We’re not always museum people.  We definitely don’t visit them in every city or even in every country, but we try to hit up the really unique or interesting ones.  In a city that just oozes history, we couldn’t miss the Istanbul Archaeological Museum (which is actually three museums in one – the Museum of the Ancient Orient, the Museum of Islamic Art in the Tiled Kiosk and the main Archaeology Museum).  And it did not disappoint.

We were surprised to find the museum (located on the grounds of the Topkapi Palace) nearly empty of tourists, though maybe it was just a slow day. Admission was a reasonable 10 lira ($5.50 CAD).  If you plan to go, leave yourself at least half a day to wander through the buildings.  If you don’t get museumed-out like we do, you could easily spend a full day there.  The collections include Greek and Roman antiquities (including a large collection from the mega-famous city of Troy), a mummy and sarcophagus collection, a timeline of coins used in the area, detailed information about the Byzantine period and an entire floor dedicated to Istanbul’s history.  The collections are impressive – in scope, in size, and in the level of preservation.

Here’s a few of my favourite photos from our visit:

Reflection of the Tiled Kiosk Building

Tile Kiosk

Engravings on Tomb (6 feet tall)

Mike, with pieces of the Ishtar Gate of the city of Babylon

Skeleton of Sidonian King Tabnit ll

Alexander Sarcophagus, 4th Century BC

Detail of Alexander Sarcophagus, 4th Century BC

Stunning Sarcophagus

Detail on Sarcophagus

I had long ago heard of Whirling Dervishes but, to be honest, had no idea who they were, what they did (well, ok… I figured it probably had something to do with whirling), or where they were.  Until I got to Turkey.

While we were walking by the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, we were (surprise, surprise) approached by a man trying to sell us tickets to a Mevlevi (Whirling Dervishes) show.  Still knowing nothing about them, I decided there and then to attend… with a name like “Whirling Dervishes” how could you go wrong?  Tickets cost 35 lira per person (normally 40 lira, but he was giving us a deal. The same deal he gives to everyone else).

The show took place in the waiting room of the Istanbul Train Station and, I must admit, until the Dervishes took the stage I was still unsure if it was legit.  The “ticket” was a generic piece of cardstock, lacking a date or a number.  To my relief, it was accepted at the doors and we were shown into a small room with three rows of plastic chairs set up on three sides of the performance space.

The band came out first, followed by the Dervishes.  Since the “performance” is actually a religious ritual, most Orders prohibit photography and recording.  We were told nothing of the sort, however, and while I didn’t use a flash, photos were obviously fair game.

Two of the musicians

Every part of the ceremony – from the music to the singing to the clothing to the Dervishes’ every movement  – was highly ritualized.  From the moment the music started, I could sense a deep meaning behind every note and action – even if I didn’t understand it.  It is not choreographed – in that the Dervishes are not always in perfect sync as they whirl – which contributes to the raw feeling and emotion being displayed.

For about an hour, the Dervishes completely transformed the waiting room into a totally different place.  Except for the LCD screens of the tourists’ cameras and phones that kept tugging me back to reality, it almost felt like I was transported to a different time and space.  Eventually, I put MY camera down and let myself get completely mesmerized by the ritual.  I especially enjoyed watching the faces of each Dervish as they got lost in the ritual of whirling.

Whether you take the time to research the history of the Whirling Dervishes or not, experiencing their ritual is not something to miss in Turkey.  It is almost mystical to watch, and a true thing of beauty.

Info Box on the Whirling Dervishes:

In a nutshell, the Order of the Whirling Dervishes is a branch of the Sufi tradition of Islam.  The Sema ritual they perform has deep roots, beginning with the inspiration of Mevlâna Jalâluddîn Rumi (1207-1273).  By revolving, the dervishes acknowledge the existence and majesty of the Creator, give thanks to Him, and pray to Him.  The ritual, which has been performed for seven centuries, unites three fundamental components of human nature – the mind (through knowledge and thought), the heart (through feelings, poetry and music), and the body (by spinning).  It symbolizes the universal values of love and service.

