Back in Vienna the sun was shining so I avoided museums and we spent our time wandering instead. Sunday morning was spent exploring Schönbrunn Palace, which was owned by the Hapsburg royal family from 1569 until 1918. The grounds were originally only used to breed game and fowl for hunting but later the impressive buildings were constructed, and in 1752 the world’s oldest existent zoo was founded. In 1683 the Turkish Ottoman Empire clashed with the House of Hapsburg and got as far as Vienna before being defeated. The Hapsburgs controlled a pretty incredible amount of land all over the world, mainly through selective marriages and inbreeding that eventually led to various genetic disorders. Looking at Charles II of Spain’s family tree there are all sorts of linkages that just shouldn’t be there, including far too many examples of men marrying their nieces.

Back in Munich I packed up my apartment. Moved out and headed up to the mountains near Garmisch. I’ve heard so much about the area and it was beautiful. My relatives had a holiday apartment for 2 weeks and I visited for 2 nights, with a stunning day in the middle. With the sun shining and an almost totally blue sky, we headed up the Karwendel cable car to almost the top of the mountains. From the top we did a round trip walk that took us up to the Austria border and gave us some stunning views to the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain, as well as the Alps of Germany, Austria and Italy.

From the top of the cable car a 430m long tunnel through the mountain takes you to the top of what must be, in winter, a pretty amazing ski run. At 7km, the Dammkar run is the longest in Germany, and it’s pretty impressive that until the cablecar was built in the 1960s, people would carry their skis up to ski back down. Now that’s a sport! Of course they also built an ice bar for people who needed refreshments (though I can only assume this was near the bottom!). Sybille and Pit were making lots of great plans for the rest of their time there and I think Brett and I might head up there pretty regularly, it was beautiful.

Heading back through Munich to pick up the rest of my stuff and finish off some admin, I then headed to visit my relatives near Stuttgart before I flew to America. They had organised a BBQ with some of the rest of the family which was cool, I got to see Markus, Whitney and Colin again and also met Hans’ sister in law.

While waiting for my plane to Miami, I checked email to see a message from my dad that my uncle had passed away earlier that morning. He’s been battling prostate cancer for a long time now but somehow the fact that this outcome was pretty much inevitable didn’t make it any easier to handle the news. My thoughts are with his family, my father, my grandma and everyone else who lost a good friend.

Actually, getting on my flight to America wasn’t as simple as it should have been, I didn’t know about the new ESTA registration which is meant to be filled out online 72 hours before arrival in the US. Even for visa waiver countries. Consider yourself warned! Thankfully I’d got there in plenty of time and was approved instantly. Phew! The flight itself went well apart and I was let into the country by a semi-daft immigration officer. A free shuttle to the hotel in Miami and dinner nearby where I made the rookie error of thinking I could fit in two American sized entrées because I was hungry. Fail!

In Helena I was picked up by Brett’s dad and step mum, who have made me feel very welcome in the time before Erica and Brett arrive. It’s been nice to hang out and spend some time with them as the only times I’ve met them have been my brief trip here in mid 2007 and then for the wedding where I obviously had a lot going on. When Brett and Erica get here (tonight!) we’ll sit down and talk about our ever changing plans and work out where we’re going next. Mexico is looking ever more dangerous so we’ll have to see what pans out.

Both the last weekends I’ve headed out of town. The first weekend to visit Kathi’s family just outside Munich, and the second I went to vote in Frankfurt and then headed down to visit the family for a few days. Both times it was really nice to get out of the city a bit and smell a bit of fresh air. It’s nice that only an hour out of the centre of Munich is greenery and villages. We stayed with Kathi’s mother, sister, brother-in-law and nephew; it was really nice to hang out and meet them all. On our second night there we went to a party that someone in the village had organised, which was a lot of fun despite the intermittent rainstorms. There were a variety of bands, plenty of food and a fire for BBQing - we had marshmallows! Between the rainstorms and before it got dark, Kathi and I went for a wander through the fields and got a really nice view down on the surrounding countryside. I also played Scrabble in German for the first time (challenging)and ate some really tasty home-made pesto (garlicky).

Back in Munich it was the same old routine, but last Thursday I headed to Frankfurt to do a pre-poll vote in the upcoming Australian Federal election. In Australia voting is compulsory and I think that’s a good thing, so even though I would be exempted for being overseas, I always make the effort to go in and have my say. This is my third election overseas, which makes me realise just how long I’ve been away! Anyway, while in Frankfurt I also caught up with a friend from Munich who has a short term contract there. It was nice to catch up and hang out in between my voting and his work.

On Friday evening I headed down to Stuttgart and then to my relative’s place. By the time I got there it was pretty much time for bed, but I had time to hang out on Saturday. We visited my German grandpa (my grandma’s sister’s husband) in the nursing home then went to a garden party held on the plot of land that one of their friends owns. It was another nice community party where everyone brought food for themselves and some to share, then sat around enjoying each other’s company and drinking wine. I’m starting to see some familiar faces amongst the friends and acquaintances which is cool too.

I headed back to Munich on Sunday, in time for class on Monday. This week is a little less busy than last week was, I had a few people I know passing through Munich and it was cool to catch up with them. One of the afternoons we did a bike ride along the Isar River - a nice easy ride through the trees and into areas that seemed a world away from the big city. We ended in a beautiful beer garden and whiled away the evening with drinks and currywurst.

It’s hard to believe that my time in Munich is coming to an end already. This weekend I’m heading to Vienna to meet a friend from Uzbekistan, then I’m planning on meeting up with my relatives who are headed to Garmish (just south of here) for a holiday. When I get back from that I’m off back to the Stuttgart area to see people again before I fly to the States. And zip! The time is gone.

Meanwhile I’ve been “furthering my studies” by hanging out with friends who happen to speak German and reading a little, though I seem to keep falling asleep when I read which makes progress difficult. It still takes quite a bit of concentration to read German but (while I stay awake) at least I tend to know what’s going on even if I don’t understand every single word. With swimming a few times a week and continued good eating my progression to a routine is pretty much complete. In other slightly more exciting news Erica has booked her flight to Montana and Brett is in the process of doing the same for once he finishes work. That’s it for this week…

Just in case you thought I was actually growing roots and erecting a white picket fence: I’ve booked my flight to The States for the end of August, and am reading about Central America. My itchy feet haven’t disappeared that quickly. And although it feels like I’ve been here forever it’s only been three nights. Wait, really? Wow. Here I am worrying I haven’t finished my to-do list! I’ve been studying at home for three days and I’m still not fluent in German?? I might as well just give up now. I’m really looking forward to the classes and am curious to see how my level compares to other students. I assume in the listening section I’ll be pretty advanced but speaking I have an accent and reading/writing I’ll be behind.

But before I came back to Munich, Brett and I spent a few days in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. It was a cool city with a nice old town, though I have to say I prefer Riga’s old town. Even though Vilnius had some really nice churches and buildings, somehow it didn’t have the same atmosphere. Maybe we just didn’t give it enough of a chance - we were only there two days. I didn’t know this but back in the 15th century the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was actually quite big. Its territory stretched to the Black sea, including areas that now belong to The Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Russia and Transnistria (Moldova). In the 18th century things declined, and for the next little while Lithuania seemed to swing between occupations by Russia, Poland, Germany and brief windows of independence. Unfortunately for the large Jewish population in Vilnius, one of Germany’s occupations was during the Second World War. About 95% of them were massacred.

Things weren’t great under Soviet occupation either, as we learned at the Museum of Genocide Victims. It focused on Lithuanian resistance to Soviet rule and the repression of that resistance and the local population. The building itself has an interesting history: it was first built as a court in 1890 but was used by the Germans in their WW1 occupation, then a Soviet prison, then the headquarters of the Gestapo in WW2, then KGB offices, prison and interrogation centre. Downstairs in the basement, away from most of the cells, is the execution chamber. On the explanation it noted that the people about to be executed stood in front of a wooden panelled wall so that the bullets wouldn’t ricochet and accidentally kill someone else. That would be an appalling loss of life I guess.  All of the people held, interrogated and killed there were there for political reasons. There was also a poignant exhibition dedicated to those who were deported to remote areas of Russia, whole families at a time, and a section dedicated to their struggles to readjust if they were allowed back “home”.

On a lighter note, we spent a few hours wandering around the Republic of Uzupis, a bohemian area of town that has cheekily declared independence from Vilnius/Lithuania. It has its own president, prime minister, constitution, anthem, army (12 people) and holidays. April Fools Day is it’s national day, the day on which it declared independence back in 1997. Articles on the constitution include: “Everyone has the right to be unique” (article 5), “A dog has the right to be a dog” (article 12) and “Everyone shall remember their name” (article 27). It was a nice little area and we enjoyed a lazy few hours sitting in the sun, looking back over the rest of Vilnius as we had a drawn out dinner.

Of course we also saw plenty of churches in Vilnius, and a few other sights like the Gate of Dawn. It is the only surviving gate from Vilnius’ 16th century city walls and houses an icon of the Virgin Mary. The icon is highly revered by Roman Catholic and Orthodox believers, so when the Russians ordered the demolition of the city walls in the late 18th century the gate and its icon were allowed to stay.

Back in Riga we had time to squeeze in another Tex-Mex fix (though sadly they were out of brownies that night) before we headed our separate ways. We’ll meet up again in Montana at the end of August to spend some time with Brett’s family and show my sister Erica around a little. Then Erica and I will explore Central America for a few months, hopefully joined by Brett once he’s taken care of some admin back home. Then it’s back to Australia in November and December. At the moment we’re hoping to head to Iran before we move to Germany early next year.

-

Well we headed back down to Shakhrisabz but decided to hang out there instead of heading further south. It’s a cool little town, full of sprawling markets, winding backstreets and friendly locals. Though, as it turned out, our stone carving was finished earlier than expected – we are now the proud owners of our portrait carved in granite! Once we’d picked it up we headed back to Tashkent to explore for a few days before our flight to Riga. Even though we’d been there twice we hadn’t really done any sightseeing and to be honest I wasn’t overly optimistic about the attractions in the ex-Soviet capital, but it had a few surprises up its sleeve.

Chorsu Bazaar was near our hotel and provided hours worth of wandering and people watching. I dream of living in a place that has a market like that, the fruit and vegetables were all so fresh and beautifully presented. There was a massive section devoted purely to melons, with huge army trucks coming in to restock the cages of watermelons. We can attest to their tastiness. Actually it was a bit hard to tell where the market ended. There was the official section under the dome, with it’s numbered stands and signage but outside that the stalls, stands and people presenting their wares on blankets stretched on. They sold not only food but also everything else imaginable – clothes, kitchenware, hardware etc.

A more official attraction was the History Museum of the People of Uzbekistan, thankfully with some English signage. Among the potshards and primitive arrowheads were gems like a list of NGOs that used to operate in the country before most western interests fled following the 2005 Andijan Massacre, and a display showing how advanced the National Bank of Uzbekistan was. They even issue Visa cards! Another museum was the Museum of Applied Arts, a combination of fine arts and local crafts. It was pretty cool. There was a beautiful collection of just about every local art form we’d seen for sale in the many souvenir shops, but of course better quality and more historically significant.

We also went out to the spiritual centre of Islam in the country at Khast Imam Mosque. There we saw the Uthman Quran, a copy of the Quran written on deer hide. It is about 1300-1400 years old and was compiled by Uthman ibn Affan to ensure the purity of the Quran which had, until then, been mostly passed on via memorisation. As people who had actually known the prophet Mohammed passed away and stylistic differences in readings in different areas became apparent it was decided that a standardised edition was needed. All other versions, complete or fragmentary, were burnt. The Uthman Quran that we saw, although huge, contains only a third of the actual verses of the Quran. It has big, bold script on shiny pages and legend says the red spots in the spine are the blood of Uthman, assassinated while reading it.

Having seen those attractions we were ready to leave Tashkent and Uzbekistan. From the comforts of Riga it already seems like a long time ago and my impressions are already changing. By the time we left I was kind of sick of the heat and the lack of variety in the food. On top of that it seemed like we got cheated a lot in our last few days, including an instance when we had the Uzbek menu and correct prices in our hands but were charged more (yes we argued, yes we still got ripped off). In a nutshell I was ready to leave. We seemed to be really tired there, something we attributed both to the heat and the food. I didn’t mind the food there, certainly it didn’t taste like greasy mutton the way some Muslim cuisines seem to, but there just wasn’t a lot of variety at the chaikanas we ate at. I can think of six dishes that we rotated amongst: shashlik, plov, lagman, dolma, samsa and manti. All of them are delicious but after a month I started craving something else.

Here in Riga we’ve been making up for lost time, stuffing ourselves with excellent and varied food. Even the breakfast at our hotel was blissful – so much choice! In two short days we’ve had burgers, sushi, tex mex, brownies, thai, ice cream (that didn’t melt within 3 seconds of being outside the freezer) and quite a few cocktails. And of course, I’ve reconnected with my internet addiction. Oh the joys of Wifi. We’ve also done a bit more wandering around the city, checking out the semi-dodgy area our hotel is in as well as the old town. There seems to be more activity here than last time we were here – lots of outdoor cafes in all the squares and plenty of people out enjoying the sunshine. It’s still warm here but nothing compared to Uzbekistan.

Tomorrow we head down to Vilnius for a few days before coming back up here to fly out. Brett heads back up to Norway to work and I’m heading back to Munich to study up on some German. Then it’s off to the States for some family and friends time. I’ll catch my sister there and we’ll head down to Mexico and through some of Central America until I fly back to Australia in November.

-

note: photo album isn’t complete as i’m on a reeeeeally slow connection here in Samarkand.

We’ve spent most of the last week in Samarkand, checking out the various monuments and sights in this ancient city. It’s a place whose name conjures up romantic visions of silk-laden camels and exploration in an era when men were men and regularly died in the course of getting to such exotic corners. Now it’s a firm stop on the tourist itinerary and the caravanserais and medressas shelter souvenir stands instead of traders or students. That’s been a little disappointing.

But before we could enjoy the sights of Samarkand we had to head to Tashkent to work out our visa. In a nutshell we have a visa which has validity dates which don’t match the duration of stay listed (validity dates 32 days, duration of stay 30). I heard one thing from the embassy in London where I picked them up, but we heard a different thing on arrival in Tashkent. When we double-checked at another office in Tashkent they agreed with London. In short, nobody seemed to have any idea. Unfortunately, one of those options had us potentially overstaying our visa so that wasn’t really good. As it turns out, the fourth person we asked confirmed that duration of stay was the overriding factor and to extend would cost US$40 for me and US$131 for Brett. Being American he often gets a rough deal on visa costs. As we were only planning to stay two extra days we opted to change Brett’s ticket and buy me one accordingly. We like Uzbekistan, but not that much. We’ll spend the time in Riga instead.

Once that was sorted we headed back to Samarkand. Here we’ve checked out some of the most beautiful mosques and medressas we’ve seen so far. Although it’s an ancient city, most of what’s left tends to date from around the 14th century. The site of Samarkand has been settled since around the 5th century BC and was already a thriving city when Alexander the Great conquered it in 329BC. It grew richer still in the Silk Road era, with a population higher than today, and changed hands many times as a result. However, anything that was here was destroyed in 1220 when Jenghiz Khan came through and it wasn’t until Timur (Tamerlane) made it his capital in 1370 that the city started to recover.

Samarkand’s (or Uzbekistan’s or Central Asia’s depending on your opinion) most impressive sight is the Registan, a trio of medressas around a central square. Back in the day this was the city’s commercial centre and the medressas are amongst the world’s oldest still standing. They have needed a lot of modern restoration but the resulting tile work is impressive. For all the bad things you can say about communism in the USSR, they at least worked hard to preserve historical buildings in this part of the world. Looking at old photos pre-restoration you can really appreciate that, as well as the incredible building skills of the original architects, whose work has survived multiple earthquakes over the hundreds of years. The oldest of the three is Ulugbek Medressa, which was finished by Timur’s grandson in 1420. The other two were finished in 1636 and 1660, with the latter’s mosque illustrating without a doubt the incredible wealth that must have existed in Samarkand at the time. It drips with gold leaf and intricate painting.

Not too far away is the Bibi Khanym mosque, once the largest mosque in the world. It was finished just before Timur’s death and was apparently built by his Chinese wife, Bibi Khanym, while he was away. The main gateway was 35m high and has now been reconstructed after it crumbled in an earthquake in 1897. When he died, Timur was interred in the Guri Amir Mausoleum along with his grandson Ulugbek, another grandson and two sons. As with most of the sites we’ve seen, there is some stunning tile work on the gate and buildings. Other family members were buried in the Shah I Zinda area, a line of mausoleums a little to the west. I feel a little like a broken record when I say that there is some beautiful tile work on the buildings, but there really is. And tiles to me are like mountains to Brett, I love them and always take too many photos of them. The first person to be buried here was apparently Qusam ibn-Abbas, a cousin of the Prophet Mohammed, who brought Islam to the area in the 7th century. In the 14th century Timur, and then his grandson Ulugbek, buried their families near the auspicious tomb.

In Samarkand itself we’ve also checked out the excavated remains of ancient Samarkand at a small museum, visited the reconstruction of the 8th century Hazrat Hizr Mosque and seen the track of Ulugbek’s astrolabe. According to the Lonely Planet Ulugbek was “probably more famous as an astronomer than a ruler” – amongst who they don’t say. Personally I’d never heard of him in either role but then what do I know? Brett went in to the tomb of the Old Testament prophet Daniel while I waited outside. I’d had enough of overpriced entrance tickets that charged foreigners 10 times more than locals to look into pretty empty rooms. There was a “woodcarving museum” in Bukhara that had 3 items. Seriously. The walls were nicely painted at least. I preferred the free shade and Brett confirmed it was a bit of a waste of money, even if it was only US$2. That’s a cheeseburger in the real world! Oooooh for a cheeseburger…

Outside Samarkand we’ve checked out Urgut and Shakhrisabz. On Sundays Urgut is host to a bustling market which made for great people watching and aimless wandering. All sorts of things were for sale. Today we headed to Shakhrisabz, 90km south, on a daytrip. It was Timur’s birthplace and a sort of family seat of power. Some of his relatives are buried here and there is a tomb that it’s believed was intended for Timur himself. Legend says that when Timur died unexpectedly the passes to Shakhrisabz were snowed over and he was interred in Samarkand’s Guri Amir Mausoleum instead. Speaking of death and graveyards and other such things, we’ve taken a liking to the carved portraits used on local gravestones. They’re etched into black marble and are a beautiful way of making the grave more personal. Today in Shakhrisabz we asked a price at the local mosque and have decided to have one of our wedding photos carved. Not as a grave marker, obviously, but as a quirky way of remembering both our wedding and Uzbekistan. Of course Brett is once again rolling his eyes at his wife’s propensity for buying impractical souvenirs.

So we’re heading back down to Shakhrisabz tomorrow to take them a printed photo and sort out the design, check out the backstreets of Shakhrisabz then head further south to Termiz. Then it’s back to Tashkent ready to fly out on the 20th. I have a ticket back to Munich when Brett goes back to work; I’ll spend the time studying German (if I can find an appropriate course) then head to the States.

-

The luxury of time has been appreciated even more as temperatures continued to soar into the high 30s and possibly low 40s. We don’t really know how hot it’s been - we haven’t had access to forecasts. All I can say is that staying hydrated is a constant battle which we’re only just starting to find a working strategy for. The sights in Bukhara are a little more spread out than Khiva, where all the main things to see were inside the compact old city walls. Here they’re not that spread out but walking can be a sweaty business. Have I mentioned that it’s really hot here??

We’ve been bouncing about between medressas, mosques and buildings built for the powerful local rulers. In the 9th and 10th centuries Bukhara was a vibrant cultural and religious centre, with many of the Islamic clerics in the surrounding countries coming to the city for studies. There were once about 120 medressas, of which only 30-40 remain. We visited quite a few, including Ulugbek Medressa which is the oldest in Central Asia. When we visited, it was undergoing some much needed restoration work, something a little lacking in many of the places we’ve visited. It was built in 1417 by a grandson of Timur, the man who waged a bloody war with the fractured Mongolian empire following Jenghiz Khan’s death.

Not that the Mongolians hadn’t gone on their own rampages. In 1220 their armies attacked Bukhara, raping, looting and burning it to the ground, killing 30,000 people in the process. One of the few things spared was the Kalon Minaret, built about 100 years before Jenghiz Khan arrived. Even today it’s an impressive structure, standing independently of the mosque. 47m tall and covered in beautiful decorative brick work, it apparently impressed Jenghiz Khan so much that he ordered it to be spared, something the Russians attacking in 1920 didn’t quite manage. The Kalon mosque next door was impressive, not only for its size (it can hold 10,000 people) but for the quality of its well preserved tile work. We spent quite a while there, trying to photograph the various arches, angles and geometric designs.

Most of the structures we’ve visited are surprisingly open to the elements. For example, the main areas of the mosque were open to the central courtyard with only a roof and external wall. In the medressas many of the rooms have ventilation holes in the roofs and open doors. Sometimes there must have been doors and windows but in many cases there’s no indication that that was the case. In the summer season it’s easy to see why that would be a popular design but once the buildings are no longer in use, and being swept out regularly, dust accumulates and the pigeons move in. It’s sad to see the impressive old buildings so badly neglected that the pigeon poo and dust piles start taking over rooms.

The main attraction in town is apparently the Ark, the former royal residence and Bukhara’s oldest structure. It was lived in all the way from the 5th century until 1920 when the Russians attacked. Unfortunately the Red Army bombed it pretty extensively and inside is now mostly ruins, encircled by a reconstructed wall. We climbed the nearby water tower, a Soviet construction no longer in use apart from by tourists who pay a random guy playing cards for the privilege of risking their lives on the rickety spiral staircase. OK, so it wasn’t that bad but when you’re 30m above the ground and the staircase starts wobbling even I got a little worried. The view was nice though. Actually the last two emirs preferred to live at the Summer Palace, a little to the north of the main town. We went there today and were impressed by the general gaudiness and over-the-topness of the interior decorations. Actually there weren’t that many buildings or rooms but the ones that were decorated were completely ostentatious, full of alabaster carvings, mirror and glass mosaics, and elaborate paintings.

Not too far from our house is a small plaza built around a pool. It’s a popular spot to sit under the mulberry trees on tea beds and have a drink or something to eat. At certain times of day there is a sort of fountain which cools the area down a little and in the evening the chaikhana (teahouse) owners pour water over the stone paving to get rid of the day’s heat. Until the Russians took over Bukhara there were hundreds of these small pools, filled by a network of canals, but for sanitation reasons most of them were filled in.

Before we came to Bukhara we spent a day exploring the old mud brick qalas (forts) of ancient Khorezm. Many of them originally date to the 4th century BC when the area, recently independent of Persian rule, reached a high point of cultural development. There is evidence of the Zoroastrian religion in the area, with remains of fire temples and also a tower of silence where bodies were placed after death so that birds could purify the bones. According to Zoroastrian religion the world was an ongoing battle between good and evil. A person’s bones were created by Ahura Mazda, the wise lord, but the flesh by Ahriman who embodied the principles of evil. The Qalas we visited were cool, one of them, Toprak Qala, had remains of a royal palace of the kings of Khorezm.

We spent a night in a yurt camp near Ayaz Qala, another fortress, and planned to spend a day chilling out and relaxing there. Unfortunately we failed to take into account the heat and quickly realised that sweating wasn’t relaxing. We took our lazy day here in Bukhara, paying homage to our air conditioner. Tomorrow we head to Samarkand from where we’ll take a quick trip back to Tashkent to try to sort out our visa. Then it’s back to Samarkand for a bit longer and up to a lake in the north of the country for another yurt stay.

-

From Nukus we headed north to indulge in a little disaster tourism. For all the things we read about the Aral Sea, actually seeing its remains gave us a fuller appreciation of the scale of the environmental disaster. The thing that’s most striking is how big it still is. Even after so many years of shrinking there’s still a large area of water, which made me appreciate just how massive it was to start with. Back in the early 60’s, before the water started receding, it was the world’s fourth largest lake, 400km across at its longest point and 280km at its widest. It was home to fish stocks that supported a fishing industry of 60,000 people, mainly in Moynaq (Uzbekistan) and Aralsk (Kazakhstan). Unfortunately, the Soviet planners wanted to expand agriculture in the area, and particularly production of cotton to supply the textile industry. They dug irrigation canals to tap the water of the Amu-Darya and Syr Darya rivers and by the 1980’s the flow into the Aral Sea was less than one tenth of levels in the 1950’s. But the Aral Sea had already started to dry up in the mid 1960’s. According to the Lonely Planet, water levels fell more than 16m between 1966 and 1993, though our guide told us the current water depth is 48m lower than the original.

That’s the other thing that shocked us – the water is still dropping. At the lake shore near where we camped there was a pontoon lying on the salt-encrusted shore, at least 5m from the water. Apparently it was in the water in August 2008, refuelling boats that were buzzing around looking for oil. Looking way back to the plateau we were camped on, the water would have stretched all the way to the cliffs, and in 1983 still had a depth of 12m. And yet cotton growing is still being encouraged. So much so that university students in the area are put to work picking cotton for four months of the academic year.

Of course the disappearance of such a large body of water has had environmental consequences. As the sea shrinks the salinity increases and there is almost no life in the remaining water. In the 1960’s the water was 9mg of salt per litre, last year it was 100mg and this year it’s already 120mg. As the water recedes the dust and sand left behind is increasingly salty and pesticide laden and the dust storms cause health problems for the local population. Such a large body of water also had a moderating effect on the local climate; now that it’s gone the winters are longer and harsher, the summers shorter, and there is far less rainfall than in the past. To restore the sea would take drastic measures coordinated between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and effectively require the restructuring of their entire economies away from cotton production. As far as I can tell nobody seems to think this is even a remote possibility.

For the people of Moynaq the disaster is about much more than statistics and studies. The town once had a population of 150,000 people and thrived on the rich fishing grounds of the sea. Five fish canneries operated to process the daily haul. Now it is 150km from the shoreline and attempts to link the town to the shrinking sea via canals were abandoned in the 1980’s. 8,000 people still live there, though it’s hard to know what jobs they manage to find in the dusty town. Probably some of them work for the companies coming in to drill for natural gas in the dry seabed. The rigs are the only thing on the horizon, sticking up between scattered tamarisks shimmering in the heat.

For travellers the main reason to visit Moynaq is to see the ship graveyard, a collection of rusting hulks that were once the town’s fishing fleet. It’s an image that perfectly illustrates the disaster – once proud vessels beached in a sandy desert. Unfortunately there aren’t many left, as scrap metal companies made short work of them before the tourism authorities forbade it. In one final kick for a local population already downed, the money didn’t go to the people who owned the boats; it was divided up between the scrap companies and government officials. Really, can it get any worse?

After spending a night in Moynaq we headed back to Nukus for a well appreciated shower (heat+dust=mud+crusty hair) before heading on to Khiva, where we are now. The area of Khiva has been settled for up to 6,000 years but it wasn’t until the Silk Road times in the 8th century that it gained some importance. Its relative obscurity saved it from being ravaged by Timur, and in 1592 the city was made the capital of the Khorezm state. It was infamous as being the site of a massive slave market and the presence of Russian citizens among the slaves gave the Tsar an excuse to invade in 1873. This was during the time of the Great Game, a political and sometimes military struggle between Russia and Great Britain to control the fuzzy border areas between the expanding Russian empire and British India.

Anyway, enough history for one blog post… Khiva is a well preserved city, with most of the historical sites within the 2.5km long mud-brick city walls. Back in the 1970’s and 80’s the Soviet government went on a conservation drive and restored much of the city, to the extent that some people find it a little sanitised. Having not visited the other Silk Road cities of Uzbekistan we have nothing to compare it to, but we’ve really enjoyed our time here. We’ve seen plenty of medressas, minarets and mausoleums, many of them decorated with the most beautiful blue tile work. The rest of the city is low-rise and mainly built of mud bricks. A three story building is relatively rare in the old town. A combination of courtyards and high-roofed open rooms allow as much breeze as possible to be captured and a lot of people sleep outside under mosquito nets. On our early morning jaunts we’ve walked past a few people only just starting to wake up, waving groggily as they poke their head out from under the protective netting.

Our daily schedule has been adjusted for both the heat and the World Cup football tournament. This time of year is the hottest month, with temperatures hovering around the high 30’s low 40’s (Celsius). We haven’t seen many forecasts but I can tell you from experience that by 8:30am it’s hot enough to start getting a little sweat going. By the time it hits the heat of the day around 2pm only the most desperate of souvenir sellers are outside, hawking their wares to tourists making a break for the nearest air conditioned space. Actually we haven’t seen many foreigners around, partly because it’s the wrong season but there are apparently fewer visitors than normal. Possibly due to the worldwide economic problems, or because the current problems in Kyrgyzstan are seen to affect the whole area, nobody knows.

To avoid the heat we’ve been getting up around 7am, doing some sightseeing before breakfast then a little more before the heat of the day. We retire to our air conditioned room then a little more sightseeing before the first World Cup match of the night. We’ve watched the last few games in the yurt of the guesthouse owner. There is a big screen in a café nearby but at 8:30pm when the first match starts it’s still too light to watch an outside screen. Besides, we tried to go there last night for the second game and their satellite TV wasn’t working. We missed the first two goals by Brazil because the channel the game was meant to be shown on was too busy playing a Tajik music and dance festival.

Tomorrow we head out on a daytrip to some old mud brick forts in the area then spend a few nights in a yurt camp near one of them. Next on the list of Silk Road cities is Bukhara, then heading further west to Samarkand via another nature break at a lake. It’s really nice to have so much time to explore Uzbekistan; I think a lot of people breeze through as part of an overall Central Asia itinerary and pack as many Silk Road cities into a week as possible. We’re lucky to have the luxury of time.

The next day we headed out to do some admin before our flight to Nukus in the west of the country. We tried unsucessfully to get some answers about our visas. In London i was told we could only stay 30 days, at the Tashkent airport they said no problem to stay 32 days. At the visa office downtown Tashkent we were once again told that we could only stay 30 days. This is kind of important to know the correct answer to but as yet we’re still not really sure. I’d hate to do something truely complicated here - like organise health insurance! Speaking of which, i’d dreamt that all my German health insurance dramas were over but i was obviously in some delerious state of hopefullness. As we speak a form is being faxed in Germany to someone’s mum (who i think is in Nigeria) to scan and email to me before the internet cafe closes in 20 min. I will then print it, sign it and tomorrow morning go in to a friend’s office to get her to fax it back to Germany. Welcome to my life…

But a very big highlight of coming to Nukus has been to meet up with the friend i mentioned. Last year when we were in Kyrgyzstan we met Gulzar and a doctor from the US who were both working over here in Nukus for MSF (Medicins Sans Frontieres) trying to deal with the TB problem. She came to meet us at the airport and we had dinner together last night. Tonight we went and saw her office and meet some of her colleagues. From everything we’ve seen and heard they seem to have a well run operation that’s gone a long way to make a difference to the local population. It’s really good to see.

During the day today we checked out the local art museum which has an impressive collection of modern art from 1920s and 30s USSR based artists. The artworks were collected by the founder and first curator of the museum and were mostly from artists who had been denounced and banned by the Soviet authorities. With considerable risk to himself Igor Savitsky searched out these artists and bought their works from the artists themselves or their heirs. These days of course it’s one of the only collections of this period of Russian art and is very valuable. It also had an impressive ethnographic and historic section, which was just as interesting to me as the modern Russian art. Actually, probably more so if i were to be completely honest.

Tomorrow we head up north to the remains of the Aral Sea. Once the world’s fourth largest freshwater body of water it’s now a shadow of it’s former self. The dusty, polluted, oversalinated waters of a massive environmental disaster may seem like a strange tourist attraction but hey, so is Chornobyl. From a photographic point of view i’m looking forward to seeing the beached ships in Moynaq. The remains fo what was once a thriving fishing village is now 150km from the receeding shoreline.

We’ll spend a night at the remains of the lake, then a night in Moynaq before returning here. After that we’ll head further east to Khiva and on to the big name Silk Road cities.

On a day trip out of the city I went to Kutna Hora, a small town an hour outside Prague. The first settlement was a monastery in 1142 and by 1260 people began to mine silver in the area. The city grew quickly in the ensuing centuries and even rivalled Prague as the most important city in Bohemia. These days it’s a pretty sleepy little town but people come to see the Sedlec Ossuary, which contains the artistically arranged bones of around 40,000 people. Back in 1278 the abbot of Sedlec monastery went to Jerusalem, brought back some holy earth and sprinkled it over the cemetery. News of this meant that Sedlec was THE place to be buried, and people from all over Central Europe were interred. Plague in the 14th century and wars in the early 15th century meant the cemetery had to be enlarged several times and in 1400 a new church was built with an area to house remains that had been dug up to make space for new burials. In 1870 a private family took ownership of the church grounds and employed someone to tidy up the bones. The results speak for themselves – chains of skulls, a family crest fashioned from bones and a chandelier that contains every single in the human body. It was interesting, but a little creepy.

From Prague I went back to near Stuttgart to see my German family very briefly before flying to London. It’s amazing how many people I know in London. As it turns out I didn’t have time to see most of them but I hung out with a school friend, saw my cousin and met up with a few other people while I was in town. One thing I didn’t do was any sightseeing, not a teeny tiny little bit. I’ve been to London before and done most of it but I did plan to see the British Museum. I have no idea why I didn’t go last time but that was my plan… I guess I’ll have to go back. But I did manage to get visas for Uzbekistan, watch some World Cup games, eat some great Indian food and sort out a few more things for Uzbekistan.

