Finally, a Mohawk Sighting
Trip Start
Aug 25, 2003
1
47
55
Trip End
Jul 18, 2004
Berlin, Germany
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
didn´t change as we considered if it was the best option for us. We took a day trip to Pamukkale, which draws a lot of people for their natural calcium pools. The pools must have attracted the Romans as well because the ruins of the city Hierapolis are there as well. Ruins... they´re just so cool.
After exploring a few ancient roads in the sweltering heat of Pamukkale we headed south to Marmaris, a cruise ship stopover town on the Mediterranean (quite a tourist zoo). We ended staying longer than we expected because we got an incredible room there with a self-catering kitchen. After eating out every meal for 9 months I was ready to actually cook a few meals for myself, not to mention that the prices in Marmaris were alot higher than the rest of Turkey.
We eventually had to leave Marmaris after a few days since we had a flight in Athens to catch. We caught a ferry to Rhodes, yet another cruise ship stopover point. Rhodes had a bit more character since it has one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe (or so our guidebook says). The city had beautiful tiny winding roads, and at one point Sarah and I had actually wandered into the moat surrounding the old city. We explored the moat for awhile and, after starting to roast in the midday hear of Greece in the summer, we eventually found a way to climb out. It was probably not the way we were supposed to go since we had to hop a few fences, but we made it out unscathed.
The hostel we stayed at in Rhodes had a little more character than what we were used to. Our dorm room had the option of two bunk beds, one on top of another, or two both on the ground, or one double bed. Even better, there were two people camping on the roof, one in a tent (his own) and one who just slept on a mat. The guy in the tent was an
interesting Swedish guy with a freakish memory who had been there so long he was getting mail there. We gave him my parents address at home and they have already gotten mail from him, he even gave us his return address as being at the hostal so I guess he´s going to be there for awhile.
From Rhodes we took an overnight ferry to get to Athens, it was very nice once we found a place to sleep away from the chain smoking gypsy families. Our stay in Athens was short but we did have enough time to check out the Acropolis and the Olympic Stadium for this summer´s Olympics. Both were in an equal state of disrepair. The Acropolis was interesting to see, but truthfully, the Greek ruins we saw in Turkey had more to offer. Visiting Olympic Stadium brought true to life what we had been hearing in the news, Athens is way behind in their preparations for the Olympics. We walked around the small area that tourists were allowed to go just outside the stadium area; there was alot of
construction going on and the huge shell of a building closest to us was nothing but support arches. We asked the security guy what that building was going to be. He responded ¨I don´t even know yet.¨ This, in my mind, doesn´t seem to bode well for this summer´s Olympics.
From Athens we flew to Berlin on our way to meeting Sarah´s sister in Barcelona. Why? Because our flight had a stop over there anyway and I had heard that Berlin was a cool city. I finally felt we were truly entering the ¨western world¨ when we spotted some guys in full leather attire sporting huge mohawks. Ahhh... it almost felt like home. We saw some of what I imagine are some of the usual sites of Berlin: Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, The Brandenburg Gate, The Berliner Dome, The Topography of Terror (an open air museum about Berlin´s Nazi History. It also has a decent size section of The Wall still relatively intact).
The hostal we stayed at opened our eyes to the large amount of western, mainly North American, students spending their summer trapsing around Europe. Our last night at the hostal the common room was more like a party room and the next morning we woke up early to catch our flight and found that two people didn´t make it to their own places (one was a local and the other was camping on the ourskirts of town). Luckily the common room had couches and the people running the hostal didn´t mind ¨party crashers.¨ We flew into Barcelona feeling a little fried from our Berlin experience - I guess that´s the price we pay for drinking with college-age kids.
