Update for those on their seat's edge waiting for it..

Haven't been up to a whole lot since getting back from Istanbul. In fact the last three weeks have been more or less a blur. I've been spending a lot of time with Rachel, watched a lot of movies and TV, have been pretty lazy. Haven't even taken the camera out since I got back I don't think... I resolve to change that in the next few days though.

This past weekend was moderately eventful. On friday night, Rachel and I went to her friends place for a goodbye party. I got to drive Rachel's car there so that was very exciting for me! This party turned into a Zurich excursion that got messy pretty quickly. Ended up with the friend's camera getting lost and us leaving zurich at about 5AM. We crashed on an air mattress and made it home at about 2PM on saturday. That night, I had my first fondue with Dave and Olivia. It was pretty good but I was absolutely dead from the night before so I took a nap. That evening Rachel and I went to a really cool circus in Wettingen (just across the Limmat from Baden). Not an animal circus mind you, more of an acrobatics thing like Cirque du Soleil (on an admittedly lower budget). Sunday, we all went over to the Berg and hung out with Rachel Sondergaard and Olivia and Chris and Rachel Wong (too many Rachels) and Dave and Bruce. That was fun. Olivia cooked us a nice vegetarian stir-fry and we played what is quite possibly the funniest game in the world: telephone pictionary!

This week we have some halloween activities arranged but I'll comment on them once they've happened in a future post.

Isanbul: Europe and Asia (Like Europe, only Asianyer...)

This past weekend, that of both my birthday and Canadian Thanksgiving, I ventured to Istanbul with Dave, Rachel, Olivia, Shannon, Bianca, Steve and Caitlin. This was my first time travelling to a (predominantly) Muslim country and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Going in I was sure that I would be forced to have a 'dry' birthday because of Muslim laws against drinking. Of course, it turns out that Turkey is a quite secular country and getting a beer or wine wasn't difficult outside of a few restaurants. Not that we abused this. I think I had 3 beers all weekend...

Some other things that made Istanbul a lot different than anywhere else I've been include the frequent call to prayer blasted from each of the numerous mosques in the city (which took turns singing verses of prayer resulting in an experience reminiscent of a singing duel but was more likely out of respect...) , the predominance of muslim dress (particularly for the women), the ability to haggle, and the sheer number of doner places (I didn't realize how prevelant this type of cuisine really was!).

We arrived at the early hour of about 02:30 and, after paying an extortionate 45Eur for a visa (thank YOU Canada for that one..) we made it though passport control and onto our hostel shuttle by about 03:30 and to the hostel by 04:00.

Got a good 5hrs of sleep and then crawled to the roof of our hostel for a nice Turkish breakfast of bread, cheese, tomatoes, cucumber, olives, cereal and condiments (this would be further expanded to include hard-boiled eggs and yoghurt in the following days). The roof afforded a nice view of the Golden horn and, in the distance, the Bosphorus Strait. We could also see the minarets of the Hagia Sofia mosque. After breakfast, we rendezvoused (Sp?) with the 3 who had been staying elsewhere and walked down to the water's edge. Here we admired the water, marvelled at the number of ships going by, watched men fish, and Steve stuck his head in a hole. We walked along the water and eventually headed inland to explore some Palacial Tea Gardens. At the entrance to these gardens, we were stopped by a police car full of officers who rolled down their window and proceeded to shake our hands and say "Salam" or some such thing. I'm fairly certain they only shook Dave and my hands because we happened to be bordering a group of girls.. Anyway, turns out this tea garden happened to flank Topkapi Palace which, I guess, is pretty signifcant. We paid some money to go in and it was actually pretty cool. Lots of neat muslim architecture and a good bit of history as well. Notable points include the large Harem and a museum featuring Moses' (the Moses') staff (with which he led the jews out of egypt) and other various religious artifacts.

After walking around the palace for a few hours we got pretty hungry and decided to leg it to the nearest Kebap place. We ended up being enticed to enter the sit-down portion of a fast food place and ended up pretty disappointed with our small meals. Also, turns out that Ayran, turkish yoghurt drink, isn't very good. From here we decided to check out the famous Grand Bazaar. It is an extraordinarily huge place in which it is almost impossible to not get lost because all of the winding, crisscrossing roads look exactly the same, full of touristy merch and crap you wouldn't give to your worst enemy. Inevitably, we all got split up and elected to meet in a specified location an hour and a half later. This was far too much time for Dave and I as we spent the entire time not buying anything and mostly just trying to find the exit. A cool experience though, certainly. We left the bazaar and, on our way to finding dinner, decided to check out the famous Blue Mosque. It was my first time going inside a mosque and to be honest I thought it was pretty cool (compared to churches anyway). The first thing one notices - after they get over having to remove their footwear and, if they are female, covering their head - is the distinct lack of stuff in there. There is a far wall with, for lack of knowing the proper word, an altar of sorts towards which prayer is done. Other than that, the decorated ceiling and the columns that supported the roof, there was a carpeted floor and that was it. Certainly a much different experience from churches that tend to be adorned with chairs, booths, ornaments, statues and so on. I quite liked it. It was very peaceful and, despite the sheer magnitude and impressiveness of the place, seemingly humble in a way.. I can't really explain.. Anyway, we had to go grab some eats afterwards and we went to a place recommended by Caitlin's guide book: Doy Doy. Had a great chicken kebap. Its kind of strange eating what you'd usually have as fast food in a sit-down restaurant arranged more like a meal than like a convenient snack.

