Our first stop was Athens best known as the home of theater, the Olympics, the Aegean, and Chris Papadopoulos. Our first day in Athens was pretty slow, but remarkable. It was slow since we were all tired from hours of international travel, the time change, and the heat so we just went out to eat and walked around. It was a remarkable day because we were in Greece. Wes, another cadet on the trip, continued to remind us of this. I think he said it was crazy that we were in Athens at fifteen minute intervals for the entire first day until we embraced this fact to his satisfaction. He was right though you could see the Acropolis rising high above the city, old baths, and ruins that made it easy to pretend you were in Ancient Greece. The breeze coming from the Aegean made the heat pleasant which was a sensation quite different from the desert heat in Colorado.
After our initial self tour of Athens, we met with a few students from the American University in Greece. They showed us through a few roads that were walled with tons of little shops selling different Greek trinkets, fake sunglasses, food, and American military uniforms. Exhausted we stopped for Frappes which I can't really explain because I don't like coffee, but apparently it is something you should drink if you go to Greece. This gave us plenty of time to bs and get to know some of the Greek university students. We also got some Gyros which we decided to pronounce like Gyroscope otherwise we couldn't understand each other. After lounging on the cafe sofas we capped the night off with some Ouzo and a guided tour of Greek nightlife. Unfortunately our night was cut short when one of us, I won't say his name, decided to salsa dance with our guide from the university. I was in the bathroom when it happened, but apparently they basically knocked a table over with glasses on it. Our guide told us that it was normal to break glasses in Greece which was weird since she asked us to run out of the club. I'm not sure what would have happened if we stayed, but Wes cleared himself with Gina by blaming the guide for knocking over the glass. Fortunately for some of us, the next day didn't start until 1 pm. We met the University students and traveled through the wonderful Greek transportation system to AUG. After some amazing triangle sandwiches we toured the campus where Ryan and I became aware of the universities secret for attracting new students. Ryan Wes, and Alexis debated amazingly for their first time against some of the Greek university students. Ryan and I kicked some a$$, but I'm sure other versions of the debate might be construed differently. The next day Chris took us to do all things touristy. He helped us haggle with people so that we could get discounts. Below I've included some pictures of the first half of the day; the Parthenon, and its museum. It was surreal to walk where Socrates walked with his students sparking modern western philosophy. Chris and Sophia took us to an awesome beach to swim for the second half of the day. Chris said it was an eight minute trip so I figured I would just stand. I kept asking Chris but he kept telling me eight minutes so he'd convince me to continue standing since the trolley was so crowded. All together I stood on a very windy trolley for just over an hour. The beach was awesome once we got there; it was extremely blue and salty. Ryan is on the open water swim club at USAFA so he showed off how well he could swim in the open water in Greece. Basically he looked like a red blob swimming around. Later that night we found some awesome nightlife. That was mostly our trip in Athens I'll let the pictures speak for the rest.
The Acropolis at night
Greek place of protest
Sweet outdoor Cafe
Parthenon and Ryan's finger
The last thing we did in Athens was to say our good byes to Chris. I kept this in my mind during our very interesting trip to Varna Bulgaria. The interesting part really started once we arrived thirty minutes late to our connection in Sophia. They rushed us through the airport to an employee's gate entrance where we were greeted by an extremely thorough security checkpoint. I know the girls complained about it, but I remember a very long thorough body search. I kept reminding the man conducting the search that the metal detector didn't go off, but he spoke Bulgarian and continued his search. My guess is that he was just angry that he wasn't American like me, too bad. Once he finished he gave me an attaboy pat on the ass which was a bit concerning. I convinced myself that they just took their jobs too seriously until I met my neighbor on the plane. He greeted me by asking,"Why did you come to my f***ing miserable country. It is riddled with poverty, mafia, and corruption". A little embarrassed, I lied and said that I was just passing through on my way to Turkey, popp-off. My neighbor approved of this and told me that he needed to get out to blow up the bathroom. At that point I remember being pissed at Chris for allowing us to go to Bulgaria I also was hoping that the man sitting next to me got stuck in the bathroom so I didn't have to sit next to him.
Either my new friend was unsuccessful at blowing up the plane or it was confused in translation since he came back. Fortunately Alexis was sitting to my right so she heard the whole thing and was able to worry with me. After meeting this apparent terrorist the trip went off without a hitch.
The next morning we gave a speech in a hotel conference room about AA Civil Rights in the United States with Roma youth. It was extremely intimidating to give a speech to an ethnic group I've only read about. Everything we said needed to be translated into Bulgarian which felt a little impersonal. Besides giving speeches our part in Bulgaria was to work with the Roma as camp counselors. We helped answer questions, and encouraged the students to participate. The language barrier was difficult, but it was still super fun to work with these high school kids.
