"Bus ride From Hell"! mwah har ha!

Here's the thing, I’d been told that I better take the bus at 12.30 because that was the direct bus and would take me only about 24 hours and not 30 like the one that stopped in Antakya where I’d have to change buses. Great I thought… it makes it a lot more bearable to travel 24 hours overland if you don’t have to stop 15 hours into it and move all your stuff on to another bus.

Ah ha!! How misled I was by this travel agent woman! The first thing I ask the driver when I arrive at the bus station is “is this bus to Damascus? Damascus? Damascus?” The sign at the front of the bus says Antakya, but I am constantly reassured that in fact it’s going to Damascus… ok, ok, I think maybe I am being paranoid, maybe the bus just came from Antakya and the sign is still up… so I hop on the bus and make myself comfortable.

Ok, so this is a Turkish bus and no one seems to speak English, French or Arabic (you have three languages at your disposal and it doesn’t help?!?!?). The woman sitting next to me knows some Arabic, but my diminished knowledge can’t take in her Turkish accent/Turkish words into much sense. Also she seems to be confused about where Damascus is located in the Arab world and tells the driver Beirut! Beirut! I am not going to Beirut!!!! So I start with him Damascus! Damascus! Too bizarre! The driver once again assures me I’m going to Damascus, okay, okay…

It’s at this stage that the rain starts, it is absolutely pissing down. The sun is setting, and the roads are busy. So as I am sitting in seat number six I had a nice view of the traffic we’re weaving in and out of and also the hills and such we’re passing through the windscreen. It’s when I realise something… I can’t actually see the road anymore, but we’re still moving… so I wonder... why doesn’t the driver put on the windscreen wipers?

Ah! There are no windscreen wipers! Oh my God. We are going 120km down a highway on a dodgy bus with no windscreen wipers and it’s dark and raining. Surprisingly enough I found it quite hard to relax.

A few hours into the trip at one of the stops who should board the bus but ‘Young Mother’ and ‘Crying Baby’ oh great, please dear god don’t let them sit near me, so naturally they sit right behind me.

At this point in time I would like to give my love and admiration to all mothers. Not because you have to put up with crying babies, but because you have to put up with every other person around you being an expert on the matter of crying babies and how to make them stop. This includes, 14 year old boys who decide that whistling at the baby is surely the best way to get it to stop crying… The baby got on at about 9pm and by about 1.30am all the bus, still wide awake, had offered their opinions.

Right now is where the ‘unscheduled stops’ began. The driver – as expert as the rest, decided that the baby for sure would need some fresh air (in my humble opinion the baby just needed to goddamn sleep and the bus’ lights, everyone having a go of holding him and the whistling wasn’t really the right way to go about it! But I kept this advice to myself and patiently tried to sleep). Anyway getting fresh air a few times, stopping to heat up milk and so on, and everyone was complaining about the fact that the bus was going to be late.

It must have been round 3 am when it all became too much for the mother, who yelled at the steward and started crying herself. So now there was crying mother and crying baby crying together. This then led to shaking of the baby in a vain attempt to finally stop him crying and which, obviously led to more crying and unscheduled stops.

… But hey, at least the rain had stopped…

At Dawn we eventually we stopped in what appears to be a scheduled stop as everyone seems to be getting off. In fact I am informed we have to get off, as our luggage is being unloaded but this I can tell you is definitely not Damascus (plus it’s only been (a long) 18 hours on the bus).

So I am mildly informed by the woman who was sitting in front of me the entire bus ride who – has suddenly decided she speaks English (despite my desperate pleas to any English speakers on the whole bus earlier in the trip) – that I have to change buses for Damascus.

“Great (No worries – worse things have happened than this, it’s just a bus change – and you’re in a bus station so that’s a bonus). When is it?”

“We just missed it, it was at 5.30am” (Damn crying baby unscheduled stops!!) (It’s now 6.15am)

“Great (You know there are several buses to take each day, Lonely Planet told you so). When’s the next bus?”

She didn’t know so I had to go down to the office and find out. It’s 12.30… great 6 hour wait at border town… love it really!