Day 2 we elected to get on a boat and have a quick tour of the bosphorus. This was pretty neat. After being haggled with to convince us to choose his tour, the operator crammed us onto his already completely full van giving us need to stand (and in my case fall all over the place) for the short but uncomfortable ride to the boat. We snagged some dope seats at the bow though so we had a good spot for taking pics. The boat cruised us on over to the Asian side of Istanbul (I've been to Asia - woo!) where we had a whopping 30 minutes to explore. A good 10 of that was used to get out money.. We then hopped back on the boat and headed back to Europe. Tim, an Australian guy sharing our room at the hostel, then led us to the famous Spice market where, once again we all got split up. I stuck with Tim and we ended up getting some great Lamb kebaps, some great baklava, we found an exotic pet section of the bazaar featuring a toucan, turtles, peacocks, lizards and leaches, I bought a Kilo of turkish delight and we wandered into some sketchy back alleys. We regrouped with the rest an hour or so later at which point Tim took off. The rest of us headed back to the hostel for a bit of a rest and to strategize for the following day. This was followed by dinner at a charming restaurant, again recommended by the guide book, in which the waiters all wore brightly colored bowling shirts and tried to teach us Turkish. After this we ended up heading up to the roof, getting some drinks, playing some games and enjoying some Narghile.

Sunday was my birthday! However, I can honestly say it was the least birthday like birthday I've ever had for a variety of reasons. First, clearly my family was nowhere to be seen. Second, I was in Turkey. Then of course, no presents (while I was there)! Ok, that sounds kinda like something a spoiled kid would say but come on, who doesn't like to open presents on their birthday? Of course, my friends acknowledged the occasion and gave me a hushed "happy birthday" in unison during breakfast. They also let me choose the restaurant for dinner (as long as it was Doy Doy haha) and Dave bought me a beer at the end of the day.

For the course of the day, though, we had decided to take a ferry to the Prince's Island. Here we rented some bikes and rode around the entire thing in the course of a few hours. The island is supposed to be free of motorized vehicles (though we definately saw a big truck and at least one motorcycle) and as such the main forms of locomotion are shoddy, falling apart bicycles and horse-drawn carriages. The latter was somewhat perplexing as the horses were clearly malnourished and overworked but there was an abundance of faeces everywhere... We had hoped that being on an island we'd be able to locate and enjoy a beach. Unfortunately that was not the case. Instead we found a pile of garbage and a concrete pad that some fat guy was lazing around on by the water that one was expected to pay 20YTL to enjoy... We ended up sitting on some rocks near the harbor and lazing away some time instead.. Our boat back to the mainland came at around 6PM and I slept the entire way back. I would not be in the least surprised if there were some embarassing photos of me doing just that floating around somewhere... Upon return to Istanbul we, as I mentioned earlier, went back to Doy Doy and had a huge meal followed by dessert and tea in their cushion room. Soo comfy! Oh, and I had these Rum Baba thingies for dessert which were essentially turkish Galub jamun! mmmm! Went back to the hostel to hang out before everyone except Dave and I had to head to the airport to go home.

Dave and I had booked another room for our last stay and it ended up being one in which we had to share a double bed. This wasn't bad at all, turns out we're both very good at avoiding uncomfortable contact. We checked out the next morning, grabbed breakfast, left our luggage there and headed out to do some more exploring. We went into the Basilica Cistern, a big underground water storage facility, and that was pretty cool. There was a column that was different than all the others for some reason and had a hole into which tourists would insert their thumb and rotate their hands around. There was no description or explanation of why this was being done so, naturally, Dave and I both did it as well. There were also two columns propped up by rocks in the shape of Medusa's head. That was neat. I was glad I didn't turn to stone though.

The order of events in my mind for the rest of the day is a bit shaky (we did a lot of aimless wandering) so I'll just list of the things we did. We wandered really far out of the tourist area and found a restaurant catering purely to locals where we got an ENOURMOUS meal for just 7YTL each that was probably the best we'd had the entire trip. We went to the spice market again and I got some stringy turkish ice cream. We went to a turkish barber, got a shave, a trim, an ear cleaning and had my ear set on fire. We went back to the spice market for dinner. We sat on some benches between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia and listened to the call to prayer and an arabic guy with a guitar singing english and french pop songs while a 6 year old girl tried to sell me water. We had some shisha. We talked for a long time with an american guy at our hostel named Ryan. I ate waaay to many nuts. We took a shuttle to the airport at 00:20 and fell asleep despite nearly dying several times. We slept in several parks. We slept in the airport. We fought our way onto the plane past a bunch of impatient, selfish, arrogant turks. We slept on the plane. We got back to Switzerland at 5:30. We got back to baden at 7:30. I went to bed. I went to work at 10:00. I had a terrible day at work I was so tired. Dave worked the whole day then went home and was sick the next day and the day after that and the day after that.

