Sophie À La Carte!

On my last morning in Istanbul, my host drove me to the metro station, and I rode the packed train to the main bus station. I had instructions from the farm to go to a certain agency, buy my ticket, and once on the bus ask the driver to drop me off at a gas station before their last stop. This I did with little difficulty, and once at the gas station a Turkish volunteer, Serdar, picked me up to take me to the farm. Before I go any further, I’d like to address one of my favorite parts of Turkish culture: tea. After I bought my ticket at the bus station, the man at the counter suggested I go upstairs for a cup of caj (pronounced like chai). Cai is prevalent everywhere in Istanbul: people drink caj at the sidewalk cafes, boys deliver trays of caj to the men manning their booths at the bazaar or the farmers market, and a man hawks caj to ferry passengers as they cross the Bosphorus Bay. There’s really only one type of tea served: strong, black, and usually doctored with several spoons

How's that for click bait? It's amazing how long ago-made, concrete plans change in such a short time. My original plan after trekking through the Western Balkans was to take the train to Istanbul from Belgrade. Using my Eurail pass I purchased before I left in June, I would take a night train to Sofia, spend a few nights there and explore the city, then take another night train to Istanbul, arriving at 8am on Sunday. I would then have a few days in the city before busing out to Buyukcavuslu (trying saying that three times fast, or at all) to start my Workaway experience on the dairy farm. Typical of me, I had this all planned out in advance. Sometimes typical of me, I waited until the last minute to do something- that would be activating my rail pass. I went on the last day I could activate it, which would give me two months to use the pass (5 days of travel). I figured it would be better to activate it as late as possible, since I did not have a plan to use all five days

A month is not enough time to visit the Western Balkans, by my travel companion Michael and I worked our way through 14 cities in 7 countries in 25 days. It was a marathon journey- we saw a lot, ate a lot, and met a lot of cool people. Looking back a few days after it ended it amazes me how much ground we covered. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in my last post, the first casualty of the trip was my Chromebook- I think I accidentally stepped on it and cracked the screen, which left it unusable until I got it repaired. I took it to several repair shops in Albania, but none had the screen I needed. After a lengthy email conversation with an eBay electronics seller and several visits to a computer shop in Prizren, Kosovo, I ordered the correct screen to have shipped from the UK to Ivan, my former CS host in Serbia, fingers crossed that it would arrive before I got there a week and a half later. A few hours later, on the bus to Pristina, Kosovo's capital, I realized I left the bag w

I mentioned several posts ago that I decided to become a vegetarian. While most of my posts have focused on my itinerary, where I went, what I did, etc.; I've decided to be a little more focused in this post and talk about the adventures of being meatless on the road. Furthermore, I won't be incorporating pictures into this post- earlier this week in Ohrid, Macedonia I somehow managed to crack my laptop screen, rendering my Chromebook invalid. We arrived in Albania a few days ago, so here's hoping I can find a place to get it fixed in a short period of time. My Chromebook was only about $180, so I'm not wedded to it, and if it weren't for my blog or for my new freelance travel writing gig I could probably eschew a laptop entirely - you can do almost anything on a smartphone these days. Another small update, if you're wondering who’s this “we” I'm referring to. For the next leg of my trip, at least through the western Balkans, I'll have a travel buddy.

My last morning in Plovdiv I woke up early and took a taxi to the train station. Taxis in Bulgaria are unbelievably cheap compared to the United States; I’ve never paid more than $3 USD for a ride. This time, it cost about 2.5 lev ($1.38). My train was at 8am, and I got there about 10 minutes early. I thought about grabbing a coffee from one of the stands or automatic machines (price for an espresso ranges from .40 lev to 1 lev- 22 to 55 cents), but decided to hold off until my connection. Maybe I would doze off for a bit for the first hour, and I would want to be awake for the second leg of the trip. I took a train to Septemvri, where the narrow-gauge rail line starts and where I’d be taking a 4 hour train ride through the mountains to Bansko. Early on in my research I came across a list of scenic train rides in the Balkans and Central/Eastern Europe. I like traveling by train; it’s more comfortable than a bus and easier to take in the scenery. Whenever I can combine transporta

Hey friends, I jumped back on the road last week after an early goodbye to Rodo. I took a minibus to Veliko Turnovo, then boarded a slightly bigger bus en route to Plovdiv. The bus ride was long- about four and a half hours, but bearable. For some reason I was craving a Snickers bar before I got on the bus. I stopped by a snack window, looked at my options, and decided to go for something more local- a MOPEHU bar, which had the necessary peanut and chocolate requirement. So that was my breakfast. Quick stop on the way to Stara Zagora Halfway to Plovdiv I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me (neither of us spoke Bulgarian and had no idea if we were supposed to stay on the bus during a stop in Stara Zagora). He spoke okay English, but was from Venezuela, so I attempted to dust off my high school Spanish to converse with him. Turns out he’s an acrobat and illusionist working for a Bulgarian circus, and has been working at circuses across Europe for 10 years. He spent