DEFCON 2

When we learned that we should go by bus to Istanbul (8 hours from Salonika) we didn’t had a good feeling. Our last experience in a bus was in the Balkans, and it wasn’t exactly a pleasant one.

However, when we saw the bus waiting for us, it was a relief. Plenty of space, brand new, with AC, individual media stations, a guy passing every few minutes to give us water and snacks… And although it had no WC onboard, we were traveling with Barney Stinson. Or at least, his twin. Check it out yourselves here and here.

Then in Istanbul, the chaotic traffic that will travel with me for most of the trip around the Middle East started to show up. Lost in the bus station –itself a few kilometers outside of Istanbul-, Barney, two more Americans and I didn’t know exactly how to get to town. And everyone we asked for only repeated incessantly “Aksaray, Aksaray!” –another one to add to Alençon, Hollendretch and Doboj-. We later learned Aksaray was a neighborhood close to the city center.

In the end we took a taxi the five of us –the Americans and Barney thought we were going in two taxis…- to the city center and from there, we splitted up to our hostels. We would see again Barney the day after, just before he took a train to Sofia. Poor guy, skip Istanbul fro Sofia, such a dull city. He probably had a Bulgarian girl waiting for him.

As for Istanbul, I only can say it’s impressive. The Hagia Sofia and Topkapi Palace are the ones more famous, but for me the Blue Mosque is much better. The Basilica Cistern, an underground Ottoman cistern is also worth seeing. And the best of all, it was all free for being journalist.

Well, in the Harem of the Topkapi Palace I had a few problems. The guy behind the desk was rude, really rude. He didn’t want to understand me. I had to show him my Press Pass several times. I even showed him the Press Passport, where it’s explained in several languages (including Turkish) that I’m journalist. He refused to give me my ticket until a supervisor came and pushed him to do it. But as soon as he left, the guy started to swear in Turkish and he didn’t “give” me the ticket; he literally threw it to me instead with bad gestures and words.

The second day was a bit more relaxed. We bought presents for those back at home (basically, between David and I ended the existences of a little shop) and we sent home a parcel full of all the weight we didn’t want to carry around anymore. A sunset from the Galata Bridge allowed me to be for an hour between Asia and Europe (although it wasn’t between two Asian and European girls, as I would wish) and finally, being interviewed by students of journalism and political sciences ended the Istanbul tour.

It was time to say goodbye to Istanbul and David. He was flying home but I was staying and I had still a month ahead of travelling. The thrill was to come; the most exciting part was to come. It was calling at my door, and it was the day after. It was the time for a real taste on the Middle East.

It was time for Iraq.

After the Balkanic odyssey we really needed something like Greece. Right from the beginning it looked good. When you board a train full of young people back from a rock concert, with plenty of beer and willing to continue the party, you know something good has to happen.

We had two seats –or that we thought- in a compartment with the two quietest guys in the train. A guy and a girl that at the beginning we thought were a couple (but not). We didn’t talk too much until we got into Greece, but then the party started. Soon after entering Greece, the train stopped for 20 minutes. No passport control or anything else; just a strike.

Greece is suffering one of the worst blows from the world financial crisis and the government chose to cut salaries everywhere, starting with the public workers. Not many liked it and strikes are frequent. That day was the turn for the railway guys; or maybe they just joined in solidarity, but they did it anyway.

The connection between the Greeks of our compartment and us started then, when they asked us if we minded if they smoke. “No problem, mate”; open the window, kill the lights, close that curtain and pass me that beer. Neither the ticket inspectors seemed to mind we were smoking in the train. “Welcome to Greece”, as Giannis said.

So we were sharing beers and confessions when the train stopped again. And this time for good. Just besides a bar by the railways, and the first ones to get off the train are the ticket inspectors and the conductors. Soon the crowds follow them and for an hour and a half David and I were enjoying retsinas –white wine with coke- and sasikis being invited by the Greek guys. It was like heroes’ welcome to the Olympus with wine and… well, not women.

But it was time to go back to reality and the train. In Salonika the rock crowd got off the train and we boarded the coach we were supposed to be in from the beginning –it was by mistake that we met the Greeks- and after a placid night sleeping we arrived in the Greek capital with plenty of sun and no sign of rain.

Athens was waiting for us.

Ulysses on his way home suffered the wrath of Poseidon at sea. We suffered it on land.

Right from the beginning, rain had been always a constant threat. In London it respected us. In Paris and until Prague it looked too grey. In Wien it threw all it had over us, wetting us in a matter of seconds –and giving me a cold. In Budapest it confined us to our rooms. And in the Balkans… Intermittentshowers had been a constant in Sarajevo but we surely weren’t prepared for what was about to come in the rest of the country, much poorly prepared and with a worse infrastructure to withstand the attack of Mother Nature. The disaster was on way to collision with us.

