Definition of Identity Crisis…

You all must surely know the saying “if you look up the word crazy in the dictionary your face would be beside it”! I feel like someone should say that about me…lately I find that I could be the definition of crazy and also of identity crisis. According to some psychology guy Erik Erikson, the identity crisis is most commonly found in the teenage years…well, fast forward about 10 years later for me and here we are in present-day Switzerland with two filled-to-capacity suitcases!

I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about this transition but mostly I’m scared. I’m not at ease about this, I’m not completely sad about leaving or completely happy about my return to GA.

Today I went to church at IPC for the last time and then walked around Zürich with Dawn and we caught up on the last two months of each other’s lives. As we walked I was overcome with love for this place…this city, this country, my family (those two precious little girls), my life here! How can I leave it now? I don’t know how!

Being an au pair is such a cool experience. It is filled with valuable life lessons. For me, it was filled with so much opportunity to see Europe on a larger scale than a week’s vacation would allow. But the one lesson I learned most is that everything is constantly changing: people leave, new people come, and life continues…perhaps not the same as it was before but it goes on…and it certainly will after I leave as well.

I’ve said, since the first of my friends left over a year ago, that it’s much easier to be the person leaving than the one left behind; the person leaving is on to new things with their mind elsewhere, for the person staying their world is the same but now with a hole where the departed once stood. I sure hope this week proves theory that to be true! I’ve been told that I’m on to an exciting new life…one where I get to make new choices about where to work, what car to drive, even what cell phone company to use…I’m sure it should be exciting but I’m just scared!

The next few days will be very hectic and sad for me. I will most likely not be posting again from Switzerland. My flight is Thursday…I left the US to move here on September 11^th, 2006 and I move back to the US on December 11^th, 2008-two years and three months exactly. I wish sometimes I could just forget the last two years ever happened; maybe then my heart wouldn’t hurt so much. To forget it, though, would be to forget also my Swiss family and my many traveling experiences and my beautiful friends…all things I never want to keep far from my thoughts.

On the Wikipedia website (if they say it, it must be true!) addressing identity crisis, it states that Erikson believed “only individuals who succeed in resolving the crisis will be ready to face future challenges in life”. (I wouldn’t be me-the ultimate drama queen-if I didn’t say this…) I hope I make it through!!

For most of you I’ll see you States side in a few days and for the rest of you I’ll see you when I see you…I love you all!

LuLu

Brrrr in Berlin (The German Capital Part 1)!

Hello Everyone!

Well, Megzi and I have been here in Berlin, the last city on our 2 month trip, for about 3 days now and we are loving it...but freezing to death (we saw our first snow of the trip yesterday)! We are staying in the nicest hostel I've ever been in, so clean...it's like a hotel! Berlin has so many things to see and do and so we've been zipping from one place to another to experience everything we can! Not to mention eating all sorts of exotic food...everything from Vietnamese food to Thai and even the famed Berlin currywurst (a sausage covered in tomato sauce and curry powder...I didn't so much care for it!)

On our first full day here we did basically nothing...we went grocery shopping in an attempt to set ourselves up for the week and then we went shopping...taking some time to familiarize ourselves with the transit system here. Berlin has a really great system going on...between buses, trams, trains and the metro you are never far away from what you want to see!

The second day we went on a 3 1/2 hour free walking tour offered by a company called New Berlin. This is a fantastic concept. The tours are free and at the end you are encouraged to tip proportionally to how good you feel the tour was and your own budget. There are some people who abuse the system, I'm sure; but it insures that the tour guides do a really good job of taking care of you. I learned so much on this tour and would really encourage everyone to take it if they come to Berlin. We saw the Holocaust Memorial, the site of Hitler's Bunker, the island where Berlin first began as a small fishing village-it is now the island where all the museums are located, and most importantly (hehe!) we saw the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his small child over a balcony. Our tour guide was a spunky Scottish girl who explained to us about much of the city's history...she seemed to really know her stuff!

I thought that this trip as a whole would be educational more about WWII than anything, but I was wrong. The more I am on this trip, and especially here in Berlin, I'm learning quite alot about life behind the Iron Curtain and Soviet/Communist occupation. Things that I never learned about in school and I now find that to be such a shame. Highschoolers should be learning this!

