Mom Says I’m Running Away

Day: 29

So I was a naysayer…

I though it would be interesting to see this eclipse, but I never imagined something like this. It was amazing, the world went completely black and you could stare strait at the sun and see this brilliant circular flare, my pictures can never do it justice, even if I had the $7,000 lens needed to get the greatest picture. I’ll tell you now, if you ever get a chance to see this celestial event I suggest you do your damnedest to get there. I’m sorry I don’t have the technical know-how to get you all better pictures but you can try NASA’s website. I even kind of understand the “Eclipse-Chasers” that I gave such a hard time to yesterday.

Our bus left the hostel at 11am and after a 45minute ride and a 20 minute hike we (8 of us, me being the only American) made it to the Chimera (see yesterday for details) and grabbed a great spot under a tree to wait for the moon to start to block out the sun. It slowly moved over the course of an hour and then for 3 ½ minutes the entire world went dark and all anyone could look at was the sun. I don’t know about spiritual, but it was a hell of a thrill, it got every ones adrenaline pumping and smiles on the faces of every single person around. I could image nothing like it until I saw it for the first time, every minute of “Traveling Hell” was worth it for that short pay off.

At 3:30pm the bus took us back to the treehouses and I went to work trying to see what kind of pictures I got (the best of anyone around here, but still disappointing to me), and get a couple of entries for my blog ready.

I have decided to head out tomorrow on a three-night cruise around the southern coast of Turkey. It stops on all kinds of islands, towns and historic sights, so I hope these pictures will suffice for those of you disappointed in missing the Greek islands. I got a great deal to because they need to fill the boat last minute and they gave me the cruise for about 40 percent less than what a couple of others around here paid, but as a courtesy to the tour company they asked that I not tell the other passengers I paid only 150 lire (about $110) instead of the 150 Euro (about $180) they paid. If that is the only obstacle to getting a great deal, I can live with keeping my mouth shut (except on the world wide web). I leave tomorrow in the morning and I doubt the boat will have a connection so you all will be without new entries for the next 3 or 4 days. Sunday afternoon I should be in a city and should be able to get up the missing entries for the whole cruise and all the pictures I have backed up since Athens. If you really need more Rob, try going back and read up on any entries you may have skipped or skimmed over, and leave me comments on them to keep me motivated.

Day: 28

Well, now that I actually have sunblock and the fact that I was slightly hungover I decided I’d just take it easy and walk down to the beach, sit in the sun and listen to music. A bold plan, but one I thought I might manage to carry out. By the time I was up, had eaten and omelet, and packed my bag with my towel, my camera and a bottle of water it was near 11am. I made a call to Aaron and spent about 15 minutes on the phone just talking about everything in life going on for each of us. When my card ran out I was just letting him know that Turkey is actually on the Asian continent, he had made a reference to it being in Europe. I realized during this conversation that Aaron was one of the people I am beginning to miss.

I took my time leisurely strolling down to the beach where I scoped out a prime spot of beachfront, a small strip of land between the Mediterranean and the river that flowed into it. The sound of the rushing water was brilliant. I spent a couple of hours napping, reading Huck Finn (which I haven’t made much progress on lately), listening to Jimmy Buffet and George Strait, taking a few pictures, and getting a little sun. This has been one of the nicest days, weather-wise, that I’ve had so far in my World Tour.

I made it back to my Treehouse just in time to spend about 40 frustratingly slow minutes on the internet before they closed for a couple of hours. After 40 minutes all I had accomplished was to get my blog up with no pictures, and check on the comments you have all left me recently (and yes, I do read everyone, even if I don’t get a chance to respond personally to each). Freaking dialup. It may be a few more days before I can get everything up, but I do have the pictures ready and I will upload everything since Athens when I find a decent connection.

