Once upon a weekend in Istanbul

The weather and Prague is getting colder and colder. The temperature is currently well below zero, which is not to my liking. To escape from this kind of winter weather, I planned a trip to Istanbul last weekend. On the way there I already found out that the weather in Istanbul was not as good as it was supposed to be. Even though the skies at my transfer station in Vienna were clear and the weather was sunny, my flight was delayed due to “bad weather circumstances” (as I later found out: a snowstorm) in Istanbul. With a delay of 2.5 hours I landed at Atat”urk Airport and after buying my visa and getting through the passport control it was time to find myself a place to sleep. I had been unable to arrange a couch to sleep on this time nor had I planned a meetup in advance with someone in Istanbul; I had tried to arrange something, but found out that it was impossible for me to make proper arrangements with Turkish people. So this weekend I would have to travel like a normal backpacker: stay in a hostel and explore the city by myself.

It was pretty easy to find a hostel in Istanbul: in the center there are at least 10 hostels in one square kilometer. In the end, I got myself a good deal at Istanbul Hostel. During my stay there I had one roommate: Stefan, a German guy who is currently traveling from Germany to India and will cross through countries like Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on his way there. We had some really interesting conversations about this topic and I will surely be following his adventures in the coming months. And, mom: please don’t read this next line, maybe I will do a similar trip one day, because it sounds like an awesome adventure.

Ok, now about the city of Istanbul itself. The city is of course known for the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, the Hagia Sofia and the famous bridge over the Bosporus. But also for the pushy salesmen on the streets. On Saturday morning I already became a victim of one of them. He came up to me and asked me if I wanted to buy a book about Istanbul. I was prepared, so I told him "I already have a book" and walked by him. The salesman however, like all Turkish salesmen, did not give up and asked me where I was from. I replied and out of nowhere he handed me a book about Istanbul in Dutch.
He pointed at a sticker with the number 37 on it and said: "Normal price is 37 liras, but I give you for 20".
I said that I wasn't interested and tried to give the book back to him, but he refused to take it. All he said was: "15... 12... 10!"
I kept saying no, while still trying to give back the book, but he just wouldn't take it back."Ok ok, 5 liras!"
Now I started to doubt. 5 liras is only 2 euros and that's not at all expensive for a book. I browsed through the book, noticed it had lots of information about all the places I wanted to visit and also a handy map of the whole city in it.
"Ok," I said, "I give you 5 for it, but I only have 10 liras, do you have change?"
"Yeah yeah, I have change."
"Can I see the change?"
"Ok, I don't have change. But I will get it. Follow me."
"No, I'm sorry, I need to go now, goodbye"
Now the salesman almost started to beg for my money:
"Please please, I need money, I hungry! How much change do you have?"
I searched in my wallet and found 3.5 liras.
"Ok, 3.5 liras, it's good," the salesman said and I bought the book from him for 3.5 liras. And it even came in very handy later on, because I had only found a map of the real city centre at the hostel, I could really use the map inside the book.
I didn't buy anything else that I didn't want to buy for the rest of the weekend, but salesmen kept on harassing me wherever I went. At the end of the weekend I became so distrustful that when I saw a guy walking towards me with a new window under his arm I automatically started up making excuses why I wouldn't need to buy that window from him.

I spent most of my time in Istanbul just walking around the city. In my opinion that is the only way to get a feeling of what a city is really like. And even though I didn't really meet any locals in Istanbul and the weather was not as warm as I had hoped it would be, I did have a very nice time there. I ate all the Turkish food that I wanted to eat, visited all places in Istanbul that I wanted to visit and took some nice pictures, including these:





The rest of my pictures can be found on Facebook.

The end of an era: No Top 300 this year

Back in 1999 I was eagerly listening to the Top 2000 on the Dutch Radio 2 with the best music of all time. It even inspired me to make such a list myself. I started off in December 1999 making a top 50 of my all-time favourite songs with, I had to look it up in a 12 years old notebook, "De Bestemming" by Marco Borsato on the number 1 spot. In the years after that I added 50 more songs every year to my list until I reached the magic number of 300. It took me 2 days to put together the list (not including the preparations, that usually started in August already), but it was worth it. It became a real tradition for me to make such a list in the period between Christmas and New Year.

