June was mostly filled with GRE studying, hanging out with my dad who was visiting, life crises about what to do with myself, and saying goodbyes to friends who were headed back to their respective homes. Then July happened. And now July's almost over. And I'm not really sure how that happened... But I know it was a good month.
I took the GRE and had lots of support from wonderful friends (THANKS FRIENDS!) The next day I celebrated at a music festival a bit outside of Vienna. The headliners were Mumford and Sons and The Kooks. The former were amazing, the latter not so much. We had a stellar time, though, despite the rain and the man with a very large, pokey, and violent elbow who was next to us for most of the concert.
Last night I saw another great performance - Fatima Spar and the Freedom Fries. I had seen them in early June, also at a free event, and loved them. This time they played in a much less intimate setting - on a large outdoor stage set up right outside of Karlskirche. Again, they were fabulous. They even provoked some Austrians to dance, a rare occurrence. :-) Just kidding, kind of.
Between the two great concerts, though, I went to Istanbul, a city I've always had on my list of must-visit places. I went with a hodge podge of near-strangers, to be frank. It turned out to be an amazing trip, especially considering that it could have gone horrendously wrong. I won't go into details about the round about way I knew my fellow travelers: three Germans (two of whom are originally from Turkey) and Jeannine. But at the end of our journey, I can look back and say we made a great travel group. We saw all the obvious highlights and tourist attractions in the city as well as meeting some cool folks and laughing a lot.
By the way, the ice cream in Turkey is chewy. CHEWY!
Other notes from the trip: If you ever go to Istanbul, my two top recommendations would be to eat kaymak and to go to a Hammam. Not at the same time, though. That would probably turn out to be disastrous. Kaymak is basically clotted cream served with honey and bread. We went to a little family-run place for this, where photos of their buffalo that produced the milk for the kaymak adorned the walls. The Hammam provided for a night of entertainment. We went, expecting there to be a separate male and female section, as there often is. Not in our case. So the five of us marched in to the steamy, tiled room, clutching our towels a bit more tightly than we would have otherwise. We proceeded to dump buckets of water on ourselves, as you do. After sitting in the stifling room for a while, the scrubbing began. One at a time, a man scrubbed us free of any dead or even near-dead skin that might have been clinging onto our bodies. Then, he massaged us. This was anything but the candlelit, relaxing massage with lavender scented oil that you might think of. Celil was the first to go. Imagine this: a grown man, covered in bubbles, screaming and twisting in pain as a man loosens every knot in his body. Although we laughed, every single one of us did the same as our turn came. Afterwards, though, we all felt surprisingly relaxed and at ease..
Another night, we were taken out by a guy who turned out to be the owner of the hostel one evening for a night of binge dancing. This will forevermore be marked as a night to remember, as it was the night Daniel had the epiphany that he could move his upper body separately from his lower body when dancing. Dance on, my friend! On a similar note, the trip was the absolute experiment in gender role reversal. The boys had more luggage, took longer getting ready, chatted in the middle of the night, never seemed to get hungry, and requested to keep one day for shopping. I've never experience anything like it, but it was brilliant. At the very least, it provided a lot of laughs.
Here are photos...
Dinner our first night - fish sandwiches from the man with the nice smile.
Biking on Prince's Island.
We didn't make it to the swimming hole that we had set out for, so we splashed each other with water instead.
When this photo was taken, Daniel was sitting in gum. Jeannine and I spent about 20 minutes scrubbing his bottom afterwards to get it out - we succeeded! Partially thanks to the kids who ran up laughing to sell us wet wipes.
Daniel bought us flowers for our hair as a thank you. (This photo was taken in Vienna. Though we attempted to find a park as green as this one in Istanbul, we did not succeed... I'm sure they exist though, they're just off the beaten path, I presume.)
Inside Topkapi Palace.
Kaymak
Hagia Sophia. By the way, I'd estimate there are about as many Turkish flags hanging around Istanbul as there are American flags in the South. A lot.
Look at our glowing, baby-like skin after the Hammam!
New Mosque
Cistern
The two times I walked down this sidewalk, I saw vendors walking down the middle of the street, yelling at cars that honked at them.
Traditional Sufi dance; based on interesting ideas and customs, and beautiful to watch for a few minutes, but an hour of spinning was a bit too much for all of us.
On the Asian side; the last ferry back was probably leaving as this photo was taken.
Classic
Celil and Mehmets friend was kind enough to drive us back after missing our ferry. The taxi drivers were like hyenas that hadn't eaten in weeks when we arrived at the ferry station to find the last one had already left. One last stretch of sitting four to the backseat, and successfully hiding myself from the second police check that evening, and we were home.
So yes, we returned to Vienna, exhausted and hungry. Oti arrived the same night we did, so I hung around the airport to wait for her arrival. Unfortunately, Jeannine and I both got sick the next day, so Oti's trip was less energetic than expected, but we still managed to do a good bit and catch up at the very least. Since then, Jeannine has flown to Ireland and will be off to Canada tomorrow, leaving me feeling as though I've gone through a bad breakup. Perhaps even worse, since I can't even complain about her. ;-) Instead I'm just left with happy memories and unsure of when I'll see her again. It's wonderful thing, though, to be able to travel and meet such fabulous people and find amazing friends like her. It'd be nice to be able to cut back a bit on all of the goodbyes at some point though. Jeannine, I hope you've made it to Canada safely, and we miss you here in Vienna!!
Onward. To find a job and a place to live in San Francisco. Yep, I'm coming back. Probably. Want to give me a job?
