One Beer to Rule Them All

...and in my mouth bind them

Look at that, a title this week. Can you tell I'm in a good mood? I have good news and bad news for yall. First, the positive: yall thought I forgot about this bitch, but I'm back and dropping some more Euro knowledge for ya. Despite the fact that I'm currently dripping with sweat and suffering the emotional pain of finishing my last day at the Parliament in Brussels. I've even littered it with helpful links throughout for the less enlightened among you. Bad news is my camera is gone, so don't hold your breath for pics. The only certainty is that it's somewhere in Luxembourg. Now let's never speak of it or what drunk me tweeted about it again.

(P.S. even the random internet cafe I'm typing this in still produced a Chimay Bleu for me. I'm gonna miss this country.)

Lots in my notes for this week. Had some more sweet delegation at the Parliament, including one headed by the speaker of Tunisia's new Constituent Assembly, one Mustapha Ben Jafar. Guy looks about as Tunisian as my uncle and is more belligerent than my uncle after eight Pilsners to boot. Still, the guy is obviously pretty canny if he manuevered himself into one of the top government jobs post-revolution, and he's not having any of these questions about potential Salafist entrenchment in the constitution or amnesty for the ancien regime. Like always, I am a paragon of focus and diligence and am faithfully taking notes for the Zeller. The girl beside me is morally bankrupt and texting the whole time, only keeping pace by copying my pristine information. Now I know how the Chans and Lees of the world feel. So I start writing random ahit in the middle of my notes to fuck with her. Something like:

-1/4 of budget devoted to social programs
-stresses need to address regional inequalities
-demands "All Power to the Soviets"
-insists that sharia law will not be incorporated into new constitution
-says instead all non-believers will be forced to drive Toyota Priuses

A note about the translators here. Generally they do a pretty damn good job at translating from 20-odd languages on the fly direct into English. They were working overtime this day handling Arabic, too. One thing you don't immediately realize is that they have to get the tone of the speech right, too. Occasionally you get one who's having an off day and uses a happy, lighthearted tone while he's describing rampant organ thievery in Kosovo. Free kidneys for everyone under 12!

It's funny how the Germans view this country, too. Jan finds it bizarre that I enjoy Brussels at all and says if he couldn't fly back to Germany every weekend he would commit. According to him the beer here is all made with the wrong ingredients and unfit for human consumption, too. Not the first time I've been indirectly called a pig. Me and Joanna were having a convo about culture shock and anything that might be throwing me off in Belgium. I tell her it's basically been cool (as if Western Europe was really going to be more jarring than a country that wrestles its camels) and that the only thing that's really pissed me off is the absurd opening hours of all the shops here, with nothing open past 6 or on Sundays. She gives me a look of exasperated understanding and we bond as we spend the next ten minutes bitching about the insanity of it all. I'm starting to love the Deutsch.

By the next morning my computer is so far removed from working condition I have no choice but to take it in. Someone needs to smack those bloody Japanese around. I fire off a quick Ipod email to Joanna to let her know I'll be late. Below is the text word-for-word:

Hello Mrs. [name redacted],

Just letting you know I'll be in around 11 today. I need to take my computer in and the nearest shop is only open from 10 to 6. Fucking Belgians, am I right?

Regards,
Neil

At least that's what I typed up prior to discovering that the internet was out, too. But you still laughed. I think I went in and probably did some stuff after. There's no way we can be sure. Visited another sick lambic brewery on Friday and picked up some goodies. My wallet hurts.

Saturday, and that means traveling time. Brace yourself Ypres. I initially planned on using my amazing morning skills to start my day at 8 30. Somehow this became 9 30, then 11, and by the time I finally dragged my ass out of bed it was damn near noon. Oops. Guess I won't be biking around the Salient today. The massive WWI museum stops taking visitors at 5 pm, so I scramble through the hotel check-in and make it there with ten minutes to spare. Only to discover that it's getting renovated until next Saturday. I think the only Dutch word I've learned here is GESLOTEN - CLOSED. At least the service for all the fallen Canadians in the evening is still pretty dope. Respect.

No avoiding the biking on Sunday. Today's target, Westvleteren Abbey, is out in the countryside far from any public transit and well out of walking distance. If you want the world's best beer, you have to work for it. Somehow I'm still pretty bad at this whole traveling thing, and for some reason I elected to bring only the pair of jeans I was wearing Thursday with me. I'm not even sure why I bought these things - they barely fit me after fasting for twelve hours and are so skinny you'd think I was a diehard My Chemical Romance fan. You'd actually be close, my brother is. The fucking jeans would probably fit him a lot better, too. I briefly consider cutting them into denim shorts Tobias Funke style, but decide instead to just become an incredibly chafed human being. There are dozens of us!