The past few years however it got harder and harder for me to make such a list, as I like so many different kinds of music and it's almost impossible to compare and rank them. This year I was also lacking the time and will power to make the necessary preparations and therefore I had to decide, with a heavy heart, not to make a top 300 this year.

I realize that this is (obviously) a huge disappointment for many of you. I also realize that I must give a compensation to the people that were relying on me to help them find new music to start the new year with. So I retrieved a top 30 of the music that I listened to the most during the past year from last.fm. You can find the list below. I put links to YouTube for my top 10 favourite songs in 2011, for those that want to check out what kind of music I am listening to on a daily basis.

1. Sunrise Avenue – Hollywood Hills (Can't wait to see them live in Prague in 2012)
2. Ryan Star – Right Now
3. The Story So Far – I Didn't Slap You (Not suitable for parents; make sure your sound is not too loud when the video starts)
4. Sunrise Avenue – Fairytale Gone Bad
5. My Chemical Romance – Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na) (Again: not suitable for parents...)
6. The Pretty Reckless – Just Tonight (Can you believe that the girl was just 17 when this video was made?)
7. Neon Trees – Animal
8. The Script – For The First Time
9. Bryan Rice – No Promises (The Danish original, much better than the cover version by Shayne Ward)
10. Every Avenue – Tell Me I'm A Wreck (My favourite song at the moment)
11. Handsome Poets – Dance (The War Is Over)
12. Weezer – Perfect Situation
13. Scouting For Girls – This Ain't A Love Song
14. Idool 2011 Finalisten – More To Me
15. Handsome Poets – Silence Is Sexy
16. Donkeyboy – Sometimes
17. Ryan Star – Start A Fire
18. The Bigger Lights – Hey Summer
19. Ryan Star – Breathe
20. The Downtown Fiction – I Just Wanna Run
21. Secondhand Serenade – Fall For You
22. Something Corporate – Watch the Sky
23. Two Door Cinema Club – What You Know
24. Sherwood – Ground Beneath My Feet
25. Carolina Liar – Last Night
26. Negative – Won't Let Go
27. Reamonn – Supergirl
28. The Moog – When I See You
29. Alexander Rybak – Funny Little World
30. Volumia! – Afscheid

Finally, I'd like to wish you all the best for 2012 and I hope to see you again next year!

The results of ISC #2...

Hi all,

Thanks a lot to those of you that were willing to vote in my song contest. It's really appreciated. So, as promised, below you can find a link to the results.

Click here to see the full voting process. (Recommended, as the voting was quite exciting)

Click here for a direct link to the full results.

I hope you enjoyed the contest as much as I did! Congratulatons to the winning country. :)

International Song Contest #2

It's December now and even though the weather is not as cold as one year ago, I reckon that most of you will now spend more time inside than 6 months ago. Such moments may be boring, but hey, with good music on the background those days will be a bit happier.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, most people stick to the same old (usually American) music all the time. Those people miss out on a lot of good music. I know that most people don't have the time to search new music themselves, and that's what this blog is for. Below you will find a video I made with 22 songs that I discovered in the past year either in one of the online song contests I participate in or by myself. Just click on "play" and listen to those wonderful songs.

And because I just love making lists and rankings out of everything, of course I made a contest out of this as well, just like I did in spring, in which you can vote for the best song. So if you feel like being a judge and/or want to make me a happy boy, please send in your top 10 in the form below. The deadline to do this is 20 December at 23:59 and this time there are no voting restrictions: you can also vote for your own country. Thank you very much if you participate in this!