For instance: I always knew about the Berlin Wall...most people have heard about it...but I never knew that West Berlin (the side occupied by the Allies) was basically an island inside Eastern Germany. I never knew that the Berlin Wall was built around the whole of Western Berlin...it was 155km long! We are seeing portions of the wall and the measures that the East German government used to hold their people in (did you know that there was actually 2 walls-an inner one and an outer as well!)...we are hearing stories of escapes or attempted ones, of death and suffering. We are seeing the divisions and differences of each side of this city and the lengths, in the 19 years since the wall came down, it's going to in order to repair itself and become whole.

Yesterday we walked around, mostly through the city's very large Tiergarten but we also explored the area around the Zoologisher Garten as well, and went back to a few of the places we'd seen on the tour and wanted to explore further. We went back to Checkpoint Charlie and took more pictures and we revisited the Brandenburg Gate-also for more pictures.

We are hoping to get to Potsdam, the town with a lot of palaces, on the next sunny and clear day- maybe tomorrow- and we're also going to visit a few more memorials and exhibits around the city. Our flight back to Zürich is not until Thursday late afternoon so we are making the most of our time here and packing in as much as possible!

I'll write again soon, probably after we return to Switzerland, to let you all know how the rest of our time here goes.

Ciao for now!

LuLu

How Schengen is Ruining My Life!

Hello All!

Just a little blurb from me again...On this trip I was so excited at the prospect of getting many, many passport stamps. I even got new pages added into my passport (a HUGE thanks again for that Host Mum...) because technically there wasn't enough space for all the countries I was to/did visit. Well...so the trip started out beautifully, a nice new Turkish visa, two stamps for entering Turkey and two for leaving, stamps for entering and leaving Greece and then again for Bulgaria and Romania, and then one for entering Hungary...and that was it....no more since then!!

The problem is a little agreement between the European countries called Shengen. Even my beloved Switzerland is set to join soon. It effectively does away with all border controls in its interior (see the link attached to get an idea of the area I'm talking about). So basically, once you enter a Shengen country you are free to move about within the whole of the Shengen area without needing to show your passport for crossing borders...good for some, not for me (who just wants that little stamp to prove I've been there!)

LuLu is not a happy camper about this situation...all I want is a stamped up passport!

From Near Russia with Love...My Time in the Baltics

Picking up where the last blog left off...we did make it to Vilnius by bus; and no, that bus did not go through Belarus or that little bit of Russia. We had no problems, well, very little problems. There was a guy going into shock from alcohol poisoning in the seat behind me but the ambulance was called and he was quickly removed after hour 2 of our 13 hour journey.

When we arrived in Lithuania we thought we'd go in and just sleep a bit to recover from the bus ride, but after checking schedules to our next destination we decided on just a very short stay in Vilnius and so we headed straight out for sight-seeing. We met up with a really nice Aussie guy who'd been in the city for a few days and we spent the day with him and a nice American man too. We saw a quirky little part of the city called the Republic of Uzupis, which is a place that declared itself an independent republic in 1997. Follow the link for more information about this interesting place which is overrun with artists and even has it's own constitution!

We also went into the Genocide Museum which is in the former KGB headquarters building...I've read my whole life about WWII and horrors that happened there but not too much about the Soviet regime and occupied most of Eastern Europe for many years after that war. The Baltic countries were not free of this until 1991...another thing I was quite oblivious to as I was just a small girl at the time. The Museum had so many informative and interesting things to be seen and even more than that a lot of really disturbing things as well. Tales of torture and imprisonment, lack of freedom and personal choices. The further I travel north on this trip the more I find that I am exceedingly lucky to have been born in a country with rights and freedoms abounding. Things that we as Americans take for granted every day these people had to fight for as little as 20 years ago.

The next day Megz and I just wandered around on our own. We went shopping a lot but managed to see at least one important thing. In the square in front of the big cathedral there is a stone marking the spot where a 2,000,000 person human chain ended. The chain was formed in 1989 as a public outcry against the Soviet occupation. It stretched from Tallinn, Estonia all the way to Vilnius!

