Part V: Eastern European Vacation!

After leaving Vienna, we booked it out of Austria, through Hungary and into Romania. Hungary has some beautiful scenery, but don't concentrate on it too long because the drivers are insane, (although less insane than those in Romania, and a lot less insane than those in Turkey). For example, we managed to see two overturned semi trucks in our two days exploring Hungary.


After leaving the main highway to get to a campsite, we were immediately surprised to find an area full of vineyards. Our campsite was at the base of a range of hills covered in them. We would later find that the grapes grown in Romania are commonly imported to Italy to be sold as Italian wine!


Cornel was the first Romanian we met. He ran the campsite we stayed at for the night, and was very inviting and generous. He also followed the male Romanian tradition of never wearing a shirt, a custom we could get used to. There were also plenty of stray dogs to pet (and then wash your hands thoroughly)!


As we were setting up, another team doing the rally came into the campsite! They were supporting Save the Children, and were named Carlos, Juan and Alex (originally from Columbia, but living in Miami). They weren't officially doing the rally through the Adventurists, they've gone rogue. They emailed the Mongolian embassy and found that importing the car might not be as difficult as it seemed, and managed to get all of their visas completed without The Visa Machine. If they manage to work their way through the bureaucracy unaided we'll definitely look into this option if any of us plan a second rally.


(7/24/12)


After a night in Romania we booked it for Bulgaria. Every country has a “Vignette” or a road tax, and as we head east, they seem to get less and less official. Austria and Hungary had an official looking sticker, Romania had a stamped receipt, and Bulgaria just gave us a couple pieces of printed out paper. By the end of the trip we might be getting handed a handwritten note.

Exploring Bulgaria

We entered Bulgaria at Ruse, which happened to have an extremely nice hostel, “The English Guest House”. They had showers, clean restrooms, and were very close to a historic Soviet-era town square. At the hostel, we met a German man named Armin, and his two children, Juno and Aaron. They were taking their beat up car on one last adventure through Europe. They had dinner with us in the square, and we had a great conversation about the differences between the US and Germany, each mostly arguing the merits of the other's country as it turned out. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the border.


(7/25/12)


The next day was spent driving to Istanbul. Bulgaria had some great scenery, with some beautiful rivers and hills, but the scenery was overshadowed by the ninja-esque moves pulled off by the Bulgarian drivers. The scenery changed to rolling farmland as we entered Turkey, and as we went south the temperature kept rising. Turkish driving also seems to have the boldness of Romania, combined with the speed of the Nurburgring, but as we would find out later, the driving would be easy compared to the urban warzone that is Istanbul.

Stray cat inspecting our Vignette outside of Bada Bing Hostel

We entered Istanbul fairly late, but early enough that we still had enough light to see the vastness of the city. The streets were just as we expected: a vast maze of organically planned streets, suicidal pedestrians, and homicidal taxi drivers. We managed to get to our hostel unscathed, and vowed to never drive again until we were leaving Istanbul!


A man named Mustafa ran Bada Bing Hostel, a fantastic place located just between the historic district and a great place for exploring at night, in addition to an amazing rooftop bar. There were great showers, bathrooms nicer than any hostel we’d been to, and most importantly, great company.


After unpacking the car, we headed straight to the rooftop bar for a much needed beer, and quickly met some of the great people staying there. A man named Jacob had been exploring Europe for months, and was from San Francisco. A few girls from Holland named Yris, Anette, and Renatta were exploring Europe by train for a few weeks, something difficult for Americans to do without an expensive plane ticket.



(7/26/12)

Michael photographing The Blue Mosque in front of Ayasofya

Michael, Alex, Thomas and Byron on a bridge in Istanbul

The next day was spent exploring Istanbul. We took a trolly to the Blue Mosque, an enormous and ornate structure built about 500 years ago in a futile attempt to overshadow the adjacent mosque, the Ayasofya (or Hagia Sophia). The Ayasofya was built about 1500 (yes, 1500) years ago, and while not as pristine as the Blue Mosque, is more impressive due to its historical significance and the enormous scale of the structure. Afterward we explored the Grand Bazaar, an enormous shopping district, where searching through the shops for a unique trinket is complicated by the millions of items imported from China, and fighting your way through pushy shop owners to a bathroom is a battle.

