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As it turned out getting to Belgrade wasn’t as simple as “direct train” would have you believe, but we felt a little of the old fashioned romance of train travel as we pulled out of Istanbul. We left from the same station that the Orient Express used back in the day. Our carriage was hooked on to a train that had different cars heading off in various directions along the way, but when we got to Sofia, Bulgaria, we were told that our little orphan carriage had missed the train we were meant to be joining on to. We had to wait until evening (another 10 hours) for the next train to Belgrade. Brett and I explored the station area, bought some supplies, then wandered around the sidings looking for our mobile home. We eventually found it and killed some more time before being bounced around like a ping pong ball by an engine driver who was obviously in need of shunting practice.
Eventually we arrived in Belgrade, at 5:30am, and once checked in (at 9am) we headed out to explore Belgrade. The city doesn’t really have all that many sights but the weather was beautiful and we joined the locals in making the most of it. Outdoor cafes and the beautiful park at the old citadel were great places to hang out and people watch. The young people are very fashion conscious and in certain areas you’d be forgiven for believing that nobody over the age of 35 lived in Belgrade. Apparently the nightlife is pretty lively on any night of the week but we weren’t really in the mood to head out drinking, though we did visit one eclectic little bar which gave us some inspiration for how we’re going to arrange our own strange collection of travel artefacts once we have a house. One sightseeing thing that we did do was the ethnographic museum which has an incredible collection of traditional costumes. We were also told that there was an area where you could still see some of the buildings bombed by NATO in 1999. It’s a strange thing to go and see when you think about it logically, but it had to be seen. Maybe its morbid fascination but I prefer to think of it as seeing traces of recent history that you usually only read about in the newspapers. As far as I can tell the buildings we saw used to be the Yugoslav Army Headquarters and the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs and they’ve been left as a reminder of the past.
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Tags: Belgrade, Istanbul, Munich, train travel
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We finally made it to Divrigi the morning after I last posted. Prior research indicated that there were very limited accommodation options but we had the name, approximate location and phone number of a government-run hotel. Our initial inquiries took us to the local council offices where we were served tea, met the mayor and generally sat around wondering what was going to happen next. Once everyone had had enough tea they drove us to the hotel and made sure we were settled. We were. It was a beautiful hotel in a peaceful location and to top it all off was the cheapest place we’d found in our time in the country! Happy as two travellers could be we headed off to see the main (only?) attraction in town, a trio of intricately carved doorways.
It seems like a strange reason to detour hundreds of kilometres down a dead end valley but the doorways on Divrigi’s Great Mosque and hospital are incredibly beautiful. The mosque was built in 1229 by the local lord and at the same time his wife commissioned the building of the adjacent hospital. Inside and out the yellow stone walls are very plain but it’s as if the entire decorative power of the areas artisans was dedicated to the carvings surrounding the doorways. The stone bends and warps in ways that make you need to touch it to prove that it’s stone, it looks more like plastic or wood carving. There are three doorways and each seemed more amazing than the last, though believe me when I say that even the first one was impressive.
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Tags: Divrigi, Istanbul, Mt Nemrut, UNECO, World Heritage
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Well we’re still in Istanbul, though we’re finally leaving this evening to explore more of what Turkey has to offer. It’s been great to have so much time in this fascinating city but two weeks in one place is enough for us. Actually the past month has been pretty relaxing; a week in Lviv (Ukraine) then a week in Kyiv and two weeks here. It’s going to be a shock to put on our backpacks again, though after a session at the post office yesterday they’ll be a whole lot lighter. I finally got rid of my pet rock, Melnik, who I’ve been carrying since the start of Bulgaria about 3 months ago. It’s a long story…
In our second week in Istanbul we visited Dolmabaçe Palace, which was the residence of the Ottoman sultans when they moved out of Topkapi Palace in 1856. They certainly didn’t skimp on decorations, and the rooms are beautiful. Most impressive were those that were designed to impress visiting dignitaries and ambassadors; they dripped with gold leaf, lush fabrics and luxurious French style furniture. On the other hand the rooms of the harem, the residential part of the palace, were relatively plain. Once the palace had been vacated following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had his summer residence here. He was a military officer during World War 1 and is revered as the founder of the modern, secular Turkish nation. The bed on which died in 1938 is watched over by a clock stopped at his time of death.
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Tags: Bosphorus, Dolmabaçe Palace, Istanbul, Kariye Church, Rüstem Pasha Mosque, Turkey
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We’ve spent the past week in Istanbul, being befriended by carpet salesmen, exploring historic mosques, drinking fresh orange juice, watching dervishes whirl, eating baklava, counting stray cats, buying souvenirs in the Grand Bazaar and dodging rain showers. It’s been a busy week. On our first night in the city we headed out to the weekly CouchSurfing meeting where we met lots of great people who gave us a list of culinary delights to taste and some great tips for sightseeing in Istanbul and Turkey. On our way home, as we walked between the Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque, it snowed a wet, heavy snow.
Both Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque were, of course, on the “must see” list and both are incredible. Aya Sofya was originally built in 537AD by the Byzantine emperor Justinian. It was the world’s biggest Christian church until the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottomans and its transformation into a mosque. Even today with all the technology available, the building is still incredible. The 55m high dome floats above mere mortals heads, and even the balcony soars up toward the ceiling. The Blue Mosque, more accurately named Sultan Ahmet Mosque after the sultan who commissioned it, was built between 1606 and 1616 to rival Aya Sofya. It doesn’t quite achieve that but it’s a pretty tough competition to win. The interior is a huge space covered in tens of thousands of blue tiles, hence the unofficial name of the structure.
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Tags: Aya Sofya, Blue Mosque, Grand Bazaar, Hagia Sofia, hamam, Istanbul, Ottoman, Topkapi Palace, Turkey, whirling dervishes
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Before we left Kyiv we had one major sight left to see: the Kyivo-Pechers’ka Lavra, a monastery complex that draws crowds of pilgrims and tourists. It was originally founded in 1051 by a Greek monk and his follower, who dug caves where they and other monks worshipped, studied and lived. Their mummies are still visible today, preserved by the cool dry air, and this is seen as proof that they were holy men. We visited the tunnels underground but weren’t allowed to see all of them as we weren’t pilgrims, to be fair all the mummies kind of looked the same to me. They were all covered with a shroud with only the odd hand or foot poking out. Up aboveground the monastery complex was huge, an incredible 28 hectares of churches, museums and other buildings. The massive Dormition Cathedral is a year 2000 reconstruction of the original which was blown up by either the Nazis or the Soviets (nobody is really sure).
One of the museums we went in to was the museum of micro miniatures which had exhibitions of such mind boggling smallness that it only took a single room to blow our minds and change our world view forever. Well maybe not quite that extreme but there was some seriously cool stuff, all viewed through a microscope. The pieces of art are the creation of a Russian artist, N Siadristy who does this stuff in his spare time. One of the pieces was a 2mm long strand of hair which had been hollowed out until it was almost transparent (?!). Not to stop at this he then created (by hand, this is all done by hand) a miniscule rose which he placed inside the hollowed out hair. Seriously! A chess board on the head of a pin was another creation and an intricate Egyptian scene complete with pyramids, a palm tree and a chariot all placed inside the eye of a needle. There were about 20 of these creations in an otherwise relatively non-descript room.
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Tags: Istanbul, Kyivo-Pechers’ka Lavra, micro miniatures, Odessa, winter