On the seventh day, God looked at Belgium and gave it a once-over with a meat tenderizer, so the whole country is flat as fuck. It's like he knew I wouldn't have exercised for four months before coming here. I rip across to the abbey in an hour flat. I've been anticipating this moment for years months weeks and am literally tingling with excitement. Maybe I can even get one of the monks to sprinkle some of his dandruff in my beer and make it that much more authentic. Sit down, order up and I'm presented with a glistening amber chalice. My first ever pint of Westvleteren 12 looks every bit as refined as I'd imagined. Even the head looks like something you'd get on your knees to drink out of the gutter. And my fuck does it ever deliver. The taste is like Rochefort 10 (the world's second best beer, in my unquestionable opinion) on steroids. I could sit here spouting adjectives that most of you can't really relate to for the next ten minutes, but I'll just let Ratebeer do the talking. If I had to describe it in one sentence, it would be like the resurrection of Christ in your mouth (no homo). Totally fucking awesome. Book the next flight to Belgium and see for yourself.

Initially I'd planned on hitting the nearby De Struise brewery, another total beauty, later that day. After an 8, a Blonde and a double dip in the 12, my legs have other ideas. I'm lucky to stumble to the shop, only to find out they won't sell me a single bottle to take home. Lucky for them I left my Uzi in my other pants. With great focus and determination I make it back to town, slam a couple litres of water, sample some more regional specialties and make it back to Brussels. Without even losing anything. I wish that wasn't as impressive as it is.

I'm still soaked in my suit and getting thirsty. Plus I gotta change in time to watch the Germans annihilate the dirty broke Italians in an hour. Factor in getting stuck in the elevator for another half hour and I better head out now. If you're lucky and I can't make more friends I might type another entry next week in Strasbourg. Until then go outside, or something.

Christmas came early, kids. You thought I had forgotten about this bitch. You were wrong. My ASUS bit the dust two weeks into my trip, just as I hit the end credits of the Game of Thrones season two finale (thank you Scott and Krista, cause that show fucking owns). But since I love you all so much, I just parked my ass at a greasy computer gaming cafe for the express purpose of updating you all on my life. With great focus, Red Bull and drum and bass I'm resisting the temptation to join the crowd playing Magic: the Gathering to translate my notes from my Ipod onto here. I might even get through my world's-best-beer and Antwerp entries today. You can save any awards until I get home.

Let's pick up with the second week. This week the Parliament is holding its plenary session in Strasbourg. All the members and most of the assistants are there. I am not. Neither are Mr. Zeller's assistants Jan and Joanna, and they tell me I can hole up in his office for the week and basically stream the session, read articles and chill. But I was looking forward to soul-crushing clerical work! The office itself is pretty dope: top floor, and Zeller has all sorts of cool shit from Central Asia, travel guides to the Congo and Taiwan, dictionaries for Deutsch-Polish, -Japanese, and -Bulgarian, plus lots of other shit. I also notice some reports from the election monitoring he did in Algeria, Tajikistan and the DRC. Guy gets around.

Tuesday starts off boring, but the Strasbourg plenary has a pretty sweet debate. The European Parliament is interesting in that it faces the challenge of reconciling 753 members and the dozens of national parties they represent into coherent political groups. To this end the various MEPs coalesce into ideologically-based groups and coordinate policies along these lines. Thankfully the guy I'm working for is sane and a member of the centre-right European People's Party, which is also the biggest group. As you'd expect most of the parliamentarians are happy to jerk each other off about how harmoniously end-of-history their European integration project is, but about one in ten is an asshole Euroskeptic. Most of these guys are Brits and fucking funny, too. The best one is Nigel Farage, who leads a UK party that basically demands tearing up every multilateral treaty the country has ever signed. Smart guy, too. His speech this day was brilliant. Check it out.

I typed up a huge polemic on the merits and drawbacks of the EU back when I thought I'd be updating this every couple days, but it's taken me a half hour to type all this shit so I'm just gonna move into the second sweet five-day weekend in a row. I had long ago bought a ticket to the Netsky show Friday night, because who doesn't like Belgian drum and bass live in the sweetest venue in Brussels? Searching for other random nearby concerts, however, I stumbled upon something far sweeter. Judas Priest, finishing their last ever world tour. In London. On Saturday. Ten minutes and way too many euros later and I have a ticket, a round trip on a train and two nights in a hostel with a 24-hour bar in the basement. I really hate Europe.