Speaking of Tallinn, this was our next destination...a mere day and a half after arriving in Vilnius we set out on a night bus for Tallinn. It wasn't a long one this time, only 9 hours, but it was filled with nosey Spanish people...very little sleep was achieved! We arrived very early in the city and were dropped off at the port where we made the freezing walk to our hostel of choice and arrived at 6:30AM.

I love Tallinn (I mean, take a look at that picture above, where else can you find a giant egg for sale in the refrigerated section of the grocery store)!! That is all I can say, we didn't see much of it and what we did see was under construction, a lot of the city is, but it is just fantastic! We walked around a very medieval old town for most of our visit or spent time gaining energy in the hostel by watching mind-numbing movies, but it was great. We found time one day to take the short ferry over to Helsinki, which is in Finland.

Yay, we added Scandinavia to our list of places we got to go, though I think one day hardly counts. We went into the two main churches, the orthodox and the protestant, saw the changing of the guards at a little place that gathered no crowd, and got our feet totally wet when it started to rain. It appears that Megan and I have both ruined our shoes on this trip by walking holes into the soles of them. Mine were purchased specially for the trip so I am happy to say that I've walked enough to ruin a pair of shoes in less than two months...an accomplishment if nothing else on this trip has been!

Oh, back to Helsinki though....We did take a ferry out to Suomenllina Island, which is a short 20 minute ride. We were able to walk around this unique fortressed island, which is actually made up of 3 different islands...it was made a UNESCO site because of it's uniqueness, in fact. There we were able to see also a really interesting lighthouse which is also a church...it was really plain on the inside, much like the churches at home, and I loved it so much!

On the day we were set to leave Tallinn we planned to, yet again, do nothing. We went and organized our bus tickets to the next city and walked around enjoying the city once again. We left ourselves plenty of time to get to the port, where we were supposed to catch our bus at 1:55, or so we thought! It turns out that the girl at the booking office told us the wrong time, the bus left the port at 1:25 and so we were sitting there all along thinking that we'd made it in time and we really hadn't! Luckily I had one of those really weird feelings about it all and went in to the info booth to check there about the schedule...we rushed into a taxi driven by, quite possibly, the nicest man alive! He ran every red-light and sped the whole way to the bus terminal, only to get there and see our bus pulling out. He then basically blocked the bus with his car and shoved us on with our belongings as we thanked him profusely...yet again another story of the kindness of many strangers along our journey!

And so we were on our way...to Riga, Latvia. Riga is the capital and again a quite charming city. We checked into a very quiet 20 bed hostel, which incidentally we had all to ourselves for 2 of the 3 nights...Megzi and I treated it like our own apartment. We have gotten into the habit of making our own food to save $$ and this hostel was impecably (sp?) clean and tidy, just perfect for making grand meals!

We went out and enjoyed walking through the parks and winding streets of the old town. We took recommendation from our hostel manager to try some local dishes at a restaurant called Lido...have no idea what we ate but it was really good! We went into the spire of the St. Peters Church, which incidentally has fallen off before, killing many civilians (but never fear...that was 100s of years ago!), we drank LOTS of hot chocolate and just throughly enjoyed the coziness of the cafes because it was FREEZING temperatures outside. But my favorite bit of Riga was something we did on the day we left...we saw the new 007 movie...and it was really cheap! We payed 2.45LAT which is just over 5 CHF and I guess would be right around 5 dollars (since the going rate in Switzerland is around 18CHF we really found this movie date a bargain!). When we exited the theatre we realized just what a time crunch we had on our hands and so we hurried back to the hostel, grabbed our lunch/dinner and our things and ran to the bus stop where we just barely made it on board and headed to the airport.

On a really sad note, I was standing in line in a grocery store in Riga on Wednesday when my cell phone rang. Mom and Dad, my great grandfather has died. He's not been well for quite some time and had a stroke on Sunday. He was in hospital when his heart gave out...nearly 90 years old, married for over 70 years. He had children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and even great great grandchildren...he worked hard and gave everything he had for all...his church and his community. No one can blame his heart for giving out...he gave it all away in the numerous years that he lived. I will miss him so much, I regret not being there for my family, specifically Mom and Grandmother, right now. I love you all and I'll be home soon!

We are currently in Berlin, Germany (wait for that post later!) and loving it. This is our last stop and we plan to be here for 7 days before returning to Zürich.

Thanks to you all for reading.

