Chapter 5 is moving

I'm moving my blog over to Wordpress: www.chapter5.wordpress.com Please update your links.

United Nations of Armenia

There were representatives from Australia, Israel, Italy, Germany, Iran, Armenia & Canada. And one girl whose blonde hair earned her the nickname of "sweden". This was our UN party of misfits out on the town in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. So many things happen on my travels that I neglect to report. Often I sit somewhere -- among a group of interesting strangers, in the middle of a bustling cafe or on a ledge looking over beautiful views -- and I think that the moment is "blogworthy". But inevitably I cannot record all such moments. Friday October 13 was notable for three reasons: (1) one month before I leave europe; (2) it was Friday October 13 when the Knights Templar were formally disbanded under influence of King Philip IV of France; and (3) it became noticably cold here. The next day I caught a mini-bus down to the Armenian capital of Yerevan and it was the following Sunday October 15 when I met up with the Armenian UN and went out to watch a local band and then move on to drunken dancing at a bar. Great night. While in Yerevan I went to the history museum, walked around the main monuments & explored their Sunday markets. Yerevan is cleaner and more classicaly beautiful than Tblisi and has more cafes and clubs; but perhaps less rustic vibe and spontaneous friendliness. Still, the locals were very generous. When I arrived late at night with no local money a taxi driver took me to the city for free. The next day when I had the wrong change, a side-of-the-road shop gave me a pastry for free. Later, when I asked the price of one peach the seller insisted that I just take it! On Monday October 16 I caught the overnight train back up to Tblisi, Georgia and have since spent my time walking the town, reading, drinking & blogging. Today I explored the old town and spent a few hours reading & drinking US$0.40 pints in a park. Tomorrow is my last day in the Caucusas before I fly to Riga, Latvia and the Baltics.

Back in the USSR

"You don't know how lucky you are boys... Back in the USSR" Georgia is a small but proud corner of the old USSR, famous for wine, war and as the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. And it's capital, Tblisi, is supposedly the most impressive of the caucasus (including Georgia, Armenia & Azerbaijan) cities. Despite the post title, this is my first taste of the former USSR & I like it. On Tuesday 10 October I took a day tour out to Sumela Monastery, amazingly built 1500 years ago into the side of a huge cliff, and then walkd around Trabzon town. And then to Georgia. The bus was painful, but I was in a good mood and it made me feel like I was getting off-the-beaten-track to be crammed in with loud smoking Georgians sitting on luggage thrown everywhere with the struggling bus being driven with wreckless abandon. We watched the sunrise at the Geogian border after waiting over four hours and after about 20 hours we eventually arrived in Tblisi. Luckily there was another backpacker on the trip and she had a friend picking her up from the bus stop. That friend kindly dropped me off at an excellent psuedo-hostel full of Israelis, we I am still staying. That night (Wednesday 11 October) I followed a few others along to watch Georgia play Italy in a European Cup qualifier. The Georgians did well to have the score at 1-1 at half time, but when they had a man sent off (bloody cheating Italians) they eventually went down 3-1. After the game I walked around the city in the rain lost for an hour before amazingly finding the hostel. Yesterday (12 October) was a lazy rainy day. I slept, surfed the net, read, tried the local food and walked around the city. Today is following the same themes. I am comfortable here -- things are cheap, the city has charm and the people are friendly.

Ramadan

Ah, the serenity. On the top of a mini-mountain in the middle of a desert valley surrounded by dramatic cliffs, ancient man-made caves and autumn leaves fighting the wind to stay with their tree. And no people. A good moment. After another fun-filled overnight bus I am now in the north-east Turkish city of Trabzon. This town held out against the Seljeck turks and the Mongols and was one of the last places to fall to the Ottomans, and given their proximity to Russia, lack of tourists and the higher level of religious conservativism, this town feels quite different to the rest of Turkish experience. I decided to go along with the locals and joined in the ramadan fasting. The locals get up just before sunrise to have an early meal, but unfortunately I was on a bus so I missed that. I spent the daylight ours without any food or drink. At about 2:30pm I was getting pretty hungry, thirsty and tired -- so I escaped the real world by hiding in an internet cafe until the mosque signalled official sunset and dinner time. Yay. Speaking of the internet, I have been arranging the merger of the Australian Libertarian Society blog with the Thoughts on Freedom blog to create a combined ALS blog: thoughts on freedom. I have also updated my money matters blog.