There's so painfully little going on at the Parliament that they give me Thursday off, too. Who said the Germans aren't merciful? I hit the Cantillon brewery for some epic lambics, basically beers that are brewed using only wild yeast from the air and are stored and age like wines. Much more on them in a future entry. Friday arrives and I head down to the Ancienne Belgique dead in the old town heart of Brussels. This is the guy's homecoming show, so he brings out the big guns: a live band with a keyboardist, a drummer on a Roland kit (this could have been you, Eric Chiang) and an MC. Five Duvels and two hours of insane drum and bass later I can't hear anything except my heart in my ears and I look like I just got out of the pool.

No rest for the wicked and I'm fighting my way through British customs early the next day. Black woman at the counter gives me the business about not having a copy of the receipt for the hostel I booked online or my flight back to Calgary fucking two months later. Am I visiting England or East Germany? The bitch's best efforts still can't stop me from showing up at the Hammersmith Apollo just as the first opener heads on. Decent enough. Saxon follows them. Old school New Wave of British Heavy Metal dudes that I never listened to, but they have some crunchy riffs. Pretty impressed. Spot a guy inexplicably wearing an Oilers jersey. I guess failure transcends continents. The lights go down, I chat with a British dude about dirty continentals and it's time.

The Metal Gods come out with all guns blazing. Immediately rip into some classic British Steel before spreading out into all eras of Priestly goodness. Even standing at the very back of the sweltering arena I'm still covered in goosebumps. Rob Halford is ten times better than he was at the 2005 show, nailing every high note on Painkiller and all the rest. This can't get any better. Then come the first few notes of The Sentinel, the best Priest song of all time. Fuck it, the best metal song of all time. The best song of best song time ever. Rocked out like I was in the first row, and in a couple months if you really squint you'll be able to see for yourselves, because just before the last song the drummer comes up and announces they've been filming the show for a DVD. I drop twenty euros on probably the coolest fucking band shirt I own at the merch stand and head back to the hostel to get lit. Fifteen-year-old me would be so proud.

Pretty normal college kid tourist shit for the rest of the weekend. Made it till 5 am that night drinking with some beauties from Chicago and some other kids. Walked around the city until my ass was too chafed to continue and fleeced some Hungarians at poker for twenty whole pounds. Pretty sure there was a Sunday, too. Who knows. Do you really want to read another three paragraphs about the fucking zoo? Check out the sweet pics I'm about to facebook. Please.

EDIT: Even Batman needs Robin sometimes (no homo). Big ups to my boy ET for suggesting the Cantillon tour, because apparently the quiet satisfaction of knowing it himself wasn't good enough.

Live, Learn, and Never Trust Dirty Fucking Slovenians

After a long week of killing brain cells I'm finally back in a writing mood again. The fact that I just tossed on one of my favorite Netsky mixes (seeing him next Friday, what up!) and cracked a La Trappe Quadrupel isn't hurting either. If you've ever wanted to live Belgium vicariously through a jackass, strap yourself in.

Let's pick up where we left off. Sunday was pretty lackluster, but I did make it down to Brussels' waterfront district. By 'waterfront district' I mean 'overpriced seafood restaurant central'. It turns out ninety percent of the stores and restaurants here are closed on Sundays, too, something that the ones remain open are definitely aware of. A decent meal of waterzooi runs me thirty euros and adds an element of frustration to my thirst. Thank God there's a place with 40 different brews on draught a little ways down the road. I'm most intrigued by the one labelled 'Band of Brothers S01E01' but decide Goebbels and Goering can stay out of my drinking life.

