long overdue

... so i guess since i've been back in the states for over a month, i should finish stories about the summer - it'll happen; you know, good things come to those who wait and all that nonsense. school is keeping me inordinately busy, but when i find some time, you guys have egypt and morocco to look forward to!

at least there's mr. baba's

VAR01, Highlights of Varna was possibly the biggest joke of a tour I have ever lived through. A few of us kept on looking at each other throughout the morning and just said “if these are the highlights of this city, it’s going to be a long four days.” Their national archeological museum consisted of gold bracelets, a recreated gravesite, and pieces of Byzantine art that made St. John look like he had leprosy. After Greece and Italy, Bulgaria offered nothing to us in the form of cultural enrichment. So we drank a lot… and tanned a lot… sometimes we tanned while drinking, just to switch things up. If we were really into it, we drank on a pirate ship. The next four days included Club Arrogance, Hotel Plesko, swimming in the Black Sea, a lot of sand, and, overall, just a shitshow of events. The description of what we all did during the 96 hours we were in Varna would take longer than its worth, so let’s just put is this way: this summer was the first year Semester at Sea has included Bulgaria in its summer itinerary; we left Varna, and two days later, Varna was taken off of the list of destinations for summer 2010; this is the kind of legacy we leave.

istanbul... there are no words to describe

I’m glad that I can just write these posts chronologically, because otherwise, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with Turkey. First off, we spent five days there, which we’ve only done for Italy thus far, but secondly, it’s the first country that comes with a true culture shock. At the pre-port meeting for Turkey, the deans warned us about the dangers of the country, most of which involves terrorism and bombings of touristy regions around Istanbul. But, short of just camping out on the ship for 5 days, there's really no way to avoid the risks of this area (it's heavily populated by Muslims, but since it's a crossroads, lots of other minority groups co-mingle; hence the tension)… so, instead of heeding their advice, we roamed all around the city the first day, and it's not really that bad; I'd say the biggest threat(s) at the moment are the crazily sleazy Turkish men who are unabashedly forward to every girl getting off of the ship.

The Grand Bazaar is literally just what it sounds like: sensory overload to the max, huge crowds, and just overall CRAZINESS. There are 4400+ shops in this labyrinth, and every guy working there just looks at Americans as big bulls eyes, and if you’re a girl, it’s for more than one reason. In our group, Greg and Kaene fended off the dirty ones, but they left for a hookah bar, and shit went downhill quickly. Infamous quotes and actions from the bazaar:

- “can I touch you?"

- my friend getting forcibly made out with by a Turkish midget

- vendors geeting us with: “excuse me, thank you”… who taught these people English?

- every single part Asian person calling me “my sister"

- "my turn to help you spend your money"

- "your teeth are fake, yes? your second set?"

- Roby pissing off a Turkish man and being told to “get the fuck out” of his store

Most girls on the ship had some ridiculous stories from this place, but my personal scarring experience didn’t occur until the train ride back from Beyazit to Karakoy (our ship). I guess I should have prefaced this entire post with the fact that, even though it sounds like I hated Turkey, I didn’t; the nature of our first day there was just so hectic and overwhelming, it just sounds like we had a bad experience. Really, the only terrible time I had is the story I’m about to tell.

So, we’re on the train that has no A/C, elbow to elbow with people who don’t believe in deodorant, my friends are in front of me and strangers are behind. Mistake #1: never turn your back towards a group of people you don’t know. Anyway, there’s about 5 stops between the bazaar and the port, and as the stops go on, I become VERY aware of the guy behind me getting progressively closer. Not only is he starting to give me the heeby-jeebies, but he’s also holding a bag and doing something strange with his hands behind said bag; I just ignore it for a while, as there are only 2 stops left. Mistake #2: if something ever feels awry, you really should never ‘just ignore it,’ you need to get the fuck out of there. The train stops for the last time, and all of the sudden I feel something bump against me… I whip around, and, I shit you not, I see this man with his hands IN his pants JACKING OFF ON MY ASS. Just take a moment to wrap your head around this scenario, and then think of what reaction you could possibly come up with. Being in total shock, I just did the first thing that came to my head, which was move away QUICKLY and yell “WHAT THE FUCK?!” grabbing the attention of every single person in there. My second reaction was to punch the guy in the mouth, but we were in Turkey, a country where women are treated like second-class citizens… I’m not sure how kindly they would have taken to an Asian girl from America decking a Turkish man in the face on the train, and, while getting molested on the public transportation system is awful, I’d wager to say being thrown into a Turkish jail is much worse. Meanwhile, the 3 other semester at sea kids are kind of confused because they weren’t sure what just happened, they just knew we needed to get the hell off of the train at this point. Of course, his stop is the same as ours, and as we mass exodus off of that godforsaken coach I can’t stop myself from elbowing him in his chest as he literally flees from sight. The last thing I remember yelling at him was “YOU’RE A TERRIBLE PERSON AND I HOPE YOUR DAUGHTER IS A WHORE,” and moved on with my life. Thus began my love-hate relationship with this crazy country.

