Strange things happen

Jerusalem, 7:45 AM

Sometimes the luck in finding a ride leads to unexpected consequences. I'll meet my host after 6 PM. Mmh, that means ten hours roaming in Jerusalem. OK, let's find a place to drop the backpack and then a nice place to have breakfast!

But this is Israel: you cannot drop your luggage anywhere. I mean it. The police will come and blow your backpack just before you realise that it is raining underwear. Your underwear!

After one hour or so, I recognise a desperate glance coming from under a huge backpack: another CouchSurfer is facing the no-drop feature of this place! We decide to have a breakfast in the old city while looking for a solution.

Walking the Holy City. The holiest place on Earth — at least for a handful of different religions.

We feel the holiness raising as we approach the old city, in terms of amount of religious symbols on sale: here you can buy any kind of sacred item, ranging from Coptic Orthodox necklaces to FC Barcelona t-shirts! (I am pretty sure that there were also gondola-lamps somewhere, but to actually find it would be too depressing!)

Climbing the Via Dolorosa carrying a heavy burden makes you think all sort of strange things …

But eventually we sit on a nice café and with great relief for my soul, the morning starts looking kind of familiar :-)

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Photos of Jerusalem here.

Hitch hiking in the desert

My two days in Tel Aviv are fast and intense. After the first night clubbing I found myself crashed in somebody else's couch with my original host and another friend. The second day I awake in a couch full of sand without any clue. But for some reason everybody I meet seems to remember me from the beach party in the preceding night. I tend to associate this behaviour with the social capabilities of the arak :-)

Anyway, a series of coincidences — typical of the hospitality-exchange world — lead me on the next day to a small kibbutz on the Dead sea (the relevant photos are here).

But the amazing discovery is that you can easily hitch hike to almost every place in Israel! You just wait in a some big junction — even in the middle of the desert! (Check the picture and count the cars on sight :-)

And you will realise soon that all class of people can pick you up: from the young religious to the SUV-family to the hippie couple in a dark green Punto (by the way, a big thank you goes to the Indian girl who translated the hindi inscriptions on my yellow bag).

So I grab my casetta and I start flashing the drivers approaching my spot with big smiles, and in virtually no-time I found myself in front of the walls of Jerusalem!

Istanbul as it once was

After a couple of hours in Ayvalık walking up and down with my backpack — that is a bit heavier every day — I decide to just go to İstanbul and from there to the next stop.

Oh, by the way, you should be aware that in Turkey long distance buses stop during the trip for washing (see photo), so you can happily wait outside thinking about how different things can be in different places :-)

But, alas! things are not always as you wish: ten hours of bus and once in İstanbul, rain. And then rain, and cold, and rain … if you lived in Treviso you know what I mean.


So I go to a travel agency, with Cappadocia in mind. And then … Ramazan Bayram! Yes, a very important holiday in Islamic countries. Like all of the buses booked for the whole week. Me not happy :-(

But a great city always reserves you more options, and mine is discover remains of the old Ottoman city in between modern buildings. Here you have some sample, mostly in the Kadıköy district.

After the sightseeing I went to a random travel agency, and I bought the first ticket for Whatever.

That's in the south :-)

Update

Thanks to Andrea, this post has new(?) photos.

Back to kebap!

I'm back to Turkey, and hungry: sewing this flags to my backpack is a very tiring task!

There is the good old kebap, but Turkish food has many many options, so I tried to taste more. Here you have a small gallery, ranging from the afore mentioned Mr. K to more esoteric possibilities: a thing with eggs inside — the name will be posted as soon as I'll remember it — that you can't actually see because my American friend put all of the bread into it (for saving time?).

A portion of chicken with vegetables and rice — with the evil green-peppers as a side dish —; a carefully prepared in nouvelle cuisine style plate of Köfte with cheese.

But my favourite so far is this home-made dinner: mushroom soup, cooked and fresh vegetables, stuffed peppers, yoghurt and dates!

Of course, if you are looking for something a little more unusual, you can pay a visit to this bar at Izmir bus station:

Blue is my favourite colour …

… as in sky and sea!

The mighty SummerCamp in beautiful Naxos (Paros, Sexos) ended, and I moved my casetta to Syros, but it was only for having a real sleep — after a week between no-sleeping and sleeping-on-the-floor — and for doing the laundry.

After that was Samos! Due to the lack of CSers there, I opted for an hotel, made sure it had an internet connection, rented a small motorbike and went for the wild-and-deserted-beaches tour.

The results are posted here below :-)

For some reason the blue in Greece seems bluer than elsewhere, thus I'm planning a little come-back on the next week.

More photos of Samos here.

Stay tuned for more blue!

Greece, fifteen years after

I'm on the boat to Samos, trying to catch up with my thoughts and feelings after a couple of weeks lived with my whole body and soul.

What I feel now is a bit of loneliness — the least one could expect after such an intense social activity. But it is a good opportunity for recovering energies and preparing the Turkey trip. And update the blog :-)

I'm sorry, but I think that this post will be appreciated — almost — only by few of you, namely the participants of the 1993 El Harén mission.



Walking the same streets after 15 years make me feel like as no time had passed — although it was the other century — and at the same time I know that I'm a completely different person (eg: I don't feel anymore the urge of climbing that headless statue, yet I can't stop laughing my a** off remembering the museum guard getting mad at us!)

And next came Naxos (Paros, Sexos).

And that wind (I still have sand in my mouth after three days). So I had to take this photos also, although the lack of our friends makes me a bit melancholic.

This is how we looked fifteen years ago!

This hug is for you, my friends.

You can find more photos of Greece here.

Treviso, close to Venice

After the first two nights in Budapest I had to change host. After a while that I was moving my casetta all around Budapest, I decided to just stop, have a beer, and — with a bit of luck — connect to some wireless connection waiting for my host to come home.

So, once arrived in my new host area, I chose a nice-looking bar. I asked the bartender about a wireless connection and she pointed me to the bar on the other side of the street. But, having been the bartender so nice to me, I just moved on the seat that were closer to that other bar, opened my laptop and checked the signal: it was fairly good.


After a while the other bartender noticed my computer, and smiled telling me that he has one too. We started the usual chat — where are you from, this is your first time in Budapest, how long you'll stay here, and so on — but when I was going with my good old « Treviso … — three seconds pause, just in case — … close to Venice » he smiled and said: « Ah, Treviso, I've been there! »

I almost fell off the chair, and asked more about it. It sorted out that fifteen years ago he and his wife used to go to Treviso to buy leather jackets, that in Hungary were too expensive!

When you travel alone you get more chances of knowing interesting people. The chances of getting bored to deeath are also high, but let's look at the silver lining :-)