After escaping the Bazaar maze, we managed to make it to a bridge linking two sides of Istanbul. Under the bridge there are some restaurants with world class fish food, which we completely ignored in favor of some cold beers. After recovering at the hostel for a bit, we headed to the Istanbul night district, which is sort of like Pearl Street but much larger and more crowded. It's a strange combination of shops that have been there for a hundred years, trendy new coffee shops, and vogue fashion stores.


(7/27/12)


The following day we had to say goodbye to Joyce, who needed to leave our trip before we encountered and countries requiring visas. She took a shuttle to the airport, and we fought our way out of Istanbul and into Eastern Turkey.


The temperature seemed to keep rising as we left Istanbul; the folks in the Perodua were able to see the tire marks of the Getz imprinted into the asphalt, due to the melting tar. As we approached the coast, the temperature mercifully dropped, and we finally got to our campsite for the night in Sinop. We weren’t able to find any English-speakers to explain the rules to the campsite to us, but we did find a man who spoke German. Surprisingly, Thomas’ rudimentary German skills have proven somewhat useful in Turkey. Our campsite was totally free, although we had to deal with some cows suspiciously surrounding the campsite.


(7/28/12)


Turns out the cows were mostly talk, leaving just a bit of poop on the corner of Michael and Thomas' tent. After a quick cleaning, we were off to the local black sand beach, where we did some diving into the black sea from a concrete pier, and threw a Frisbee around in the water until we were thoroughly sunburnt. It was, perhaps, the best morning we’ve had on the entire trip.

Michael looking annoyed before cleaning up cow poop

After procrastinating for as long as we could, we left for another seafront city called Ordu. It's difficult to find campsites in Turkish, and what we thought was a campsite was actually a recreational facility. Luckily there was an employee setting up for a family picnic. He called the owner of the facility, and we were given permission to camp on the site!

The family that gave us great food and a better story

As we were setting up our tents for the evening, a group of friends and family showed up for a picnic and invited us to join them. Turkey is mostly Muslim, and we’re currently in the month of Ramadan in the Islamic calendar, which involves fasting between sunrise and sunset (we’ve been hearing calls to prayer over the city megaphones 5 times a day since we got to Turkey). This group had come for an evening feast after fasting all day, so they brought an incredible amount of food and shared it all with us. One of the women was from Germany and spoke some English (NAME). We’ve been completely blown away by the hospitality people have shown us on this trip, and this night was one of the best. We had stuffed peppers, pasta salad, bread, melon, fanta, and tea. They were using an amazing contraption to brew their tea which is shaped like a large jug and can only be described as a tea furnace. Hot embers are loaded into the bottom of the jug-thing, and heat the water and tea which sit above. The whole thing has a chimney on top which constantly emits large quantities of smoke and fire. The tea was absolutely delicious, although some of us still have burned tongues. After the first round of food, we had corn cooked on the hot embers left from the campfire. We had a great time eating, talking, laughing, and dancing. We even learned some Turkish! Now we can all say “Thank you”, count to ten, and ask for a beer, so we should be more or less functional for the rest of our stay in Turkey.



(7/29/12)


We left Ordu in the morning and headed out to Trabzon. When we arrived, we found that driving in Trabzon is about as difficult as in Istanbul. Not because of the crazy drivers, but because of the crazy roads. The city is a maze of one-way roads and hills steep enough the stall our cars. After determining that our google map of Trabzon was taking us the wrong way down several one-way roads, we finally pulled over to ask for directions to our hotel. The first guy we found spoke English and offered to lead us directly to our hotel with his car! This turned out to be a life-saver, as we realized we would never have found it on our own. One more point for Turkish hospitality!


Our hotel was called the Nurotel. After checking in, we went out to the city square and had another delicious meal of rice, lamb kebab, chicken, eggplant, veggies, and rice pudding. We had to look around for awhile before finding a restaurant which was open before sundown (Ramadan). We spent the rest of the evening doing laundry in the sink and watching TV shows downloaded by Byron. It was a good way to relax and recharge.


