Bulgaria, I Thought I Knew You

About a year ago Mel and I had an unpleasant experience at the Turkish/Bulgarian border that we attributed to Bulgaria. The short of it is that we were extorted for being taken across the border (for passport purposes). This led to a 15 km walk into Bulgaria's interior followed by a 60 km drive into it and finally a trip out. During this time we witnessed a good deal of dilapidated farm area amid feelings of distrust and anxiety from our unintended overnight trip from Hell.

This Roman ruin is nestled in the middle of a busy shopping district.

We dared to challenge this view by traveling to the city of Plovdiv after reading a positive review of the place in the NY Times. They have Roman ruins there, and since we didn't get a good chance to explore them when in Rome, we thought we'd give it a chance. As it turns out, the Bulgarian people that we encountered there were exceptionally pleasant and our entire trip must be recounted as one of our best yet. This surprised us for two reasons: 1) our previous experience and 2) Plovdiv isn't a major attraction.

The second point has actually caused us to rethink our view on what vacations should be comprised of. Of course if we go to Greece, we have every intention of visiting Athens. But maybe instead of spending our entire time there, we should give it maybe 30% of the time and then go off to explore a smaller neighboring city that boasts some history and a cheaper fair.

The town has a number of interesting artsy things about it.
This fountain may be my favorite.

So what made Plovdiv nice? Well, first off, it was cheap. This may not be a big sticking point for those of you that pull in $100k+ in annual income, but to us, it meant we could eat and drink whatever we wanted without feeling guilty about it. Our accommodations were very nice and cost us about what a second rate hostel would have in London. Second, the people were nice and helpful (usually spoke some level of English) anywhere we went. Third, the town actually had great shopping. We were able to find stuff for our Halloween costumes for super cheap and browse interesting mid to high end stores as well. If I ever need to buy a computer in Turkey, I'm going to Bulgaria. Finally, the city really does have a lot of great history. We were able to get a free tour that took us from the south end of the Old Town district to the north end. Our guide took us to a lot of out of the way places and to a point that overlooked the entire city.

Not everything was as inexpensive as our guide, but it's hard to beat free.

Most of all, what we discovered was that it isn't Bulgaria that we have such a distaste for, it's the border between Bulgaria and Turkey. Both going in and out we were stopped there for 4 hours, lengthening our uncomfortable trip by about 75%. However, I suspect these problems are much more likely to pop up on any border so I'll try not to begrudge either country.

Here's a link to the full photo set.

Social Doesn't Mean Healthy

One of the things to do while living in Turkey is to buy a water pipe (hookah). They call them "nargile" here. On any row of restaurants you'll be able to see a Nargile place that advertises itself as such where people congregate to have a few drinks and take a few puffs off of a lightly adorned piece of glass. The light tobacco you smoke out (sheesha) of it is flavored anywhere from peach to cotton candy. Since we still can't talk to anyone here in their native language, we've decided we'd better do something that makes us feel Turkish so BAM! we got a nargile.

Doing so was a simultaneously delightful and painful process. It was great going from place to place to haggle for pipes, seeing the same styles repeated, but never quite the same. What was difficult, however, was coming to consensus on what to get since Mel and I had staunchly different views on what a nargile should look like. After several weekends of looking an bargaining we finally rested on a high quality deep blue that we got for a really good price.

I enjoy the thing. The guy that sold it to us provided us with both cappuccino and strawberry flavors. Mmm! The problem is that this is an altogether unhealthy habit. It was two years ago that I made a New Year's resolution to not even socially smoke cigarettes anymore (you know, when you've been drinking and your judgement isn't what it should be). I've faithfully kept to this. According to the World Health organization, smoking out of a water pipe for the hour that the substance usually burns for can equal 100 or more cigarettes! NHS has something sightly different to say about it, which can be summed up here. I was taught to smoke a cigar by only puffing into the mouth, not inhaling into the lungs. This doesn't really work with a water pipe. It takes a significant breath to draw enough smoke down into the vessel so the tiny little puffs I use hardly get any of that fruity or coffee-like taste onto my buds. We only break the nargile out bi-weekly or even less, but I wonder how well this fits into my plans of dying healthy. I'll post a picture of my lungs a little later.

Eat Slowly

I have lots of good stuff to say about Turkey, but as an informal critique of restaurant dining service, I have to mention that Turkey gets an D-. This, to me, means that it just barely passes as suitable enough to rarely venture out, knowing you're throwing the dice, hoping for a seven, but knowing you will most likely roll the snake eyes. Last night's outing was perhaps below par, but it was not atypical. We had a Groupon thing to a sushi place called Ninja.

I know what you're going to say next: "Sven, aren't ninjas known for their table service?" Well, of course they are. A proper ninja will bring you out a live cow and ask you what portion you want. After pointing to the appropriate place on the cow, he will slice it off with a single swipe of his sword and it will land on your plate cooked to perfection. You can't see because his face is covered, but his smile never falters. Never under tip a ninja.

