Istanbul, Constantinople, no Istanbul, no Constantinople

Arriving in Istanbul, it was obvious that we had not seen anything like it. First of all and most obviously the buildings, and not just the famous ones, were unique. Also, and not in any way less unique, there was the traffic. There is something special about Istanbul traffic, also something that we havent seen before. There seems to be no rules regarding anything on the road be it other cars, pedestrians or animals. We made it through the worst of the traffic to the inner part of Istanbul called Sultanahmet, which is full of narrow, cobbled streets. It wasnt easy, since Turkey does not understand the meaning of the word "street sign". After driving a circuit of Sultanahmet 3 times, we eventually found our hotel, no thanks to a local who, when we were one street away pointed us in the wrong direction, thankyou. Walking in Istanbul is almost as hazardous as driving, as it seems everyone thinks they have the right to be on the road, cars, horses, buses and trucks alike. Luckily our hotel was not too far away from the major sights of the city and, thankfully, a pedestrian zone, although for the few cars that almost ran us over they were apparantly not informed of the pedestrians only rule. The major sights are mostly located in the same small area and they do not disappoint. The first sight we visited was the Aya Sofia, or Haghia Sofia. It is an amazing building which when you find out it is around 1500 years old only adds to the amazement. Inside it does not disappoint either, with frescoes from the original Christian church as well as artifacts from the Islamic mosque that it because in the 1400's when Constantinople fell. I dont believe that I can describe the place with any justice so I think I will let the pictures be the adjectives.
Next on the list is the Blue Mosque, which is directly opposite the Aya Sofia and look slightly similar, although oddly not blue. Outside it is truly magnificent, but inside it was slightly disappoiting, compared with the building across the square. It is still a working mosque and cannot be entered by tourists during the 5 times a day prayers. On that note, I was intrigued to find out that the call to prayers are now delivered through a P.A system rather than sung in person from the balcony of a minaret. Progress.
Around the corner from these two places of worship is the Archaelogical museum which is full of things that are usually found in a museum, but with more of an middle eastern flair. We spent a good afternoon wandering the halls viewing exhibits from Sumerian, Mesopotamian, Arabic, Roman, Byzantine, Assyrian and other long gone civilisations found in the middle east. It is a hugely interesting place but you do leave with your head full and a feeling of historical burnout.
One of the really cool things about Istanbul is that you can have lunch in Europe and dinner in Asia which we of course did. We took the ferry across the Bosphorous to the Asian side, which in itself is an adventure and as the sun goes down there is a great view fo the city. People in Istanbul dont think that trivial details like waiting for the boat to stop or actually to reach the pier should stop you from getting on or indeed off. We found a typical Turkish Lokanta, a small self-service type of restaurant that was off the tourist trail. There are around eight dishes available and the menu changes depending on what is in season. The chef is the boss and he had a character all of his own. The food was not too bad and was definitely unique.
One of the things Istanbul is famous for is carpets and the bazaar they are sold at. There are two well known bazaars in Istanbul, the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar contains carpet shops, t-shirt shops, jewellery shops and almost any other kind of shop you can think of. Although it is diverse it was also a little disenchanting. It didnt quite live up to the expectiations I had for it, still it was interesting and an experience to have someone try to sell us a carpet. The Spice Bazaar was another matter. It was vibrant and had the exotic aroma that I was expecting if slightly less pungent and concentrated than I though it would be. The colours were dynamic and the activity bee-like given that it is still used by people to buy spices aswell as a tourist attraction.
We decided that there is too much to do in Istanbul and we definitely need to come back. Next stop on the road is Canakkale and the Gallipoli battlefields.