The second bus took about 7 hours, including a 1 hour stop at the Turkish border and another hour or so at the Syrian border. The fact that there was no air-conditioning and I was sweating like a pig (hey it was only 45 degrees Celsius outside) didn’t bother me nearly as much as the 1950’s Syrian movie with songs that I couldn’t even watch if I’d wanted to because the woman next to me was speaking rapidly to me in Romanian like I was meant to understand.
Finally 36 hours (only 12 hours more than I thought it would take originally) I arrived in Damascus. I even let the taxi driver rip me off because I didn’t care anymore. At least I was there where and I could find out all about my course etc. and as they’d say Alhamdulliah (Thank God!). I had arrived.

Istanbul not Constantinople…

Istanbul was a short stop for me and basically involved two days of paying taxis to drive me between the Australian Consulate, Syrian Consulate and my hotel. I was staying in Mavi Guesthouse, which is really close to Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque as well as being cheap (and the people there so friendly!). It killed me I couldn’t go and look at all these marvellous things, but I will return (with Eirin in two months actually).

I did have time to look in the Grand Bazaar though – under the guise of looking for long loose clothes to wear in Syria. It is completely tourist orientated which was a bit disappointing because the only things you could buy were belly dancing costumes, carpets and really, really, really beautiful ceramic bowls/coasters. Which, of course, I couldn’t afford to buy (or carry). But it was a beautiful building and too easy to get lost in (in a good way!!).

Anyway in the end I only stayed 3 nights before I hopped on a bus to Damascus…

CROOOOOOOOATIA

Ha ha, I’m writing this the day after Croatia lost it’s chances in the world cup so please excuse me if at any stage I sound slightly arrogant (and don’t mention any off sides), and also if I trash Italy for any reason… GO AUSTRALIA!

Ok, moving on from football… damn Croatians and their football fanaticism!! Everywhere we went there were stores absolutely covered in those red and white checks and maybe a little bit of Brazil for any tourists who happened to wonder on by… This got to such a state that Eirin and I decided to get revenge and ask at every store (especially those with only red and white) if they had any Australian t-shirts. We made a video of one such endeavour and we will be happy to show anyone should they wish to rub it in to any people who were going for Croatia.

Anyway, in Croatia we visited Pula, Split, Dubrovnik and the Islands of Hvar and Korcula. We also had small stops in Zagreb and Split, but we didn’t stay there overnight.

The first thing that hit us, almost literally when we finally arrived in Pula and got out and about was the rockiness of the beaches. We had read all about how great the beaches in Croatia were so we were pretty excited to be working on our tans. However we found that we were misled!! In fact all the people contributing to the lonely planet’s thorn trees (where we get all our free travel information on the net) must indeed be British or Scottish and think anywhere where it’s actually warm enough to lie on a beach is great. Never mind if that beach is in fact filled with boulders! And by boulders I mean stones that are about 30cms around. Not pleasant. So we made up our minds to only listen to Australians in regard to what makes a good beach… from our research we’ve basically come to the conclusion that good beaches only exist in Australia, Pacific Islands and Thailand. Call us snobs.

Our accommodation in Croatia was solely what we’d termed ‘old ladies’ accommodation. I.e. we arrive at the bus station old ladies fight with each other for our attention and show us maps of their place and we go with them on dodgy night-time car rides with people we don’t know to their house and pay up to $25 for a room. It’s great! It was through our old lady in Split that we discovered the magic of Dubrovnik… Nickola…

Some may say that the old walled city of Dubrovnik is the best thing on the Adriatic. However we found the kindness of the man Nickola, and his sister in law to really won our vote. Basically you pay $25 each a night (a bit expensive in hostel/old lady terms) to stay, but you get a private bathroom and nice big kitchen to use. PLUS Nickola will drive you anywhere, anytime… it’s so great! Nickola can we go to the old town please? The beach? The bus station? The port? Can you pick us up? Really great stuff, and to top it off they give you a bottle of wine upon departure… we stayed twice to get two… he he… no, but seriously it was cool and we really liked it, it was our home in Croatia.

