Baby It's Cold Outside

After nearly 4 months of work, I finally got a much-needed 2-week holiday for the semester break. Mike had another week of work, so I decided to make the most of my time off and go to Bulgaria. I've seen many places in Bulgaria, but Veliko Tarnovo, said to be one of the best towns in the country, was a place I'd never made it to. I didn't think I could visit Bulgaria without also visiting Sofia, so I managed to fit both of them into a 4-day visit. A 10-hour night bus to Sofia and back plus a 3-hour bus to and from Veliko Tarnovo means I spent almost a whole day unterwegs, but it was worth it.

My ex-boyfriend is Bulgarian and I wrote to his parents, whose company I always enjoyed, asking if they wanted to meet up. They were more than happy to and they picked me up at the bus station when I arrived. Geri had prepared a great meal and we ate and caught up (I hadn't seen them for over 2 years). At that point I had been studying Bulgarian in the States so I was pretty good, but since learning Russian my Bulgarian moved to the back burner. They had to learn Russian during Soviet times, so we were able to communicate easily with each other using a mix of Russian, Bulgarian and a little English. In 2007 Efrem's brother Vilislav spent 5 months in Colorado doing Work and Travel, so his English had greatly improved and he was happy to talk to me. We spent the day together and they offered to let me stay the weekend, but I'd already found couchsurfers so they picked me up in the evening.



The couchsurfers, Ganka and Andrey, were a couple who lived together with a roommate and a beagle. They were very hands-on hosts who spent their whole weekend with me. They spent a whole afternoon with me shopping for a pair of purple boots. When I was in Sofia last time I bought the perfect pair of boots, but wore them out and left them in Kyrgyzstan. I searched in vain for a replacement pair but couldn't find one, so Sofia was my last hope. I ended up finding a great pair in the very last shop we visited, so I'm glad they put up with me the whole time! They took me bowling and out to dinner in a great Bulgarian restaurant, and it was a really great couchsurfing experience. Mike and I are more hands-off hosts who let our surfers do their own thing, so it was a bit strange to be chaperoned.

At the bowling alley there was a Land Rover with a mini Land Rover on the dashboard, which was just too funny to not photograph.



I caught a bus from Sofia to Veliko Tarnovo, a journey that had been impossible just a few days before due to snow in the mountains. Luckily it had stopped snowing and I had no problems on the way. I was met in VT by my couchsurfer Iva-Simona, an art student. It was the coldest day/night of the winter in VT (about -20 Celsius) so I really hadn't chosen the best time to visit. However, I dressed warmly and we sucked it up. Iva-Simona and I walked to her friends' house where there was a gathering of her classmates. They were playing Belot, a popular Bulgarian card game that no matter how many times I watch I can't for the life of me figure out the rules. I watched for a while and her friends were friendly and willing to speak English with me even though they hadn't practiced since high school English class. We switched to Parcheesi and I won once. It was freezing when we left around midnight and caught a cab home. Iva-Simona had a two-bedroom apartment but only heated her bedroom, so the room I stayed in was freezing. She had a tiny space heater that made it a bit warmer, but I spent the night fully dressed in my Pamiri socks, lined jeans, sweater and hat.

The next time I met Iva-Simona at her university and got a tour from her and her friends of the art faculty. I'm not usually into art, but it was fun to see "art in action" and have her friends explain to me how different types of printmaking are done. Iva-Simona had to work but her friend took me out to lunch at a Bulgarian restaurant which happened to be Lonely Planet's "pick" and definitely lived up to the hype. I had sach, which is a mix of meat and veggies baked on an iron board and is just delicious (and sach in Turkish means hair, which made it slightly unappetizing to imagine what it would be before it arrived). The girls then gave me a quick tour of the Old Town but it's hard to enjoy sightseeing when it's -20 degrees. VT's best known landmark is Tsarevets Fortress but it was so cold and icy that I didn't even feel safe walking up the hill to get inside. All the real sightseeing stuff will have to wait for another time. It was just a taste of what the town has to offer.



Veliko Tarnovo is located on both sides of a river and the Old Town and the newer Soviet part are separated by a peninsula with an art museum and my favorite statue in the world. I don't know what it is about this statue but ever since I first saw pictures of it a few years ago I felt like it was something that should be in Lord of the Rings.