So yeah, that pretty much summarizes my Turkey trip. I had a really good time and it was definately one of the more unique places I've been!

Munich Oktoberfest: Day Man, Fighter of the Night Man, Champion of the Sun, Master of Karate and Friendship for Everyone

What a weekend. So much fun.

We took the train to Munich on Thursday night. Everyone stocked up on some 'rail beers' before we left and we enjoyed those over the course of the ride. Some people (Bruce and Mike) got waaay too drunk. We arrived in Munich and took a tram to our campground. After checking in, we set up our 3 tents and chilled out for a bit before hitting the hay. Ohh yeah, and Holly showed up!

We got up at around 8 on friday. By the time everyone had gotten organized and we managed to leave and take a tram and figure out how to get to the grounds, we arrived at Oktoberfest 2009 at around 10. First order of business was to grab some breakfast, which, being at Oktoberfest, was inevitably a giant Pretzel. We then headed into the Hofbrau tent and found a table. We had to wait a little while before the beer service began, but when it did it was greeted by enthusiastic applause from the entire tent. By the way, these tents are huge. Each one probably holds over 1000 people.

 

 

So, we began drinking at around 10. We spent our time in the tent singing, playing cards, talking, eating laughing - it was great. 4 and a half hours and 4L of (7%) beer later, we made our way out of the tent. Chris and I went to get bratwurst. I dropped mine on the floor (and followed this with a few expletives), picked it up and put it back on my bun, disappointed but committed to this sausage. The cook at the stall, seeing this, promptly stole back my sausage, said something along the lines of "NOT IN DEUTCHLAND" and game me another one free of charge. Good guy, always liked him.

Upon finishing my food, Miller and I made a mad dash for a ride. We bought tickets, strapped ourselves in, and started spinning rapidly. The only other people on the ride were a grandpa and his two grandkids as well as two 14year old looking girls. All of them were quite amused by me and Mike as we laughed our heads off the entire time. Interestingly, Mike's iPhone flew out of his pocket, off the ride and across the cement ground. Fortunately it was picked up by a carny and it wasn't even damaged! Next stop was a rollercoaster. Mike has a hillarious video of it in which all you can here is our histerical screaming. This is made funnier by the fact that it was possibly the most tame rollercoaster ever....

The rest of the day was spent wandering around the fairgrounds (very comparable to the stampede grounds). We eventually had enough and decided to head back to camp. It was about 5 when we got there and I decided to take a little nap. I woke up from that nap 3 hours later! We spent the rest of the evening playing some board games and hanging out by the fire. Eventually went to bed again.

Saturday, again woke up around 8 and took our time getting to the festival. Decided to visit another beer tent, not as good beer as the first one, but interstingly decorated. The highlight of this tent was when the polka band marched (yes marched) onto their stage each with a litre of beer in their hand. They then proceeded to chug the entire thing in synchrony. Pretty impressive! We also got some tasty food at that tent.. We were forced to leave because the reservations began at noon (and clearly we didn't have one) so we wandered around, did some more rides, got some more food (ate half a duck with Steve Paige - soo good) and eventually got tired around 2PM. This was about the same time Bianca decided to show up. Holly stayed with her and we didn't see them again until that night (more on that later). The rest of us headed to Munich's english gardens where we chilled out and napped for a bit. We then attempted to visit the famous Hofbrau Haus (a beer hall) but it was too busy so we went to a traditional Bavarian restaurant across the street.

 

Had delicious roast pork and delicious Augustina beer. MMM. Headed back to the tent and we proceeded to play a hillarious game called telephone pictionary. I believe Steve Paige's blog'll have some evidence of what that turned into so feel free to link there (he's under followers). Eventually got tired and went to bed. I made the terrific decision of buying earplugs but it didn't stop me from hearing Bianca shout "I'M SOOO DRUNK! WHO WANTS TO SLEEP WITH BIANCA?" when she arrived back. She proceeded to fall into our tent, taking out the fly and leaving the door open ALL NIGHT. So cold!

The next day we had to check out of the campground, pack up and move along. We decided to do a free walking tour of Munich so went looking for that. It was pretty cool, very informative but we'd just walked pretty much the entire thing the previous night (albeit drunk). This tour was followed by cheap delicious beer and bottomless Bavarian stew. This, believe it or not, was then followed by another (successful) attempt at entering the Hofbrau Haus.

I got their dark beer. It was glorious. Very very tasty. We killed the rest of the day here, singing lots of drinking songs very enthusiastically. Apparently some Asian tourists were impressed enough to snap some pictures! After this we had to head to our train home. Along the way, Steve Paige fell flat on his face walking down the street and Bruce crushed a lady falling down the escalator. On the train, Steve puked everywhere too. Messy, messy, messy! Still, totally worth it! A great trip!