Speaking of Uzbekistan, it feels a little like we’re stepping into the void. We’ve experienced the void before, and I have to say I’m a little apprehensive this time around. We’re heading back to the world where people don’t answer phone calls, ATMs are scarce, 600km in a bus takes 55 hours and everything tastes like greasy mutton. Oh and where the following is a review for the only accommodation in a town I really want to visit:

“There’s no electricity, no running water, and it looks like a poo volcano erupted in the shared bathroom… Ask for directions because it has no address and no sign.”

(Lonely Planet Central Asia, 2007)

But before I talk any more about what’s coming up I’ll finish off talking about what I’ve already done. While in London I decided to head up to Edinburgh to see an ex-tour leader friend of mine who lives up there. Instead of flying or taking the train I went by bus, and realised it really isn’t all that close to London! 9.5 hours on the bus each way, but at least I had a good book with me. Because I spent so much time getting there and back I only really had one day to hang out but we made good use of it by going to New Lanark. On the River Clyde, it’s a small village that was founded in 1786 as a cotton mill and was run as a model of utopian socialism. Compared to other employees of the day the workers were well looked after, and the mills were very profitable until they closed in 1968. We wandered around the village for a while then headed out for a walk along the river for a few hours, checking out a peregrine falcon nest along the way.

Back down in London I picked up the Uzbek visas and flew out the next day to Riga, Latvia. I met up with Brett on the way, in Oslo, and we spent today exploring Riga. It was fun showing him some of the little corners I found in my time here last autumn. Anyway, tomorrow we fly to Tashkent then the next day out to Nukus which is in the west of Uzbekistan near the remains of the Aral Sea. We’ll spend 30 days in the country (unless we can extend our visas) before Brett heads back to work.

On my first day the weather was good, but it’s been pretty awful ever since. As a result, most of the rest of my sightseeing was indoors, though Amsterdam does have some cool museums. I checked out the Van Gogh museum, the Rijksmuseum and Anne Frank house. As well as seeing some of Van Gogh’s most famous artworks, it was really cool to see the transition of his work from his first ever oil painting, through mimicking of other artists styles and finally to his trademark style of expressive blobs of brightly coloured paint. I already knew of his mental illness, ear cutting off incident and suicide at age 37, but I didn’t realise that he only started painting at a late age and did most of his best known work in the last two years. He initially worked at an art dealership but left to do religious work, and was later largely supported by his art dealer brother, Theo, who worked hard to promote Vincent’s work both during his life and after his death.

The Rijksmuseum is the granddaddy of Dutch museums. Founded in 1800 it has an incredible collection centred on the Dutch Golden Age. During that period, in the 17th century, Dutch science and art was amongst the most acclaimed in the world, and their naval power gave them privileged access to the trading ports of Asia. The collection in the Rijksmuseum reflects the power and wealth of this age, though due to a renovation of the buildings only about 100 of the best pieces were on display. This wasn’t actually such a bad thing as I got to see them without spending a whole day looking through all the hundreds of Rembrandt paintings. The day I went I wasn’t in such a museum mood so this was a good thing.

Like at the Van Gogh museum I already knew a fair bit about the story of Anne Frank when I went to the house she was hidden away in, but I still learnt more by going there. Actually the thing that surprised me most was the size of the rooms they sheltered in. That they were so big. I mean I still wouldn’t have wanted to be trapped inside there for 2 years of my life, especially with seven other people, but it surprised me that nobody questioned 3 rooms of a building that could clearly be seen from outside but that couldn’t be accessed from the building it was attached to. Anyway, at some stage someone did and all the inhabitants were sent off to concentration camps. Only Otto Frank, Anne’s father, survived and was at the forefront of campaigns to promote Anne’s diary, save the house from demolition in 1955 and turn it into a museum dedicated to telling the story of Jewish persecution during WW2. Even today nobody knows who gave up the inhabitants.

Apart from museum hopping I also did a few other things in Amsterdam when I wasn’t enjoying the beautiful apartment and fantastic cooking at Jen and Mark’s. On my last night I went out to dinner with Jen at a really nice restaurant, the type of place that has a set menu designed by someone who probably has a degree in foodology and calls himself a cuisine engineer. Whatever happened in that kitchen the results were divine, and we had a great night of wine and chatter before cycling home through the red light district. That is indeed a strange place. It’s one thing to hear about the small rooms/cells with full length windows where women draw the curtain once a client has been lured in, but quite another to see it in action. Maybe it’s because I’m the wrong gender, but there wasn’t anything overly erotic about a line of bored but trying-to-be-sexy young women standing behind full length glass, their white underwear glowing in the UV light. Anyway, it had to be seen and even though I do in some ways approve of legalised prostitution (seeing as it’s going to happen anyway), from what I heard/read the situation of many of the women can be as precarious as prostitutes anywhere. Another big draw to Amsterdam for many people is legalised marijuana, though I have to say that I didn’t indulge (and no, I’m not just saying this cause my parents read the blog). I did go in to a “coffeeshop” but only to print out a few pages. The owner didn’t charge me – here’s to more pot smoking businessmen!

I left Amsterdam, making use of the same lift-sharing website that I’ve used before and made my way back down to Munich. After a weekend waiting for businesses to open up again I was off racing, trying to sort out all the things that need to be done for Brett and I to move to Germany. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were full and intense days, all the more so because today, Thursday, is a public holiday. I’m happy to say that all the things that definitely had to be taken care of have been sorted out and I’ve decided that I can afford (time wise) to go to Prague for a few days. For the longest time it seemed like nothing was getting ticked off my to-do list because all I was doing was the background research. Then all of a sudden that research has paid off and I’ve been running around ticking things off like a squirrel on amphetamines.

So I leave here tomorrow night for Prague, spend a few days there exploring the city, taking photos with my newly cleaned camera and hanging out with a friend Brett and I met in Moldova. Then I head back to Stuttgart to see the relatives again briefly before flying to London to see friends and sort out the Uzbek visa. I’ll meet Brett in a few weeks, we’ll have a couple of days in Riga and then fly to Tashkent for a month of travel in Uzbekistan. I can’t wait to see more of the old Silk Road.

Japan in cherry blossom season is beautiful and we hit it perfectly on the start of our extended honeymoon. The Japanese love having hanami parties which translates to “flower viewing”. They involve a group of friends, a lot of sake and a blue tarpaulin spread out underneath the blossom covered trees. It’s by far the best season to be in Japan and it was the first time I’d really been able to enjoy it, because previously in my Japan-based tourism jobs spring was obviously our most busy season. The castle in the second photo is Himeji, the most beautiful castle in Japan and the perfect place to be when the flowers are in full bloom.

A Buddhist temple in South Korea. The painted decoration on the roofs was pretty incredible, as you can see. Pretty much every building in every temple we went to looked like this, it must take an army of painters to keep everything looking so fresh and brightly painted. We were there around Buddha’s birthday and in celebration all the temples put up hundreds of colourful paper lanterns which were lit up at night.

At the border of North and South Korea, in the zone administered by the United Nations. The blue building straddles the border and is where any negotiations between the two sides take place. Technically they’re still at war, after the Korean War of the 1950s a ceasefire was signed but never a true peace treaty. In the last few days with an international report finding that a South Korean warship was sunk by a North Korean torpedo the north has retaliated by withdrawing from the ceasefire agreement. Anyway, on the day we were there everything was peaceful, if a little bizarre. The soldier on the right is standing facing North Korea but keeping half of his body safe behind the building. Just in case.

Traditional Korean folk music called pungmul. The drummers are constantly moving and dancing around as they play, and some of them wear ribbons attached to their hat which spin around as they bobble their heads. It’s a bit hard to describe but if you can imagine a group of guys dancing in a circle, playing drums and moving their heads around in circles then you can start to imagine the amount of coordination that would be needed. Impressive.

The western end of the Great Wall of China, in Xinjiang province. A big fort from which the camel caravans headed further west along the silk road and around the Taklamakan Desert. I was really happy to take Brett to Xinjiang which is probably my favourite area in China. The people are beautiful, the countryside impressive and the history interesting.

Kashgar animal market, Xinjiang. Every Sunday men get together here to buy/sell goats, sheep, donkeys, horses and cows. It’s a dusty, chaotic mess and its great fun to watch the buying process. The only reason to leave is to make sure you don’t miss the rest of the Sunday market, one of the biggest in the area, where absolutely everything can be bought.

Tearing down Kashgar’s old town. The historic centre of the city is being destroyed to make way for shopping malls and other things that the Han Chinese prefer. Beautiful courtyard houses and the narrow twisting alleyways between them are disappearing, with big painted 拆symbols on the walls showing how many more are scheduled to be demolished. I tried to spend as much time as possible in the old town because I know that by the time I go back it may not exist anymore.

 A yurt/ger in Kyrgyzstan. We spent a few nights in these nomadic homes, which are easily dismantled and moved twice a year, when the animals need to be moved into or away from higher pastures. They’re traditionally made of felt and are quite comfortable inside, even when it’s snowing outside they’re toasty and warm thanks to the stove in the centre. Inside you sleep on mattresses on the carpet covered floor.

The animal market in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan. Animals were brought to market in any available transport, including the luggage trunk of the Russian made Lada cars. At one stage we saw a cow, a sheep and three people pile into the back of a minivan. Then a man rode up on a horse… (it didn’t end up going in). We weren’t actually planning on spending the day in Karakol but Brett was feeling a bit ill (i’d been ill the day before) so we spent the day wandering around and relaxing. The animal market was as interesting for people watching as it was for the animals, there was the most amazing mix of faces - European, Asian, Middle-Eastern, Mongolian and every possible combination thereof.

The bus trip from hell, Tajikistan. We were travelling from Khorog to Dushanbe which is only about 600km but it took us 55 hours. I’m not kidding. The van got 8 flat tyres, we had engine problems, the driver wasn’t carrying spare inner tubes or a pump, we had engine problems and it was a religious holiday so there wasn’t as many cars on the road to stop and help. We’d left in the morning planning to be in Dushanbe that evening but were only half way by midnight. By the time we were broken down the 2nd night the rest of the passengers bailed out and got in a truck. Brett and I spent the night of our six month wedding anniversary in a broken down van then finally got the tyre pumped up. About 15 minutes after we started driving another tyre was flat but the driver kept driving. Part of the car fell off because the shredded tyre was flapping against it and by the time we limped into the next town a second tyre was also flat. At that point, still a few hundred km from Dushanbe, we jumped into another car and rode in the boot for another 5 hours. This picture was taken on the first day, broken down with Afghanistan on the other side of the river. In an area some people recomend not driving through, not to mention being broken down for four hours…

Riga, Latvia. After adventures like that one above it was great to be in a more developed country where cars are reliable, toilets flush and greasy mutton wasn’t added to every meal. Having said that I loved what we saw of Central Asia and we’re planning to do some more exploring. While Brett was at work I spent a few weeks hanging out in Riga, exploring the old town and admiring the beautiful Art Nouveau architecture.

Rila Monastery, Bulgaria. Up in the mountains outside Sofia this monastery has been a safe haven for Bulgarian culture and religion throughout history. It was protected during the Ottoman era and managed to survive the Communists too. Originally founded in the 10th century the oldest buildings still in existence are from the 14th century and it’s obviously designed to withhold a siege. The central church is surrounded by thick defensive walls in which the monk’s cells are located. External windows are built very small. This picture is of the outside of the church, which is completely covered in stunning frescoes. This one is in a dome in the roof and I remember spending a lot of time leaning as far back as I could, trying to take it all in.

Sighisoara, Romania. A beautiful fortified medieval town perched on top of a hill, now of course surrounded by the modern new town on the plains below. It was originally founded by Germanic people in the 12th century who were invited by the King of Hungary to protect the borders of his land. It amazed me in our travels in this area of Europe how many times Germanic people were mentioned, we even went to a fortified church in a community that still spoke an old form of German and used German bibles. Anyway, Sighisoara was probably more famous amongst tourists as the birthplace of Vlad Tepes, also known as Vlad the Impaler or Count Dracula. Bram Stoker has a lot to answer for, the house that little Vlad lived in for the first four years of his life is now an expensive restaurant popular with tour bus groups.

Kiev, Ukraine. Please appreciate this photo, it was about -15oC when I took it and very windy. I’ve never been so cold in my life, and when my fingers finally defrosted after all the photo taking they actually ached. Though it was such a beautiful sky I had to take pictures. I have to say I never need to live through another  Ukrainian winter, though apparently all of Europe had a particularly harsh season. Just our luck. I didn’t pack for those temperatures.

Istanbul, Turkey. A fascinating city, so full of history and culture that we spent two weeks and only forced ourselves to leave by realising that if the city was this amazing then the rest of the country was worth seeing too. It was established as the eastern capital of the Roman empire in 330AD and when the western Roman empire collapsed it was the capital of the Byzantine empire until the Ottoman Turks took over in 1453. Then it was capital of that great empire until after WW1. The most amazing thing is that all that history is still there, something that only really hit me when we went to Gallipoli. If the Gallipoli campaign (something central to Australia’s sense of identity) in WW1 had been successful, the next stage of that plan was to head up the Dardanelles and bomb the bejeezus out of Istanbul. Turkey stayed neutral in WW2.

Olympos, Turkey. This isn’t a bonfire, it’s natural gas seeping out of the ground, that ignites on contact with the air. Even if the flames (there are about 15 of them) are put out with water, they reignite on their own. It was a pretty impressive sight and one that inspired worship of the gods thousands of years ago. Near where we stayed a small city has been uncovered and near the flames you could see the remains of an ancient temple.

Cappadocia, Turkey. No matter how hard I tried, I never did manage to capture how cool this area is in a photo. As nice as the 2D image is it can’t express the feeling of clambering into one of the openings in a fairy chimney, and following eroded passageways through to other rooms carved into the volcanic rock. For thousands of years people have been carving into the rock, to escape religious persecution, avoid the heat or just to save money on building materials. The caves were used for houses, storerooms, wine presses, pigeon coops to collect the droppings for fertiliser and as churches. There’s even a cave mosque. After all the amazing photos we’d seen and all the eager anticipation it was pretty impressive that Cappadocia not only lived up to expectations but exceeded them.

Mt Nemrut, Turkey. Back in the 1st century BC a local ruler indulged in some delusions of grandeur and built himself a monumental tomb on top of this 2,100m high mountain. He erected 9m tall statues of himself, his family and the gods (who were obviously also his relatives), and set them up on the east and west sides of an artificial terrace. Between them he built a massive 50m high mound of rock which is believed to cover his tomb. The power of his small empire didn’t last long after his death and he would hardly be a footnote in history if it wasn’t for these incredible statues, now picturesquely collapsed. We delayed our visit as long as possible to wait for the snow to melt and were really glad we made it up.

photos to come…

-

I spent a little more time hanging with family, including some time with my cousin and his family as a working bee was launched to beautify their courtyard. Well let’s just call him my cousin, technically he’s my mum’s cousin’s son but that just gets too convoluted. Anyway he and his wife have a gorgeous 2 year old son who spent the day keeping us women busy as the guys were outside working in the rain. Little Colin was learning how to ride his walking bike and apparently the day after I saw him managed to do it all on his own. By all accounts he was as proud as punch. He reminded me that the best sound in the world is the gurgling laugh of a happy child. The second best sound in the world is the clink of ice cubes in a gin and tonic on a hot and sunny afternoon. Before leaving I also spent a day hanging out with some family friends who have twice done long trips around Australia and visited us both times. The first time was with motorbikes and the second with a campervan and kids in tow. They can’t believe an Australian wants to move to Germany when all they want to do is move to where I’m leaving. Funny how that works.

From Stetten I headed back to Munich to pick up some stuff I’d left at the hostel and discovered one of the inexplicable phenomena of backpacking: if you have a full bag, take some stuff out and leave it behind for a while then pick it up again, there is little chance that the left behind stuff will fit back into the bag you originally took it out of. Admittedly, some stuff was bits and pieces Brett left behind for me to carry, but that doesn’t account for the whole problem. I swear there could be a PhD thesis dedicated to the quirks of living out of a backpack and it would probably involve some quantum physics, elementary particles or other seriously complicated sounding scientific words. Anyway, I was left with an extra bag as well as my big backpack and daypack. I feel like a fool.

Thankfully my lift from Munich up north to Muenster had lots of luggage space. I’ve become a fan of a German lift-sharing website called mitfahrgelegenheit (all you non-Germans try saying that one fast 3 times…). Basically people post when they’re driving from point A to point B and if you’re trying to do the same journey at the same time you can ask for a seat in their car. It’s much cheaper than any other form of transport and the driver (who was making the trip anyway) gets some petrol money. On the way up to Muenster I drove with 3 girls and seeing as we got in late I crashed on the driver’s couch for the night.

The next day was my presentation at the local Pecha Kucha night. Presenters show 20 slides for 20 seconds each and it’s a good way to see a variety of artists/designers/architects work. If it’s something you’re not interested in then it’s over in just over 6.5 minutes. It’s a concept that started in Tokyo and I presented twice while living there, so it was cool to see the same idea replicated somewhere else. Anyway, I showed some of my travel photos from the past year or so, presented in English and think I did an OK job. I got laughs when I expected them, but also when I put a photo of yet another country up. I guess we have been to lots of pretty amazing places over the past 61 weeks. After the other presentations I hung out with my couchsurfing host and some of his university friends. They took me to a typical student bar, full of rock music, smoke, cheap beer and the occasional man falling off the table he was dancing on. It was awesome!

Waking up a few hours after we made it home I got on the train to Amsterdam, met my friend Jen and her boyfriend Mark, and proceeded to drive back into Germany. In fact we drove down to southern Germany, not far from Stetten. I never said this was a well planned trip… It was a long weekend in the Netherlands so they were headed down to Rheinland Pfalz for some rock climbing. The three of us drove 6 or so hours in Fred, their campervan, who is fantastic! We got in to the campsite in the dark so waking up the next morning to see a narrow valley surrounded by forested hills and the occasional sandstone crag was really nice. The sun was shining, the picnic blanket was out and life was good.

The next two days were spent rock-climbing; mostly Jen and Mark but I also had a try. I’m not sure if they’re just saying it but apparently I did OK for a first timer. It helped that I don’t really have a fear of heights (as long as I don’t fall off them) and have done some abseiling before so I’m a little used to trusting ropes to hold me. Anyway the first climb I did was cool and not too difficult but I had a little more trouble on the second. It had a section of almost vertical flat rock which I only managed to pass by pulling on gear (bad form, bad form) and hauling myself up in a most undignified and unladylike manner. Apparently it can be an elegant sport, just not when I do it. They were both 4s in case anyone out there knows what that means?

On our last day we checked out a pretty cool medieval castle near Dahn. Well 3 separate castles actually. They were all built right next to each other along a narrow sandstone ridge and passed through several owners over the hundreds of years. Even though most of the buildings have been destroyed there’s still plenty to see, and the fact that we were allowed to wander around almost unimpeded added to the excitement. The first of the castles was built in the 12th century and all of them have made great use of the natural fortifications, building on top of the crags and reinforcing the surrounding area. After exploring all three castles we headed back to Amsterdam, where I am now.

I’ll stay a few more days here then head back to Munich on Friday. If all goes to plan with Brett’s work I’ll spend 2 weeks or so in Munich (with probably a weekend trip to Prague) then head to London. Uzbekistan is still scheduled for our next destination together.

photos to come…

-
Brett didn’t leave for work on Saturday and so spent another few hours on the phone to change his flights to this Tuesday. It then looked like that wouldn’t happen either because the boat was waiting on parts. Finally at 9am on Tuesday he got the OK to fly and we immediately left for the airport. He’s now in the far north of Norway getting ready for a five or so week stint in the North Sea.

A few days before he left we headed out to the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart, which was really interesting even for someone who isn’t overly interested in cars. It gave a good history of the company from the independent development of the first motorised vehicles by Gottlieb Daimler, Karl Benz and Wilhelm Maybach in the late 1800s. The Daimler and Benz companies merged in 1926, when high inflation in Germany and general economic turmoil meant that companies were fighting for survival. It is now the world’s 13th largest car manufacturer in the world. Something I found interesting is that the Mercedes brand was named after the daughter of a rich Austrian businessman, who persuaded the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft to make another race car after a fatal crash in 1900. Sometime later the company’s racing cars became known as “silver bullets”, because one had its paint sanded back to the metal when it was 1kg over racing weight.

Since Brett left I’ve been hanging out with relatives and starting to do some research on health insurance for when we move here. I won’t bore you with too many details but needless to say we don’t fit very well in the nice neat German boxes. And neither do my language skills. I’ve been negotiating most of it in Schwabisch, the dialect of German that I speak, and people tend to think it rather strange that I can speak either English or Schwabisch but not proper German. Apart from my situation there’s really no other reason that would be the case. Anyway, apart from the occasional “you’re really weird” looks and comments everyone has been really helpful and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to pull out some more proper German when I head to a different part of the country.

There’s not all that much more to write, I’ve really been enjoying hanging out and spending whole days just chatting to people. In a few days I’ll head to Munich. At the moment there’s a big church gathering where all the different churches meet once a year. Catholic, Orthodox and Methodist leaders and followers are filling up all the dorm beds. From there I’ll head up to Münster to present some of my photos at a Pecha Kucha night on Thursday.

-

Trying to get the classic photo of Neuschwanstein castle turned out to be quite an adventure. Actually it should have been simple – we knew where we wanted to be. Getting there was another matter. Slopes were steep and unstable, groves of prickly trees grew in the most inopportune places, and we discovered that ticks exist in Europe, too. Thankfully after all the clambering we found the view we were looking for and snapped a few photos before scrambling back down to civilisation. The afternoon was spent exploring the town of Fussen which has a beautiful old quarter that’s generally overlooked by the hordes of bus tours.

From there we headed east toward Stuttgart to where my mother was born. Actually it’s a bit outside Stuttgart, in a town called Stetten. Relatives are spread around a bit in different towns nearby and the names of the different areas evoke memories of previous visits or stories I’ve been told growing up. We’ve been welcomed with open arms and it’s great to be able to introduce Brett to everyone and show him where my German roots come from. Actually, his German roots aren’t from all that far away, about 60km as the crow flies. Thankfully his ancestors left Germany in the early 1800s so the chances of us being related are pretty slim. Back then 60km was a longer distance than it is now. We plan to head there at some stage and sift through the old church books for details of his family, but before we do that I have to learn some of the old German Sutterlin script. As if learning  proper German isn’t enough of a task already!

It’s been really cool catching up with people over here. The last time I was around was in 2006 and a bit has changed. My great uncle’s Parkinsons has gotten worse and it was tough to see him so debilitated. Last time I was here he was still walking around and doing OK, but now he’s confined to a wheelchair and hardly recognises anyone. On a happier note my… what is he to me… cousin? My grandmother’s sister’s grandchild… anyway he got married and now has a beautiful two year old son (and of course a beautiful wife as well). We spent some time over there last night, chatting eating and hanging out.

His parents are the ones who have been putting a roof over our heads and also making sure our days are filled with interesting activities and delicious food. Yesterday we went to an open air museum of old buildings which have been brought together from around the area. There was an old schoolhouse, a house from 1555 and a teeny tiny poor farmer’s house. We thought the single room was small already, but then we read that a family with 11 children lived there! It would have been standing room only, and sleeping in shifts. One of the buildings had a really good display of building techniques used and we saw how the fachwerk beam frame was filled with woven sticks which were then covered in clay. Roofs/floors were made with wooden beams coated with clay and straw mix which supported the floor beams on top and were plastered smooth on the roof side.

Actually one of the nicest things that I realised when we were walking around the museum was that we could still see some of the old style buildings being used in towns in the area. Of course you can’t go into the private houses but the old fachwerk houses are still being used and maintained. In a nearby village called Strumpfelbach we saw some beautiful examples along the main street and as we drive through other villages there are plenty that catch our eye. Speaking of looking after old buildings we also spent a morning at a 400 year old old winepress bu in Stetten which is being renovated to become a multipurpose hall. It lost its original function in 1931 when a new wine press was built, and over the years has served a variety of purposes - most notably a meeting hall for youth organisations during the Nazi times and as a home for refugees and displaced people after WWII. Something that’s struck me so far just in my time back in Germany is how open people are about the dark era of the Third Reich, I guess because I’ve spent so much time in Japan where their equally dark era isn’t talked about and China where nothing much at all is openly discussed. It’s good to see.

Brett was meant to go back to work yesterday but things got delayed, as things often do, and now he flies out on Saturday. It actually worked out well because he gets more time to explore the area and spend more time with my relatives. We’ve shown him around Stetten, wandered through the vineyards and forests that surround it and taken him to the “world famous” Yburg. It’s a small fortification, more just a tower, in the vineyards above town and serves as Stetten’s signature landmark. It’s nice for me to see the area in something apart from the depths of winter, which is when I’ve been here the last two times (the only times I can really remember). It’ll be nice when we live in Munich to be able to come back in different seasons, particularly grape harvest and autumn when all the leaves change colour.

When Brett heads back to work I’ll probably go back to Munich to sort out some stuff and get a bit more of a feel for the city, then some time in the Netherlands, Belgium and London. If all goes to plan we’re heading to Uzbekistan in Brett’s next break.

-

We spent a week in Munich, checking out some of the neighbourhoods, picking couchsurfers’ brains and exploring some of the many cool corners of the city. It really seems like a place we’re going to enjoy living when we finally get it all together and “settle down”. I use quotation marks because one of the things that we love about the city is its proximity to places that we want to travel. Much to Brett’s delight it’s only an hour or so from the mountains, which should be great for outdoor activities in all seasons. Yes, that’s right, the Sydney girl is actually excited about going snowshoeing, cross country skiing and hiking on cleared paths (as long as there’s a log fire and mug of mulled wine at the end of those days). It’s also really close to some of the areas of Eastern Europe that we’re itching to explore.

Apart from all that Munich seems like a really liveable city. There is plenty of green space all throughout the city and the central area is compact enough to be able to walk to most places if you’re not in a hurry. Just about the only thing we’ve heard people complain about is the price of housing, with rent apparently being much higher than anywhere else in Germany. Other living expenses may or may not be higher, depending on who you talk to. Anyway it’s easy to see why people want to live there so we’ll just have to make it work.
On one of our days we took the S-bahn down south to a suburb we’ve heard good things about. It’s on the Isar River and seemed to have a lot of green space in the surrounding areas, according to our map. We fell in love with it, though this has been a bit of a theme for each area we visit in Munich. It was quiet, green and only 20 minutes from the centre of the city. To get home we walked for about 8km along the Isar and marvelled at how many other people were out enjoying the beautiful spring day. There were bike and walking paths everywhere and it seemed like everyone was out getting some exercise and having fun. The banks of the river were full of people with picnic blankets spread out, BBQs wafting enticing smells and crates of beer stored in the river to keep them cool. Further along we saw the nudist area, though it wasn’t discretely hidden away like I would expect. They were hanging out, in all their glory, just metres from the main path along the river. Some of them wandered around tending a BBQ but most of them just lay there avoiding tan lines.

Of course we also spent an evening at the Fruhlingsfest, the spring festival that’s kind of a smaller version of Octoberfest. It was cool, with a lot more rides and other festival things than I expected. Well OK it was mostly about beer but also some rides to make you feel ill afterwards. It was also cool to see how many people were dressed up in traditional costume, the dirndl for women and lederhosen for men. As is usually the case there were more women dressed up and there seem to be plenty of shops in town selling traditional clothing. We sat in one of the festival tents, huge spaces with lines and lines of tables surrounding a traditional brass oom-pa-pa band that played rousing music as we raised our 1L beers and swayed in time to the music. Actually we didn’t do too much of that but I can only imagine how crazy it must get during Octoberfest when the tents are full of rowdy drunks. I certainly wouldn’t want to be a dirndl clad waitress with cleavage up around my ears on one of those nights.

Anyway, today we left Munich and headed down to Fussen to see Neuschwanstein castle. It’s a beautiful castle from the outside and the interior was even more incredible. Built by Ludwig II of Bavaria it was started in 1869 and remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1886. A day before his mysterious/suspicious death he had been deposed from the throne on the grounds of insanity, though these days he’s simply regarded as an eccentric man who enjoyed art and music much more than the activities befitting a statesman. Ludwig II was a great fan and financial backer of Richard Wagner, and throughout the castle there are paintings of scenes in operas he composed. The rest of the decorations are mostly done in the style of the Middle Ages and it seemed he looked back longingly to the romantic era when kings ruled with the power of god on their side, an absolute power that was slipping from the grasp of the Bavarian kings. Whatever the reasons and sad truths of the melancholy king it has to be said he had a great eye for beautiful artwork, the lavish murals are surrounded by golden designs and it seemed like not a single space was left blank. All too soon we were being told that the tour was over and we were pushed, gawping, into the bright sunshine of another beautiful spring day.

Tomorrow we’ll do some hiking in the mountains around the castle, visit another nearby castle and wander around the town of Fussen before heading toward Stuttgart to visit my German relatives. Then, after six months of 24/7 time, I’ll finally have to say goodbye to Brett as he heads off to work in about a week. Maybe I can use my melancholy alone time to build a mini Neuschwanstein?

-

As it turned out getting to Belgrade wasn’t as simple as “direct train” would have you believe, but we felt a little of the old fashioned romance of train travel as we pulled out of Istanbul. We left from the same station that the Orient Express used back in the day. Our carriage was hooked on to a train that had different cars heading off in various directions along the way, but when we got to Sofia, Bulgaria, we were told that our little orphan carriage had missed the train we were meant to be joining on to. We had to wait until evening (another 10 hours) for the next train to Belgrade. Brett and I explored the station area, bought some supplies, then wandered around the sidings looking for our mobile home. We eventually found it and killed some more time before being bounced around like a ping pong ball by an engine driver who was obviously in need of shunting practice.

Eventually we arrived in Belgrade, at 5:30am, and once checked in (at 9am) we headed out to explore Belgrade. The city doesn’t really have all that many sights but the weather was beautiful and we joined the locals in making the most of it. Outdoor cafes and the beautiful park at the old citadel were great places to hang out and people watch. The young people are very fashion conscious and in certain areas you’d be forgiven for believing that nobody over the age of 35 lived in Belgrade. Apparently the nightlife is pretty lively on any night of the week but we weren’t really in the mood to head out drinking, though we did visit one eclectic little bar which gave us some inspiration for how we’re going to arrange our own strange collection of travel artefacts once we have a house. One sightseeing thing that we did do was the ethnographic museum which has an incredible collection of traditional costumes. We were also told that there was an area where you could still see some of the buildings bombed by NATO in 1999. It’s a strange thing to go and see when you think about it logically, but it had to be seen. Maybe its morbid fascination but I prefer to think of it as seeing traces of recent history that you usually only read about in the newspapers. As far as I can tell the buildings we saw used to be the Yugoslav Army Headquarters and the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs and they’ve been left as a reminder of the past.

A few days later we hopped on the train to Munich, where we are now. It’s a pity that we didn’t get out into the Serbian countryside but it was only a quick stop to break up the Istanbul to Munich train journey. Travelling through Slovenia the scenery was beautiful so we’ll definitely be back in this part of the world at some stage. It was surprisingly easy to get train tickets to Germany despite the fact that the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano has cancelled all flights to Europe. It really seems to be wreaking havoc, and as we got closer to shut-down air zones we picked up more and more people, refugees from cancelled flights. It’s amazing to people like us, whose last train was 11 hours late, how impatient people are. I guess a lot of it comes with the fact that they have jobs to get back to and we don’t. They weren’t really picking up on that “train travel is romantically old fashioned” vibe that I love.

To their relief we finally pulled in to Munich, and we headed out to look for a place to sleep. Places were more full and expensive than expected because there is a massive trade fair going on. There are also some football finals and a mini October fest. Talk about bad timing! (though we do hope to make the most of the mini October fest tomorrow). It was kind of strange to arrive in a place we’ve already decided to live, though thankfully I like what I’ve seen. Brett has been here twice before so he knew what to expect. We spent today wandering around English Garden, popped into a beautiful church and generally soaked up the atmosphere as crowds of football fans sung their chants in the beer gardens of Marienplatz. For lunch we had some of the solid, meaty, heart attackingly delicious food that I always associate with Germany and which, for me, tastes like home. And of course some beer, which comes in bicep building 1L portions unless you’re a girl and go for “just” 500ml. I’m really looking forward to exploring more of the city in the next few days and hopefully seeing a bit more of Germany while Brett’s at work. I also want to work on my language skills, which are pretty rusty. Unfortunately, I also have a list of other places I want to visit in Europe. As is always the case I have a massive list of things I want to do and not enough time, no surprises there!

-

We finally made it to Divrigi the morning after I last posted. Prior research indicated that there were very limited accommodation options but we had the name, approximate location and phone number of a government-run hotel. Our initial inquiries took us to the local council offices where we were served tea, met the mayor and generally sat around wondering what was going to happen next. Once everyone had had enough tea they drove us to the hotel and made sure we were settled. We were. It was a beautiful hotel in a peaceful location and to top it all off was the cheapest place we’d found in our time in the country! Happy as two travellers could be we headed off to see the main (only?) attraction in town, a trio of intricately carved doorways.