LuLu

Finally Making it to Krakow, Poland....

Hello All!

Well, we left Budapest on a bus at 6:00AM bound for Krakow, Poland. We've been trying for our entire two years in Switzerland to get here on a trip and it just wasn't an easy task. Alot of traveler's you meet along your journey rave about this place so we knew we just had to see it. Our bus took 7 hours and I'm happy to say I slept the whole time. It was great!

We had arrangements to stay with a friend of a friend when we got here. A couchsurfing experience, sort of, but more comfortable for our first time since one of our good friends has stayed with this girl twice before. Ewa (pronounced Eva) was lovely, she was accommodating, chatty, and very friendly. So we hurried to her house to put down our things and then out for the evening to find our bearings in this city and get some dinner. We stayed with Ewa for two nights but after that we decided to check into a hostel. It was lovely staying with her but Megzi and I have decided we're not very good couch surfers, we like just being able to come to our room at a hostel and lay down whenever, just hang around!

The first full day of being in Krakow we made the short trip to the village of Wielizcka, about 30 minutes away by bus. They have a 700 year old salt mine, the only one of it's type that's worked constantly through the middle ages, it only stopped production about 15 years ago. There in that salt mine that tunnels down 9 layers under the earth you can tour some of the most amazing hand sculpted rooms and tunnels. It was inducted into the original UNESCO list back in the 70's and being there I didn't need to wonder why. I wish I could convey to you the real wonder that I had about this place. It was all salt...(all of it!! I licked the walls to see!) the statues were salt, the rocks in the chandielers were salt, the floor was salt...AMAZING! We spent the entire day there and even pigged out at their restaurant, the only one located 135M below the earth.

Day two found us heading for the Auschwitz/Berknau concentration camps. They were the largest of the German camps in WWII. What a completely moving day! We took an organized tour, we thought it would be pointless to go there and not be entirely informed, and we learned so much. I'd been to Dachau, near Munich, and I thought that was a big place but it was nothing compared to the size of Auschwitz/Berknau camp II. Massive, it went on for as far as the eye could see. The train tracks came straight into the camp and the people were hearded off, most of them not to be prisioners but rather straight to the gas chambers to die. The horrors that place has seen. The crimes against humanity that happened there...it's too much for my heart to take. The guide took us to the area of the crematorium there. She said that all around us were the ashes of the dead. They used them as fertilizer all over the camp. After she said that it was more than I could do to stay there any longer, I was glad the tour was up.

It was that evening that we moved into our hostel, a place along the main square of the city. A great location. We've met a few people but more importantly we have a kitchen to use, money saving method, and the freedom to come and go whenever. For the past two days we've just taken it easy, not done much but take walks and go into things that interest us. We plan to see the Wawel Castle today and then wait out the next day for our bus to Vilinus, Lithuania.

We were hoping to be able to leave here tonight but the bus only runs on Tuesday night and Friday. Luck of the draw I guess. The bus trip will be 14 hours, so overnight. We are really hoping that this bus doesn't take us through Belarus or through the tiny bit of Russia that also borders Poland/Lithuania. To go into those countries, even passing through on a bus, requires visas or transit visas and we don't have any. We've heard stories from people who have been kicked off of buses in the middle of the night for not having transit visas, not at this border but others, hope that doesn't happen to us!

Well, I guess this gets me all caught up for my travels so far. We have less than 3 weeks left now. We are looking forward to our return to Switzerland, and for me especially looking forward to getting back to Girls Aged 5 and 8, and then ultimately our trips to our respective countries. Please continue to pray for us in our travels and for our health/safety. We are doing quite well on our small budgets though the last week will definitely be stretching it, we hope to make it through without missing too many meals...hehe....

Thanks for all your thoughts and support so far!

Love you all!!

LuLu

Bulgaria, Romania and Sickness....Then the Recovery that came in Budapest!

Hello All!

I bet you thought I was having too much fun to keep in touch. Quite the opposite let me assure you! Just a day or so after the last time you heard from me I became sick. Something I suspect I picked up in Turkey; it probably laid dormat in my body for a few days before it reared it's very ugly head as I was leaving Bulgaria. I have done a search of my symptoms and concluded that it's mostly likely a common traveler's disease for people that visit there. So here's how it went for me...

