ciao!

Its has been sometime since I wrote last, so I will attempt to recall everything that has happened since my glowing report of Istanbul.

The rest of the time spent in that lovely and grand town was amazing; a trip to the Black Sea with our hosts and their friends, a visit to the Hagia Sophia, and a bathing experience in a 15th century hamam (turkish bath). We walked that town silly, for ten to twelve hours a day we moved through the old and the new parts of the city in the rain, ate all sorts of delicous food,and finally departed by rail on the 12th of March. Now of course, nothing we do is straightforward,and our departure and subsequent travels was no exception, as we meandered through the Balkans by train quite unexpectedly, in order to reach Italy by the 18th of March. Our idea was that we would travel by ferry through Greece from Turkey, and from Greece to Italy, but the ferries did not start operating till mid to late April, leaving us to an unknown rail trip through the former Yugoslavia. We started on a train from Istanbul with the idea that we would reach Sofia (Bulgaria) the next day and figure out transportation. We booked a private cabin for less than fifty Euros for the both of us, and thoroughly enjoyed our train ride (aside from the passport inspection at the Turkish border that had us outside in the freezing cold at least an hour) and arrived in the late morning the next day. We found out from there that could take a train to Belgrade (Serbia) that would give us access to Western Europe by rail easily. The train left that night, so we spent the day wandering around Sofia, thinking of Robert, the Bulgarian Bar in NYC, and all the lovely food we had left behind in Isti. I would love to give a longer account of our brief but rich experiences in the Balkan cities of Sofia, Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubliana, but time grows short on the hour of internet time I purchased, so I will leave you with thes images/vignettes: A man handing me a beer in the town square of Zagreb as a St. Patrick celebration rages (a decidely un-slavic holiday aside from the fact its an excuse to drink in public); A Japanese man, drunk on the one beer we insisted he drink, sings Beatles song on our walk to our Hostel, Karin's exhausted face as we arrive in Venice at 7:00am......ciao regazzi.

istanbullu

This crazy Byzantine city is so alive, it makes me yearn for something undefined.  I have been trying to fill this longing with cay (chai), baklava, and lamb sandwiches, only to make the realization a few days into this journey that I have gotten a taste of what it is to be an Istanbullu (a denizen of this fine city);  a citizen who is lucky in enough to have an appetite to match the offerings of this metropolis.  Food is only the beginning.  The beauty of the Bosphorous, the architecture, the men and women, the winding alleys, the Muezzedin's call to the faithful echoing through the cosmopolitan city streets, the juxtaposition of modern and classical, all invite the senses to lose themselves.  

The infrastructure is pretty impressive as well.  We've discovered the Akbil, Istanbul's answer to our metrocard, a plastic keychain that one can add as much money to as one wants, and use on all of the public transportation options; the buses, the tram, the metro, and the ferries.  The transportation system as a whole rivals (and in most cases, is better than, with possibly the exception of NYC) any major western city.  

Grilled mackerel sandwiches on the Galata Bridge.  Smoking nargile in an Ottoman cemetery chai garden.  The blue of the tiles in Sultan Mehmet Cammii taking me back in time.