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October 28 Turkey (that's rıght, Turkey)!Greetings from Turkey!
That's right, Turkey!
We first flew into Istanbul, and were horrified to learn (once we were already in the country!) that you HAVE to have a Turkish Vısa to be here for any length of time. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, we shelled out the $60 each to gain access to Turkey for three months. TRY THREE DAYS! Oh well... live and learn. We then flew from Istanbul to Izmir, and little did we know, we shared a plane with a VERY important Turkish religious leader. Being the go-getters that we are, we were the first ones off the plane and were shocked when we walked out of the arrival gates to be greeted by 500 expectant muslims holdıng flowers. 'Wow!' we thought, 'what hospitality!'. Then we realized they were actually waitıng for the very important looking man that followed behind. It was pretty funny at the time though - boy were those muslims dissapointed to see us!
After two more busses, we finally found ourselves at our destination - the small tourist/fishing village of Kusadasi. Our $20 hotel room has the most beautiful view of the ocean - everythıng here is so cheap! The main tourist attraction in these parts is the ancient vıllage of Epheseus (dating back to 6000 BC), which boasts tons of ruins not unlike Rome and Athens. We asked the guy at our hotel how to best get there (about half an hour away) and he said that he has a friend who sells carpets and, because business is slow, he would drive us all the way there and back for free if we would just LOOK at the poor guy's carpets (a very saturated industry here by the way, carpet stores as far as the eye can see... and stray cats, but that's another story). So we took up his offer, and this carpet guy was so nice - he drove us all the way there, taught us all about Turkish history and politics on the way, waited 2.5 hours for us while we looked at the ruins, and even had fresh mandarins for us after that he picked himself. Well by the time he took us to his carpet store, we couldn't help but buy a carpet! The system works! We would have felt like pretty big assholes on the drive back down if we hadn't
 . The good news is that the carpet is beautiful (and small), and it is going to match Adam's mom's living room perfectly  .Tomorrow we are going to take a ferry to the Greek island of Samos (only 2 hours away from here). More hilarious storıes to come, I'm sure! Last night when we were walking down some stairs here to the ocean, Adam tripped and bent his left ring finger all the way back (he'd better get that finger workıng agaın quickly!) no, seriously, it's pretty messed up. It's swollen and purple and we think he tore a ligiment. We are hesitant to visit a doctor here though, so he is going to tough it out until we get back to France and we will see ıf he needs to have it amputated. Until then, Doctor Wallace has set him up with a fine brace made of a popsicle stick and a pink hair elastic. Good as new!!!
We will post all of our pictures when we get home. Love you all,
Erin & Adam October 25 Adam's Thoughts (7th Edition)Hello again everybody,
I'm just here to give you an update on our next crazy adventure, which begins tomorrow. We leave for Milan at 6:00pm and arrive there at 10:00pm Thursday night. We will then try to find our way to the Milan Airport and spend the night on the hopefully carpeted floor (unless it's also soaked in urine). At 11:00am the next morning we fly to Izmir, Turkey after a brief stop over in Istanbul. Izmir is a port city on the west coast of Turkey with 3 million inhabitants. We will then catch a bus 80km South to Kusadasi which is near the House of Artemis (Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), the House of the Virgin Mary and other historic sites along the Turkish coast. From there we will catch a ferry to the beautiful Greek Island of Samos, apparently a virtually untouched tropical paradise. After a couple of days there, we will go to the last leg of our journey, the Greek Island Ikaria. Ikaria is the place of the legendary story of Icarus (you know, the guy who flew to close to the sun on wax wings). We will spend a couple of more days there before making our way back to Izmir to catch our flight back to Milan, then back to Nice via rail. We should get home around 1:00am on November 5th. We will try to upate the blog from Turkey or Greece but we're not making any promises! There will be lots of pictures to post when we get back, until then, Opa!  October 24 The half way point: 25 things we've learned so farOctober 23 = Half way through our trip! 25 Things we've learned in Europe so far: 25) “Je m’en fout” – a phrase often used to sum up the French way of life. Roughly translated it means, “too bad – zis eez not my problemme”. ...we plan on enjoying the next two months to the fullest as well. Next weekend we are going to Greece and Turkey for the 11 days Erin gets off school for holidays. Plans after that include Holland, skiing in Austria (Erin & Jen), driving through Italy and Spain (Adam and his friend Jordo), visiting Adam and Jordo in Spain (Erin), driving around Portugal (Erin, Adam, and Jordo), and going to Paris at Christmas time (Erin & Adam) right before coming home on Dec. 23rd. Whew. We miss you guys a lot (and Erin misses Old Dutch Dill Pickle chips)!
