Kebops and Gyros

Term has finally come to a close, and although the Swedish schedule never really consisted of much class time in the first place – school is now officially out for summer. As such, I managed to lure Alex away from his Dexter’s lab life for a full TWO WEEKS!

Thanks to cheap tickets online & a variety of intra-Europe budget airlines, we managed to get a killer deal on a multi-city flight: Stockholm-Athens & Istanbul-Stockholm. The only trick lay in getting from Athens to Istanbul, but alas… we would figure that out when we got there. I mean people must do it all the time right? How hard could it be?

Well apparently nobody was a keen on the idea as me. First off, Greek people hate Turkey, so trying to convey to them that, yes in fact we did want to go to Istanbul was challenge #1. When they finally conceded that perhaps it is possible to harbor a desire to see Turkey, they insisted that the reality of getting there was absolutely “impossible”.

I had done some reading and found that instead of taking a 24hour bus between the two cities, you could in fact take a boat to the Greek Island of Lesvos, then a ferry to the Turkish mainland and bus up the coast from there.

With images of dolphins floating in my mind, I was hell-bent on taking the boat, despite all the discouraging advice of travel agents who thought we should either:
a) pay 80euros to the Greek bus company or b) just stay in Athens.

Against the advice of the Greeks who feared that Turkey harbored nothing but peril, and that of the American’s who feared Greek-Turkey relations were so dire that we would be held up at the border – we set off.

First: the overnight boat to Lesvos. This was an entirely ‘local’ experience, seeing how the boat was a low budget version of the BC Ferries, where one’s bed consisted of a patch of carpeted floor space. We were the only tourists aboard and, seeing how all announcements were in Greek, were quickly submerged into the local culture.

When we arrived at the Port, we met an adorable Greek man with a thick Aussie accent who helped us buy tickets to Turkey and sent us on our way through customs 10minutes later.

Next: Not only did we see the aforementioned dream-dolphins, but we also met a Professor of Political Science from the University of Kansas and his German wife who were also making their way up to Istanbul (or as the Greeks like to say, Constantinople).
The four of us joined forces and by midnight we found ourselves in the former capital of the Roman empire and current city of 13 million…
Let the games begin.