Turkey > In thirty hours to Budapest

We get up at nine o’clock because we have to check out of the room today. Ron goes out to get a new Telegraaf newspaper, with information about the Tour and the Olympic Games. He also picks up some bread and withdraws money so we can pay for the hotel. At exactly eleven o’clock, we leave the rooms. There are already new guests waiting for them. Our belongings can remain at the hotel. We first walk in the direction of the tower with the city view. On the way, we have to stop several times to take shelter from short showers. When we cross the bridge over the Golden Horn, the gentle rain turns into a downpour. We manage to find a small shelter near a bench. Water pours from the sky, and visibility drops to zero. We decide to duck into a Kentucky Fried Chicken for something to drink. Unfortunately, they temporarily have no cola, Fanta, Sprite, water, ice, or milkshakes—only milk. On the first floor, we drink our own bottle of cola. To make matters worse, the bottle tips over. Outside, the rain has stopped and visibility improves. From the tower, we have a view over all of Istanbul. The silhouettes of the mosques are particularly striking, and we can even see Asia. Back near the neighborhood around our hotel, we visit the Hagia Sophia mosque. It has been a mosque for a hundred years; before that, it was a Catholic church. At the entrance, we naturally get student discounts (child tickets) by presenting our impressive collection of cards at the counter. With bus passes, public transport cards, student IDs, and the like, it doesn’t show that Sandra actually has no student ID.

Turkey - The covered bazaar look but dont buy

Later we learn that an exception was made for us. Other Dutch visitors asked for a student discount but didn’t get it. After the visit, we buy nearly thirty postcards, which are very cheap in Turkey. With the postcards in hand, we enter the Bazaar. In a labyrinth of covered streets, vendors in tiny shops try to sell their goods. We wander around for a small hour, just “looking, looking…”. We need to eat early today, so we go to the same restaurant where we ate on the first day. Meanwhile, we write the postcards. We order extra drinks twice for this, and Sandra takes the opportunity to rush to the toilet, as she isn’t feeling well. On the way to the station, we stop at a shoemaker. He looks at my shoes and quickly concludes: “finished.” I don’t bother mentioning that the shoes are only three weeks old. Fortunately, we have the entire train compartment to ourselves. What else would you expect on a train through Yugoslavia? Originally, we thought we would travel through Bulgaria and Romania, but the train doesn’t go through Romania at all, so we didn’t even need the visa in our passport. Just as we settle in, we realize we still have the postcards with us. We rush outside. After asking a few times, we find a vague slot with an illegible sign. We have little choice and trust that it is a mailbox. The postcards disappear inside. Alongside Sandra, Monique also falls ill. The train toilet quickly clogs with a massive amount of waste. Probably something went wrong with the food, because Ron and I aren’t feeling 100% either—likely the kebab from yesterday. While Monique and Sandra fall asleep in the compartment, we play a game of Hearts a few compartments down with two Danes and a Dutchman. After crossing the Bulgarian border, we also go to sleep. To avoid waking Monique and Sandra, we take up residence in an empty compartment further down the corridor.