It seems like a strange reason to detour hundreds of kilometres down a dead end valley but the doorways on Divrigi’s Great Mosque and hospital are incredibly beautiful. The mosque was built in 1229 by the local lord and at the same time his wife commissioned the building of the adjacent hospital. Inside and out the yellow stone walls are very plain but it’s as if the entire decorative power of the areas artisans was dedicated to the carvings surrounding the doorways. The stone bends and warps in ways that make you need to touch it to prove that it’s stone, it looks more like plastic or wood carving. There are three doorways and each seemed more amazing than the last, though believe me when I say that even the first one was impressive.

Historically it’s hard to see why these amazing doorways are in such an isolated place. In the past, as it is now, Divrigi was at the end of a dead end valley. There is one road in, and it doesn’t go much further up the valley than the town. All we can assume is that the lord had some spare cash lying around. We spent a fair while exploring the building, taking far too many detail shots of the amazing carvings. As we were getting ready to leave the caretaker invited us in for a cup of tea then fed us some Turkish pizza. Chai really does make the world go around in Turkey. Before we left he said “My village good. You go?” before telling us to meet him back there at 4:30pm. Sure, why not?

Having no idea what we were getting ourselves into we rocked up at the appointed time, chocolates in hand. After wandering around with him for a little while we picked up another guy who apparently had a car. Some food was bought, some raki (aniseed liquor) was bought and we drove up the valley. After about half an hour Brett and I were a little worried about how we’d get home but it all turned out marvellous. First we drove past his village up to a dam, where we had our first glass of raki in the car, looking out over the lake as the wind whistled outside. Then we drove up to a fish farm where we bought some fish that we later fried up for dinner. Back at his village we stoked up a fire in his village house and the four of us sat around eating and drinking until the raki was gone. Thankfully both men live full time in town so we all headed back there, though the second bottle of raki at the company’s garden house nearby probably tipped the balance. It was a crazily random night, and it was great to experience such lovely hospitality.

After a bit of head holding and feeling sorry for ourselves the next day we left Divrigi to make our way down toward Mt Nemrut. The mountain is famous for the massive stone heads that have toppled from their 8m high statues and now lie around the place looking ridiculously picturesque. It’s one of the iconic images of Turkey but we’d been worried that too much snow on the peak would stop us from going up. Thankfully we’ve spent so much time exploring the rest of the country that the snow has melted and the hotels opened. We decided to do a bit of a circuit, travelling up to the summit from Malatya for sunset then staying near the top, going up again for sunrise and descending to Kahta. The drive from Malatya was scenic, it gave us two chances to see the heads in different light and we got to see the ruins of the capital city at Arsameia.

Like Divrigi the remains on Nemrut Dagi are the work of a fleeting dynasty which would be no more than a footnote in history if it weren’t for a single, strikingly over-the-top feat of construction. In the case of Mt Nemrut it was an independent king who set himself up as a buffer state between Rome and the Parthians. He claimed ancestry leading back to the great empires to the east and west and his son revelled in delusions of grandeur. He ordered the building of a massive terrace on top of the 2,100m high peak and placed 8-9m tall statues of himself and the gods (who he claimed were his relatives). In the middle of the terrace is a 50m high pile of rubble which it’s assumed covers the tomb of King Antiochus. He decreed that ceremonies to him would take place on the mountain, in a temple he constructed there, twice every month. It didn’t last long, after his death in 38BC the territory was annexed by Rome and the Kingdom of Commagene was effectively over.

These days the heads have been toppled from the statues by earthquakes and lie at their feet. It was nice to have both sunset and sunrise at the summit as it gave us the chance to see both sides with good light. As it turns out that chance was thwarted by a cloud covered sunrise but we had some nice weather the night before and it was actually quite atmospheric with the mist. On the way down the mountain we stopped in at Arsameia which was the summer capital of the kingdom. There’s not much left apart from a few massive steles, one of which shows King Mithridates I shaking hands with the god Heracles. There is also a long tunnel dug 158m down into the bedrock which was designed for worshipping the king after his death. Up on a hilltop with a beautiful view down the valley is some walls, and a pebble floor from the ancient royal palace, but little else remains.

Later that day we made it back to Malatya to catch our overnight train back to Istanbul. Our time in Turkey was nearly at an end but we were looking forward to going back to where it all began 2.5 months ago. The last few days have been spent revisiting some of our favourite spots in this amazing city before we say a final farewell tonight. We’re catching the train to Belgrade, Serbia, though this was something we weren’t sure of until this morning. Yesterday they couldn’t tell us whether the train would go or not, it’s just pure luck that it’s going on the day we want to. The schedule says every day but hey, what kind of an adventure would that be? So we’ll spend a few days in Belgrade (and read about what there is to do there on the train) before heading to Munich.

-

The first stop on our UNESCO hopping was Safranbolu, where we wandered among the Ottoman era buildings that have been preserved in the old market area of the city. One of the things that was really nice was that the historic area is separated from the new part of town, and in its own little valley. Apart from the modern apartment blocks on the ridgeline and the occasional communications tower on a peak, all you saw were old houses, or new ones that are designed to fit in. We stayed in a beautiful building that had some of the features we saw in other buildings. The exterior is usually covered in white plaster but the interior is all wooden – the floors, ceilings and cupboards that cover the walls. Around the walls there is a narrow seating area and the rooms are designed to be multipurpose. During the day they are set up for general living and in the evening bedding is brought out of the cupboards in the wall. Another space-saving device which was a little odd was a bath in the cupboard. We’re still not really sure how this worked but essentially a small trapdoor in the raised floor of the cupboard opened and people would wash there. When they were finished the trapdoor would be closed and the cupboard would be used for storage. We’re not sure how drainage worked; we had a normal bathroom in our room.

Wandering around the streets was really cool, many of them are too narrow for car traffic and even the ones that are one car wide were pretty much only pedestrian. Many of the buildings now house shops in the bottom floor selling tourist tat, halva and Turkish delight. Everything seems to be saffron infused, as it was the growing and trading of this spice that gave the town its wealth and its name, though I can’t recommend saffron tea. We visited another caravanserai, built to give shelter to traders’ caravans and now continuing that function as a hotel. A little out of town another hotel had restored a building with a feature not often seen, an indoor pool in the reception room. It wasn’t designed for swimming, but instead cooled the room and the running water provided a pleasant background sound for socialising. I was happy enough with overhanging second floors jutting out at odd angles, all these special features made the town’s buildings even cooler! Up in the clock tower we talked to the man who has been in charge of winding up the town’s clock for the past 45 years! Since he was 22 in 1965 he has made sure the counterweights don’t hit the floor. I can’t imagine the council being able to find a replacement when he retires.

We continued our UNESCO hopping with a visit to the ancient Hittite capital of Hattusha. The Hittites were immigrants to Anatolia and not a lot is known about their origins. They spoke an Indo-European language and it’s generally assumed they trickled in from the Caucuses region in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. There wasn’t a big invasion but they gradually formed groups and eventually overthrew the Hatti rulers around the 18th century BC. The empire reached its height in the 14th century BC when it covered parts of northern Syria and came into conflict with the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II. The Battle of Kadesh in 1274BC was a massive battle, involving around 5,000 chariots, and the end result was a draw. The peace treaty that resulted was the first of its kind in the world and held until the downfall of the Hittite empire hundreds of years later. Ramses II also indulged in some of the world’s earliest recorded propaganda and managed to turn what was essentially a loss for him into a grand victory.

But I digress…

Hattusha was the capital of the Hatti people before the Hittites took over their land and capital around 1650BC. Though it was far from the sea there were many trade routes through the area, and in that time the climate was milder and more suitable for harvesting crops than it is now. Once in control the Hittites reintroduced cuneiform writing, which had been used by Assyrian traders but had fallen into disuse under the Hattis. It’s through about 25,000 clay tablets found in Hattusha’s archives that archaeologists have learnt so much about a people who, until the rediscovery of Hattusha, were thought to be almost mythical. They were mentioned in the bible and in Egyptian sources but no trace of them had been found, until 1834. The site has been continually excavated since 1906, apart from pauses during both world wars.

You need to use a lot of imagination at the site but it’s easy to see that it was a big city. The remnants of stone foundations remain where the upper sections of wood framed mud brick walls have long disintegrated, but they cover an impressive area. We walked a 5km course that took us through the upper and lower city areas. 7m wide defensive walls used to surround the city, which included a royal palace, massive grain storage, water storage pools, numerous temples and administrative buildings. It’s estimated that the population at the city’s peak was between 40,000 and 50,000. One section of the city wall has been restored; an impressive feat that underlines how impressive a feat it was in the first place. A 65m long section required approximately 64,000 mud bricks, each 45×45x10cm, and took 11 months. One of the cool little details we saw was where the heavy wooden doors of a temple had swung open and rubbed a semi-circular mark in the stone threshold. There was also a huge rampart in the south of the city that was built with a tunnel through it. Nobody is sure of its function; some say it was defensive but if that were the case one would expect it to be better concealed.

Near Hattusha is the religious sanctuary of Yazilikaya. It was a shrine for the inhabitants of Hattusha and comprised of two open air galleries of carved rock reliefs surrounded by religious buildings. We must have had bad light because it was really difficult to see much of the detail we read about, but apparently the main chamber shows a procession of male gods on one wall and a procession of female gods on the other. The central scene shows the Hittite’s main gods facing each other, the storm-god Teshub and the sun-goddess Hebat. Each deity is labelled with their name in Luvian hieroglyphics. The Luvian language was widely used in the Hittite empire and at Hattusha we saw an inscription in Luvian hieroglyphics. It was really odd. They didn’t write left to right, or right to left, or top to bottom, or any other way which would be (to my mind) logical. Instead they wrote “as the ox plows”, as our book so poetically put it. They started at the top right, wrote toward the left then the next line started on the left and wrote toward the right. It kept going down in a never ending “s” shape. Hieroglyphics in lines going one way were mirror images of those in lines going the opposite direction. I understand that the English language doesn’t have the monopoly on dictating how a language should be written but boy am I glad the Luvians don’t either.

Anyway, tonight we’re in Sivas. It’s not a place we plan on seeing any of, though I’m sure it’s got something to see if we wanted to spend more time. We arrived in the evening after a convoluted series of transport changes, and are travelling on tomorrow to Divrigi, our main destination for this journey. Since we left the coast and the more major tourist areas transport has been a bit more of a hassle. Connections aren’t direct and sometimes (like today) the most logical route isn’t covered by public transport. Still, we really were spoiled down along the coast.

-

After a very full and exciting week last week we seem to have slowed down a little over the past seven days. Our blue sky weather in Cappadocia finally came to an end, and we’d seen a lot of fairy chimneys by the time we left. On our last full day of exploring we headed to Cavusin, a small village at the base of an impressive honeycombed rock outcrop. We clambered up and got to the Church of St John the Baptist, which dates from the 5th century and is one of the oldest churches in Cappadocia. Access is now assisted by a platform because the structure of the entire outcrop is so eroded that the original route no longer exists. It was impressive. A huge cave carved out of the rock in the shape of a traditional church, complete with columns, wall carvings and the remains of frescoes. We scrambled around the rest of the outcrop, climbing in and out of rooms, peering out of high windows and wondering if a huge cracks in the rock meant the whole thing was going to collapse in the next 5 minutes or the next 5 years.

From there we walked to an area called Pasabag, known for its mushroom-shaped fairy chimneys. The shape is a result of the more solid rock on top being eroded slower than the layers underneath. The image you see on a lot of local postcards is the three-headed fairy chimney. A single chimney splits into three at the top, with each of the small chimneys being topped by a basalt hat. It was cool, but actually some of the nicer scenery was further up the valley where the basalt tops have all but toppled off chimneys that have eroded away to narrow tips. The discs of basalt balance at odd angles, waiting to be jolted off by the next earthquake.

Further up the valley was the Zelve Open Air Museum. Three narrow valleys were home to a densely populated Christian community between the 9th and 13th centuries. Habitation continued after the valley’s population became majority Muslim and it is home to one of the only cave mosques in Cappadocia. Because a mosque needs to face toward Mecca it’s more difficult to find an appropriate cave/cliff. As late as 1952 people lived in the valleys and worshipped in the mosque, but were moved out when the eroding cliffs were deemed to be too dangerous. One of the valleys was blocked off and we weren’t able to explore the monastery with narrow rock cut stairs leading off its massive open chamber. We looked across at it longingly as we exited the fantastic tunnel which led, through a series of rooms and passageways, from one valley to the next.

From Cappadocia we didn’t travel far to Aksaray, our base for visiting one of the many hans, or caravanserais, that are found in the area. They are spaced at a distance of a day’s camel ride apart, along an ancient trade route. In the 13th century the Seljuk Turks ordered the construction of the hans, which were paid for by the sultan and provided free accommodation for the caravans. It seems that they are mainly found in this area but I’m not sure why that is, maybe because the landscape here is pretty barren and flat. There may not have been many villages in the area and there certainly wouldn’t have been many places to find shelter (from weather or attack). We visited the Sultanhani, 40km from Aksaray, which was originally built in 1229. It was restored in 1278 after a fire and became Turkey’s largest han. A single entrance led through an ornately carved gate into an inner courtyard surrounded by rooms. These were the sleeping, dining and cooking areas, with animals accommodated in an indoor area almost as big as the living quarters for people. In the centre of the courtyard a raised mosque accommodated the spiritual needs of the traders.

We’re now in Ankara, which hasn’t really made all that good an impression on us. I guess it’s unfair to compare a manufactured capital to a city that’s been the capital of empires since 324AD, but I have to say that Istanbul is a much nicer city. Ankara and the surrounding area do actually have a long history of habitation, though when it was named the capital in 1924 it had only 35,000 inhabitants. Now there are 4.5 million. Today we learned more about the history of the surrounding area at the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations. One of the displays from the Neolithic age showed obsidian mirrors and little cosmetic kits made out of half a shell and a small spatula. 9,000 years ago women were trying to make themselves look prettier. There was also an interesting collection of Hittite tablets inscribed with cuneiform script. A few of the clay tablets were covered with their original “envelopes”, clay casings that had to be broken before the tablet could be read. I’ve never seen that before. Another thing I didn’t know was that cuneiform was the first ever writing system, developed by the Sumerians around 3,400BC and used in various forms for the next 3,000 years. The mind boggles.

Yesterday we visited the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the man whose image is ubiquitous all over the country and whose name graces the main street of most cities. I mentioned him in my blog when we visited Gallipoli because he was the man who can take greatest credit for the failure of the Allied invasion. He didn’t stop there though; commanding Turkish army strategy in the War of Independence against Greece, and then proving that he was more than “just” a military genius by being an able politician and president of the newly founded Republic of Turkey. By all accounts he was an incredible man, though I had to roll my eyes at the overly nationalistic movie that claimed that it was “the love and respect of the Turkish people” that saved him from being killed by shrapnel on Gallipoli. It was a pocket watch; we saw the remains of it. The mausoleum is an imposing stone monument with an enormous parade ground for the ceremonies that still take place over 70 years after his death in 1938.

Tomorrow we travel north to Safranbolu where we start what is essentially a tour of UNESCO world heritage sites. Safranbolu is a town with many Ottoman era wooden houses then Hattusha, which was the Hittite capital from about 1375BC. From there we go to Divrigi, where the mosque/medrese complex has beautifully carved gateways. Our last stop in Turkey (apart from a return to Istanbul) will be Nemrut Dagi, the mountain with the stone heads which we’ve put off as long as possible so that we have a chance of visiting the top without too much snow. Then it’s off to Germany by train with a stop in Belgrade.

The amounts are in USD, converted from the local currency at the rates we saw posted on currency exchange offices in country, and are daily averages. The figures don’t include international transport into/out of the country, but include everything spent while in-country - even things like hair product or Skype credit. Percentages quoted are for overall spending in one category over our entire time in a country. I’ve only included the time we travelled together. There’s also a section for when I’m travelling alone while Brett’s at work (11 weeks in total) but that’s less representative of travelling as I often spend more time hanging out in one place. All costs listed below are for two people.

The most expensive country that we’ve visited was Norway ($289.41 per day) where 42% of our costs were food. Though food was indeed expensive, a large chunk of this average was our first night in Bergen. We bought multiple rounds of $10 beers for Brett’s workmates on their last night together after a few years. The cheapest country visited was South Korea ($65.48), followed closely by Kyrgyzstan ($67.97). China was more expensive than expected as we spent our time there in Xinjiang, a massive distance from our point of entry, and we took a few flights. Transport was 47% of our costs in China compared to 43% in Kygyzstan where we had to take private transport a few times. The next highest was Japan at 33.9%.

Accommodation is another major cost when travelling and for us it hovered around 25-30% of total daily cost, on average. The lowest was in China at 15%, which was $15.4 per night on average. The highest, percentage wise, was in Transnistria (Moldova) at 51.7% ($37.60) but this is more due to the fact that there was very little else to spend money on, apart from food. Speaking of which, food costs are a little misleading as they seem to have more to do with where we were on certain important dates than the countries themselves. For example, Romania is disproportionately high at $48.01 per day because we had Christmas and New Year there. Moldova is also quite high as we had our nine month anniversary and were recommended a very nice place where we splashed out on a delicious meal and some nice wine. We didn’t have many days in-country to average out that one splurge, so it influenced Moldova’s entire average cost.

*costs getting to/from country not included

Our overall average while travelling together is $126.90 for all costs (for both of us). Its would be easy to travel cheaper but we have our little splurges every now and again – buying nice souvenirs, posting them home or eating at a swanky restaurant on special days. We could definitely cut costs by staying in dorms or doing more self catering where we have access to kitchens, but we prefer not to. Our time in Europe has been a bit of a shock to us compared to the travel we’ve previously done in Asia. In particular, our memories of South East Asia have us drooling over $5 hotel rooms and 50c street food meals.

Best dining experiences

• A long, drawn-out meal at a tavern in Bansko, Bulgaria. Taking recommendations from the waiter and enjoying the best food we had in the country as we sipped our ice cold beer.
• A hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Sokcho, South Korea. It could do no wrong and I still drool over the yukgaejang (spicy beef soup) that I had there. It was so spicy it made me cry but just had the best flavour.
• Ottoman era cuisine in Istanbul, Turkey. The restaurant has researched traditional dishes served in the Ottoman court and recreated them.
• Red wine looking down over a Roman theatre in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
• Multiple meals next to the ice rink in Brasov, Romania. Mulled wine, kürtős, white sausage and pfeffernüsse biscuits as we watched people skate around and enjoy themselves.
• Christmas Eve dinner in Brasov, Romania. Fantastic food in a cosy restaurant where we were even given a music menu to select our background music.
• Cafes and outdoor mulled wine in Lviv, Ukraine. Many cafés had themes – we went to one decorated like a Ukrainian Insurgent Army bunker, one dedicated to the inventor of the oil lamp and one remembering the life of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the man after whom masochism is named.
• After walking several hours from the nearest road in the Geisev Valley, Tajikistan, we found a village house to stay in. The old lady asked if we wanted gretcha (buckwheat) or “macarone” (noodles) for dinner. We answered gretcha and that’s what we got. Just gretcha. Breakfast was the other choice. Sweet and hilarious at the same time.
• All you can eat cabbage in Kanazawa, Japan. A small themed restaurant harking back to the good old days (when I suppose they had all you can eat cabbage?). Nice atmosphere and good, cheap food.
• Rice triangles and sliced fruit in Kashgar, Xinjiang. Sticky rice triangles served on a small plate and smothered with honey, eaten while standing on the street and people watching. Then washing them down with a slice of fresh melon, cut off for us by a man with a smile almost as big as his knife.
• Sweet shop where we overdosed on backlava in Istanbul, Turkey. We went back so many times they knew us by name.

Best accommodation

• Hello Kitty Love Hotel in Osaka, Japan. So wrong, so hilarious.
• Yurts in Tash Rabat and Song Kol, Kyrgyzstan. A fantastic opportunity to experience traditional nomadic life.
• Temple stay in Haeinsa, South Korea. Spending a night at a UNESCO listed temple and being shown around by a monk.
• Random person’s house in Kadji Sai, Kyrgyzstan. We didn’t share any language but he welcomed us into his home when his neighbour (who had a guesthouse) wasn’t home.
• Back seat of a minivan. Somewhere in Tajikistan. We didn’t plan to spend our 6 month anniversary on the road but it just happened (see best journeys)
• Jeti Oghuz Sanitarium in Kyrgystan. Crumbling ex-Soviet health retreat.

Best souvenirs

• Tajik policeman’s hat. We bought it in a store, honest officer. I had to smuggle it out of the country after the post office told me it could not be posted and should not be taken out of the country.
• A 5kg piece of rock that I thought was jade and became unnecessarily attached to after carrying for 3 months.
• Fuse of a WW1 bomb that I bought at a dodgy flea market in Riga, Latvia.
• Ostrich egg pysanky. Traditional Ukrainian egg painting on a massive scale.
• Bread imprinters from Xinjiang. They’re used to press designs into the large round flat bread that you see everywhere.

Best sights

• DMZ, South Korea. The line separating South and North Korea where we stepped foot on North Korean soil. Interesting for the history as well - a war I knew very little about.
• Kashgar Sunday Market, Xinjiang. At the animal market fat tailed sheep, cows, donkeys and horses are put on display and haggled over in a dusty, chaotic spectacle. The rest of the Sunday market sprawls over an incredible area and traders from the surrounding countries sell anything you could possibly want.
• Chernobyl, Ukraine. The site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster is now open to visitors as long as you don’t get too close to reactor 4. Interesting for the abandoned town nearby. The nuclear plant was in operation until the year 2000.
• Rila Monastery, Bulgaria. The refuge of Bulgarian culture during the rough years and a religious centre since the 10th century, the monastery is in a beautiful setting and has an incredible feeling of peacefulness. That’s before I even start raving about the beautiful frescoes of its main church.
• Odessa Opera and Ballet Theatre, Ukraine. A stunning building with almost nightly performances of high-quality shows at reasonable prices. What’s not to love? We paid $10pp for our own private box seat.
• Ephesus, Turkey. Overall the best preserved and excavated Roman city we’ve seen. Though other places have small parts which equal it, Ephesus really gives a good feeling of the city as a whole.
• Bran Castle, Romania. Also known as Dracula’s Castle though it would be an attraction without the tenuous link. We visited it on a quiet day and had the twisting corridors and small rooms almost to ourselves.
• Peles Castle in Sinia, Romania. Truly exemplifying luxurious excess, this royal villa was one of the most beautiful  buildings I’ve ever seen.
• Glinnoye, Transnistria (Moldova). We went to see where Brett’s ancestors lived when they left Germany and before they moved to the USA. It was an appallingly cold day with wind and snow and horrible temperatures but we were welcomed into the nearby school and I communicated with the German teacher as best I could.
• Aphrodisias, Turkey. For not having our own transport Aphrodisias was a little out of the way, and that made it all the more intriguing. The only time we’ve seen a stadium and some incredible carvings beautifully displayed and explained in the museum.

Best “journeys”

• Ferry from Tokyo to Kita Kyushu (33 hours) with the boat almost to ourselves and vending machine sushi.
• 55 hour bus ride from Khorog to Dushanbe in Tajikistan (600km). It was only meant to take 12 hours but we ended up spending 2 nights on the way and had 8 flat tyres. Eventually we bailed (the locals had given up before us) and hopped into another car.
• Norway in a nutshell. Train, bus and ferry trip through the fjordlands of Norway. Beautiful.
• The Lycian Way, a six day hike along the Turkish coast. Walking through olive groves, along cliff lines and past villages.
• Entering Transnistria after having read about all the different scams and shakedowns we could expect and having the border guard ask us how much money we were carrying. Managing to get into and out of the country without paying a single bribe (apparently a very rare occurrence).

Other worthy mentions

• Our visit to the police station in Aksu, Xinjiang, when the police officer told us that everything was back to normal a day after the 5 July Urumqi riots had started. This despite the fact that there was an encampment of army troops in full riot gear in the same room and that a prisoner with wrists shackled to ankles had shuffled through the lobby under heavy armed guard. In total at least 200 people were killed and Xinjiang still remains without internet access.
• Walking back to our guesthouse on our first night in Istanbul as it snowed and seeing the flakes fall on the blue mosque (to our right) and Aya Sofia (to our left).

-

We wandered around Antalya a little more before heading inland to Konya via some spectacular mountain scenery. Konya is the spiritual home of the Mawlawi Order of Sufi Islam, famous for its sema ceremonies where the dervishes whirl as a form of meditation. Between 1150 and 1300 the city was the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, and in 1228 the man who would become one of Turkey’s most beloved poet and religious leader moved to the city with his father. Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi, otherwise known as Mevlana or Rumi, was a spiritual leader and teacher like his father had been. After his death in 1273 his followers built a mausoleum over his tomb and continued to follow his teachings.

The mausoleum is now a museum and we saw the beautiful decorations that adorn his tomb. He is still held in high regard and many pilgrims come to Konya every year to pay homage. Many of them also go to see a sema ceremony which is held every Saturday. Not knowing if we’d be able to see one in Konya we’d already seen one in Istanbul but went again. It was a completely different experience, though strangely enough the touristy expensive one in Istanbul was actually more intimate. In Konya they whirled in a 2,000 person stadium and free tickets meant it was almost full. Camera flashes were going off regularly despite a request not to use them. Still, it was good in a different way and I appreciated the chance to take photos even if the results are somewhat fuzzy and grainy.

Our next stop was Cappadocia, a place both of us have been looking forward to visiting for a very long time. So far it hasn’t disappointed. There are probably more tour buses here than we’ve seen anywhere in Turkey (apart from Istanbul) but apart from a few popular places we’ve managed to get away from the crowds and find some awesome nooks and crannies. On the first day we headed to the Goreme Open Air Museum, a must see. In the 4th century Christian communities started to carve monastic cells out of the relatively soft rock in the area but most of the 30 or so churches in the Open Air Museum date from the 9th to 11th centuries. There are some pretty impressive frescoes but what were most interesting to me were the churches that were painted during the iconoclastic parts of Byzantine era. In these two periods (730-787 and 814-842) religious icons were destroyed and Orthodox Christian art as we know it was replaced by red ochre scribbles. Thankfully for the eyes of art-loving people it was simply a phase, one brought about in part by the ever increasing military successes of Islamic forces. It seemed that God had switched sides to a religion that didn’t portray images of their saints and saviours. Coincidence? They thought not.

In the afternoon we wandered through another nearby valley on our way back to Goreme and stumbled across what has been one of the highlights of our time in Cappadocia. Up an unmarked ladder to a nameless cave we found what must have been one of the many hidden retreats carved out by early Christians. Before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire there was a lot of persecution and that was one of the reasons that there are so many churches and chapels carved out of the rock. It was a hiding place.

But reading about it and actually finding a great example of it are completely different things. Our ladder took us up to a carved out room where we could see an example of the round rock doors that we’d read about. They were used to close off entrances against attacks as they were only manoeuvrable from one side, the inside. Using a relatively small amount of leverage the massive block of stone was rolled across the entrance way and the only way to open it from the outside was to chisel away at it. The original entrance way to our cave was a small tunnel hidden behind bushes in a notch in the hillside, the only reason we could see it so clearly and get in so easily was because the front of the cliff had eroded away. Anyway, from what was probably the kitchen a narrow tunnel led to what looked like a chapel or church. Iconoclastic designs adorned the roof. An extremely small tunnel in the wall led off that room then turned suddenly vertical and with the help of footholds in the wall we pulled ourselves up into what was probably the sleeping area. It was a fantastic experience to find something that made all the historical stories seem so real.

The next day we had one of the most amazing travel days we’ve had in a long time. It started early, at 5:45am when we were picked up for our sunrise hot air balloon tour. We took a long time deciding whether or not to fly because it’s quite expensive but in the end we decided to go, firstly because it seemed like something we’d regret not doing and secondly because we had our anniversary to help justify it. Our anniversary of marriage and our anniversary of travelling. No matter what the justification it was amazing. Seeing Cappadocia’s landscapes from the air is a completely different experience and it was worth both the money and the early morning wakeup. Feeling relatively fresh when we got back to the guesthouse we decided to walk through Love Valley to Uchisar. Love Valley is rather coyly named for the collection of rock formations that even the most innocent of virgins would recognise as looking like penises. We’d flown over it in the morning and almost touched down in our balloon but decided that we still wanted to walk through on our way to the massive stone fortress of Uchisar.

Actually we were a little disappointed by the fortress itself. Historically it was the villagers refuge in times of war and there are rooms carved out all over it but the accessible parts are very limited. We had much more fun exploring a nearby fairy chimney which was less managed and more open. Probably a bit more dangerous too but so much more fun! We found tunnels and passageways and rooms galore. It was fantastic! We’re planning to go back to explore more. As it was we wanted to walk back to Goreme via the Pigeon Valley before the sun went down. It didn’t go as smoothly as it could have, the path was a little deceptive, but we made it home in the end.

Today we took a day tour to get us out to some more remote (from Goreme) areas. We visited the Derinkuyu Underground City, the Ilhara valley and Selime monastery. Cappadocia has many underground cities which were built in many stages. The main stage of use was during the mid-late Byzantine era when armies from the Syrian area would march across Cappadocia en route to attacking Istanbul. As they had no military defences the villagers simply tried to disappear into the ground until the threat had passed. Estimates vary but historians think that about 10,000 people could be accommodated in the underground city we visited. It has about 11 different levels and we went down to about 60m underground in our short tour. Only about 10% of the total area has been cleaned out and is open to visitors. The city has areas for food storage, kitchens, meeting halls, a school, churches, stables, wine or oil presses, ventilation shafts and wells.

The Ilhara Valley was nice; it’s a totally different landscape from the rest of Cappadocia. Instead of being formed by water erosion of volcanic tuff it’s formed by the cracking and collapse of basalt. The result is an incredibly steep sided valley, which early Christians again used as a refuge. Around 100 churches were carved into its cliff faces but only about 15 survive today. We only visited one and it was notable for the pre iconoclastic paintings. You know how I said earlier that I was glad the iconoclasm had passed? Well I’m glad the phase before that passed too. It was OK but, as the guide explained, this was an era before professional artists or a time when there were more churches being built than there were artists to paint them. Whatever the reason, the naïve artwork on the wall was interesting but not necessarily beautiful.

The last stop on our tour was the Selime monastery. It takes up an entire fairy chimney and was used as both a religious centre and as a defensive refuge in case of attack. I wish I could tell you more about it but Brett and I were too excited to be able to climb all over it to listen to our guide. We climbed up a metal ladder into a black almost vertical tunnel that led to another flight of steep steps and then another. It was all awesomely adventurous until we got to a point that we didn’t want to continue and realised that we had to climb down. Why is the climb up always so much faster and more fun than the slow cautious descent?

We have a few more days here in Cappadocia before we move on. At the moment we’re not sure where we’ll go next, it depends on the reports we hear about weather on Nemrut Dagi, the mountain to the east that’s scattered with massive stone heads. We’ll see what we hear and plan around that.

-

Leaving Fethiye (with all our stuff in tow again) we headed down the coast to Kas, not far from where we’d finished our hike the day before. Our main reason for going there was to do a sea kayaking trip over nearby ruins of a city that earthquakes sunk below the water line. Unfortunately, on our first full day in town the operator told us that it was too rough to go out. We decided to stick around in hope that the next day was better and took what ended up being a really good day trip to the town of Demre.

It’s near the ancient Lycian city of Myra and we visited the rock tombs of the necropolis, the theatre and the church of St. Nicholas. Back in 168BC when the Lycian League was formed there were 23 city state members who sent 1, 2 or 3 representatives to an annual senate (depending on their population). Myra was one of only six cities to be allowed to send 3 representatives. Its rock tombs are the most impressive we’ve seen and form a backdrop to the ancient theatre, something which is apparently relatively common. In the Christian era Myra remained an important city and in the 4th century AD St Nicholas was the bishop there. A basilica built in his memory has been a popular pilgrimage site ever since, even though the relics themselves were taken by Italian sailors in 1087 during a period of battles between Islamic invaders and the Byzantine Empire. The historical figure, who was one of the most popular saints of Tsarist Russia, is more popularly known today by the name of Santa Claus. This transformation probably came about because of his reputation as the protector of children and for secret gift giving.

The next day was indeed calm and we headed out to explore the coastline in sea kayaks. The sunken city is off the island of Kekova and was actually rebuilt after the 2nd century AD earthquake that submerged some of the buildings below 6m of seawater. In actual fact most of what we saw was the ruins above ground as strict rules forbid swimming or snorkelling over the ruins as well as any diving. We landed at the only place allowed on the island, where the remains of a Roman shipbuilding yard are visible as well as various other Lycian and Byzantine structures. Back in our kayaks we saw the outline of the ancient harbour shimmering under the turquoise water and cut steps leading down to what had once been dry land. The rest of the ruins we could see were above the water level and included a Roman bathhouse, residential houses and various other unspecified ruins that tumbled down the steep hillside and mingled with the natural rock outcrops.

From Kas we headed further along the coast to Olympos. The settlement itself was a strange sort of place with the kind of hippy laid back vibe that would make it a place to retreat to, except that it seems a lot of people want to relax. Massive bungalow camps and tree house cities jostle for space along the single road leading down to the beach. Just before the sacred sands are the ruins of the old city of Olympus which dates back to the Lycian League, but went into decline in the 3rd century with increased pirate activity. The ruins are almost completely overgrown and exploring them felt a little like being the first people to find them (apart from the worn paths and signage of course). Nearby are the flames of Chimaera, vents of gas that ignite upon contact with the air. They can be put out by covering them but will reignite. They were believed to be the breath of a horrible monster – part lion, part goat and part snake. Even today they’re an awe-inspiring site; eternal flames of methane-based gas that seep out of cracks in the earth. We visited at night and scrambled up the barren hillside to see about ten flames of varying heights and sizes, some of them big enough to provide warmth in the slightly chilly evening air.

