Long way to Turkey - 2nd part

9th March 2002 – Finally in Istambul...

Hi Guys...
After 22 hours by bus I’m in Istanbul. Just to start I didn’t have Turkish Lira (very smart) and I don’t know their language. It was a bit complicated to find a place where I could exchange my money and buy a telephone card.


I decided to ask a help inside of a store where there were some telephones but the person didn’t know any english. At the end we could understand each other and he helped me, exchanged some money to me and called my friend Hakan that came there to pick me up.
Right now I’m in his house. Already tasted turkish food. I liked but it is very spicy.

Still talking about my greek adventure, after right the last e-mail I went eat something and then decided to try to find the Olympic Complex. That place is great, huge! As I didn’t have permission to be there (but I didn’t know), I was forced to leave the place. This was funny because the guy didn’t speak any english and we had to ask some help from people that were there. After some translation, finally I understood that I was not welcome there. J

The bus trip was hard, I’m very tired. 22 hours inside of a very old and unconfortable bus, nobody deserves that, but that was my choice to come to Turkey… the cheapest one by the way. As I didn’t know how to buy things in greek durring the way and we only stopped in some very small places I didn’t even eat on the way. Anyway, I’m alive.

Tomorrow will be a long day. I need to meet Zeki, a turkish guy who wants to open a ConnAction (NGO I work in Brasil) here in Turkey and also meet a friend that teached me some turkish while I was still in Rio.

10th March 2002 – Yeah, I’m really in Turkey
I was in Hakan’s home but as it is far from everywhere I decided to call to Azade, the friend I talked before who lives close to Intanbul Downtonw in a place called Ortaköy. It doesn’t mean I didn’t like there, it was very nice place, but I would like to know the city and also meet her.

Almost night and she got there with a very nice guy, Kenan, that is engineer and her friend. We went to her house and from there to walk around, closed to Bosforo canal that is very closed to her home. After eat something we came back home because it was very cold… at least to me but to them it was a nice night to walk.

When we came back I showed her Guaraná and she got crazy. They never saw it before, even heard about it here. I met also another friend of her that was going to show me the city at the next day as she had to work. I was so tired that I slept at the couch as a small child.

Ahh.. Azade decided to give me a nickname “Samba Man”. She thinks I know how to dance samba… lets see

11th March 2002 – Unreal day

Guys, today was a very weird day. I woke-up and took a shower. The bathroom here is weird, there is a whole on the groud to do the stuffs. Then, decided to call Zeki. As he lived 1 year in Brasil he knows portuguese, what was great, we spoke english the entire day. Image the scene, my second day in Turkey, walking around to a turkish guy, only speaking portuguese. J We visited Besiktas, Üsküdar and Taksim where the AIESEC Istanbul office is.

After that I met Azade, we bought the bus ticket to Eskisehir (11 million turkish liras) and went back to her home as it was getting colder. All turkish are millionaires here! Everything is in millions. We came back together to another friend of her, a big guy that I don’t remember the name. At home, far from the cold weather, we saw some pictures from her and some stuff I brought from Brasil. She asked me to drink Guaraná again… I think that guaraná is really aphodisiac.

Next contact I will be in Eskisehir!
Kisses!