It was from this base that we travelled to the Islands of Hvar and Korcula. We left our suitcases at our new home and were only travelling with our hand luggage. FREEEEEEEEEEEE we felt sooooooo frrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

Unfortunately with the exception of one day we had really shitty island weather. So our Island holiday (5 nights) basically consisted of sleeping in, eating pasta and chatting with other wacky travelling in the old ladies (or old men’s – crazy Luka!) houses. ‘Twas good and as the time went by and we travelled back to Dubrovnik we realised that the time had come…

It was time for Eirin and I to part again...sad! I was headed to Istanbul to sort out my visa for Syria and then move on to Damascus for my course, and Eirin was set for some serious intensive travel with Wes around Europe.


Us in Dubrovnik!

Budapest part 2…late release…

Ok, I know this is late but luckily for me Budapest really left an impact… check out article soon to appear in Canberra Times…

Ok, where was I? Ohhhhhhhhhh…. The Chocolate bar! And by that I mean the Chocolate café… but y’know. The three of us went and absolutely stuffed ourselves on hot chocolates and the like… including, chocolate fondue! Hmmmmmmmm I will never eat chocolate again, well maybe just a little bit… I’ve mentioned this before but why does chocolate in Europe taste just sooooooooooooooooo much better than at home. Damn Cadbury’s and their stupid anti-melting chemicals!

Another thing I really feel I should mention in regards to Budapest is the Labyrinth. David Bowie would be jealous we had such an adventure under the castle in Buda with all the scary music and drum beats and dark caves… we took lots of stupid pictures too… fun times. Worth a mention.

What else?!?! Oh yes!!! Fruit soup – beware all and steer clear!! Eirin ordered this in an effort to get French onion soup…. This is one thing about not being ok with the whole Hungarian language thing (or the really, really, really badly translated menu) eventually Eirin and I narrowed the French onion soup options down to ‘soup with panky’ or ‘fruit soup’ … fruit soup was evidently the wrong choice. It came and was purple, with cream piled on top, nothing could be sweeter in the world and I hope Eirin doesn’t mind me saying but this was one of those days when you’re travelling and you really should be lying at home drinking black tea and maybe eating some plain rice if you can hold it in. Bad, bad choice. Just looking at it made us queasy.

Ha ha… and so now every time we are facing a menu we don’t understand, or we get something we really didn’t think we ordered we call it a ‘fruit soup experience’. Good times…

Ah ha ha… AH!!!!! Sometime around this time in Budapest we had the return of Ota. You may recall that Ota was the brain-fried psycho at the hotel in Prague who totally freaked us out with his loud stereo and choice of ‘soundtrack from Hitchcock’s psycho’ along with ‘U2’… honestly what could be more scary… anyway… it was around this time that I received my first hate mail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello!!!! Hate mail/death threats are not something I ever expected to encounter seeing as I generally try and be a nice person to all people I meet. Anyway I believe this was in response to the very reasonable review Eirin and I had left on the booking website that said that mentioned the music and if you like to sleep etc don’t stay here… (by the way don’t book with ‘hostel world they will give psycho hotel owners your email so they can send you threats)… anyway to make a long story short he emailed me saying ‘I hope you spend your next life in pain and suffering’. Nice. Never, Ever, Ever stay there!!!!!!!

Luckily, our lives as always were made easier by Livia and her family who offered to take us to Lake Balaton for the weekend (excuse spelling here) but it’s the largest lake in Hungary and Middle Europe and it’s pretty impressive and very beautiful, as was their house there. We went out for traditional Hungarian food, and relaxed with Markus (have I mentioned him he is the beautiful, huge, timid, German Shepard that belongs to Livia’s family). We also fed swans on the lake and played badminton, a very enjoyable weekend was had by all.

Anyway it was fabulous, so naturally Eirin and I cried when we had to leave for Croatia.

sorry ok!

Hi y'all!

Well I'm in the cradle of civilization... aka Syria and Eirin's off galavanting around with her lovely Wesley - so sorry we've been slack and all that but that's where we are at right now! Also our poverty prevents us from beign connected as often as we please and therefore uploading all the delicious blogs we've prepared.... yes I jest, but stress not! I promise there's more coming, once I get over the fact that it's 45 degrees here and I'm speaking Arabic again I will write something to let you know a little of what's going on in my world...

interestingly... I was offered a job in the hotel where I'm staying I will stay for free if I make breakfast and tea for the guests every morning from 7-12, I am still trying to decide whether it's worth it... what do you all think??