92

We arrived at the Bulgaria-Turkey border at just after midday. We brought food and drink expecting to be waiting for quite a while. When we got there it would seem that the way to the actual border control area has been moved because the signs pointed us to a road that had many, many trucks on it, pointed straight at us. Clearly this was not the way in. after a few u-turns and a few more u-turns we eventually made it to the border control area proper, only to find it just like all the other borders we have come across, empty. The cheery Bulgarian official checked our passports in about 30 seconds, no problems. On to the Turkish side. We didn’t have visas since the information we had said we could buy them at the border. Following some tentative slow driving, not quite knowing where we should be going and being a little intimidated by the lack of traffic (maybe everyone else knows something we don’t) we came to the first booth. Handing over our passports the guy asked “where are your visas?” visions of Midnight Express come into my head. We say we don’t have any, “oh….. 92” he replied. Ok, it cost 92, but where do we get them? “Yes, yes, 92” emphasised with the number 92 written on a piece of paper. Waved on to the next booth marked ‘Customs’ where this guy said we needed to get the visa first, then see the guy in the first booth again. He also said 92and said if we park off to the side we can walk to get the visa. We parked the car and went in search of the visa office. There were two offices in a large building next to the many rows of booths outside (only one of which was operational). We went in one building and managed to find someone who spoke a little English to help us. “Yes, visa. Outside. 92” Ok. We have established for the third time that is cost 92 but we are still nowhere closer to finding out where to get it. The office in the building next door had the police in it, maybe they know. Walking down a corridor with glass walled office cubicles, we found one that announced itself as “Passport Office”. This sounds a little more likely. Stepping into the room, the smell of sweat and manliness was like a wall you had to walk through. It smelled like what I would imagine Bargearse’s office to smell like, or even what a Turkish police office with six officers, five other men and an old woman to smell like. We waited for about 10 minutes for the one officer who was designated to work (the others were quite obviously on a break and gave the ‘don’t even think about asking me something’ look) to finish what he was doing. Finally I ask about the visa. “yes, 92” was the answer. Ok, but where? “booth number 92 outside”! Of course, they weren’t all telling me it cost 92, but to go to booth number 92, which as it turns out, we walked straight past already. Approaching booth 92, it appeared as if no one was there, but as we got closer we could see a T.V on inside. When we reached the window, there was an older man asleep on a couch. Clearly they don’t get too many visa requests at this border crossing. He didn’t look too thrilled that we woke him up to do his job. 60 Euro’s later and we had our visas. After that the rest was problematic and only took another 10 minutes, most of that waiting for the three or four cars to go through first. The last check was ‘baggage control’ which consisted of looking at the car, then stamping the passport. He did seem confused that the car is French and I was using a British Passport, if only he could detect an Australian accent. There was one more booth about 100m away that was more of a ‘hello’ booth since they said hello then opened the barrier and there before us was the highway to Istanbul. If this is the worst border crossing I will be happy, the whole thing taking about 45 minutes from start to finish.
Of course at borders they frown upon the taking of pictures, but there was one we managed to get, which is of a mosque on the Turkish sid of the border control. This is our first image of Turkey.

