Buckatürk?

At the beginning of the Nineties, we used to play a quite popular board game: Trivial Pursuit.

I remember a day, playing in Ally's kitchen, when the question « Who is the father of all turks? » panicked most of us. And then somebody — with the beginning of a smile sprouting from his lips — said this single word: « Atatürk? »

Many years passed, and eventually I have an answer for that: reincarnation!



Further proofs of this theory here.

A day in a words collector's life

Sometimes it is hard to be a language junkie.

You try to catch up with all the things you hear in every new place you're visiting, but it is getting harder and harder, when you are still elaborating sentences from your last country.


I want to post here a few snippets from the last couple of months.

Probably that will require a few of googling from you, but I never said it would be easy :-)

There you go!

Ty srdce v srdci mém — ty srdce v srdci všech
Bezbřehý živote, co ve mně máš svůj břeh.

« Reading a poem in translation, » wrote Bialek, « is like kissing a woman through a veil »

Güzele bakmak sevaptır

Plus a random list of words:

• Mierenneuker (Dutch)


• Χελιδόνια (Greek)


• Çiçek (Turkish)


• Salamati (Farsi)


• Terviseks (Estonian)


• НаЗдраве (Bulgarian)


• Noroc (Rumanian)


• Megszentségteleníthetetlensegeskedéseitekést (Hungarian)

Have fun :-)

—
Oh, I have updated this post, and you can find new photos here.

Treviso, close to Venice #2

This happened actually on September 3rd, at my arrival in Samos. I'm posting it today because I don't want to forget it!

It's a dialog between a New Zealand guy (working for the port tourist agencies) and me.

—Where are you from?
—Italy.
—Oh, nice! I love Italy!
—Yep!
—Is Nice in Italy or in France?
—In France.
—And Florence? And Venice? I loved that area, but I was a little drunk, so I can't remember if it was France or Italy!
—…

I smiled, skipped the Treviso-close-to-Venice part, and went to the agency next door.

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.

Language crossing in the Balkans

I've just realised that — so far — I've been in four countries, spanning four language families (Finno-Ugric / Romance / Slavic / Greek) and three different alphabets in a row!

No surprise that I feel so confused …

A note to our fellows western travellers: I'm sorry, but you can't beat the Old Continent!

And now… for something completely different:

Μέγας Αλέξανδρος

I have a list of things to do in Thessaloniki:

1. go to the Ano Poli


2. watch the sunset from the church with the peafowls


3. watch the sunset from the Λεωφόρος Νίκης


4. have a giros at Snoopy's

So far, I did #1 and #3, and I'm afraid that #4 will remain unchecked, because good ol' Snoopy seems to have moved from the waterfront :-(



I'm now in a bar on Leoforos Nikis, waiting to join a CSers mini-meeting, sipping the obligatory omnipresent frappé (technically, mine is a frappé skéto megála).

Take your time

I'm here in Varna since a week, so I can say that I know the centre very well — even if I think I've spent more time on the beach, anyway.

Back in my days we used to do some kind of brute-force tourism, seeing 20 cities in a fortnight.

But now I just prefer to stay more time in the same place, walk slowly down the roads, look at the people and the less important things, small shops, hidden corners.


I just sit in a cafe with my notebook or a book, observing the flowing of everyday life. And it's also nice to meet the same people in the same places, as we were neighbours.

Maybe the whole point of doing such a long trip is for me that I'll learn more from people than from monuments.

People from Treviso maybe will appreciate this photo of the street were I live in Varna.

Le bulgare hanno gli occhi grandi come il mare

After a long bus trip from Bucharest, I eventually arrive to Constanţa. The trip includes a stop for the driver's lunch in some kind of spaghetti-western-saloon in the middle of nowhere (see photo).

Once at the train station (see photo), the "Quest For Useful Info" begins.



It seems that people working at information desks only know a few words in English: the numbers (for the prices) and "I don't know" (for everything else). Brilliant! No time wasting whatsoever.

Thus I ask somebody else for the bus station — that is just in the next block, as miss "I don't know" is probably aware of — and head for the Turkish agency: if you go to İstanbul you have to pass through Varna, don't you?

The man at the counter luckily speaks both languages: Turkish and Rumanian, but somehow I manage to eventually get my ticket to Varna.

And after a long bus trip from Constanţa, I eventually arrive to Varna.

Time travelling in the wild west

On the train from budapest to Sighişoara, trying to sleep — with no success at all — I look over the window every now and then. I can assure you that Romania looks like you travelled in time kind of a century. In the past!

My camera battery is empty so I can't take pictures, thus you somehow has to believe me.

Apart of breath-taking landscapes — like moving 19th-century paintings — my attention is captured by farm workers.


An elder man is picking up with his hands the hay he just cut using a sickle. The most used transport — at least in Transilvania — seems to be the horse-driven cart, and crossing the countryside your sight may stumble upon semi-demolished warehouses, 18th-century houses and haylofts, women wearing traditional costumes for their daily life as well as some luxury-SUV waiting side by side with a horse cart at the rail-road crossing.

This really is the wild-west of Europe.


I'm now writing this notes sitting in front of my 0.71 EUR half liter of Ciuc beer (pronounced as in Italian) in a small deserted cafe in Braşov, listening to traditional music.

And no, I'm not in the 3rd stage cantos regionales!

Oh, and by the way, don't ask me about Sighişoara, because — not having sleeped all night — I fell asleep just during my station stop, proceeding happily to Braşov!

Notes to self

1. always have the camera batteries fully charged.


2. be aware of time-zone changing when setting the alarm to your scheduled train stop.


3. don't try to write about farm life, hay and the like, because you don't know this kind of words in English!

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 :-)