In 1925, Turkey outlawed all Sufi orders, included the Mevlevi Order.  It is believed to have survived by continuing their rituals in small villages until 1954, when they were granted limited permission to perform the Sema for tourists.  Even today, they are still banned as a Sufi order.  To find out more about the order and the ritual, click here.

You can experience the Sema ritual nearly nightly in Istanbul.  There are also regular performances in Cappadocia and, of course, Konya (where the order originates and which holds the Mevlana Commemoration Festival in December each year).

There’s an old Turkish proverb that says coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.  Naturally, that’s what Turkish coffee is.

Mike and I were never coffee drinkers before we left home.  I would have the occasional half-coffee, half-hot chocolate but that was about it.  Mike wouldn’t touch the stuff.  Somewhere in Austria that started to change.  By the time we were living in Bulgaria, I was drinking a coffee or two a day, and even Mike was frequenting the local cafe for a freshly brewed Americano.

So it was only natural that we embraced the concept of “When in Turkey, drink Turkish coffee.”  We didn’t expect to like it so much.

In Istanbul, a cup of Turkish coffee will run you between 3.50 and 5 lira (about $2-$2.80 CAD).

Coffee shop in Istanbul

To make it in the traditional method (to the best of my understanding, anyways), fine coffee grinds and sugar are added to cold water in a small copper vessel, which is then heated slowly over charcoal.  Once the grinds start to sink, the drink is stirred to mix it and to create a foam on the top.  Once heated, it is poured in a small cup and served.

Preparing Turkish coffee

The coffee is thick, sweet, bitter, and almost nutty.  It is served very hot, and continues to steep in the cup.  When finished, the bottom of the cup is thick with grounds.

The thick sludge at the bottom of the drink

It is quite popular to have your fortune told from your grinds… we, of course, did a little fortune telling for each other.

A heart and a butterfly

Not sure exactly what a fortuneteller would read into this one, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know… scary little guy

Obviously a pig dog and oversized gerbil fight is in our future

 

What do you see in these grinds?

We thought we had our Bulgaria to Istanbul travel plans cased.  We booked our night bus from Veliko Tarnovo in advance, had the paper ticket in hand, and even had a friend to drive us from our village to the door of the bus station.  We knew our hostel name and address in Istanbul and pre-planned a splurge on a taxi so we wouldn’t have to navigate the chaos of a new city and country in the early morning hours.

But, several seemingly small things coalesced to make a seemingly easy night of travel an unrelenting comedy of errors:

1. A light drizzle the night before departure.  The light drizzle caused mud on the sidewalk by morning.  Mud on the sidewalk meant less friction for my sandal.  And less friction meant that, before I knew it, I was sprawled on the sidewalk with muddy jeans, a bruised leg and swollen hand.  This made packing a little tougher, but still manageable.  No big deal.

2. Worn shoes.  My shoes have been with me for every outdoor activity since the Yukon River in the summer of 2010.  Don’t forget that I walked 900 km across Northern Spain over concrete, asphalt, and rocky trails.  So they’re a little less grippy then they used to be.

Apparently, this can be a problem as you walk down bus steps in the pouring rain.  For the second time today I found myself sprawled out in pain. Luckily my elbow nobly broke the fall for my back, letting out a crack of glee that called out to every passenger on the bus.  Bruised and broken, I hopped up to save an ounce of dignity, grabbed my bag from under the bus, and cowered in the nearby bus station to avoid the line of eyes and noses pressed against the windows of the bus.  Still shocky, I was ushered into the tiny bus company office to get our tickets for the second leg of our journey.

3. A single digit.  Normally, the difference between 28 and 29 is not great.  Unless you’re travelling on the 29th of October and the guy at the bus station in Veliko Tarnovo booked your onward travel for the 28th.  As I sat in the tiny office, I was told by the agent that he expected us yesterday and there was no room on the bus for us today.  All of this was relayed in German, since we still didn’t understand Bulgarian.  While he made some calls, we stopped to assess the damage from my fall.  Mike was convinced I broke my laptop from the sound of the crack, but I assured him that it was my elbow that made that sound, not my electronics.  We pulled out the laptop, iPhone, and Kindle and they were all A-OK.  I felt a little better.  I took off my rainjacket and pulled up my sleeve to examine the brave little elbow.  By Mike’s expression, I knew it didn’t fare as well… turns out I managed to peel the skin off it through a wool sweater and Goretex rain jacket (pretty impressive I would say, since I didn’t even damage the jackets!).  Mike swore he could see bone.  The joint was swelling fairly quickly and I couldn’t bare the pain of touching it to see if the bone was intact.  We bandaged it up and sat back to wait.

