You can't go back to Constantinople...

...but you can go to Istanbul, which is exactly what I did after Hungary. It's an intriguing city, I must say. Just taking a cab ride around town, you're constantly taking in views of enormous mosques perched on various hillsides. The Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia (although it is no longer used as a mosque) are the most famous/grand of these. The city is also littered with various ancient buildings and relics, including the cistern and hippodrome. But hey, you can read about all that stuff in any Turkey travel brochure, so I figure I'll try to provide some alternative perspectives:

FOOD: Believe it or not, the food I enjoyed most in Istanbul was...the ice cream. Or dondurma as they call it there. You can get it from typically cheeky vendors at sidewalk stalls all over the place. The interesting thing about dondurma is that it has a sticky, almost chewy texture to it that is unlike any ice cream I've tasted previously. These physical properties enable the vendor to perform all kinds of tricks with the ice cream, including swinging huge chunks of it through the air with their serving/stirring/kneading paddles and twirling ice cream cones around as tourists try in vain to grab for the cone. Granted, this routine gets old after a couple tries, but the ice cream still tastes good.

While I'm still on the topic of food, let me let you in on a discovery I made in Istanbul that shocked me to the core. A little background: In Europe, it is possible to get a Turkish-style snack known as a doner kebab in just about any city, in any country. A doner kebab is essentially some gyro- or shoarma-like meat between two pieces of bread with lettuce, tomato, onions, and various sauces. They are generally cheap and very tasty, which means that I ate a lot of them. Perhaps too many. Anyways, once I realized that doner kebabs had infiltrated every corner of Europe, I decided to find out which region produced the best ones. So, in every city I visited, I resolved to try a local doner kebab, subjecting them to the most rigorous quality criteria. Before I came to Turkey, Berlin was in possession of the "World's Best Doner Kebab" title belt. The one I had there was meaty, juicy, saucy and, perhaps most importantly, huge. But this was no surprise to me...I believe that Berlin actually has the 4th highest Turkish population of any city in the world, being bested only by Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir. So it figures that Berliners could turn out a mean doner kebab. But it was my assumption that the creme de la creme of doner kebabs was to be found in Istanbul. I mean, it's a Turkish food, right? Well, it turns out that I was horribly mistaken. I gave Turkey several chances to prove itself worthy of the doner kebab crown, and it failed miserably on every try. The Turkish doner kebab, I found, was basically the antithesis of the Berlin version: small, dry, and just not very tasty. People have since told me that the doner kebab was actually invented in Berlin, that the concept of putting kebab meat between two slices of bread had previously not existed in Turkey. Well, this may be the case, but I still don't think this excuses such a terrible all-around showing. C'mon, Turkey! Let's get with the program!

THE BUS RIDE FROM HELL: Christ, just writing about this unfortunate story makes me cringe. I decided to take a brief two-day detour from Istanbul to the Kappadokya region, known for it's impressive "moonscape" geological formations. The 11-hour bus ride out there was pleasant enough, and I enjoyed my stay while I was there. The night bus back to Istanbul, however, was a complete nightmare. It started with my assigned seat: in the very back row, where they try to squeeze 5 seats in where there should normally be 4. On top of that, they put some fat Turkish guy next to me, who was so corpulent that there was essentially no way he could sit without him resting his sweaty elbow on my chest. Very, very uncomfortable. By around 2 in the morning, I had decided just to give up trying to sleep, although I drifted off eventually. When I woke up (around 6 AM), I had, shall we say, a "gut feeling" that caused me great alarm. Yes, folks, it was the onset of The Shits. Something I had eaten back in Kappadokya (probably one of those damn doner kebabs) was not agreeing with me. As my old boss Alan would have said, it was fighting back. With a vengeance. Normally this would not be a huge issue, except for the fact that this bus didn't have any sort of a toilet on board. So I went up to the driver and asked him to pull over at his earliest convenience. Almost as soon as I said this, traffic on the freeway began to slow down to a crawl. A traffic jam. (I later discovered that this was the result of a truck overturning several KM up the road). My worst fears had been realized. Total gridlock, and I had nowhere to go. It was becoming increasingly difficult for me to avert disaster, with "urges" coming in waves that had me straining with all my might. I think I came close to fainting at one point. It got so bad that I actually asked the bus driver to just open the door so I could go over to the side of the road and do my business. Think about that for a moment. I was so incredibly distressed that I was actually entertaining the thought, nay, begging for the opportunity to drop trou and empty my bowels in front of hundreds of horrified onlookers. Well, by some miracle I was able to make it through the traffic jam to the next rest stop, at which point I sprinted to the men's room only to find both stalls occupied. So I just went next door to the women's bathroom. Perhaps this might be labeled "culturally insensitive" in a country where Islam is practiced by 90% of the populace, but if given the choice between cultural insensitivity and colonic explosivity, I'll take the former every time.