Anyway, I was kind of over the idea of going out to bars and clubs that night because I was slightly traumatized still, but luckily, quite a few other people felt the same way, so we went to see the new Harry Potter movie instead - we all just hoped to God that it was in English and not Turkish. So, we walk into the theater, it’s down a dark alley, by the way (go figure), and are all kind of confused because it looks exactly like a theater that a play would be performed in, gold curtain, stage, and all; and nothing like a movie theater. But, everything worked out in the end, the curtain went up and a screen appeared from behind, and I hear the glorious sound of the Queen’s English coming out of the speakers, the first thing that went right all day. Overall, it wasn’t a bad way to end my first night in Turkey.

The second day was a great deal better than the first. I learned from my mistakes and travelled with more guys (and always had my back against a wall while standing in moving locomotives). We went to Sultanahmet, the area where most of the famous historical sights are located within Istanbul, ie. the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and Basilica Cistern. The one that I was most excited to go see was, without a doubt, the Hagia Sophia, but out of the three, it was the one that disappointed me the most. It was an unreal experience to get to go see something that I’ve waited, literally, years for, but the Blue Mosque is SO much more impressive (but in the Hagia Sophia’s defense, the mosque was built specifically to trump it, and it’s amazing, still, in its own right). My favorite event of the day was standing between the two monumental buildings while the Call of Prayer was being played; it’s hard to explain, but the atmosphere, coupled with the eeriness of the situation sends chills down your spine. After visiting these two places, we went to the Basilica Cistern, which is nothing short of an amazing feat of engineering. Experiencing the Cistern is unlike any other thing I have done thus far. Usually, when something is a tourist attraction, it generally has a large, ostentatious sign (or it, itself, is a large, ostentatious building) to tell you where are. Without the line coming out of the building, I wouldn’t have even know this thing was there; the nondescript entryway leading to this complicated maze of underground columns and vaulted ceilings 50 feet underground is really the craziest dichotomy I think I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to believe that this place used to be used to store water, and it’s even harder to believe that it was built over 1500 years ago. It doesn’t seem like it, but doing the tourist thing takes a lot out of you, so by mid-afternoon, we were beat, and decided to head back to the port area to find a place to eat. Later that night, we came back to the same place and smoked hookah (in the US, I think this is something that people do to be badass, but in some of these countries, it’s literally just an integral part of the culture, and locals do it as a socializing/time passing activity, which I find to be way more appealing) and ate some more, because the food was good, the internet was free, and the restaurant was on the bridge that overlooked the Bosporus: what more could you ask for? Obviously, nothing, because a group of a dozen of us, or so, stayed there for hours (this is where some of you guys received your facebook videos from)… such an amazing day.

I didn’t expect it at the time, but my third day partly consisted of a trip to Asia, which is wicked, because when’s the next time I’m going to be able to say “oh, you know, I think I’ll just pop into Asia for a couple of hours, see you later!” It started pretty late, because Colby, Roby, Tara, and I didn’t have to meet one of our other friends, Meghan, until 10 (her cousin, Sarah, has been living in Turkey for the last year or so and offered to show us around) by the water. We took a ride down the Bosporus River and jumped off onto a little fishermen’s island, where we hiked to the top of it and stumbled across one of the greatest views I’ve seen since Dubrovnik. On top of the ruins of an old fort/castle, we saw the mouth of the Black Sea on one side, and Turkey on the other. For lunch, we had an authentic Turkish meal, and, as a bonus, met some Spanish women from Madrid that were on vacation. And because going to Asia for the day wasn’t enough, our group decided to go try out a hamam… a.k.a turksih bath… a.k.a. completely naked in front of strangers (and friends, which wasn’t THAT awkward…) while someone beats you for a while. Overall, it was an experience that was worth experience, but maybe only once, haha. That night, some of us went to the futbol game, and some of us went to see the Sufi Dervish; I did the latter, but, from what I hear, I should have gone to see that game.