4. A box full of water.  The agent returned with a smile on his face and told us “keine problem!”  He found us a bus leaving an hour later then the one we originally booked.  It was also full, but the staff agreed to find space for us.  I didn’t like the sound of that, but the idea of staying the night at the mostly closed bus station in the rain didn’t appeal to me either.  We paid full fare and waited.  When the bus arrived, its attendant ushered me on board and showed me my seat… Four (partially full) cases of water crammed in behind some seats.  Nothing like sitting sideways at a 45 degree angle for a 9 hour bus ride!  The bright side:  My sore elbow was on the high side, not the low one which required some elbow propping to achieve some semblance of comfort.

My seat for the night

5. Coffee service on a night bus.  Sounds good, right? This was our first experience with European night buses and we were pleasantly surprised to see them offer coffee, tea, water, juice, and soda.  However, every time someone ordered a coffee, Mike was required to move.  You see… his seat was not quite as luxurious as mine.  He got a newspaper and a cushion to sit on the steps of the back door.  Which is where the hot water was.

Mike’s settled into his staircase for the night.

6. A case of mistaken identity.  Arriving at the Bulgaria-Turkey border, we were told that we would have to buy a visa for about 15 bucks each.  No problem.  We were expecting this.  We had talked to quite a few British ex-pats that had made the trip and the price sounded about right.  The attendant navigated us across the multiple security booths and brought us to the visa office.  The man looked at our passports and asked for 15 USD each.  I pulled it out.  He looked at them again, then said… “Oh, Kanadski! Not Amerikanski… oh… wait…” He turns around, rifles through some papers, and finds the sheet of Canadian visa stickers.  Turns out they are 60 USD per person.  Unbeknownst to us, Canadians are required to pay 3-4 times as much as any other country to enter Turkey.  Yikes.

7. A broken ATM machine.  When our second bus was just two hours outside of Istanbul (the company managed to find us another bus parked at the same rest stop with some spare seats that was headed our way. We fell into a deep sleep the second our butts hit the seats.

When we finally arrived I was so sore, I could hardly get up.  We got our stuff together, grabbed our backpacks and found a taxi.  We showed him the address for our hostel and he said “OK.” We asked how much.  He said “40 lira.”  Thinking this was way too much, but too sore and tired to even haggle, we said “OK.”  We asked if he could stop at an ATM so we could take out some Turkish money.  He didn’t understand so we mimed the action while holding a debit card. “OK,” he said. We got in and he drove us along the bus terminal (which, if you’ve ever been at Istanbul’s main bus terminal is larger than most airports I’ve been at) and stopped at an ATM.  It was out of service.  We hopped back in and he drove us to a string of banks where I got our card to work, not on the first, but the second machine we tried (I’m pretty sure I was just putting in the wrong PIN at the first one in my sleep-deprived state).

We got back in the cab and our driver asked us where our hostel was.  He already had the paper with the address on it, so we pointed at it.  Obviously he wasn’t sure where that was.  He stopped and asked another cab.  Drove a little farther, and stopped to ask another.  He tried to call the hostel’s number but couldn’t get an answer.  Then, asked several more cab drivers on the street.  Phoned a friend.  Asked the audience. Oh… Google Maps, how handy you could have been here!

Finally, after something like an hour or more in the cab, he stumbled across our hostel and dropped us off at the door.  “50 lira,” he said.  “What?!? No way!”  It doesn’t matter how tired we were, we weren’t overpaying by that much.  He could have told us he didn’t know where the hostel was.  He could have actually turned on the meter in the front instead of quoting us a price.  He could have told us when we asked to stop at an ATM that he would charge more.  After a little yelling in the street, we paid him the 40 lira we rightfully owed and walked into our hostel.  Luckily, he didn’t follow us in cause he was mad.