This eclipse thing tomorrow seems like a huge deal to everyone around here. There are all kinds of “Eclipse-Chasers” who are on their 4^th, 5^th , and 6^th eclipses, they all seem so excited, there was even one guy who spent ten minutes trying to convince me of the spirituality of the eclipse. It is supposed to be pretty sweet though, it had better be, I mean I did come like 30 hours out of the way to see it. A few of us are planning to hire a bus and head up to the Chimera (some naturally occurring gas vents in the earth that are constantly on fire, and will automatically relight themselves if ever put out) to watch the eclipse, everyone thinks it’ll be sweet if when the earth goes black for 3 ½ minutes we have these naturally occurring flames surrounding us. I guess I see what the big deal is at 1:52 in the afternoon tomorrow.

Day: 27

I rolled out of bed around 9am, and thanked whoever was in charge for letting me get back to my normal sleep cycle. All that waking up at seven for the first three weeks of my trip was really starting to F with me. I headed over to the kitchen and started my day off with another vegetarian omelet full of a salty cheese, tomatoes, onions and mushrooms, and chased it down with a strong glass of Turkish tea. I didn’t have any real plans for the day, so I asked Benny (one of the Aussies that helps run the place) about a good hike in the area that would take the better part of the day. He told me that there was a nice hike up to a small meadow and the lost city of Olympos, sounded cool.

By now it was 10:30 but before I could start my hike I was missing one vital ingredient, Sunblock. Me being as white as I am can’t really go for another day without some 40spf. I asked around and someone told me there was a little shop about 10 minutes up the road that sold my fix. I headed over there, meandered the isles for a couple of minutes and finally found a nice bottle of Nivea 40spf for a cheap $27 lire! (that’s about $20). Holy Freakin Crap! $20 for sunblock! I knew I was getting taken so I tried to barter the store clerk down, but I am pretty sure he took one look at me and knew he had a sale even if he charged 40 lire. Bastard. I shelled out the money and headed to the trailhead.

The hike was great even though I had a light rain about 2/3rds of the way up. When I got to the top I found a spectacular meadow filled with wildflowers and trees. I spent 20 minutes taking pictures and to the lookout point where a Turkish father and son where enjoying their picnic lunch. We got to talking and I told them all about my trip and they told me other things I just had to see in Turkey. They even gave me an extra cheese sandwich that they had so I could picnic with them. It was great especially since all I had for the day was a bag of peanuts leftover from my ferry ride a few nights ago. I took a long break, meet some more hikers (2 Swiss guys and an Aussie) and headed down so I could still make the end of happy hour at the hostels bar. I also must say that after six hours of hiking I feel out of shape, it was tiring.

I spent the rest of the night drinking Efes (the local Turkish beer), eating another Vegetarian dinner, meeting and dancing with a couple of cute British girls, Rachel and Honey, and just having an all around good time. I think I finally staggered to bed some time at three in the morning.

Day: 26

I rolled over and woke up I my treehouse when the roosters started making a ruckus around 6:30am. The night before had been a great time but I was still feeling it a little, mainly in my bladder. The bathroom is about 50 feet away and I’m sure I can still hold it for another hour or two.

15 minutes later I was up and dressed to piss.

I went back to sleep for a few more hours until around 9am, when I finally got up and headed down to the kitchen to see what my “free breakfast” consisted of. I was in luck, they custom make omelets here for each person! Spectacular! I may never leave. For $10 I get a bed, omelets in the morning and all you can eat vegetarian dinner. Turkey is treating me well, it’s the first country I can afford to drink in. Things are looking up, not that they ever looked down.

There was supposedly a Mediterranean beach and some old ruins around here somewhere so I decided to head out and see what I could find. The beach was wonderful and the skies clear, the pictures wonderful. I spent about four hours just wandering around checking out the area, I even found a shop and bought a bottle of vodka for the next few days. I spent the evening just having a few beers and talking to everyone about politics and religion.

