, it was crowded and hot. I was not able to get much sleep on it because I had accrued too much on the boat. The train went at a snail’s pace, and it angered me how cars were traveling much faster than it along parallel roads. I did arrive in Athens a little ahead of schedule, though I couldn’t for the life of my figure out how. On the way I took a picture of the sunrise.

Ljubljana

The train from Hungary to Slovenia was brief, in that it went a few stops outside of Budapest before it dead-ended in some random hamlet. I was told to board a bus. I had no idea whether the rail was under construction, was disabled, had an abandoned couch tossed on it that baffled the railway conductors, no idea. The bus took almost two hours to get to the Slovenian border where passport checks were conducted and I was allowed to board a new train. A couple hours later I arrived in Ljubljana, only four hours behind schedule. Along the way I took a picture of sunflower fields, the only scenery with color worth mentioning.


The fact that I was in Ljubljana in the first place was apart of a deviation in my original travel plans. Throughout the trip through Europe I had been seeking out information regarding Romania and Bulgaria because those were two countries I was to cross in order to get to Istanbul, my jump point to Asia. Unfortunately, none of the information I received about either was particularly positive. Bucharest was apparently infested with packs of wild dogs and hostile locals and Bulgaria was full of uninteresting farmland occupied by bumpkins who used horse-drawn car frames to get around. Essentially, both smacked of underdevelopment and I was not ready to experience poverty of that magnitude quite yet. Besides, I would have run into problems in Bulgaria because my Eurail pass was no good there.

Plan B consisted of backtracking to Venice and taking a ferry from there to Patras, Greece, and then continuing on the rail across Greece to get to Turkey. The ferry was covered in my Eurail pass so it seemed to make sense enough. Also, I was excited to see Greece, cradle of Western civilization.

I arrived in Ljubljana at a little past 8 PM, and made a beeline for my hostel. The receptionist was a funny lady who greeted me in song, and would go back in forth between talking to us and singing to us. We gave her our passports for check-in and she would sing the information aloud while she wrote it down. She got a kick out of singing Mike’s name. She was also a big fan of blueberries, as she was eating a large bowl of them. She offered me one; it tasted bitter; I declined a second offer. I was exhausted from the unusual day of travel, and sleep was priority #1.

The next day I headed to the train station to try and catch the first available train to Venice. Upon arriving, I discovered that the only available one was a night train that left at 8 PM that evening and did not arrive until 4 AM the next day. It annoyed me that there was such a lack of options, and that it took a train eight hours to travel 120 miles. I tried to look on the bright side in that it gave me an entire day to discover Slovenia’s capital. I checked my bags at the train station and set out to get some information. First stop: the public library.

The great thing about Ljubljana is that it is an incredibly small town. On a bicycle one could see the town in it’s entirety in a day. The public library was not more than 150 yards from the train station. It was here that I made inquiries as to where the parliament building was and anything else that would serve to put Ljubljana on the map. The parliament building, as it turned out, was one block down and around the corner, so I decided to check that out first.

Looking at it from the front it certainly did not look like a seat of government, but more like a modern conceptual art museum.


This description was also fitting for the public art displays across the street in the parking lot opposite the building.


The weather was beginning to turn fowl and the gray clouds began to produce rain. As I headed to the main square on the other side of the parliamentary parking lot, I caught a tourist information place out of the corner of my eye. I popped in and with my map and inquired as to where the bars were located. It was 2 PM and I still had time to kill before my train left, and since it was an overnighter I knew that intoxication was the only way to get me through it with as little pain as possible. I was directed towards a few tourist trap bars, because the lady behind the counter did not understand what a blue-collar workers’ bar was. I decided to try a different angle and asked her to show me where an Irish pub was. Irish pubs are always safe bets for appropriately priced beer and a friendly atmosphere, no matter the location.