Now we’re in Antalya, our first big city for a while. Today we wandered around the old part of town and visited the museum. The old Ottoman houses in the centre are now protected and wandering along the narrow vehicle free streets was very pleasant. Overhead the irregularly shaped second floors and balconies narrow the streets even further. White painted walls, rustic stonework and dark timber frames tumble down to cobblestone streets. The museum was impressive too, displaying a massive hoard of artefacts from the many historical ruins in the area as well as even earlier signs of settlement.

We’ll have one more day here before heading inland toward Konya then Cappadocia. It’ll be the last we see of the Turkish coast. Our travel plans have been a little re-routed so that we finish up in Ankara. From there we’re planning to travel overland to Germany instead of flying. It’ll be more expensive and take a lot longer but much more fun at the same time.

-

For the past 6 days Brett and I have been walking along the Lycian Way. It’s a 509km long hiking path that stretches between Fethiye (or technically a small town outside it called Ovacik) to Antalya. We started walking from Fethiye, passing a village called Kaya Koy before starting on the trail proper around Hisaronu. Over six hiking days we covered around 80km and finally stopped walking in Pydnai earlier this morning.

Kaya Koy was our first stop outside Fethiye. The main attraction is the 2000 or so empty stone houses that cover the hillside of what was once a bustling Ottoman-Greek town. As part the population exchanges that took place after the Turkish War of Independence the Christian inhabitants were moved to the outskirts of Athens and only a handful of Muslim Turks were left. As there were less Turks in Greece nobody replaced the inhabitants who had been moved away and the town has stood abandoned since the 1920s. These days it’s apparently a popular daytrip from the bustle that is Fethiye in the summer months though at this time of year we had the place almost to ourselves. We wandered between roofless and crumbling houses, following cobblestone paths overgrown with weeds. A few of the old churches were still standing, with black and white pebble mosaics and the remains of frescoes. In one we saw the remains of icons painted on the wall, albeit with eyes gouged out and covered with whitewash to the average reach of a Turkish man. It turns out the Muslims have done to the Christians what we’ve seen evidence of the Christians doing to the Greek/Roman gods before them.

Our first night was spent near Hisaronu, a bizarre town that seems to be built to let (mostly British) tourists think that nothing has changed on their holiday except that the beer is cheaper. There was hardly a single word in Turkish on the entire main street, which seemed to be under construction as we walked through. It was as if some developer had got cheap land and decided to build a town. The people in this town seemed to need only restaurants, bars, jewellery shops, beauty parlours and the occasional small supermarket. Nearby was an area of new development where legoland villas jostled for space and multi storey apartment blocks looked across into the living rooms of other multi story apartment blocks. According to our pension owner people prefer to live uphill of the beach at Olu Deniz, the nearest sandy spot of choice. In the hot summer months which, ironically, seem to be the busiest season, the cool breeze of the highlands is a welcome respite. There are also less mosquitoes, all the better if you’re sipping two for one mojitos in a skimpy frock on the terrace of the Lion Pub.

Thankfully the rest of the hike was through much more rural and local areas. Unfortunately we didn’t have any decent information on the hike. According to the bookshops we asked the official guidebook is only sold in summer and all we could find was a 1:250,000 fold out map that was basic at best. Certainly nothing like the detailed topographical maps that I’m used to trekking with. It seems the restriction is a military thing and the occasional lost hiker is a small price to pay for the safety and security of the motherland. It’s just as well there wasn’t a young army conscript telling me that as we accidentally walked three quarters of the way up Mt Baba (1969m). The trail up the mountain was extremely well marked but, as we finally realised, not the one we were meant to be following. We turned around, walked all the way back down, found our trail and made it to Faralya before dark.

Below Faralya’s clifftops is the Butterfly Valley. Though the valley floor is connected to the village by a steep path it seems most of the traffic in and out of the valley is via boat. There’s very little development and the rustic structures exude the laid back beach vibe that you get all over the world. Hippy sayings covered the red, green and yellow paint on the bar and we could imagine the haven it would be on a hot summer day. As it was we were greeted only by two horse-sized dogs and an empty beach. Later two men who lived there arrived by boat and we sat and chatted over a few cups of tea. We didn’t see any of the eponymous butterflies though apparently people who count these things have found around 35 butterfly and 40 moth species in the valley. Something to do with the humidity created by the waterfalls flowing over the cliffs.

After climbing back out of the valley we picked up our bags and hiked for a few hours to Kabak. I don’t really have anything much interesting to say about Kabak except that we watched a tractor scrape away at the foundations of the pension we were staying in. Overnight a gale force wind whipped up and it stayed windy all day and through the following night. At one stage the next day it sounded like the cliffs above us were about to come crashing down on us as the wind buffeted around the rocks and through the pine trees. Out on the exposed road even Brett got bounced around and I spent a bit of time clinging on to trees and rocks. Eventually we made it to Gey, a small village where we stayed in a local house. The wind came down the flue and blew the smoke into the room before putting out the fire altogether.

Our next day (day 5) took us to Gavuragili and by this stage of the hike we’d almost walked through the aches and pains that unfit people get when they do things like decide to walk for 6 days straight. My calves were almost back to normal, quads stretchable and, most excitingly, I had holes in two of my socks! I’ve been trying to wear out those things for the past year. While I did get them at a discount (thank you Erica), I made the mistake of buying white socks for travelling. It’s a colour they haven’t maintained though true to Erica’s word they have lasted me well, 3 out of four pairs  outliving my Columbia shoes which will be replaced as soon as I can find their equivalent. The complete lack of tread is starting to be a problem. It’s at this stage, almost a year into our trip that our gear seems to finally be breaking. Last week we made a tailor in Fethiye very happy with all our mending needs.

This morning we left our luxurious pension in Gavuragili and walked to Pydnai where we saw the remains of a Lycian fortress. The port it used to protect has silted up and is now a marshy, mosquito infested swamp. Further inland a sea of greenhouses grow truckloads of tomatoes. Exploring the ruins we found a snake, a partially decomposed wild pig, some porcupine quills and I was hissed at by a turtle. Scared the hell out of me! instead of walking to Letoon we went for the lazy option and took a dolmus, a minivan, to make sure that we had enough time at the ruins.

Letoon was one of the most important religious centres in Lycia. The temples were originally built in the 6th century BC and are dedicated to the Greek goddess Leto and her twin children Artemis and Apollo. They were fathered by Zeus, something his wife Hera was a little unhappy about. In revenge Hera decreed that Leto should wander indefinitely from country to country. It’s said that she spent much of this time in Lycia. Today there’s not much left of the temples to Leto and her children but the nearby ruins of Xanthos were a little more extensive (and not quite so covered in water). It was the administrative centre of the Lycian League, a democratic coalition of city states established in 168BC. Before this it suffered a couple of catastrophes, most notably when the city was besieged in 545BC by the Persians. When it became apparent that they couldn’t win the people of Xanthos decided to kill all their women and children before razing the city and fighting to the death. Today some of the structures of the rebuilt city have been excavated including a basilica built during the Byzantine Empire. The city lost its importance in the 7th century and lay pretty much undisturbed until a British archaeologist arrived in 1838 and shipped off some of the most important relics to the British Museum.

Tonight we’re back in Fethiye, reunited with all our stuff. We’re off back down the coast tomorrow though we haven’t quite decided where we’re going to go. Brett has finally got some work lined up for late April/early May and we’re weighing up whether we should spend the full 90 days allowed on our visa in Turkey or try to get to Syria/Jordan before he heads off. We still have so much we want to see in Turkey that the first option is as tempting as the second. For now I’m going to head to bed, it’s way past our hiking bedtime. Last night we thought we were night owls at 10pm, it’s funny how your body clock changes.

-

From Selcuk we travelled to Kusadasi where we met up with my aunt’s stepbrother who lives there with his wife. I’d never met Mark and Barbara before but we had a great time hanging out, ended up staying at their place that night and talked for hours over a couple of glasses of wine. Listening to my aunt’s family history I realise how interesting the people who I’ve grown up with are. When someone’s always been a part of your life you don’t really think about where they came from. Her mother is Greek and took part in the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey in the aftermath of the First World War. She ended up marrying a British man who is my aunt’s father but they divorced. My aunt’s mother remarried and Mark is her second husband’s son from a previous marriage. Apparently before the family was kicked out of Turkey my aunt’s grandfather built (or designed?) buildings for the Ottoman sultans which can still be seen in Istanbul today.

It was a good week for meeting interesting people in between our Roman ruin visits. Our base for visiting the UNESCO listed combination of Hierapolis/Pamukkale was Denizli where we couchsurfed. Yasin had contacted us and offered his house so we based ourselves there for a couple of nights and did a daytrip. His wife, Umran, and 1 year old daughter, Deniz, were lovely and we really enjoyed hanging out with their extended family. On our second night there he took us to a concert by a Turkish singer who has been living in exile in France since 1980. In that year Turkey had its third military coup (earlier ones in 1960 and 1971) and hundreds of thousands of people were detained, tortured, tried and blacklisted. Around 14,000 people were stripped of citizenship.

Pamukkale is probably one of the most recognisable images of Turkey along with the scattered stone heads of Nemrut Dag and Cappadocia’s fairy chimneys. It’s the white travertine terraces that you see filled with turquoise water, contrasted against a brilliantly blue sky and filled with scantily clad women. As is often the case with glossy tourism images the reality wasn’t quite as picturesque. The travertines were dirtier than expected, many of them empty of water, the sky was grey and I’m not that into scantily clad women anyway. Still, I enjoyed walking through them (shoes off) on our way out of the site. They were a lot more solid than the soft flowing lines and shapes would have you believe and after about 20 minutes of walking on the cold white stone a dip into the still tepid water was a welcome respite. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We arrived at the north entrance and explored the site of Hierapolis before walking out through the travertines. The terraces are formed by hot calcium rich mineral water flowing down the hill and the city of Hierapolis was built as a spa city in the second century BC by the king of Pergamum. We visited the ruins of Pergamum a few weeks ago and learned that the entire kingdom was bequeathed to Rome when the last king died without an heir in 133BC. During the Roman era it was destroyed a couple of times by earthquakes and finally abandoned in 1334 after a particularly bad one. People came to bathe in the curative waters but, as the size of the necropolis confirms, there weren’t many miracles to go around. We walked through several kilometres of graveyard with tumulus tombs, stone sarcophagi and funerary buildings. Almost all of them showed signs of having been looted at some stage in the past, even the one which invoked penalties of disease, misfortune and punishment in the next life on anyone who violated the tomb, as well as the usual monetary fines.

In the city there were also temples to Greek/Hellenistic/Roman gods as well as Christian churches built during the Byzantine era of the Roman Empire. St Phillip, one of the 12 apostles, was apparently martyred here and a church was later built over the site of his tomb. There’s also a few other cathedrals and churches jostling for space with the Roman theatre and Temple of Apollo. There was an oracle here and it was believed that a nearby spring that released toxic fumes was its direct line to Hades (the underworld). The fumes can certainly take you to the underworld and even relatively recently curious tourists have gone the way of a cat and died from breathing them in. These days the hole is mostly sealed up but you can still stick your ear to it and listen to the bubbling and boiling.

Our next stop was another Roman ruin, Aphrodisias, which we could have done as an organised daytrip from Pamukkale. Unfortunately, this option only gave us about 2.5 hours at the site and, knowing ourselves, we figured we’d want longer. We were right. When we finally got there we spent 6.5 hours wandering around and would have stayed longer if we hadn’t been kicked out because the museum was closing. The ancient city was named after Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and a temple dedicated to her was the focal point of the city. Built in the first century BC it was funded by a local man who had been a slave of the Roman emperor but was freed. In 48BC Gaius Julius Zoilus returned home to Aphrodisias as a rich man with good personal connections in the capital. He played an important role in the development of the city and a number of the important buildings were built with his contributions. His generosity and status meant that he was appointed a priest of Aphrodite which, if the stories of orgies in homage to Aphrodite are to be believed, would have been a job with a unique type of job satisfaction. The temple was rebuilt as a Christian church around 500AD and images of Aphrodite were destroyed.

One unusual ruin at Aphrodisias was the stadium. We’ve seen plenty of semi circular theatres and odeons but this was a long, skinny stadium designed for watching athletic events. It measures 270m by 60m and is one of the biggest and best preserved in the classical world. It was awesome! After an earthquake in the 7th century damaged the city’s theatre, one end of the stadium was converted to stage events previously held there. We marched out of the tunnels where gladiators made their entrances and imagined the roar of the crowd. One of the best things about our visit to Aphrodosias was that we had the place almost to ourselves. A few tour groups came but they whizzed through and left us to explore pretty much undisturbed. Having seen the ruins we went to the museum where we were blown away by some of the carvings that have been found. Unlike many of the sites we’ve visited, Aphrodisias’ most impressive sculptures are still in Turkey, and having them so close to where they were originally found let us really appreciate how amazing a site it is.

The most impressive area of the museum was the part dedicated to the marble reliefs found in the Sebasteion. It was a temple complex built between AD20 and AD60 to celebrate the close relationship between the city and the Roman emperors. The incredibly well-preserved reliefs show almost life sized figures of Aphrodite, Roman emperors, the various races incorporated into the Roman Empire and Greek/Roman gods. In total there were around 200 reliefs and 80 of them have been recovered in excavations, many of them vandalised by early Christians. I’m finding it hard to convey how amazing the carvings were - it’s hard to believe that they’re nearly 2000 years old. They were so perfectly done, so amazingly well preserved and so rich in symbolism and mythology that it just smacks you in the face how advanced these ancient people actually were. Speaking of advanced technology, one of the male nudes befuddled the facial recognition on Brett’s camera. It turns out that two round things with a long straight thing down the middle isn’t always a face…

Yesterday we jumped a series of buses to get to Fethiye, back down on the coast. It’s home to a collection of Lycian tombs, Ionic temple facades carved into the rock face in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. We scrambled up to some of them and poked our heads into the hollowed out rooms where sarcophagi once sat, but which are now home only to damp, smelly puddles and piles of rubbish. One, closer to the road and people’s houses, is being used as a garden shed. The most impressive one is the tomb of Amyntas, who was believed to be the king or governor of what was then the largest city in Lycia. Brett was dwarfed by the columns and the faux door, all carved out of the solid cliff face. Nearby was the ruin of a Crusader fortress, built by the Knights of St John in the 15th century, which we clambered up and looked down over the sunshine soaked blue water of the bay.

Our main plan for the next week is to do some hiking along the Lycian Way, a 500km long hiking path that connects Fethiye with Antalya. We won’t be doing much of it and as it seems difficult to find any good information on it we don’t really know what we’re doing but there are signs and villages along the way so we’ll see how we go.

-

It’s been a week full of randomly placed marble blocks, stepping over broken terracotta pipes and trying to visualise what used to stand in the grassy area that’s now home to skittering lizards and brightly coloured spring flowers. We’ve seen Ancient Roman ruins galore and discovered a Christian history in this part of the world that kind of took me by surprise. Shows you how little I know about these things…

From Ayvalik we went south to Bergama, our base for exploring the ruins of Pergamum. After Alexander the Great’s death in 323BC at the age of 32 (which reminds me of a Tom Lehrer quote: “it’s a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age he’d been dead for two years”) without a son or appointed heir, one of his generals, Lysimachus, took control of much of the Aegean region. He then promptly died himself, leaving a massive amount of captured treasure in the hands of his commander in Pergamum. Who did what anyone in his position would do:  he set himself up as governor. The dynasty continued until 129BC when the last king bequeathed the kingdom to Rome upon his death, though the peak of Pergamum’s power came between 197 to 159BC when it was a cultural and intellectual centre.

We wandered around the Acropolis, the ancient city that sits perched on top of a hill surrounded by defensive walls. There are remains of the royal palace, residential houses, water and sewage systems (water came from 45km away), an arsenal, a bazaar, the library, a gymnasium, bathhouses and various temples. The 10,000 seat 3rd century BC theatre is cut into the hillside and gives a fantastic view over the surrounding landscape. Some of the temples are still impressive but the mound of rubble left at the altar of Zeus gives no indication of the splendour that now adorns a museum in Berlin. The library in Pergamum was rivalled only by that in Alexandria but Mark Anthony later gave all its volumes to Cleopatra as a wedding present.

Nearby is the Asclepion, an ancient medical centre and temple dedicated to Asclepius and built around the 4th century BC. He is the Greek god of medicine and healing; the names of two of his daughters were Hygieia and Panacea and his snake-entwined staff is still used as a symbol of medicine. People came to the temple for treatment and it became well renowned, especially under the influence of a physician called Galen (AD 129-199/217). He was a medical researcher whose theories and accounts of the heart, arteries, veins and the nervous system were the best available sources until the 16th century. No doubt his post as the physician of gladiators helped him overcome the ban on human dissection as he tended their wounds and published theories about preventive measures such as a good diet, hygiene and fitness. Today there’s not much left of the Asclepion except a small theatre, the foundations of a temple building where patients slept and the underground passage that led to it. We had the place mostly to ourselves but as a French tour group left I was disappointed to see two of their male members relieve themselves on the 2400 year old ruins.

We also visited the Red Basilica, a massive structure that was originally a temple to the Egyptian gods Isis and Harpocrates. The courtyard was 100×200m and now mostly lies under the modern city of Bergama. Originally built in the 2nd century AD it was converted into a Christian church in the 4th century and is mentioned in the New Testament as one of the Seven Churches of Revelation (though the timing of dates confuses me here).

Taking a short break from ruins we spent a few nights in Izmir and enjoyed the waterfront. Our backgammon skills are improving and we spent some time sitting in the sun playing and sipping chai. Later we had a romantic dinner next to a TV screen showing a crackling log fire before a massively popular soccer match started and filled up the restaurant.

Back on the Roman ruins trail we’re now in Selcuk, the base for seeing Ephesus. It’s also the site of some interesting Christian ruins. On our first day we visited the Basilica of St John the Apostle, built in the 6th century on what is believed to be his tomb. There were other structures before this but the massive basilica built by Emperor Justinian and Queen Theodora was one of the most impressive religious structures of its time. If it were fully restored today it would be the seventh largest cathedral in the world. St John the Apostle is believed to have come to Ephesus, with the Virgin Mary, to avoid persecution and we went to the site of what is believed to be her house. The foundations were found following the visions of a bedridden German nun who had never left Germany. Local folklore has stories of Mary living in the area, and every year the descendants of Ephesian Christians hold a pilgrimage to the site on the same date that is accepted as her date of death.

One ruin which was very underwhelming was the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Artemis is a Greek goddess who seems to represent different things at different times and is also identified with the Roman goddess Diana. It seems her main thing at the temple of Artemis was fertility and the temple was a major pilgrimage spot. The incarnation that made it onto the seven wonders list was built around 550BC and was burned down in 356BC by a man who wanted his 15 minutes of fame. Seriously, you thought reality TV stars were bad didn’t you? Herostratus loudly proclaimed his guilt and went down in history. His name is used in the expression “Herostratic fame” meaning fame at any cost, for example the man who shot John Lennon for the fame it would bring him. As for the temple, there’s very little left apart from a lone column from the 127 that used to surround the inner chamber. It was rebuilt after Herostratus’ arson but was destroyed again in the 5th century by a Christian mob and the stones were plundered. The man who led the mob has been ordained a saint.

Ephesus on the other hand was pretty impressive. Most of the ruins we see today are from the 1st to 4th centuries AD but it remained an important and prosperous city until the 11th century. Previous settlements had moved due to harbours silting up and in the end the settlement we now call Ephesus suffered the same fate, cut off from the Aegean and with its Temple of Artemis long since destroyed and forgotten. A wide, grand avenue dating to the Byzantine era (4th century AD) joined the sea with the main street and, unusually for the time, was lit at night with oil lamps. Although only a third of the ruins have been excavated, it’s easy to see the layout of the city and start to imagine the way it was. In the first century AD the population was around 250,000, making it the second biggest city in the world after Rome, and the remains include a 25,000 seat stadium, private houses, numerous fountains where people collected water, a gymnasium with exercise fields and a swimming pool, a library, public toilets, marketplaces, the world’s first church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, bath houses and various temples to Greek/Roman gods or the Emperor cult.

The library was an impressive building, not in size but in the detail of its façade and the overall design. A 1m gap between two layers of wall protected the 12,000 scrolls from extremes of heat and humidity and the façade is designed to make the building look taller and wider than it actually is. We also got an insight into the way the upper class of Ephesus lived in the terrace houses lining the main street. The partially excavated buildings show evidence of lavish entertainment areas as well as living areas equipped with heating and hot and cold water. The walls were covered in frescoes or marble while the floors were often beautiful mosaics. Public toilets, on the other hand, were used by everyone and were apparently quite a social place. People sat knee to knee on long benches with strategic holes, and a trough of water ran at their feet to wash their hands after wiping.

Anyway, it’s been an interesting week and there’s much more to come. We’ve already been in Turkey for a month and yet even with at least another month planned we’re finding ourselves having to leave things out. There’s just too much to see! From here we head inland to Pamukkale (the white travertine terraces) and the nearby ruins of Hierapolis and Afrodisias. Then it’s back to the coast for some hiking along the Lycian Way.

-

It has to be said that my first impression of Turkey outside Istanbul wasn’t great. Finding our way to the centre of Bursa from the ferry terminal was confusing and along the way we were laughed at a few times. Having groups of people obviously talking about you, gesturing toward you and openly laughing is never a way to be made feel welcome. I started to think that maybe there was a reason so much of Turkey’s tourism seemed to be centred in Istanbul.

Thankfully it just seems to have been a random thing. It does have to be said that the two of us laden down front and back with our packs is a pretty amusing sight but most people manage to giggle quietly or include us in their laughter. Bursa and the rest of Turkey rose in my estimation once we found a place to stay and had a good night’s sleep. Exploring Bursa was great, we visited a couple of interesting mosques, ate Iskender kebab at its birthplace and explored the sprawling markets. The city was founded around 200BC and in the 6th century the nearby thermal area of Çekirge was developed by Justinian 1, the Byzantine emperor. For a while it bounced between rulers until it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1326. It was their capital until 1402 and the first two sultans are buried there. We visited the Green Mosque, built between 1419 and 1424, which has beautiful marble carvings on the outside wall. The nearby Green Tomb, where the Green Mosque’s founder is buried, is a beautiful small building surrounded by cypress trees. The tiles inside are original and the stunning 3D designs are something we haven’t seen before.

Just outside the Green Mosque we were finally lured inside a carpet shop by a charming man who was happy to chat, show us carpets and give us tea until he realised that we were actually serious about not wanting to buy a carpet. He had some nice ones but not nice enough to justify a serious outlay of cash when we have neither house nor means of shipping it (carpets were listed as a prohibited item at the post office in Istanbul).

From Bursa we went to Canakkale, our base for visiting both Troy and the battlefields of Gallipoli. The ruins at Troy aren’t overly spectacular but they’re a must see for the myths and legends surrounding them. Until 1868 the references to Troy in Homer’s Odyssey and Illiad and in other works by ancient Greek historians were thought to be simply myths. The fact that some of the main characters are represented as demigods might have had something to do with that but excavations and analysis has proven that the site uncovered was actually the historical city. It had been settled since 3000BC and underwent regular rebuilding until it finally went into decline in the 6th century AD. The legendary Trojan War is thought to have taken place in the 13th century BC when archaeological remains show the city was badly burnt and abandoned for around 250 years. We had the ruins almost to ourselves and wandered around wondering at the incredible amount of work that must go in to working out which layers of remains belong to which incarnation of the city.

Our Valentine’s Day was spent on the Gallipoli Peninsula, pondering the wastefulness of war. As an Australian you grow up with the legend of the of the Anzacs (Australian and  New Zealand Army Corp) who were formed in 1915 and had their first deployment on what we now call Anzac Day, April 25th of the same year. The “Anzac spirit” conjures up all sorts of images and ideals; mateship, courage and good humour. To today’s Australians they seem to embody how we would like to see ourselves, and looking back it was the first time that Australians saw themselves as being different to the British. We were a young country; the disparate British colonies had only joined a federation in 1901 and the idea of Australia as a country was a new one. We were fighting as part of the British Empire and on the Gallipoli campaign they gave us the task of landing on the western side of the peninsula and cutting off the Ottoman army so that the British navy could sail up the Dardanelles, take Istanbul, knock Turkey out of the war and open a supply route to Russia. It was meant to be simple.

A few months earlier a purely naval force had attacked and failed so the Ottoman army assumed an invasion was on the way. What they didn’t know was when or where. As it turns out the British planners weren’t so good at working out the details either. Actually they weren’t really very good at planning full stop. Some of it can be put down to bad luck but even taking into consideration the gift of hindsight there was a fair bit of bad management. The reason for the Anzacs landing at what is today called Anzac Cove is shrouded in mystery. It’s a tiny cove surrounded by steep cliffs, hardly the best location for an invasion force of 15,000 men, but as it turned out they were more sheltered there from the Turkish guns there than they were on the landing beach originally planned. The Turks never expected anyone to land in such a stupid place.

The ground gained on the initial days was pretty much the limit to Allied territory gains over the whole eight month campaign. Both sides dug trenches and the image of waves of attackers coming out of the trenches and running across no man’s land into a hail of bullets is something we can’t really fathom today. In one place, where the trenches are still visible, the enemy lines were separated by little more than a 1.5 lane road. And yet men obeyed orders and jumped out of the trenches. Wave after wave of them. We went to the cemetery of the 57th regiment of the Ottoman Army. When the Allies attacked the majority of the Ottoman army was in a different part of the peninsula and only one regiment could be quickly summoned. Their officer gave them the following instruction

“I don’t order you to fight, I order you to die. In the time it takes us to die, other troops and commanders can come and take our places” Mustafa Kemal (later founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey).

And die they did, all 628 of them. Walking around the cemetery we saw only a handful of people over the age of 24.

In total about 130,000 soldiers died on the peninsula and half a million were wounded, including the British and French forces that landed further south at Cape Helles. The British Empire lost 36,000, including 8,700 Australians while the Ottomans had 250,000 casualties and 86,700 deaths. The numbers are mind boggling but actually they’re just a fact of WW1 warfare. Those Australians who survived Gallipoli were sent to France where they lost as many men in the first six weeks as over the entire eight months in Turkey.

But enough about war… We’re now in Ayvalik, a beautiful seaside town on the Aegean. The sun is out and I even thought about not wearing my long johns today! Even the decision process is a novelty – since I landed in Latvia on October 6th 2009 they have been an almost essential part of everyday apparel. We spent the day exploring the atmospheric old town that covers the hill behind the harbour. It was apparently a Greek town until the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey in 1923 that followed Turkey’s War of Independence and defeat of the Greek army. In total around 1.5 million Greek Orthodox citizens of Turkey and 500,000 Muslim citizens of Greece were relocated.

Walking around today we soaked up the laid back atmosphere, ate Ayvalik toast by the waterside and sipped chai on a street corner. We’re the only tourists in town and all the pensions are still closed for the off season. We’re the first foreigners to stay in our hotel this year (the hotel owner says the Greeks don’t count as foreigners). The TV last night was subtitled in Greek, not Turkish which was interesting. It’s only a 1.5 hour ferry ride to the Greek island of Lesvos where many of the Ayvalik Greek population were relocated.

Tomorrow we head further south to Bergama to check out the pre-Roman ruins of Pergamum then more ruins at Ephesus. We’re considering trying to get Syrian visas in Ankara and heading south instead of east toward the snow and Kurdish riots (shhh, don’t tell my parents!).

-

Well we’re still in Istanbul, though we’re finally leaving this evening to explore more of what Turkey has to offer. It’s been great to have so much time in this fascinating city but two weeks in one place is enough for us. Actually the past month has been pretty relaxing; a week in Lviv (Ukraine) then a week in Kyiv and two weeks here. It’s going to be a shock to put on our backpacks again, though after a session at the post office yesterday they’ll be a whole lot lighter. I finally got rid of my pet rock, Melnik, who I’ve been carrying since the start of Bulgaria about 3 months ago. It’s a long story…

In our second week in Istanbul we visited Dolmabaçe Palace, which was the residence of the Ottoman sultans when they moved out of Topkapi Palace in 1856. They certainly didn’t skimp on decorations, and the rooms are beautiful. Most impressive were those that were designed to impress visiting dignitaries and ambassadors; they dripped with gold leaf, lush fabrics and luxurious French style furniture. On the other hand the rooms of the harem, the residential part of the palace, were relatively plain. Once the palace had been vacated following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had his summer residence here. He was a military officer during World War 1 and is revered as the founder of the modern, secular Turkish nation. The bed on which died in 1938 is watched over by a clock stopped at his time of death.

The palace is on the Bosphorus, the 30km long strait that links the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara and divides European Turkey from the Asian continent. At its narrowest there is only 700m between the banks and only two bridges cross it. On our way south from Odessa we passed through but we decided to take a sightseeing cruise to see it in a bit more detail and at a slower pace. It has long been a strategic passageway and in a few places along the banks you can see the remains of ancient fortifications. A simple way of controlling shipping traffic was to fasten a chain across the strait, something that was done in at least two places that we heard of. Our ninety minute cruise took us up to where the Black Sea opens up and we spent some time wandering around Yoros Castle in Anadolu Kavağı. Many different peoples have used the strategic location over the centuries and further down toward Istanbul were two fortresses on opposite sides of the water. Anadoluhisarı  and Rumelihisarı were used by the emerging Ottoman Empire in their siege of Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453 to stop aid reaching the city.

Of course we also visited plenty more mosques but the one that really stood out was Rüstem Pasha Mosque. It was built in 1561-1563 for the Grand Vizier and son in law of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. I’m a fan of his nickname – “Louse of fortune” – due to his being found to be infested with lice before his marriage to the sultan’s daughter. He was born to a Catholic Croatian family and taken into service at the Ottoman court through the Janissary system where he worked his way up to the second in command. Only non Muslims were recruited for service to the Sultan as they had no loyalty to other Ottoman nobles (and could be converted to Islam later), and while it initially started out as forced enslavement the perks and opportunities offered to rural village boys soon meant that even Muslim families were trying to sell their sons into the system.

But I’m getting sidetracked. The inside of the Rüstem Pasha Mosque was beautifully decorated with Iznik tiles, a style of pottery made in the town of Iznik in Western Anatolia. The designs are usually on a white background and consist of floral motifs in blue, aqua, red and green. They were highly prized by the sultans and the Blue Mosque is decorated with about 20,000 tiles. Rüstem Pasha Mosque has fewer tiles, being smaller, but they cover almost every surface and make ensure that people knew the wealth and power of Rüstem Pasha. It’s still beautiful today and as we wandered the crowded market streets surrounding the mosque we discovered a corner of Istanbul that we’d been looking for since we arrived. With the call to prayer echoing in the narrow alleyways, chai vendors running between shops with small hourglass shaped glasses of tea, the smell of kebabs wafting through the air and hardly a tourist in sight it was my favourite part of Istanbul so far. Along with the end of the Bosphorus cruise as we sailed back toward the sun setting on a silhouette of minarets and mosques it goes down as a perfect Istanbul moment.

Another day we made it out to Kariye Church, near the old city walls. It was originally founded in the 5th century but the current building is from 1077–1081. The stunning frescoes and mosaics date from about 300 years later and have survived despite being plastered over when the church was converted to a mosque. Nearby was a restaurant dedicated to uncovering traditional Ottoman court cuisine, a task made difficult by the fact that recipes were kept secret. Using the shopping lists of the sultan’s court and records kept by foreign visitors they’ve managed to recreate a selection of delicious dishes. The first reference to the soup Brett ate for entre was in 1469 and it combined chestnuts, dried yoghurt, green pepper, tomatoes and mint. Everything was delicious but we wondered if the sultan sometimes just craved a burger (or the Ottoman era equivalent).

We’ve also spent some time in small teahouses, places people go to smoke nargile, drink tea and play backgammon. Nargile is the water pipe, also known as the shisha or hookah in other parts of the world. A couchsurfer took us for our first experience and we smoked some apple flavoured tobacco which was pretty smooth considering neither of us are smokers. Quite a few Turkish people have told us that smoking nargile is actually worse for you than smoking cigarettes and it’s true. A cigarette only takes a few minutes to smoke whereas a nargile session usually takes about forty minutes. The fact that the smoke is drawn through water means it’s less irritating to your lungs but in fact the smoke loses none of its effects, as we found out when we both buzzed a little.

Another favourite activity is playing backgammon and, determined to take part, Brett and I taught ourselves to play using Wikipedia and Skype. Aaah the powers of technology. Feeling a little more confident we promoted ourselves to an actual real life backgammon set borrowed from our guesthouse and then actually played some real life people who whooped our real life butts. Many times. It was embarrassing, but we did manage to win a couple of times when they were feeling generous. Through the haze of nargile smoke I could vaguely make out the “no smoking” sign as the chai man came around with another tray of steaming tea glasses.

Tonight we take a ferry across the Sea of Marmara to Bursa. It’s Turkey’s fourth largest city but also has plenty of Ottoman era structures. It’ll be nice to be moving again.

-

We’ve spent the past week in Istanbul, being befriended by carpet salesmen, exploring historic mosques, drinking fresh orange juice, watching dervishes whirl, eating baklava, counting stray cats, buying souvenirs in the Grand Bazaar and dodging rain showers. It’s been a busy week. On our first night in the city we headed out to the weekly CouchSurfing meeting where we met lots of great people who gave us a list of culinary delights to taste and some great tips for sightseeing in Istanbul and Turkey. On our way home, as we walked between the Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque, it snowed a wet, heavy snow.