Cappadocia

I'm in the middle of Turkey now, in the town of Goreme in the heart of the Cappadocia region. This place is famous for the amazing natural landscape with the semi-desert opening up into valleys of strange rock formations and pillars of sandstone. Over a thousand years ago the Byzantines made caves in the pillars, building impressive cave-churches and complete underground cities to hide from the arabs. I arrived on Friday 6 October and checked into a funky little cave-hostel for only YTL5 (A$4) with a hitch-hiking Czech doctor and an Aussie linguist who plans on becoming a monk and a few others. The town is surrounded by amazing views of multi-coloured desert cliffs and has caves and pillars all around. The hostel has a roof balcony which gets the sun and offers great views of the sunset and moon rise. After exploring the town I spent that night on the roof watching the full moon and thinking about HyunHee. Yesterday was my mum's birthday -- Happy Birthday Mum! I celebrated by going down to the famous Goreme open air museum that has dozens of cave-churches with frescoes on the walls. Today I will spend another relaxing day in town, maybe go for a walk though a valley and then catch another night bus to the Black Sea city of Trazbon.

South Turkey

After exploring Gallipoli I went back to Canakkale and had some coffee and sheesha with a quality Scottish guy called Brendan who had been working in Kabul, Afghanistan for the last 2.5 years. He gave me lots of ideas about going to Kabul. But today I met a couple of girls who told me that it is easy to pick up work on the French Riviera each summer working on boats, getting paid too much and not doing much. And then you can get paid to sail to the Caribbean! Not to mention my previous ideas for 2007 -- working in Korea, standing for the Senate in Australia, learning to fly and sail, driving trucks in the outback, doing my PhD, and of course travelling. Too many options. I don't know how people find time for a proper job. I took the overnight bus from Canakkale down to the coastal resort of Bodrum. It was a pretty town of white cube houses, a beautiful bay, a castle in the middle of town and worthy sunsets over the water and mountains. But it was also half-full of fat English tourists and was a tourist trap, but without enough people to make a good nightlife. After one last day soaking up the sun by the sea, I gave up on ideas of visiting the Greek island of Kos or going scuba diving and instead took a bus yesterday (Wednesday 4 October) inland to Pamukkale. Today I explored the famous calcium pools (which are unfortunately only half full these days) and Roman ruins. I wandered around, chatted with some locals and stood under waterfalls of "super-healthy" calcium water before heading back to town to catch a bus further inland to Cappadocia.

Gallipoli

Around 150,000 people died at Gallipoli. Most were Turks or English, but over 10,000 were ANZACS. Walking around the many gravestones at the many mass graves I noticed that most of the dead were younger than me. Some of the gravestones had brief comments. The saddest of these, I thought, was "he died so that others might live" -- because this was simply not true. The thousands who sacrificed their lives at Gallipoli died for nothing. I got into Canakkale late on 1 October and spent the evening looking around the town and checking out a good local four-piece funk-rock band. The next day I went on a tour to the main sites of Gallipoli, including the landing beaches, the trenches only 8 metres apart, the mass graves, museums and various battle sights. We heard some amazing stories such as the time when an unarmed Turk walked up to the Allied trenches with a white flag carrying an injuried allied soilder, and then walked safely back to his trench. And the continued ANZAC-Turk trade as soilders through tobacco, papers, food and milk between the trenches (not to mention grenades). We heard about (and saw in the Gallipoli movie that evening) the stupid charge of the Australian light horse brigade into Turk machine gun fire and certain death. And the stand made by a single Turk regiment when Ataturk instructed his men not just to attack, but to die. They did so, and bought enough time for re-enforcements to come. The pointlessness of their fighting does nothing to detract from the bravery of those who fought. The reason for the Gallipoli campaign was to knock the Turks out of the war and therefore get access to the Black Sea so that the British/French forces could better coordinate with their Russian allies and open up a new front against the Germans. They never succeeded. After 9 months the allied withdrew and the ageing Ottoman Empire won that battle. However, when the Germans lost the war the Ottomans were stripped of their Empire (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine) and had to fight for their existence in the 1921-23 "war of independence". All of this may have been a blessing in very heavy disguise for the Turks as their new secular Republic (founded by the war hero Ataturk) has grown to be the biggest success story of how a muslim country can develop and democratise.