Alright, I'll be honest with you: After spending a good chunk of time writing this post up to this point, I really don't feel like writing any more. Not that I didn't have a great time in Turkey, of course. If you want the whole story, you can always ask me when I get home.

Hungary Redux

Once again, I have done a God-awful job of posting regularly, so I'm just going to do a brief recap of my Hungarian travel experience. My time in that country was divided between two cities: Budapest and Pecs (pronounced "paych"). I spent about 7 days in Budapest and 2 days in Pecs.

With Budapest, it was great to spend a good chunk of time in one place and really get to know the city. I found that it had fewer communist-era leftovers than Prague, but it seemed to have an intriguing split personality of sorts. Depending on what neighborhood you were in, you could definitely see whether the people there had vigorously embraced the full-throttle capitalism of the 90s, or lagged behind, stuck in the "old ways." I saw a surprising number of Ferraris and Lamborghinis while I was there.

Budapest was also special for me because I got to CouchSurf with not one, not two, but THREE different Budapesters! One of the things I like most about CouchSurfing is that every time I stay with a local somewhere, I end up doing things that I would never have even thought to do otherwise. For example, on my first night I went with my host to what was probably the most interesting bar I have ever visited. It was housed in what was essentially an abandoned, gutted factory complex. The bar itself was in the courtyard, but if you felt so inspired, you could freely wander through the buildings, maneuvering in darkness up stairways and around piles of trash. At one point we ended up on top of one of the highest buildings, looking down on the bar bustle below. Unrefined, perhaps, but definitely unique.

With another host, I went to a local cafeteria that served up traditional homestyle Hungarian food. Basically, Budapest's version of Boston Market. Budapest Market, perhaps? Hungarian cuisine is typically very rich, very hearty, full of paprika, and served in very large portions. Some people say that every Hungarian recipe begins by sauteeing onions in butter. Which may be true. Still, very tasty and very filling. Afterwards, we went to a local bar which happened to be doing a karaoke night. Hungarian karaoke is, for those who have not experienced it, a very interesting sight to behold. Probably 75% of the songs sung were Hungarian rock 'n' roll tunes, influenced heavily by Elvis, Chuck Berry, and other early rockers. I asked my host for a brief synopsis of the lyrical content, which was somewhere along the lines of "I love my girl, she is so beautiful, we have so much fun together, blah blah blah..." So nothing revolutionary, but it definitely inspires Hungarians to get on stage and make fools of themselves.

Pecs was a big change of pace from Budapest. It's basically a rural outpost with some interesting history (it was once an Ottoman stronghold), one of Hungary's universities, and a cute, squeaky-clean town center. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have gone there if it weren't for the fact that I was meeting my friend Anand (of Utrecht fame) and his girlfriend Tammy there. A particularly interesting (if somewhat harrowing) aspect of my visit was my accommodation. I ended up staying in one of the town's university dormitories, as most of the actual students were on summer holiday. The room itself was nice enough...it actually reminded me a lot of Liggett 2, my freshman dorm floor. Things took a turn for the worst when I visited the bathrooms. As far as I could tell, they hadn't been cleaned since the students had left in the spring. One of the stalls looked as though a stick of shit dynamite had been placed in the toilet and detonated, creating a scene that would have brough a tear to Jackson Pollock's eye. So basically, I resolved to take care of all my bodily functions in town. On the bright side, I only paid $5 per night for the bed. Maybe that's a fair tradeoff.

So that was Hungary, in a very tiny nutshell. After that, I flew from Budapest to...Istanbul! Which takes me to my next post...