(7/30/12)


We woke up, had breakfast, and took a walk to the docks to figure out ferry tickets to Sochi. We found the ticket office without trouble. There was a man standing outside who immediately saw that we were tourists and came out to us asking if we were going to Sochi. Taking care of ferry tickets in the morning proved to be a good idea since the process ended up being fairly complicated, mostly because they didn’t accept credit cards. We spent about an hour walking around town trying to find a working ATM. Our plan was for one person to withdraw cash and cover everyone, but we found that none of us could withdraw a large amount of cash, so we all ended up withdrawing smaller amounts and paying together.


On the way back from the ticket office we passed a hotel with a Mongol Rally car outside. We’re not alone! Their team name appears to be “Genghis Khan’s East India Company”. We left a note for them in the lobby of their hotel, hoping to hang out with them later.


We retired once again to the hotel to catch up on more laundry and blogging, and also to finish the last of our produce and meat foods before heading across the Russian border. Our Lonely Planet guide to Russia turns out to be fairly unhelpful when it comes to food restrictions at the border, so we figured better safe than sorry.

Video Episode 2: Exploring England

We've just finished our third video! Check it out here!

Part IV B : Team Praha

(7/20/2012)

With Thomas, Michael and Byron on their way to Wien (Vienna), Alex, Nick and Joyce stayed behind to enjoy the Czech capital of Praha (Prague). We checked in and settled down at the Chili Hostel, a raucous and lively dwelling located in the center of the city very close to the Vltava River. However, a long day of cooped-up driving and an acute lack of belly-fullness led us almost immediately back out to the streets in search of dinner, which we had no trouble reading. After strolling by a few places closeby and inspecting the menus, we eventually settled on some delicious thai food that looked reasonably priced by US standards. We quickly discovered that, not for a lack of quality, the Czech Republic is rather less expensive than the US. Our “reasonably priced” thai meal turned out to be a rather large feast in a rather fancy restaurant.

With a new found abundance of belly-fullness and a temperate evening at hand, we then decided to explore the Old Town section of Prague. From the restaurant we meandered along the river to the famous Charles Bridge. It was an odd mix of fascinating and annoying. Fascinating in that the bridge has numerous historical sculptures and significance, annoying in that it is a tourist hot spot and therefore set upon by hosts of pushy merchants and their gimmicky wares, even at night. Unfortunately, most of the interesting activities across the bridge were closed for the evening so we ventured back to explore Old Town Square.

Even in the late evening and night, Old Town was brimming with life and energy. Huge crowds flocking across the open square and spilling into the narrow streets beyond. Along one of these streets was a small Absinthe house that caught our eyes. Having never tried it before, we were all game for a taste and asked the bartender to recommend three can't-miss Absinthe experiences, which she did admirably, including one that was fermented with a giant beetle of some sort (Alex chose to try that one). Even ordering Absinthe is an experience. Because the real stuff is at least 70% ABV, it is set on fire along with a sugar cube suspended by a slotted spoon. The burning sugar is occasionally dipped into the burning alcohol until it changes from pale green to deep amber and the flames are suffocated. Then, you alternate sips of the alcohol and water to bring out the complex flavors (like opening a scotch). For the record, the beetle Absinthe was the team favorite.

After we finished our respective drinks (with much sharing, of course) and on Rally-veteran Bert's recommendation, we had a mind to check out Propaganda Bar. As it so happened, the Absinthe bartender used to work there and, after giving us a look of surprise when we told her that was our next destination, she gave us characteristically European directions. That is to say, they were relative rather than absolute. Armed with nothing more than a vague list of proximal landmarks and a buzz from fermented beetle juice, we set out to track it down. This proved to be an ultimately unsuccessful quest. Despite numerous exploratory wanderings and questioning more than a few locals (all of whom had never heard of the place), we acquiesced to defeat and began the lengthy, but pleasant, walk back to the hostel. Along the way we hopped a few fences (to avoid some particularly rowdy locals) and took a detour to a basement bar for a couple of local beers.