October 14 Eze Village & relaxing weekendWell after spending last weekend in Italy and the weekend before in Germany, the Sullivans decided to take 'er easy this time. I had Friday off, so yesterday was spent sleeping in and then a block away from our house at the beach (with, of course, a stop in for lunch at our favorite pizza place). It sure is nice being able to say "we went to the beach" in the middle of October! Today we finally did something we've been meaning to do for a while - visit Eze Village. It's only about a 10 minute train ride away... and then a looong way up a hill. Right outside Nice, and about 600m up, there is a tiny village built entirely into the rock face that dates back to 200 BC. It was built up there to avoid invasions - but there were still several. At one point, it was used entirely for housing victims of the plague before they died, and then a leper colony after that. So, as I say, we finally found our way there today. We knew it was a hike... but we didn't know how much of one. It was exactly like (if not harder than) climbing Mt. Finlayson back home. It was an incredibly steep incline and took us about 45 minutes to climb and we were walking fast. I sure am glad I was wearing the new runners Adam's mom bought me (thanks Tina!). Long story short, it was WELL worth the climb. One of those "you had to be there" things, but take a look at the pictures anyway. When looking, if you think about the fact that our train let us off right in front of the ocean and look how far up we were when taking some of those pictures, you can get a feel for how tough of a climb it was. We're going out for pizza tonight and I won't have to feel guilty because I think I got in my workout for the week today! October 10 Most romantic weekend EVER (continued)Our last account took place on Saturday evening. Sunday morning, we set off to explore the ancient ruins that make up, well, Ancient Rome. First, we went next door (kidding, but practically) to the Coliseum. Wow. Pretty cool stuff. Right beside the coliseum is The Palatino. I didn’t know what that was to tell you the truth, but we quickly learned that it’s a park of ancient ruins which once made up the hangout for the classiest of the Romans. It’s on a hill, and you could see quite a few ruins from where we were at the bottom. We noticed a big line of people waiting to pay eleven euros to go up the hill. “Eleven euros?!” thought we, as we surveyed the huge line in the 27 degree mid-October weather. But then we thought, “they must be standing there for a reason”. We braved the line. Our determination to see what the fuss was about was wavered only for a moment when we almost throttled the family behind us (loud Texans with two screaming children) but 30 minutes later we made it. Worth every last nerve and euro. There was an entire hill covered with the remains of what I can only imagine was a gleaming white paradise for the upper class Romans and Caesars. For that eleven euros, you’re allowed to just walk around all over these ruins. Wow, money really does buy anything! Adam and I jokingly clasped our hands behind our backs while strolling in ruins through an olive tree orchard, “fine day, Bruteus, wouldn’t you say?” … “Why, YES, Maximus… a day of the Gods” and so on. Good times. Never felt “smaller”. After that jaunting good time, we went and saw The Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, took a ride on “The Time Elevator” (an Imax-like “time travel through Rome’s 2700 year history” but with moving seats so you REALLY FEEL LIKE YOU’RE FLYING THROUGH ROME). Hey, we even found some time to go shopping and buy me some new pants. We then had another romantic dinner on our last night in Rome… there was one restaurant that was too busy to take us on Saturday night, and they had awesome looking $5 pizza and spaghetti and seemed pretty authentic… so we went back on Sunday at lunch (closed) and again for dinner (closed). Now we have another reason to come back to Italy again someday. We spent all day today on uneventful trains playing “Big Two” and doing a little homework (me)… and so thus concludes the story of our weekend. Ciao October 07 When in Rome (and Venice, for that matter)Wow. Greetings from Rome. My school schedule changes every week, so you never know what you are going to get. This week I lucked out and had Friday and Monday off, so Adam and I decided to spend four days in Italy. Thursday night we took the night train to Venice and were able to score our own sleeper car (for an