I´M BACK IN: Istanbul
HAVING VISITED: Vienna, Austria and Basel, Switzerland
NEXT UP: India!!
I had a wonderful last week in Europe. Vienna is a city everyone should visit as it has tons going for it: culture, beautiful buildings, great coffee houses and a thought-provoking modern art scene. For me, it also has my friend Hubs, who I met in the jungle in Laos. Hubs and his fabulous girlfriend Julia are both studying to be dentists (which involves extensive slave labor and little free time) and they were incredibly kind to host me (brilliantly) with little warning. At some point I will master the art of planning my travels ahead of time, but this is not the case at present. Hubs and Julia have a large group of friends who were equally gracious and fun. We had such a great time that I did not want to leave Vienna on Sunday at all, but did so en (a very circuitous yet thrifty) route to India. Right, so I had no problems at all getting my visa in Vienna, all I needed was a way to get my tail over there. Funds are low these days, and I felt like I could definitely do better than the $1300 flights that I found from Vienna to Delhi. My final travel bill will come to less than half of this cost, but this will involve lots of layover ludicrousness (boo) and a trip back to Turkey (yay).
My flight last night (Basel to Istanbul) started this string of dubious travel. I arrived in Istanbul's secondary airport (one hour out of town) this morning at 2:40 a.m. Yikes. Quite serendipitously I met a woman in my dorm in Basel who was on this same flight! So at least I had good company for this adventure. We were both able to get a bus into town and a dorm bed with little to no hassle. Indeed, I hope the journey to Delhi goes half as smoothly. Here is the plan: on Saturday night I fly from Istanbul to Kuwait. Then after a six hour layover (lasting from 2-8:00 a.m.) it'll be Kuwait to Dubai where I have a twelve hour layover, then from Dubai to Delhi, where I arrive at 5:00 a.m Monday morning. Clearly I was wearing my Bad Idea jeans when I booked this. Here's hoping that Indian customs officials have liberal policies regarding Zombie Admittance.
But in the meantime, I am back in Turkey and it is a beautiful thing. A la Bangkok, it is so nice to visit a place where you have a notion of which way is up, even if it is a vague notion. If only I could get that They Might Be Giants 'Istanbul not Constantinople' song out of my head for more than five minutes! As recently as this morning I was planning to go around to various Turkish cities I did not get a chance to see on my last visit, but I have revised this plan (in no small part because of my fond feelings for this city) to just chilling in Istanbul. Full disclosure: there are also movies in English here. But my goal for today is to get my hair done, always a dicey proposition when there is a language barrier involved. Wish me luck!
