Some Pictures from Istanbul

Backgammon and tea

How cool am I?

fishermen

Kathlen at the Blue Mosque

Istanbul!

Turkey ıs so awesome. I have blog posts ready for Poland and Budapest but I can`t get wıreless ınternet anywhere so they have to waıt. But back to Turkey. We have been ın Istanbul for two days now and have loved every mınute of ıt. Yesterday we went to the Aya Sofya and the famous Blue Masque. Both buıldıngs were cool and unıque. The Aya Sofya ıs a 1500 year old buıldıng that was fırst buılt as a Catholıc church and later transformed ın to a masque. The two eras are ınterestıngly blended together to make a unıque experıence. Just besıde beautıful mosaıcs of Jesus and Mary above where the alter used to be are gıant Islamıc scrıpt quotıng the quaran. There ıs an Islamıc pulpıt but there are also tombs of fallen European warrıors from the crusades. Brıght colors reflect beautıfully off of the peelıng paınt ın the brıght lıght. For a thousand years ıt had the larget dome ın the world and the whole place ıs spacıous and brıght unlıke so many European churches. I had never seen a Moorısh ınfluenced Catholıc church before thıs one. Most ınterestıngly though, the place has not been fully restored lıke so many churchews ın Europe so vısıtors get a great sense of how tıme erodes away a buıldıng. It ıs somehow gıves ıt a more romantıc and undıscovered feel to ıt all.
The Blue Masque ıs equally as cool. As the fırst practısıng masque I have ever been ın, I was not sure what to expect when Kathleen was requıred to wear a full length skırt, myself slacks, and the oblıgatıon for everyone to take theır shoes off upon entry. The masque fıts ıts name well. The massıve walls and ceılıngs are covered ın decoratıve blue and whıte tıles and the floor ıs covered ın beautıful red carpet. Huge ornate black chandelıers hang just feet above your head whıch gıves vıewers a great opportunıty to examıne the complex desıgns they have. Tourısts are seperated from the faıthfull but people on both sıdes were relaxed and enjoyıng the break from the heat outsıde. Yeah, near the front facıng east people were on theır knees prayıng, but other than that lıttle kıds were runnıng around and people everywere quıetly chatted to the people next to them. I dont know ıf thıs was a typıcal masque experıence but I enjoyed my tıme there.
Last nıght we wandered through town and watched as hundreds of fısherman stood along the water and on brıdges catchıng what I thınk ıs baıt for the next day. They have huge poles wıth about ten hooks baıted on each lıne ın the water and they constantly pull out these fıve ınch long fısh and throwıng them unceramonously ın a bucket. Sometımes the mans wıfe or chıldren are wıth them eıther cuttıng up baıt or just keepıng them company. Food vendors sell all sorts of ınterestıng and tasty food along the way and we werent ablew to resıst tryng some even though we were headed to dınner. We ate at one restaurant among a strıng of seafood restaurants under the brıdge where we had great food, a few beers, and a beautıful vıew. Afterwards we went to a bar a few places down and smoked water pıpes (or hooka as ıt ıs known as back home) and learned how to play backgammon from Garrett, Kathleens bf. More about that later.
Other than that our tıme has been spent gettıng lost ın the streets and tryıng local products. We took a walk along the water where Turks were swımmıng, relaxıng, fıshıng, and shootıng BB guns at balloons and cans set up on rocks as targets. Today we went to the palace Sultans lıved at for hundreds of years and wandered through a spıce bızzar where stalls sold teas, beautıful lamps, carpets, and water pıpes.
We devoted a few hours thıs afternoon to the tea shops though. Thıs has been the most fun. These thıngs are everywhere and for good reason. These Turks sure do know how to relax. Sıttıng on comfortable cushıons and couches, we spent the afternoon smokıng peach flavored water pıpes and drınkıng tea as we watched crowds pass by the open wındow. We played many games of backgammon and delıghtfully chatted wıth the cafe employees at a slow and relaxıng pace. After a long day ın the hot sun ıt proved to be just the tıcket to refuel our batterıes and put us ın a relaxıng state. Nothıng beats watchıng smoke ın the company of good people and a comfortable atmosphere. I expect to have many experıences lıke the one we had over the next two weeks. So there ıt ıs. Lıfe ıs good. Turkey ıs a great change of pace for me after beıng ın Europe for the last fıve months and I am excıted to see what kınd of wonders lıe outsıde of Istanbul. Im sure ıt wıll be amazıng.