The first day I just thought I'd eaten something off, then it became much worse. I started limiting my diet to only short sips of water and soft bread or plain things. Eventually, after we reached our second city in Romania, I was not eating at all. If I ate I got sick and when I was sick I couldn't eat. So by day 5 or 6 I was starving and majorly dehydrated, even standing on my own was a problem because I was so weak. Megzi was gem enough to be very patient with me. She went to the shops and bought me rehydrating fluids to mix with water to replace my body salts lost from the sickness. I forced myself to eat as much as I could in small spurts but it was mostly to no avail. The sickness remained in my stomach and I never had more than 20 minutes without feeling that I might need to curl up and die. I then decided to consult two of the smartest women I know about this problem: Mom and my Swiss Host Mum. Advice all around and I tried to follow it all or most of it...still nothing. But, thanks to one of my Dad's well-traveled friends we got a really strange solution that seems to have done the trick. I denied myself everything for about 14 hours, food and drink, and then I ate as many fresh almonds as my stomach would allow and chased it down with 2 glasses of uber cheap red wine. Apparently my Dad's friend has had this sort of problem a few times in the past and it's always worked for him. The almonds soak up the "poison" sitting in there and then the wine aids in flushing it all out. I won't say it made me 100% immediately, but it made an immediate difference. I was/am a new woman. Please please try this quirky solution should you ever find yourself in this situation. It saved me from going home, which I was plotting when Mom and Dad handed over this remedy. I'm so glad I didn't though...too many great things to see!!

But, on to the real bit you're reading this blog for...you probably want to know what we have seen or done. I have to warn that this post is quite depressing. I was so looking forward to these countries and the sickness ruined them for me...I must go back!

We arrived in Bulgaria in a blur, truly. The bus that was supposed to let us out at the city bus terminal at 5 arrived instead at about 3:30 and let us all out in the middle of nowhere! We had no Bulgarian money, and no idea where we were. We did have a reservation at a hostel for the next night but how was that supposed to help us with hours even before sunrise?? Thanks to the kindness of a wonderful Bulgarian woman we were ushered into a cab and taken, what turned out to be only, 2 blocks or so to our hostel. She wouldn't hear of us giving her any money, not that we had any Bulgarian money but still...she was just one of the many angels we've met along our way.

We were in the city of Varna which is on the Black Sea Coast of Bulgaria. It's supposed to be a great tourist town and resort place but we didn't see much of it. We laid low and just wandered the streets. We posted some items home, I'm still saying prayers that they will arrive...who knows how well the Bulgarian post system works. It took us far longer and was much more of a hassle than we'd anticipate that it would be. And finally we made our way to the beaches to touch our feet in the mighty Black Sea. To me, it was just like any other.

We were plotting our best way to get into Romania and discovered that it would help us alot to just stay in a city along the border, Ruse...so that's what we did. We slept at a lovely English Guesthouse there, it was owned by a quirky Brit who thought he was the funniest thing this side of the moon, quite entertaining! And it was there that the first signs of trouble came for me. The next day we were set to take a bus to Bucharest, the capital of Romania, and as we were headed there I felt a funny rumbly in my tummy (Winnie the Pooh would be proud of my lingo now!)...never a good sign!

But we did make the bus and we did make it to the capital city, and might I add with more fresh stamps in the ol' passports! Bucharest is a scary place. It's big and noisy and just doesn't feel right. Maybe it had something to do with all the stories I've heard from others having trouble there or maybe it was my own gut feeling, who knows, but we left there in a hurry. Took the first train out to Brasov, the main city in the Romanian province of Transylvania.

I've been aching to go to Transylvania for a few years now. Finally my chance!! We stayed in a lovely hostel and met heaps of people, but our motivation for seeing "things" was waining fast. We had hit that point that all long term traveler's talk about. It's around the month mark and you suddenly only want to sit around and watch a movie...you don't want to look at your camera or guidebook or think about organizing a tour...NOTHING!

We made ourselves leave the hostel on day one to have a look around Brasov. It is such a beautiful place. Transylvania is said to have the most concentrated amount of Gothic architecture of anywhere in the world. We even got to see the most narrow street in Europe, one no car would ever fit down! It was rather disappointing that most of the tourists sites (two very important churches) were closed and we could not go inside, but on the whole it was a great day.

