It won't be as detailed as before because a) I've left it like, a month too long to write! and b) long posts get a bit boring, don't you think? This will still be a long post, but not mind-numbingly long like it would have been before.
First thing's first...I saved my bum off to get to Turkey and even though it seriously wiped out all my hard-earned savings I am so glad I did it and wouldn't have done it any differently had I another chance. In the weeks before I went, we were short a girl at work because Katie quit (and now we know she was lying about her reasons for abruptly quitting...way to go dignity!) and I was pulling 15hr shifts and saving about €400 each week. Now that we have another girl on staff and I'm down to 5 days again I'm lucky if I get that in my pay packet each week. Although I did get a €5 per shift payrise. That still puts me at about €10 below minimum wage, I reckon :-P
So yeah, Darren and I headed off firstly for London where we were to stay for a meagre 24hrs then off to Istanbul. My first impressions of England were it was nice and very much like the charming countryside I see in those pommie shows Mum watches on UKTV about property development and all that. We even saw the canals with the canal boats in them that people live in! It was all very quaint and all that...bunnies running through fields and all that. Mind you, we were on the train coming into the city from Stansted so we were about 2hrs out of town.
To be honest, when I got into London city proper my first impression was that it was big, and grey, and dreary (was raining) and very very busy. We went on the bus from Liverpool St station through to Piccadilly so we got to see all the landmarks along the way.
The hostel we were at was massive...6 floors and wouldn't you know it, we were on the 5th floor. The lift was broken! A bit of exercise never hurt anyone (did it?) and it's not like there is a lift at Paddys...
We went out and saw Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square, then went to the Slug & Lettuce ( a chain pub that is all over London...we don't really have pub 'chains' back home like they do over here) and saw SoHo and West End and all that area. It was so crowded...
Me outside the gates of Buckingham Palace. Didn't take notice of whether the flag was flying or not...apparently if the flag is flying over Buckingham then it means the Queen is there at that moment.
Westminster Abbey-very impressive!
Not quite sure what this is...haha
Didn't go on it-it was like £20 or something crazy like that! You can see what a dreary day it was though.
Earlier that day we went up to St James Gate station or something like that and it just so happens that Abbey Road is right around the corner-I had to get the obligatory photo!
It's blurry cos Darren was trying to take it in the gap in traffic, before the bus came down the road!
That area of London is quite nice, actually, and is Lord's Cricket ground is around there so we went for the tour. We were with a group of Indians who knew alllll the facts and it was fun to see them interact with the tour guide (a very proper english chap-stereotypical-who knew alot about cricket too).
Here's the members stand. Apparently Sir Paul McCartney owns one of the houses really close to here...I wonder if Mucca got it in the divorce settlement?
So after a full day of sightseeing we headed back to the hostel for some sleep. Only to be woken up at 3am by the sounds of one of the guys in our room vomiting all over the floor. Charming. He didn't even make an effort to get out of bed, he just leant his head over and chundered...alot. The other room guests have him hell for it the next morning, and rightly so! In all my time working at Paddy's I am so glad that I have never had to deal with something like that!!! (touch wood) *although* we did have a group of drunken scotsmen (in kilts!) over one of the rubgy weekends and one of them thought it would be a good idea to do a poo on the internal stairs...
So, the next morning we high-tailed it out of the vomit-room and went to see if Harrod's was open. It wasn't, as it doesn't open til noon on Sundays. oh well...looking at the windows it looks like a very classy and out of my price range shop! Darren had been there before and said it's amazing inside. Really wish I got to see it!