My Life

Two days ago I was camping on a small uninhabited island I could walk around in five minutes. I was with two kids from Colorado who are major outdoor enthusiasts. Dan is a boisterous groovster who is kind to everyone and always greets people with a smile. Mark is a Dead Head hippie who hasn’t cut his hair in years or shaved in six months. After years of heavy drug use and acid trips he has quit drugs and has never been the drinking type. His favorite hobby is contact juggling and poi, a kind of fireball twirling seen at Hawaiian luaus. He entertained us all week with his tricks and a million jokes. They love nature and going off the grid. They don’t understand city living and passionately told stories of their home.
We rented a small boat and puttered around the island of Solta stopping along the way to climb sea side walls and dive off cliffs. We also swam, ran out of gas, ate ice cream and basked in the sun. We drank with locals and cooked our meals over beachside fires. It was a surreal beauty. We lived in a paradise of crystal water and without people. Imagine those Corona commercials but better. They both have tattoos but unlike bimbos with tramp stamps and deuchebags with unknown Japanese symbols on their biceps, they deeply believe the symbolism behind the ink they got.
Eventually we came back to the mainland and separated the next day but not beforeI ran in to Cameron, an Aussie I had a brilliant time partying with in Frankfurt, Germany. Cameron and I met up yesterday at the beach and were accompanied by his friend Charlie and another kid, Jack. Cameron is a grinning good guy who is quick to make friends and has a smart wit about him. Charlie is his lifelong friend and neighbor who was born in Korea and treats relaxation as the most natural thing in the world. They met Jack in their hostel who is English but was raised in Singapore. He has been all over the world and has an enviable number of stories to tell about fantastic places.
After a few hours on the beach we realized it was beer-o-clock and spent the afternoon wandering from one café bar to the next drinking half liters of cheap Croatian beer. Our conversations were all over the place, smart, and hilarious about topics such as the social impact facebook has on dating (are any of you facebook official?) We stared in disbelief at both the sun drenched beauties and the mustache-clad Croatian men who are
exceedingly fat but still opt for a tiny speedo revealing more than I care to elaborate about. Their skin is leather and they all look like seasoned mechanics coming home from work. When the comfortable shade got too hot or whenever bladders became full we would simply stand up, walk ten steps and dive off the promenade in to the cool water and float around for a few minutes before joining back in the festivities. We lived the pampered life. We took the road more often travelled and loved it. Taking it easy was implied. We were in heaven.
That night we swapped our trunks for a pair of jeans and partied at clubs along the beach. Their was an inebriated bliss in the air that’s unique to a summer day. We didn’t have to buy many drinks because the job was done and we were able to concentrate on the assumed competition of picking up the hottest girl there.
This morning I woke up in their hostel two hours after check out in a bed I neither reserved nor paid for. The guys were getting up also and we talked about the escapades and our future plans. Not wanting to draw the attention to the hostel staff of my intrusion however, I packed my shit quickly and confirmed the plans of my friends. Realizing our paths were headed in different directions, I clasped hands with my friends and wished them happy travels and I would hope to run in to them again, at the very least on facebook. Goodbyes on the road are never too emotional. There’s no need. Nobody ever remembers goodbyes, they just remember the awesome times shared together.
So this is my life. I wander from place to place and find unique, fun people who are doing the same thing as me. We have a kind of bond not everyone is lucky to have. I’ve heard people discredit what I’m doing by sarcastically giving speeches about finding themselves like this is a pilgrimage I expect to leave from as a more complete person but never actually reach, but that’s not true at all. Yeah, a lot of travelers are at the crossroads of their lives but most of us just want to have a ton of fun and delay the inevitable of figuring out what comes next. I don’t have expectations and I’m not trying to change but if it does happen at least I can say it happened naturally and truly brought on by the places I’ve seen and the people I’ve met. Asking for anything more would just make me look like a dick.
On Monday I meet up with Kathleen and her boy toy so that means this incredible freedom of being alone is coming to an end. It will be great to see her after six months though and I know she is as adventurous as I am and supposedly her bf isn’t that shabby either. All my experiences here have been awesome because I have had great company. Thank god there are so man cool people in the world.