The Old Town has a lot of churches and a cathedral that dot the skyline with their crosses and steeples.





Iva-Simona and her friends Ani and Tsvetelin took me out to dinner right before I had to catch my bus and I got to enjoy Bulgarian pizza which is usually eaten with mayonnaise. I thought this was strange but Mike tells me it's a common thing. The last thing we did before I caught my bus back to Sofia and then to Istanbul was take our picture a free tourist computer.



I had really great couchsurfing experiences in Bulgaria, I got to eat wonderful food, practiced my Bulgarian (which by the end of my stay had started to come back) and toughened myself up in the cold. I had such a good time that I'm now thinking of making Bulgaria my next work destination if I can get a work visa somehow.

Some Money on the Side?

An advertisement showed up on mylifeisaverage.com, a website I often read when I'm bored. It was an ad for an online shop that looked like it had some cute things, so I went to the site. It had a lot of great (but EXPENSIVE!) trinkets and jewelry that were exactly my style, but the things that caught my eye were these two scarves.






They are pretty cool, right? Crocheted pears, knit watermelon, really unique! They even have real pear and watermelon seeds handsewn on to add to the authenticity. However, you will be amazed when you hear the price- for the pears, $150, for the watermelon, $120. SERIOUSLY? Neither scarf is very intricate and a high beginning knitter or crocheter could make them. I don't know anyone who would pay that much for a scarf, but the pear one is sold out so someone found it reasonably priced! Seeing how much money knitters can make for fairly simple things made me see that I have a money-making skill I hadn't realized before.

There's a website, etsy.com, where crafters sell their homemade items, so my plan for the next months is to figure out how registration and all that works and to start making money knitting too. My speciality for now seems animal-themed hats... your choice of color and animal and you'll get a personal, one-of-a-kind fashion statement! $50, any takers?!?

(Just kidding, that is ridiculous, I would think that $15 or so is reasonable... how much do you think people would pay?)

Anna's Decade of Travels

One of our Polish couchsurfers has a great map posted on facebook showing all his travels of 2009, complete with arrows from Poland color-coded to show whether he travelled by plane, bus, train, or hitch-hiking. I was inspired by his map and decided to make my own version. I documented all the countries I've visited in the 2000-2009 decade and color-coded them by which year I first visited that country. I feel like I've seen a lot of places but looking at all the white staring off the map it proves that I have a long way to go before I can really call myself a world traveller!

(By Mike's request/demand I didn't include any country that I only travelled through (Serbia/Croatia by train in 2006), and country I had a layover in (Budapest Hungary, Paris France) or any country I flew over/saw from the air (Greenland) :)



(click on the map to see it bigger in all its glory)

Silvester

New Year's last year was spent in Turkestan, a tiny desert Kazakh village near the Uzbek border known for its camels and preserved moque/medressa. Mike and I were sent back to our hotel before 00:00 by police who feared for our safety, so it was very low-key celebration. We decided to do the opposite this year and flew to Berlin to ring in the new year by the Brandenburg Gate with a million other people.

The time to get a new Turkish visa coincidentally fell just at New Year's, so we made the most of a day off from work and searched for the cheapest international destination we could fly to. We were almost set on Riga when I found tickets at half the price to Berlin. I immediately wrote to my friend Caroline, a fellow exchange student with me in Finland, whose parents live near Berlin and asked if she'd be home for the holidays. She said we could stay with her so we set off on another adventure.

Istanbul winter is mild so we packed all the warm things we could find since we'd read that it was below zero Celsius and snowy. We arrived in the middle of the night but found our way via public transport and a path through the forest to Caroline's house, where she met us before we even had to ring the bell and awaken her parents.

We took a short nap to recover from our trip and then, after a wonderfully filling German breakfast, Caroline took us into Berlin to give me the grand tour. We went to Alexanderplatz first, where we found that the world clock had Central Asian countries listed that are generally missing from any world summary like a weather forecast or a currency converter.



It was cold and snowy, but we managed to visit most of the sites worth seeing- the cathedral, Reichstag, Unter den Linden, the Brandenburg Gate and of course H&M! We hung out in various train stations trying to get warm and had a great dinner at an Asian fast food place at the Hauptbahnhof. Then we sucked it up and walked over to Brandenburg Gate to start the party.