First day of work arrives. Even the jet lag waking me up three hours early isn't enough to get myself sorted in time, and I repeatedly cut myself shaving and barely make my train on time. As in, I book it to the station and jam one arm in the door to force my way in. I am nothing if not consistent. At least this job gives me an excuse to rock an Italian suit for eight hours a day. P Diddy WISHES he could wake up feeling like I look. Arriving at the Parliament itself is a bit on an experience: the place is fucking huge. I don't know what I expected with about 10,000 Eurocrats in one building, but this looks like the sort of place Palpatine would feel at home at. My role here is to help out one Mr. Zeller, a Member of the European Parliament, but as he's in Poland keeping a foot on those peoples' throats I meet up with his two full-time assistants instead. They lead me to some sort of info session that only succeeds in going further and further over my head, with the most memorable detail being the fact that waiters serve you coffee and mineral water every hour or so. Things really get kickstarted in the afternoon when I get assigned to take notes on the Committee on Foreign Affairs session. The committee chamber is swarming with MEPs, media and all sorts of people more important than me as we take in first a session on a full week's worth of coups, rebellions and ethnic conflicts across Africa. You know how you always see those videos of UN sessions where the representatives of each country are wearing headphones and getting the speeches translated into their own language live? Yeah. We have those. One of the English translators sounds identical to David Attenborough. I keep expecting him to lapse into a description of penguin mating habits in the middle of explaining the military coup in Guinea-Bissau, but he disappoints. An Albanian delegation featuring the foreign minister and deputy PM (picture below) also gives a self-congratulatory conference on their progress towards EU integration. I have never had such a huge poli sci boner. This bodes very well.

Tuesday involves much of the same. It's pretty clear the two assistants don't really know what to do with me, but this entails me showing up at 10 am and spending all day attending conferences on the Timoshenko trial in Ukraine and watching movies on things like human rights in Chechnya, so I'm all smiles. The most exciting part of the day comes when I'm informed that there's really nothing for me to do on Wednesday at all, so I can go ahead and make my weekend a full five days. The new deputy PM of Libya is giving a conference on his country's upcoming first-ever elections. He's pretty positive about their situation and cites the nice stat that they managed to register over two million voters (out of a population of six million) in two weeks. Knowing the rest of the story, I'm more skeptical about the prospects for successful democratizing a country where the majority of the population is angry, unemployed young men, each of whom has his own tribal loyalty and a Kalashnikov to back it up. Sounds like another state I know *cough*AFGHANISTAN*cough*. A week in is probably too early to start hammering foreign delegates, however, so I let the rebels and NATO hacks jerk each other off some more before calling it quits for the week.

My plans for the weekend are initially pretty grand, and they start off well. Wednesday morning I book a hostel in Ghent and head up to Flanders for the weekend. On the train there I'm subjected to my first real experience listening to Dutch. I consider myself pretty open-minded, but god damn if that isn't one disgusting sounding language. It sounds like a chimpanzee trying to read a German textbook with a mouthful of Skittles, and every four or five syllables he chokes on one and produces this wretched guttural noise. Despite this, Ghent is a pretty impressive city and I even find myself doing something I never thought possible: appreciating artwork. I spend half the day wandering the city and the other half downing Belgian beers before stopping in at my hostel, which, being a Wednesday, is pretty dead. There's only one other guy in the room with me, so I try and make friends with him. He's apparently Slovenian despite looking more like Castro than any Slav I've ever seen, and we manage a broken conversation in Russian. I have no worries. I go to sleep. Silly me.

I wake up around nine. The Slovenian is gone, but I think nothing of it. I shower. I eat breakfast. I start packing my things. I check my wallet. Weird, it's empty. I check it again. That's funny, I could have sworn I had about three hundred euros in it. Oh wait. I DID. Unless they ascended to the Promised Land last night there's only one possibility. I am seeing red. I can barely breathe. Too bad I left the nuclear launch codes in my other pants. This dirty, sleazy, communist motherfucker fished my wallet out of my jeans and robbed me blind as I slept not six inches away. I talk to the hostel owner, get his name and passport number and file a police report, but unfortunately real life is not a Nicholas Cage movie and there's not much else I can do. But mark my words, Rafael Roman, Slovenian passport number 116516: if I ever find you I will flay you alive with a potato peeler and drink every drop of your greasy, Stalin-fucking communist blood.

The rest of the weekend is very pleasant. I make my way to Bruges and spend an afternoon sipping rare beers and enjoying some good conversation with some people who aren't fucking assholes. This includes a former American senator (according to him, at any rate) and a sweet Danish couple. Friday was more beer in Bruges, and today revolved around a trip to the Delirium cafe in central Brussels. Obviously any place serving 2000+ different brews was high on my list, and the rest of the clientele was pretty decent, especially the Russian girl I ended up chatting with. I was thoroughly enjoying our conversation and got a couple chances to look smarter than I really am by dropping some slick Russian phrases, but the emotionless Soviet mother on the other side of her didn't seem to find the hammer and sickle on my shirt very amusing. I thought everyone enjoyed dictatorships of the proletariat? Either way I'm tired and going to stop enlightening you all now. Tune in next week when I fix the Eurozone debt crisis.