And don't feel pressured to vote if you don't want to, of course it's also fine if you just listen to the songs and don't vote at all. I understand that not everybody is as enthousiastic about this kind of things as I am. :)

Recap video:




Playlist and links to YouTube:

1.	Norway	Aleksander With	A Little Too Perfect
2.	Belgium	Yevgueni	Manzijn
3.	Estonia	Maarja	Shine It On
4.	Great Britain	Young Rebel Set	If I Was
5.	Poland	Sylwia Grzeszczak	Małe Rzeczy
6.	Italy	Modà	La Notte
7.	South Africa	Nádine	This Time I Know It's For Real
8.	Romania	Zero	Lay Me Down
9.	Iceland	Yohanna	Beautiful Silence
10.	France	Sofia Essaïdi	J'croque La Vie
11.	Switzerland	Lunatica	Who You Are
12.	Netherlands	Only Seven Left	Wake Up Call
13.	Austria	Christina Stürmer	Wir Leben Den Moment
14.	Finland	Negative	Won't Let Go
15.	Germany	Unheilig	Geboren Um Zu Leben
16.	Malta	Claudia Faniello	I Hate This Song
17.	Russia	Lena Katina	Never Forget
18.	South Korea	Song Ji Eun ft. Bang Yong Guk	Going Crazy
19.	Bosnia & Herzegovina	Hari Mata Hari & Ivana Banfic	Navodno
20.	Spain	La Oreja de Van Gogh	La Niña Que Llora En Tus Fiestas

21.	Latvia	Lauris Reiniks	Banjo Laura
22.	Czech Republic	Tomáš Klus	Marie

VOTING DISABLED

Trip to Dubai and Oman

My apologies for the delay, but finally it is here: the report from my travel to the United Arab Emirates and Oman!

Ever since I saw an episode of a Dutch tv show called "3 op reis" about Oman a couple of years ago, I fell in love with the beauty of this country and it was very high on my to-go-list. This autumn I finally got a chance to go there. From Prague, I could book a relatively cheap ticket to Dubai. From there I would travel over land to Oman, a road trip through the desert, that turned out to be less empty than I expected. More about that will follow later.

First I will introduce Dubai, which is one of the craziest cities in the world. It is located in the United Arab Emirates, however, only 20% of its inhabitants is Emirati. 50% of the population is Indian or Pakistani. All of these people come to Dubai to earn money, which is quite there, because there is no income tax at all and the salaries are high. Due to the large amount of oil in the Emirates, the government just doesn't know what to do with all the money, which is why they started building crazy stuff, such as the highest tower in the world and or an artificial group of islands shaped like the world. Now let me tell you about my experiences.

I arrived in Dubai in the evening and quite unexpectedly I got through the passport control easily. When I got out of the airport, I got on a taxi to take me to Zulekha Hospital: the landmark near to the place where my Couchsurfing host Nicknack was living. The ride was however not a big success and it took me over 40 minutes to cross 11 kilometres. Nicknack, a 26 years old Thai guy, picked me up from the hospital with his own car and took me to his great apartment. It became clear to me that indeed it was easy to live a wealthy life here. In the evening we went to the famous Dubai mall. Just outside the mall, I bought my host a beer, that cost me 8 euros, but for that money we did have an amazing view on Burj Khalifa (that highest tower in the world). Even at night it was very impressive.

The next day was more or less a typical tourist day for me. I visited all famous places in Dubai, including Burj Al-Arab, the beach at Dubai Marina and Al-Ahmadiyah school. I could use 200 words to describe all this, but the pictures below speak for themselves:

I had to be home at a reasonable time though, as Nicknack told me he would cook a real Thai meal for me and his Lebanese friend who would also stay at his place that night. When I got home, at first I thought I was at the wrong address. The appartment was suddenly filled with Thai people, all speaking in their own language! It seemed like I arrived at a dinner party for the entire Thai community in Dubai. I did have a good time with all of them though, ate squid for the first time (like I expected in advance: I didn't like it), went out to a club in the basement of the Crowne Plaza Hotel with Nicknack, his Kenyan flatmate, his Lebanese friend Max and the last two remaining Thai girls Kim and Noyna and found out that parties in Dubai can be pretty good:

The next day I would go to Oman. However, at the bus station I suffered my first setback: even though I arrived 45 minutes in advance, the bus was already full and there were like 40 people waiting outside the bus. In a very chaotic situation I found out that there might be an extra bus, however, it was not sure when and if at all this bus would come. In the meantime, I had some tea with Ali, a Pakistani businessman in his late fifties on his way to meet a friend in Oman, and Tariq, an Indian student who was going to visit his parents in Muscat.