To Sum Up:  We can certainly say our quiet little overnight trip to Istanbul was an adventure.  At the time of writing (12 days after the trip), I still have souvenirs from it: a black bruise on my thigh the size of a softball, two horizontal linear bruises on my back where it connected with the stairs, and a bruised elbow that I still can’t put pressure on.  But that’s part of travelling, isn’t it?  We survived and hey- it sure makes for a better story than we got on the bus, fell asleep, and woke up in Istanbul, doesn’t it?

Here’s a little Bulgarian lesson for you…

Дa = Da = yes

He = Nay = no

Simple enough, right?  Wrong, my friend.  So very wrong indeed.

I thought that mastering the Cyrillic alphabet would be the biggest stumbling block to communicating in Bulgarian.  Of course, I was mistaken.  It was actually my neck that would get me in trouble.

For 27 years of my life, I understood that a nod of the head meant “yes” and a shake of the head meant “no.”  I was trained to believe this was universal and let me tell you, it’s now deeply ingrained.  So it was quite the shock to learn that this doesn’t hold true everywhere.

As you may have guessed… in Bulgaria, a nod means “no” and a shake of the head is “yes.”  We were quick to realize this fact as soon as we learned the words Дa and He.

Knowing a social convention and internalizing are two very different things, however.  When you see someone doing this…

… your brain doesn’t know how to process it.  Half the message is “yes” and half is “no”.  The visual and audio clues are perfect opposites and you end up perplexed.  Or at least I do.

And just try to say yes (or da) without nodding.  Or no without shaking your head. It’s about a thousand times harder than trying to pat your head with one hand while rubbing your tummy with the other.  Especially when those are two of the precious few words you can speak or understand.

I’ve heard lots of stories from British expats that have walked into a restaurant, asked if they had a table for four, and stood there waiting to go to their nonexistent seats after the hostess nodded.

Mike and I found ourselves in an unknown city looking to buy our Bulgarian car (which we later dubbed the “little red shitbox” – for obvious reasons).  We needed to find an English interpreter to help with the sale, but we didn’t know where to start.  We saw a sign for an information centre and walked in.  But it didn’t look at all like an information centre – there were no pamphlets, and the set-up was something like an accounting firm.  Mike asked, “Information?”  The woman behind the nearest desk shook her head.  We walked out.  About a block later, we realized she had actually said yes.  Oops.

You would think that after three months in the country, we’d get used to this, but it’s just too hard to master.

One of the last things we did before leaving our house in Bulgaria was to register the property with the municipal tax office.  We brought a Bulgarian friend along to translate, and fill out the 12 page form that reminded me of a university final exam.  When everything was signed and done, the tax official said, “Now all you have to do is come back next year and pay your taxes.”  To that, I nodded and walked out.  She was not impressed.

We are back from the dead!  After an unprecedented 28 days of internet silence, we’ve gained the strength to bring you this update…

Our return to the tech-laden “real” world has come with the surprise announcement that Mike’s sister was happily married while we were hiding from the sun.  While big events at home always bring on a bout of homesickness, we can take solace in the fact that she eloped to “the happiest place on earth” and we, in fact, missed nothing but the inevitable drunken celebration upon their return.  (Congrats sis!  Can’t wait to party it up next time we see you guys… we’re sending big hugs your way!)  The other thing that helped ward off the evil spirits – oops, I mean the homesickness – is the fact that we are no longer homeless.  Yep, you heard that right… we are the proud owners of a Bulgarian house, smack dab in the middle of the Balkan vampire zone.  My how things change when the blog goes dark!

[If you’ve been following us on our Facebook page, this isn’t really news, is it?  You’ve already seen the photos.  If you aren’t following our Facebook page, what the heck are you waiting for???]

Now, I suppose you want details… Of course you do.  I know you do because so did our moms, dads, friends, former colleagues, former high school teachers, new neighbours, our sheep herder (more on this in a bit), nearly every ex-pat we have come across, a fellow traveller we met in Sofia, and our recent victims.  Umm… maybe scratch that last one.