Our last, real, full day in Turkey is easily the most amusing memory I have of the country; the whole day just seems hilarious in retrospect. We went to Topkaki Palace because it’s on the list of places to see in Istanbul, but 20 yards away from the building, a Turkish man speed walks past Colby, Roby, and me and just says in a hushed tone “palaceisclosedtoday!” and rushes away. So now, we’re thinking maybe this guy is about to blow this place up and is trying to tell us to get the fuck out of there; so we do. We make our way, instead, to the spice bazaar, where, not only do they sell spices, they apparently also sell pet ducklings, peacocks, puppies, and “Turkish Viagra” (“make eight times one night!”). Here, Roby was told to “fuck off” by a Turk (I don’t think they appreciated his bargaining methods), Colby was told that he looked like a local (blatant lie), and I was approached with “excuse me, where are you from, you are very brown.” Oh, and we were accosted by a self-proclaimed pedophile; lesson learned, do not return to the spice bazaar. We decided to end our stay in Istanbul with a bang, and so we went to Taksim Square that night and bar hopped well into the morning. It was nice to have a long break from the constant partying, but I’m not going to lie, the clubs in Turkey aren’t too shabby.

olympic games? we're def in greece

For the most part, days at sea aren’t really memorable enough to blog about, but Sea Olympics deserves to be mentioned, at least a little, especially because our sea DOMINATED the games. Let me back track and explain what that means/why that’s even remotely important or interesting (though it’s going to seem way more exciting to me regardless). Our ship has four-ish floors of student cabins (2, 3, 4, and 5), and each is separated into 2 seas (ie. Aegean Sea, Black Sea, etc.) via port or starboard cabin. I was one of three captains of our hall, the Yellow Sea, and the three of us decided that there was no way we were going to make losing an option, because the prize for the winning the games is disembarking first in Norfolk, which is, apparently, a hellish process and painstakingly long. Usually, the ship docks at 8am and the last people don’t get to leave until at least four hours later… so, long story short, I’m off this ship first – digression aside, on to Greece!


Greece is like Italy’s overshadowed younger brother: not quite as good, but a very close second (although, the Greeks are definitely the nicest people on the face of this planet). Piraeus is a strange port, in that, unless you get a taxi, you will be walking a good 2 miles to get to ANYWHERE you actually want to be... and then it’s another 15 minute metro ride to Athens or a couple (thousand) hour ferry ride to an island. Obviously, the first thing I went to see was the Acropolis, but because everyone else did their tours through Semester at Sea, it was just me and Colby wandering around Athens on our own, with our collective Greek vocabulary amounting to “yassis” and nothing else… you can already tell that this is a good idea. The area surrounding the Acropolis has crazy little shops, including my favorite store yet: Brettos, home of the best wine tasting I’ve ever experienced (I ran into a couple form Fairfax, Virginia in here; small world).
So, while we were in Rome, some of our group went to a bar crawl, so we decided that it’d be a good idea to do it again in Athens… such a bad idea. If Greece is Italy’s younger brother, Athens’ nightlife is like Rome’s gothic second cousin: weird as fuck. One restaurant, 3 bars, and a club later (one free shot at every location didn’t redeem the fact that our group of 15 were ALONE in the club), 4 of us just said ‘fuck it’ at 3am and grabbed a taxi home; we all thought this was the end of the night… our cab driver didn’t get the memo. Here’s a pearl of wisdom that I wish someone had told me before this night happened: it is generally never a good thing when the person in control of where you’re headed to is 1) a stranger and 2) trying to convince you to “come, it’s ok, I show you good time.” I’m not sure how this happens, but the next thing I know, we’re cruising down a side road, slow down next to two “women” standing on the street, and our driver exclaims, “see, that is a man woman.” The only thought running through my mind at the moment, as it should be, was “WHAT THE FUCK??”… and then we stop in front of Anatolia, a strip club, and my mind apparently explodes, because I just start hysterically laughing at the situation. The cab driver shoos us out of the car and says he’ll give us ten minutes; all I’m thinking is “ten minutes to do what??” I guess I can check “go to a shady strip club and watch my friend swing on the pole in Greece” off of my to-do list. We eventually made it home, if that’s any consolation whatsoever.


The next morning, I woke up hating life a little, but I had to make it on time for the bus that left at 8am, and headed to the Oracle of Delphi in central Greece, which was WAY cool. The ruins were not even remotely close to what I thought the Oracle was: it’s huge. We got back to Piraeus around 7pm that night (but Tara and I told Colby that we were going to meet him for dinner at 6, so we hauled ass back to Athens), passing by both the old and new Olympic stadiums along the way, and, because I had no intention of winding up in another strip club, we went shopping around the streets instead. I don’t think I’m really going to be able to explain the eclectic nature of the streets of Athens at night, with all the bootleg vendors and gypsies swarming around, but the ridiculousness of it all can be summed up in one sentence: I bought an old Greek man’s passport. For 5 euro… he told me that he usually sells it for 25 euro, but he was making an exception (which leads me to the question of how many passports is he selling on a regular basis?).