When we finished our tea and headed back to the bus station (which was not more than just some sand next to the road with a sign "bus" next to it), we got in touch with Farook, an Indian businessman who owned a car, but didn't want to drive to Muscat alone. After some time, the two businessman negotiated a deal: we would not wait for a bus to come, but go on a roadtrip to Oman with the four of us.

This road trip was one of the most special memories from my trip. Four men, that didn't know eachother when they got up that morning, spending 8 hours driving through the Arab desert, waiting for a visum for Oman at the Hatta-border and driving through typically Omani villages, sometimes stopping over for some Arab tea in a local teahouse. The tea was also one of the highlights of my trip by the way. I could get used to the quiet life of drinking tea in a tea house all day.

We arrived in the Muscat area shortly after midnight. This could have been a bit of a problem for me, as I didn't arrange a place to sleep in advance. Luckily Ali and his Omani friend Shabeer were willing to help me find accomodation. And even though it was late at night, Shabeer insisted on showing us around the area. He was clearly the kind of man that always expects to get what he wants, so we had no other choice than to go with him. After one crazy ride in the middle of the night we ended up at a fastfood chain, where my new Omani friend ordered enough food for the four of us (including his personal assistant/bodyguard Sohail from Bangladesh) to feed three local families. It was also at that moment that I was offered to stay at Shabeer's place during my stay in Oman. An offer that I gladly accepted.

The stay in Oman was hectic: it involved a lot of driving around, visiting sights in the area, drinking tea (at least three times per day), visits to the mosque (during which I had to enjoy myself for one hour, as non-muslims are not allowed to enter the mosque) and also a meetup with Mehdi: the only friend in the region that I made prior to my visit. The meetup took only two hours, during which we took a walk through the city and talked about everything, from general topics like the mindset of Omani people to really personal topics. It was a very interesting conversation that improved my understanding of what it's like to be young in a country like Oman and of the Arab culture in general. This is a photo of the two of us together, you can imagine that quite a lot of people were looking at us when we were walking the street together:

On Monday I was facing a difficult decision. Initially, I was planning to go back to Dubai on this day, however, Shabeer told me that if I would stay he would show me a beautiful beach and take me to the countryside. It was hard for me, but I decided to stay in Oman at the expense of visiting Abu Dhabi, as I had heard that there was not so much to do there. So on Tuesday I went back to Dubai, again by car, together with Ali and Farook.

For my last night in the Middle East, I arranged that I could stay at Nicknack's place again. The next morning, my flight left only in the evening so I had one full last day in Dubai, I went to visit the last remaining sights in Old Dubai and in the afternoon I met up with Noyna again. Together we went to some kind of park for kids near the Dubai creek, where we sat down for a while. I realized that this was going to be my last moment of warm weather for 2011.

So now I'm back in Prague, back in the normal world, where winter is starting already. Ah well, just 5 months left and then spring will start again...

About my addiction

It's been a while since I last wrote here, but now I feel it's time to tell you in all honesty that I have become an addict. Not the bad kind of addict though, no, I realized that I am addicted to traveling, meeting new people and exploring new places.

The addiction started in spring of this year, when I had the best 1.5 weeks of my life during my trip through the Baltics and Poland. In the past few months, I have been on holiday in Ukraine for 2 weeks and went on several weekend trips within Czech Republic, and sometimes even to Poland or Slovakia. Now, my addiction has reached a new "high". From 2 to 9 November I will travel outside of Europe for the second time in my life, as I will visit United Arab Emirates and Oman in that week. I will travel alone and have no real friends yet in those countries, so to be honest I'm a bit frightened about this trip, but as Eleanor Roosevelt once said:

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

A very inspiring quote, that fits in my current mindset perfectly. So at the moment I am still planning everything, so I can't say much about my schedule yet, but for sure I will visit Dubai (the home of the famous Burj Al Arab Hotel), Masqat and make a daytrip to the Omani countryside, which has been my dream ever since I saw a report on tv about Oman a couple of years ago. Not many people may think of Oman as a tourist destination, but believe me: it's an amazing place.

