Türkiye - Europa

One More Tower

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

On our last day we checked out of the hotel - but arranged for them to look after our bags and give us a ride to the airport in the afternoon - and set off into the city one last time. We still hadn’t been on the Funicular railway (that had to be fun!) and there was a mini-eiffel-like tower at the top of the hill.

After the metro and the walk through the city we got thoroughly lost in the back streets trying to remember where to catch a tram … but eventually we stumbled across it. We managed to get off again at the right stop, and wandered around a bit until we found the train.

It wasn’t very exciting - not like the old funicular railway in the Blue Mountains (Australia) that dives straight down over haberin devamı »

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Getting there, and staying somewhere

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

Max and the boys were booked into a cheapish hotel, some distance out of the city but with easy access to their sporting venue. As the main thing I wanted to see in Prague was Max, we asked him to get us booked into the same hotel.

Early morning hassles

We had to get up early in the morning. We found a taxi driver asleep in his taxi in the main street of Bakırköy, and arrived at the airport in good time. There were hardly any check-in desks operating, and our flight was one of those combination ones: Czech Airlines and Turkish airlines together. We couldn’t see a Czech counter, but there was a Turkish “Common Check-in” … with a queue a mile long. We joined the line, and shuffled our way up and then back and then up again in the lane. It took about 20 minutes haberin devamı »

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Gaining Weights

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

We have been looking for a gym in Istanbul. Peter really enjoyed going to the gym in Wuxi, China - he was probably one of their most regular clients. But the only one we have found (a fellow teacher, a Turkish lady, goes there) is small and very expensive compared to what we are used to. It costs a lot of money and then you are only allowed to go a couple of days a week. To go more often you must spend even more money.

Peter had decided he might have to buy his own weights. But - we couldn’t find a sports shop locally, only shops that sell sports shoes.

So the other day he headed out the door to buy our daily fish …

And came home with a set of weights.

alt=”" id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5020331193781451490″ border=”0″>They were just lying beside the road outside the shoe shop. Peter popped inside the shop to ask the question - ” ….er… ?” a noise, raised eyebrows and a gesture towards the weights. They said 100, he said 50, and the deal was closed at 80 - still much cheaper than the gym.

Of course they have taken up residence in our “spare room” which is in fact the “sewing room” not (as Peter is suggesting) the “weights room”!

haberin devamı »

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Picnic Time

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

School outings and picnics … counting children on and off buses, permission forms, kids injuring themselves on playground equipment, the whole thing … I remember it well.

My weekday morning class, which I’ve had since elementary, are about to take their final intermediate exam, so we were having a picnic.

I share the class with Turcan, a Turkish-American guy, and we make a good team.

The class has progressed really well - their English is quite good, and they are responsible and reliable. So, our students organised transport and booked a restaurant and we went down to Florya.

Florya is by the Sea (of Marmara), and it was a beautiful day - cool and really pleasant.

We sat around several tables and shared some çay (Turkish tea).

Here is Turcan with our two young men in the class - Yiğit, and Cenk - as well as our lovely lady, Şadan.

And haberin devamı »

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Spicy Cockroach

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

Nearly lunchtime, so I was on the prowl for something to eat. I opened the fridge door.
Hmmm. A tub of margarine, half a tub of yoghurt …. that was all, if you ignore the almost empty mayonnaise jar in the door.

Peter was standing at the kitchen bench, killing ants one by one. These are our first Turkish ants and there aren’t very many of them - not like when you get ants in the kitchen in Australia!

So, as usual, we put on our coats and shoes and headed down the street for something to eat. Looking for something different, something we haven’t tried yet.

At each restaurant door a man was calling “Buyurun! Buyurun!” trying to draw us in. So we wandered slowly past keeping just out of their reach. Many restaurants have one or two meaty kebabs turning in the window near the door, and an attendant slicing off slivers haberin devamı »

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The case of the reappearing rubbish

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

Gotta love “Wheelie-bins”! I can remember our excitement (in Western Australia) when we got rid of our old metal bin because the local council had provided us with a shiny new wheelie bin. (We were devastated shortly after when the local hoons took it in a drive-by heist, and ran it alongside their speeding car, so far and so fast that its little wheels fell off.)

In China, living in a sizable apartment complex, we were a little startled to find that a swing-top kitchen tidy bin was the receptacle provided for hundreds of apartment dwellers to deposit their household trash. (Especially as the plumbing was such that you could not flush even the tiniest amount of paper - no getting away with that at all, any mistakes and it would return to haunt you until you fished it back out or got to work with the plunger … So haberin devamı »

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Rockin’ Rollin’ Ridin’

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

We live right next to the railway line. There is one building in between us and the line, and as it goes past here the line is not underground but down below the level of roads and buildings so there is not much noise. All the same it has taken us five months to actually get on one of these trains.

The carriages are very basic. Hard plastic seats, and plenty of standing space. The doors mostly close automatically, but some of them take quite a yank to get them open.

On Thursday we went west towards (and past) the airport, and discovered the little beach at Florya. Yesterday was our day off so we decided to head in the other direction, east - into the main part of the city. We went haberin devamı »

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Water restrictions

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

So the water finally came back on in the early hours of the morning. We had some spare 10 litre water bottles, so Peter quickly filled them as soon as we knew the water was running. It was not very clean water, but at least we could flush the toilet now.

We were both staring at these big bottles of dirty water … and suddenly we remembered. When we first moved into this apartment there were a few bottles of slightly dirty water stored in our spare (squat) toilet room. We had kept them for a while, in case they were something important, but eventually emptied them and threw the bottles away.

And this was like deja vue.

As soon as the water was running clear again we filled our bottles with clean water, and stashed them in the spare toilet room.

That was Wednesday. On Saturday we woke up to … no haberin devamı »

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The longest seven hours

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

The 31st of July. Time for Peter’s interview at the British Consulate in Taksim.

Travel to Taksim is best by dolmus (shared taxi), and usually this involves a few minutes of queuing as vehicles arrive, fill, and leave, until there is a space. We thought maybe it would be different early in the day, so we went down on Monday morning to have a look. This was different, at 7am there were ten or so dolmuses queuing, waiting for passengers. And there was hardly any traffic. Catching a dolmus early would mean a short trip, maybe half an hour, but catching one a few minutes later after the traffic started to build would mean a long trip, over an hour.

So this morning we were up bright and early and we went there soon after seven - too soon. We were in Taksim in half an hour … and the interview wouldn’t haberin devamı »

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The Cathedral

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

There are a lot of great buildings to see in and around Prague, and the Cathedral is a must. We set off early, caught the metro into the city, walked through the square and across the bridge, and then caught a tram up the hill. We weren’t the only ones. The tram was fairly crowded, and there were crowds already waiting to get into the cathedral. In fact there was a very discouraging queue several hundred long …

We wandered around outside, looking at the statues and admiring the gargoyles, wondering if it was really worth queuing to get inside.

Finally we went and asked in the tourist office about ticket prices, and were told haberin devamı »

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