After a very long hiatus, it's time to revive this bitch. Somehow I only ended up covering the first two weeks of my last trip despite writing enough to fill half a book. During the rest of my semester abroad I visited the Black Sea, Ephesus, Georgia (the country, not the state), Chernobyl/Pripyat, La Tomatina and some other places, but I'm pretty sure everyone's done that shit so I won't bore you with the details.

Anyways, as I'm sure you're all aware I've tricked enough people into thinking I can handle an internship at the European Parliament to be rewarded with one this summer. This involved the ever-pleasant task of a ten-hour flight across the Atlantic, so I started into that Wednesday night. After the nightmare of my last trans-Atlantic flight (see previous post) there was nowhere to go but up. At least this one had a couple good in-flight movie options, i.e. Contraband. Damn good flick if you haven't seen it. Then again, they could film Marky Mark picking fucking azaleas for two hours and I'd still be on the edge of my seat watching it, so your mileage may vary. This time around I decide to slay the beast that is jet lag by not once closing my eyes until I'm settled in my hotel room. Cue ominous foreshadowing music here. I kill the rest of the air time with The Ides of March (also great) and various bullshit, fight through a couple brutal hours in Heathrow while my flight is delayed and finally make it to Brussels around 8 pm local time. There's maybe five minutes in my hotel room before I pass out, and with the state I'm in I sleep for a full twelve hours and awake feeling like a million bucks.

Just kidding. I wake up at 2 am after maybe five hours of shut-eye and scumbag brain decides that's it for rest. The next few hours are spent bent over my computer in a state that can only be loosely described as 'awake' before the breakfast buffet opens. This is seriously one of the perks of the parentals forcing me to book at the Marriott, as it's just outstanding. The importance of breakfast can hardly be overstated. Miss out on it and you might as well sit your ass down and go back to bed, because you've fucked yourself for the entire day. I am a firm believer that access to quality breakfast twenty-four hours a day is one of the hallmarks of the first world, but as this one's only available for five I make sure to hit it twice.

After this I make my way to the flat I'll be renting for the next two months. Let me take a moment to emphasize what a colossal achievement it is to lock down long-term accommodations in a city eight time zones removed from yours with barely two weeks of notice. My final living arrangements were only secured after fighting through endless Belgian Craiglist scams (no, I won't wire you 900 euros in advance, especially when you having the typing skills of a Nigerian prince) and an all-nighter calling across the pond again and again. So it's to my great relief when I finally show up at this place and the owner is the nice old Belgian lady she had claimed to be. The flat is classy, spacious and offers a panoramic view of Brussels. The woman I'm living with has been almost everywhere I have (and then some) and has an international relations degree. This could work out.

I get shit settled, get a tour of the neighbourhood and, despite the fact I've had five hours of sleep in the last 48 hours, decide to explore a bit. I hop on a train downtown and head in the general direction of the Old Town. I have little idea what I'm doing or where I'm going, but a couple random side streets later I stumble into the middle of Grand Place. I'll admit I'm usually into more exotic landmarks, but this one is nothing short of stunning. The picture really does it little justice. I gawk like a tourist for a few minutes and continue on. Still wandering without any real purpose, my thirst starts to catch up to me and I grab a streetside table at a random pub to explore the most important aspect of Belgium: the beer. The list here includes a number of the legendary Trappists, so obviously I dive right in.

Nothing could have possibly prepared me. My first choice, Orval, hits it out of the park. Light, flavorful and incredibly smooth, this is the kind of beer that makes you forget about your wife, kids and restraining order. Maybe Jesus did turn water into wine, but only because he wasn't able to turn it into Orval. I have a glass of Rochefort 10 next: equally superb, and Westmalle Triple falls only just short. It's now raining, I'm wearing shorts and the two Belgians I'm crammed between are doing their best to give me secondhand lung cancer, but I barely notice. I have entered a plane of Nirvana Gandhi himself could barely wrap his shriveled prune head around. Forget any earlier worries I had about being tempted to slam these like any normal beer: if you could even bring yourself to some sort of Belgian beer deity would kill you where you sat. In each you can taste only the faintest hint of alcohol, which is a damned good thing; it leaves room for a massive range of flavours I never knew beer could have. In the middle of this a guy ambles up and starts playing 'Hava Nagila' on accordion. The definition of happiness is written from ear to ear across my face. I think I am going to like Belgium very, very much.

