Kitten Titties 2012

Finally the English version of this blog is released! The articles on this blog are being translated continually. If you know of anyone speaking (and writing!) a good English while understanding Hungarian and having some free time, even for translating one article, please tell him/her to drop me an email to veszelovszki@gmail.com.

Thank you :)

We had an easy day today so at last I had time to watch some tutorials about using Adobe Premiere and to cut my first video as a test. The result is of course somewhat primitive but I hope you still like it :)

It's been a long while since I decided I'd write a post about packing stuff for a trip like ours etc. I've been postponing it for a month now when I realized I just don't feel like. So I'll only write a few useful tips. Anyone who needs a good list should

1. go take a shorter trip and try out what is useful there and what's not. Then go for a longer trip, where 95% of the stuff should be exactly the same as for the shorter trip. Same things and same amount of them. If you only needed two t-shirts for a week, two of them will do for a year, too. This applies while the circumstances of the two trips (e.g. cheap hitch-hike trips) are the same.
2. in a desperate situation search the internet for articles on what to pack for a trip, there are plenty of good ones
3. above all, use one's brains and think. It's hard to make a big mistake unless you forget your money or your passport at home.

If after all this you still need my packing list, I can certainly send it to you because I have it, I just don't want to publish it in its current form because it's incomplete, not that well-formed and mostly in Hungarian.

For everyone else, here is a picture of my bag before packing it. Click the picture for a big size.

This picture has been taken in Konya, in an original Turkish café. In the morning the elderly get together to drink Turkish coffee (which they are very proud of!) and talk. A bit different from home. Here, the older generation lives a very active social life. A local professor brought us here, I felt a little strange as a woman. I thought I'd break some unwritten rule with my presence, but they assured me that women are not banned, they just don't attend such places. I felt so honoured that I immediately asked for permission to take some photos. For the request of the main table I put a picture here so they can print it in their homes...

After spending a night in one of Antalya's super cheap "roachy" hostels, where the receptionist kind of tried to make move on Judit while we were buying water, Amanda's plane was about to arrive. We weren't too familiar with the layout of the airport, or the number of terminals, so even though we had been able to make it, we wasted our time hitch-hiking between terminals and eventually turned up 20 minutes late. After a bit of smiley happy, we set out for Fethiye. Hitching a ride isn't easy with three people, so Judit took the bus. We got lucky and managed to get there before she did. :)

In Fethiye, we hopped in a minivan together, and continued on to Ölüdeniz (gorgeous, but very popular place, full of people), then Kayaköy (small village with only a handful of houses), and finally Kabak (not even on the map, even some Fethiye residents are unaware of its existence). And that's where we stopped. Kabak, well... We really want to thank Zoli for recommending this place to us. Kabak is one of the most wonderful places in the world:

Nobody really lives in Kabak. Thirteen years ago this was untoched, pristine land. Since then, around 15 campsites have been built, with the little houses, parcels for tents and the like, but people still only come here to get baked chill out and do yoga. Kabak is unknown to the masses.

First night we teamed up with a couple of Turkish guys, who also came with backpacks into Kabak, and because they said it was forbidden to camp on the beach, we climbed up the hills and found a suitable spot there for their 4-5 tents and our two. They weren't the best spots, they were sloped, stony and thorny, but we managed. :)

We awoke to the game warden telling us to piss off. By the time we got up, the guys were already getting their stuff packed. Later, in the afternoon, we saw that he even put a "NO CAMPING" sign on one of the trees.

So, with nothing else to do, the girls went down to the beach to bask in the sun, and I set out to go through all the campsites and haggle. The first place was quite fancy (stretched surface pools and all) and just as pricey, but next to it, I found the Shanti Garden Camping, where I managed to become fast friends with a really cool bartender guy, who vouched for us with the boss, so they let us put up our tents. They even offered us free breakfast and dinner if we did the dishes. So we did the dishes:

Judit even helped the chef lady with the cooking, so she can learn about vegetarian cuisine:

With Judit cooking, Amanda and I went to see the biggest attraction of the neighbourhood, a big waterfall. There are two paths leading up to it: an easy one and a "trekking" one. We decided to try our chances with the latter going up, and return on the longer, easier road. We ended up taking the tougher road both ways, but we didn't even find it at first. In fact, we started off exactly in the opposite direction. Luckily a huge Turkish guy found us, who was heading that way, so we figured we'd just follow him.

The guy was incredibly nice. Not only did he always wait for us, he even gave us almonds and hazelnuts, helped carry the bags through the tougher parts (the path was down the length of a canyon where we waded through water up to our chests sometimes) and he instantly brought a wet kerchief for Amanda when she hit her head quite badly on a protruding branch. And of course he took lots of pictures of us in the water:

In the end, we had to say goodbye to Kabak, because Amanda's flight was leaving from Antalya. This is actually lucky because we got so friendly with everybody and had such a good time that maybe if we didn't leave then, we'd still be there. :)

It was a tough ~45 minute ascent to the hills, in 40 degrees, with 30 kilos of stuff, which was quite stressful for all of us. But we were SUPER badass:

We weren't so lucky with hitchhiking this time, so we all took the bus, and said goodbye to Amanda in the morning, who flew home to find a job in the Land of Opportunities. I'll probably don't get to see her until November, in Thailand. :'-(

And finally, a tractor, from us, to you. CAUTION, NO FRAME!!

(translated by edward of himmel)

Telling about Cappadocia in text is just as a smart thing as washing one's teeth with a toilet pump... It is possible but it just doesn't make much sense.