We boarded a train supposed to last for eight hours, from Sarajevo to Belgrade. The plan was to arrive just on time to have a quick view of the city and then catch another train to Sofia. And everything was working fine. The train went out of Sarajevo on time, without problems, good speed and it looked like rain was forgiving us for a while.

Well, not so fast. After three-four hours, we arrived to Doboj –town to add to the axis of evil of Alençon and Hollendretch. Suddenly the train stops. After the first few moments of not knowing what’s going on, I asked the ticket inspector. “No English”; great. Fortunately, there was a Canadian-Serbian girl around that translated it to me: the railway is flooded and the train cannot continue; we must get off the train and wait for a bus that will connect us to another train to bring us to Belgrade. Knowing what was going on, the ticket inspector used me as a speaker to communicate the news to the rest of foreigners aboard the train, so I went compartment by compartment telling the news.

Resigned to wait –and hungry- we got off the train and waited in the station. It’s strange how these experiences unite you with your fellow travelers. Up until then, David and I almost never had exchange words with other travelers –apart from Prague and mostly because David wasn’t too eager to that. But there in Doboj we befriended am English couple, two French girls, two Canadian-Serbian girls and several Bosnian and Serbian old fellas that didn’t have a clue of English.

Five hours later the bus appeared. We thought the wait was over, but it had just started. The cause of our delay –the floods- had flooded the road and the bus spent more than two and a half hours trying to cross what looked more like a river than a road, even though it was just about two kilometers long. Once we crossed it everything went quicker, including border formalities.

Still, it took us five hours to get to the train waiting for us. It was like a palace in an oasis in the middle of the desert, even though it was just an old train in a station in the middle of nowhere. But they had food onboard and we were moving. Three hours with little sleep but good food and funny waiters made the trip to Belgrade easy and a pleasure compared to what we had just had.

We finally arrived to Belgrade in the middle of the night. Our night train to Sofia, although a night train, had gone several hours ago and the next one wasn’t running until 7 in the morning. It was too late to find a hostel and too early to board the train, so we had to sleep in the train station in Belgrade, just the one that our guide discouraged to sleep in. David could get some sleep, I didn’t.

With too much sleep to recover and too little food eaten, we boarded the train to Sofia. Eight hours, this time without major problems. And just like that, after 32 hours of travelling, we arrived in Sofia. And what’s our prize for all that travelling? A dull city, a grey city, a boring city; probably the worst city we’ve visited so far. Fine, Bulgarian women are awesome and our couchsurfer Mila was a great host, but seriously, Sofia is a city worth to skip.

No wonder we took the first train out of the city to Athens.

Here we are. Mad in an Internet café in Paris looking for accommodation for our next stop. So far everything is going smoothly -but France. First couple of days in London were awesome. We stayed with a Hungarian girl from Couchsurfing. She was living in a flat with seven more girls but we didn’t really have a chance to be there a lot. What a pity.

Walking; lots of walking has been the norm since the beginning instead. We visited London’s main touristic spots in just a day. The postcards. And unlike other times, I didn’t make any grand entrée -once I broke my elbow and dislocated my knee; other time I ended up missing the friend I was visiting. After London, Portsmouth and Normandie’s landing followed.

Specially Normandie was exciting. We rented a car and went around the historical landing sites. A couple of photos with veterans from WWII show that heroes are too big guys in small sizes. Then followed the racing through Le Mans… at night and with our tank almost empty! We weren’t sure if we’ll have enough gas until we gave back the car, and still don’t know how we managed to do it. That little piece of rubbish behaved well over our spectations.

However, since landing in Normandie we realized that France is our enemy -together with non-drying underwear. Just after landing in Cherbourgh we got caught by the enemy; a police car intercepted us when trying to find our way out of the ferry port. We dodged them easily but Cherbourgh still had more for us: a 2 hour walk with our packs (around 12kg.) up a ramp to get to our hostel… just to find it closed at arrival. We sorted it out in the end -and we almost had a hostel for ourselves- but at the beginning it was frustrating.

Paris cheered up a bit that grey look at France. The Eiffel tower is deceiving from the distance, impressive from below and breathtaking from above. The gardens of the Tulliers and others are too uplifting; but I assume they would be much better in a sunny day. And finally, the Louvre museum, for a non artistic person like me, was even good. Not Mona Lisa -such a tiny picture. All that, spiced up with the fact of not having to pay for the ticket, for being journalist.

So; no great entrance in Britain this time, but in France instead. Now, Amsterdam awaits!