Both Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque were, of course, on the “must see” list and both are incredible. Aya Sofya was originally built in 537AD by the Byzantine emperor Justinian. It was the world’s biggest Christian church until the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottomans and its transformation into a mosque. Even today with all the technology available, the building is still incredible. The 55m high dome floats above mere mortals heads, and even the balcony soars up toward the ceiling. The Blue Mosque, more accurately named Sultan Ahmet Mosque after the sultan who commissioned it, was built between 1606 and 1616 to rival Aya Sofya. It doesn’t quite achieve that but it’s a pretty tough competition to win. The interior is a huge space covered in tens of thousands of blue tiles, hence the unofficial name of the structure.

Another popular sight is Topkapi Palace, the residence of Istanbul’s sultans from 1453 until the 19th century when they built separate palaces for themselves. The harem is an incredible complex and was home to the sultan, his mother, his children, his many concubines and the eunuchs who guarded them. Interestingly enough the girls/women in the harem were all foreigners as Islam forbade enslaving other Muslims. The same was true for the pages in the emperor’s court, who could aim for the position of Grand Vizer who was second in command after the sultan himself. The treasury houses an incredible collection of sparkly and ostentatious treasures which say more about the wealth and power of the sultans than the buildings of the palace itself. Among them is the Topkapi dagger, destined to be a gift to the Nadir Shah of Persia but was undelivered at the time of his death. Three enormous emeralds are set into the hilt and a whole lot of other sparkle makes sure they’re not the only thing catching your eye. We also saw the world’s 5th largest diamond, known as the spoon maker’s diamond because it was originally found on a rubbish dump and bought for three spoons. The cut stone is 86 carats and was first worn by Mehmet IV when he ascended the throne in 1648.

One of our days was spent wandering around some of the less touristy neighbourhoods. We’re staying in Sultanahmet which is the centre of the old Byzantine and Ottoman city and hence is now the centre of all things touristy. It’s a convenient base for the historic sites but it was nice to get out to see some of the more local areas. On our first day we were disappointed to see that the Grand Bazaar has pretty much been transformed into a large souvenir shop, with some allowances for seriously blingy jewellery and fake brand name goods. Walking briefly through the spice market we saw the same trend there, tourism seems to be big business here. Even in the low season there are plenty of big buses around. It’s easy to see why the city is so popular though, we’re still here a week later and our list of things to see and do never seems to get shorter.

In a single evening we managed to fit in whirling dervishes and a visit to a hamam (Turkish bath). The whirling dervishes are members of the Mevlevii Sufi order and their famous whirling is a form of meditation. For many of the tourists watching the ceremony the chanting and music preceding the whirling was too long. With the attention span of ADD afflicted kids they started fidgeting after 5 minutes of flute and drum music but finally the whirlers made their entrance. Wearing tall tan cylindrical hats that represent the tombstone of the ego they shed their black cloaks and started whirling (after some other ceremonies that had the kids twitching again). It was beautiful. There was such peace and serenity in their movements as they turned and moved around the circular “dancefloor” in the centre of the converted hamam. As they spun their right hands reached up toward the sky, symbolising the gifts they receive from God, and the left pointed downward symbolising their charity to those less fortunate.

Later in the night we visited a functioning hamam and had our first Turkish bath. It was an experience. We went for the soap massage option and got sudsed up by rather unattractive members of our respective genders. Men and women bathed separately which is just as well as there wasn’t a whole lot of clothing involved, though I was surprised to be given a pair of underpants to wear. Later, as I lay on my back getting a full body soap massage from a pendulous Turkish lady I was rather grateful for the humble covering those undies provided. There wasn’t much holding back on her part! Once I’d been rubbed all over by a complete stranger I was left to my own devices and spent the rest of my visit alternating between the heated stone slab in the middle of the room and cooling rinses from the taps lining the walls.

Today we avoided the pouring rain with visits to a few museums. The Istanbul Archaeological museum was incredible. It just kept going and going and going! Along with some of the incredible treasures in the Topkapi Palace it really drove home the fact that under the Ottoman sultans Istanbul was the capital of a far reaching empire. At its height the Ottomans controlled lands from Hungary to southern Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and west along the Mediterranean African coast to Morocco. One of the more impressive things we saw in the museum, before we got kicked out at closing time, was the marble sarcophagus of a king, found in present day Lebanon. It is covered in incredibly detailed carvings showing Alexander the Great and his army battling with the Persians, and was once brightly painted. Traces of the 4th century BC paint are still visible. Other interesting displays were an Egyptian sarcophagus reused by King Tabnit of Sidon in the 5th century BC and a sarcophagus with a classical Greek style face adorned with an Egyptian pharaoh’s beard from around 465BC.

As we’re still adding to our “to do” list we’ve decided to stay at least another five days in Istanbul before heading off to explore the rest of Turkey. If we’re lucky the eastern part of the country will have warmed up a bit by the time we get there – at the moment there’s still a lot of snow around.

-

Before we left Kyiv we had one major sight left to see: the Kyivo-Pechers’ka Lavra, a monastery complex that draws crowds of pilgrims and tourists. It was originally founded in 1051 by a Greek monk and his follower, who dug caves where they and other monks worshipped, studied and lived. Their mummies are still visible today, preserved by the cool dry air, and this is seen as proof that they were holy men. We visited the tunnels underground but weren’t allowed to see all of them as we weren’t pilgrims, to be fair all the mummies kind of looked the same to me. They were all covered with a shroud with only the odd hand or foot poking out. Up aboveground the monastery complex was huge, an incredible 28 hectares of churches, museums and other buildings. The massive Dormition Cathedral is a year 2000 reconstruction of the original which was blown up by either the Nazis or the Soviets (nobody is really sure).

One of the museums we went in to was the museum of micro miniatures which had exhibitions of such mind boggling smallness that it only took a single room to blow our minds and change our world view forever. Well maybe not quite that extreme but there was some seriously cool stuff, all viewed through a microscope. The pieces of art are the creation of a Russian artist, N Siadristy who does this stuff in his spare time. One of the pieces was a 2mm long strand of hair which had been hollowed out until it was almost transparent (?!). Not to stop at this he then created (by hand, this is all done by hand) a miniscule rose which he placed inside the hollowed out hair. Seriously! A chess board on the head of a pin was another creation and an intricate Egyptian scene complete with pyramids, a palm tree and a chariot all placed inside the eye of a needle. There were about 20 of these creations in an otherwise relatively non-descript room.

A few days after this the temperature hit -17oC and the sky turned blue, a cruel combination for a person who likes taking photographs but hates the cold. We headed out to retake some earlier photos but nearly froze our fingers and noses off in the icy wind at the top of the St. Sofia belltower. I’ve never been so certain my appendages were about to snap off. The next day wasn’t any better but I spent all day in the hostel doing laundry and washing my hair, both things that require some serious at-home time in this weather. Brett went out to run some errands before we left for Odessa on the overnight train.

Odessa wasn’t any better; a chirpy sign announced the time and temperature when we arrived. 6:28am and -17oC. Cue another few days of serious snuggled-up-in-bed-by-the-heater time. We ventured out for food and to see a production of Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty” at the Odessa Theatre of Opera and Ballet. It was our third time to see a show there and we weren’t disappointed, it was beautifully done.

Back at the hostel they seemed to leaveone of the burners on the gas stove going all the time. We asked and they said it was for heating the apartment. It’s a five room apartment. Not the most efficient method but the central heating certainly wasn’t warm enough. I would have bought a small heater but this weather is seriously unusual for Odessa, even more so than for the rest of the Ukraine and Europe. Apparently they hardly ever get snow in Odessa but a solid layer covered the sidewalks and hadn’t even melted enough to turn to ice with compacting like it had on the sidewalks in Kyiv.

On Monday night we left Odessa on a 36 hour boat to Istanbul, where we are now. We spent two nights and one full day on board and arrived early Wednesday morning. It was a good excuse to chill out (not that we seem to need an excuse), catch up on diary writing (me), work on photos (Brett) and read about Turkey. As we left Odessa harbour the boat passed through pack ice for about 20 minutes, some of the slabs looked up to 15cm thick, it was pretty exciting and some indication of the temperature. As we left the temperature displayed in the terminal was -19oC.

First impressions say we’re going to love our time in Istanbul and the time spent exploring. Fresh pomegranate juice, oodles of doner kebabs and miscellaneous other street food beckons…

-

It’s been an interesting week and I’m going to start with what we did today even though it throws out the whole chronological order of things. We headed out to visit Chernobyl, site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, which released 400 times more fallout than the bombing of Hiroshima. Scary and foolish as that sounds the levels of radiation since the disaster on April 26, 1986 have dropped so much that visiting and working in the exclusion zone is now considered safe. There are around 4,000 people working within the 30km zone (doing 4 day to 2 week stints in the contaminated area followed by time outside). Many of them work at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. These days their main job is to transform the area into a safer place but I was surprised to find out that the plant was operational until December 2000.

At the time of the disaster there were four reactors functioning and two under construction, but now rectors five and six stand unfinished. To get in to the centre of the exclusion zone we had to pass two checkpoints and on the way out were tested for radiation, as was our car. The exclusion zone was initially circular but with later testing it has been changed to more accurately reflect contamination levels. The plume of radioactive fallout was initially blown westward but then winds changed northerly and it’s estimated that 60% of the contamination fell on Belarus. Nuclear rain fell as far away as Ireland.

Our visit started with a drive to near the Nuclear Power Plant, where our Geiger counter beeped in alarm for the first time. Apparently radiation levels are lowered by approximately half in winter as the snow covers everything. The Red Forest was another area of high radiation as the pine trees were bulldozed then buried in the same area. It’s called the red forest because of the rusty brown the trees turned when they died after the accident. Driving through the area today the reading on our Geiger counter was 1.22 µSv/h (microsieverts per hour) compared to about 0.1 µSv/h in the Kiev Metro or 0.25 µSv/h in Chernobyl town according to this site. Standing about 200m from reactor four we hit a high of 1.75 µSv/h which is still considered safe.

We also went to Prypiat, the company town of the Nuclear Power Plant. It was founded in 1970 and at the time of the disaster housed 50,000 people. They weren’t evacuated until a few days after the disaster and at the time were told it was a temporary evacuation. Later they (and looters) came back for their belongings and the apartments now stand eerily empty. The only things to remain behind are a few pieces of cumbersome furniture, stoves and peeling wallpaper. In the primary school building there is the remains of the library and outside a ferris wheel stands in a forlorn amusement park.

Anyway, we’ve spent most of this week in Kyiv, 100km south of Chernobyl. It’s a pretty city and despite the plummeting temperatures and worry about elections we’ve enjoyed our time here. Temperatures have been around -5oC to -12oC and limit the amount of time we like to spend outside in any single stretch. Thankfully the walking tour we’ve been following has plenty of churches to pop in to, underground shopping malls and cafes nearby. Unfortunately, the next week looks like it’s getting even colder, with a low of -21oC forecast on Friday.

So far the highlights of the city have been its churches. We’ve visited St. Michael’s Golden Domed Monastery, St. Sophia Cathedral and St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral, all of which have been beautiful in their own way. St. Michaels was originally built in the middle ages, but was destroyed by the Soviets in the 1930s to make way for a grandiose plan to rebuild the centre of Kyiv. Since independence it’s been reconstructed in Byzantine and Baroque style. St. Sophia Cathedral managed to avoid destruction and the historical building as well as the beautiful interior decoration has been World Heritage listed. The restoration work has been done incredibly well, with missing sections of frescos repainted but in a way that it’s obvious which parts are original. Layers of paint or wall have been removed to show older details and you’re allowed to explore the upper levels which were traditionally reserved for kings and queens. St Volodymyr’s Cathedral seems plain on the outside but has some of the most beautiful interior paintings that we’ve seen. They were completed in 1896 and are an exquisite combination of Pre Raphaelite and Art Nouveau styles.

We haven’t spent all our time in churches though, we also checked out the Golden Gate. It was the main gate in the fortifications surrounding the city. A little way away, opposite the president’s office is the House with Chimeras. It was built in 1901-1902 and the exterior is made entirely of concrete donated from a nearby concrete company. At this time concrete was a relatively new building material and the company rightly assumed that a house designed by the eccentric architect Vladislav Gorodetsky would generate enough interest to pay back their investment. He didn’t disappoint them. The façade drips with mermaids, frogs, ships, elephants, catfish and rhinos, all sculpted by the Italian Emilio Sala.

The recent presidential elections seem to have happened without any of the protests that brought about the Orange Revolution five years ago. This time around apathy seems to reign, with voter turnout around 67%. Actually this isn’t only due to people not bothering to vote, changing your registration can be impossible if your landlord doesn’t want to register you (and therefore pay taxes) so many people are registered to vote in places they no longer live. Ironically the man people are expecting to win is the same one who rigged the ballots last time, while the man swept to office by people power in 2004 only got 5.49% of the votes. No single candidate got more than 50% of the vote and so a second round, pitting the top two candidates against each other, is scheduled for February 7.

We’re planning on being out of the country by then, down in Istanbul where temperatures on the positive scale sound positively balmy.

-

Our first stop back in the Ukraine was Kamyanets Podilsky, home to an impressive fortress. The main part of the old town was built on what is almost an island in a sharp bend of the Smotrych River. It forms a natural moat fortified by high cliffs and the narrow strip of land connecting the old town to the “mainland” is guarded by the fort. It’s hard to imagine a better situated city but other than that I have to say that I was underwhelmed. The fortress was cool but we didn’t find much more to check out in the city. We did see a church that had been converted into a mosque during the Turkish rule in the 17th century. When the city was handed back to the Polish forces in 1699 a clause stated that the minaret that had been built could not be torn down. Not to be outwitted the Poles put a massive golden statue of the Virgin Mary on top instead.

From there we travelled to Lviv, a city that gets a lot of hype in the tourism in Ukraine literature. Maybe we’re just slow on the uptake or have hit that stage of travelling that we term “tourist tiredness”. It seems to happen about every month or so: we just get a bit bored, lazy and want to spend whole days doing nothing - especially avoiding sightseeing. Thankfully Lviv’s European bent means there are plenty of cafes designed for doing just that. We’ve had a latte at a café dedicated to the inventor of the kerosene lamp, eaten enough cake to make ourselves sick at a place called “the sweet shop” and sipped honey (and wasabi) vodka in a place designed like a Ukrainian Insurgent Army bunker. The UIA waged a guerrilla war for Ukrainian independence between 1943 and 1949, both against the Nazis and the Soviets. It was particularly popular in Western Ukraine and its lack of success (Ukraine didn’t gain independence from the USSR until 1990) doesn’t seem to matter to the patrons of the wildly popular restaurant. Before you’re allowed inside a guard opens a small window in the door and says “slava Ukraini” (glory to Ukraine) and you have to reply “geroyam slava” (glory to its heroes). The door is then opened and another guard, armed with a machine gun, hands you a shot of vodka. The secret door to the stairs leading down is hidden behind a bookshelf.

Today we visited the Lychakivskiy Cemetery, which in this case is actually an unmissable tourist attraction even for people who aren’t as into cemeteries as I am. It was founded in 1787 and has historically been the main resting place of Lviv’s middle and upper classes. The massive grounds are home to thousands of impressive family tombs and graves adorned with statues, busts and images of the deceased. Last night it started to snow and a thick layer covered the grounds and all the graves – apart from one. We walked along the already cleared roads and did some overlanding in the ankle deep snow as we explored the beautiful grounds. By the time we left our feet were frozen and when we got somewhere warm my fingers tingled as they warmed up. I’m not a great fan of that feeling.

We’re not sure if the weather that’s here is the same storm that’s been wreaking havoc on Germany for the last few days but it’s certainly colder now than it has been. Since we got to Lviv it’s been grey, hazy and a little rainy but temperatures haven’t been too bad, something that’s changing. Thankfully we’ve done a lot of the wandering we were planning on doing in our exploration of the city. We’ve popped into a lot of churches and enjoyed hot wine as we wandered the Orthodox Christmas (January 7th) markets. It’s been nice to soak up some of the Christmas spirit again as we celebrate for the second time. Tomorrow is meant to be the coldest day so maybe we’ll just stay inside with a warm cup of tea and a movie. Oh that does sound nice…

Our plan is to stay here another few days then head to Kiev. On the 14th we’re going to see The Nutcracker at the Opera and Ballet theatre which should be good. At some stage we’re going to have to start doing some reading about Turkey because that’s where we’ll head after Kiev (by way of Odessa).

-

Our first stop after Brasov was Sighisoara. It’s another town founded by Germanic people, the Transylvanian Saxons, who were invited by the King of Hungary to protect the southern borders of what was then his land. They built their medieval citadel on a hill and it has been UNESCO listed for being “an outstanding example of a small fortified city” which has been inhabited since the 12th century. It was also where we celebrated New Years Eve 2009/2010. But before that happened we had a few days to explore the (inevitably) cobblestoned streets of the old town. It was beautiful.

The Clock Tower was once the main entry to the fortified city and home to the town council. It was built in 1280 with walls 2.35m thick and is now a history museum. Inside you can see the workings of the 1648 clock, a fantastic tangle of wheels, cogs, chains and spinning things all controlled by the steady tick tock of the pendulum swinging.  Each day a different wooden figurine represents the day of the week and other figurines, carved from linden wood, represent characters from Greek and Roman mythology.

Nearby is a restaurant in the house where Vlad Tepes (inspiration for Count Dracula) was born, but we avoided it. Instead we opted for the delicious kurtos kalacs that were being sold in the main square. We first discovered kurtos kalacs in Brasov at the Christmas market next to the ice skating rink, and they’ve been a staple feature of any outdoor area that people wander around and might want to eat. Made from a thin ribbon of pastry wound around a thick wooden spit, they’re a hollow cylinder about 40cm long and 10cm wide which is slowly cooked over charcoal. The outside is crispy, covered with caramelised sugar and nuts, while the inside is still a little undercooked and mushy. Delicious!! Apparently they originate here in Transylvania but are now considered a Hungarian dish as this area was part of Hungary for hundreds of years. As you eat it the helix unwinds and we had an easy-to-eat street snack as we wandered.

Speaking of food, another thing that we’ve been enjoying since it got cold is mulled wine. There’s nothing like coming in from the cold to a warm room and sipping a hot mug of spicy wine. We made some in Chisinau with Kaatya and it was surprisingly simple. Just add some cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and orange slices to a sweet red wine and warm it up. It’s saved me on many a chilly winter day, when my fingers were about to go numb and my face about to freeze off. There have been a few more of those cold days than I would have liked but I guess my four year avoidance of winter had to end at some stage.

On New Year’s Eve we spent most of the night hanging out in our hotel room because all the bars and restaurants had expensive reservation-only parties. We hung out until a bit before midnight and then headed up to the citadel to brave the winter chill and join the other revellers. We weren’t the only ones with the same thought, as 2010 got closer more people joined us and we watched fireworks go off all over the city. You must be able to buy fireworks in shops because there were small displays all over the city as different parties counted down the New Year on their slightly different watches. Some went off on either side of us and we enjoyed the display while people all around us popped champagne corks.

The next day we left to head to Romania’s northeast. It’s an area famous for its 15th and 16th century churches which are decorated both inside and out with beautiful frescos. The designs depict stories from the bible, historical saints and martyrs, historical events such as the siege of Constantinople, scenes of Armageddon and historical figures that founded or funded the churches. Since 1993 seven outstanding examples have been UNESCO listed and we managed to see four of them while in the area. The first one we visited was the Church of St George at Voronet, built by Stefan Cel Mare in 1488 as thanks to a religious hermit who had given him advice during a crisis in the war with the Ottomans. It’s famous for the beautiful and well preserved fresco depicting the last judgement as well as the vivid shade of blue that is used for the background of most of the figures. It’s apparently known worldwide as “Voronet blue” though a quick Google search doesn’t show much international usage of it apart from describing the monastery frescos.

We also visited the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin in Humor which is famous for its interior frescos. Unfortunately we visited on a day that it wasn’t open. The outside was nice though, painted in 1535 with funding by Stefan Cel Mares’ illegitimate son Petru Rares. We didn’t stick around for long – without shelter from the bitter cold it wasn’t much fun to stand around and hope that someone would come to open the church. Up near the village of Moldovita we visited another one, The Church of the Annunciation. This one is notable for the fortifications that surround the church, which are a reminder that many of these churches were built at a time when the area was threatened by Turkish invaders. The fortified church area was where armies would wait to do battle and the exterior frescoes were designed to educate the illiterate soldiers who could neither enter the church nor understand the Slavic language used in mass.

We’re now in Suceava, the main city in this area and home to another of the painted churches. The Church of St. George was probably the most disappointing of the churches we’ve seen as the exterior paintings are very faded. Still, we had to pass through Suceava anyway on our way up into the Ukraine. Tomorrow we head up toward Kamianets-Podilskyi in the Ukraine then to Lviv and probably Kiev. If Brett doesn’t hear from work the plan is to catch the ferry from Odessa to Istanbul and spend some time in Turkey, or maybe head to Germany.

-

We’ve been in Brasov for a week and it’s been fantastic. Just after I posted my last update we celebrated Christmas, or rather we celebrated Christmas Eve and spent Christmas day popping aspirin and avoiding getting out of bed. Before all that happened, on Christmas Eve day, we headed out to Bran. Home to the castle more popularly known as Dracula Castle, Bran looked like it would be hectic in the high season. Thankfully winter is the low season and we almost had the castle to ourselves as we explored its many nooks and crannies. Steep staircases led to higher floors where balconies overlooked the interior courtyard. If I were a vampire the balcony looking out over the valley would be my helipad of choice. Speaking of, the local character that Bram Stoker’s Dracula is based on spent minimal time in this castle. An exhibition in one of the rooms talked about Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler, and tried to paint him in a good light. He was just misunderstood. Look up impalement… We had a beautiful day for the castle and after wandering around we headed up a nearby hill for some views across to and down on the castle. A perfect Christmas present.

Christmas Eve was spent at a cosy little restaurant in downtown Brasov where the white wine flowed freely, then back home where we added a bottle of chilli vodka to the hostel party that had started in our absence. As I mentioned, Christmas day was a bit of a non event so I’ll skip straight to Boxing Day (the 26th).

We spent the day exploring Brasov’s well preserved old town. First of all we visted the St. Nicholas Church, whose stone building dates from 1495 and replaced an earlier church from 1292. Next to it was a beautiful graveyard where we saw a headstone carved with a person’s name, date of birth and the first two digits of their date of death. Unfortunately, it seemed nobody expected them to live into the 21st century because the first two digits were “19”. In the streets of Brasov were some beautiful old houses with decorative flourishes and we wandered around for hours before heading up to the White Tower for a view over the city as the sun set. At 3:45pm.

The next day we headed to Sinaia, an hour south of Brasov. It took us two hours because it started snowing very heavily almost as soon as we left Brasov and traffic seems to turn to chaos pretty quickly after that happens around here. Anyway, we finally got in and headed up to Peles Castle. Actually it was never designed as a fortification, simply a luxurious summer retreat for King Carol the first. It was built from 1873 to 1914, though it had its inaugural ball in 1883. It has 3,200sqm of floor space, around 170 rooms, 30 bathrooms and an entry hallway that made me swoon. It also has a management who know how to extort money from tourists, but that’s the only bad thing I can say about the castle. It’s one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen in my life. Many of the rooms have unique themes - Florentine, Turkish, Moorish, French, Imperial - and every single one of them is done exquisitely. And so they should be, in todays money the construction bill came to US$120 million!

Nearby was Pelisor Castle, built between 1899 and 1903 as the residence of the future King Ferdinand and his consort Crown Princess Marie. They didn’t like Peles Castle and Marie didn’t like her father-in-law King Carol 1. This may have had something to do with the fact that he put an end to her affair with Lieutenant Zizi Cantacuzene in 1897. Other ill concealed secrets meant that the paternity of a few others of her children was suspect and it’s pretty obvious that the marriage wasn’t a happy one. Having said that, Marie seems to have had impeccable taste. She took an active part in the design and decoration of the castle and created a much more minimalistic Art Nouveau style than Peles. Her favourite room, where she spent most of her time, was the incredible Gold Room, a vaulted room with a Celtic cross over the skylight. The walls are entirely covered in gilded stucco in a thistle leaf design and reflect the light. Queen Marie died in this room in 1938, eleven years after her husband.

Today we headed out to some of the fortified churches in the surrounding villages. In Prejmer a 15th century citadel built by Teutonic Knights surrounds a 13th century church. It was designed to house and protect the local peasants who were required to keep most of their goods in one of the 272 cells in the citadel walls in case the town was attacked by the Ottomans. At this time the southern part of Transylvania was the southern border of Hungary, and the Germanic knights were employed to protect it. Nearby, in Harman, is another citadel from the 16th century which was less impressive but at least we were allowed more time to explore. As it turns out both are closed on Monday (something the Lonely Planet and other sources neglected to tell us) but at Harman an obliging caretaker opened the gate. At Prejmer a grumpy lady berated us for the Lonely Planet’s mistake but grudgingly let us in for five minutes of exploration. At Harman the German speaking caretaker told us that the people in the village speak what he called Saxish, a dialect of German which is probably called Old Low German or Middle Low German in English. Either way both these languages have died out in Germany (OLG in the 12th century and MLG in the 17th century), and it made me wonder how these communities have kept the language alive for so long when places like Brett’s village in Transnistria have lost all trace of their German past. Mass and prayers in church are in High German.

This afternoon we finally made it to the gothic Black Church, the main attraction in Brasov, which has been inconveniently closed over the Christmas period. Construction began in 1383 but in 1421 the incomplete church was destroyed by an Ottoman invasion. It was rebuilt and survived 100 earthquakes and a small fire before the Great Brasov Fire of 1689 destroyed it and blackened the walls, giving it its current name. Once again it was rebuilt and now houses a 4,000 pipe organ as well as an impressive collection of Turkish rugs, gifts from traders returning from trips.

Anyway, we leave Brasov tomorrow for Sighisoara, a medieval town to the north where Vlad Tepes (the misunderstood nice guy who liked to watch impaled people writhe as he ate his dinner) was born. It looks nice and we might spend New Year’s Eve there before heading further north on our way back into the Ukraine.

-

It didn’t stop snowing for about a week - every time we looked out it was white white white. By the time it finally stopped there was about 40cm of snow and cars were spinning their wheels all over the place. It seemed that only minimal work was done while it was still snowing which meant the roads were covered. Weather in Chisinau was cold (around -10oC), mostly grey and windy. On the upside we met a fantastic gal, Kaatya, through couchsurfing and the drabness of the days was balanced by the great nights of conversation and mulled wine that we enjoyed at her place.

We did do some wandering around the city but to be honest there isn’t a lot to be seen. In the centre we visited the Orthodox cathedral, Holy Gates and a lovely park with snow covered benches that looked like they’d be very inviting in summer. It was guarded by a statue of Stefan the Great, a prince of Moldova between 1457 and 1504 who defended his country against the Ottoman Empire. In doing so he stopped the Ottomans from entirely taking over Europe and in 1992 he was made a saint by the Romanian Orthodox Church who sees him as a defender of the faith.

On the 21st we spent a non travelling anniversary enjoying a delicious dinner and some swanky wine at a place Kaatya recommended. After a 32 hour train journey on our 3 month, and a 55 hour minibus from hell on our 6 month, I banned transport on our 9 month anniversary of marriage. We left for Romania the next day and arrived in Brasov 10 hours later (on time). At the border leaving Moldova we were a little nervous as we’d never been stamped in to the country. With all the shenanigans between Transnistria and Moldova we hadn’t passed through an official Moldovan border post but all went well and we were on our way.

Finding an ATM was a bit of an issue in Romania and we had to beg money from the bus driver to go to the toilet at our first stop in the country. On arriving in Brasov we ended up walking about an hour to get to our hotel. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, we walked through the main part of town and the temperature at 10pm was actually quite pleasant. There was snow around but it’s been melting today with the warmer weather. It’s unfortunate because I like the fact that it’s not bitterly cold anymore but the slush that the snow has become isn’t my favourite either. Walking today was a gauntlet of drips from the roof, half melted dog poo and piles of slushy snow.

Still, it was a nice day in a beautiful city. The old town of Brasov was founded in the 12th century by German colonists known as the Transylvanian Saxons. They were mostly traders and craftsmen but were also tasked with the defence of what was then Hungary’s southern border. The town of Brasov was fortified and each tower was maintained by a different craftsman’s guild. We went to the Weaver’s Bastion, a hexagonal fortification built in the second half of the 14th century to defend against the Ottoman threat. It amazes me how often I come across historical colonies of Germans in my travels around Europe. Maybe it’s just because I’m paying attention, being a roving half German myself and married to a man of nomadic German background, but they really seemed to move around a lot.

It’s only a few days until Christmas and it’s nice to see people putting up decorations and celebrating the season without going over the top. Sometimes it seems in Australia that by the time Christmas comes around I’ve been bombarded with carols for months and have lost all my Christmas cheer in frustrating visits to the packed shopping centre. Having said that I am getting a little sick of “Last Christmas” by Wham!, which isn’t really a Christmas song so much as a song about a bitter man who got jilted last Christmas. Anyway… in the main square a nice big Christmas tree stands next to a full sized manger and the walking street is decorated with lights. We had dinner at a market set up next to an outdoor ice rink then watched people skate as we enjoyed mulled wine and German gingerbread biscuits. We’ll probably hang out there for Christmas eve tomorrow and enjoy the atmosphere.

Tomorrow during the day we’re heading to Bran castle, also known as Dracula castle for its link to Vlad Tepes. More commonly known as Vlad the Impaler (don’t ask, it was a particularly cruel form of torture) he was a prince of Wallachia in the 15th century. His surname was Dracula, which means son of Dracul (Vlad Dracul was his fathers name) and his name was used by Bram Stoker in his 1897 book. Busloads of tourists have found linkages to Dracula/Vlad Tepes in towns and castles all around Romania ever since. We’ll spend a few more days in and around Brasov then head further north in Romania.

Anyway I hope everyone reading this has a great Christmas filled with love and laughter.

-

I guess it makes sense that a lazy week is followed by a busy one so here we go… The opera we saw at the Odessa Opera and Ballet theatre was Puccini’s La Boheme, a nice induction to the world of opera. The inside of the building was spectacularly stunningly amazingly beautiful and we went back the next night to watch a ballet (and take photos of the building). It was full of red velvet, gold paint, cherubs and renaissance paintings surrounding a massive chandelier in the main theatre room. We felt like real royalty sitting up in our own box (for the bargain price of $10 each).

On our last full day in Odessa we headed to the catacombs. In the 19th century a maze of tunnels were dug to supply limestone for a building boom in the city. There was no centralised plan and no map exists of the whole system, but it’s estimated that there are about 2,000-3,000km of tunnels ranging from 10m to 60m in depth. Apart from their initial use they have served other purposes through history. From 1819 to 1858 Odessa was a duty free port, a policy which made Odessa the third biggest city in Russia at the time. During this era smugglers would use the catacombs to smuggle goods bought at duty free prices out of the city. Later, during the Second World War resistance fighters hid in the catacombs after Odessa was occupied by the Romanian and Germany army following an impressive 73 day siege. After the war most of the entrances were sealed up to help stop crime.

From Odessa we headed to Tiraspol, capital of Transnistria. Though it declared independence from Moldova in 1990 it’s thus far unrecognised internationally except by Abkhazia and South Ossetia (which in turn are only recognised by each other and Transnistria). The reason for the split is a historical division in the country; Transnistria was part of the Russian Empire for much longer than the rest of Moldova and has much less Romanian influence. As the USSR started to crumble, nationalist Romanian oriented sentiment in Moldova soared and in 1989 Moldovan (a dialect of Romanian) was declared the only national language. For the mostly Russian speaking Transnistrians this and the prospect of Moldova reuniting with Romania caused skirmishes that led to an all out war in 1992. Since then a ceasefire and a large Russian presence has restricted the conflict to economic blockades and rhetoric. Transnistria has its own government, military, police, currency, postal system, constitution, flag, national anthem, passports and coat of arms. However, the currency can’t be exchanged anywhere outside Transnistria, the stamps are for domestic use only and citizens who travel abroad use a Moldovan passport.

All our research indicated that the border crossing could be a long process and involve plenty of bribery. There were various horror stories including an Italian reporter who was “fined” 600 Euros for being drunk when he hadn’t had a single drink. We got to the border and made sure we were some of the first in the immigration queue, but were singled out to come back after we’d had our bags scanned. It seemed we were in for a shakedown, the guard ordered us to put our bags on the bus so that we’d get stressed about it leaving without us. He asked us how much money we were carrying, a common tactic to evaluate how much of a payday they were looking at. We, prepared for this, had stashed most of our cash and told him $20 and 20 Euros. Obviously he wanted to wring this from us and scrutinised our entry forms looking for a problem. In accommodation we’d simply written “Lena’s apartment”, no address. This was a problem, he said, looking concerned. I had the address. He changed tack: what was Lena’s surname? We didn’t know. This was a problem, he said, looking concerned. We had a phone number. He did a few other menial tasks trying to make us stressed but we stood around nonchalantly. I fiddled with the zipper on my jacket and eventually he signed our forms and stamped us in, no bribe paid.