Today was pretty low-key too. Walked around the European Union institutions a bit to kill some time until it was a more socially acceptable time to start expanding my hops horizons. Dipped back into the Rochefort pool, checked off my fourth amazing Trappist with Chimay Blue and added Duvel and the cherry-flavored Kriek to the tally. I haven't even made any friends yet and I've managed to get half-drunk by myslef in the most enjoyable way possible twice. I could write for years about these beers. I cut my wallet off and head home to start making other people jealous of these phenomenal brews.

PS I wish you could intravenous Belgian beers directly to my brain. Jesus fucking reptile Christ are they ever good.

Metropolis, part two

First update in quite some time. Wrote this when I was pretty drunk, so it gets cheesy and a little confusing in parts, but here it is.

We wake up at 9 am on Saturday. On my way to breakfast I run into Onur. Our conversation goes something like this: “Hello, how are you?” “I’m good, man, how are you?” “I am fucked”. Turns out he lost his wallet at the bar last night. Tough break for the guy. I take some time at breakfast to have a nice and very interesting conversation with Emran and Fuat, because how often is it that you room with a Bulgarian and an Azeri? They prove to be very interesting characters, but as we finish up our meal, the natives head to a nargileh spot while the exchange kids move in the direction of the Blue Mosque.

Fairly soon, we meet with the travelers with the other hostel and take the tram to Sultanahmet (lit. District of Sultan Ahmet) to hit our first destination of the day. The mosque is quite imposing, and the active service taking place during our visit certainly adds to the atmosphere, but nothing will compare to what we are about to see. We exit the area and leave through the outer gate. The view upon exiting is one that I will never forget: the 1500-year old Hagia Sophia dominating the landscape. It immediately reminds me of the glories of the twelve-hundred year Christian capital of Constantinople: the Ottomans changed nothing except adding four minarets and painting over the interior mosaics, so the entire place is very nostalgic. It is really impossible to grasp the full scope of the building without seeing it with your own eyes, but one can certainly forgive Justinian for his statement that “o Solomon, I have outdone thee!”. Inside you can still see sights such as the circular floor relief where the Byzantine emperors were crowned for over a thousand years. You can also see the Ottoman-Arabic calligraphy dissolving in some places to reveal the original Byzantine Christian paintings, which is also a sight to behold: the side exhibits in the upper levels of the church show some of the existing portraits of Byzantine emperors, which makes me really curious to have seen the pre-conquest citadel and the 1000+ years of emperors that were painted on its surface. Nonetheless, we snap some good pictures and grab some long-overdue lunch at a nearby kebapci. In the afternoon we hit the bazaar again and I help Luis out with some bargaining. On the way back to our hostels we see a “help Kyrgyzstan” poster on the metro, which as a political science student I am all over. We also see a communist demonstration on our way back, which is also something that piques my interest quite a bit. Eventually in the evening we clean up a bit and decide to predrink at our hostel before at night on the town.

We grab some extremely cheap 50cl (the most common format) beers from the next-door liquor store and get to work on our drinking. Bilge (who is staying with us) is intent on holding a discussion on domestic politics, and although I try and change the topic several times to accommodate the left-out Cathy, Clint is surprisingly interested in the subject and I thoroughly enjoy our talk. Eventually the girls and Turks meet us, and despite the less-than-receptive proprietor, we manage to drink a fair amount before heading to an Istanbul club. We arrive and get the free drinks we are accorded, and I discover that Turkish guys are much more akin to Europeans than North Americans in terms of dancing, in that they inherently enjoy the activity rather than just the girls that are associated with it. Make no mistake, though – probably around half the Turkish guys I have met here are really just interested in ****ing the foreign girls and not much else, so it goes both ways. At this point my memory becomes fuzzy, but it involves dancing on the upper floor of the open-air club before heading down with Jill and Sarah at separate times to do shots before there are almost no memories left at all. At this point in time I apparently told the girls that I was going downstairs to “find myself a Turkish girl” before disappearing.

I awake. It is 10 AM. Cathy and Yun are finishing their preparations for the day at the foot of my bed. I notice that I am wearing the same clothes and contacts as the day before, and have not even bothered to pull a sheet up over myself before passing out. Through others’ stories and my own vague memories, I ascertain that I spent most of last night with some Belgian girl on the dance floor. I hazily remember her saying that she would host me in Belgium and me trying to write down my email address, but that’s about it. Common rumor includes me “getting to know her” on the dance floor, so I happily accept that as part of the night’s events. We head out to Topkapi Palace, the 400+ year seat of the Ottoman sultans, where the extremely haggard picture of me in the Turkish cap is taken. I see a number of people donning the fez and wonder why this particularly fine piece of Turkish headware is not worn anymore. At length we make our way through the area and end up making our way to the Roman-era cistern.