And if you decide not to believe me, that's fine as well. I'm confident that I will convince you in one month from now with the most beautiful pictures. :)

Pidkamin 2011

The past two summers I have been enjoying volunteer work camps in Serbia and Estonia. Even though I have a full-time job now, I wanted to participate in such a project again. This year I went to the village of Pidkamin, in Western Ukraine, to help renovate an old monastery with a long an interesting history.

I went by bus to Ukraine and to prevent an 18 hour bus ride I stayed in Kraków for one day and one night. Kraków is a great city, I had a very nice time there and can recommend it to anyone. And if you are going there, be sure to ask me where to eat: I know a place in the Jewish area where you can eat really good zapiekanka (thanks Alex for reminding me of this name) and another place called "King Kebab", that really honours its name. There was a fat guy with a beard behind the counter, who kept on asking me "yes?" with every ingredient he wanted to use. I just let him have his way, because instinctively I knew that this guy was going to make me the best kebab I had ever had. And my instinct was right. Just take a look at this wonderful picture:


In the evening I got on the night bus to Lviv. It became a trip to remember. We arrived at the border with Ukraine at around 1:15. So far the trip had gone very smoothly. At the border we encountered a huge traffic jam, that we were allowed to pass at first with our bus, but we were kept waiting at the front of the line for a long time, with no information on how long it was going to take. In the end it took us 4 hours to even be allowed to enter the border area. After a lot of inefficiency and bossy customs we were finally allowed to enter Ukraine at 7:15, which was 1 hour after the bus should have arrived in Lviv.

Our bus felt at home on the bumpy Ukrainian roads immediately. Just like a working person stops pretending to be better than he actually is and gets rid of his fancy outfit as soon as he gets home, our bus let go of a light socket above one of the seats:


At the same time, drops of water started falling from the ceiling at several places in the bus. Yup, that's Ukraine: never fix anything until it's really, really broken.

In the afternoon I met the other volunteers with who I would be living and working the coming two weeks. Together we took the train to Brody. The train ride was quite uncomfortable for a person that wanted to rest a bit, but still that was nothing compared to the bus ride from Brody to Pidkamin. At first we wanted to get on the bus of 16:15, so we bought tickets for that bus. When the bus arrived however, it was so full that it looked impossible to fit in even one extra person without a backpack. So in the end we bought tickets for the next bus, which was (slightly) less crowded. I needed to get used to that for the coming weeks, as pretty much all buses were old and too crowded.

At the monastery in Pidkamin we were welcomed by Father Andrei, the priest who was in charge of the whole complex and our boss during the camp. The priest told us that he expected us to work really hard the coming two weeks. Maintenance man Igor, a thin bald man who looks like he walked straight out of a ghost story, thought different about that. The first working day the priest was away and we were working well, until Igor showed up, told us not to work too hard and gave us some instructions that were wrong, probably because otherwise we would made him look lazy. However, the priest already knew that Igor was a lazy worker and when he got back he instructed us to friendly nod when Igor was talking to us but ignore all of his instructions.

So now about the work. Our goal of the camp was to make the area near the big wall of the monastery complex, which was more or less a hill with a lot of weed and stones, look flat again. This was quite a hard job, because of all the rocks and the ground that needed to be taken down the hill to the dumping ground. We started off with a good mood and full of energy, as you can see here:


However, after two weeks, we looked like this:



Luckily there were also plenty of fun activities. As we were with a group of 8 foreigners and 2 Ukrainians who came from a different part of the country, we went sightseeing as well and visited a castle in Oleskiv and a huge monastery complex in Pochajiv. This complex was absolutely amazing. I could use 100 words to describe its beauty, but one photo says it all:


Moreover, in the first weekend of the camp there was an ethno-folk-rock festival on a field near the monastery. The first Friday night was alright, we met the monks, dressed in a traditional Ukrainian outfit, and took a photo with them:


Saturday was supposed to be the best day of the festival. During the day I had already met some people that were attending the festival and I met them again in the evening. It took quite some time to find them, and the rest of the group didn't want to wait for them, so I ended up alone, partying with my new Ukrainian friends. And I had a great time with them, as the picture below proves:


The next day I would meet up again with Olya, a girl I met the day before (the left one on the picture). Together we walked around the festival area a bit and after that we went to a nice and quiet place near a lake in the forest:


Finally we met some guys from the camp there as well and together we walked back to the festival area, where we said goodbye to Olya, who had to go home with her friends, and went back to the monastery for some Ukrainian lunch. Unfortunately the weather was not so good in the afternoon (the picture above was taken later), so the group didn't feel like going back to the festival after that lunch.