(7/21/2012)

The next day began in fits and starts. After getting up early to re-up the parking meter (parking in Prague is somewhat of a hassle as 90% of the spots available are for residents only and tow trucks are only too happy to enforce that fact), Joyce and Nick decided to get breakfast at another of Rally-vet Bert's short-list locations: The Globe. Alex, in the midst of his characteristically comatose sleep cycle, tacitly decided to sleep in.

Run by self-described “ex-patriots”, The Globe is a coffeehouse/restaurant/bookstore that is particularly friendly to American travelers (not that Prague isn't in general), and provided the perfect location to adjust Joyce's return flights to accommodate the previous delays in the UK.

With everyone well rested and readjusted, Team Prague set out for a full day of sightseeing. After fording the river of tourist on the Charles Bridge again, the first stop was the St. Nicholas Cathedral (at Nick's request). Although this is not the most famous building in Prague, it turned out to be one of the most beautiful and ornate places anyone on Team Prague had ever seen. It was almost hard to gauge how intricate the inside of the building was because the intricacy was so dense. Gold and bronze statues, carved marble, and masterful woodwork covered every surface of the interior. Needless to say, many pictures were taken. To top it off, there was a gold-plated Porsche parked right outside the church as well.

After the splendor of the cathedral, we set off towards Prague Castle. Relative to the buildings around it, the size of the castle is second only to the number of Gothic spines that adorned its roof (it would feel right at home next to a giant porcupine). Unfortunately, the full castle experience was uncharacteristically expensive, so we opted for the free walking tour of the main room and its stunning stained glass windows that appear dark and dull from the outside, but positively glow with every color inside.

With eyes sore from boggling and legs even more sore from all the walking we returned to the hostel, but not before stopping off at yet another Bert-spot (and his favorite at that): a donor kebabish. Although Google seems to have no record of this place, we are 95% sure it was not a dream or some hunger-induced hallucination. This was by far the best donor any of us had ever had, and was high in the running for best food ever. It really was that good.

A few food comas and some internet research later, we decided to further explore the Czech beer scene. Although the Czech style of beer is nothing new, it is arguably the finest example of its breed. Primarily pilsners (a style invented in Plzen, CZ), the fresh local brews completely break from the dullness of their mass-market American counterparts while somehow undercutting the price (0.5L beers averaged about $1.50). This is a very welcome state of affairs for a night of bar-hopping. Thanks to the previous research, we even got to experience Propaganda Bar (apparently there were two places with that name and we were actually recommended to the much less sketchy one). With Prague successfully painted red (though most of the city is already that colorful anyways), we called it a night and prepared for the drive to Vienna the next day to meet up with Thomas, Michael and Byron.

(7/22/2012)

The next day started with some good news: Team Wien had decided to go on a hike, which gave Team Praha some unexpected, but welcome, time to do some general shopping, stock up on groceries, and visit the (hopefully, thanks to this blog) legendary donor kebabish once more before hitting the road to Vienna. It should be noted that this was no mean feat since both people with modern navigation devices were already in Vienna. We had to do this one old school. That sucked.

Leaving Prague was challenging but doable, and the highways between the cities were as easily navigable as the interstates we are used to. Vienna, however, is another story. An unfortunate combination of poor signage, labyrinthine one-way streets, and a serious case of internet-enabled techno-coddling left us hopelessly lost in the Austrian capital. After several double-backs and misguided guesses, we were sitting at a stoplight discussing our next move when, through the open window, a pair of Bosnian truck drivers couldn't help but overhear our predicament. They offered to help and we pulled over to plumb their comparatively infinite knowledge of Vienna for directions to the hostel. In a matter of minutes, we were pulling up to the hostel, checked in, and set about reuniting with Byron, Michael, and Thomas that evening.

Stay tuned for the next update!

Part IV A, Team Wien

We woke up early in Vienna and had Austrian “Geld Kugeln” cereal (or “Gold Balls”, coincidentally also Tom’s new nickname) for breakfast. We started the day by taking the car to Midas to get it inspected. Katie and Mandi were extremely helpful and did most of the speaking to the mechanics for us. What took them a few minutes might have taken us an hour to translate. The mechanics found that the front left wheel was dented, presumably from driving into the ditch in England. We got it repaired and purchased a full-size replacement tire (which we hopefully won’t need).