I stopped in Prague

The Prague staple.

Prague is a cool place. I have been here for the last few days and have enjoyed getting to know the place a little. To be honest, I didn’t know much about the country before I showed up. Prague is special because the Czechs rolled over quickly in WWII so the Nazis didn’t have to destroy the place and it escaped Allied bombings as well making it pretty much the only undisturbed major city from that period. It is a charming and romantic town that people always look for in a European city. That being said, tourists flock here. In the summertime, tourists outnumber locals by 9 to 1. I have always felt that an economy that relies on tourism this heavily is not as rewarding as places that stand on its own feet. I don’t want to see what the locals think I want, I want to see what they want and to not give a shit about me. Towns seem to be watered down this way. It turns out to be not that bad though. Yeah, the tourists were overwhelming in a few spots but it is unbelievable how little the stray from the main areas which left a big portion of town for the things I wanted to see. I got to experience the architecture hidden down allies, panoramic views of the town, lazy pubs with only a few regulars drinking their paychecks away, and the seedier parts of town where few tourists go.

an overview of the city.

This story is getting a little redundant for me. I have seen quaint towns and cobbled streets and overhyped tourist attractions and places that claim to have the best beer in the world before. It starts to blur together after a bit. Prague was different though. For the first time I am in a distinctively Eastern European town. Things are a little less developed and lax. People openly smoke weed on the streets and I was looked at like a crazy person when I asked what time they stopped selling beer for the night. The rules that have enveloped the States and Western Europe don’t apply here. The Czech Republic hasn’t been accepted in to the European Union yet so their currency is the Koruna, not the Euro. One U.S. dollar is 19 koruna and one Euro is 26 koruna. It was actually a pain in the ass doing conversions in m head all day but things were cheaper. People have a chance to live a little without scrutiny to every detail of life. There of course are pluses and minuses to this, but it was nice to experience something different.

the town center that didn't get rocked in WWII

Prague was up to date with their fashions and cars and such, but the same can’t be said for the rest of the country. Outside of Prague towns are made up of tall concrete communist buildings that are in serious need of repair and rusted out industrial areas lay abandoned. Maybe one in ten cars has been made in the last fifteen years but they are shitty hatchbacks that come with the bare minimum. The rest of the cars are the old paper mache communist block cars seen in the movies. Still, the towns look nice nestled between the side of heavily forested hills and grassy plains. In a way it reminded me of old Appalachian mining towns that long ago worked but has dwindled away over the years. Things have obviously been hard here for the last 50 years but it is getting better. I’m glad I got a glimpse of how others lived.

Do you know where Croatia is?

Yeah since that last post I have been to Berlin and to Prague and have posts written out for both places but haven't had the time to post them. I am now actually in Croatia. Do you know where Croatia is? I had a vague idea before coming here but that's about it. It is on the Adriatic Sea and has thousands of islands along the Dalmatian Coast. The water is the clearest in the Mediteranean and because of the recent war with Bosnia, people dont realize how great of a vacation spot it is but every ruling group in the history of Europe has used this place as their getaway.
I met two guys from Colorado who said they were going to camp most nights they were here and I went along with them despite having no camping equipment. The nights have been so warm all I have needed was my jacket draped over me to be comfortable and the views are worth it. We just lay down a tarp and crash on that comfortably.Two nights ago we slept on top of a mountain and looked down on a huge deserted lake on one side and the sound of waterfalls on the other. I am now on a small island called Solta and slept in the hills near a bay where people partied on expensive yachts. Today I am going sea kayaking to find a deserted beach to camp at. So, as you can see, finding time to update this blog is kind of not on my mind!

Germany

One of the many huge beer gardens in Munich.