Broncos win!

Yay for me. After a fairly ordinary second half of the season and losing the first finals game, the Brisbane Broncos have come back to beat the Melbourne Storm and win the NRL premiership. Six premierships for Bennett and a fitting send-off for Webke. Continuing the sporting theme, Michael Schumacher has now tied up the F1 with Fernando Alonso by winning the Chinese Grand Prix. Two races to go. Exciting. And the West Coast Eagles (Perth) beat the Sydney Swans in the AFL final by one point, leaving my poor anti-eagles friend less than happy.

The glory of Constantinople

I am a big fan of Instanbul. It is a city of between 10 and 20 million people, but there is little polution and lots of places to escape the crowd (eg peaceful mosques or the waterfront on the Asian side). It is an unrivaled history as the centre of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires and a great position on the banks of two rivers. It perfectly mixes it's Byzantine and asian past with a western attitude and gives a new exciting experience while also making you feel at home. I could easily live there. On Friday (29 September) I went to the old town and walked around the spice markets, the 400 year old "new" mosque and the impressive Suleymaniye mosque where I escaped the rain at a tea house. Then I met up with Ozy and caught a ferry over to Asian Istanbul for dinner, drinks and backgamon... before catching a taxi-bus back over the bridge to Europe. The next day Ozy and I went over to the old city to explore the tranditional tourist sights -- Aya Sophia, the Palace (though we didn't go inside), the Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque and the Grand Bizar. Then back to the new city to catch a movie (Miami Vice), desert, shisha, turkish coffee and a game of checkers at a tea house. A great day around town. I woke up late today (Sunday 1 October) and finally managed to escape Istanbul in a 7 hour bus ride to the southern university town of Canakkale. This city is famous as the base for people who want to see the famous battle grounds of Gallipoli and/or Troy. That's the plan for tomorrow.

The Middle East

More overnight travel. Over the past week I spent four nights at hostels (Sarajevo, Herceg Novi, Belgrade, Sofia) and four nights in transport! On Wednesday 27 September I made my way from Sofia to the central Bulgarian city of Plovdiv, which puts the Bulgarian capital to shame with Roman ruins, a buzzing main street and a generally better vibe. I walked past ruins and mosques and cobbled streets and found a nice cheap little pub at an ancient (but still used) ampitheatre on a hill overlooking the city. I stopped for a while to read about middle-east history and then caught an overnight bus (with 2 hour customs delay) to the mega-city of Istanbul. I guess I expected Turkey to be a cross between Bulgaria and Morocco... eastern Europe merged with the arab/islamic world. But Istanbul (at least the new city) is more modern than both and more like central Europe. While Turkey has 98% muslims, the government is secular to the point where female leaders are forbidden from wearing the headscarf at formal occasions. Besides the architecturally impressive mosques, you could be forgiven for thinking you are in christian Europe. Yesterday I spent the day relaxing and reading. In the evening I went out for dinner with my Turkish friend Ozy before heading to a cafe for some backgamon and turkish coffee and then a nearby pub which was playing underground heavy metal. After that we walked down to the Bosphorus Strait and looked from European Istanbul over the water to the lights of Asian Istanbul, and had more coffee near the Dolmabahche Palace. I had hoped to head from here down to Syria and then perhaps to Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and/or Eygpt... but lack of time/money and visa hassles have ruined those plans. Sad, but on the positive side it gives me more time to explore Istanbul & Turkey.