Day: 25

I was rudely awoken as the ferries engines rattled to a stop as we pulled into the port of Chios, Greece, at 5am. I put my contacts in, took a piss, grabbed my bag and headed out with everyone else to the cold, windy, island of Chios for a 3 ½ hour wait until our next ferry would take us into Turkey. Our plan was to try to make it to the area around Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast. Needless to say, when we arrived on Chios nothing was open so the four of us just decided to take a walk and find a great spot to watch the sunrise over the Aegean (at least I think this body of water was still called that). We found a great little jetty with a monument to the Greek soldiers of WWII, and a broad ocean View. George got out his flute and played us some Christmas songs (I have no clue where he came up with idea to play Christmas songs), Lotte climbed onto the rock jetty and tried to meditate, until a wave hit her and she got dripping wet, and I just took pictures of myself, the sunrise, my new friends and everything else around.

We spent about an hour just fooling around until the wind picked up and it was so cold that we just huddled together behind the WWII monument and hid from the cutting ocean winds. It was about 7:30 when we grabbed our things and decided to try to find some food and tea for Maarten (who always seems to be hungry, even more so than myself), and find out where our boat departed from. Before we boarded the boat we had to go through E.U. exit customs, I had to wait in a special line for non-E.U. citizens. The border patrol seemed to be giving everyone the third degree about there purpose in Turkey, how long they had been in they’d been in the E.U. and such. When my turn finally arrived he flipped through my passport looking for my E.U. entry stamp, well it turns out I entered three different E.U. counties (Ireland to change planes, Italy, and Greece) and the only one that gave me a stamp was Ireland which said transit under it. It didn’t suffice. He then got slightly frustrated and asked where I have been, where I am going, to see my ticket stubs, and he finally gave me an exit stamp, but not before admonishing me to make sure I get entry stamps or next time there my be a fine.
Whatever.

Once on the ferry everything about the hour long ride went smoothly and we arrived on the west coast of Turkey just short of 10 am. I now had to go through Turkish customs and get a visa ($20) which actually turned out to be less of a hassle than getting out of the European Union. We exited the ferry station and where in the middle of nowhere. There was a shuttle bus of sorts that was filling up on the curb with a bunch of Greek ravers (gigantic 7-day psy-trance festival in Antalya to celebrate the solar eclipse). We got taken on the price (7 euro), even after a little negotiation from our new tri-lingual (Greek, Turkish, and English) raver friends. Our only other option was to walk the 2 kilometers into town and try to find a bus to Izmir from there. We joined this new group and our small party of 4 going to Antalya became 10. The Greeks where stoked because with ten people we could bargain on the bus price for a group discount. I was stoked because I don’t speak Turkish and they where going to take care of my transportation woes, without too much difficulty for me.

When we arrived in Izmir around noon we found a bus that left in an hour and would have us to Antalya around 7:30 or 8 pm. I had a couple of $0.80 sandwiches from the street vendor outside of the bus station, bought a bottle of water and mentally prepared myself to sit in a bus for another seven hours. The seven hours went by uneventfully, other than a few bathroom breaks and some face painting by Lotte on Jose, one of our new Greek raver friends.

When we finally made it to Antalya it was a little after 8. I knew I had to move on to outside of the city because this eclipse has brought in around 100,000 people to the area and everything I had seen online was booked. George had a friend in town and he headed of to see her and Lotte decided to join the ravers and head to the psy-trance festival. I had booked a small hotel for Maarten and I about 70 kilometers along the coast and although they didn’t answer there phone I thought I’d give it a try and see if we could make it with the shitty directions they had posted online (After the big mountain, we are on the right). My options where limited, but we managed to find a short bus with about 15 seats that was headed in the direction of Olympos, we also managed to find a Japanese guy, Yosh, who also was headed that direction to a hostel which the internet had said was full. The hostel is where I really wanted to stay, but I didn’t know if they were booked and Turkey is extremely dark at night. The bus driver managed to squeeze 22 people into this bus and Marteen even had a Turkish man sleeping on his shoulder for most of the ride. It was classic, just like a movie.

We told the bus driver we needed to go to Olympos, hoping we would see our hotel and we could call for a stop. Horrible idea, we where on a twisting costal road similar to PCH around Big Sur and just as dark in the middle of the night, pitch black. Whenever we passed a sign we could never read it fast enough to find out where we were going. Finally the driver pulled over on the side of the road and said “Olympos treehouse” (I think they were the only two English words he knew), unloaded our stuff on the side of the road, pointed down a small road to the side of the highway, and drove off. I was pretty sure he just assumed we were all staying at the hostel.