We arrived in rural Bulgaria for a HelpX gig at the start of August.  It took us a mere week or two of village life, along with an enlightening conversation about Balkan vampirism and just how cheap Bulgarian real estate can be (not that we’re implying the two are related) to decide that we should look at some properties.  After all, just looking can’t hurt, right?

After an, umm, “interesting” day with a real estate agent that involved getting lost for over an hour in a village, nearly breaking into the wrong house, and watching the realtor kick in the gate and the front door of a house we were looking at, we still weren’t sure.  Nothing spoke to us.  Perhaps it had something to do with all the garlic hanging on the doors.

Then, through our HelpX hosts and one of their friends, the perfect property presented itself.  We showed up, looked around, and knew within the first two minutes that we wanted it (despite the creepy, creepy doll in the bedroom).

Let me tell you… this baby didn’t last long… it was out before we moved in.

After twenty minutes, we had a kiss from the baba (aka the granny) that was selling it.  We had ourselves a lair!  I mean, a house!

It’s probably worth noting our mindsets here… Mike was 100% gung-ho about the purchase, and I was still a little on the fence.  Bulgaria is a long, long way from our friends and family at home.  I couldn’t picture exactly how it would fit into our long-term plan (whatever that may be).  Yet, in the moment,  I just knew the purchase was right.  When it’s right, it’s right, you know?  Mike helped to relieve any final misgivings I had with his well-timed statement upon our return: “Maybe I shouldn’t have had that beer right before we went to look at it… I was just walking around the yard thinking I really wish I wasn’t buzzed right now.”  Helpful, huh?  Anyways, I digress…

While we all considered the baba’s kiss to be binding, Bulgarians do like their bureaucracy so we started the ball rolling to actually buy the thing.  Everyone told us we’d be moved in within a week, but – alas! –  it was not to be.  And thus began the longest MONTH of waiting of our lives and the most difficult time of our trip for us.

First, we waited for our company papers to come through (non-EU citizens are not allowed to own property in Bulgaria, but they can form a company that owns the property).  Then, we waited for our company stamp.  Then, we waited for the bank transfer to go through.  Then, for the money to actually show up (this took a full week AFTER we got the confirmation of it).  Finally, we had to wait for the notary to make time for our appointment.

But finally, on October 1, the deal went through.  Everything was signed in quintuplet.  We went to the bank and paid our taxes and then paid the bank to obtain proof (in quintuplet) that we paid our taxes.  We took out our company stamp that cost a small fortune to make and asked for a stamp pad, but were waved off.  Apparently, you simply need to possess the stamp, instead of actually stamping with it.  Ah… the strange quirks of the system!

Coolest (and heaviest) set of house keys I’ve ever set my eyes on

“Wait…”, you’re thinking.  “This is all very nice,” (you’re probably actually thinking boring, but I’ve chosen to hear your interjection as “nice”), “but when you said details, I thought you meant what we all want to know…  HOW MUCH does a house in Bulgaria COST?”

Here’s the numbers and a little bit more of the bureaucratic process (in case you too want to get up close and personal with the vampires by buying a house)…

The house itself cost 12000 BGN leva (or $7650 CAD/6000 Euro at the time of purchase).  As I mentioned, this required the formation of a company which cost 450 leva, plus 17 leva to notarize the papers (EVERYTHING has to be notarized in Bulgaria!), and another 50 leva to get our stamp.  Getting lost?  Don’t worry.  There’s a grand total at the end.  Lawyer fees for the house deal were 750 leva.  While a lawyer wasn’t essential, we didn’t want to mess around here (and she caught a discrepancy in the lot size that was fixed up in our deed).  Taxes and notary fees for the house purchase totalled 764 leva.  We could have saved on the taxes by declaring a lower purchase price than the true amount (a common, and as it turns out expected practice), but we went by the book here too.  Every trip to the notary requires a translator (trust me, if you don’t speak Bulgarian, they won’t speak to you… even if you show them your fangs as proof of Balkan citizenship).  This, of course, adds to the costs – 30 leva.

So the grand total, including all the taxes and fees we never even considered was… drum roll please… 14,061 leva/$8,964.04 CAD/7,030 Euro.  (Which, as an amusing side note, would – if included in our overall trip budget along with our Bulgarian car purchase, car repair bill, and house renovation bill – put our daily cost at $68 CAD/day since we left home… still not too shabby, huh?)