Coby, Hilary, Tara, and I spent the next to days on the island of Hydra (it was that or Mykonos), land of no cars and too many donkeys. I’m not sure how, but everything the first day seemed to serendipitously work out for us on the first day: we made it onto the ferry literally a minute before it departed; when we got there, Colby and I decided to go down a small alley that led us to a guest house, where we were able to book a villa for dirt cheap (it had a terrace that overlooked the harbor, a marble bathroom, a bed with a canopy, a loft, and a jacuzzi)… and then the other shoe dropped: Colby got deathly ill so I bought him sketchy Greek medicine (Coldex??), Hilary’s card got eaten by the ATM and later threw up (unrelated occurrences), Tara sat on a sea urchin and may have had the whopping cough, and I had so many mosquito bites on my leg, we thought I contracted malaria. Beyond those things, however, Hydra is definitely on my list of top three favorite places ever. I got to go cliff diving again, had one of the best gyros in Greece, met an old Irish guy with only one real tooth (he called it a ‘clitoral stimulator’; that ended our conversation quickly), and swam into/explored a cave. I’m happy I didn’t go to Mykonos, because the kids that did all came back to port the next day late, half dead, and possibly drugged. Way to be, Greece.

"dubrovnik is the new ibiza"

Okay, I’m not going to lie, I didn’t really have the best impression of Croatia before we got there… Aside from Leigh Anne’s mom telling me that Dubrovnik was beautiful, everyone else I talked to basically told me I was going to die there. However, I kind of really loved Croatia by the end of it, just in a very different way than I’ve loved Italy and Spain – they’re not really comparable countries anyway, and it was nice to have a relaxing port after those two intense ones anyway.

The first day, I had to buy a new camera in the morning because I broke mine in Venice… it cost 1,670 Kuna to buy a new camera and memory card in Croatia. I almost had a conniption when I saw the figure on the receipt, but then I realized that amounted to around $330 US dollars and felt better about my life (fucking hate kuna though, by the way; worst currency ever). I took a tour around the Old City through SAS and got to see the churches, museums, and city walls that surround the area. I’m not going to go into detail about the history, but it’s definitely wickedly interesting, and ALL the citizens in Croatia are freakishly proud of their independence (just don’t ask about the civil war). Apparently, Dubrovnik is the birthplace of cliffjumping as a sport, and we just so happen to be there the week of the Red Bull Challenge, where these (psycho) guys jump off a wooden plank 20-40 meters above the sea while doing crazy tricks. I guess I got caught up in the excitement, because I (along with Meghan and Tara) figure it can’t be that hard and spontaneously decide that we’re going cliff diving too. We follow this sign that says “this way to the most beautiful view of Croatia,” climb into a hobbit hole, and come out the other side into a bar. The rock we picked was named “Leo” because it’s shaped like a lion’s face; we had to climb UP his face (because higher is definitely a good idea; sometimes we’re stupid) to get to the edge… but if you looked down, you could still see rocks, so you kind of have to leap outwards and just say a little prayer. I got talked into going twice, but it was legit SO FUN. At dinner an hour later, we were still kind of on an adrenaline high. We asked the waiters which clubs were the best ones to go to for people our age, so they told us, and then said they'd meet us there... and then gave us free shots of something that looked suspiciously like vodka, except it tasted more like black licorice fire. Later, when I went to the restroom, I ran into ALL of the waiters in the back room, who proceed to pour me along with each one of them a CUP of this shit and tell me to drink with them. I finally find out that the crap they’re giving us is grappa (which I am positive has to be Croatian for gasoline; I know, smart, taking anonymous drinks, right?)… basically it's like moonshine but much worse tasting. That night is actually not that noteworthy, we just ended up at a club called EastWest, but so did the rest of our shipboard community, so meh.

Day 2 consisted of a trip to Mostar, Bosnia. I’m happy I went, but seriously, there was NOTHING to see there, and the whole trip can be summed up as a string of silly mishappenings, but still, I LOVE MOSTAR.

Meghan and I tried to sneak into Montenegro the next day, but it was nothing short of an epic fail, so we went to the island of Lopud with a group of other kids instead. This was probably the most relaxing day of the trip. That night, the three of us serendipitously ran into the entire boy’s waterpolo team from Stanford who was in Croatia, playing their club team. It definitely became a night that will live in infamy, but not for the obvious reasons. Let’s just say, Norwegians are compelling.