Now I hope someone can sympathize, I just got left on the side of a deserted Turkish Highway at 10 pm at night in the pitch black, with Maarten the Dutchman and a Japanese guy who spoke very broken English, and I’m trying to rummage though my pack to find a flashlight before the taillights of the bus leave us in complete darkness. I am slight bit nervous as to how this night might turn out, I think Marteen was more so, and Yosh just started asking us if we had drugs.

“LSD? Pot?”

We started walking in the direction we were pointed and after one kilometer I began to second guess myself, after two kilometers I began to mentally prepare myself to sleep under a tree (which wasn’t really a problem for me, it was warm out), around the 2 ½ kilometer mark we came across a Turkish family an the 12 year old son spoke a small amount of English who told us we had another 10 kilometers to go. Damn. He told us his father would drive us for 20 Lire (about $16), but we managed to bargain him down to 15 Lire, which is still a huge price here in Turkey for a 10 minute ride considering that the 7 hour bus ride I just took cost about the same. But really? What am I going to do? Not spend $3.50 and walk until 1 am after all the ferries and buses I’ve taken over the last 30 hours. This nice man drove us right to the door of the hostel without ever saying a word. It was just before 11pm when we three staggered up to the reception desk to see if they had beds, fully expecting them to be full and for us to have to sleep outside.

Good news! They have an open Treehouse (literally a little shack in a tree, I’ll get pictures tomorrow) that has three beds in it. Sweet! The Aussie at receptions shows us our little hut, tells us to leave our bags and he’ll buy us a beer at the bar and tell us about the place. Things are looking up.

Now comes the moment of truth. It’s Saturday night, I haven’t showered since Thursday afternoon, I slept for a few hours last night on the floor in a ferry, 20 minutes ago I was wandering aimlessly down a completely black Turkish road, I’m exhausted. Now, what would you do? Me too! I spent the next 3 hours getting completely smash with Yosh and all kinds of other people. It was a little bit of a celebration of me conquering one of my most challenging and nerve-racking days of travel. I haven’t seen it yet but supposedly it gorgeous outside here. I can’t wait for tomorrow.

Day: 24

Well the twenty-two hour train ride for Istanbul today was cancelled and replaced with a ferry ride that is ten hours shorter and gets us closer to our destination in southern Turkey. The ferry didn’t leave until 7pm so that left most of the day for me to chill out and do a little wandering. Maarten and I had also came across two others, George (a Hungarian traveling for six months) and Lotte (A Belgium girl who likes to play music in the street for change then pay for everything in 10 cent pieces)

I went to all the “Areas of Interest” on the map that I hadn’t hit yet and hiked up the “Hill of Nymphs” (by the way there were no nymphs present, unfortunately). Yet after a couple of hours I realized Athens is just another big city and as with London, Paris, or Rome I have a 3-day big city time limit and then I just seem to get bored with all the people, crowds, smog, and cars and want to head somewhere just a little more relaxing. Around two in the afternoon I just went back to the hostel and had a glass of tea. While waiting for my ferry time I spent the afternoon in the movie room, (where my bag was stored for the day) reading, napping and just having a lazy day. I can’t complain, but I am not sure it makes the most interesting blogging for all of you out there that can’t quit your jobs and come with me.

Maarten, George, and I, left the hostel about 5:30 in the evening to get the metro to the ferry stop. This was the beginning of a 29 hour Ferry/Bus/Walking/ HireSomeGuyWithACar trip and if I had know my traveling companions were so hard up to make it all the way to the south of Turkey in one go, I may have mentally prepared a little more. Well I made my ferry with no problem, we meant up with Lotte, had a picnic lunch on the boat and I found some chairs to climb under and went to sleep for the night. The boat was arriving at 5am.