And what did that money get us?  In Bulgaria, a 3 bedroom house with an outdoor kitchen, outdoor loo, and barn.  Half an acre of land with peach trees, apple trees, plum trees, and grapevines.  An amazing view of the stunning hills surrounding us.  No indoor kitchen or bathroom (but there’s plenty of space for them and there will be one day…) and no shower.  The house is in livable condition, with water hooked up and basic (as in basically old, crumby, and downright dangerous) electricity.  In Canada, the same amount would get us little more than a used car. 

The house, as we found it

Our future dining/living room… so much potential!

One of the bedrooms

Our yard

Outdoor kitchen, complete with clay oven

The outdoor loo.  Ever heard the expression “built like a brick shithouse”? Now you’ve seen one!

This picture was taken from our yard

The house also came with a sheep keeper – an elderly man that cuts the grass, keeping the yard from being reclaimed by the jungle.  I must admit, at first I was a little uneasy when he let himself into the back gate and started hanging out in our yard.  But, through a little translation help from a friend, we discovered that he cut the lucerne (aka alfalfa) in the yard for the old owner and he was willing to keep doing so until we were ready to move in.  And what does he want in payment?  Get this… the grass!  That’s right, where else in the world can you hire someone to cut your grass (through a combination of a scythe and two sheep) for the price of the grass itself?  It’s a beautifully simple system!

So, anyways, back to the present.  Mike and I battled our way out of Bulgaria (I’m sure you can sense there’s a story here.. but I’ll save that for a later post) after spending a blissful four weeks in our very own home.  We ditched our lofty goals of putting in a new bathroom, redoing the upstairs wiring,  and just got the windows and doors done.

Taking a break from renos to be carried over the threshold

Scraping, sanding, and puttying the window frame before painting

The windows BEFORE

The windows AFTER

The house, as we left it

And so, under the cover of darkness, we journeyed to Istanbul, Turkey.  We snuck into our hostel just as the sun was about to rise, and we’re spending the daylight hours hidden away… catching you, our reader, up on the adventures.  I’m sure we’ll venture out after sundown – there is, after all, fresh blood to be had!  Oops… I mean a new culture to experience!

FYI… We are not settling down in Bulgaria just yet.  In fact, we still don’t know when our Bulgarian house will become our Bulgarian home for good.  But for now, it’s one hell of a summer project, no?

AHHHHH!!!!! It’s back!

Want to see more of our house? Check out our photos in our photo gallery or stop by the ol’ Facebook page to see some more.

Have you ever wondered what to do with the ax you used to smash up the furniture your ex left behind?  Or the stuffed beagle he gave you when your dog died? What about the air sickness bags you collected from the flights you took to visit your former long distance lover?  Or the rear view mirror you ripped off his car when it was parked in front of the “wrong” house?  Or the fake rubber breasts your ex-husband so thoughtfully gave you to wear?

So what do you do with these mementos of failed relationships?  In Zagreb, Croatia the answer is put them on display!

Not your typical museum, the Museum of Broken Relationships is definitely worth a visit.  On the surface, it appears to be a collection of random and mundane objects (like wedding dresses, axes, and teddy bears) but, unlike most museums, it is not the artifacts that people come for… it is the stories.

Housed in a small building with attached cafe/wine bar, the museum is a collection of objects representing love lost.  Each object has been donated by someone with a story to tell, and is exhibited with a label telling the date, location, and tale of woe (in English and Croatian, though there are QR codes and free wifi so travellers can read the stories in their own languages).  As the information at the entrance tells you, the museum offers contributors a chance to “overcome an emotional collapse through creation” rather than destruction.  The stories range from humourous (like the garterbelts that are labeled “I never put them on.  The relationship might have lasted longer if I did”) to spiteful (the garden gnome that was thrown at a partner’s windshield) to, quite fittingly, heartbreaking (losses from war and murder, to name a few).

Admission is 25 Croatian kuna (about $4.25 CAD).  Even for shoestring budget travellers like ourselves, the hour or two of laughter, tears, and connection with a universal human experience are well worth the price.

A love letter on shattered glass