The ruins prove to be more impressive than one might think for an area than essentially comprises a subterranean cavern of pillars and water. On the way through the metro, the girls decide to stop and shop at Eminönü, so I get out and head over to grab one of the region’s famous fish sandwiches. They are served, freshly caught and fried, on one of many boats floating on the edge of the pier for four lira apiece. Standing there solitarily (rocking the aviators, of course), on the edge of the Galata Bridge, gazing out across the Golden Horn next to about two dozen travelers of very different ethnicities as the sun closed in on the horizon in the distance, the ageless metropolis of Constantinople really hit me. It was at this point that I really realized that this was by far the most interesting city I had ever visited and that it was somewhere I could certainly envision myself spending a more significant portion of my life. The whole scene took maybe five minutes as I finished my sandwich, but it was an event that I found very profound and one where I found myself certain that two months in this country, and especially merely three days in this city, would be nowhere near adequate, and I knew that I would have to return in the future. Soon enough I returned to the group and we headed back to gather our things from the hostel.

After checking out, we realized that our bus was only a couple hours from departure, and we decided to catch as much of the final World Cup match as possible before deporting. On our way down Istiklal Street we passed the Dutch consulate, which was immediately identifiable by the two-hundred-plus orange-clad fans massed outside. We reached the bar, and were served by a very outgoing, somewhat English-speaking waiter. At one point, when it was just me and four girls at the table, he came up and asked me which one of the lucky girls was my girlfriend. I responded that they were not pretty enough, which he (and I) laughed heartily at. The girls were taken quite aback initially, but they warmed up to the joke soon enough. We managed to see most of the game (a scoreless draw heading into extra time) before departing for an unavoidably hellish overnight bus. At some point Monday morning we stumbled into Ankara, (the cool ones among us) still far from satisfied with Istanbul, but with at least some of our curiosity sated. Likely my favorite weekend here thus far. I have been to New York, Paris, and London in my time, and Istanbul easily tops all three. A definite stop to be made for any world/European traveler.

Metropolis, part one

Alright, I’m going to get at least one update in before we leave for Izmir and the Aegean tonight. Been getting kind of lazy with this, but there’s been a lot of distractions this week (especially the drop-dead gorgeous Ukrainian girl who’s now in our Turkish State class. And she’s an International Relations major. Marry me.). ANYWAYS…

Date: Friday, July 9. Time: 7:30 am. Location: Istanbul. Our shuttle drops us off in Taksim Square, in the heart of the fourth-largest city in the world. After having just spent the last seven hours on a bus, killing time sleeping restlessly and playing games with Cathy, I am feeling equal parts exhausted and intrepid. We disembark (sans Clint and Luis, elsewhere in the city with their engineering class) to a grey sky and the sight of a McDonald’s thirty feet in front of us. We decide to enter and grab some breakfast. I am dismayed by both the lack of McGriddles and the inordinately (relatively) high prices – when you can grab a delicious doner for three lira ($2) at any number of street stalls, an eight lira cheeseburger combo is suddenly much less appealing. It’s one of the most expensive places here, but the prices are the same as back home, to give you a sense of things. Nonetheless, we sate our hunger and discover upon exiting that it is pouring rain. I did not expect the weather to drop below thirty degrees, let alone produce a torrential downpour, so my wardrobe of t-shirts and shorts does little to aid me. Luckily, at the first sign of rain hordes of umbrella salesmen materialize out of thin air and I solicit one for five lira. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.



We make our way through the eerily empty streets searching for our two hostels, with me, Yun and Cathy having little success, before meeting up and deciding that most of us want to do the Bosporus cruise regardless of the less-than-ideal weather. It turns out most cruises are six hours, decidedly out of our time range, but we are soon approached by a Turkish man who claims to be a captain who can take us around on his boat for two hours at fifteen lira apiece. This is fine. The hour-long wait we spend in an unmarked van before we finally make it to his boat is not fine. Neither is the persistent drizzle. At least we see some sights and get some decent pictures off. I look pretty good sitting at the confluence of two continents, don’t you think?



