Recent Travels

Hello, dear readers! By popular demand (okay, an email from my mom) I’m finally going to give a long overdue account of my recent travels in Istanbul and Brasov, Romania, as well as an update on my recent Moldovan adventures. Okay, here goes:

ISTANBUL

Before entering Peace Corps, this city had no more significance for me than being the subject of a They Might Be Giants song, but during my service here it has been a popular travel spot for many of my colleagues. That’s definitely one plus of living in Eastern Europe: suddenly I’m within short and affordable distance of a number of places I never would have visited while living in the US. Hopefully I’ll make it to Bulgaria and Russia before my time here is up, and a weekend to Lvov or Kiev in the Ukraine should be coming up in the near future if the weather doesn’t get too cold.

But I digress. How was Istanbul? I went with my dad and Nic in mid-October, probably missing the ideal time to visit the city by a few weeks but still enjoying beautiful sunny weather the first few days of our trip. What were my impressions of the city? First, I suppose because of the way I’d thought of the city back when hearing references to it in the US, and from what I read in travel guides, I was surprised by how very European it felt, especially when venturing out of the mosque-heavy tourist area of Sultanhamet. Good mass transit, friendly people, lovely buildings everywhere, great shopping. I also noted that in contrast to stray-dog-populated Moldova, Istanbul had cats everywhere, but they looked healthy and happy and people were nice to them. A fat orange tabby that reminded me of my beloved Zeus was even lounging languorously in the Aya Sofya -- this, I thought, is my kind of city. And there was sushi! And we found a Thai restaurant!

These last two likely would have been impossible without the help of my mom’s former exchange student, Batu, who lived with her in Washougal last year and is now back home in Istanbul. Our fabulous teenage guide gave us a grand tour, helped my dad get a great bargain on a carpet, found us restaurants, and took us to play backgammon, smoke nargileh and drink strong little cups of Turkish coffee at his favorite hole-in-the-wall café. One night we were even treated to a post-Ramadan feast at his family’s home prepared by his lovely mom: bread with sweet butter and honeycomb, stuffed peppers, steak, baklava and baked quince stuffed with sour apple and topped with more sweet butter. (It never would have occurred to me to combine these things, but the result was fantastic. Where can I find that special butter stuff?)

So what is there to see in Istanbul? We hit up the most well-known tourist spots, most of which were a short walk away from our hotel in Sultanhamet, including the Hagia Sofya, the underground cistern, and the Blue Mosque. The Hagia Sofya was enormous and gilded and beautiful, a former mosque turned into Christian church and now museum. The cistern, spanning several city blocks underground, was dark and dank, with huge koi swimming in the pool of water running beneath the walkways, carved stone pillars and two massive stone Medusa heads (turned upside down, they say, to decrease the power of her deadly glance). Then there was the Blue Mosque. I don’t know what is to blame, the excessive praises of my Lonely Planet guide, the unexpected view obstruction of thousands of wires suspending huge, low-hanging chandeliers from the ceiling, or being kind of blasé about mosques after a week in a city filled with them, but I found myself underwhelmed by the Blue Mosque once I finally made my way inside. My dad, meanwhile, made a solo venture to Topkapi Palace (money running low, I’d decided to skip this one) and reported that he could have thought of better ways to spend that 15 or so Euro.

So what about those famous markets? Well, similar to our finding with the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar proved to be less grand than a tourist trap, with designer knock-off handbags, belly dancing costumes and evil eye emblazoned merchandise draped on every surface. We’d already shopped around a bit, so one glance at the prices in the bazaar told us we’d best wander right back on out to less chaotic and more affordable shopping areas. Luckily, the spice market was just that! While certainly still touristy, it was impossible not to be taken in by the tables piled with colorful spices, teas, and sweets, and the stalls strung with dried vegetables.