After retrieving the car, we took Rick Steve’s walking tour of central Vienna past many of the top sites, including the Opera house and St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Most importantly, we visited a subway bathroom next to the Opera House which played Opera music to you as you did your business. We deviated slightly from Rick's tour at Katie’s suggestion to visit the oldest church in Vienna from circa 1100 and to visit Cafe Hawelka, a typical Viennese cafe with excellent coffee, fantastic apricot cake, mediocre topfenstrudel, and famously poor service. The walls are lined with art given to the shop by poor local artists in exchange for caffeine. We found time to do some shopping for camera equipment, ridiculous Freud-esque sunglasses, and extra underwear for the trip ahead. This was also a great time to stroll through Vienna with our new absurd glasses, feeling like true Austrian locals. We had a great homemade dinner of eggs, salad, and pretzels with Katie and Mandi, then took a short stroll through the film festival in front of City Hall. Strangely, the only thing showing was an American acapella group, and combined with some beer and our absurd glasses we were having an amazing, albeit random, experience in Vienna. The following day, team Wien (Byron, Michael, Thomas, and Katie) decided to take a hike in the Vienna woods or “Wiener Wald” which surround Vienna. We took a tram to the outskirts of Vienna and took a long hike along the path which alternated between residential areas and dirt paths. The ground was pretty muddy and we saw lots of slugs. It was actually a little nerve-racking trying not to step on them. Viennese hiking routes have a lot of pubs and restaurants which pop up in the middle of the hike, a concept definitely good enough to be stolen by the US and claimed as its own. It seems like you’re in the middle of nowhere for a while and then you randomly find a pub or wine garden. We stopped our hike at a wine garden or “Heuriger” which overlooked Vienna from the top of a hill. We stayed for a few hours (time really flew by, we were having such a good time) and had lots of excellent wine, cheese spreads, and apple strudel. We even sang some songs with the locals, to the disapproval of the employees.

That night, Team Praha (Prague) and team Wien (Vienna) reunited at the Team Prague’s hostel. Team Prahe met two guys from Bosnia (Faya I and Faya II) who were helpful in finding the hostel, so we all decided to go out to a bar and have a drink with them. The following day was spent exploring the city. Team Praha explored the city while Team Wien slept in (recovering from the previous day), but we all met up after to go to the Vienna Treasury. This museum houses many of the historical relics collected and commissioned by the Austrian royalty over its centuries of power. There were jewel encrusted crowns, every conceivable depiction of Jesus, ancient finely crafted clothing, along with hundreds of other priceless pieces. After the treasury, we decided to go to a local brewery, with great beer and better food. The following day we had to leave Vienna for Romania after a depressing goodbye to our amazing hosts Katie and Mandi. Vienna was a great town to see, but like very city we've visited, we left with the impression that there was much more to see and do. Unfortunately, this trip isn't a vacation, it's a journey!

Video Episode 1: The Festival of Slow

Michael finished our second video! Check it out here!

Video Prologue: Getting to London

We've finished our first video for the Mongol Rally! It covers up until the Mongol Rally. We'll be creating more of these as we go along! Make sure to subscribe!

Part III, FREEEEDOOOOOOM!!!!!!!

We rushed to Dover Tuesday morning for our noon ferry to France. We were anxious to escape the island and start moving east into continental Europe. We had some time before our ferry so we did some speed tourism at Dover castle and the White Cliffs, which are both stunning. The cliffs had grazing horses to complement the picturesque landscape. The castle itself is too large and the history too dense to be appreciated in the time we had. After some quick pictures we dashed (literally ran) to our cars so that we could have some more margin for the ferry to France.

White Cliffs in Dover

We made it with time to spare, and after a painless two hour cruise, we escaped to mainland Europe. We met an extremely nice English couple named Clyde and Julia that actually volunteered to have us follow them to Belgium, since they were going the same direction. We wouldn't even need to navigate! It was extremely nice of them; they even corrected a wrong turn for us after we got onto the freeway in the wrong direction. Thanks again guys!