We were going to see the Tower of London but it was 3pm and our flight was at....6 or 7pm so we decided to cut it short and head off early. WELL since the tube was being stupid that day and not all lines were open and it took so long to get to Heathrow we missed our flight by like, 5minutes. Not happy. So we found somewhere to stay nearby and got to the airport at 4.30am the next morning to try for standby on the 7am flight. Well, after so much mucking around (nobody there knew anything...their excuse: 'oh it's still new here') and being passed from desk to desk, we didn't make the 7am flight. The next one was at 10.30am. So we waited and waited for that and finally got told we could go but it would be leaving soon. We rushed to the departure gate only to be told there was a problem with the fuel line or something and the flight would be delayed until noon. Noon rolls around and we get told they can't fix the plane and we're getting a new one that will leave at 2pm. We were very unhappy chappies...think about it-we had been at the airport for close to 10hrs already. It also meant that we would miss out on the Bosphorus cruise that night, and that was one of the things we really wanted to do. Worse still, talking to a girl on our tour group who was ON the 7am flight...she said that there were STACKS of seats still available!
So we finally got to Istanbul and even though it was late we went out and had a look about town. None of it made any sense to me because I was in a place that was so different to anywhere I had been before. It wasn't dirty like some places in Asia, it wasn't scary like some places in India, and it wasn't as 'comfortable' feeling as some places in Europe. It was a weird mix of all three. 97% of Turkey is classified as 'Asia' and the other 3% is 'Europe'. It shares borders with Greece, Iraq, Iran, etc and it's about the same length as NSW (probably a little longer).
It was surprisingly clean, and European feeling, but then every so often the Mosques would start their prayers and the loudspeakers would blare out prayers and chants in an indecipherable language (to me).
I wish I had gotten more photos of Istanbul but I was either not carrying my camera or it was out of batteries. Shame, really.
We joined our tour the next morning and we set off for the western part of Turkey, namely, the Gallipoli peninsula.
The Turkish name for Gallipoli is Gelibolu, and along the way our tour guide told us important facts about Turkey and about the war. This was good for me, because I didn't really know all the nitty gritty about the First World War. I have been involved in ANZAC day marches and ceremonies and all that, but it annoyed me that I didn't know more. I'm glad that I actually went out and experienced the landscape and culture first hand, instead of just Googling it.
We saw the small fishing village of Galebolu proper, before heading onto Carnakkale and other nice Western-Turkish towns. I could look up my itinerary what exactly they were but it's a bit late at night for that sort of effort.
Galebolu fishing village
It was national childrens day around the time we were there so there were Turkish flags absolutely everywhere! Pretty much every single building had at least one flying and many of them had pictures of their beloved first president Ataturk on them. It was so patriotic-not even on Australia Day does home get so festooned and adorned with our ensign!
We saw the believed site of Troy, saw Pergamon (Bergama) and a lot of other nice places but Anzac cove was by far the most beautiful and also meaningful place for me.
The little stretch of beach just behind me and to the right, is the actual beach where the ANZAC troops landed. It's high tide and also much eroded since 1915 but to think that these poor guys turned up in their boats, being watched from the hills by the Turks and having to climb up into the hills covered in scrub under heavy gunfire-it was unbelievable. Very sobering thought! Especially when it came to be around 4.30am, the time they landed, and we felt how bitterly cold and windy it was. I have so much respect and admiration for the ANZACS now, not that I didn't before but I think I understand better now.
I don't want to harp on about it but the campaign served no purpose except to get over 60,000 Turkish soliders killed and over 16,000 ANZAC troops being killed. Killed for no good reason, other than some high-ups wanted to try and get a better strategic foothold. Makes me sick to think about it.
We saw the gravestones at a few of the several grave sites that are scattered over the hills. Most of the ages of the men killed were between 18 and 25yrs...
Ari Burnu (spelling?) cemetery, where the ANZAC service used to be held until attendance grew too large.
We all started filing into the service site at 4pm...the day before ANZAC day. At first I thought it was too early but as the night went on and people just kept coming in and coming in, I realise that unless they staggered the entrances then it would be a madhouse. The backpackers got in first because we are the most hardy and willing to sit about for 13hrs in the cold and wind.
