Dude.

Animals need to stop crossing the road.

Seriously.

I witnessed a number of geese and cows (separately) crossing the road on our way to Georgia.

So, Bulgaria – two chicks and a rooster.

Turkey – several geese and cows.

What next? Pandas in China?

Talking of chickens, they keep showing up. It was devastating to see one squawking in the hands of a man taking it to the market😭.

Poor chicken 🐔.

But that was in Kars. Instanbul was beautiful. No doubt about that.

The picture above was taken at the fountain in front of Hagia Sophia, a former church which was destroyed twice, rebuilt and converted as a mosque after the fall of Constantinopolis. Now, Hagia Sophia is a museum.

Its neighbour, the Blue Mosque (named after the predominant presence of the blue and turquoise tiles) was the first mosque I have been in.

Once in Kars, we also visited an orthodox Russian-built church converted into a mosque – which makes it the only one with such architecture in Turkey – or so I’ve been told.

So by now I’ve reached the conclusion that I prefer mosques to churches. The latter are so serious and so quiet while the former are loud, playful and as a bonus, have comfortable carpets.

We also went to see the Basilica Cistern (an underground water cistern from the Roman times). It was quite creepy, walking through the passage surrounded by the dark. The music didn’t help either. To be honest, I didn’t really care about the building, but I was curious to see the two carved Medusa heads, of which the story still remains a mystery.

It was interesting to see the culture of Turkey through my own eyes.

For example, while I’m not a religious person, listening to the call of prayer from the mosques was satisfying to my ears.

Even more fascinating was watching two restaurants in a battle of convincing passers-by to stop and eat. I couldn’t help but feel pity for the vendors in the Spice Bazaar and the Grand Bazaar when my parents refused their offers, but both my mom and dad found that perfectly normal. They grew up in a Mediterranean environment, so they must have been used to it.

The same goes for the sight of all the homeless dogs and cats stranded in the streets. This was not a common sight in London and it was soon enough that I was informed of the ugly truth – a lot of animals found on the streets of London were slaughtered.

Probably though, the first amusing encounter to the foreign culture was already on the bus from Haskovo to Instanbul.

Approaching the border of Bulgaria, you could see a lane going for kilometres full of trucks waiting to get into Turkey, as shown below (my parents were commenting on how this will become a common sight on the UK/France border once Brexit happens).

The locals have thus found ways to trade making do without the red tape of customs. As you are allowed to bring one bottle of alcohol per person into Turkey, the bus hostess was then going around asking the passengers if they wouldn’t mind carrying a bottle each for her. The bus then duly stopped before the border at a big discount store to buy the extra alcohol 😂.

Other (very) relevant things about Istanbul were:

– Even as we approached with the bus we couldn’t help but notice the amount of mosques all around.

– I finally had my hair cut in Besiktas! We walked into a minuscule shop (2*0.5mt max) where the barber – sitting in a chair, scrolling through his phone, seemed relaxed . He did his job well.

– One day, we tried to take a ferry back to the hotel area. While no-one at the station understood English they gestured us into one when my father showed them our destination on Google Maps. It turns out the ferry was going in the opposite direction. We had no choice but to wait on the ferry till it came back to its departure point. By then there wasn’t a ferry that could take us back to Sultanahmet. On the other hand, this gave us a chance to see the Bosphorus up close at sunset. And it was really beautiful.

That was all our time in Instanbul. But we weren’t finished with Turkey yet.

We took a train from Instanbul to Ankara. The train was very modern with a secure WiFi connection, so we were equipped for the three hours ride ahead 😎.

This wasn’t the case for our next train, Ankara-Kars, which not only was clearly past its prime but also had no WiFi connection. This was a tragedy, considering we were going to be on the train for 25 hours. So we were going ‘old school’ .

But more of this later. First, a bit more about Ankara. We had only two hours before taking the overnight train. Still, we managed to explore the nearby park and fill our parents ears with the chant “It’s not fair! Take us to the fair!” (Gençlik Park has a big permanent amusement park).

We stopped, however, at a park cafe for gyuzleme, ayran, and ice cream. I finally tried Turkish ice-cream! It feels like bubblegum. Very elastic.

While eating, few children startled me by coming over to our table, pleading for food. I had never experienced that. I was surprised and sad. But it turns out this is quite a common practice in Turkey and does not necessarily mean that they are starving.

Indeed, later on, at one train stop, a huge crowd of children came running towards the train, literally on the tracks, asking for food, drinks, toys, anything. Passengers on the train actually started throwing snacks and drinks out of the windows (I saw one kid happily holding a massive bag of Doritos).

This reminded my father of his past. Since he spent his summers in the village of Dobrich (which is really close to the border with Turkey) some of his friends would go with their bikes to the gas station where Turkish trucks stopped. The drivers would gift them with all sort of items but particularly prized was a special type of chewing gum which would contain stickers of fancy cars. They were called ‘BeepBeep’ and the kids would collect them and trade them as a particularly prestigious possession.