The three B's

Brasov, Bran and Bucharest, all firmly on Romania's tourist route. Brasov is a beautiful small old town with Saxon heritage. It has a large old town square and two rather mundane towers that the locals are supremely proud of, one called the White Tower and one the Black Tower, confusing since they are both built from beige stone. They call them towers but they really resemble giant lego blocks. The town is nestled in a vally with a large hill on one side covered in trees. At the top of this hill is a fortress/castle that has a cable car to go up, or as one local put it "you can walk if you have half a day spare". Three quarters of the way up the hill, jutting out of the trees is a 'BRASOV' sign remeniscent of the Hollywood sign in L.A. As one older resident eloquently put it "do they think Im so old I dont remember where I live?". Brasov looked just as god at night as it did during the day, with most of the town under lights, including the 'BRASOV' sign. We only spent one night in Brasov which some would consider not enough but we have places to be so it is on to Bucharest.
On the way there is a touristic place called Bran which is famous for one reason, Dracula. It was the castle here that Bram Stoker based his novel so we thought it was worth a visit on the way to Bucharest. We were greeted by streets lined with stalls selling all sorts of trinkets and other things you dont need. They certainly saw the tourist coming. So did the castle, it was another case of 'gee, we are charging a lot to let people in, I guess we should put some stuff in the castle'. Overrated is an apt description and definitely not worth the rather high cost of admission, but they need to pay the three guards who checked our tickets, two of which were metres apart. My favourite was the plaque alerting us to the fact that we are in a "Hallway". There were some good parts to the castle, the old shields with insignia on them were quite nice, although it would have been better if they werent made from aluminium. I was looking forward to getting a photo of the whole castle but there really isnt a convenient place to take one that doesnt have a shop with Dracula dolls in it. Incidentally, Dracula the fictional character is from Transilvania, but the real life person people associate with Dracula, Vlad Tepes is from Wallachia which is another province and until recently (200 years or so) wasnt technically a part of Romania. Still, it is an interesting story and as the saying goes 'dont let the truth get in the way of a good story'.
We left Brasov for Bucharest which was only a few hours away and also a whole world away. Since we arrived in Romania we have dealt with a mosly rural country, even the towns arent what you would call busy. Bucharest is the commercial centre of the country and a completely different story. Just driving into the city we could see the difference. The monuments were so much bigger (a bigger version of the Arc de Triomphe), the buildings bigger and the thing you most notice, the traffic was bigger. How to describe Bucharest traffic? Insane, chaotic, fluent, effervescent? Maybe that is a good way to decribe it, imagine a glass of lemonade with the bubbles being the cars and you are somewhere close. On our travels, people have described Bucharest for us and not really painted it in a great light, saying it is a little dull and communistic. Well, they were right. It actually reminded me of New York, with the traffic and wide streets, tall office buildings but without the attitude. We saw some of the sights of the city, most of which seem transplanted, engineered for a specific purpose, which of course they were. Ceausescu, to my mind, wasa little jealous of the USSR and was like a little brother trying to show off what he had done. He didnt do it the right way though, starving the country by selling off all its food to pay for his construction, one of which, the Presidential Palace, is the second largest building in the world behind the Pentagon. It didnt work though, he and his wife were executed during a riot, or revolution I guess it would be (it depends on who wins, history is written by the winners) on Christmas day no less.
The next stop for us is Bulgaria, another country that has the impression of being shrowded in mystery, mostly because no one really knows anything about it.

Northern Romania

After leaving Krakow we continued south. We spent one night in a sleepy village called Zdiar in eastern Slovakia which had stunning views, right from the hostel. It was nestled on the edge of a mountain, with ski runs on one side and cows grazing on the other. A place to lose yourself for a week for sure. But we were on the move and we skipped through northern Hungary to get to Romania. When we got to the border we found something that we had not yet seen. People. There were actual guards at this border and they wanted to see our passports. Get with the times Romania, checking passports is so last decade. This was our 14th border crossing and the first time anyone had looked at our passports. No problems and on we went. Immediately it was evident we were in a different world. Within 2 minutes we had seen our first horse and cart, the first of many. We were on our way to Maramures, an area near the Ukraine border. We had to drive through some mountains and as we got closer, so did the weather. It began to rain, and rain quite heavily. The only time the rain stopped was over the mountains where it was replaced with fog, and a real pea souper it was too. Its the worst/best fog Ive ever seen. We arrived at our hostel late in the evening and we were greated with warm smiles and dinner. It was the beginning of three awesome days were we felt like family not paying guests. There wasnt a huge amount to do in the area, so we went on a daytrip drive. There is a cemetery which has painted graves, painted with murals of details about the persons life. There was a David Hasselhof in Knight Rider looking one, complete with car, there were a couple of butcher pictures and some that depict a moment in a persons life that was memorable. It is a colourful cemetery and it had more than a few visitors, odd for a small village on the Ukraine/Romania border. Back at the guesthouse, we received dinner every night, expertly cooked by the owners, serving real traditional Romanian food. I cant say enough about this place.
From there we moved on to Suceava near the Moldovan border. Suceava itself is rather dreary, especially in the rain that seemed to have followed us. There are some very nice monasteries in the area though, famous for being painted. They were a short drive away and there are three main ones, of which we saw two, Suceavita and Moldovita. They are painted with Biblical scenes and some other types of scenes, one notable one is Santa Claus depicted as the exorcist. To explain, the real St. Nicholas was supposed to be able to cast out demons in actual exorcisms. It was interesting that we needed an extra fee to take photos, well, we were supposed to have one, each. In reality, at one monastery we didnt pay at all, and the other we only got one and no one complained. There was also a sign inside the monastery that photos were not allowed at all. Given that there was only a nun at the entry, flash off and silent mode on, we have photos of the inside. Was it worth it? Decide for yourselves.
From Suceava we will go south, to Bucharest with a stop in Brasov, Dracula country.