The slightly snowy paths and roads turned to awful brown slush due to all the people walking to and fro, but since we are geniuses and put thick plastic bags on our feet before putting our shoes on, we managed to stay dry and warmish until almost midnight. It definitely made the night better! We wandered around stopping off at times for food from some outdoor stands and drinks, which considering it was New Year's in Berlin, were fairly reasonably priced. There were 2 heated tents that we visited whenever it got too cold outside. There was dancing and drinking in the packed tents and it was a fun way to pass the time and beat the weather.

Around 11:30 it was time to leave the warmth of the tent and stand in the slush on the street with all the other people. Caroline had stashed a bottle of sparkling wine in her bag so we drank that and hopped around trying to stay warm. We were too far from the stage to hear anything but a handy dandy countdown clock appeared on the giant TV screens so we were sure not to miss the arrival of the new decade. People celebrated, kissed, drank, shouted, and a fireworks show started.





We documented our New Year's on a silly machine that printed out a Berlin New Year's souvenir postcard:



The rest of our time we did some more sightseeing and stopped at the beautiful Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Checkpoint Charlie, the East Side Gallery (the stretch of the Berlin Wall remaining) and did some shopping at H&M. We also saw Avatar in 3D, which was a super end to our quick Berlin trip. I'm sure that 2010 will be even better than 2009, even though 2009 was pretty darn awesome.

Rings Galore

I found an amazing and inexpensive jewelry store close to my house and have quickly become a frequent shopper there. The man who owns the shops makes most of the jewelry himself, so it's all unique too! There are always new designs every time I go in and I'm sure he makes things to order as well. So far I've just bought rings but they have great necklaces too that I'm sure I'll try on and buy when it's warmer and I'm not stuck in a turtleneck and scarf. I wanted to share pictures of my purchases so far so that you can enjoy their beauty as well.

Seasons Greetings

Work was kind enough to give me 2 days off for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so Mike and I decided to take a trip to the historically preserved Ottoman city of Safranbolu, a 10-hour bus ride east of Istanbul. We had checked the weather forecast every day for a week to make sure we dressed appropriately for the weather in Safranbolu, and were excited to see that it was supposed to be above 15 degrees Celsius. We wore fall clothes and were glad to be escaping the relative cold of Istanbul. However, when we arrived at 6:30 in the morning we nearly froze to death because it was close to 0 degrees Celsius! We found a hostel that served breakfast and nursed some tea for a few hours waiting for sunlight and hopefully warmth to come. Unfortunately the warmth never came even though the sun did for a few minutes, but we sucked it up and explored the town.

We first visited the historical museum which had some old photographs and historical artifacts (boring) and some rooms set up as traditional shops (cool). There was a pharmacy, a shoe-maker, a sweets shop, a saddle-maker and a blacksmith, complete with mannequins dressed up and posed.





We then set off to wander around town looking at beautiful Ottoman buildings. There were lots of narrow cobblestoned streets with great buildings everywhere - it's definitely a quaint town with a lot of character. The highlight for me was the street bazar, which took up most of the old part of town and reminded me a lot of Kyrgyzstan's Osh Bazar, one of my favorite places in the world. They were trinket sellers, textile shops, and here and there a tiny restaurant. We warmed up over lunch in a tiny cafe where we were practically sitting in the kitchen. We had great Turkish manti and piping hot tea.








We had seen most of the city in just a few hours and were freezing cold, so we changed our plans and decided to take a night bus back to Istanbul rather than spend a night. After we'd reserved bus tickets we sat outside the tourist office wondering how to spend the few hours before the bus left when a Turkish guy sat down next to us and started speaking English. He said he was a tourism student and a tour guide and offered to show us around Safranbolu for free. Figuring that we had nothing better to do, we let him guide us around town. It turned out to be great- he took us to a lot of places that weren't in Lonely Planet and we learned a lot of history and interesting facts that we'd never have learned otherwise. Some fun trivia included : Safranbolu used to be underwater and the hills of the city were islands in the sea, homes hang deer antlers for the eaves of the roof for good luck, and homes have 2 knockers on the door- one for men and one for women so that the the residents of the house know who should go to open the door.




We then met up with our couchsurfer for tea and dinner and had a nice discussion about English teaching, life in Turkey, and of course football (soccer). No conversation is ever complete without at least a mention of soccer.