extra $22 each) so we were actually able to get some shut-eye. We arrived in Venice at 7am on Friday and were absolutely blown away. It is by far the most beautiful city I have ever seen. Besides San Marco Square, there actually are not that many quote-un-quote "attractions", but the city itself IS the main attraction. You know the drill - no roads, all canals and boats and bridges... truly the most romantic city in the world. We spent the day shopping and getting lost... Adam bought me a rose and we ate lunch outside on a canal... you do not have to pay extra for waterfront seating since the WHOLE thing is waterfront. We were very impressed with what a clean and friendly city it was. We even lucked out by somehow scoring the honeymoon suite of the hostel we booked - we were the only room with their own terrace in the entire building, and the hotel itself was right in the center of the main island. Venice gets two thumbs up from the Sullivans for sure. This morning we awoke in Venice at the crack of dawn to catch a 6:30am boat to the train station, where we made our way to Rome. We have been commenting so far that, "Italy has been good to us" because we keep running into little strings of good luck. The good luck smacked us in the face today when we were changing trains in a city called Bologna and a very fancy woman pushed past us down the stairs and I saw 50euros (like $75) fall out of her pocket. As someone who believes in karma, I chased after her and said, "you dropped this". She stared at me with a confused/annoyed look on her face and I realized she did not speak English. I make what I think is the internationally recognized charades-motion for "YOU - DROPPED - THIS", pointing at her pockets and everything. I think she thought I was asking her for change for a 50 or something, because she just said, "no I can not" and stalked off. Italy HAS been good for us. We gave a toast to the lady as we enjoyed spaghetti and white wine on her tab this evening.
. In other news, ROME IS AMAZING. Not for the quaint charming reasons of Venice, but the history... My God, the history! Everywhere you look, there is another ruin. Our hotel is right next to the colloseum, but about 10k from the Vatican. Not realizing it was 10k to the Vatican, my good fiance and I decided to do away with busses and subways and go for a nice stroll through Rome. 10k there and back. Long walk. Worth it. I am not even a religious person, but Adam and I were both moved almost to tears within the walls of the Vatican. Inside St. Peters Basilica... I cannot even describe so I wont try. Gold, Michaelangelo works of art, tombs of past popes... all under one very high and well decorated roof. The most beautiful building either of us have ever been in. Being that it took us all afternoon to get there, upon our arrival we found ourselves right in the middle of Saturday night mass at the Vatican and stayed to watch part of the service... even though it was all in Italian. Very cool. Tomorrow we are going to spend the day walking around the Colloseum and other ruins... we will post pictures and the rest of the story when we get home to Nice on Monday night! Best 4 day weekend EVER!Erin & Adam October 05 Adam's thoughts 6th EditionBonjour from Nice,
The last few days have been quite relaxing after the trans-continental adventure of last week. The weather here has been perfect with nothing but sunshine and the occasional faint Mediterranean breeze by the water. I've been cooking for the girls the last couple of days, I learned some new dishes while on my trip and have been using them as my Guinea Pigs. My most popular dishes to date are "authentic" Chicken Cordon Bleu and traditional Austrian breakfast (eggs, potatoes, spices, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, ham and cheese all cooked together in an quasi-omlette like dish.
Tonight, Erin and I leave for a long weekend in Italy. We'll catch the 10:00pm night train which will arrive in Venice at 7:00am tomorrow morning. After spending Friday taking Gondola rides in Venezia and eating spaghetti we'll hop a train Saturday morning bound for Rome. Once in Rome we plan on seeing the Pantheon, Vatican, Sistine Chapel, Colosseum and the Catacombs to name a few things. Monday morning we'll make our way back to Nice and hopefully get home around 8:00pm (assuming we don't get on the wrong train). We already have our hostels booked so no searching when we get there, too easy!
We will take lots of pictures and try to update the blog from Rome.