We left France fairly quickly, and after a quick beer in Belgium, moved on to Germany where we attempted to find a campsite in the dark near our goal of Cochem.   At night, everything seems like a sketchy place to sleep. Every footprint in the mud is the freshly laid track of an axe wielding drug dealer. We hastily found a lit parking lot, and hoped that we wouldn't be confronted by the cops or the locals.

As it turned out, the concerns of the previous night were baseless; the parking lot was actually adjacent to a small suburban development. We were more likely to run into thugs in Superior, Colorado than at our campsite. Besides an angry dog, we got out of the town without being confronted and managed to escape to one of our primary German destinations, Burg Eltz.

Burg Eltz

We did not quite know what to expect, but after a pleasant short hike through though the woods we took a corner and saw this amazing castle in the middle of an isolated German valley. Based on the dissimilar architecture it was clear that the castle was built up over time. The structure had a fascinating history, at one point it was under siege for 5 years (long enough for the intruders to build a permanent fort on top of one of the surrounding hills). The collection of artifacts was stunning as well. We even had a chance to get some good German food and beer from the on-site restaurant!

After leaving Burg Eltz, we set to work on the Perodua's exhaust in the parking lot. It's been contacting the right rear shock, the bumper, as well as a suspension strut mount. We solved most of the problems by cutting off some of the bumper with Byron’s multi-tool, securing the exhaust away from the shock with some wire, and wrapping the contact area with some aluminum tape. Hopefully this will last 10,000 miles! A nice German/American family also stopped by to check out the car and ask some questions while we were doing the repair, the kids even signed the car! We're going to try to take some pictures at random places so that they can see their names move across the continent.

The team at the Nurburgring

After the castle adventure, we set upon fulfilling Byron's automotive fantasy of driving on the Nurburgring. This is a 13 mile track, and is classified as a Gernan highway, which allows anyone to take their car onto the track and drive it as fast as they're able, whether it be a Porsche 911 GT3RS, or in our case, a 2006 Perodua Kelisa with a 3 cylinder 54 hp engine, with 4 people in it. We were, by far, the slowest car on the track, but I think we absolutely had the most fun. Everyone in the car was calling out passing cars, relaying information, and chanting that the highest priority was getting the car to Mongolia. It was a team effort that makes us all the more confident that we're ready for the challenges ahead!

The Carousel

Prague!

Thursday was one of our best days yet, we woke up clean (ish) after our recent showers, and booked it for Prague after packing up. Prague is a beautiful city, built on a river in the Czech Republic. Just as we found some illegal parking near the hostel, a guy rides his bike up to us on the street and says that he did the rally in 2009! This is the third person we've randomly run into that has done the rally in the past. His name is Burt, and he provided several recommendations for food and drinks in the surrounding area, as well as recommendations for what to see in Prague. He quickly realized during the rally that he wasn't going to be able to return to his past life in Virginia, and has been travelling the world ever since. 

Unfortunately, we decided to get the Getz to Vienna a few days early so that the wobble that popped up after the crash into the ditch could be inspected, so Michael,  Byron, and Tom all left Prague a bit early to get this done. Nick, Joyce and Alex would stay in Prague until Saturday, and then we'd meet up in Vienna so that we could convoy down to Turkey. It's a risk separating, but we decided this would be the best way to fix the car and let everyone who really wanted to see Prague not have to miss out.

It turned out that the drive through the Southern Czech Republic and Northern Austria is a beautiful drive, with sunflower fields, wheat farms, small picturesque lakes and rivers, and an abundance of interesting architecture. We stopped the car a few times to take pictures and video because the landscape was so gorgeous.

Taking a break from driving in the Czech Republic

Vienna's architecture is stunning, every building seems to have its own character and identity, but at the same time each is fitting with the overall style of the town itself. The three of us stayed with Tom's sister Katie and her husband Mandi, who were extremely welcoming and inviting, giving us an opportunity to wash our clothes and recharge (physically, mentally, and electrically). 

Stay tuned for an update from the Prague contingent!