Turkey, cheese, bratwurst and beer!

Fairy Chimneys
Originally uploaded by camandkristin.

251 days down, 100 to go! And we're now into our passport punching phase where we'll be jumping from country to country, hitting the highlights, and moving even more often than we have been! Good thing we're not tired...

Since we left off, we spent two weeks in Turkey, starting and ending in Istanbul. Istanbul is a beautiful city, or at least the Sultanahmet area is, which is where we stayed and which boasts the Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque. The Hagia Sofia is an interesting building because it is of religious importance to both the Christian and Islamic population. It was originally a Christian church, but then some Islamic dude sacked it, painted a few signs in Arabic, plastered over the ornate mosaics with the much simpler Islamic style, erected a few minarets, and threw in the niche pointing to Mecca and, bam!, he had himself a mosque. Today it is has been redesignated a museum, and they are beginning to uncover and restore many of the original Christian mosaics, which gives the building a unique "hybrid" feel.

From Istanbul, we headed east to the Cappadocia region, a land of crazy rock formations and even crazier cities carved into them. The rock is called tufa, and is soft enough to carve with a spoon. The people of the area built homes into the "fairy chimneys" and made entire cities up to 50 metres underground with labyrinth like tunnels which kept them safe from their enemies. Or something. It was cool.

Then we headed to Turkey's Aegean coast where we spent a night in a treehouse before hopping on a sailboat for 4 days of fun in the sun! There were 18 people on board, ranging in age from 25 to 57, and it was amazing how well everyone got along. One night there was a Pirate episode, where four 'pirates' from our ship swam over to a neighbouring ship and stole their dinghy, a bottle of wine, numerous cans of pop, and all the laundry from the drying line. The next morning the neighbours weren't in such good spirits, and one of our pirates had to walk the plank! Even once we all disembarked, most of the the group stayed together and we ended up travelling with 10 others for a few days. Talk about a logistics nightmare... We parted ways eventually and took in some more of Turkey's sights before returning to Istanbul and flying out to Holland.

In Holland we had the pleasure of reconnecting with a Dutch couple we met in Peru. We met Guido and Felica while doing the Colca Canyon trek in Arequipa, and let me tell you- one way to bond is by walking together for 3 days, up and down, non stop, at altitude, in the sun... Anyway, they picked us up at the airport on Thursday night and took us to their home in Krommenie, just outside of Amsterdam. For the next 5 days they showed us all around and fully Dutch'd us out! Oh the cheese!! Oh the stroopwafels!! Oh the SexMuseum ;)

Our Holland Highlights Reel includes: biking 30km along the incredibly well organized bike paths, visiting the windmills at Zaanse Schanse (don't even try to pronounce it!), buying croquettes from a wall, visiting a cheese auction AND a cheese museum (free samples) AND having a cheese fondue, visiting the Van Gogh museum (again, we pronounce it ALL wrong) and the Anne Frank Museum (fantastic, and emotional), a 3 hour personal canal tour with wine and cheese on board, wandering through the Redlight District at night, visiting Rotterdam to cheer on Guido who had just biked from Paris for charity, visiting the Zuiderzee Museum (kinda like the Dutch Barkerville), eating stroopwafels and hagel... sprinkles, a quick trip to visit Haarlem (beautiful), and then topping it off with a visit to the SexMuseum. Do we qualify for Dutch citizenship now (they get, like, 6 weeks of holiday you know)?!

It was hard to leave Holland and all the comforts of home and friends, but we had to press on- Europe was waiting! We jumped on a night bus and have spent the last 3 days in Berlin. Germany is, of course, the host of the World Cup, and Berlin is the epicentre of the excitement. We spent an hour waiting in line to get to the top of the Reichstag (the German Parliament, which has a dome with an incredible view of the city). Once we finally made it to the top we heard a familiar song, and then looked down to see Nelly Furtado doing what turned out to be a sound check for her "FanFest" concert that night! Ironic that we would see a Victoria star playing in Berlin...

Berlin has lots to see and do, much of which centers around the Holocaust- it's pretty interesting to see the number and quality of sights and how brutally honest they are about what actually happened here during WWII. We have enjoyed the displays and learned a lot as well. And then there's the Berlin Wall...

But it's not all depressing- there is soccer-mania going on all around us with entire streets being closed off for the festivities. There are so many bratwurst-and-beer stands you can easily stagger from one to the other, so you'll never starve. Unless you have less than a 20 in your pocket, because then you can't afford it... And no, we aren't going to any matches, are you?

Today we went to the Berlin Zoo, which claims to have the most species of any zoo in the World. It took us almost 5 hours, so they could be right (and that's without reading any signs, since nothing is in English here). The real highlight for us (at least Kristin) was the Giant Panda! Finally to see the real thing! And without trekking through China! The funniest thing we saw was a blind howler monkey, finding his way along a log with arms outstreched, grasping the air, just like a person!

We are now awaiting our bus tonight which leaves at the convienient time of 1:30am, and which will deposit us in Prague tomorrow morning. Country #3 on the European Checklist.

Bye for now,
Cam and Kristin