Arrivederci. October 03 Back in the swing of things...Well I started school today (again). The first two weeks so far were a short intensive French course which has now ended. The university itself didn't get into full swing until today, which marked the first day of actual business courses. I had one class today - 4.5 hours of European Law which, although it sounds extremely dry, was pretty interesting. It's taught by a young German lawyer-turned-law-professor and he really knows his stuff. Even though I may never actually need to apply this particular knowledge, it's interesting to learn the inner workings of the European Union and how all those countries work together so well while still maintaining their sovereignty. It looks like my classes will be a bit more challenging than I originally expected, as I think I underestimated the reputation of EDHEC as a European business school, but I'm up to the challenge - the teachers have impressive credentials and (so far) make the material interesting and fun to learn.
In other news, Adam is sleeping in and trying to let his body recover from his CRAZY adventure. So he's back on laundry/dish duty while Jen and I are off at school. Unfortunately for me, it's going to take him a while to wash (or burn) all of the disgusting clothes from his trip before he can start doing mine . October 02 One WILD weekend in MunichWow. That's all I have to say about my life from 7:47pm Friday night till 2am Sunday. WOW. The craziest, most random, exhausting weekend ever. Here's why:
1) Jen and I catch the night train from Nice to Strasbourg on Friday night. We slept. Nobody bothered us (a pleasant surprise for women on night trains in Europe).
2) We spent 3 hours on a lay-over in Strasbourg. Being girls, naturally, we spent the three hours shopping.
3) We carry our backpacks and newly acquired shopping bags back on a morning train from Strasbourg to Munich.
4) We get in Munich at 3:30pm, and Adam - being the great fiance that he is - was waiting for us the minute our train pulled up.
.... this is where the gong show begins...
5) Enter: Oktoberfest 2006. Image Playland (because of the rides), but it's got over 100,000 people jammed into it, and everyone is wearing traditional Leiderhosen (except me, Adam, and Jen, apparently) and drinking one litre glasses of beer (that part we could help with). What does all this add up to? One giant GONG-SHOW.
6) But that wasn't the craziest part. I guess after about 95,000 or so of these tourists booked their accomodation months in advance, that left the other 5,000 of us with absolutely NOWHERE to stay (for less than $400/night). What does that mean? 5,000 people passed out in the Munich train station. I'm serious. Just picture it. In between our restless (and cold and dirty) train station floor sleep, we saw many many many sights. People in fights, bleeding everywhere, people laying face down in pee, people yelling and screaming, people using water bottles as pillows... you name it. Early in the evening it's all part of the atmosphere, but come 6am when you just want your train to come, it's a very unusual sight - let me tell you. It sure gave us a deeper appreciation for homeless people... sleeping like that's not as easy as it sounds. Do you know how hard it is to find a warm corner that doesn't have too much pee in it to lay down when you have no pillows or blankets and anyone can come steal your stuff? Hard work, my friends. Sure leaves you sore in the morning! At one time, I even just put my purse on the ground for one second to change my shoes and realized I had just put it in a big pile of urine. My purse is cloth. Soaked 'er up like a sponge. EWW... 100,000 people partying together doesn't make for the most hygenic experience. We were all good sports about it though... it was just part of our crazy adventure. The cool thing about Oktoberfest was that there are a bunch of UVic students all over Europe right now on the same exchange I'm doing and we all seemed to find our way to Munich for this crazy festival, so there we were in Germany - constantly running into people we knew!
7) Once we got on our 7:30am train from Munich to Verona (after which we were supposed to connect to Milan and then Nice), we thought our crazy adventure was coming to an end. Think again.
8) Picture it. We have 15 minutes in Verona. We're hungry. We know our train to Milan leaves from Gate 1 in 15 minutes. We go get pizza and pops to go. We go to Gate 1. There's a train there. Every single other time, the train's there 30 minutes to an hour before it leaves, so you just get on and wait. We get on with 10 minutes to go. The minute we sit down, the doors slam and the train starts moving in the OTHER DIRECTION. We ask some Italian guy if this train is going to Milan. He laughs and says "Venizia!" (VENICE?!?!). Keep in mind that Jen and I have school the next morning and now we're headed to the opposite side of Italy.
9) We flag down a train guy. We tell him we aren't supposed to be on this train, what do we do. He says they're making a stop shortly. We get off. We're still in fair Verona (home of Romeo and Juliet) but we're on the OTHER SIDE, and our train to Milan leaves from the ORIGINAL STATION in 8 minutes. We run.