When I arrived at the pub, I was happy to notice that it shared my name. The first pint of Guinness was sweet nectar to my lips, a perfect frothy foam with a shamrock drawn into it. I downed it fast, and ordered another while making myself comfortable. I made friends with the bartender, who enjoyed the company of a Patrick in his namesake’s pub. We talked for hours about American football and basketball. I spent a good amount of Euros in that pub, but it was well spent. I was warm, dry, buzzed, and the bartender even reminded me of the time so I wouldn’t miss my train. I stoically strolled back to the train station, and got comfortable in my seat. As the train crept out of station, I fell into a dream.

Budapest

A beautiful city on the Danube, Budapest is actually a tale of two cities: Buda and Pest. What that tale is I haven’t the foggiest, but from what I learned, Buda is the commercial center of the city while Pest is the residential.

On the train ride into Budapest I met an American on the train by the name of Vince. Vince was one of the more interesting characters I had met on the road, having opined on a political discussion Mike and I were having. After talking a little, we found out that Vince was a producer of pornography who did photo shoots out in Thailand for three websites he ran: two for Asian women and one for ladyboys. By ladyboys, I mean chicks with dicks. The story I will tell of Bangkok will clarify this distinction further. Anyway, in addition to producing porn, Vince occasionally made trips to Burma to acquire rubies that he would then smuggle into Russia and sell for a ridiculous sum. He was able to do this with the help of one of his girlfriends who lived in Moscow, who made her living selling knock-off art under the guise of being a renowned student from a top Israeli art school. Vince said he’d been on the road for eleven years, and only owned one house, a beach hut in the Philippines where he claimed to have three wives. He claimed his only vice in life was he was addicted to sex, and that he didn’t like to do it with condoms, and that even when he was requested to wear them, he would coat the inside with baby oil so that they would dissolve during the act. If there was ever an explanation for overpopulation, Vince was the indisputable answer. The guy probably had more STD’s and illegitimate children than James Bond. He then went on a random tangent about how after a heroin overdose in Pakistan he had a vision of attending the Hajj in Mecca, and spent the next three months learning Arabic so that he could do just that. As we pulled into Budapest, he said he needed a place to stay and that he would not mind splitting a cab with us to our hostel on the chance that they would have an open bed. I didn’t think I could stand to be around this creep show any longer, but I relented because his stories were so unbelievably funny that I couldn’t stand to lose the comic relief. That, and it saved me a couple bucks on cab fare which was better than figuring out the public transportation network as the sun set and the city became dark.

At the hostel, we were checked in by a nice girl from Finland. She was semi-cute, and I since she was the first Finn I’d ever met I looked forward to finding out more about her country and culture (in the end, the only interesting thing I found out about her was that her favorite song was "November Rain" by Guns 'N Roses). Unfortunately Vince could not secure a bed, but decided to stick around anyway. I spent the rest of that evening writing on my laptop in the common room, watching TV and just relaxing. By about midnight I turned in and Vince was still hanging out, even though he said he’d been searching for hostels online for almost three hours. I shrugged and went to bed.

The next morning I woke up early to be first in line for complimentary bread and jam and found Vince asleep on the couch. I only found this slightly strange, and ate my bread and jam in my dorm room. That day I went sightseeing and found the Hungarian Parliament.


In front of the parliament building was a square and there was a monument to the hundred or so protesters killed in the Hungarian uprising against Soviet rule in 1956.


After that I returned to my hostel I found Vince still on the couch, calling his Moscow girl on Skype and arranging a ruby run. At this point the guy was starting to give me the willies, and I quickly ran to my room and hid beneath the comfort of my sheets.

The next day, I went for a walk to St. Margaret’s island. It is an island located in the middle of the Danube River between Buda and Pest. It’s a rather large island and is mostly a park, though a water-theme park and resort hotel are also on the island. There also lie the remains of a monastery where St. Margaret lived. I believe she is the patron saint of Hungary or something. Here is a picture of her grave:

At the ruins of her monastery, I heard something thumping in the stone gravel that littered the ruins. Turning a corner, I found a youth doing flips off the wall.