On day two in Brasov we opted for the 3 castles tour ran by our hostel. We were taken to Rasnov, a ruined fortress sitting high on a transylvanian hill. Then we went to Bran Castle, Dracula's Castle as written in the Bram Stoker novel. However, there was no mention of the blook sucking vampire anywhere except for the capitalizing junk stands at the bottom of the entry road. It was very beautiful but I was hoping more for scary and goosebump producing this time!

Then we went to Peles Castle. I think I'm right in saying it's the most modern castle in Europe. Built only about 100 years ago, the interior is spottlessly beautiful, it was occupied by the last king of Romania, King Carol. There are impressive rooms, large collections of weapons from all over the world (both old and really old!), and the coolest bit to me...an electrically retractable glass ceiling in one room. It was apparently very modern for it's time with running water, electricity, and even central heat and air. If you ever find yourself in Transylvania and can visit only one place you should definitely skip Bran Castle and opt for Peles instead, you won't be disappointed!

After all out castle adventures we headed back to the hostel to retrieve our things and head to the next city in Romania, Sighisoara. I was also excited about this city, but by the time we arrived I was so sick, I was in need of a day in bed. So I never got to see the city, I saw the inside of my hostel and that's all. I laid out for a day of starvation and sickness while Megan went out with a few people we'd met to see the sites. The day after that we had a flight to Budapest. After making our way to the really small airport (2 flights for the entire day!) and being ripped off by a taxi driver in the process we were on our way to a somewhat familiar city and what turned out to be 4 days of nothing but rest.

Budapest has to be one of my favorite cities in Europe. Not just because of the earlier memories it holds for me, going there with my girls in March '07, but it is a truly beautiful place. We'd seen the sites already so we found a hostel and just did nothing but take walks and I began what was ultimately my recovery there. We met some interesting people and went on one less-than-worth-it bus tour but other than that, nothing!

I'm sorry this post is so sporadic. I wanted to catch you up on everything but I guess that everything was more than I thought it'd be. Hopefully the ones to follow for the last bit of our journey (we have about 3 weeks left now!) will be more up-to-date and less chaotic.

Love you all...thanks for reading!

LuLu

Athens, Back to Turkey, and the Joys of Airport Sleepıng...oh, and Istanbul!!!

Hello all!!

I have been trying to stay in touch but this past week has been hard for me. No internet on the ship and when we found it on some islands it was just really expensive. So I wanted to catch you all up on my last week...

Last Saturday we were in Athens, Greece for the day. I find that people aren't lying when they say that's all the time you need there. We went on a cruise-organized tour which was hardly worth the money but we went to get an initial feel for the city. They drove us to the Olympic stadium, built for the first modern day olympic in 1896, it's supposed to be exactly like the ancient stadium. We were taken to the parliament building, where the tomb of the unknown soldier is...and they have a changing of the guard there. In my travels i've seen a fair few guard changings but this one was the best...they do such funny high step moves and wear short skirts...hehe...after that we were taken to the Acropolis. I thought that Athens was the only city with one but acropolis is just a high hill so alot of greek cities have one! From there Megz and I made our own way around, leaving the group. We didn't go up the acropolis to the Parthenon because we didn't feel like we had enough time for that...but we got some cool pictures from around that area. Then we walked into the large Athens flea market for some adventure and found our old trusty McDonald's for lunch...we just needed something familiar that day! Then back to parliament to see the guard changing, wasn't included on the tour and then back to the ship...

I'm sure there are other cool things to see and experience in Athens but we were mostly satisfied with our time there. One interesting thing I did learn is that the Athens metro system is kind of like a museum. Everytime they dig for a new line or a portion of a line they find more buried artifacts...so the digging stops and the archeologists come in...and then when they resume building and make a station some of those artifacts are displayed there...such a cool concept!

After Athens a good number of our friends from the ship disembarked and we were left only with a few familiar faces. The next day we were supposed to visit the island of Kalymnos (sp??) but due to high winds we weren't able to port there so the captain steered us in the direction of Kos again and we spent another lovely day there.

After Kos the next day was Bodrum, Turkey again and our point of disembarkation...We were so excited to get a place to put our stuff and organize our bus to the airport for a really early flight...instead, due to the bus schedule, we opted for sleeping in the airport and, in the end, it wasn't as bad as you would think.