For the past four days I have been travelling through Germany getting to know a land I have always been interested in. Growing up, there was a certain taboo connotation of Germany in my mind. I learned about WWI, WWII, and communism and it all signaled to me that Germany was the antithesis of American ideals. A formidable and exceedingly capable power we should keep an eye on. They had a leading role in the show that was 20th century America, and they were the bad guys. This is obviously a childish viewpoint, but hey, I was a child. I have of course come to realize this conception of Germany is not legitimate and has no connection to what the place is today (and I knew this long before ever getting here.) Today’s generation, my generation, is not part of the 20th century. It is a different world. Still though, I keep hold of an undeniable awe and distant respect for its history. Germany has always done spectacular things, both unfathomably horrible and exceedingly great spectacular things. I’ve come here to sort this all out for myself. And hey, one side of my family holds dear their Irish roots, and the other holds dear their Polish roots, but I am just as much German and I want connect a little with that other part of my distant fam.

Heidelburg Castle high in the hills.

Germany is great so far. I have been travelling for a week now and have been to Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich, Heidelberg, Nuremburg, and now Berlin. Each town has been beautiful. There is an undeniable vibrancy here that I love. Everything is rich and alive. The buildings have dark browns clashing with all other colors and the roofs are made of rust colored tiles and run high and steep. The churches have been rebuilt after most were destroyed in WWII to the exact specifications they were before so every town still has their huge and dramatic Gothic Cathedrals. From out of train windows I have seen countless rolling fields of still-green wheat that is just tall enough to blow in the wind and dense forests of evergreens that have red trunks and no limbs until the very top. The trees stand incredibly close together and grow perfectly straight and tall. This had to be where the Barbarians came from. It looks just like the forests you see in movies about them- they are pretty spooky looking. On a particularly stunning stretch from Cologne to Frankfurt, the train cruised between mountains along the Rhine River where I saw more castles than anywhere else in my life high in the hills. Some were in ruins but many were preserved and I could tell they were still in use. It was a fantasy world I didn’t know actually existed. I must have seen 20 romantic castles.

I lounged extremely hung over overlooking the Frankfurt skyline.

The impressive Dom Cathedral in Cologne.

The people too are as rich and exciting as the land. I always thought German was the harsh and brutish language we imagine the Nazis speaking but today I was lounging in a beer garden listening to families and friends laugh and talk and my mind changed. Their words are so expressional and unique. It’s intimidating to an outsider but still fun to listen too. And finally, the girls-man are they gorgeous. I have been to many places in my life but have never seen better proportioned bodies. Their boobs are big, their booties round, and their legs long. Put that together with the first beautiful days of summer and some revealing clothes and we guys have a whole lot of eye candy to admire. (I hear that is how it is throughout all of Eastern Europe though.)Yes, after many liter steins of beer, beautiful summer days, and unforgettable sights, I can say I have a very good first week.

Bratwurst central.

Kiss me, I'm Irish

The 2009 Volvo Ocean Race.

Well, I’m leaving Ireland for the last time in a couple of hours. I am very sad about it. Anyone who has read this blog knows how much fun I have had here. My expectations coming here were incredibly high but every moment here has lived up to what I wanted. The friends I have made, the things I have done, and the countless pints I have drunk are all very dear to me. I’m not going home though. I still have about seven weeks ahead of me if I don’t go crazy from travelling so much before going home. Tonight I fly to Germany where I will be for a week or two.

All the nice yachts have come to Galway.

I leave Galway at a bad time though. Currently, the Volvo Ocean Race, a nine-month yacht race around the world is stopped in Galway for two weeks. They got in late Saturday night after the pubs closed to a roaring audience around the bay just outside my balcony. People were everywhere and they had music and fireworks to greet the first boat. Also, thanks to my rugged good looks and inescapable charm, I got a couple of hot girls without a place to stay to come to my place to continue the party. The few remaining American students also came as well as some of our Irish friends. It was a great party that lasted until the sun came up. It was a memorable last party.

The racing boats out of the water.

The Irish competitor, the Green Dragon.

Anyways, for the past few days Galway has been buzzing with visitors and there has been live music and people walking around just outside my window admiring the yachts that are being repaired. In two days though they will all start racing around Galway Bay which is supposed to be so cool. I wish I could see it but I have more to do here in Europe. I meet my sister in Poland on June 22 but until then I am on my own. I consider myself to be an independent person but three weeks completely on my own will be testing. I guess my writing will have to keep me company.
Well, this is goodbye to Ireland. I love it here and consider it a second home. I’m sure I will be back again and I will be very glad when I do, but I’m sure it could never be as electric and fun as it is now for me. This has been a once in a lifetime gift that I will never forget. What an experience.