On the walk home, not only did I capture a good image of St. Margaret’s island:


I also got a good shot of the Hungarian Parliament from across the Danube:


Instead of taking the metro, I wanted to walk back to the hostel. On the way, however, I ran into a blockade consisting of police in riot gear. I also noticed an abundance of police squad cars and paddy wagons in the area. I went as far as I could, literally up to the line of officers, and tried to peak around their sheer massiveness to see what was going on. Perhaps a VIP was in the area, or a bank robbery/hostage situation was in the works. Instead, I saw rainbow banners. In the distance I could make out a crowd of a couple hundred marching toward the main square waving rainbow banners. I thought this was novel, a gay pride parade in Budapest. However, the overwhelming police presence, I felt, was not warranted for this occasion. I had thought that maybe there was a threat against the parade by some neo-Nazis or something, and thus the police were their to protect the gay protesters. And then I started hearing the breaking of glass. As the crowd was nearing the square, the police were squaring off against them to keep them from entering. What was really happening was the parade was turning into mob, and they were throwing bottles at the police and breaking windows along the way. I then saw a police truck roll by with a 5-foot tall cattle guard on the front of it, heading towards the crowd. I believe it was meant to push the mob back, but I didn’t stick around to figure it out. I wanted to take a picture but was afraid one of the riot police would confiscate or worse, smash my camera, so I hurried back to my hostel, and found the Finnish girl watching the news. I asked her what the hell was going on, and she told me a riot was in progress. She also said that a few days prior the police chief of Budapest said that the parade was not allowed to convene on the main city square, and was ready to back that up with force. This struck me as the queerest (pardon the pun) situation I think I could have encountered. I witnessed my first-ever gay pride riot! I decided not to go out that night, hoping that things would be calmer the next day.

On the last full day in Budapest, I awoke to find Vince sleeping in the bunk above mine. This really perturbed me because a Brit had been occupying that bunk the night before, and had told me he was leaving at 6AM for a flight back to London. I surmised that as soon as he left, couch surfing Vince decided to steal his bunk. I didn’t want to talk to him, but he saw me and asked me the time, and what I was doing that day. I shrugged, and told him we were going to Heroes Square. He said cool; I left hastily.

Mike and I took the tram to Heroes Square, which features statues of Hungary’s finest patriots of the past. On the way, Mike and I ran into a precarious situation. While exiting the metro, we were stopped by a gaggle of transit authorities who demanded to see our tickets. Upon presenting them, they told us that we had not paid for the transfer between lines (something written on the back in the smallest print ever) and that we had to pay a fine. They told us we had to pay the equivalent of 30 Euro ($45) in Hungarian currency and that if we could not comply they would call the police and the fine would double. Since I was not carrying that much cash, I explained to them that I would need to visit an ATM. After taking down my AZ driver’s license info (I didn’t have my passport and it was my only form of ID), they gave me crummy directions to an ATM. Mike stayed behind while I ventured out. After ten minutes I was unsuccessful in finding an ATM, and, completely at a loss, I returned to the tram stop to find Mike steaming angry. I too was becoming very upset at the situation, and the heat and humidity was not helping. I told them in the harshest way possible that I could not find the ATM and that if they wanted to call the cops, they could go right on ahead because at that point I didn’t care if I had to spend the night in jail and go through deportation proceedings, I refused to pay them anything. The couple of transit officials stepped back, talked amongst themselves, and the woman stepped forward and said “Ok. No problem. You may go.”

What really pissed me off about that situation was that it was an obvious scam to rip us off, as many things did not add up. First of all, while we may have been in technical violation of some stupid transit law, a $45 fine seemed excessive, especially after we offered to go buy another ticket as a sign of good faith. Secondly, I did not understand why the fine would double if the cops were called. Thirdly, when writing down our information, they wrote it on the cardboard backing of their ticket book. Fourthly, Mike said that while I was away they shook down a British couple, did not issue a receipt, and one of the officials placed the money in a wallet pulled from his back pocket. And finally, they let us go after realizing we were unable and unwilling to pay them anything instead of calling the cops. I really tried not to let this experience mar my image of Budapest, as it really is a nice looking city, but as far as their transit authorities are concerned, they’re more crooked than a question mark.

Mike and I walked very quickly away from that tram stop, expecting them to call the cops on us anyway. We made it to Heroes Square, and it really is an impressive monument.



