Firstly, thanks to everyone who’s been leaving comments for us – it’s great to feel connected! I know I often read blogs but shy away from leaving comments and now I wish I hadn’t – so keep the comments coming!

Secondly, we made it to Bulgaria! Hooray. It’s really great to have made it somewhere we can refer to as “home” after all the travelling.

Thirdly, trainspotters might have noticed the new header image for our blog… It’s a panoramic photo from our apartment balconies! Great view. In the next few days we’ll be adding a short video tour of our new flat. For now, though, I wanted to relate a few reflections I had on Istanbul.

We’ve spoken a lot about how much we like Istanbul… here’s what I’ve come up with in trying to articulate why it’s such a fun city: it’s the people. They’re so loud, funny and energetic! Whether they’re driving a taxi, convincing you to buy something or visit their restaurant, or fixing anything from a broken powerpoint to a mosque minaret, Turks have this amazing self-confidence and happy-go-lucky attitude! Whatever they’re doing, they’re doing a great job and you should be impressed! The sheer number of things in Istanbul that could aptly be described as “dodgy” (to use an Australian idiom) is not just hilarious but also liberating; it encourages a genuinely fun, relaxed feeling. This is a cultural phenomenon, obviously, and wouldn’t really translate to Australia but while you’re here, it’s great!

I think this photo (of some dude who shoved a few tables and chairs on the footpath opposite his restaurant) sums up this attitude perfectly!

11th June 2009

Hello – it’s Elly this time!

We’re currently sitting under a tree in a lovely park in the Istanbul district of Sultanahmet and we have free wireless internet due to some government initiative. Just in case we needed another reason to love this city!

It’s very nice to be here after 58 hours of travelling time. It’s also nice to be back in familiar territory too, we’re staying in the same area as the last visit in 2007 so there’s a bit of deja vu happening here.

The flights from Melbourne and Seoul were fine, nothing spectacularly exciting happened on them! The first leg seemed worse because we’d forgotten just how deadly boring it was to be confined to a small space for 11 hours so it was very tedious. Plus there were about 10 children ‘seated’ around us who spent most of the time roaming the plane. They weren’t too bad tho.

Korean Air put us up in a really nice hotel 5 mins away from the airport and supplied us with meal vouchers so we didn’t actually have to spend any money during our 20 hour stopover. The room was really big and quite nice…but it only had 2 single beds. I say single, they were more like king single, or small double! We spent most of the stopover hiding in our room, trying to get over having been near so many people for the past 11 hours.

We made friends with some Korean children in the airport while we were waiting for it to be a good time to go through security and passport control. They were quite funny! To our delight we discovered that ‘annyong’ really does mean hello in Korean – anyone who is a fan of the tv show Arrested Development will understand the relevance of this fact! We got video footage of the Korean girl saying annyong! I’ve included a photo I took of Stu with the little boy pulling a rather scary face!

The second leg, from Seoul to Istanbul went really quickly which was nice. We arrived in Istanbul at 7pm local time, 2am AEST. After getting a sharp reminder of riding in a Turkish taxi we eventually found our hostel. Our double room here actually has 4 single beds, with 2 pushed together. Hmm…I’m beginning to sense a theme emerging here with the beds…

So after forcing ourselves to sleep 9 hours we’ve been spending our first day here roaming the streets and trying to get used to the idea that this is it, we are actually doing this! I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I’m feeling at the moment. Mostly I’m quite excited, I’ve wanted to live overseas since I was a teenager, purely to get out and see how other people live. I’m glad that we’re doing it this way, and not just working and living in London for example. I’m also missing the comfort of home and my friends and family, but I’m telling myself that this is normal and I’m giving myself a month to get over it.

12th June 2009

We’re about to go check out and then spend the day doing some more wandering. We wrote out a pile of postcards yesterday and then were charged 1 lira each for 80 kuruş stamps (~ $1 for 80c). Ah well. We posted them into a yellow box that hopefully was a postbox…

Tonight we catch the overnight train to Dimitrovgrad where we’ll be met by David and taken back to Haskovo where we meet the flat that will be our home for the next 12 months! We’re really looking forward to getting settled into something we can call our own – we’ve been living with other people since the end of January!

I’m a bit nervous about what ‘fully furnished’ actually entails. Already we’re glad we brought our own towels as the hostel didn’t provide any. Thankfully it’s quite hot at night so if our flat doesn’t have bedding it’s not the end of the world.

Ok, this is enough of a post for me now. I better publish this before the laptop runs out of battery! We don’t expect to have our own internet for a couple of weeks, but David and Kathryn do so our next post will be from their flat in Haskovo!

Lots of love, take care, God bless

Elly xx