Safranbolu is famous for its saffron, so of course there's a very touristy saffron shop. I bought some saffron soap for souvenirs and we got saffron-flavored Turkish delight. We caught the night bus home without any problems and were back to balmy (12 degree) Istanbul weather by morning.




It was a great break from city life and a wonderfully-preserved Old Town full of friendly people and an amazing bazar. I'd love to go back in summer when it's warmer and more inviting.

A Penguin Hat

I started knitting again, which has made my life significantly better. I made a hat for Mike and a hat for myself a few months ago:

I decided to start on something a bit more creative. Mike's favourite animal is a penguin, so I wanted to make him a penguin hat. I found a pattern online for a kid's penguin hat, but I didn't think it was very cute. So I used this basic hat pattern and drew up my own penguin chart. I looked a some penguin clip art and combined it with the kid's hat pattern, and this is what I ended up with:



Here are pictures of the hat partway finished and then the final product. Maybe I'll start my own animal hat business, would you buy one with the animal of your choice for $10? (And to think, my dad says I need to go to grad school and become a linguistics professor.) I'll make my living as a travelling animal hat knitter!

Rock and Roll

This year, Thanksgiving fell the same week as Ramadan, so we had 3 days off. Mike and I decided to leave Istanbul and go to Cappadocia, which is said by many to be the most beautiful place in Turkey.

We caught a night bus and arrived early in the morning. Göreme, the tourist center of Cappadocia is famous for its fairy chimneys, phallus- shaped rock formations that people in Cappadocia have hollowed out and used as shelter for thousands of years. Savvy businesspeople have turned some fairy chimneys into hotels, and Mike and I chose a cave hostel to stay in, even though it was dim and musty. There aren't many other chances in life to stay in a fairy chimney cave room.

We visited the UNESCO World Heritage Göreme Open Air Museum, which is a collection of cave monasteries and churches with some fading frescoes. We spent a few hours walking around the Open Air Museum and the surrounding rock formations.

One of Cappadocia's main tourist activities is a hot air balloon ride at dawn among the fairy chimneys. At 130 Euros a person it was way too expensive for us, but we woke up at sunrise and climbed the Göreme hill in time to watch the balloons take off. There was a main launch site with about 10 balloons but we saw some other balloons popping up from different places on the horizon, so it seemed to be a thriving business, even out of tourist season. It was freezing cold on the ground so I'm sure it was much colder up in the air, but we met a British tourist who said it was definitely worth it. Maybe when I'm a millionaire I'll make a stopover in Göreme and take a ride.



Neither Mike nor I are into package tours, but it's very difficult to see the sites of Cappadocia on your own. Transport is expensive to hire as things are spread out, so we signed up for a day tour. For 50 lira it was much cheaper than organizing it ourselves, and even though our tour guide had terrible English, we learned more from him than Lonely Planet would have told us. We stopped for a panoramic view of Göreme and then explored the underground city of Derinkuyu. It was built BC and was used by villagers as a hiding place from enemies. It went 8 stories underground and got a bit claustrophobic at times, but it was interesting to imagine living months and months without any sunlight- almost like winter in Lapland, but without beautiful snow.

We then made up for the lack of fresh air in Derinkuyu by walking a 2-kilometer length of Ihlara Valley, ending with a nice lunch. We stopped by Selime Monastery, the biggest rock monastery in Cappadocia, which is also famous for being the place where Luke Skywalker went in search of Ben Kenobi in the first (fourth) Star Wars movie. We quickly visited a geothermal lake nestled in the mountains that resembled Kyrgyzstan, especially the two donkeys. :) There were dogs guarding a herd of sheep, and they (the dogs) had collars with huge spikes to protect them from wolves. They never came close enough to get a photo of the weapons though.



We ended the tour in Pigeon Valley, where locals have built homes for pigeons in the valley's walls. They then collect the pigeon poo and use it as fertilizer. Pretty smart, huh?



One of the culinary specialities of the region was a pottery kebab, a mix of meat and vegetables cooked into a clay pot, which is then broken open and eaten. Unfortunately it looked a lot cooler than it tasted.



We spent most of the weekend in cafes drinking a lot of orange tea and hot chocolate and smoking hookahs. It was a relaxing break from work and city life.

sunset