Author: wmw752

Istanbul –

The train whistle blew, and we knew it was time to get up as we approached the train station in Istanbul. It was a neat experience to watch the steam evaporate off the fields as the sun was coming up.

We got into the station, and it was pure madness at 8:00 am. We needed to use the metro to continue to our destination, but we came to find out you could only purchase a metro pass with Turkish lira. Coming from Bulgaria didn’t allow for this, and the closest atm was at least 500 meters away. With the help with directions from the local security guards, we hoofed it up the hill to the atm.On the way back down to station, we decided to try our first official cup of Turkish coffee and a pastry.

After we purchased our Istanbul cards (definitely recommend for using any public transportation in Istanbul. Can be loaded and reloaded with money to be used for buses, ferries, trains, trams, metro, etc.), and we made it to Tarik’s home in the Göztepe area. It was not only a family home, but we came to find out we were in the midst of a international chess competitor and teacher! The bottom floor was entirely devoted to teaching and playing chess!

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Sarajevo – Never Forget

For this chapter I would like to re-iterate my phrase from my last post in that “The more I see, the less I know.” Sarajevo is the very manifestation of that phrase for me. This city, the capital of BiH, is not large by comparison for capital cities with a population of less than 300,000 people. However, it is full of history and has a strong presence in the music and other art forms.

Also, it’s really interesting because of the heterogeneous cultural and religious mixture of its inhabitants all living amongst each other. It’s actually one of the only places in the world where you can find a mosque, Catholic church, Orthodox church, and synagogue all within a few hundred meters of each other. There’s also many influences from different occupational periods of the area including Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian occupations that it is a melting pot of different physical traits too ranging from blue eyes and red hair to olive skin, dark hair and eyes. Plus, it’s quite common that people of different practicing religions marry and will adopt both sets of practices or observations such as Christmas mass, Hanukkah, or Ramadan. Pretty cool!

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Croatia – Zagreb and Plitvice

It was interesting getting to Croatia from Lake Balaton in Hungary. It was very much so “planes, trains, and automobiles”, minus the plane part, sub in an 8 minute ferry ride to take you from one shore to the other, a decent two mile walk with fully loaded packs, two buses, and taxi ride. We even had a border control stop entering Croatia where the entire bus had to deboard the bus, supply passports and stand nervously for them to be returned (which they were). This is the zest of adventure, am I right?

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