What else…ah yes, the food. Well, bless little Istanbul’s heart for having a huge and readily available selection of fast food throughout the city. And when I say fast food, I’m not talking about McDonalds! Pistachio and walnut baklava, honey-soaked cake layered with sweet butter, cheap kebaps, vendors selling roast chestnuts, one lira glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice, and grilled fish sandwiches at the waterfront. Our stay in Istanbul was a brief few days but I nevertheless managed to put away, say, 3 kilos of baklava, and to the utter dismay of my companions, my enthusiasm for the sticky little nuggets of heaven was just as great the day we left as when we arrived. (By the end of the trip I was joking that the calls to prayer over loudspeaker in the city each day were Bridgett’s calls to baklava.) Yum, yum, yum. We spent one pleasant night just meandering along the waterfront, stopping at various food kiosks for baklava and cheap kebaps and kefir (a sour yoghurt drink that they also enjoy in Moldova) and then made our way across the Galata bridge, peeking in the many bars located on its lower level and watching as small wriggling fish were drawn up out of the water on poles held by fishermen standing on the bridge’s upper level. Fisherman standing on Istanbul’s several bridges are a constant sight. Finally after much deliberation we popped into one bar to try Turkey’s national liquor, a sweet anise-flavored beverage called raki that is served mixed with carbonated water, before heading off to a little gelato shop I’d spotted the day before that made the most heavenly banana and chocolate gelatos.

And that, folks, is Istanbul.

BRASOV (Brah-shov), ROMANIA

A fellow PCV who was born on Halloween and adores the holiday invited several of us on a whirlwind trip to Brasov, in Transylvania, to celebrate the holiday and his birthday and attend a knighting ceremony. We left Chisinau after dark to embark on a 10 hour bus ride that plopped us down at the Brasov bus station, sleep-deprived and freezing our behinds off, at about 5 in the morning. Thankfully a series of very friendly and helpful bus drivers, passengers, and strangers on the streets helped us find our hostel, where the hostel hostess took pity on us and the long wait until our reserved rooms were available and put us up in a large attic room with a number of mattresses set up on its floor. Ah sleep, precious sleep!

We only spent two days in Brasov, but they were jam-packed. Day one we wandered around the quaint old city square, saw the Biserica Neagra (Black Church), and then took a bus to the nearby town of Bran to visit "Dracula's castle" which was actually used up until 1948 by Romanian royalty. We had a wonderful lunch of Romania's national dish, mamaliga,with the classic accompanimentsof beef, sour cream, and grated brinza, and partook in the restaurant's house wine, then bought a special local snack at a kiosk outside on our way to the castle. This treat, which I unfortunately forgot the name of, is made by winding long strips of dough around a conical metal rod, rolling the dough in sugar, and then turning it slowly over a bed of hot coals until dough turns golden and the sugar melts into a glassy coating, after which is is dusted with any of several toppings: cinnamon, cocoa, nuts.

After touring the castle we decided to hike up the hill standing opposite the castle, me hoping for a good vantage point from which to look at the distant mountains after too many months living in a flat country. We trudged up the hillside deep with fallen orange leaves, stopping once at the top to take a nap. Beautiful.

That night we returned to our hostel (shout out to the Rolling Stone! the staff were fantastic) where, along with our many fellow American PCVs and hostel stayers, and even a handful of volunteers from PC Macedonia (go figure) we got into our costumes, imbibed of the cheapest local liquor, and headed out into the night to take over karaoke night* at a local Irish pub* in a country where Halloween* isn’t celebrated. I wore the kind of dress I’d always dreamed of having as a kid, poofy and corseted like something out of Gone With the Wind, which I’d paid probably too much to rent back in Balti but figured was worth it for a once in a lifetime occasion. I will say one thing, though: don’t drink too much (of anything) while wearing a corset. There’s nowhere for it to go!

[***How is this for globalization?]
The locals seemed entertained by our rowdy group, or at the very least tolerant, and many of the Romanians present surprised me with their command of American hits during karaoke. As for us, we did a pretty impressive rendition of the Romanian “happy birthday” song for our friend Rok. (Mults an treasca, mults an treasca, la mults an…)

The next day was our last in Brasov, so we did the only natural thing and visited the local KFC, which I was heart broken to find didn’t sell biscuits! The outrage! Didn’t they know that I’d had elaborate biscuit and honey related fantasies ever since spying the restaurant in the city square the day before? What, KFC headquarters, you don’t think Romanians are ready for biscuits? You think wrong! Bah!

After the no biscuit debacle we wandered from the center of Brasov to a gondola which took us up to the top of the mountain overlooking the city on which a Hollywood-esque “Brasov” sign sits. The view was amazing, from the little red tiled roofs of the buildings in the old city center below to the mountains peeking from clouds around us.

Then, almost as soon as we had arrived, it was time for another 10 hour stint on the bus, this time heading home. I tried to entertain myself by “reading” Romanian Maxim (I find it’s best to stay away from high brow stuff when real distraction is needed) and then spent the next 9.5 hours making every possible human pretzel formation while trying to get comfortable in my bus seat.

And that, folks, is Brasov.