Finishing this up, we make our way over to the Grand Bazaar. I decide with great prescience that Istanbul is not a city that pictures can do justice, so I snap a little video of our journey to the Bazaar which captures the atmosphere a little better (this will be coming later, videos take too long to upload). This turns out to be just about the last thing I do with my camera this week, as I forgot to charge it before leaving and the battery dies just as I snap a picture of the entrance. I seem to have a running trend of ****ups with my preparations for these trips so far, so this doesn’t overly surprise me – everyone else is constantly snapping pictures anyways, so I’ll steal some of theirs to augment this entry in a little while. The size of the place is stunning – over 4000 shops and stalls. You don’t really realize it when you enter, but when you’ve spent two hours walking around and haven’t seen the same shop twice it starts to hit you. We meet some other Edmontonians and eat some pricy but very worthwhile kebaps. Time to get my haggle on.

The deal with the Grand Bazaar is that nothing has a price tag. You walk up to a merchant and inquire about an item, and he names you an inordinately high price, because you’re just a stupid white boy who’s going to pay it because you don’t know any better. I, however, am a slightly less stupid white boy, and I am not about to let these Turks **** with me. My first purchase, a shirt, goes decently enough – from 20 lira to 12 as a final price. I watch some other people try their hands and pick up a few ideas before I decide to go tag-team one of these chumps with Yun and see what price we can get. This is how the conversation goes:

Merchant (noticing us browsing): Welcome, welcome! You want shirts? I give you very good price! Which one you like?
Yun: This one is alright, how much?
Merchant: Twenty lira.
Me: Twenty lira! You take us for fools! We should leave right now after such an outrageous insult!
M: Okay, okay. I give you this one for fifteen lira. Turkish cotton, very good quality.
Y (looking at my bag, with shirt inside): How much did you pay for your shirt?
N: Six lira.
M: Six lira? That is impossible. I do not believe it.
N: Tell that to the guy who sold it to me. Uzbek cotton, too, much better than the refuse you’re peddling. We didn’t like him much, though, so we only bought the one. Maybe if you come close we’ll have pity on you and buy something.
M: Twelve lira, and that is my final price.
Y: Not interested. We won’t do more than eight.
M: Ten lira. [We start walking away]. Nine lira. [No change]. Okay, okay, fine, eight.
N: There you go! Perhaps you are not an entirely worthless creature after all! Bring us two, and make it fast lest we change our minds.

We walk out with a shirt each at that price. Feeling confident, I make the mistake of strolling into the antiques section, where they have such things as Soviet war medals and Nazi paraphernalia. You slap a hammer and sickle and some Cyrillic characters on something and dangle it in front of my nose and I’m going to buy it, so this does not bode well for my wallet. I notice a particularly badass Great Patriotic War medal that costs much less than the solid gold Order of Lenin that initially caught my eye, and am able to get the shopkeeper down to about 60% of his initially quoted price. Vladdy Ilyich would be proud of me.



We depart the bazaar and make our way to our hostel for the first time. It turns out it’s just off of Istiklal Street, which is packed with dirt-cheap and delicious kebapcilar, doner stands and all sorts of stores, one of which is a place called Pandora. I could have easily dropped a couple hundred lira in this place, lined wall-to-wall with English language books on Middle Eastern, European and (former) Soviet Union politics, but I restrain myself to two books, one of which is the Nobel Prize-winning Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. It is nothing short of awesome. Somewhere in here we grab dinner and all head to a nice restaurant for some cheap beer. We (or at I) end up getting very intoxicated before Clint and Luis show up with their Turkish friends and we head out to another bar. I fall prey to one of my drunken weaknesses and get locked into a political discussion for most of the night with Utku, on the topic of Turkish relations with Central Asia and the Caucasus. After a good amount of this, the awkwardly segregated groups of Turkish students and exchange kids decide it’s time to leave, and we call it a night.

Splitting this one into two parts because I’m already at 1300 words for this entry. Part two (including the Byzantines and the nightlife) coming soon.

Hallways of always

Haven't updated this in a while so I figure I'll post some sort of recap. Went to Istanbul last weekend and it was absolutely insane - 15 million people in one city. I think it's probably the coolest place I've ever visited and I would definitely spend a month or two there, if not more. The guys are doing God knows what around the Mediterranean coast this weekend, so I'm heading to Amasra and the Black Sea coast with the girls to sit on the beach, drink some beers and see what the Turkish girls think of white boys. I'm also planning a little solo pilgrimage to Georgia (the country, not the state) in a few weeks, so hopefully that works out. Full update for both trips next week - I promise. Turkey just keeps getting better and better.