You can see the hills behind the beach...so steep in places that the diggers had to stab their bayonets into the sandy soil just to get a hold of something to drag themselves up the hill with. There ended up being over 10,000 people attending the dawn service. All night they played historical documentaries and clips about the Gallipoli landing, and Jennifer Byrne from ABC was doing interviews with historians and the like. It kept us awake and interested until 5.30am when the service started. It was also good to see clips of what the services back home were like and also the messages from Turkish, New Zealand, and Australian heads of state were something I was particularly looking forward to (Kevin Rudd!!!).
That fool Warren Brown (who does the cartoon on the letters page in the Daily Telegraph) was the MC and he told us off for doing the Mexican Wave. Get about ten thousand backpackers who have been sitting about in the cold for several hours and in a big stadium/area together and you are bound to get a wave or two. I'm so glad that alcohol was prohibited though because it would have wrecked the whole thing.
The Dawn Service was solemn, and I'm very glad I could be there for it. It was very well done, I think.
But it was SO COLD...I don't think I have been that cold since I was in Alaska...it was just freezing and the wind was blowing and in our little plastic seats it was impossible to get comfortable or get any sleep. The british couple next to us tried to sleep on the floor at the feet of the seats (crazy) and it put me off a bit because they didn't seem to care about any of the other stuff that went along with ANZAC day, they just wanted to wake up and see the Dawn Service and get on with it. How could they appreciate what the diggers went through if they just laid down and slept while we were all up experiencing the same sort of conditions the diggers were? Except at least we had blankets and gloves and coats and we didn't have to jump into chest deep water and then run for our lives into incoming machine-gun fire.
After the service, we all filed out and made the trek up into the hills to get to the Lone Pine cemetery for the Australian service. I liked the Australian service better than the Dawn service-maybe because it was during daylight hours and not so cold, but mostly because it was more specific and there were a few less people there. Ironically, after the extreme cold of the night before I ended up getting a sunburnt face at the Australian service. So I went from being freezing cold to burning up within 12 hours.
We sat on the grass under the shade of the Pine and watched the Kiwi service on the big screen. It was the best service out of them all-they had a magnificent orator (Winston Peters?) who said the best speech I have heard about ANZAC day yet! It was fantastic. He makes reference to the amount of people in the Kiwi service (about 4000) and how that was about how many ANZAC soldiers died on this day, back in 1915. Very sombre and it really hits you in the guts when you think of it in that way. He said a part like, 'take a look at the person on your left, and the person on your right. If you were soldiers here on ANZAC day, these people would have either be injured or killed on the day of landing'.
That's not the speech I meant but it's still a cracking speech.
yes, THE lone pine (replaced for the original one I think, though)
There are something like 600 (6000?) soldiers buried here but they only have graves for less than half of them. Alot of the graves say 'believed to be buried here' because they're not even sure if the soldiers remains are there or not.
It makes me angry...the Allied troops INVADED Turkey and the vast majority of deaths were Turkish. They were just trying to defend their land and they paid dearly for it. Meanwhile mothers of ANZAC soldiers lost their sons, wives lost their husbands and children lost their fathers, for a futile campaign.
I am proud of the ANZAC troops and I am proud to be Australian. I hate the idea of the war and the fact that it was so damaging to all involved...
Inside the war memorial was a visitors book so I signed it, as did several hundred other people. Who knows-go to Lone Pine one day and you might be able to see where I left my mark.
It was also Darren's birthday on ANZAC day (along with a few other people there-as we heard Happy Birthday being sung somewhere in the crowd just after midnight) so I hope he had a nice day for it :-)
*yawn* It's 2am now so I had better leave it here for the night and update it tomorrow or whenever I next get the chance...
Next update will include our last day in Istanbul and also Frankfurt.
I know there are a lot of little things that happened that I have left out but they might come back to me...I put all the most important things in for now, I reckon.
Time to get to bed now!
I'll write more soon-including CHEESE ROLLING and a general post about how things are going over here. Got some news, too!!! So stay tuned. LEAVE A COMMENT ALREADY! I don't like having to beg, you know. I don't think anybody reads this thing anymore...
slain go foill!
-lisha