Exiting the square we were walking toward another tram stop, turned a corner, and bumped right into Vince. After a quick and awkward moment, I remembered telling him where we were going, and secretly cursed fate for bringing us together at this point in time. Mike and I looked at each other and nodded an understanding. We feigned fatigue as he talked of going to see some secret prison museum, and excused ourselves. The following morning we woke up extra early, and quietly made our exit. We were happy to have given Vince the slip, and that he did not invite himself along to Ljubljana.

Bratislava

In order to get to Bratislava, I had to cross the whole of Austria from Salzburg. The countryside is very beautiful, green, and full of cows. My Eurail pass did not go to Slovakia, so I had to do a quick train station switcheroo in Vienna in order to get to Bratislava. Luckily, the distance between Vienna and Bratislava is ~30 miles (making them the closest national capitals on the planet). I had not thought to stop in Vienna because the last time I was there all I saw was Freud’s house and a Hapsburg palace, neither of which were terribly exhilarating sights (though it was pretty cool to see Freud’s stogy collection and his coke bowl).

My reason for wanting to stay in Bratislava instead of Vienna was also because Slovakia has yet to join the Eurozone (they are set to join at the beginning of 2009). As such, I was under the impression that I would get a good exchange on my dollar which was depreciating in value every day since I left the States. However, the assumption was as incorrect as it had been in the Czech Republic. While I did get more volume for my dollar, everything cost about as much as it did in the US, so while it was comparatively better than the Eurozone, it afforded me little. The only thing I found cheap and in abundance was the beer, which is very understandable in any of the former Communist Eastern Bloc countries.

Upon entering the train station I was at a loss as it was after 6 PM and everything looked closed. I thought this problematic as I had no Slovak currency in which to use to get to my hostel. Also, the language was very hard for me to understand, being Slavic in origin. Luckily, after floundering for a bit, I caught a man going into what looked like a tourist information room. I caught him and asked if he exchanged money, and he said he did. After exchanging some Euro for Slovak koruny I asked him what the best way to get to my hostel would be, and he said by bus. He also told me that he would be taking the same bus home himself, and that if I followed him, he would show me the way.

On the bus ride into town, I questioned the man about Bratislava: stuff to see, things to do, bars to drink at, all the necessary questions. He told me that there really was not much to see in Bratislava, but assured me there were plenty of bars around. I asked him if he was excited about Slovakia switching over to the Euro, and he told me he stood to lose a chunk of his savings in the exchange, so I chose not to pursue that line of thought further. A few minutes before he exited the bus, he cautioned me about the women in Bratislava. “Watch out for the girls. They act nice, but they just want your money.” I said, “So they’re no different than other women anywhere else?” to which he replied, “You are a smart young man. Not me though, I learned the hard way.” and he lifted his left hand to show me a wedding ring. As horrible as that sounds, it made me laugh a lot inside.

I eventually did arrive to my hostel, which was nothing special. The place, at the time of my arrival, seemed to have an abundance of drunk and obnoxious youngsters from the island of Great Britain, so I avoided them like the group of uptight and pretentious lepers that they are.
There really were no great sights to see in Bratislava. Most of the buildings are still drab and smack of the old Communist regime. It is a wonder for me why artists do not attack the city’s walls with buckets of colorful paint, but perhaps that will be a task for the younger generation that has been brought up in the comforts of free thought and expression. I did happen to run into a pair of odd statues that happened to stick out while walking down what was, I assumed, the “bustling” part of town. One was a statue of a man sticking out of a manhole. I have no idea why this thing was made, but just so people would take notice, either for tourist reasons or to simply not trip over the thing, they had a special traffic sign dedicated to it. The second one was a happy gent with a top hat that I had some fun posing with. Here are both manhole guy and top hat man:



Here I am in front of the Danube:


Three days in Bratislava turned out to drag ad infinitum. The drabness of the place could hardly be compensated for, even after consecutive nights of beer binges. The next stop was Budapest, and in order to get there I had to cross back into Austria and hop back on Eurail trains. Along the way, I saw a military train convoy with several tanks loaded onto flatbeds traveling along a parallel track. This perplexed me as I had not heard of Slovakia having any military worth mentioning, and I especially wondered where this convoy was heading. Had I seen such a tank convoy in Germany, it would have been easy to assume that they were probably heading for Poland.