Everyone we met in Transnistria, after the border crossing, was fantastic. Arriving in Tiraspol we asked a few people for directions to our home stay and an older lady who spoke no English walked us all the way because she realised we couldn’t understand her directions. It was a good 15-20 minutes’ walk away and when we got there she simply smiled, waved and walked off. Lena welcomed us into her home and was as friendly and helpful as a person can be. She took care of our police registration and made sure we knew what we had to do when we left Tiraspol.

I have to admit there weren’t a whole lot of tourist attractions in Tiraspol apart from the converted water tanker in the market that was used to transport live fish. We spent a day wandering around but it was mostly to soak up the strange Soviet lack of anything much of all. Andy’s pizza, a fast food chain, was the most modern thing we found in the capital. On the day we were planning to leave we headed out to Noul Neamt Monastery, the biggest in Transnistria and a beautiful complex. Founded in 1861 its grounds originally covered 10 hectares, but Soviet authorities trimmed it down to 2 hectares then closed it altogether in 1962 to use the buildings as a hospital. Reopened in 1989 it now has around 50 monks living there. Two of them approached us in the winter Assumption Church and showed us around. One of them spoke a little English and was our guide for a few hours as he showed us around the church, the crypt and then took us on a little excursion to a hill overlooking the village of Kitskani. On the upper levels of the church was a depiction of hell which showed Hitler, Stalin, Lenin and Marx in a mural of the black angel. In the crypt the skull of a previous head monk of the monastery who died in 1880 was on display through a hole in his shroud.

The excursion to the monastery took longer than expected and we spent another night in Tiraspol before heading to Dubasari, to the north. Near Dubasari is a small village called Glinnoye which during the 17th and 18th century was a German colony called Gluckstal. Sometime between his birth in 1762 in Nebringen(Germany) and 1814 Brett’s great-great-great grandfather, Michael Voegele, moved to what was then Russia, as part of Catherine the Great’s incentives aimed at populating the new Russian areas. Generations of his family lived there until 1905 when Brett’s grandfather and great grandfather left to live in the United States. We visited the village on a freezing, windy, snowy day and saw a small museum in the basement of the school that is dedicated to the colony. These days there are no people left that speak German except for the delightful German teacher, Svetlana, who served as our guide and my translator (with me as Brett’s translator) but plenty of people come back to see where their ancestors came from. It made me more curious about my own family history.

From Dubasari we headed to Chisinau, capital of Moldova, where we are now. It started snowing on December 15 and has hardly stopped since. Apparently this is unusual even in winter and the transport is a little chaotic. In the central bus station vehicles were stuck in the middle of the road, tyres spinning in the snow, and as it compacts we’re starting to see more ice. There’s probably 20-30cm of snow lying around on the ground and forecasts are for more. Temperatures are around -10 degrees Celsius and the days are short. It’s not really sightseeing weather but we’re hoping that it means we’ll have a white Christmas down in Transylvania. Enough for now, I’ll write more about Chisinau in my next update as we’re staying here a few more days.

-

This week has been uncharacteristically lazy. We’ve spent quite a few days lazing about in hotel rooms, sleeping late and not achieving much at all. It’s been really nice! Sometimes you need those days and we haven’t taken many yet this trip, the weather has been so fantastic and there’s been so much to see that we haven’t slowed down. When we got to Nesebar the weather had changed to winter and to be honest there wasn’t much to see once we’d done the short wander around the small old town. The isthmus that the old town is on was almost deserted in the winter season, pretty much all the churches, shops, restaurants and even Tourist Information were closed. All that remained of the summer tan-seeking throng was a few chilly postcard sellers, construction workers preparing for next year’s rush and a taxi driver who was so desperate for business that he promised to take us anywhere we wanted to go for bus fare prices. We ended up paying him a bit more than bus fare price for the trip to Varna (1.5 hours) and he was the most excited and happy taxi driver I think I’ve ever met. Our measly 30 leva (USD25) fare won’t go far toward the 1,000 leva he pays monthly to rent the car but it’ll help.

Varna is also on the coast but being a big city (3rd largest in Bulgaria) most sun seekers head to one of the smaller resorts nearby (when they come in summer). We got in on a Saturday and the next bus up to Odessa, Ukraine, wasn’t until Tuesday afternoon. Once we’d wandered the beachfront, been to the cathedral, seen the Roman baths and wandered the streets a bit we spent the rest of the time hanging out and doing mundane life stuff like laundry, catching up on emails and watching lots of interesting shows on the History Channel. Did you know that in WW2 homing pigeons were actually a really important means of communication for both the Allies and the Axis? So important that both sides trained peregrine falcons to take out enemy pigeons. The British actually trained their falcons to retrieve the Nazi pigeons instead of just killing them, with messages and markings intact, thereby enabling them to plant double agent pigeons behind Nazi lines. When the Nazis released these devious birds they returned to their roosts in the UK carrying important enemy intelligence. The things you learn when you can’t be bothered to leave the hotel room…

We didn’t end up going to Sozopol either, with another reading of the Lonely Planet it sounded a lot like Nesebar. Some people would say it’s a bad thing when you read about cobblestone streets and quaint wooden houses and decide not to go to a place but there’s only so many cute old towns a person needs to see and we’d seen that many. Next up was Odessa in the Ukraine, with no mention of quaint or cobblestones.The bus ride was 18 hours and it was very nearly the end of me. We’d had a kebab before we left and I can only assume that it decided that it wanted to stay in Bulgaria when we got on the bus to the Ukraine. My entry into Romania was nothing if not dramatic, as I stumbled out of the bus with the world spinning around me and collapsed onto the ground. Thankfully once the kebab had asserted its rights of non travel all was peachy with the world and the rest of the bus trip passed without incident. Unless of course you count 4 hours of border crossings as an incident. We went from Bulgaria to Romania then seemed to do one long Romania-Moldova-Ukraine crossing. We can’t have been in Moldova more than about 10 minutes but the border crossing was painful.

Anyway we got into Odessa this morning, found a place to stay and spent the day exploring a new city and the start of a new country. Some of the buildings around Odessa are beautiful, some really stunning art nouveau facades and the most amazing indoor shopping mall, built in 1898. It has all the flourishes and decoration its designers could possibly fit on the pastel coloured walls. The national opera house, nearby, is justifiably one of the most famous buildings in town and we bought a ticket to the opera tomorrow so we can see it being put to its intended use. I don’t think I’ve ever been to an opera before and I’m sure we’ll be underdressed but at US$10 per ticket how can you refuse? Besides, it’s indoor sightseeing and with a daytime temperature of 3-4 degrees Celsius plus wind chill I’m all for indoor activities. Even Brett admits to being chilled every now and again which makes me feel better as I shiver under my 2 wool layers, fleece, down jacket, long johns, beanie, scarf and gloves. Mountain man on the other hand wears thin trousers, a t-shirt, a flannel shirt and a thin windstopper shell. Some people’s kids…

We’ll hang out here for a few days then head into Transdniestria, an area of Moldova that declared independence in 1990 but isn’t recognised as such by anyone. Back in 1905 when it was still part of Russia, Brett’s grandfather and great grandfather left what was then called Glukstal for the United States and we’re going to see how the town (now called Glinnoye) looks today. We’ll then spend some time in Moldova proper and move on to Romania to spend Christmas in Transylvania. We’ll then cross back in to the Ukraine to spend the Orthodox Christmas (Jan 7th) somewhere here.

-

From Smolyan we headed north, passing back through Plovdiv and on to Ivan Vazovo village. There Brett had his first Couchsurfing experience as we stayed with a couple and their two children. Atanas is a retired jet pilot who tries to balance holistic living and new age philosophies with an obvious fascination with all things gadget-like and the management of his company, Extreme Bulgaria. We spent an interesting few days being shown around the area, walking, cycling and exploring some of the historical sites. Nearby Hisar has been famous since Roman times for its 22 mineral springs; a 5m high, 3m thick wall was built around the town to protect it from invaders. We also went to Starossel, an ancient Thracian shrine from the late 5th to early 4th century BC. You know something happened a long time ago when they count dates backwards. A keyhole entry led to a rectangular corridor then another doorway to a perfectly circular 5.3m diameter domed chamber (the largest ever discovered). The carving on the doorways was as crisp as if it was carved yesterday and traces of the 7,000 year old paint were still visible.

On our second day with Atanas he took us water tasting. We tried water from a few different springs and compared the taste. They were quite different. People in Bulgaria take bottles to the many springs in each town and fill up their supply of drinking water for the house. We filled six 10L bottles and took them back to the house. In a field nearby was a hot spring where we went to wash one night. It was a small concrete room with what looked like a fire hydrant in the middle. Apparently there used to be some kind of piping but Atanas said it’d been stolen by the gypsies. He didn’t have many good things to say about the gypsies, one of the reasons they’d moved to that particular village was that there weren’t any gypsies (well there was one old lady but she was OK). We squatted next to the gushing pipe and washed then headed outside to get dressed by the light of the moon.

The family have their own vegetable garden and almost all the food we ate at their house came from it. There seems to be much more of a tradition of being self sufficient here than in Australia/the west. The lady we stayed with in Smolyan picked the mushrooms, made the jam, baked the bread and made the elderflower juice we had with breakfast. She seemed to take as much pride in telling us this as a posh Sydneysider would take when saying “I bought it at (insert name of expensive department store), it’s imported from (insert name of an exotic place)”. It seems to be much nicer for them to know where something came from and have that place be somewhere local, which is a nice way to live really. Better for the environment and probably healthier too.

From Ivan Vazovo it was meant to be a simple hop to our next destination, Veliko Tarnovo, but we were stranded by bad connections and ended up spending a night in Kazanlak. Actually it ended up being two because we couldn’t fit in the things we’d decided we wanted to see before the last bus of the day, seeing as we were in town. We visited the museum and a Thracian tomb from the 4th century BC. It was discovered in 1944 by soldiers digging a bomb shelter and is remarkable for its perfectly preserved murals. We paid the high entrance fee to spend a few minutes in the original (breathing shallowly) then spent more time in the nearby tomb copy. The beehive shaped roof of the circular chamber is covered in a beautiful painting that shows the ruler and his wife with their servants, musicians, stable man and horses. Above them in a belt of paintings are three chariots representing the races and competitions that were part of the funeral rites for Thracian rulers. Outside Kazanlak, in Shipka, was another Thracian tomb and a beautiful Russian style church built in 1902 to commemorate soldiers who died defending the Shipka Pass in the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78).

We’re now in Veliko Tarnovo, a city name we only mastered shortly before we got here. We’ve spent some time wandering the town’s remaining traditional areas, checked out the ancient fortress and drooled over the property prices in Bulgaria. We also walked to Arbanasi, a village on the hill overlooking Veliko where there seems to be a lot of massive houses behind tall walls. Apparently the area was ruled by a son-in-law of the Ottoman sultan in the 16th century and therefore was tax free. A historical Monaco. Our main reason for visiting was the Nativity Church, a modest un-churchlike building that was designed to conceal its purpose from the Muslim Ottoman rulers. Inside the walls are completely covered in murals, painted between 1632 and 1649. What they lack in artistic finesse they make up for in sheer numbers with over 3,500 figures shown in 2,000 scenes.

Today we head to Nessebar, a town on the Black Sea Coast which is meant to be pretty. We’ll also head to Sozopol then up to Varna which is apparently packed with tourists in the right (wrong?) season. I would like to come back for a bit of a beach break some time but we’ll see what happens. From Varna we’ll head up to Odessa then into Moldova before coming back for more time in the Ukraine. Christmas is still planned for Transylvania in Romania, hopefully there’s some snow! The weather has definitely changed a little in the last week – cooler and more like we expected it to be.

-

The train from Bansko was deliciously slow as we trundled past rural villages and farmhouses. On arrival in Plovdiv we rented a room in an older couple’s house and set out to explore the city. It had a nice vibe to it – despite being Bulgaria’s second largest city it had more of a village feel to it with plenty of small shops, fruit and veg markets and people wandering the streets. Every now and again a Thracian or Roman ruin would stick up out of the modern city and remind us of the incredible history that this part of the world has seen. Underneath the pedestrian shopping mall are the remains of a Roman stadium and up on the hill we went to on the first night are the remains of a fortress, the earliest incarnation of which dates back to the Bronze Age. There is evidence of a Thracian settlement on the site, which was conquered and further fortified by Phillip II of Macedon in 342 BC. These days it’s a hangout for teenagers and cuddling couples who enjoy the view across the city and, apparently in summer, a few beers.

The old town was where we spent a lot of our time; it was a picturesque tangle of cobblestone streets lined with houses that overhung their lower levels. It seemed that very few blocks of land were square and so the upper levels simply hung out over the misshapen street frontages so that the upper levels had regular shaped rooms. Along some of the narrower streets the houses almost touched above our heads as we wandered through. Some of the old houses were open as museums and we explored the revival era (1762-1878) houses with their hand painted murals and decorative flourishes. The Koyumdjioglou house (built 1848), which is now the Ethnographic Museum, had some of the most incredible wooden ceilings I’ve ever seen. Actually, I should say some of the most incredible ceilings as I haven’t seen many wooden ones. They were carved and intricate and my favourite was a huge starburst that erupted away from the chandelier in a way that defied gravity.

One night we popped in to an antique shop to browse, actually I’m looking for a couple of things – one which seems to be more expensive than I’m willing to pay and another that we haven’t yet seen for sale. Anyway, we neither found nor bought these two items but we were once again lured in to buying old coins and notes. It’s so fascinating to have these incredible pieces of history. We are now the proud owners of a 10 Lev coin from 1881, the first year money was minted in the newly independent Bulgaria, some East German coins, a 100 million mark bank note from 1923 Germany which shows the incredible inflation post WW1 and a 1937 Russian note which is the only year the Ruble was not the Ruble. For some reason that year they decided it was called the Chervonetse. The shop owner was enthusiastic and full of information, telling us all about the things we bought and anything else in the shop we were interested in. We found out that a Bulgarian Christian who had been on a holy pilgrimage was called a Haji, the same word used by Muslims who have been to Mecca.

We also hung out on the steps of a Roman theatre, built in the early 2nd century. The marble steps leading up and down the semi-circular seating are worn in the middle from hundreds of years of use, but the marble statues on the 3 level stage structure at the front look as good as new. In the summer months they still hold performances there and I would love to see the ancient theatre being put to modern use. On our last night in town we had a glass of wine overlooking the theatre as the sun set on a beautiful city.

At the moment we’re in Smolyan, a town in the Rodopi mountains. Our original plan was to spend a night here then do a two day walk nearby but we were charmed by the guesthouse, its owner and the convenience of doing day walks. The Lonely Planet had mentioned that the meals at the guesthouse were great so we opted for dinner on our first night. We weren’t disappointed. Milena apparently learnt to cook from her mother and has passed her skills on to her son. As we tasted one delicious dish after another Brett wondered if she was still married and I wondered how old her son was. True love be damned, we wanted to eat like that every day! And we did, for three gut-stuffing days. Between her breakfast buffets, packed lunches and massive dinners “hungry” was certainly not a word that was uttered while we were in Smolyan.

Thankfully we went hiking both days we were there, though neither hike was as long or strenuous as we would have liked. There were easy trails everywhere though on our second day we got ourselves thoroughly confused and ended up walking in an almost complete circle as we missed turn offs, walked roads, found other trails and generally ended up 3km from where we’d been 4 hours earlier. Out on the road we found ourselves on the Greek side of the Border Police guard post though thankfully it was unattended. It was a good day of walking and it was nice to be out in the mountains surrounded by pine forests, farming land and small villages. We keep dreaming about moving here, every place we’ve been to has been great, the people are friendly and the weather seems nice. What more do we need?

Today we head to a village called Ivan Vazovo to stay with a couchsurfer and his family, after that we’re not sure. There’s still so much we want to see in Bulgaria but we also want to move on to Moldova and the Ukraine.

-

I have to say, our first impressions of Bulgaria were a little underwhelming. It was a grey day and Sofia’s outskirts didn’t look like much. However after 10 minutes of shocked silence and culture shock digestion things looked a bit better. In a way the dull light suited the flaking paint and crumbling concrete of Sofia’s aging apartment blocks better than a brighter sun would have.

We spent our first full day wandering around the city, but first was a very important visit to the German embassy where I finally picked up my new passport in my married name. We’ve been married nearly 8 months and have been trying to sort this out since March 25th so it was quite an achievement to finally hold it in my hands. We celebrated with some delicious ice cream in a 1909 shopping market in the centre of town.

Nearby was the Sofia Synagogue, built from 1905 to 1909, which has recently undergone an EU sponsored restoration project to celebrate 100 years. There was also a mosque nearby, not to mention the many (many) churches. Quite a few of the ruins and buildings we saw dated from Roman times, around 100AD, when they controlled the lands that are now Bulgaria. The Thracians were here before them (from the 4th century BC) but there are no remains from that era in downtown Sofia, though we may see some as we travel around the country. Bulgaria was also part of the Ottoman Empire from 1396 to 1878. In WWII they aligned with Germany (though saved their Jews from the Nazis) but then changed sides to the USSR after the war. They never actually joined the USSR, but were communist, and Russian is still commonly understood.

One of the more impressive sights we saw in the capital was Alexander Nevski cathedral. It bubbled up from the ground with layers of rounded domes and flourishes with its golden domes glinting in the sunlight and reflecting the brilliantly blue sky. Construction of the cathedral started in 1882 but actually the majority of the building happened between 1904 and 1912. It honours the Russian soldiers who died fighting the Ottomans in the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878).

From Sofia we headed south to the UNESCO listed Rila Monastery, established in 927 near the site of St Ivan’s hermitage cave. On our first night the rooms at the monastery were full as they only have 10 rooms open in winter but thankfully Sunday night wasn’t as busy and we managed to stay in the monastery itself. Only married couples are allowed to share a room though they didn’t ask us for any proof. The Nativity Church at the centre of the square residential complex was beautiful; just about every inch of the inside and outside walls was covered in colourful, intricate murals. Inside a massive wooden carved wall, dripping with intricate carvings and covered in gold leaf, partitioned the public part of the church from the rearmost section. I’ve seen few things more beautiful.

Tearing ourselves away from Rila we headed further south to Melnik, a town known within Bulgaria for its wine. We were greeted at the bus stop by a bubbly woman with bright red dyed hair who had a room for rent and also a well stocked wine cellar. We bought a 5L bottle for the equivalent of about US$15. It’s a lot tastier than the price would have you believe and we started to see why every second building in town is a restaurant or hotel. Before the sun went down we headed to a traditional house where we were given a free glass of wine as we sat outside with our cheese and sausage picnic then we visited a winery. We were told that the family had 7 tonnes of wine that was fermented for a month elsewhere then brought to the small cellar we were sitting in to be sold to tourists. As we sat, sipping, a man filled a bucket from a 20L plastic jerry can then poured it into a 100L cask using a funnel.

While in Melnik we also ambled to Rozhen monastery through the Melnik sand pyramids, towering peaks of eroded sandstone that have apparently been popular since Roman times. It was a nice walk up and we paused at a particularly scenic viewpoint for some cheese, wine, Haribo and a crossword (if one pays close attention one can start to see a theme in the cheese and wine area of our eating habits). The monastery was cool, though more in a rustic stone and wood way than Rila. We then walked the road back to our home in Melnik. Today we caught buses to Bansko where we wandered the old town and dodged smooth talkers warming up their skills for the winter ski season.

A deliciously drawn out meal in a friendly and cosy Mekhana completed our positive impression of the city, though we’re still leaving tomorrow on the slow train to Plovdiv. We’ll spend some time there before heading further north to Koprivshtitsa and a few other places most people have never heard of. Without knowing when Brett will be heading back to work our plan is to spend another 2 or so weeks in Bulgaria then shoot through Romania to Moldova, up to the Ukraine for a short visit then come back into Romania to spend Christmas in Transylvania’s mountains.

-

From Bergen to Oslo we did the “Norway in a Nutshell” itinerary which was suggested to us by tourist information. There seems to be a variety of itineraries around Norway which consist of convenient transport connections that you can get information about and pre-book. First of all we took a train from Bergen to Voss which spent a lot of time in tunnels. The scenery we saw out the windows was nice when we saw it but it was a relief to be on a bus from there to Gudvangen. It was my first glimpse of the Norwegian countryside and even in the pre-winter drabness it’s easy to see it’s a beautiful country. From Brett’s photos in the summer the brown grass is green, the grey sky is blue and the red buildings are still red.

From Gudvangen we took a ferry along Naeroy fjord which, along with Geiranger fjord, has been UNESCO listed since 2005. It’s notable for its narrowness, with the narrowest point being only 300m across. It was a chilly ferry ride out on the top deck but worth the view as we cruised past cute hamlets of colourful houses nestled between the shoreline and the 1,700m high cliffs. The boat trip took us to Flam, a small town whose tourist industry apparently started in the late 19th century with Brits coming to fish for salmon. Today most tourists pass through between ferries or cruise ships and the scenic Flam railway that snakes its way up the mountain from an altitude of 2m at Flam to 866m above sea level at Myrdal.

We spent a night at a small guesthouse outside the newer tourist town and walked further up the valley to Flam church. In the graveyard you could clearly see some of the older established families, with certain family names appearing much more often than others. One grave which piqued my curiosity was one that read (in English):

Owen O’Neill
born in Melbourne
10-2-1961
He loved the Flam valley and died here
16-9-1982

Assuming that the Melbourne mentioned is where I’m thinking, what is a young Aussie guy doing buried in a small graveyard next to a rural wooden church? For this mystery the almighty Google and Wikipedia have no answers.

The next morning we took the train up the mountain but we didn’t walk back into town to get on, instead we walked to the small station nearby and flagged it down, as you would a bus. It was so much more exciting than just getting on at a normal station. And yes, I do get excited by the small things. I forgot to write about it but in Stockholm I went to a supermarket where I checked the items out myself then paid a machine. It gave me change and wished me a pleasant day. Apparently these shops exist in other places but I’ve obviously not been to those places. Anyway, the train up to Myrdal was cool, a grade of 1:18 for almost 80% of the track. It took us an hour to snake up the mountain and through the 20 tunnels before arriving and changing to the normal train for Oslo.

We climbed even further and the landscape on the high plateau was a winter wonderland of snow covered pine trees and partially frozen lakes. The sky was moodily cloudy as we rolled along. Further down toward Olso it was back to grey and brown hues and the last few days here have been much the same. While Brett was in a meeting with the boss who he just finished up a job for I checked out the Vigeland Sculpture Park which is home to over 200 sculptures by the well known (in some circles) Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland. The most striking sculpture is his monolith, a 14m tall tower of granite covered with the writhing forms of 121 naked people. Around it is a series of 36 statues of groups of people in various stages of life. The wrought iron gates leading into this area are also pretty impressive.

I also headed to the Kon Tiki museum, dedicated to the work and adventures of Thor Heyerdahl. He’s most famous for his 1947 voyage on the Kon Tiki, a balsa raft, which took him from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days. His scientific aim was to prove that settlement of Polynesia was possible from the Americas with the technology and boat building skills that are known to have existed historically. Though I don’t think his ideas are always taken seriously in the scientific community he certainly scores points in my book for getting out there and testing it. He also took the Ra 2, a reed boat, from Morocco to Barbados in 57 days. If you’re interested in some of his stories I’d recommend his books, I’ve read about most of the voyages so I have to admit there wasn’t much new at the museum for me apart from actually seeing the Ra 2 and the Kon Tiki boats which was pretty cool.

With Brett again we checked out the Fram museum, dedicated to the boat of the same name which was designed for Fridtjof Nansen’s 1893 Arctic expedition. The plan was to sail up as far north as possible from the Siberian islands then let the ship freeze into the sheet ice and float on the current he thought existed, up to the North Pole and then west to Greenland. The idea came from the wreckage of another ship, crushed by the ice, which ended up in Greenland. They took provisions for 5 years and designed a boat whose shape would mean that it was pushed up by the freezing ice instead of being crushed. Pretty crazy stuff. As Brett says that was a time when men were _MEN_ and exploration was hardcore.

We’ve also checked out the Nobel Peace museum and spent some time wandering around Oslo. Tomorrow we’re flying to Bulgaria which I’ve still not done enough research on, but where hopefully prices will be cheaper than Norway. When a hotdog costs US$6, a public toilet US$1 and 1 stop on a train US$5 it’s pretty hard to do anything without blowing our budget. Still, it’s been good.

-

From Helsinki I caught a bus to Turku, on the western coast. It’s Finland’s oldest town, founded as a Catholic settlement in 1229. I spent an afternoon wandering around Turku castle, built by the Swedish rulers at the mouth of the Aura River and intended as a military fortress. Construction started in 1280 and continued into the 19th century, and the tourist literature bills it as one of the oldest buildings still in use in Finland. It’s variously served as a fortress, mansion, prison and now museum and conference venue. The medieval keep (built in the early 1400s) and renaissance bailey (late 15th and 16th centuries) had interesting and different styles.

Rauma is about 1.5 hours north of Turku, also on the coast and the old part of town is UNESCO listed for the collection of around 600 wooden buildings that are found there. It was beautiful to wander the cobbled streets between colourful low rise wooden buildings that are still lived in and used today. The sun also made a rare appearance, though it was a winter sun that warms nothing apart from photographer’s hearts. Rauma’s prosperity came from its proximity to the sea and in 1897 the town had Finland’s largest sailing fleet with 57 boats. From here goods were exported to Germany, Stockholm and the Baltic states.

Back in Turku I headed out to karaoke with my couchsurfing host. It was so long since I’d done karaoke that I was pretty excited until I realised it was public karaoke, not the private little booths I was used to in Japan. It was fun though, and I got to see a guy “sing” Metallica’s “One” while a drunk guy slow danced with his girlfriend, regularly stepping on her feet. The next morning I caught a day ferry to Stockholm, a 10 hour cruise that took me out through the archipelago with its many islands. In Stockholm I met a guy who also led tours in China while I worked for Intrepid. Pawel moved back to Sweden and has settled down with his girlfriend, bought an apartment and four months ago became a father. Little Ines was gorgeous and Majda was a calm and patient mother. I have to admit I felt a twinge of life envy.

I spent my first day in Stockholm wandering through the old town, full of narrow cobblestone streets flanked with tall buildings that made them seem even narrower. The next day I spent almost the whole day at the Vasa museum, dedicated to the ship of the same name. It was built in 1628 at great expense for the King of Sweden and was meant to be the flagship of his fleet in the war with his cousin, the King of Poland (and previously King of Sweden). Everything was going swimmingly well and it launched on time to much fanfare. It sailed out of its dock and into Stockholm harbour where it sank 20 minutes later. Oops. It was top heavy with all the cannons the king had demanded and the shipbuilders had no experience building a ship with two gun decks. History has revealed that they knew this in advance through a failed stability test but nobody was brave enough to tell the king.

On the night of the 31st I headed to Skogskyrkogården, a cemetery to the south of the city which was designed in 1915 and is UNESCO listed. This year Halloween happened to coincide with the traditional celebration of All Saints Day which is a day to commemorate the dead and visit the graves of deceased relatives. There were lots of people there, lighting candles, cleaning graves and leaving offerings of flowers or wreaths and it was a beautifully peaceful setting. As darkness fell the candles flickered amongst the pine trees and turned the ground into a starry night sky.

From Stockholm I flew to Bergen where Brett was docking after 5 weeks working at sea. He’d actually come in to port earlier than we’d expected and by the time I arrived the guys he works with were already working towards drinking the bar dry, as were plenty of other guys who’d also been on boats for long periods of time without any females. There were a total of about 5 women in the bar and I was treated to the sort of pick up lines that only true desperation can create. “I can show you the equipment on my boat sometime” was one of my favourites. He seemed unperturbed by my mention of a husband but when he realised that Brett was 6 foot, well built and nearby he apparently made a very quick escape.

Bergen is beautiful, lots of old buildings around the harbour and we’ve been treated to some great weather. It’s cold and the wind when it blows is biting but the skies are blue and the air fresh. After a long sleep in yesterday for Brett to catch up on some much needed rest we wandered around the hilly streets and enjoyed the crisp autumn weather. We’ve spent a bit of time down around Bryggen, a line of wooden buildings originally built around 1100. The current buildings were rebuilt after a big fire in 1702 and aren’t quite straight anymore, they line up higgledy piggledy along the line of the Vagan harbour which is still an important port today.

We’re in Norway in the off season and while that’s usually no problem there seems to be a very distinct divide between tourist services in the summer and winter seasons. Many of the attractions are closed, or only open very limited hours which happen to correspond to the limited hours of daylight this time of year. A church we wanted to see was only open between 11am-12:30pm and we missed it as we were exploring a museum which was only open from 11am-3pm. Earlier today we ate some delicious marinated salmon with dill mayonnaise at the fish market. We were also given a small piece of cooked meat which the shopkeeper later told us was whale. There you have it, time for the environmentalists to crucify me. To be honest it wasn’t very good, had a strange taste to it and certainly not something I’d kill an endangered animal over. If salmon or dill were endangered we might have a fight on our hands though.

Tomorrow we’re catching a few modes of transport to get us to Flam, including a boat along the Naeroy Fjord which is UNESCO listed and then on to Oslo after a night in Flam, via the scenic Flam railway and normal train. We think we’re flying to Sofia, Bulgaria, next.

-

For someone who doesn’t usually do country hopping I’ve certainly been racking them up in the last little bit, and it won’t stop for another couple of weeks. I’m still in Finland but now in Turku, from where I will take the boat to Stockholm. Country number 5 in as many weeks and unfortunately currency number 5 as well. I did have to choose European countries that haven’t adopted the Euro didn’t I? Apart from Finland of course.

Last I wrote I was in Estonia, hanging out in Tallinn. I spent a few hours at the Tallinn City Theatre with a couchsurfer and got a great tour of the backstage areas and building. The building is actually 3 different adjacent houses that have been renovated to make one impressive complex. There are 5 stages in different parts of the building and we walked up stairs, along corridors, down stairs, around corners, up stairs, past pool tables and into dressing rooms and basements as we visited them all. It was amazing; I could spend my life exploring all the nooks and crannies. I’d order delivery pizza to a different corner every day and play hide and seek with the delivery man. One of the stages is in the basement and apparently quite difficult to work with, though it looks fantastic. A few weeks ago when it rained the water came in through the power points, which can never be a good thing. Unfortunately I didn’t see a play as those showing while I was there were in Estonian and a little esoteric. As the woman showing me around explained, they can be difficult to understand for a native Estonian speaker.

The ferry ride to Helsinki was short (and had wifi!) and once on land I met up with a guy who was a passenger on one of the tours I led in Japan. We’ve stayed in touch and caught up in Sydney when he was in town late last year (and by random coincidence I was home). He took me to a smoke sauna which is a particularly Finnish style of sauna. The wood is burned in a large stove and the smoke is kept inside due to a lack of chimney. When the sauna is hot enough the smoke is let out and the sauna is ready to be used. My first image of the sauna was two steaming people standing outside the door in the semi-darkness of a northern winter evening. We stripped down to swimmers and headed in, Anders explaining the protocol to this bumbling tourist. We poured a few ladles of water over our head, sat on wooden boards to protect our behinds from being blackened with the residual soot and sat down to sweat. And sweat we did, huge drips of it. There was a lake outside and after a bit of working up to it I went for a quick swim. The water was 3 degrees, and as Anders cheerfully pointed out it doesn’t get much colder than that, even in the depths of winter, before it turns to ice.

I went back a few days later and we hit it when it was fresher and hotter. Wow! Talk about sweating! Anders also explained how you should pour water on the hot stones, all in one place instead of splashing it all over the place. That way the heat spike is more gradual and smoother. Either way, my skin burned and my fingernails heated up in a most disconcerting way.

My days in Helsinki were accompanied by cloudy skies and rain. Not the optimal time to be in this part of the world but it’s easy to see that it would be beautiful in better weather. There are lots of lakes, water and parks around and people here are out making use of them. Even in the soggy autumn weather there were heaps of people out running, cycling or walking the many purpose built paths amongst the autumn leaves. I wandered around the Finlandia building, the market square and the western shore of the Helsinki peninsula. The Temppeliaukio Church, opened in 1969 was an impressive building partially carved out of the bedrock. A mish mash of textures and materials, it used concrete, wood, glass, copper and unworked natural rock to create a building quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

On one of my full days I headed out to Suomenlinna, the impressive fortress complex located on islands close to the city. It’s been an important defensive position since it was built in 1748 by the Swedish, who controlled Finland at the time. It was designed to help halt the expansion of the Russian empire but in 1808 it surrendered to the Russian forces and Finland was an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian empire until the 1917 revolution. These days it’s a popular picnic spot (in summer), one of Helsinki’s most popular tourist attractions and UNESCO world heritage site. I spent a few hours wandering around, exploring the many tunnels and storage rooms hidden under innocent looking hillocks along the shoreline. It really was an impressive complex and used up an incredible amount of Swedish and French resources (the French were allied with Sweden against Russia at the time). When completed it housed officers and their families in a settlement that rivalled Helsinki in size at the time. These days there are still around 800 people living on the islands.

On another day in Helsinki I headed to Porvoo, Finland’s second oldest town after Turku (where I am now). The medieval old town is a quaint collection of wooden buildings and I wandered around for a while until the rain started annoying me. Unfortunately the photos I’ve taken this week aren’t all that fantastic, the weather has really been a downer. It hasn’t even been moodily photogenic, just bleak and grey. Of course this is the photographer in me talking, for wandering around it hasn’t been all that bad.

On Friday I catch the ferry to Stockholm for a few days and then on November 4th I meet Brett again in Bergen, southern Norway. We’re not sure where we’re going next, our plans keep changing. Maybe Bulgaria?