So instead of writing anything, here is an album with Hungarian and English comments. Take a look and have fun :)

Here is the sequel =), sorry, but although we are told everywhere there is internet, in fact there isn't! Going back to where we dropped the storytelling last time (a bit complicated after all this time) we did not carry on towards the planned direction after Istanbul. We had planned a loads of typical touristic and lying-on-the-beach activities near to the Aegean sea, but we got a rather more serious task at the end then these. Bela's girlfriend - let's call her Amanda - figured, she would fly to Antalya for some sightseeing and it would be great if we could make it to get there. =) Good to know for a rather keen traveler that there is a nice 700 km distance between the two cities at least. We gave ourselves two days to get there. In fact we made it in one, hitchhiking to the south coast!

After we said goodbye to Zoli we caught a ship to the train station since that's already in Asia. From there we went to the border of the city with a suburban railway. This means a slight 80 km journey cause Istanbul and it's agglomeration sort of embrace the sea, that's why it takes so long. Or at least it seemed us so long... After one or two quite average hitchhiking trips (driving on abandoned roads with young Turkish guys while Pendulum was shouting in the background) a truck driver picked us up - FIRST TRUCK HITCHHIKING IN MY LIFE!! At this point we were still for some 600 kms from the finish line, so we asked the driver if he went towards Antalya. He was smiling widely - few teeth missing - and beckoned to join him and nodded reassuringly to Antalya! His name was Osman (everyone here is called Osman) and almost didn't speak any other languages but Turkish. I really got to like this guy! It turned out that in the summer he's a truck driver, otherwise he teaches math in a secondary school. After he taught me how to count in Turkish (and got me repeat it as well!) he gave Bela a math graduation exam test which he proudly solved, here is the picture if you don't believe:

Our journey together lasted 12 hours with an average speed of 40 km/h, but as for exchange we saw heaps of dreary nothing! :) Okok, it was great to relax and to muse a bit! Osman showed us some tricks how to avoid numbness while driving: 'don't use the pedals below! Let them rest!'

We slept in the truck 3 hours next to the airport then got into the city to find a place to sleep. How I hate this... We explored the old town and it's famous coast while waiting for Amanda to arrive.

What's happened in the next few days Bela will let you know soon. I would like to thank Amanda that she visited us here, it was a great experience! :)

(translated by Dóri :)

Our new post is coming soon...

Tadamm tadamm tadamm...

After saying farewell to Michaela, our wonderful host in Burgas, we set out for the remaining 400 km-s until Istanbul, but unfortunately our hitchhiking didn't go so well as usual. After the first successful hour the rain began to pour, so we had to wait in a rotting bus stop in the middle of nowhere. If we placed our stuff and ourselves in the correct square centimeters we could avoid most of the raindrops leaking in so we can say it was quite comfortable. (Not.)

After the rain had gave over and we were taken a couple of villages onwards it turned out that from the three border crossing points that existed between Bulgaria and Turkey, the one we've been at was extremely rarely used. Cars passed by every ten minutes or so and neither of them gave us a lift. So we sat by the road:

While waiting for a car we hiked around 10 km-s and finally we got on a local minibus which took us to the border town. Here, with a mixture of necessity and altruistic love, I carried home a ramshackled old lady's bag which she had previously shoved into my hands during descending. On the way home she asked me four times in poor German whether or not I was a Christian. (???)

We crossed the border with a very cool turkish guy. Although we did not speak mutual words he was extremely nice! He bought us dinner along the way: we had some tasty Turkish köfte. I love Turkey.

Because of the rainy weather and the late hour we got on a bus to get to Istanbul. We looked for our Hungarian CouchSurfing friend Zoli, of whom no good pictures have been taken, but I stole a stupid photo of him from his Facebook profile:

While in Istanbul we stayed at his place. In my opinion he lives in a cool area - according to the locals it's a ghetto, but we thought it was alright. Everything we were interested in was approximately an hour walking distance away. Zoli's first thing to do was to take us to a spaghetti party, where we could finally chill out, drink beer and met a lot of cool people. During those 5 days that we spent there Zoli was extremely nice and gave us many useful tips of what to see in the city and the country. And actually even more :), but I think we've managed to see all the significant things. We visited the Blue Mosque, the Asian side of Istanbul, been to the beautiful islands next to the city, and even went partying, sometimes to totally empty, other times to almost full places, and of course we've been to the Aya Sofia, which is one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages. It is extremely suitable for performing arm-workout exercises:

Istanbul's population consists of around 15-20 million people (depending on how you're counting), with the longest diameter of 160 kilometers. Istanbul is a place where together live Arabs and Europeans, Muslims and Christians, students with excellent English and toothless telephone shop dealers, ducks and seagulls. In addition the very loud muezzins that you can hear five times a day, some native American musicians (as everywhere), the old lady who kneads pita bread in the shop window, and lots of men who fish from the bridge which is located in the middle of the city. There's an Asian and a European side (just like Buda and Pest in Hungary) and the Bosporus between them), expensive beer, cheap, freshly squeezed fruit juice and basically enough sightseeing material for a month. The one thing we were sorry about is our lack of Turkish knowledge. Otherwise we could have had conversations with a lot of interesting people.

And finally, a photo taken on our last evening in Istanbul at the main shopping street, when zombies came and ate our brain:

Many people and companies have been asking about the ways of supporting our trip, because they like the idea and fancy contributing to our project. So far the Hungarian outdoor company Mountex was the coolest to gave us a lot of equipment, all of which proved to be very handy on the trip.