Salzburg

Beautiful Salzburg, nestled up against the Austrian portion of the Swiss Alps. This town is small, but a must for any traveler across Europe. It’s most famous son was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but what really put it on the map was its setting for the film adaptation of the musical “The Sound of Music”.


I do not believe that I can stress the importance of that movie enough. It really did depict Salzburg as it was, a quiet mountain town. It still is, to this day, but it cannot escape its claim to tinsel town success. I knew this to be true as soon as I checked into my hostel, as the girl working behind the desk boastfully informed that in the common room they showed The Sound of Music movie on the large flat screen TV every night at 8 PM. It made me think that if I worked at this hostel I would want to kill myself by the end of the first week. However, since I have not seen the entire movie from start to finish, and have only come accustomed to random references made about it on numerous other television sitcoms, I decided that it would at least count as my “cultural thing to do” for the day. After a nap, I went up to the common room, bottle of Jager in hand, and settled down to watch the movie. Sure enough, the opening credits rolled, and the entire room blasted, in perfect surround sound, the opening line “THE HILLS ARE FILLED WITH THE SOUND OF MUSIC!” It was then and there that I decided for the rest of the movie that I would take a pull of Jager for every song, that I would drink until Julie Andrews looked as good as she sounded. Little did I know that there were well over 20 songs in the movie and that I did not have enough Jager to accomplish the task at hand. I believe I finished the rest of the bottle by the fifth song. Damn you Rogers and Hammerstein!

For a film made in the 1950’s, it had some pretty subtle adult humor to it for a Disney family movie that I got a good laugh out of. The Max character was by far the funniest. I felt the movie progressed along rather well until the mood was ruined by the biggest party crashers in history: the Nazis. Having never seen the film or play before, this came as an interesting twist to me. The feeling I got was similar to the one I got watching the movie Apocalypto: A man, running for his life because he is being chased by a pissed off group of Mayan man-hunters hell-bent on either killing him or dragging him back to the temple to have his heart ripped out of his chest for religious purposes, makes it down to a beachhead, and just when you think it’s all over and things couldn’t get any worse for the poor chap, the Spanish conquistadors show up. That’s the feeling I’m talking about. Anyway, the movie wrapped up rather nicely with the von Trapp family escaping to the sanctity of ever-neutral Switzerland. I was baffled. The hero that saved the day was Swiss neutrality. As the closing credits, rolled, I felt robbed of life that I would never get back, and I was overcome by an insane urge to consume strong drink.

The next day I ventured to a local brewery I had visited before on a family trip 5 years prior. It was the Stiegl brewery, and was the most famous brewer in all of Austria. I vaguely remember the tour as a youth, but it came back to me almost instantly the moment I approached the building. I bought my ticket and began the tour. It started in the basement where all the grains were kept and it walked through all the necessary components that go into making beer. The most interested thing I found was a picture of a cellular organism that is used to brew hefeweizen.



The next floor was a cooper's shop. It was here that barrels for storing the beer was made. Here is the largest of the barrels:


Further on, there was another section where the bottling took place. I was amazed that there was a beer-ymid of bottles. Here it is:


I also found a wonderful display on other uses of beer other than consumption. This one, entitled “Beer Bath” struck me as the most ingenious thing I had ever heard of.


Finally, at the end of the tour, I received two samples of beer. I chose a dark beer and a regular beer, each equally tasty and satisfactory. Since the price was not too great, I decided to order a couple mugs, including one Radler. Here I am enjoying a fine brew:


Getting home was an interesting experience. Tipsy as I was, I was able to communicate with the bus driver where I needed to be let off, and I promptly fell asleep as soon as I sat down. I was prodded awake by the bus driver, and let off. It was not until later that I realized the bus stopped specifically in front the street my hostel was located down, even though there was no bus stop at this particular spot. I grabbed my bags and headed for the train station, and promptly resumed my sleep as soon as I situated myself on the train to Vienna.