-

I finally left Riga for the “Switzerland of Latvia”, Sigulda. As nice a place as it was I would say that the label is a little generous. The autumn leaves were pretty though, and I had a great guide who I’d met at a couchsurfing meeting in Riga and who happened to be heading up to spend the weekend with her parents. She drove me around to some of the medieval castles in the area and to the Baltic States’ deepest cave (obviously there aren’t many caves around) which has a tragic love story associated with it. Details vary a little but a beautiful young woman, the Rose of Turaida, and a handsome young man were in love and planned to marry. Another evil (probably ugly) man wanted her and planned to rape her in Gutmanis Cave. She decided that death was better than the other option and convinced him that she had a scarf that would protect him from death. To prove its magical properties she put it on and told him to try to kill her. Of course the scarf had no magical properties and she was killed.

People have been visiting the cave for centuries and leaving their mark on the reddish sandstone. A sign outside said that the oldest visible graffiti is from 1667 but the oldest I could identify was 1822. At least back then people took some time with their vandalism, or paid others to take the time. Maybe it’s just the mists of time but the historical carvings seem a whole lot more beautiful than “Frank waz ‘ere, 2008” scratched furtively with a butter knife.

The castles were cool and I realised just how little I know about the history of this part of the world. It’s a convoluted sequence of influences, conquests and occupations by Germans, Poles, Swedes and Russians with overtones of religion which only serve to make it more confusing to someone who doesn’t really understand why these Christians fought against those Christians when the basis of their beliefs seem so similar. Though the Baltic States didn’t seem to be the focus of most of the struggles they had the misfortune of being on the way as larger powers fought for trade rights and souls to convert. I’ve never associated the crusades with this part of the world but apparently a northern crusade came up this way in the 12th century to convert the stubborn pagans.

While I was in Sigulda I stayed with a woman and her son and had my first bad couchsurfing experience with another guy who was also staying with her. He was sexually harassing my host and tried to get rid of me so he could have her to himself. She eventually told him to leave and I really enjoyed my last night there with just us and her dog, who became my best friend once Theodore left. Obviously I left Theodore a negative reference, I don’t want any other women to have to put up with his harassment, and he replied by accusing me of sexual harassment. Ridiculous! Even if I wasn’t married to the love of my life there is no way I would be interested in a greasy mole of a man who’s twice my age and half my height (I was a little more diplomatic in my reference).

From Sigulda I headed up to Tallinn, Estonia, for a few days before my ferry to Finland. It was such a hassle free border that I wasn’t sure I’d crossed it. As far as I could tell there wasn’t even a sign, though I was on the train so maybe we whizzed by it? The bus driver from Valga (border town) to Tallinn seemed to be a lonely man; he talked to himself constantly and waved hopefully at every passing bus. He even waved at minibuses, but shunned trucks. Everyone has to have standards I guess.

My host in Tallinn is a wonderful woman who probably generates more energy in a single day than I can muster in an entire week. Last night we had a sauna party at her house and I got in touch with my inner exhibitionist as I sat naked and sweaty with a group of people I’d just met. I enjoyed it a whole lot more than I was expecting to, though apparently 100 degrees is hotter than usual. When someone poured water on the hot stones you really felt the difference in the air, my skin burned, my pores opened and I lost a few litres of sweat. There was no birch branch beating and no snow/ice water to jump into but a few minutes standing in the open doorway cooled me down pretty quickly as I sipped my, now hot, beer.

The old town of Tallinn is beautiful and I spent yesterday exploring its winding cobbled streets and many churches. It has a different feel to Riga which is difficult to explain. In some way it feels older and I think it’s more medieval than Riga is, though I don’t even really know what that means in the historical sense. It’s certainly smaller though that makes it much more manageable. I wandered for hours, taking advantage of the rare sunshine, before I ate some luscious cake at a place that’s been serving up confectionary since the 17th century.

This afternoon I’m meeting up with another couchsurfer who works in the theatre to have a look at the historical building and then tonight I’ll have tea with Hedi’s parents before another sauna at someone else’s house. Tomorrow I take the ferry to Helsinki.

-

A week later I’m still in Riga. The main thing keeping me busy here apart from the beautiful architecture has been a very active Couchsurfing community. I’ve only just started getting in to Couchsurfing lately and initially I thought of it mostly as a way to save money on accommodation. It’s so much more than that: you can meet some really cool people. The community here meets once a week but I’ve spent many nights hanging out with people I’ve met: locals, expats or just other people passing through who’ve made contact through the Couchsurfing website. I’m sure there must be bad apples in the Couchsurfing community just the same way there is anywhere but the people I’ve met so far have been quality.

I’ve also come to appreciate the local beverage, Riga Black Balzams. Made from a mysterious concoction of herbs it’s quite a strong liqueur (45%) if you drink it straight (and apparently pretty nasty tasting) but I’ve only had it mixed with something else, usually hot. In coffee it was good and I always feel like I’m truly on holidays when I have alcoholic coffee because, as someone sensitive to caffeine, it usually means I’m drinking in the morning or early afternoon. Ooo! I’m so naughty! Balzam is also good with warm blackcurrant juice and this has become a favourite first drink after I walk in off the cold, windy street and slowly defrost in a warm bar.

The weather here hasn’t been fantastic but there have been short bursts of sunlight, mostly in the mornings, when I grab my camera and head out and try vainly to somehow “capture” this beautiful city. There are some amazing Art Nouveau buildings around and even without knowing much about the style it’s hard not to be impressed by the flourishes and decorativeness of their facades. Art Nouveau was popular from about 1890 to 1905 and used a lot of curved lines, sun motifs and plant designs. The buildings here also use a lot of masks or faces and for someone who knows a little more about the style you can apparently see the transition between early and late Art Nouveau as it transitions into more of an Art Deco style. In 1997 the old town of Riga was UNESCO listed for the “quality and quantity” of Art Nouveau architecture, though one of the best streets I’ve seen is actually not in the old town.

The other day I took a tour which aims to show that there’s more to Riga than the old town area. The most interesting place we went to was a flea market where, as the guide told us, you might find things that have “gone missing”. We were strictly instructed not to take photos as another guide got in big trouble when one of his groups did and has not been back since. There were plenty of car stereos and mobile phones but also all sorts of other bits and pieces that you wouldn’t think anyone would ever need. Things like part of a WW1 bomb, for example. There were a few stalls selling old wartime and Soviet stuff, anything from swastika badges to original gas masks. An honest stall owner told us that the badges were copies but he picked up a piece of metal and said that for the bargain price of 10 lats (about US$20) I could be the proud owner of a piece of WW1 history. How could I refuse an offer like that from a rough but friendly Russian? I later found out that what we will be using as a paperweight is part of a 1916 German mortar mine, specifically it is the fuse which could be set to timer or direct impact.

On the grey days I’ve done some work with Dreamweaver, trying to learn how to use it to make websites but progress has been frustratingly slow and so far nothing much has been achieved. Though as Brett keeps reminding me, there is a reason that some people devote their entire lives and careers to website design – it’s not simple. Me? I want to be able to learn it all in a week, is that unrealistic? Survey says: yes. Still, I’ll keep fiddling and see how far I get.

On Saturday I head north to Sigulda, a mountain area where the autumn leaves are meant to be beautiful and then on to Tallinn in Estonia where I’ll spend a few days exploring. From there I take a ferry to Helsinki to meet up with a friend I met in Japan and then by ferry to Stockholm to meet another friend. On November 4th I’ll head up to meet Brett off the boat and have a look at where he spends the time that we’re not travelling together. Not being a winter person I have to say I’m not looking forward to the weather in far northern Norway in November. Brr. We have no idea what the plan after that is – either a white Christmas in Europe or heading down to Egypt and the middle east.

-

There are plenty of people killing time in Dushanbe and it’s a nice place to do nothing, if only because there’s not much to do. But not wanting to spend the week until I flew in Dushanbe I decided to head northwest to Penjikent. My main (only) reason for heading to Penjikent was to do a daytrip to the Marguzor Lakes, a chain of seven lakes in the Fan Mountains. I hoped that there would be other guests at the homestay that I could share costs with and I had a few nights to lie in wait for them.

The owner of the homestay took good care of me, suggesting that I eat dinner with him and his family rather than go out alone at night. I’d been a little apprehensive about travelling alone but everything seemed to be going OK. Still, as his concern proved: just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean they’re not after you. I’d already come to the same conclusion and stocked up on dinner supplies. There are still plenty of places where being a lone woman is a hassle.

Unfortunately nobody else turned up so I had to pay for the whole car but it was a nice day trip. The lakes were formed by landslides from the steep sided valley. We drove up over the landslides and got to the seventh lake where we got out and walked around the shore. For my safety the homestay owner suggested the driver go with me but this time it wasn’t sleazy men he was concerned about, it was bears. Right. On our way back down to the car we walked for a while with a family who were bringing down wood from the mountains. Everywhere in the villages you can see people preparing for the winter, stockpiling feed for the animals and wood for heating. I’d heard that there were often power supply problems in winter and one of the reasons for this is the fact that much of the power comes from hydropower. A clean and renewable energy source until the lakes freeze.

Back in Penjikent I met a really cool girl from Khojand (further north in Tajikistan). She was fascinating to talk to because she perfectly embodied the clash between traditions and modernity. She’s 24, well educated, independent and unmarried. As she told me, in Tajikistan most women are married by her age and the gossip mongers are talking about her and speculating that she has some “problems”. One of the problems she mentioned they might be talking about is that she can’t have children though I’m not sure how someone who is saving themselves for marriage would know that. Most promiscuous Westerners probably have no idea until they actually try to conceive. Proposals have come her way but she’s reluctant because she doesn’t want to lose her freedom. I got the impression that in Tajikistan women are much more subject to the desires of their husbands; if her husband allowed it she could still work but if he was more traditional she’d be popping out babies every 9.5 months. Well not quite but there was much more a feeling that things change for women after marriage. At the same time she does want to get married, in the abstract sense of it. Her parents are very liberal but value family and have told her that having children is the natural thing for women to do in order to continue the family line. Apart from the fact that she’s almost beyond marriageable age is the fact that her younger sister is 20 and ready to get married. The older sister has to get married first otherwise the gossip mongers would go completely crazy.

In the share taxi on the way back to Dushanbe the woman next to me threw up constantly for 8 hours. Once again I was very happy to arrive though at least this trip didn’t take 55 hours like the last one. A few more lazy days in the capital before I flew to Riga, Latvia. First impressions were fantastic (see my last post) and I’ve decided that I’m going to spend most of the time until Brett gets off the boat hanging out here.

Unfortunately the sun that bathed everything in that warm beautiful light is now nowhere to be seen and my couchsurfing host keeps laughing at me when I say I’m waiting for it to come back. As it turns out I was very lucky to see it and autumn in Europe is grey. Who knew? The last few days have been the kind of weather that makes people jam their hands in their pockets, shorten their necks into their scarves and walk briskly to the next heated area. Anyway, my project for the 6 weeks is to learn how to build a website so grey days aren’t so bad, less temptation to run around taking photos.

I arrived to a few drops of rain and rainbows arching over the city. There’s something about the time just after a rainstorm, when the sunlight has been washed clean and everything is so grateful for its warmth. Especially on those cool crisp days when you need a big jacket but don’t quite need to zip it up. After dropping my bag in a locker at the train station I wandered out of the building with the aim of getting lost and following whatever street looked good. The plan was to go to Old Town but I don’t think I made it. Instead I stumbled upon an absolutely fantabulously beautiful church, where rays of sunlight filtered through the dusty air to light up the oodles of gold on the icons. Outside they were doing some restoration work on the wooden walls and when a guy saw me admiring the original wood he pointed me around the corner to where the 1mm thick layers of paint and plaster had all been stripped away in preparation for new layers.

The central market was heavenly, full of fresh produce, spicy aromas and the cheeses and sausages that i just can’t get enough of. Even just the variety and quality of things was mind boggling after central Asia. And everyone speaks English. Even the ones that say they only speak “a little”. At a small bistro owned by a soccer obsessed guy I was fed fried pancakes filled with cheese that came with a side of sour cream. Absolutely delicious but wow i’m glad my cholesterol isn’t a problem. Maybe it will be by the time I leave Latvia? I’m definitely going back there for more of those pancakes so I’ll keep you posted.

Tonight I meet up with my couchsurfing host and we’ll probably head to a gathering of other couchsurfers. Hopefully at some stage I’ll get some sleep, the taxi this morning came at 3:30am. Eurgh.

-

Two nights of luxurious accommodation in Dushanbe were enough for us (besides, it was sending our daily accommodation budget through the roof!) so we headed north. Our constantly changing plan eventually ended up with us hiring a taxi to take us to Iskander Kul, a lake in the Fan Mountains, then on to Istaravshan the next day. Given the minibus from hell experience getting to Dushanbe I feel it’s only right to tell you about how fantastic this drive was. The 4WD was comfy, the bumps were doable and we had no flat tyres or engine problems. We felt nice and smug about our choice of transport up until the time we saw a very similar vehicle stopped because the wheel had snapped off the axle. Another new sight to add to the mental bank of weird stuff that never happens in Australia. Well OK maybe it does but certainly not on the average Sydney street, Tajik roads chew up cars and spit them out like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

Up at Iskander Kul we stayed in an old Soviet holiday camp which had a vibe similar to the sanatorium in Kyrgyzstan. Well past its glory days. The shower block was missing parts of the roof and the whole place had that run down look to it which I’m actually quite a fan of. Maybe I can travel the former Soviet bloc countries and hunt down these forgotten and forlorn Soviet relics before they completely turn to dust? The lake itself was pretty, a gorgeous turquoise colour, and we wandered around the shore as the sun sank in the sky.

The next morning we went for a short walk to a nearby waterfall on the river flowing out of the lake. I think I enjoyed the walk more than the waterfall itself (impressive as it was) because our self appointed guide fed us with berries picked from the trees en route. The oval shaped blue ones were super sour but you got used to it. The bulbous red ones were sweet and my favourite until I threw a whole handful in my mouth. When you do that they make the back of your throat feel like you’ve just eaten hot chilli or something, a really strange sensation. Round red ones with pits almost as big were good too but relatively rare. We weren’t the only ones feasting on berries, the guide pointed out a sizeable pile of bear poo and we spotted many more just like it. I selectively ignored the fact that this meant there was a sizeable population of bears in the area.  

Later that day we drove to Istaravshan, a town in the skinny part of Tajikistan as it squeezes up between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. In the guidebook it sounded nice and historic but there was a weird vibe to it. If you’ve ever wandered the streets in a dodgy border town then you know what I mean, it was as if everyone was sizing us up. The stares were nothing like anything we’ve had in Central Asia so far and any thought I had of coming back alone once Brett went to work quickly disappeared. The old town was as disappointing as the welcome, though we did have a nice time wandering around, gathering children like the Pied Piper of Hamelin and having tea at the house of an English teacher. Some of the historic buildings were nice but overall we weren’t sad to leave.

On the way back we were stopped for 3 hours behind a Chinese road crew who figured that the middle of the day was a perfect time to stop all traffic in both directions on the only road north to south in this part of the country. As the crew stopped for lunch (road still closed) I talked to one of the workers. He told me he hated it here, the people don’t do what they’re told and they cheat him because he’s a foreigner. Sounds like my impression of China. Oh no, he protested, Chinese people wouldn’t do that. The people here are terrible. As I looked up at a blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds he told me that the weather in Tajikistan is awful, and the food worse. He’d been here for two years and was headed home in a few months. As for how long it might be until we could pass through? “hard to say” “who knows”. He was the one in charge of making sure the traffic didn’t go onto the freshly laid asphalt and he achieved this by throwing hissy fits, screaming at people in Chinese and banging on cars that crept slowly forward, frustrated by the wait. Apparently we were lucky to only wait three hours; sometimes they stop traffic for seven or eight hours at a time.

Back in bustling Dushanbe (read with ironic sarcasm) we had a lazy day before Brett took his early morning flight back to work. At least this time it was a relatively short trip up to Norway. I’m still in Dushanbe and will hang out in Tajikistan for about a week. So far I have a ticket as far as Riga and Brett and I will meet up again in Cairo. Plans are flexible; especially because we have no idea how long the work stint will be this time. Istanbul, Cyprus, Stockholm and Helsinki are all possibilities for me before I meet up with Brett again.

-

After much charades and Pictionary action at the local taxi stand we managed to organise a car from Osh, Kyrgyzstan, to Murgab, Tajikistan. There wasn’t much in Murgab itself but the homestay we found was fantastic and we did a nice day hike up in the Pamir Mountains over Gumbezkul Pass. Overall the mountains seemed to be pretty rocky and barren which makes it hard to believe there are snow leopards lurking in the area. We did see a group of four ibex which was pretty cool, though they ran off before I could get overly close. Obviously seeing animals in the wild is cool but in a way I’m always disappointed that I can’t get as close as I can in a zoo. Another indicator that I’m a city girl I guess? Water in the hotsprings nearby was hot enough to boil a person and the hospitality of our guide’s family nearly made us miss dinner at our homestay completely. Most of the population in the Pamir mountains are ethnically Kyrgyz though apparently the “city” of Murgab is majority Tajik. In language and religion the Pamiri Tajiks are different from the lowland Tajiks who live in other parts of the country. Not that we were there long enough to see these differences, they’re just things we’ve read about or been told.

Driving from Murgab to Khorog wasn’t as spectacular as we expected, though towards the end as we followed a winding glacial river through a scenic valley we did wish we had the flexibility to stop. Khorog immediately impressed us, there were so many people on the streets and the fact that it has a campus of the University of Central Asia seems to give it a youthful, energetic vibe. Apart from the odd car on fire or terrible Indian restaurant.

From Khorog we headed into the Geisev Valley to do some hiking. The Aga Khan Foundation and MSDSP have helped set up homestays in the 3 villages by providing toilets, showers, mattresses, cooking gas and tea sets. Altogether in the valley there are 100 people in 15 houses, mostly in the first village which is 2.5 hours from the nearest road. The nearest road is still a long way from anything you could call a decent sized town, and even Khorog (1.5 hours away) isn’t that big. Ironically the isolation which could make life difficult at times is the thing that makes it such a nice place to hike for people like us. A man who spoke some English told us that many of the men went to Russia to work, and the CIA fact book says that nearly half of Tajikistan’s labour force works overseas. At the moment jobs are scarcer because of the financial crisis. It’s hard to believe that a place as remote as this feels the pinch when the global economy falters.

Back in Khorog we tried, with no luck, to organise a flight to Dushanbe as we’ve heard it’s a scenic/scary route through the mountain valleys. Instead we opted for a share taxi to the capital, though our choice of car ended up being a bad, bad mistake. Before we even left town we were going to petrol station attendants houses to wake them up and buy spare tyres. Not that it did us much good, within 5 hours we’d stopped twice to fix flats. At lunch time we had another flat and ate lunch looking across the river to Afghanistan. At 3pm we stopped to put more water in the radiator as it had a leak and tried to put a new fan belt in as the engine was steaming. Then the back right tyre exploded. The driver disappeared to buy fan belts and inner tubes and 3.5 hours later we were on the road again. Around 11 pm we stopped in a town and there was much discussion (none of which we understood of course) and we ended up sleeping in a gostinitsa where the floor in the squat toilet was caving in. 17 hours into what was meant to be a 10 hour trip we were half way, there was still 284km to Dushanbe.

In the morning our travel companions had disappeared. But we found them again near our still broken down car where we waited a few hours until the car was “fixed”. Half an hour later we had another flat and sat there for about 4 hours. Incredibly the driver was not carrying a pump and so we had to wait for someone to come past and lend us one. That and he had to keep begging inner tubes from people as we were going through them faster than he and the lackey could fix them. Unfortunately there wasn’t much traffic, possibly because it was the end of Ramadan, a celebration we’d hoped to experience in a big city. Around this time the engine started having real problems and we had to push start the car regularly. As it was getting dark we had another flat and a fellow passenger told us that we still had 200km to go. Fixed again we headed off and got another flat tyre a few hours later. With not much traffic going past it was looking like a night in the car, a perfect end to a perfect 6 month wedding anniversary. Suddenly the four other travellers bailed on us, hopped into a passing truck and left us with the driver, lackey and the broken car.

By 9am the next morning we were ready to go again and about 20 minutes later we had another flat. I think by this stage even the driver had had enough as he just kept driving, determined to at least get to the town in the distance before he let something so trifling as driving on rims stop him. The tyre was absolutely shredded and by the time we stopped there was a second flat. We had been travelling for 50 hours at this stage and by hour 50.5 we gave up on the minibus and hopped in a passing 4WD. By hour 55 we checked in to a super expensive hotel where we enjoyed luxuries like running water, a toilet that flushed and a hot water shower. All these have been relatively scarce in the past few weeks. We also took a break from local food and had some Mexican, sometimes the expat cocoon you find in capital cities can be oh so welcoming.

We spent today relaxing, wandering the streets of Dushanbe and trying to organise ourselves for Brett’s final week before he heads back to work on the 29th. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have felt a bit rushed, we could definitely have used a month in each but it was a good taster and if nothing else it was great to finally get to a small part of Central Asia. At the moment it looks like I’ll hang out in Tajikistan while Brett’s at work though apparently visa extensions are hard to get as the president’s daughter is out of town. She heads up the ministry in charge of these things and we’re told things don’t happen when she’s away. Nobody can tell us when she might be back. When Brett gets off the boat in early November we’ll meet up again in Cairo for some time in Egypt then north through the Middle East until he gets pulled back to work.

-

While in Karakol we went to the Sunday animal market, Dungan mosque and Russian Orthodox Church. The animal market was a lot better than I expected, having just visited the Kashgar version. There were plenty of animals spread over a large area of squelchy mud due to recent rains. Possibly more interesting was our first real opportunity since arriving in Kyrgyzstan to see lots of people in one place. There’s the most amazing mix of facial features here – Russian, Chinese, Mongolian, Middle Eastern and every possible mixture thereof. At times it’s difficult to tell tourists from modernly dressed locals, a weird experience after 5 years in China and Japan.

The Dungan minority are Chinese Muslims who fled Xinjiang in the 1880s after persecution there. Seems that’s been going on for a while, though I’m not sure if the Dungans are what the Chinese call Uyghurs, Hui or some other minority which no longer exists in China. The mosque had a weird design, very similar to some of the Buddhist temples we saw in Korea with soaring eaves and detailed carvings on the underside of the roof. The Russian Orthodox Church also had a very distinctive design. Built in 1895 of wood the exterior has details and flourishes galore and the onion domes are topped with Russian Orthodox style crosses.

From Karakol we headed along Issyk Kol Lake’s southern shore to the small town of Kadji Sai. There we planned on staying at the B&B run by the local eagle hunter but he wasn’t home. A friendly neighbour invited us to stay with him instead and we accepted. After a wander down to the choppy lake for some photos of the snowy mountain range on the other side we headed “home” to be entertained and fed fruit by his grandson, Erbol. As the two boys played soccer I was relegated to being the goalpost (by spreading my legs rather inelegantly). Sitting there eating apples freshly picked from the trees in the garden and listening to Russian music on the radio the grandfather had hung up for us I enjoyed the afternoon sun and realised that these are the moments that make travel great. We shared no language with the family but worked out that Erbol’s father and family were part of a traditional Kyrgyz music group that had played in America early this year. Not only that but they’d played in Montana, in the town where Brett’s sisters went to college. What a crazy coincidence!

Before we left Kadji Sai we did manage to see the eagle and meet his owner. I guess I’ve never really seen an eagle up close because I was surprised by how huge she was. At age 7 she had a 2m wingspan and was incredibly heavy. I know, I held her for a photo. Apparently at age 10 she’ll be set free. There was the option for a hunting show where a rabbit is let loose to be caught by the eagle but we’d decided not to do that as it just seemed cruel. As it turns out rabbits aren’t the eagle’s usual game, as the eagle hunter told us in sign language they’re a pain to catch and they’re too small to be worth the effort. In the summer he takes her out to hunt foxes and wolves.

Our next destination was Arslanbob though we didn’t exactly take the most direct route. From Kadji Sai we went west to Balykchy then down south to Naryn. There we were told that the best way to get to Arslanbob was to go northwest to Bishkek (6hrs) then southwest  to Arslanbob (8hrs). Silly of us to think that it would be possible to head directly west from Naryn and get to Arslanbob. Actually it would be possible on Tuesdays and Fridays when the bus goes but on other days there is no transport at all to Kazarman. So we decided to retrace our steps to Balykchy and head to Bishkek. There we finally found a car to take us to Bazaar Korgon, on the road to Osh, where we could find a car for Arslanbob. A young man in an oversized suit told us we could be there by 9pm. We should have insisted that he answered why he could do it in 6 hours when everyone else told us 8-11 hours. Before we left Bishkek he asked us if we had a map of Kyrgyzstan. Alarm bells were ringing. We’d just packed the back of the car with enough mattresses and blankets to open a hotel, a TV, boxes of household goods and an ironing board. His friend didn’t seem like an overly confident driver and they were using a plastic children’s map of Kyrgyzstan to navigate. Over a greasy meal of manti at 9pm Uzgen admitted that maybe we wouldn’t get in to Bazaar Korgon on time. No kidding. Maybe around 1 or 2am? At 3am we were driving around trying to find a) Bazaar Korgon and b) a place for Brett and I to stay. We never did find the latter so all 4 of us tried to sleep in the car for about 3 hours then the boys headed on toward Osh and we tried to find a share taxi that would take us to Arslanbob for a fair price.

Thankfully Arslanbob was more than worth the pain of getting there. Set in a stunning valley with a range of snowcapped mountains to the north it was an idyllic village full of fantastically friendly people. Interestingly enough 99.9% of the people there are Uzbek and have been for a very long time. Nearby is the world’s largest walnut forest where in a good season 3,000 tons of nuts are harvested. The harvest in a few weeks is only expected to yield about 10 tons because there was heavy rain in May which knocked most of the flowers off the trees. We were told that most people have kept some of last year’s harvest or have other ways to support themselves so they’re not in as dire a situation as they could be. We spent our time there wandering into the surrounding hills and looking down on the village as we played sho (a Tibetan game) and snacked on Haribo sweets. The  patriarch of our homestay spoke better German than I do, a relic of his time in the KGB.

In Osh, our final stop in Kyrgyzstan we’ve had some down time and explored the Sunday market. There are also some great restaurants near our hotel, simple places serving laghman, naan, chai, manti, shashlik and other staples of Kyrgyz cuisine. At the market you could buy just about everything except lipbalm, something I found hard to believe given the dryness of the climate. At the stalls selling baby products they also had a large selection of contraceptives and I’m not really sure how to read that. “buy these condoms or you’ll need these nappies” or “look at what happened last time you didn’t use these condoms, better stock up while you’re buying baby formula”.

We may be heading to Tajikistan tonight, or tomorrow morning depending on whether we can find two more people to share a taxi to Murghab. At the moment it looks like Brett will be heading back to work at the end of September but we’re not sure. If he does I may meet him in Georgia (the country, not the American state), Ethiopia or some other random place i can get cheap flights from Australia (if I go home). It’s all a little up in the air at the moment but we’re both looking forward to more mountains and fantastic scenery in Tajikistan. As for going overland from Tajikistan to Ethiopia, did you know that women can only get a tourist visa to Saudi Arabia if accompanied by their husband or brother? Scratch that one off the list, even if Brett does accompany me it doesn’t sound like a place I’d want to go…

-

From Beijing the train to Urumqi took 40 hours but the time passed relatively quickly thanks to a book and some entertaining compartment mates. In Urumqi I was met at the station by my couchsurfing host for my first couchsurfing experience. We went to lunch then headed to the police station to register me as staying at his house for the night. When the riots happened at the start of July he hadn’t registered two foreigners staying with him because he didn’t know it was required. As a result he was demoted at work and doesn’t know if he’ll ever be allowed back to his original position. He’s Uyghur.

While I was in Urumqi he took great care of me and when he had to go to work the next day some of his friends took me around town and to the museum. On display are some incredibly well preserved (European looking) mummies from as far back as 1800BC! All the sections had English, Uyghur and Chinese captions except the modern history section which was lacking English explanations. Presumably because foreigners would ask awkward questions like “If Xinjiang has always been an inalienable part of the glorious motherland then why did the Red Army need to march in here with a buttload of tanks and German made machine guns in 1949?” or “was the plane crash that killed all the important leaders of East Turkestan as an independent country really an accident?”. And yes, much as I joke about it, “Xinjiang”, “inalienable” and “motherland” were indeed used in the same sentence.

Back in Kashgar I wandered around the old town some more, aware that by the next time I come back (assuming that I probably will) things may be very different. According to people I’ve talked to about 200 people were killed in Kashgar alone during the riots and the overall number of people killed across Xinjiang is more like 2,000 rather than the approximately 200 the government admits to. People I’ve talked to saw mobs of Han Chinese armed with whatever they could find and in search of Uyghurs and when they found their prey the Chinese army was slow/reluctant to do anything about it. It’s an impossible situation, you never know the truth but I know enough not to trust the official government sources. On the train in from Beijing I was asked by the guard if I was a reporter, I’ve never been asked that before in all the travels I’ve done in China. I wonder what would have happened if I’d said yes?

There was a mob of armed soldiers permanently stationed outside the main mosque in Kashgar and on Friday their numbers swelled to about 300. They did drills, brandished machine guns and generally made sure everyone knew who was in charge. Even with this show of “strength” and the 3 more trucks circling the streets (each holding at least 20 more fully armed soldiers) there wasn’t anything like the army presence I saw in Urumqi. There every street corner was like a tableau of Han Chinese weaponry. Of course I have no good photos as the army knows as well as I do that what they’re doing looks more like an occupation than “keeping the peace”. They weren’t keen on having anyone document it.

I don’t think anyone has an easy answer to the “troubles” but I think at least part of it stems from the fact that the Uyghurs aren’t being allowed to be a part of the “New China” that’s emerging. They’re discriminated against in the workplace and have more restrictions on them (in their own country) than the newly immigrated Han Chinese. If they could start seeing improvements to their lives, have new opportunities and start feeling the freedoms that come with economic stability, the way the Han Chinese are, then I’d say at least some of them would be happier with the whole situation.

Moving away from politics briefly… Brett joined me on the 28th and we planned on spending the 29th in the hotel room, sleeping, eating and watching movies. Suddenly there was a knock on the door and a staff member told us that the hotel was being closed and everyone had to leave. The police were here. I’m not sure what the official reason given was but the fact that it’s a Uyghur run place opposite the main mosque and the 60th anniversary of the glorious motherland is coming up may have something to do with it. This being China I would say the rat in the wall, the toilet that didn’t flush properly and the broken shower taps weren’t major problems.

On Sunday we went again to the animal market and the Sunday Market which were dusty and huge accordingly, as they were last time we went. We bought 2 prayer carpets and later I convinced Brett to buy 3 more. For a whopping US$5 per piece it seemed silly not to but maybe that’s just me? A frustrating afternoon at the Bank of China and China Post was how we spent the latter part of our last day before heading to Kyrgyzstan.

We went via the Torugart Pass into Kyrgyzstan, which is said to be one of the more difficult and temperamental border crossings. This is due to weather, Chinese red tape and all sorts of other random reasons. Our main problem was the abysmal car that we’d been supplied which finally managed to get us to the border 2 hours later than expected. It was only meant to be a 4 hour drive. By the time we limped to the pass there was a hole in the muffler and he had to start in first gear. Once it got going he couldn’t change gear. Admittedly some of the time was probably lost at the Chinese immigration where _every_ _single_ _one_ of our Xinjiang photos had to be checked. Twice. By two different officials. They then let us go without checking our bags at all, though they were very suspicious of our newish passports for some reason?

We were welcomed to Kyrgyzstan by a friendly man in a fantastic car. Breathe out… Our first night was spent in a yurt next to the Tash Rabat Caravanserai, an ancient ruin (though nobody knows how ancient) which was apparently a sort of hotel on an old branch of the Silk Road (though nobody is really sure of this either). It was a beautiful little valley and we were really impressed with the way the yurt stay was organised. We woke to a crisp morning and a thin blanket of snow before heading on to Naryn where we took care of some admin and headed out again. Further north in the mountains is a lake called Song Kol which was described as very pretty. It was nice but not amazing, though I may be biased by the world record in toilet trips I made the morning we left. Instead of heading further we stopped in Kochkor where I whined and Brett was sympathetic until my stomach bug passed.

From there we headed to the Karakol area, famous (amongst the few tourists that come here) for its amazing hiking. For the longest leg of the journey we were in a share taxi with a congenial driver and a colony of flies. The 5 of us (yes, that includes the driver) swatted, slapped at and killed as many as possible as we careened along the wet road trying to avoid the many potholes. Best advice for women coming to Kyrgyzstan? Pack a sports bra. Up in one of the valleys near Karakol is the Jeti Oghuz sanatorium, built in 1932 and seemingly unrepaired ever since. There were quite literally chunks of the building missing. The sign on the door of the reception office said that there was lunch break from 1-2pm and at 2:32pm on the dot a lady in a lab coat came back. By around 3:30 we were shown to our room where the toilet cistern was held together with sticky tape (it didn’t work). There was no water in the basin and about a third of the light bulbs worked but when we asked if there was another room we were told that this was the best room available. No wonder the share taxis all stopped to buy cheap vodka. Dinner was surprisingly good, as was breakfast the next day.