10) We run.
11) We stop running. We start asking everyone for directions. Turns out that Jen, Adam, and I don't speak a word of Italian... who knew? After me making train noises at about 5 different people ("you know... choo choo? Chugga, chugga? Woo --woo?"). We found the station. Thank God for all the years of pre-adolescent charades. We missed our train... which means we missed the last train to Nice that night.
12) We get on another train to Milan. We get to Milan. Unlike Verona, we didn't get a chance to run through the entire town with all of our stuff... but the train station seemed nice. There are no trains to Nice. Closest thing is "Vintimille, Italy" (which I've never heard of) right on the boarder of France and Italy. We go there. Again, never got the opportunity to sprint though it, but there was a pretty fountain outside the station and reasonably priced seafood in the cafe. No complaints there. It's 10pm on Sunday night. We're SO close. Looks like another long night in a train station.
13) BUT WAIT! WHAT'S THIS?! An unscheduled, undocumented 11:30 train to Cannes? Isn't Cannes on the other side of Nice? We ask... yup, it makes a quick stop in Nice on the way. Aaaaah.
14) 1:30am. We get home to Nice. We could technically walk home from the train station, but this is just getting ridiculous. Adam pays for a cab. We shower. Aaahhhhhhhhhhhh.
Well I'm going to go get all that pee off my new purse Adam's thoughts: Fifth edition (Home at last!)Home at last. The last 11 days have been quite something. Border Crossings in order (France-Germany, Germany-Czech Republic, Czech Republic-Slovakia, Slovakia-Austria, Austria-Hungary, Hungary-Germany, Germany-Netherlands, Netherlands-Germany, Germany-Austria, Austria-Germany, Germany-Austria, Austria-Italy, Italy-France.) 21 different Trains, 5000 km. I slept on the dirty marble floor of the Munich Train station overnight not once, but twice. I made many new friends and enjoyed many different cultural experiences. From gunfire in the distance while in Budapest, to strolling the streets of East Berlin I have many indelible memories. Artists painting in the streets of Salzburg, street musicians in Vienna and soccer matches with fanatical supporters in Prague, I have many stories to tell. In every city I visited I tried to eat where the locals ate, drank what and where the locals drank and tried to adopt the philosophy of that culture or city. I wasn’t always welcome, but always tolerated. Turns out people are a lot nicer to you if you tell them you are a Canadian and not an American. From Berlin I went south to Salzburg, Austria, home of the famous film “The Sound of Music”. I actually went on the Sound of Music tour which turned out to be just a great sightseeing excursion. I climbed up to Salzburg Fortress and toured the most amazing mountain top castle I had yet to see in all of Europe. Salzburg is a beautiful city split in two by a gorgeous blue green alpine river. It is nestled away high in the Austrian Alps, truly a magnificent site. Artists and musicians packed the narrow streets and large courtyards in a setting so breathtaking it actually makes Victoria’s view of the Olympic Mountains look average. I stayed in a hostel with 5 other guys (two of them Canadians eh!) and really enjoyed my stay. I was off at 7:00am Saturday morning to meet Erin at the world’s largest party, Oktoberfest. I will leave the details of that and the rest of our trip home together for Erin’s next update, it’s quite the story. To say at the end of all this I am tired, sore, blistered, mentally drained, physically exhausted and much lighter in the pocket would be an understatement. I’m a worn out traveler. It was a once in a lifetime adventure during a once in a lifetime trip. I did nearly every leg of it completely alone and have grown as a man and more importantly person because of it. Perhaps the most important thing I learned is people, regardless of race, religion or nationality are people. Some are nice, mean, snobby, brilliant, ignorant or rude but that is the same anywhere, whether Canada, France or Hungary. One thing that is for sure is how lucky I am to live in Canada, a place I have a new found love for after seeing the hardships facing many of the people in Europe. I will post pictures when they are put onto a cd and will write one final Adam’s thoughts telling a few of the un-told stories I have yet to share. Pearl Jam Concerts in Prague, Jersey swapping with soccer fans and many, many more adventures. But now it is time for sleep. It’s good to be home. |
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