We were in Bulgaria for quite a while and it is taking me forever to finish this post so I'm going to sum up our trip into a few short anecdotes.
Many times in Europe Ryan and I would get the munchies at night. After the fashion show put on by the Roma Youth Ryan and I tried to go to the convenience shop next to our hotel. It was supposed to be 24/7 but we weren't allowed inside and had to ask the store clerk to get our food for us. Of course he only spoke Bulgarian which made it impossible to get food so we decided to go to the city to find a McDonald's or something. We hailed a Taxi to take us the 2 km's it takes to get to the city center. Ryan and I were pretty skeptical of this taxi driver so we made sure the rate was the typical .99 lev/ km, about .80 dollars/km. I sat in the front next to the sketchy driver and Ryan sat in the back seat which turned out to be a bad idea since I didn't pay much attention to the meter. Once we were around half way there, 1 kilometer, the taxi got a flat tire. The taxi driver pulled over in the ghetto of Bulgaria and demanded 30 lev. We told him we weren't going to pay him anything since he didn't take us to our destination. Then he showed us the receipt which said that we had gone 27 km which was 26 km more than we actually traveled. This is when I saw Ryan turning bright red; I had to hold him back from attacking the taxi driver. When we left the driver threatened to call the police. We figured that two Americans would stick out in Bulgaria so we haggled the driver down to 20 lev which was still outrageous. As Ryan and I walked towards the city in search of food we saw some casinos. Ryan is from Reno so he thought we could win our money back gambling. I assumed he knew how to beat the casino and which games we should play. This was a really bad idea since we lost more than the taxi driver ripped us off. Now we were in the middle of the city and Ryan spent all of his money. Since we had very little money we just decided to buy some delicious gelato and take a cab to our hotel.
Ryan and Karen are avid Quidditch players and huge Harry Potter fans. They each own one of those sky mall Harry Potter wands and have seen each Harry Potter at least three times. For those of you who aren't good at math that adds to nearly three full days of watching Harry Potter. They really wanted to see Harry Potter a few days before it came out in the U.S. so I decided to tag along so that they didn't feel nerdy watching a movie in Bulgaria. Besides a little turbulence between Ryan and Karen trying to find the right movie theater this excursion was great. However, Ryan and I made a terrible assumption on the way from the ticket booth to the HP theater. We assumed that no one spoke English like most of the people we had encountered in Bulgaria. In retrospect I should have assumed everyone in the theater spoke English since that was the language the movie was being played in. You'll have to ask me what I said because I'm not going to repeat it. But I'll tell you we were used to saying pretty much whatever we wanted, and the couple in front of us nearly fell to their knees laughing as soon as I finished speaking. Ryan and I looked at each other suspiciously and assumed they didn't speak English. I asked Ryan if we were in the Harry Potter theater, and the couple answered in perfect English. We blushed and Karen looked confused.
The very blunt man on the airplane that welcomed us to his wonderful country warned me of the mafia in Bulgaria. He said that Bulgaria doesn't have a mafia, but is run by the mafia. I didn't really notice their presence until the last day of our trip on our departure to Istanbul. When we arrived at the train station, I noticed a mob of bruisers reading the paper and staring us down at the entrance to the Varna train station. Once we passed them the women working in the station completely ignored us. They sent us in a very circular path until I used my Droid to translate so we could get a domestic ticket from Varna to Stara Zagora where we would take the Orient Express to Istanbul. The women at the desk wouldn't look at us she just continued doing other work. Finally we got the right tickets, but it took us two days and we weren't certain if we could make it on to the train. Below are the fruits of our labor at the train station minus the 100 lev Ryan won at the casino the train stopped at.