Day: 23

Woke up today with a new plan to see Turkey starting tomorrow. I headed downstairs and joined some American girls who just got back from Turkey for a breakfast of toast and Nutella (A hazelnut spread, kind of tastes life a mix of chocolate and peanut butter) and a cup of tea. The told me a few good places to stay in Istanbul and Anatalya, and reassured me about a few of my visa concerns with getting into the country. The visa costs $20 and has to be paid in US currency at the border. Fortunately for me I have a small stockpile of dollars down deep in my backpack.

After three glasses of tea I finally gathered the energy to get out and actually make it to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which I have only been able to see from outside the gates for the last two days. It was very impressive and wasn’t covered in scaffolding or tourists, like the Acropolis was. After about 45 minutes there taking plenty of fisheye pictures I headed over to the Roman Stadium, home of the original Olympic games in 1896, and first built in the 4th century B.C. The rest of the morning I saw a bunch of ruins and random looking old rocks, carvings, flowers and street preformers. It was quite pleasing.

Since I have arrived in this warmer climate a couple of days ago I have been pleased that I could once again go back to wearing my sandals. What I did realize though is that when it’s warm a beard might not be the best idea, too itchy and hot. I went back to the hostel and shaved off my sad excuse for a beard. It was more like a neard (neck beard) anyways. Once my beautiful face was once again revealed I settled in for a nice afternoon nap only to wake up and find that with all the sun today my friend, Sunburn, has came back to me. If you saw me in person you might laugh, I had a beard when I got the sun, but after I shaved I was a mixture of sunburn and whiteness all over my face.

The rest of the day was spent watching the 6 o’clock movie, Pulp Fiction today, having a dinner of Gyros and Heiniken and typing up what I spent the day doing. Not an excessively exciting day, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. My face feels so weird, all soft and smooth.

Day: 22

Wow! Cheap Greek wine is not quite as good to you in the morning as the cheap Italian wine I had been drinking for the last 11 days! I stumbled to the bathroom around 11:45am looked in the mirror and realized I looked like shit and was feeling a little on the rough side. But, I want to see the Acropolis and since it closes at 3pm I couldn’t go with my first instinct of just climbing back in bed for a few more hours. I forced myself to brush my teeth and put myself in some semblance of looking respectable, and hike up the hill to the Acropolis. The Acropolis is spectacular and you really get a sense of what ancient Greece was like, well that is except for the giant cranes and scaffolding that the Greeks were using to rebuild the entire Acropolis and its surrounding buildings. It kind of made for shitty pictures because I was constantly trying to frame my pictures around the construction.

I was ready to move on to what I think is the most interesting relic of ancient Greece, the Theater of Dionysos. It was here that modern Theater and spoken word were founded in celebration of the Goddess Dionysos and it was here that I got yelled at by some Greek security guard woman for slipping off my sandals and liberating my feet for a few minutes well I just took it all in from the stone benches of the amphitheatre. Whatever.

I tried to make it to Temple of Olympian Zeus, but 3pm came quickly and everything closed. I just headed back to the hostel to download my pictures, do more blogging and take a little nap.

Every night at 6pm the hostel here projects a movie onto the screen in the common room, so when I walked in just as I woke up from my nap and Anti-Trust was just starting I decide to join a couple of others for this fantastic (insert sarcasm here) film. Just two short hours and our brief look into cinematic genius (insert even more sarcasm) was over an I was hungry. In addition to playing bad movies the hostel also has a shelf full of bad pasta and sauce for free. Sounded like a plan. This was actually my first spaghetti dinner since my trip began.

After dinner I went to my room, and meant my new roommate from Holland, Maarten. Maarten and I got to talking and he is heading to see a solar eclipse next week in Turkey (I am not an astronomer, but he says it’s the most spectacular place in the world to view it from). He invited me to head that way with him on Friday morning, and to see the Eclipse next Wednesday. I thought about it for twenty minutes or so and decided Turkey sounds great. Although I probably won’t make it out to the Greek islands now I will get to see the moon kick the suns ass for an entire 3 ½ minutes.

