One Week: 4 Countries, 2 Continents

Prague

It was sad to say goodbye to Prague. Our last day there was spent once again wandering through the old city enjoying the beautiful weather. We sat on a bench on one of the islands in the Vltava River reading for a while, and in the evening we visited Pivovar Dum one last time for their delicious beer and food. That night we boarded a night bus for Munich.

Munich

We would not recommend the Prague-Munich night bus to other travelers. While the bus itself is perfectly comfortable, the ride is much too short -- only 5 hours -- to get enough sleep. Adding to the lack of sleep are the several stops the bus made, and the stop at the German border where we had to have our passports checked. Needless to say, when we arrived at the Munich bus station at 5 a.m. we were quite groggy. We slowly figured out how to get from the bus station on the outskirts of the city to our hostel.

We couldn't get into our rooms right away, but the hostel had a large glass covered atrium filled with several couches and beanbag chairs. We took a nap to revive ourselves and then headed out to explore. We hadn't planned to come to Munich in our travels -- a cheap flight to Greece brought us there. But we were very happy to find a beautiful and fun city. The great spring weather was continuing. We didn't see a cloud in the sky and the temperature remained in the low 70s. The city has lovely old buildings, wide streets, and is very green. There is a huge park, called the English Gardens -- twice the size of Central Park -- right in the city.

The evening of our first night in Munich we met up with Herbert, a colleague and friend of Alison's Mom who is from Munich. He took us to a large beer garden set on a lake in the English Gardens. Beer gardens are a really fantastic part of life in Germany. They allow you to bring your own food or purchase food there and spread out on large picnic tables. You have your choice of lager beer, wheat beer, dark beer, or a lager-lemonade mixture, and the beers are typically served in liter-sized steins (and let us tell you -- a liter of beer is a lot and the steins are quite heavy!). The place was packed since it was a beautiful day (although it was a Monday so it was still somewhat surprising to see hundreds of people there). We started off with beers and shared two pretzels that were the size of our heads -- definitely the best pretzels we've had. After that we also shared some traditional German dishes -- sausages, potato salad, and a special cheese dish that is pate like in texture.

In the morning of our second day in Munich we took the train to Dachau. Dachau, a work camp, was the first concentration camp to be built under the Third Reich. Today many of the barracks no longer exist, but what remains has been preserved for people to see what the conditions were like. One of the camp's main buildings was now an extensive museum covering Hitler's rise to power, the history and events of the Holocaust, and detailed stories and descriptions of prisoner's experiences in the camp.

Back in Munich that afternoon, we rented bikes and rode all around the English Garden and parts of the city. On our ride we spotted some of the famous naked sunbathers in the garden -- sorry we don't have any pictures of them to post -- as there is a huge portion of the garden set aside for those who are interested in that particular leisure activity (we, for those of you who are curıous, are not).

Thessaloniki

We got up at 3 a.m. to get to the Munich airport for our 6 a.m. flight to Greece. When we arrived in Thessaloniki we headed to our hotel -- what Lonely Planet described as the best budget option in the city. After we saw its rather dank condition (graffiti on the walls and furniture, burn holes in the blankets, no toilet seat on the shared bathroom toilet), however, we quickly decided to seek alternative lodging. Fortunately about half a block away we found a really lovely hotel room for almost the same price. What's up Lonely Planet?

We really enjoyed our two days in Thessaloniki. It is a vibrant city right on the Mediterranean. Cafes abound, and the crowded streets were fun to wander through, stopping here and there to soak up some sun at a cafe, enjoy a gyro, or check out the ruins scattered around the city (left). The people there also seemed really friendly and most spoke at least a little English.

On the evening of our second day in Thessaloniki we boarded the night train for Istanbul. We had our own private little cabin with two small beds, a little table that had a sink underneath (Ali demonstrating, below), and a small couch seat. We fell asleep early to the motion of the train and at about 2 a.m. we were awoken to hand over our passports at the Greek border. An hour after that another knock woke us up as they returned the passports. Another hour, and another knock -- Turkish border now. We waited for another hour as they checked our passports here. Benny had to run into the office to buy our visas for Turkey. The passport control office in Turkey was pretty much a small shack with some Turkish guys enjoying their cigarettes, taking their sweet time examining our passports.

Then we were on our way again, only 3 hours behind schedule (the schedule says the border crossing only takes about 30 minutes, but considering no one really knows what's going on when they are woken up several times from deep sleep, it of course takes much longer). We went back to bed and finally woke up around 10 a.m., and watched out the window as we approached Istanbul, a city at the crossroads of Europe and Asia.

Istanbul

A good friend of ours pointed out to us recently in an e-mail that we seem to be 'eating well.' We are not sure whether our friend meant that we are writing about food a lot on our blog, or that we seem to be bulking up in our pictures, but needless to say the friend does bring up a good point that food seems to be a major theme of our travels. And we are here, live in Turkey, to report that food is continuing to be a major theme of our travels! What would Turkey be without a delicious helping of Turkish delight, (right) or a doner kebab? We took part in the aforementioned gelatinous/chewy delicacy earlier today, our third day here in Istanbul, and have to admit that it was a mild dissapointment (the baklava, however, lives up to its sterling reputation).

But of course, as our dear friend's comment reminded us (s/he shall go unnamed!), traveling is more than just about food, and Istanbul -- with its energy, crowds, sights, people, smells, sounds, and history -- is the the type of city that traveling was made for. Our night train from Greece dropped us off in Istanbul at around 10 a.m., and we checked in at our hotel, the Mavi Guesthouse. It is not one of the nicer hotels we have stayed in thus far -- it is cramped, and frankly a bit dirty -- but the location cannot be beat, a mere 5 minutes from Istanbul's main sights, many of which are in the Sultanahmet neighborhood on the European side of the city. The three main sights in the neighborhood are the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, and Aya Sofya, which at one point in its history was a church, then a mosque, but was converted under a decree from Ataturk to be a museum, which remains its official function to this day.

Perhaps the first thing that strikes western visitors about Istanbul is the skyline. Peppered with mosques, the city's skyline is unlike anything many of us are used to. The mosques, with their gentle domes and rocket-like minarets, are absolutely stunning. From the ferriıes and bridges, buildings are seen rising up from the water in layers and spread in all directions. There doesn't appear to be an inch of space between the cluster of buildings. The famous Blue Mosque is perhaps Istanbul's most famous sight, and whether it is lit up at night or bathing in the clear sunshine, it is quite a sight to behold. The Blue Mosque's interior is equally stunning, although it is not as famous as that of Aya Sofya (exterior pictured here).

But of course, it would be misleading to present Istanbul as just the sights in Sultanahmet. After all, Istanbul is a staggeringly large city of 16 million people, and we have spent a good deal of our time exploring the rest of the city, outsıde the tourist hotspots. On our second night, we went out in Beyoglu, the heart of modern Istanbul. We were amazed to see that Beyoglu was even more crowded than Sultanahmet, with every square inch of each restaurant, bar, and shop crowded with young and old alike.

Set on the Bosphorus Straits which lead from the Black sea to the Sea of Marmara, Istanbul is a city whose very identity is tied with the water. We took a ferry ride from Sultanahmet on the European side to Uskudar on the Asian side, and then a quick ferry ride back to Besıktas on the European side. The public ferries are a wonderful way to get a sense of the city, especially because a dearth of bridges makes ferries the preferred way of crisscrossing across the neighborhoods.

Overall, we are both loving the city more than we could have imagined. Luckily, we have 5 days here, and then we take a night bus to Capadocıa in Central Turkey, a region famous for it's cave dwellings and historic underground cıtıes. More from there.