So we hung around Bodrum until the last bus of the day to the airport...we didn't really do a dang thing. We were hoping to the ruins of the Tomb of Mausolus which many people call the Tomb of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Halıcarnassus is the ancient name for the city of Bodrum and Mausolus was the governer of the province...for all you weird knowledge people, like me, you'll be interested to know that this is where we get the modern day word mausoleum. The Tomb of Mausolus is, I am told, the largest tomb ever built...All that's left now is ruins, of course...and unlike the Temple of Artemis they are blocked off and you must pay to enter...it wasn't open the day we were there...I was majorly bummed out!

So skipping ahead again...we did sleep in the airport after making the major trek to get there in the first place. We took turns sleeping while the other read, for us it worked well and in between "shifts" we would each walk around a bit and use the facilities...by sunrise we were delirious and in major need of a pillow but we held out and boarded our plane around 8AM for the hour flight to Istanbul.

It was quite an adventure finding ourselves in Istanbul...it is, afterall, a city of 15 million people. We wanted to stay in a particular area around the Blue Mosque, the area is called Sultanahmet. So we took a bus, then a ferry, then a tram, and then we got ourselves REALLY lost on foot. The other problem was that we hadn't made a reservation for a room so once we did find it we had to weed through the many hostels in that area to find ours...the Orient Hostel!

The people here are quite nice but hardly any native English speakers so we've not made many close friends here. The first day we arrived we slept for a few hours to catch up from the airport experience and then headed out to see what we could see.

Day two: we made our way to the famed Grand Bazaar...and wow...it is grand! It's such a maze and not as cheap as I thought it would be. Then on to the street vendors (man, I've spent alot of money in this city!) where I bought a new, beautiful, scarf...and just in time...right after that we went into the Blue Mosque. It was AMAZING...more beautiful than I could have imagined...and we had an ex-tourguide offer to show us around and explain some things. The building itself is comletely impressive but what interested me more was the history of the place. Click on the attached link to learn more for yourself.

Day three: Megan made her way to Gallipoli, an important area in Turkey for Australian military history...I am embarrassed to say I don't know that much about it. She took an all day tour while I stayed behind in Istanbul to see some more around here. I ended up taking a 4 hour Bosphorus (the river that separates Asian and European Istanbul) Cruise and I was able to see so many palaces up and down the riverbanks. I also saw the miliary hospital that Florence Nightingale worked in.

Day four: Megan was back...yay (I was getting a bit lonely!) and we went with a few people we met to the Prince's Islands, just south of Istanbul. It was oke...a rather lazy and long day. When we returned to the mainland we went over the the Taksim side of town and walked up an enormous hill to the main shopping street, nice but too expensive for me! On the way down we took the short metro down the hill...my guidebook lists it as the oldest subway in the world...pretty cool!!!

Day five, leave day, today!: We woke early to take care of last minute things. Packed up all our stuff again. We headed out to the Grand Bazaar to buy a few things we were longing for and then on to the Egyptian Spice Bazaar for a quick walkthrough. On the way back to the area where we are staying we randomly ran into a girl we spent time with in Selçuk, which was great! After a quick chat with her we went on to the best bit of Istanbul, in my opinion! The Aya Sofia!!!

The actual name is the Hagia Sophia (not sure why we call it differently...). It is the oldest church I've ever been in. Not sure when the original church was built but the one that still stands today was built around the year 532AD. Commissioned by the emperor Justinian, the church was originally Christian but fell to the Muslims in 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans. Back in the 30s it was converted from a mosque to a museum and many restorations have taken place to bring out the beautiful mosaics from its Christian past. It is the most impressive thing I've seen in all of Turkey and I can say without a doubt the most wonderful church I've ever been in. The mix of its past over its 1500+ year life span is amazing to see.

Well...that is all for now from me. We board a bus for Bulgaria in just a few hours. The bus ride to Varna, a city on the Black Sea, takes 11 hours so we'll be on overnight. Unfortunately the computer I'm using now won't work fast enough for me to upload all my pictures for this post. You'll have to check back later to see them all...sorry!

Hope this finds you well...love you all!!

LuLu