Day: 21

End of the third week and I still haven’t been robbed! Right after breakfast I left my hostel and left the country of Italy, to take a two hour flight to Athens, Greece. I arrived in Athens at about 2:30pm after the time change, I picked up my bag and found the metro to get into Athens central. On the metro ride into Athens I made a few New York friends, On older guy who was 72 and seemed like a university professor with all that he knew about Greece, he was on his fourth trip here. The other two were cute girls from Syracuse, a little younger than me, and studying in Salmaneca, Spain. The four of us just spent most of the 40 minute train ride talking about Greece, what there is to do here and our plans. When we all got off the train I asked the girls if they wanted to meet up later for a beer, they agreed, and since none of us knew anywhere in Greece we decided to meet in front of the Acropolis at 8pm.

I found my way to a hostel that came highly recommended from two English guys in Rome, it was a little more pricey (20 euro) than the other hostels in Athens (12-15 euro), but it is literally right on next to the Acropolis and I wasn’t going to have to take the metro all over town to look at the sights. I took a quick shower, changed my cloths and took my camera out to see what I could find in the few hours till my “date”. I was excited because here in Athens its warm enough that I can start to wear my sandals again. I found a few landmarks (all closed because it was already late in the day), almost got hit by a few cars, and had a couple of Gyro’s. All in all a fulfilling afternoon, I feel excited about being in a place that is new to me.

At around 7:45 I headed up the little hill to the entrance to the Acropolis, arrived about 5 minutes till and found a bench with a view of the Acropolis all lit up for the night.

8:00 A spectacular night, all warm and clear.

8:05 I took a couple of pictures of the walkway

8:09 New Yorkers sure take their time.

8:14 Where are they?

8:22 Damn

8:30 Fuck it, I just got stood up. I’m going to the Bar at the hostel.

Well the rest of the night involved drinking, dancing, drinking, ladies, drinking, more ladies, and finally wine and sandwiches in my room (It had 8 beds and I had it all to myself!) with my new friends Mihail, a Bulgarian-American over studying from NYU, and Christine, a North Carolinan bartender/website editor on vacation for 9 days. We listened to The Cure on my laptop, drank cheap wine, and just talked about whatever until about 3am when Christine realized her ferry left in 4 hours and Mihail had to get up in the morning and write a few papers for school.

Other than that one little downer of being stood up in front of one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the day turned out to be quite eventful.

Day: 20

So this morning it was time to say goodbye to Matt and Dan, these two days with them just flew by. I meet them in front of their hotel at around 9:15 and we set out to get some breakfast for them at the grocery store, which we had a picnic in the middle of some random piazza. We then headed over to the train station to get them a ticket to Florence so Matt could visit his lady friend, Leyna. After our goodbyes Matt tried to give me his duct tape covered bible to carry around with me on my trip (for those of you who know him and this bible, this is sorta a big deal to him), but I told him I already had one bible that mom gave me that’s in my bag so I let him keep his bible. I told him I love him and I’d see him in a little more than a year. His train left around 11:15am.

I headed back to my hostel to do my laundry, burn a DVD of my pictures I’ve taken so far, write out yesterday’s blog entry, write in my journal, photoshop and organize some pictures, read up on Greece (where I’m flying to tomorrow), and read a little more Huck Finn. I headed over to the internet café, got everything posted on my site and sent a few emails. Most of the day was spent just doing chores that come along with long term travel, photography, and my blog. Lets just call this an office day. Good news though! I did some math and it looks like I am about $100 ahead of budget. I know it doesn’t seem like much but I’ve told myself that if at the end of the first year if I’m about $1000 ahead of budget I’d like to go to Japan for a week before continuing to Hawaii and home.

Walking by, I realized the restaurant we had an amazing dinner at last night runs a happy hour special from 5pm-6:30pm on dinner. Last night the three of us spent about 115 euros for dinner, so when I saw that they would serve me bread, wine, salad, and chicken cacciatore for 12 euro I knew right where I was going to eat tonight. After another amazing meal (and the most exciting part of this day), I headed to the grocery store to grab a bottle of wine to drink while I hung out at the hostel and talked with a bunch of new friends. I called it an early night and went to bed when my wine was through.