After two weeks I had to leave Pidkamin again. In Western Europe a travel of about 100 kms (to Lviv, in this case) would not be special enough to mention in a travel report. However, in Ukraine travelling is still a real adventure. First I had to take a bus from Pidkamin to Brody. It's normal that such a bus is crowded, but this bus was really surrealistic. More and more people kept getting on the bus and it became incredibly hot inside: after 15 minutes I could not see through the windows any more because of all the steam and my whole body was wet from all the sweat. After 40 minutes on the bus, it felt like heaven to get on the train again with the uncomfortable wooden benches. Also the train ride was an adventure, as the soon-to-be babushka (=grandmother) with two golden teeth that was sitting next to me started asking me questions in Russian. My answer that I didn't understand was not sufficient for her, this lady wanted answers. So I did my best to guess what each question meant and tried to answer them in a mixture of Ukrainian, Czech and English until she seemed to understand.

After we had more or less finished our conversation I put on some music and closed my eyes for a while. However, after a few minutes some really young gypsy kids entered the compartment. One of them started playing a song on his guitar, while his younger brother enthusiastically started dancing to the music. Another thing you would not often see in Western Europe.


In Lviv I met up with Olya again, who would show me her home town in the coming days. We visited some very nice places, including an underground bar where Ukrainian nationalists used to gather. In order to get in, you would have to know the password, in order to prevent Russians from coming in. Right now it's mostly a cool place to hang out, but the atmosphere of the Ukrainian nationalists is still there, which makes it a great place for a tourist to visit. If you're interested, just ask me for the password. :)

After two days in Lviv I moved on to Kosice: a city in Slovakia that was on my way home. I took the train there, which was a train ride of almost 12 hours in total. In my compartment I met Luda, a 52-years old nurse from Odessa, with who I set up a conversation. In the end, she must have felt like we became real friends, because just when I was out to stretch my legs a bit and look out of the windows on the hallway she called my name. I looked behind me and saw that she made lunch for the two of us. Luda smiled at me and said: "eat". I said that I was not that hungry and thanked her for the offer, but now the smile on her face was gone and she said to me:
"eat!". So I had lunch with her, and afterwards she even showed me lots of pictures of her son and the rest of her family.

When we arrived at the border we got into trouble again. The train was broken and it was being repaired with us inside of it. So for in total two hours I could do nothing but watch those mechanics, who most of the time were doing nothing but looking at the train like this:


Right. And then one of them pointed somewhere, saying "maybe we should try this button", another would walk towards the train, push that button, and walk back to his old position and watch the train again for one more minute only to find out that the train was still broken. After two hours, it looked like they had fixed the problem (something with electricity in the train), but before the night fell the electricity was gone again, so when we arrived in Kosice at around 21:30 I had to find my way to the exit of the train in the dark.

In Kosice I met my friend Gabika, who would lead me to my hostel and be my guide for the next 24 hours. Kosice is a city with a very nice atmosphere (like all cities in Slovakia I think) and a beautiful fountain that actually plays music and moves to that music. Moreover, there are some very nice parks in the city, where we spent a lot of time, because Kosice is not so big and it was too hot to walk around all the time anyway. Also, the best moment of my travel was in Kosice, as I found a Pizza Hut there:



You really can't imagine how happy I was to eat pizza there again. As a kid I used to go there quite often and I totally loved the pizza's there, but then the Pizza Hut in Utrecht closed and I never went to the Pizza Hut in the past 5 years for sure... So seeing this place in Kosice made me feel like a little kid again and... Ok, this is probably not a story you guys are interested in.

So after only 23 hours in Kosice it was time to go back to Prague again, because it was already the 2nd of August and I had to be back in the office the next day. Now, 4 days later, I have moved back to my old routines again, but I certainly feel like a different person after this travel, it has really opened my eyes in multiple ways.