Yesterday we planned on hiking up the valley from the sanatorium but were turned back by rain. So far we’ve been less than impressed with the weather in Kyrgyzstan, though the Lonely Planet lists September as the best time of year to travel here. We’d planned to do more hiking up into some of the (apparently) spectacular mountains but the forecast says more of the same over the next few days so we may just head west and see how we go.

First impressions of Kyrgyzstan are great - lots of mountains, nature and wide open spaces. We have about 2 weeks here before heading to Tajikistan. Updates may be a little sporadic but hopefully in Karakol (in a few days) I’ll have more internet time and electricity so I can use my laptop to work on photos. A shower would also be nice at some stage.

-

Well I’m still in Beijing, though I leave tonight on a 40 hour train to Urumq1. It’s a long way but at least I managed to get sleeper tickets; there was only seats left for the next 10 days so I waited until 7pm when the tickets for 11 days in advance went on sale. By 2 minutes past 7 there were only bottom bunks left, I assume travel agents who know people working at the station snap up tickets before they go on sale to the public. Anyway, I got a ticket and will leave Beijing at 6:36 tonight. In 2 days I’ll arrive in Urumq1, site of the massive ri0ts last Ju1y 5. I’ve heard from another tourist who went there that there is still no internet access, domestic and international text messages are still blocked and you can’t make an international phone call. It’s almost 2 months since the troubles and from everything I’ve heard things are peaceful but communications may be locked down until after the 6Oth anniversary of the founding of China on 0ctober 1st. It’s hard to believe for people who haven’t been to China or haven’t opened their eyes while here that the government has such complete control.

Earlier in the week I headed to Dalian to catch up with some friends who live up there. It took me 11 hours in a bus with minimal air-conditioning to get there and I spent my time hanging out with them as much as possible. There didn’t seem to be many must see sights but it seemed like a very liveable city with a cosmopolitan feel to it. Lots of Russians apparently come to the beaches there though I doubted that they would be up to Australian standards. There’s also a big Korean population though my search for Sujeonggwa, our favourite drink while in Korea, wasn’t successful. Apart from a bit of wandering I spent most of the 2 days my friends were at work sheltering in the air-conditioning and watching movies online. Being able to go to the cinema for quality (as opposed to Hollywood)  movies is something I really miss while travelling so it was nice to have time to do that.

Back in Beijing I moved out of my apartment to a cheap hotel near my friend’s bar, picked up our Tajik visas and tried to pack all my stuff into the 2-3 bags I have with me. I’m not quite sure how it happens but my bags are always bursting full, even when I haven’t bought anything much. Some of it is because I was planning on sending a package of stuff to Brett’s place but couldn’t. Apparently they frown upon posting massive Uyghur daggers. We’ll try again in Kashgar or from Kyrgyzstan.

From Urumq1 I splurged on a flight to avoid another 24 hours on the train to Kasghar. I’ll get in a few days before Brett and will try to find some people to share a car across the Torugart Pass in to Kyrgyzstan. We’re both looking forward to hitting countries number 20 and 21 that we’ve visited together and to seeing something new. At the moment we have no idea when Brett is headed back to work but we’ll adjust plans accordingly.

We’re off to Kyrgyzstan first (and we have the visas to prove it). Next up is Tajikistan but I’m still working on getting those visas. They needed a letter from our embassy saying that, like our passport states, we are American/Australian. So off I toddled to the respective embassies and I have the letters but have to wait until my Chinese visa is extended before I can hand in the Tajik application. This time I jumped through the ridiculous hoops and opened a bank account. To extend a tourist visa for 1 month they needed me to open a bank account at the Bank of China and deposit 25,000 kuai (US$3,675). It’s a useless account, I can’t take money out anywhere but Beijing and it can only be closed in Beijing. Just perfect for someone who’s travelling around the country, as I will be again as soon as these visas are taken care of.

In other news facebook is still blocked and I was told by a teacher at my school that Central Asia is “about the same” as China so why am I bothering to go there? When I asked if Japan and China are “about the same” he said I had misunderstood his point. My Chinese may not be perfect but I know ignorance and arrogance when I see it. My usual teacher is great so hopefully I won’t have to sit through another class with this schmuck.

I’ve moved into the room, have been going to classes and catching up with some friends. I also spent a whole afternoon searching for the Kyrgyz embassy and organising our visas. There were two addresses listed on various websites but I went to the one listed on the official embassy website. Mistake, they’d moved. I was the second in line when the embassy opened at 3pm and managed to finally get out of there at 4:30 having given in Brett and my forms, passports and a formal letter explaining our purpose for visiting Kyrgyzstan. I should be picking up the visas on Friday as well as the translations which I ended up having to get at the 664 kuai babelfish place. This time though I was told they could be done in a week at that price instead of having to pay double to rush them through. They were going to charge me more but talked them down, that’s one thing about China, things change depending on who you ask.

On Saturday I went to a mixed martial art event where fighters from a variety of disciplines get in the ring with a minimum of rules. I’ve heard about these fights and was pretty excited to go but in the end a little disappointed at how few stand up fights there were, most of them ended up down on the mats wrestling, which I find pretty boring really. About half the fighters were Chinese and the rest South Korean, Mongolian, Thai, Polish, Uzbek, Swedish, French and Bulgarian. We saw 11 fights in total and the only one won by a Chinese fighter was when two Chinese were fighting, much to the dismay of the majority Chinese crowd. It wasn’t the most sportsmanlike crowd with some boos thrown out there when the young Uzbek fighter beat a much more experienced Chinese favourite. It was one of the quickest fights we saw and I’m still not really sure what happened; the starting bell rung, a flurry of action and the Chinese guy hit the mat. It was incredible. The fight between the Polish guy and a Chinese guy took longer – 10 minutes in the first round and a 5 minute second round. Mr Polish must have had a past injury because within about 30 second his right eye was almost closed up and very bloody. He was patched up and went back to the fight with only partial vision, insisting he was good to go. Not a guy you’d want to meet in a dark alley, he’ll probably go from fighting straight to being the bodyguard for the Russian mafia. Seriously scary.

After the fight we went to the best Ethiopian restaurant in Beijing. Not a difficult feat, but even if there were more than one the food here was fantastic enough to make it the best. We ate a sampler of dishes served on a huge round pancake of sourdough bread. I have no idea what any of it’s called but it was all amazing. The flavours and spices they created in a stew of lentils that looks like something I wouldn’t want to step in was unbelievable and we stuffed our faces as we watched two dancers in traditional costume convulse on the stage. Ethiopia is now firmly on the list of places I must see.

It’s a bit hard to summon motivation to go out and do much apart from the admin stuff I need to get done; the weather is just so hot and humid. Thankfully the apartment is down on the ground floor so it’s usually pretty cool, only in the past few days have I actually needed to use my air-con. It often rains in the late afternoon, sudden downpours that send torrents of water rushing into the street, hopefully washing away all the kids’ piss. I looked out my window in a break from studying the other day to see a little girl squatting on the steps where people from the compound hang out near a couple of trees. Mum was sitting right next to her. When little darling was done she put her undies back on, wiped her hands on her dress and went back to playing with the other kids. What a charming little princess.

The classes have been really good but make me realise just how much vocabulary I’ve forgotten. Since the end of 2004 when I stopped studying and started working I haven’t really used my Chinese all that much, only basic conversations that use minimal vocab. I’m now in the process of trying to learn it again but I’m not sure how much progress will be made before I leave again. And then there’s the question of whether there’s any point to me trying to keep my Mandarin? Anyway, for now I’m enjoying studying again so I’ll just keep working on it and see what happens next.

Instead of staying in a hotel the entire time I’ve found myself an apartment where one of the tenants is moving out before her six month lease expires. The timing is perfect and it’s cheaper than any comparable hotels. Currently my main issue is trying to get the landlord to come to the police station to register me. Usually if a foreigner stays at a hotel the hotel does this but for rental accommodation or even if I was to stay at a friend’s place technically I need to register with the local police within 24 hours of arriving. Most of the time I wouldn’t really be too worried about it but I have to get one more visa extension before I leave China and the last one was painful enough without something like being off the official radar for the past month coming into play.

I haven’t actually moved into the room yet, the girl whose room I’m taking leaves tomorrow and at the moment I’m sleeping on the couch and littering the living room with my exploding luggage. It’ll be nice to move in properly, have my own key and play at having a routine for a month or so. The grass is always greener and when I’m travelling part of me craves things like getting up at the same time every morning, knowing where my next meal is coming from and having some consistency in my daily experiences. All the same things that I find dull and monotonous after a few months of settled living, when my feet start itching again.

As for the German passport… Well. Maybe its best not to get me started? In Tokyo we were missing Brett’s divorce papers and my birth certificate; in Beijing they wanted Brett’s birth certificate and an apostille of our marriage certificate. Through a combination of courier mail, hand delivery and express post we managed to get all the pieces together (with the help of long suffering families at our respective homes) and went to the embassy before Brett left as they needed his signature too. However they now also need translations of key documents which at the first place I checked take 2 weeks and cost 664 kuai (about US$100). They don’t have anyone who can translate directly from English to German and so it will go via a Babelfish-like process from English to Chinese to German (and I pay for each translation plus a myriad of other mysterious fees). God only knows what the Germans would think of the Babel-iscious outcome. Tomorrow I’ll try to find a better option but the chances of me getting a new German passport before I leave are slim, I’ve resigned myself to just getting the official name change document so I can organise the actual passport somewhere down the line. Maybe in Kyrgyzstan?

The class I’ve found seems like it’s going to be perfect. I went for the first time today and it’s a good combination of material that I know, material that I need revision on and new vocab and grammar. Much as I hate to bare my inner geek I’m really looking forward to hours on end copying out characters over and over again in the laborious process of trying to remember them. Somehow I find it soothing, like a masochistic form of meditation.

I should have warned you at the start that this update isn’t quite as exciting as the last 15 weeks. Consider yourself warned that the next 6 weeks will be sort of more of the same though I am planning on getting out more and taking some photos once I get settled and get some of the initial things ticked off my “to do” list. Today I checked out the Wal Mart superstore nearby and was amused at the contrast between a well stocked western style store and good old fashioned Chinese “service”. Actually she wasn’t all that bad and to be fair I haven’t seen anyone picking their zits rather than serving customers, so things are changing. That used to be a favourite China moment. It’s probably not often that you see a complimentary bottle of Coke attached to a tube of toothpaste though. In a way it makes sense: drink the Coke and you need the toothpaste, but they’re kind of sending mixed signals aren’t they? Not that “Darlie” toothpaste is overly good at subtleties, they changed the name from “Darkie” in 1985, as if that makes the caricature of a black man on their logo and the Chinese name of “Black man” less racist.

More again next week from Beijing and hopefully I’ll have some photos worth posting (or any at all!).

-

It was hard to tear ourselves away from Kashgar, particularly our hotel room. We don’t often get attached to hotel rooms but this was a heart stealer – the perfect travel room. The location, staff, bed and shower were all perfect and it was also the cheapest room we’d had so far. But quite apart from that little sweetener Kashgar is quite simply an amazing place. We spent the last few days wandering around what remains of the old town. The heart of the city is a rabbit warren of tightly packed courtyard houses where the Uyghur people have lived for generations. It’s also prime real estate. As we walked around it was easy to see that old town’s days were numbered – the houses are being torn down by the government to make way for the sort of generic city centre that they prefer. Uyghur residents are being moved to the outskirts where land is less valuable and as usual in China they’re not happy with the compensation. But what can they do? As one told us, “There are no laws in China”. We walked through large swathes of the old town that have been reduced to rubble and dust, small pieces of beautifully decorated walls peeking out through the destruction, reminders that someone’s house once stood here. Not far away green cladding covered a construction site.

At one stage we walked out to a main road and realised we were in what had once been the paid section of the old town, an area cordoned off where the local government charged a 30 kuai entry fee. There was nobody collecting tickets because there was nothing left to see. The ticket sellers have been moved to another area where an English guide tried to get us in by assuring us that this neighbourhood would be knocked down in a year or two so we’d better come in and see it now. We declined but a busload of Han Chinese tourists enthusiastically followed their pretty female tour guide into the pay per view city. It’s hard to comprehend or explain the destruction that is going on in China. The hutongs in Beijing, the old town of Kashgar, and I’m sure many other historic places around the country are being completely destroyed and there’s no point in protesting because it’s the government, in cahoots with developers, who are swinging the wrecking ball. Attitudes toward preservation are starting to change but not quickly enough to save these places.

On a cheerier note the bus ride to Hotan was horrible and first impressions weren’t great either. Maybe it was the brothels only thinly disguised as hotels that lined the street coming out of the bus station? The kind of place that every bed comes with an accommodating woman. I’ve been there twice before but struggled to find the city I remember. The Sunday market was great though and apparently it’s the biggest in Xinjiang. I thought that was Kashgar but I guess I got that wrong. Hotan’s jade has been traded since 5,000BC and there was still plenty of it left to sell - big sheep-sized chunks of it down to small pebbles polished and coated with oil.

Outside town we went to a place called Imam Asim which is the tomb of one of the first men to spread Islam in this area in the 11th century. The tomb was on the edge of the Taklamakan desert and we wandered for a while in the dunes before heading back toward civilisation in search of a drink. In no hurry to head back to Hotan we dallied in the villages along the road home, ate some freshly baked naan bread, visited a silk factory and had multiple cold drinks.

The next day we caught a bus across the Taklamakan desert to Aksu. The road we drove along had been open less than 2 years and is the second across the desert. Dune stabilisation is important to keep the shifting sand dunes from covering the road and about 3m on each side is covered in squares of reeds. Further out a fence of reeds stops sand from approaching the road but I wonder how easy it will be to stop the movement of the sands in the long term? I guess the first road across the desert, built in 1995 is still OK so they must know what they’re doing.

En route to Aksu a text message from my dad told us that something was going on in Urumq1. We were planning on arriving there the next morning but decided to avoid it after hearing details from him and also talking to someone we were planning on visiting in the city. At the time we thought it was a protest by Uyghurs and a brutal response by the army but the truth (when we finally found out) is that and so much more. We couldn’t book train tickets all the way to Beijing so we bought to Lanzhou (38 hours) and decided to look up options from there to Beijing online. Beware: saga following.

There was no internet connection in all of Xinjiang. We had to text a friend in Beijing to get the phone number of a travel agency because the local agency couldn’t book anything. Their entire system was based on having access to internet and so they could do nothing. We called and booked a plane ticket from Lanzhou to Beijing but couldn’t pay for it as we had to register our card details online. Back to trusty Robin (bless his heart) who went through the process for us from Beijing. The credit card was denied so we had to call the U.S. based bank but we were barred from making international calls (another part of the communication lock down). Thankfully at that time text messages still worked (later both domestic and international text services were blocked) and so we managed to get in touch with Brett’s family in the states. They could unblock the card but they needed to talk to Brett himself. Their department wasn’t allowed to make international calls and we couldn’t call them. Stalemate until Brett’s dad called someone in the bank that knows him and Brett. Small town connections came through and finally at 2:30am we managed to confirm our flight.

The next day we went to try to extend my visa and the amount of security was incredible. As we were waiting for the PSB (Public Security Bureau) to open a convoy of trucks full of soldiers in riot gear parked outside. Surveillance vans bristling with communications technology and small round windows for video cameras cruised the streets. Inside I was told that I had too much time left on my visa even though in Hotan they could have extended it the day before if we’d been there. We mentioned that we’d been planning on going to Urumq1 but now simply wanted to leave Xinjiang and in an exchange that I still can’t quite believe happened the officer told us that Urumq1 was now safe and that there was nothing abnormal about Aksu at the time. I could use (and have used) all manner of expletives to describe this irresponsible (adjectives deleted) man who would toe the party line ahead of looking after the safety of two bumbling tourists. Urumq1 is a chaos of vigi1ante attacks and people are being murd3red by mobs based purely on their ethnicity. The army is sho0ting into crowds. The train station where we would have come in is listed as a hotspot. The chances of being caught in the crossfire of racial hatred are extremely high, to say the least. And yet on July 7th Mr Chen (badge number 140486) assured us that it was safe to go there.

He also told us that the 40 s0ldiers in full riot gear with machine guns encamped in the PSB a few metres from where we were talking were simply “relaxing”. A prisoner shuffled past with hands cuffed to his shackled feet. Walking as he did, completely bent over, it was impossible to tell if he was Han or Uyghur. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Our 38 hour train took us into the province neighbouring Xinjiang. It’s easy to forget how big and far away Xinjiang is from the rest of China. From Beijing to Kashgar takes about 75 hours on the train and we weren’t really far from Kashgar. Our flight from Lanzhou to Beijing accrued more frequent flier miles than the one from Seoul to Beijing. Security on the train was tight, my bag was opened going in to the train station for the first time in years of travel in China and before we left Xinjiang a policeman came through and scanned people’s ID cards in a device that obviously had a list of people who should not be allowed to flee. As soon as we left Xinjiang we could send text messages and make international calls. In Lanzhou we went on the internet and found out for the first time the true extent of the chaos gripping Urumq1. Convoys of army trucks headed west as the trains of oil headed east.

Back in Beijing it’s easy to be optimistic about China’s ability to change but at the same time the divide between the coastal and interior areas is growing. Even within the city there are migrant workers barely eking out a living as Ferraris drive past. It’s easy to be cynical about people with a lot of money in China but I think the best thing that can happen is for a growing middle class to realise that their own country needs to change. It’s hard as an outsider not to come across as anti-Chinese when I get frustrated with China and I hope that the Chinese themselves can make it a better place.

Talking about Xinjiang it’s very easy to make it into a black and white picture but that’s not how it is. Hatred and tensions have been simmering for decades, exacerbated by pro Han policies promoted by a government terrified of Uyghur autonomy which they fear may lead to Xinjiang breaking away. The individuals being murdered by vigilantes in Urumq1 (Han and Uyghur) are no more to blame for the situation than I am for say the White Australia policy (as an Australian) or the Nazi Gas chambers (as a German). Having said that both of those are in the past and I hope that Han Chinese today take a good look at their government, themselves and what’s happening and find a way to make things better. I can’t do it; I’m just a little outspoken laowai who tells it like I see it.

-

On our last day in Turpan we headed to the Emin Minaret, built in 1777 by the head of the Turpan prefecture. The 37m high tower and accompanying building are constructed out of mud bricks and while you can get to the top of the building you can’t go inside the minaret. That afternoon we got on a 22 hour train to Kashgar, the last major city in Xinjiang/China before you hit Central Asia. We arrived on a Saturday along with a whole lot of other tourists who were timing their visit to coincide with the Sunday market.

We started our Sunday in Kashgar at the Livestock market, where people come to buy and sell sheep, goats, cows and donkeys. It was a dusty mayhem of animal noise and bustle as men sheared sheep, argued over prices and animals made their discomfort known. The sheep for sale were the local variety known as fat tailed sheep for the lump of fat hanging off their backsides, and in the process of evaluating the worth of a sheep the men would fondle the bottoms in a most indecent way. Those who had a lot of sheep for sale often tied them together by their necks with every sheep facing 180 degrees in the opposite direction to those on either side (hard to explain, look at the photos). Next to the area where sheep were tied up was an area of complete chaos by the end of the day, where every person with a few sheep to sell wandered around with them tied to a leash. We saw one very lost old man with a lone sheep who broke my heart. He was completely out of his depth and struggling to make eye contact with buyers, while protectively shielding the sheep’s head from the surrounding chaos. We almost came away with a lone sheep and an adopted grandfather.

In the donkey section men wandered around with their animals and prospective buyers checked them out by riding them, prising open their mouths to look at teeth and squeezing meaty backsides. Some of the donkeys were feisty little things and you could see buyers move away when an animal wouldn’t do as it was told. One donkey had been tied to a cart but simply pulled the cart along behind it when it wanted to move. Every now and again one donkey would start braying and soon enough a whole chorus would join in, just like babies crying. There was a lady selling a donkey and once again we would have loved to know her story because she was the only woman we saw buying or selling livestock. Nobody seemed to be paying her much attention but when we went back later in the day she wasn’t there anymore, hopefully she sold at a good price.

Goats weren’t as common though those that were for sale were near the sheep, tied together in long lines of bleating animals. Cows had their own section, with a solid framework provided to tie them to. On the way in there was the Ferrari of cows, a bull of such gigantic proportions that it must have made buyers drool and curse their limited finances. It truly was a monster. Cows were unloaded from trucks in a most inelegant way. The tailgate was lowered and the animals were unwillingly pulled from the tray by the rope around their neck, some of them protesting pretty effectively until 3 men helped with the pulling. It’s quite a jump for a cow to come down off some of those trucks and I remember in a previous visit a cow breaking its leg in the fall.

We spent most of the day at the animal market until we were so covered in dust that a shower became a priority. After washing the dust and animal poo off us we headed to the Sunday market, a massive convergence of buyers and sellers which must be one of the biggest markets in Asia, if not the world. The market actually happens every day which is why we focused on the livestock market, but Sunday is busiest with an extra 50,000 people coming to Kashgar to buy and sell. If something exists then I’d say it’s for sale at the Kashgar Sunday market.

On Monday morning we left for a 2 day trip to Karakul Lake, toward the border with Pakistan. Actually it’s also near the border with Tajikistan and Afghanistan though there is no crossing into Afghanistan and the Tajik border is closed to all apart from Chinese and Tajik nationals. We tried to go along the road toward the Khunjerab Pass (Pakistan) but the official guarding the checkpoint wouldn’t be swayed by my smiling pleas. It was a matter of safety and Pakistan is a “messy” place at the moment. I protested that we were always going to be within China and surely he knew that China was a completely safe place? He laughed, agreed, but still said no. Oh well, it was worth a try.

That was in Tashkurgan on Tuesday morning, we spent Monday night at Karakul Lake, at 3,600m elevation in the Pamir mountain range. Overlooking the lake and our yurts was Mustagh Ata, a snow capped mountain towering to 7,546m, a little lower than Kongur (7,719m) which we’d passed en route from Kashgar. We talked to a guy who’d been a porter for a foreign expedition to the summit of Mustagh Ata and he said it took about a week to climb up the southern slopes. He only looked about 20 and spoke fantastic English which he’d learned from tourists who stayed in the yurts around the lake. He was Kyrgyz, as were most of the people living around the lake, but his experience of learning English without going to school was similar to what we’ve heard from Uyghurs we’ve met. Our driver for the two days taught himself to speak Chinese and spoke it fantastically, though he said in English he was “like a mute”. To be fair I think he understood English pretty well and the words he did say were pronounced excellently. We’ve certainly been impressed with the amount and level of English spoken by Uyghurs. Despite the fact that they don’t necessarily study it at school, they speak it better than a lot of Han Chinese who spend their entire schooling life studying but can’t speak a complete sentence. Of course the Han Chinese can often read and write due to their formal education. Uyghurs are the opposite as they’ve often not studied formally but speak very well.

In the afternoon of free time at Karakul Lake I walked around it (3.5 hours) and Brett did what he loves most – picking a high point and finding out what you can see from up there. The yurts we stayed in were disappointingly made from concrete instead of the traditional felt but it seemed to be where the family usually lived so I guess that’s modernisation and progress? Meals were noodles and rice with a vegetable sauce and delicious nan bread. All washed down with salty milk tea. The stove was fed with animal dung and kept us toasty warm as the cold wind howled outside. It was hard to believe that we’d been roasting in Kashgar when I was wearing my fleece, big winter coat, scarf and was still shivering. Still, at least I got to use the big winter coat that I’ve not used since the first week in Japan but been carrying ever since. On the way back to Kashgar it snowed on us and when we arrived back in the big city we sweated in t-shirts. Like our driver said, in the morning it was winter but by afternoon summer had arrived.

Now we’re back in Kashgar hanging out for a few days before heading to Hotan, then across the Taklamakan desert to Urumqi and back to Beijing.

-

We tried to take care of a few things before leaving Beijing but were relatively unsuccessful. One pretty important thing we looked into was extending my Chinese visa to allow me to stay in China while Brett goes back to work. The longest visa I could get in Seoul was 30 days and while it’s possible to extend that for up to 60 extra days I need to open a Bank of China account and deposit US$100 per day that I want an extension. So for a 30 day extension I need to deposit US$3,000. I assume this is to prove that I have “sufficient funds” though most countries would be happy with a print out of my Australian bank statement (which I think is completely reasonable). Personally I remember opening a Bank of China account to be a process taking many hours and resulting in much frustrated pulling of hair. It’s not a process I want to go through again and it’s not a process I’d wish on any unsuspecting tourist who happens to want to spend more than 30 days exploring this massive and varied country.

Thankfully for me China’s ridiculous rules go hand in hand with rampant corruption, and for a certain extra “fee” there is a company that will “take care” of my extension without me opening a bank account. It will cost me 860 yuan (about US$125) for a 1 month extension and I’ll need to do this twice. China has just priced itself out of the backpacker market, but maybe they want to? Backpackers stay too long, talk to people and want to understand the country; maybe they’d prefer high end, short stay group tourists who only see smiles? It’s hard to tell what they’re aiming to achieve sometimes. Maybe they don’t understand that making people feel unwelcome will drive them away?

I’mgoing to spend the time Brett’s away working on my Mandarin in Beijing, though sometimes it’s hard to see the point of further study (see above). It’ll be nice to be based in one place for a while though, hang out with some friends I have there and hopefully do some photography. I’ll also be sorting out visas for Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and maybe Kazakhstan for Brett’s next break. We’ll be heading to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan for 6 weeks then I’ll hang out, maybe in Almaty or come back to China (if they’ll have me). The break after that we’ll go to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Then maybe Iran, the Middle East and Egypt. Who knows where after that?

At the moment we’re in Turpan, Xinjiang province. It’s like a different country here, the people, the language and the food is all completely different to China. Depending on who you talk to Xinjiang should be an independent country, though the Muslim Uyghur minority group don’t seem to get the same sympathetic support as Tibetans from the international community. Personally I think they rock, they’re such a breath of fresh air. The smiles are genuine and I’m always treated well here.

We stopped at a few places on our way west, first at Jiayuguan in Gansu province, the Western end of the Great Wall and China’s last major stronghold on the road west. One is asked to politely overlook the fact that Xinjiang is west of here. It’s in the Hexi corridor, a narrow strip of flat land between the Mazong, Longshou and Heli mountains in the north and the Qilian mountains in the South. All overland trading caravans heading west from China came through here and during the peak of the Silk Road jade, silk, porcelain, spices and horses made their way around the Taklamakan desert to reach as far as India, Persia and the Mediterranean.

A little further west was Dunhuang and the nearby Mogao Caves. There are 735 caves in total, 492 of which are painted with Buddhist art from a massive variety of eras. The first cave is said to have been painted in 336AD and the site was active until the 19th century. A little further west of Mogao the Silk Road split into the northern and southern routes around the Taklamakan desert. Travellers stopped at Mogao to pray for a safe journey or give thanks for a journey safely completed. Our guide took us in to a small selection of caves and told us some of the history. The artwork was incredible, the detail and the line work in the figures are breathtaking and even an ignoramus like myself can see differences in the styles of different eras. In some of the earlier caves the figures are more slender and almost feminine while later ones are more solid and masculine. Many of the caves were built on behalf of wealthy patrons and there are often images of the sponsors as well as details about them painted on the walls. Of course we were taken to the library cave where various foreign devils made off with about 40,000 priceless manuscripts, paintings and scrolls that were discovered sealed in a secret room. There were another 12,000 items left behind, the best of which were divided up amongst various Chinese officials and are lost to unknown private collections. The foreign devils donated their findings to museums and public institutions where most of them remain, albeit not in the country they were discovered in.

The day before yesterday we arrived in Turpan, our first stop in Xinjiang. We spent the day hanging out, exploring the bazaar and sheltering from the heat of the day in our hotel room (it was about 36 degrees celcius and baking hot in the sun). At the market we discovered tangzaza, triangles of sticky rice that are squashed a little and covered with syrup. Totally delicious. We also tried samsas, baked dumplings filled with mutton and maroji, ice cream with a rich vanilla flavour and a hint of an unidentifiable spice. Back out in the cool of the evening we bought ourselves a watermelon from a small stand, cut it in half and asked the shopkeeper for 2 spoons.

We went to bed at 10pm Xinjiang time and were up at 6:30am Beijing time. Beijing time is 2 hours ahead of (unofficial) Xinjiang time because Beijing prefers to ignore the fact that Xinjiang is so far west that it needs a different time zone. We’d organised a car to drive us around the sites near Turpan and spent the morning at Tuyoq and Bezeklik caves. Tuyoq is a small Uyghur village which is near an important pilgrimage site for Muslims in Xinjiang. The Chinese government makes it close to impossible for Uyghurs to get passports and so they’re not able to fulfil their obligation to make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. According to our guide the pilgrimage to the symbolic tomb of the first Uyghur Muslim, on the hillside nearby, is regarded as close enough. We met a man who had come from Kashgar on pilgrimage with his family and bought 3 goats to be sacrificed. The internal organs and head of one of them lay around on the dusty ground as another one was skinned. A goat costs 500 yuan, about US$75, quite a price for a local. As far as we could tell the villagers sell the goat to the pilgrim, it is sacrificed and then the pilgrim distributes the meat amongst the villagers. Not a bad deal for the villagers really.

Bezeklik caves are largely empty. The walls were once covered with Buddhist murals but most has been lost to pesky foreign devils, vandalism or the general wear and tear of time. Again, to be fair to the foreign men who quite literally cut out many of the frescos and left gaping holes in the walls, the ones that remained had their faces gouged out, their golden halos scraped off and were covered with wads of mud thrown where vandalising hands couldn’t reach. Unfortunately for many of the stolen frescos they were taken by a German, Albert Von le Cog, and were lost in the bombing of his country in WW2. Pass the blame to the Allies I suppose.

In the afternoon we visited the ancient city of Jiaohe, on an island between two rivers. Settled in 108BC and lived in until the end of the 14th century, many buildings are still recognisable and the main monastery still has partial statues of Buddha visible. We wandered around the streets and then headed back to our driver who took us to see the karez irrigation system. Water is channelled from the mountain snow melt into channels that run underground to villages. Oases like Turpan rely on these channels for their water and the underground tunnels are cleaned out once a year by men who drop down into the holes that are spaced every 5-10m along the channel. Grapes are an important crop in Turpan and our driver took us to his family’s grape plantation. Harvest is in about a month so the grapes were still a little sour but I’d love to be here in grape season. We might be able to buy some early harvest grapes before we leave Xinjiang.

Today we catch the train to Kasghar to get there for the Sunday market, then we head down to Hotan and across the Taklamakan desert to Urumqi. From there it’s back to Beijing in time for Brett to fly out to work.

-

We spent a little while longer on Jeju before waving goodbye to South Korea to land in Beijing. For two days we hiked along the Jeju Olle trail, a 12 day trail which follows the south coast of the island. It was nice to explore some of the less popular areas of the island and get away from the tour buses, which is exactly how the trail makers planned it. Along the coast we saw columnar jointing where lava had cooled fast when it hit the water and inland we stumbled across a massive area of aircraft hangers where the Japanese had an airport in the Second World War. In the cliffs along the coast long tunnels were their first defence of the Korean mainland as they started losing the war in the Pacific. Another find was a village of abandoned traditional houses typical of Jeju which was overgrown with weeds. Sheltered behind walls made of black volcanic stone the low houses were also built from the local stone. The rooves were made with thatch and securely tied down to stop them blowing away in high winds.

On the first day we ate at a Haenyo house, where Jeju’s famous women divers sell their catch to hungry tourists. On our second last day we watched some of them go out diving with their rudimentary wetsuits and low tech gear. They brought back seaweed, sea urchins, some fish and octopi. Historically men did the diving but in the 19th century women started going out in order to circumvent high taxes on the male divers. While the rest of Korea lived under strict Confucianism where women were subservient to men the Haenyeo of Jeju became the breadwinners in families on the island. These days there are less and less Haenyeo as the daughters of the tenacious divers choose easier jobs on the mainland or in the tourism industry on Jeju.

Another memorable meal was a soup that came out with ice cubes floating in it. We ordered it at a place that had no English or English speakers so we just pointed at something in our price range. We managed to work out that I was getting something with shellfish and Brett would have the same thing but with fish. The soup itself was quite vinegary, had cucumber and radish strips floating in it and my shellfish was both chewy and crunchy in turn. Some parts were so hard I didn’t think I could bite through them. Interesting but we probably don’t need to have it again.

Our last two days in Korea were lazy – on one we just went back to Seongsan Ilchulbong and saw the Haenyeo go out diving and on our last day we went back to Jeju si and ate nearly 2kg of citrus fruit. We left Jeju early on the 15th and flew up to Seoul where we managed to get on an earlier flight to Beijing.

It’s quite strange being back in Beijing, things have definitely changed around here in the past two years. On arrival at the airport there were no shonky taxi drivers hassling for their chance to fleece the new arrivals and when we caught the subway today there were electronic gates and queues! Not only that, but there are now 8 subway lines! It’s hard to believe but when I left China 2 years ago there was 2 lines open and one under construction. Now there are 8 open and 7 under construction. There’s a bridge over the road near where we’re staying that wasn’t there before and even though we know it’s less than 2 years old it looks like it’s been there forever. Online I can look at BBC and Wikipedia (though Youtube is still blocked) and on TV a reporter mentioned “the political incident of 1989”. Admittedly overseas one would call that the Tiananmen Square Massacre but it’s still a step in the right direction. And just as I think that China has changed immeasurably I step outside and see someone mopping the carpet. Aaaaah, the China I remember hasn’t disappeared quite y