A week ago I remembered that I actually had another blog in English. It turns out that I have created it 5 years ago! Already at that time I had this idea of writing, but I never really stuck with it and published only a couple of posts. Nevertheless, in 2013 when I was doing my IAESTE internship in Istanbul, I was updating it quite regularly. I have reread my posts now and the sweet memories made me laugh =) So I decided to import the entries here and now they can be found under the istanbul tag.
The truth is, I don’t really know what to tell you about Iguazu … It just has to be seen and then all the words in the world are powerless. Unfortunately, my amateur photos will not make it justice either. But I will try! Iguazu falls are located on the border between Argentina and Brazil on the river with the same name. These falls consist of many waterfalls of different height (60 to 82 meters) and you can enjoy them over the length of 2,7 km. You can (and should) visit both sides to have a whole impression of the grandeur of this place and to decide which one you prefer better. They say Argentina owns the waterfalls, because 80% of them lie on its territory, but Brazil owns the view! For me the most spectacular side was the Brazilian one, I was fascinated and left breathless… a true wonder of nature!
“Brasilia?! Oh, there is nothing to do there unless you are very interested in modernist architecture.” – so I was told by several people. I wouldn’t say I was, but wanted to see it anyway. I wanted to see the city that was built out of nothing in 41 months, that completely followed a designed plan and that was the fullfillment of a visionary idea of a new capital for Brazil. For around 200 years Rio de Janeiro was its capital, but located in the southeast region it was too far from the rest of the country. President Juscelino Kubitschek, fulfilling the promise of his political campaign and the country’s first republican constitution of 1891 (which stated that the capital should be moved to the center of the country), has ordered the construction of Brasilia in 1956. On the 21st of April 1960 it was inagurated.
Brasilia was built by urban planner Lucia Costa and chief architect Oscar Niemeyer, who designed most of the public buildings. The city’s shape, proposed by Lucia Costa, resembles an airplane or a bird. There are 2 axes: one along the fuselage of the plain and one along its wings. The first axis is called Eixo Monumental (Monumental Axis) – it is the central avenue of Brasilia where many important government buildings and monuments are located. When you do a sightseeing tour of the city you are basically moving around these avenue. The second axis is curved and it is a residential area of the city.
When I first saw those colorful pictures of Salvador I told to myself: “I have to visit this place!” When I went to read more about it on the internet I was like: “No way, I am not going there! My life is still too precious to me!” If you google world’s most dangerous cities it would be somewhere in the top 20 (together with many more Brazilian cities and the rest of Latin America). But then I went on booking.com and checked hotels’ reviews. And I thought: If thousands of tourists from different countries go there and write positive comments, then it can’t be that bad after all, right? =)
On the 25th of July we landed in sunny Salvador! We took a taxi and went to our nice hotel in the historical city center, in the district of Santo Antonio. The guy at the reception welcomed us with memorable words about his hometown:
“It’s not a paradise, it’s more like a hell. But a good hell!”
Brazil has never been on my high priority list and I don’t know how much time it would have taken me to visit the 5th largest country in the world, if it hadn’t been for the Olympics. But 2016 was the year of Rio de Janeiro and as I was going to volunteer for the first Olympic Games in South America, I decided I might as well travel around and discover the beauty of the host country. I asked my friends to join me, but no one was willing to pay sky high prices for flight tickets and hotels. I was actually ready to travel alone just by myself (and that was a scary thought!), but then I decided to check with online friends. I thought of 2 virtual friends that could have been interested in an adventure like this. And one of them, amazing Anna, said yes! I was very surprised by her prompt answer (she has even booked flight tickets before me!), but very-very happy as well that I got a chance to travel in her great company. As I said, I have never met her before in real life, but through her instagram I knew we would get along! And I was so right ) Later on another friend of her, Sasha, has joined us and we became a gang of three ready to enjoy Brazilian winter.
If you read my previous posts on this blog you would probably remember how unhappy I was about staying in a local family with people I’ve never met in my life. I was stressed and disappointed. To say the least … But you know, sometimes bad beginnings turn into amazing adventures. And that was exactly the case. It took me a while to get back to this blog and to write this post as a tribute to my very best Turkish family 🙂
I remember that night in the car, when we were driving to my new home and I was imagining all the bad stuff that would happen to me. I thought of some strange and unknown people I would have to share the roof with and I really didn’t like that outlook. I thought that I would be so constrained and bounded, that I would never feel free at this place and would have to adjust all my behavior to be as invisible as possible… I thought about my long working hours and the stressful way home… and how sad it would be to come back every night and not being able to relax and just be left alone doing whatever I wanted to do. I thought I would have to force myself to fit in and that my 3 weeks would be a disaster. Yes, I am a drama queen sometimes. I totally agree ))
But then in the middle of the night when they opened the door and hugged me, when I saw that smile on Yaren’s face I got my peace and decided that maybe it wouldn’t be that bad after all 😉 Continue reading “My Turkish Family”→
That weekend started on Friday night. We were taken to Fasıl by our IAESTE committe.
Some information about fasil from The Guardian: “Fasil is what makes a good night great in a traditional Turkish meyhane (tavern) – a motley band of violin, lyre and clarinet-playing musicians and singers who usually mix classical Turkish music, well-loved songs from the 1950s and 1960s and sometimes a cheeky arabesque drumbeat to suit a crowd of diners. This kind of music is quintessentially crowd-pleasing, to the extent that, as the night progresses and the raki flows, the performance becomes the realm of the people and the diners themselves do most of the singing and a great deal of boozy dancing.” Continue reading “My second weekend”→
The time flies so fast and I can’t keep up with the speed. The intention of this blog was to write about my life in Istanbul, but the life was so intense that I didn’t actually have time to tell you about it. Occasionally I would write something on the way in public transport typing with one hand on my smartphone. This works best when you want to complain about something. Because when this feeling of something going wrong overwhelmes you and you have to speak it out, you don’t care about shaking bus, dozens of people around you and really uncomfortable conditions for writing even an sms let alone a whole blog entry 🙂 But when I want to tell you about my cool weekends and nice evening infront of Maiden Tower I would love to add some pictures to the post and take my time to write nicely about it. For this I need to sit at home at my laptop and invest an hour or two for that… But I never have this free hour! And it’s actually really good .. cause it means that I have much better things to do =)
Anyway I promise to myself to write about the last 2 weekends … I hope I can do it soon till I forget where I have actually been and what I have done there.
I was hesitating to write this for obvious reasons. But then I thought is it really me who should be hesitating? And I realized that no. It’s actually them who should have hesitated to arrange things the way they did. For my friends who don’t know about all the fun I am having with accommodation here is a short introduction: We were staying in the student dorms till now, but on the 1st of September we had to leave them. Till the very last moment (and even after that) nobody knew where we would stay… We were asking a week before, 3 days before, one day before “Where will we be staying in Istanbul?”. The answer was very inspiring and comforting : “We don’t know yet … but we’ll fix it!”. And who will fix in the end my broken nerves and spirit?
Hello world! 