Black Sea
Sleeper Car
One of the other things that Wes noticed on this trip was that our group did not travel well together. He was completely right. It wasn't that we didn't get along, but we were traveling across Europe and Asia with all of our stuff using sub par transportation. The Orient Express sleeper cars were no exception. After being woken up for various border crossings, surprise ticket checks, and a wake up call we arrived in Istanbul still very tired and agitated. There were very clear moments when each of us separated from the group to relax a bit. Istanbul was a culture shock. I had never seen a minaret or heard a call to prayer before coming to Turkey. We checked out the enormous Hagia Sophia which has an interesting history. It used to be the church Saint Sophia where Byzantium emperors were coronated. Once the Ottomans took over it was converted into a mosque. Unlike the Hagia Sophia the Blue Mosque, next to the Hagia Sophia, is more than just a tourist attraction. Everyone that enters the mosque has to cover their shoes and most of their bodies. Ryan had to wear a skirt since he was wearing booty shorts that didn't cover his knees. Worse than Ryan, the women passing out cloth nearly had a heart attack when she saw Karen; they weren't going to have enough cloth to cover Karen. Doc like a pro already had her own cloth on ready to go. After touring the mosques we visited the cistern which is a giant water storage under the ground. It was built by the Roman Empire. The Grand Bazaar was touristy but awesome the first few times. Even thought it was built in 1461 it is the largest indoor market in the world. It is filled with awesome souvenirs. The big things to buy there were Water Pipes, rugs, and lamps, but they had pretty much anything you would want to buy. The European side of Istanbul was definitely more of a touristy area because it has the remnants of the Ottoman empire and Constantinople so we did all of the touristy stuff the first few days.
We spent all of our time on the Asian side at the debate camp. We stayed at a five star hotel which was awesome for night time activities that included but weren't limited to Turkish Ice Cream, Baklava, Cheese, Chocolates, Water Pipe, and some friends. Late at night we frequented the 24/7 Pide restaurant up the street which was nice since we weren't owned by a taxi driver. When we weren't lounging in the beautiful Turkish garden of the hotel we were visiting Baghdad street which is a Turkish watered down version of NYC's Fifth Avenue; Louis Vutton, Tiffanies, BK, Ahkmed's rugs, Starbucks etc.
The debate side of things were awesome. During the first session we judged the KPDC which is a competition amongst three person debate teams from around the world. Almost a high school version of World Universities Debate Championship. After judging at different Doga schools around Asia Turkey, the training portion of the Youth Forum began. The debaters were separated into random rooms and on random teams composed of multiple nationalities. In the labs the students worked on building both positive and negative cases for the tournament at the end of the forum. I lucked out in my lab, I worked for two awesome trainers Adriaan, and Norah. Adriaan works in politics in the Netherlands. The only catch with Adriaan is that he will spontaneously begin dancing, like the dancing cadet for those from the academy. Norah is also super cool she is a Palestinian living within Israel. She works for an NGO that encourages debating among youth from her country. My favorite part of the Youth Forum was to watch the debaters transform from high school debaters in the first tournament to debaters ready for university debate after the labs. I hope I am able to go to the Youth Forum again next year in Mexico.
During our last day in Istanbul, and the last day of our trip we went out with a bang. We went on an excursion on the European side in Taxiam square. It was a more modern version of the grand bazaar except it was outside and much more open. We spent most of the day there shopping for souveniors, it is also the place I fell in love with fried mussels. My favorite meal was four minutes long we sat outside, the waiter grabbed us two Pepsi's and served us 4 skewers of fried mussels in the time it took to fry them. They were delicious even rivaling Chesapeake Bay fried Oysters. As we were about to leave we noticed that the local Turkish team Galastaray was playing a game that night. Once we realized they were playing Liverpool it was mandatory that we go. We went back at around eight that night to catch the game. Once we got there the Taxi driver pointed to a giant dirt hill that we had to climb down to get to the stadium. It was much like crossing the border into Mexico. We had to climb gates, run so that we weren't run over, and dodge bullets from hua citizens in Arizona. Except for the last part it really was a giant mob. When we arrived at the ticket counter they only took cash so we had to come up with 137 TL a piece in a mob of people. Despite attempts by pick pocketers we were able to purchase the tickets and be herded into the stadium. Our seats were amazing we were in the fourth row on the sidelines which made it easy to watch Liverpool have their butts handed to them in a 3-0 match. The real excitement ensued after the game ended. We were herded to a gate which had sharp excess metal at the top. Ryan and I were able to make it over, but others were not. Let us take a moment of silence to remember the fallen soccer fans. On the other side of the fence we followed a trail of blood from someone that had obviously been severely cut by the fence. We followed an endless staircase to a parking garage that looked like it was an extension of hell itself. It looked like it was made of dirt which made it hard to breath, and there was also the threat that it could collapse. I asked Adriaan about this, and he informed me that this is how a futbol game should be, hardcore. I think I agree except once we finally escaped the hell garage we managed to flag down a taxi driver that must be from Bulgaria. Besides driving around the stadium three times, the taxi driver was speaking into a voice recorder in Turkish. While in the cab, I assumed he was saying that he has the Americans, and he was transporting us to the organ donation center. Fortunately 60TL later we made it back in time to pack for our journey home and to say goodbye to all of the friends we met during the youth forum.
Cool Cafe in Turkey
The "Fence"
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