Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas! We have arrived in Calgary after a long flight, but the jet lag was much worse going to England than coming from. We are staying at Laurie and Eric's house till Tuesday, at which point we go to Edmonton, then back here for their wedding, then back to Edmonton for New Year's, then back to Calgary just before we leave to fly back to London January 12. That clocks us in at 1200 kilometers of travelling just between the two cities. How far is that by European standards, just a little less than Berlin to Belgrade, I think. I think it is programmed into our DNA to always be on the move. Alberta welcomed us with fluffy snowflakes and icy roads, but it is only -10 degrees Celsius, so it could be much worse. We are bouncing with excitement to see everyone and for Christmas, the wedding, New Year's, setting up another new life in Scotland. We might be too busy to update till we get back to the UK, so Happy New Year's to everyone too!

London’s Burning

Or at least one of its four airport’s fuel depots is, neither of which is the one we flew into this morning, or the one we fly out of on Thursday which brings us home. London seems to have the same seasonless weather as we left it four months ago: grey and slightly chilly.

Berlin never disappoints us, and this visit was no exception! We crashed at Morten’s place for a few days as we always do when we come bouncing into Berlin, but we won’t be able to do this for future visits as he is moving to Vienna, L (great to have another friendly face in that ancient capital of culture though). But luckily we found another connection, Daniel, who is a third cousin of Carli-Ann’s who we met at the German family reunion last May, one of the few other attendees under 60 years old. Two days with him and his crazy flatmates illuminated a whole other layer of our favourite city to us, and that included crawling down a dank cellar hole in the sidewalk to find an underground punk drum and bass club. It’s great when your list of thrilling places can still be topped even at the end of a trip.

We really enjoyed being in Germany around Christmas with all the warm candles glowing in every house, surveying the famous Christmas markets (the Germans can’t seem to do anything without a ferris wheel), sampling Heiko and Torsten’s personal recommendation: Gluwein, with nativity scene llamas snorting over our shoulders. Or perhaps those were the carollers. Too bad about the Tibetan duck that ruined Morten’s weekend; we knew we should have stayed away from avian products. Mike is happily playing with his world’s smallest steamboat puttering around in the sink (an 1890 Berlin invention – a tiny candle powered tin toy).

Jim and Jean, our London family, are taking good care of us in our in-between stage before we head off to Alberta’s arctic, although Jim said we might have to call the miners in to liberate some of our Irish gear from his garden shed. We’ll be back in Britain January 12, and are thinking of settling in Scotland, perhaps Glasgow, till autumn, but our minds can easily be swayed in the next few weeks. But we are stoked to have a place again soon that we can host all of the people from whom we have received such fabulous hospitality in our last year and a half flitting around Europe and beyond!

Anyone who wants to get a hold of us in Edmonton, we will be at Mike’s parents next week!

Santa Claus is Turkish!

I know, it was just as much of a surprise to us as it probably is to you! And it seems to have some rival origin legends, but Baba Noel (St. Nicholas) apparently was a bishop on the sunny south coast of Turkey who dropped dowry money down poor young girl's chimneys. We didn't expect to see much of anything Christmasy in Turkey, and apart from that info board of Santa in a bathing suit, we haven't really. But that one was a shocker. We are glad that we postponed our arrival in Turkey to miss Ramadan, because although as foreigners we would have been permitted to eat during daylight hours, it probably wouldn't have made us any friends. And it has been really interesting to notice how many women wear headscarves in different towns, a very visual reflection of how conservative or secular a community is. Although each day we have seen a few women in head to toe coverings, it is pretty rare, at least in the west where we have travelled.

We have now come full circle back to Istanbul, the gateway to the Orient. From here it is just a a few hops between our favourite cities in Europe to visit friends, and then we will come screeching back into the Alberta snow, culture-shocked and jet-lagged. It will be great.

After climbing Mount Olimpos on the south coast, we skipped around the coast a bit with some Australians to Kas, then back to Antalaya where the hospitality club did not disappoint us. We stayed with Ugur and his family in their gorgeous flat, saw his photos of his mates moose hunting up in Alaska where he had worked for the summer, went out to experience traditional Turkish folk music in the ancient harbour setting still reminiscent of Roman times, and breakfast included a back massage from his father. This is living. And don't fear, the weather did improve for us and we were basking in 26 degrees Celcius again, probably for the last time in a long while. From there it was a long hitch up from the Mediterranean coast to the Aegean coast and Izmir, with a Bulgarian truck driver who spent the six hours complaining about Turkish drivers cutting his bulky semi off like cats whisking between his legs, and the lack of controls in the Turkish restaurant industry. I won't mention what else he associated with cats. Or at least that is what we thought he was communicating to us; it was all in Turkish and we only had Berna's little dictionary to flip through incessantly and tediously. But he was so proud of us everytime we found the meaning of the word he had repeated ten times. Wish we had retained a few more of them for future conversations.

In Izmir (hometown of Homer – of the Odyssey, not Simpsons), Berna and her kind mother were waiting for us, and we arrived just in time for Tonguc's experimental electronica gig. Izmir was a really cool town establshed by Alexander the Great, and it was awesome exploring it by taking the ferry across the bay, relaxing in the afternoon with tiny cups of Turkish tea, a nargile, and a backgammon board, poking around in the bazaars where the hollering salesmen flaunt their wares on their person: modelled bathrobes or socks hanging off their ears (the tag line also rhymed in Turkish:"Come and get it, it's synthetic!"). And we saw the bicycle couriers chasing each other briefly with a knife because someone jumped the queue. Another cool HC host, Belve, took us on a great tour of Izmir’s university student life, and we met up with a bunch of his friends at an old bar for a night of travel story swapping. We do alot of that lately. Berna took us out to the ancient city of Ephesus, the best preserved classical city on the Mediterranean, and the home of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the temple of Artemis. I hope that it doesn’t actually exist anymore and it is not just that we walked past it without noticing it. Then we wound our way up the mountain to find the legendary home of the Virgin Mary. It was interesting to see that both Christians and Muslims consider it to be a holy place.

Bergama was our next stop, the ancient city of Pergamum. It is now a small farming town, and the winding cobblestone roads that we hiked up to reach the Hellenistic era Acropolis Atlar to Zeus were crammed with mini-buses squeezing past horse and donkey drawn carriages. Another night in Canakkale near Gallipoli, and that brought us to İstanbul, where we attended our first hospitality club meeting. As you can imagine, it was just an excuse for thirty some people from different countries who were all in İstanbul at that moment to get together at a bar. Along with the Turkish were a Mexican, Lithuanian, Iranian, Spanish, and probably a few others that we didn’t have time to meet. We weren’t sure where to stay in İstanbul, but after the meeting we had our choice of places, and are now crashed at Tulay’s, who has given us her whole gorgeous flat for the week for just the two of us! And we haven’t had a moment of boredom since. Between all of us visitors and the HC guides, we have been whipped around the opulent palace and harem of the sultans: Topkapi Palace, the Grand Bazaar (which has changed alot since my mom was here in the 1970’s, I think, it now looks alot more like West Edmonton Mall than any sort of dodgy market), floated up the Bosphorus on a ferry, hopped between Asia and Europe, visited the Blue Mosque, and tomorrow we’ll see the Aya Sophia and try out a hamam: Turkish bath. Or at least Carli-Ann will.

So now as these last four months of travelling are coming to completion soon, we have reached two conclusions:

1) The world is mostly made up of good people.

2) North America greatly underutilizes pumpkins.

And our only real complaint is the air pollution which leaves our snotty tissues black. Not bad, really, for all that we have seen and learned. But we are looking forward to some fresh Rocky Mountain air!