Unfortunately, this restaurant was not populated by proper ninjas. Instead, we got a waiter who seemed only able to serve half of our table of eight. He preferred the other end for some reason. This is an acceptable problem for the most part. I know that although my food will come ten minutes later than the person sitting to my left, it will come eventually and that it will probably taste pretty good when it gets there because I'll be so famished by that time. What is not so acceptable is effusive body odor that not only emanates from the arm pits, but also the feet. Now when the food finally comes, the otherwise prayed for aromas have to compete with the excrement of a trillion microorganisms that are feeding off your waiter's sweat. I counted myself somewhat fortunate that our waiter was able to bring the check in good time so we were able escape his emissions.

As mentioned, this is not what is experienced every time, but service in Turkey does tend to be slow, forgetful, wrong, and poorly documented. You don't get an actual check in Turkey, you see. You get a slip of paper with some scribbling that may be numbers and a circled total at the bottom. If you can figure out what all of it means you win the right to argue that this isn't what the menu said.

Despite all these problems, the food is quite delicious. This, however, assumes that you are ordering Turkish food. I've yet to experience their handling of foreign cuisine extremely well, and to be quite honest, I've found that I enjoy Germany's rendition of Turkish food better thus far.

A parting tip: One should also keep a bottle of Imodium AD handy. Turkish restaurants are quite well known for causing what they call "Turkey Tummy," which is as pleasant as it sounds.

The Cost of Abroad

Some things are more expensive in Turkey. Foreign alcohol is one of them. Imagine Budweiser costing you the equivalent of $4 a bottle at the grocery store. Now guess how often we indulge in a drink.

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What I Would Miss

There's not enough space to fill in all the m's this little chocolate log deserves when writing its "mmm."

Mel posed a question to me: "What would you miss that was genuinely Turkish if we were to leave Turkey today?"

To this, I came up with several different examples of things that we had actually first experienced in Germany. This includes drying clothes on a rack instead of a dryer, using the metro, the electric kettle, and light switches. A couple of these were just stabs at finding something different from America. For example, I'm not really all that sure that I'd miss using the drying rack. 

However, I was able to come up with one thing that was uniquely Turkish (thus far) that we regularly enjoy and will truly miss whenever it is that we leave Turkey. Nearly every night we enjoy a single brownie made by ETi. It doesn't sound like anything special, but check out THIS VIDEO! I don't know what this dude is saying, but even the words sound delicious. 

Maybe that's a little weak considering how different day to day life is here, but when you talk about every day life, it's the indulgences that really stick out. But in case you'd care to know about some other daily differences, look below.

I'm not even sure if drying machines exist here.
Instead, everyone has one of these foldout things and
is willing to wait the 2 - 6 hours for their clothes to dry.

EVERYONE uses an electric kettle over here.
I think it's because more people drink tea and coffee.
Truth be told, we're sold on it, too, and we'll definitely get one wherever
we go next since it heats a liter of water in under a minute!

Light switches almost all look like this over here.
None of the American "nose up, nose down" business.
What's more is that it's backwards.
For America, the up position is on, but not for Europe/Asia.
We're STILL getting used to this.

The one on the right here is the electrical outlet.
I don't know what the one on the left is.
So don't bother brining your hair dryer unless you have a converter.

Here Mel holds a tea or çay cup.
I don't even care for tea, but we pretty much had
to buy a set when we saw how pretty the glassware was.

The tap water makes our tummies feel funny and may contain brain eating amoebas.
In answer to this, Turkey sells a LOT of bottled water, which usually arrives to your home in less than 30 minutes.
The air pump on the top of the bottle is terrible and takes an engineer to work correctly.

Christmas in Vienna

Although this is not the first Christmas I've ever spent away from my family proper, it is the most different Christmas I've ever experienced. This year the big gift was the trip and that meant going all the way to Austria to discover new experiences and tastes. Number one on the list was the mulled wine, a fine concoction of heated red wine and various spices including cinnamon. Num num!

Within the included album you'll find a great number of buildings which are unnamed. To us, that's fine. We don't know what they're call or for. They are primarily included to give you a sense of the beauty and history we walked amongst, and to fill you with a deep jealousy that hopefully counters the expense of the cost. If it incites no jealousy at all, however, we maintain that the trip was worth it, being memorable and fun. I hope your Christmas was as enjoyable.

Sultanahmet

For you picture hungry folk, we have brought another day of sight seeing action to your doorstep. We should note, perhaps, that we were rather cheap about it. We didn't pay for anything, which means that we didn't get to visit the harem quarters. That would bring a frowny face except that it is my understanding that they are no longer populated anyway. Here's a few quick examples and then the rest are available here.

It's hard to give an idea of how tall this thing is.
But to impress you, I'll simply state that this erection has been standing since 390 AD.

Short people like Mel make the height of this mosque tower all the more impressive. 

The beauty and grandeur of a mosque is meant to remind you of the majesty of god.
It also reminds you to take off your shoes and not talk too loudly.

Taken just before the genie picked the entire structure up and set it atop a nearby mountain so Jafar could rule instead.  

Taken on the palace grounds, Mel reclines amused at all the silly people
waiting in line to look at the many marvelous things they will never have. 

 Like a faberge egg that looks like it will hatch an emerald encrusted peacock but isn't even good for an omelet,
this gate is so pretty, it's no longer used.