If you are dreaming of visiting Europe the chances are it is the western half that invades your travel thoughts. London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Barcelona or Amsterdam are all well known destinations but, aside from Prague, eastern Europe is often skipped over by visitors to the continent.
Yet, for those on their European tours, venturing east will reveal cities and towns with histories and cultures to match anything western Europe can offer but on far more budget friendly terms.
Posted in Guest Posts, Travel Features, Travelling 
Tags: albania, bucharest, bulgaria, gjirokastra, macedonia, ohrid, romania, sarajevo, veliko tarnovo 
No Comments »
Our guidebook warned us about Tanya*. She worked in a club just off Taksim. The sort of place where, according to the Dangers and Annoyances section, the following might happen:
One of the most popular scams targeted at single men is the nightclub shake-down. You’re strolling along Istiklal Caddesi in the evening and a well-dressed man or couple of men approach and start to chat. They offer to buy you a drink in a nearby club. You’re given a seat next to some girls… when the bill arrives lo and behold the girls’ outrageously expensive drinks appear on it.
Turkey’s most popular beer is named after Ephesus. I only mention this because, after an expensive week in Istanbul, my informal accountant had started clamping down on unnecessary spending.
I lack a voice in my brain that says ‘don’t buy that, you don’t need it. If you continue to buy this crap you will die poor and alone, possibly in the company of a lot of cats’.
I wanted to return to Olympos before we had left. We’d been lured there by the idea of living for a few days in a treehouse and though the comfortable reality of this didn’t match the primitive expectation we both fell for Olympos.
Many of the resorts on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast provide a grand entrance by descending down from the more mountainous interior. Glimpses of the coast are offered up as the landscape gradually changes from a thin strip of asphalt in the forest to the encroachment of urban civilisation at sea level.
Sitting indoors at sea level on a fairly warm day my opinion of Mount Nemrut has softened a little. At the time the fallen idolatry ranked as one of my biggest travel disappointments but I can now look on the photos taken on the mountain with at least some affection.
This though is why I believe I reacted so negatively once we were there in person. The fallen statuary arrayed on the summit of Mount Nemrut is incredibly photogenic. It is easy to see why the fallen heads are the poster boys of Turkey’s cultural tourism and frequently take prime spot on the covers of guidebooks.
Though they are babes in arms compared to Egyptian touts, the bars and restaurants of my home town in Turkey have a reputation for hassle when it comes to drumming up business.
Despite improvements each year it is not uncommon for touts to treat tourist visitors with an unwelcome forwardness and the assumption they are incapable of deciding where to eat and drink all on their own. This desperate method of attracting custom gets old very quickly, especially when the humour, deviousness and enterprise in the persuasive arsenal of Luxorns and Caireens in the same trade is lacking here.
We spent most of our time in Şanlıurfa hanging around Gölbaşı Park. Squabbling between ourselves and time wasting appointments led us away before we were done with the place so we returned several times.
Urfa itself is a city well worth visiting. The commercial buzz of the city is focused along the straight modern main road yet duck down a side street and relative peace can be found a block away within older lanes and alleyways.
Posted in Main Features, Photo Features, Travel Features Tags: photos, sanliurfa, turkey No Comments »
Within minutes of arriving at Didim’s inaugural camel wrestling festival the fists started flying. Anyone familiar with wrestling will know that a wrestler may not hit their opponent with a closed fist and camels don’t have fists anyway.
Extra knees, foul tempers, advanced mathematics*: yes. Fists: no.
We had only just arrived and were still some distance away from the arena so I didn’t see what had sent the tempers briefly soaring into a middle-aged entanglement of knitwear.
The camel wrestling itself is more sedate – until one wins and then the fun really starts.
Posted in Living in Turkey, Photo Features, Travel Features Tags: animals, camel wrestling, didim, photos, turkey 11 Comments »
The Cappadocian landscape produces one of life’s ‘wow’ moments. Deirdre – a foot shorter than me – had been admiring the scenery out of the crowded bus window for about ten minutes. Had I attempted to bend down for a peek I would have head-butted another passenger in the chest so I had to delay the gratification.
My first glimpse of the fairy chimneys and crooked rock formations that make Cappadocia famous was on stepping out of the bus in the town of Goreme. Without the gradual build up as the scene changed over the ten or so miles from the normality of Avanos the sight biffed me around the chops to encourage the ‘wow’ that both helps to support the local economy and give childless travel fanatics a deathbed memory to look forward to.
To mark Friday the 13th I thought we would get a little ghoulish and imagine the ways we might meet our ultimate end.
Sitting in the dark at 3am typing by candlelight during yet another power cut it is easy to imagine I’m going to suffer at the hands of an axe murderer, but with no companions around to suggest we split up I can’t be in a scary movie and am probably safe.
Instead, the end might come on the road; possibly literally. A late braking minibus driver could send our heads smashing through the windscreen where, alive but stunned, our prone bodies are squished by an oncoming truck.
Latest Jobs Abroad @ JAB
The Working Traveller is published by PAYAway Media.
To advertise in The Working Traveller or with our other websites please enquire here
RSS Feed
Twitter