But enough digressing, back to the overnight train. I was ecstatic at the sight of our room – a folding couch, a bed, a fridge full of complementary food and drinks and free slippers. The lack of WiFi meant me and my family looked around and reflected on our trip.

So, I, Eliano Tonev, am proud to say I survived a whole 25 hours without WiFi.

In Kars we arrived late and left early. We still clocked in few interesting sights (among others the Kars castle, which I recommend to be called the ‘Karstle’) before heading into a taxi and driving all the way to Georgia.

By the way, the longest word in Turkish literature is composed of 70 letters. We all tried to pronounce it in one go, but we couldn’t. Can you?

Whew. That is one loooooooooooong post.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: To get to the other side.

I know, because I’ve seen it.

We were on our way back from Perpirikon, a temple erected to honor Dionysus (Greek form) / Bacchus (Roman form), God of Wine. A rooster🐓 and two chicks🐤🐥 were making their way across the road. They seemed to not like paparazzi, because they were going too fast for me to take a picture 😑. Hopefully, they will decide to pop out again during our road trip.

Flashback two hours before.

We stopped first by the Stone Mushrooms (and posed for pictures!) and later made our way up to the Perpirikon temple.

It was the Thracians who first built it around 3000 BC. When around the 7th century, a tribe called Bulgars came to the land of the Thracians (from the steppes of what is currently Kazakhstan – our road trip will go through there!) with never – seen before tamed wild horses, the Thracians were forced to sign a peace treaty with them. The temple remained and Perpirikon even holds traces of Roman construction.

While the sun was scorching and the ascent was steep, it was a beautiful view and it was fun climbing over the mismatched rocks.

Being in Bulgaria for a full four days also allowed my grandparents to teach me the Cyrillic alphabet, which not only was fun, but made the Bulgarian language a lot easier to read – considering this is the official alphabet of the country (try to read this: Елияно).

Baba and Diado have their very own orchard. When I first arrived in the village of Dobrich, I noticed a bunch of grapes my grandparents had grown, hanging from the trees. While walking around, I noticed all the growing apples, pears, peaches, plums, strawberries etc. That seemed a bit unusual to me. I realised how accustomed I was to city culture. I was so used to going to the shop and picking out fruit from there.

One evening, we made our way to Dimitrovgrad to visit the fair celebrating the 71st anniversary of the foundation of the town. My father grew up there before he left for university in America. Here’s a little interesting history.

Dimitrovgrad is the youngest city in Bulgaria, founded in 1947, named after Georgi Dimitrov, a communist leader. This was just after WWII ended. In the years that followed, a lot of places changed their names to honor famous Bulgarian communist leaders or events. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and with that, the end of communism, all those cities converted to their previous names, except for Dimitrovgrad, as it had no previous name. The new government still wanted to remove any memories of communism, so they took down the statue erected in the centre of the town in honour of Georgi Dimitrov.

London. Check.

Italy. Check.

Bulgaria. Check.

Next stop : Turkey.

By the way, did you guess it was my name written in Cyrillic?

Oh yeah, I also saw a chicken cross the road. Did I mention that?

Over all my fourteen years, London was fun. I’ve had many exciting experiences that I know I will never forget.

It was a struggle to say goodbye to our flat back in London. It had been my home since the day I was born (literally – I was delivered in the main bedroom). Flat 3 has always been with me, through thick and thin.

For my secondary school, it was a different matter. Pretty much the only thing I will miss from there are my friends.

But I don’t think I will ever struggle to say goodbye to anything more than VillaGea. This house was a pure luxury, something I couldn’t wait to visit every summer.

Not only VillaGea has everything you could ever wish for – a massive trampoline, a footsball table, a Ping-Pong table, a wide variety of balls (ranging from footballs, basketballs and volleyballs to beach balls, squeeze balls and exercise balls), a huge collection of toys and a form of entertainment available at all times, but it also holds many memories – including sleepovers with friends, barbecues with families and late-night karaoke.

However, above all, the house has its very own front-row seat for the beach. That is something extremely extraordinary. How else can you get the beautiful experience of waking up to the soft crashes of waves against the shore? How else can you get the opportunity to sit on a deck chair in the veranda, watching the sunset? How else can you get the chance to have a midnight swim on a whim? The sea was basically my own massive swimming pool. So yeah, it was a struggle saying goodbye to the house of many glorious memories.

Still, as the summer eventually ended, the trip of a lifetime started.

The first stop is the village of Dobrich, Bulgaria. We took a flight from Rome to Sofia, before jumping into the car to drive all the way there.

The time in the car allowed me to relish the sight of Bulgaria’s landscape that I had not seen in many years. When I was younger, I used to come to Bulgaria a lot to visit Diado & Baba. While in the car, it occurred to me, that throughout all the years I hadn’t visited, I still had vivid memories.

I had missed Bulgaria. That was as much as I could realise. So here I am, back in one of my childhood homes.