ENGLISH VERSION!!!!

The story of our trip

So I try to write this blog with my poor english. Forgive me the mistakes.
It's going to be a bit shorter then the original version.

Plans:

Soo me and my boyfriend always wanted to be some kind of wanderers.  So one year ago we decided to turn it into real. We worked, and collected money through months. And just planning and planning...
We started buying every outdoor equipments and stuffs what's needed, like tent, inflatable mattress, ( which is really easy, and you can roll it very small) and good shoes, cooking set, water cleaner, only a few, but appropriate clothes (for hot and also for cold), solar charger (what is really useful in the nature) etc..

Then we got 4 shots againts the bed illnesses with 6 kind of agents.
We bought a visa card, that we can use in every country (except Iran)
And bought visas for few country like Iran, Pakistan, and India.

1th day

And finally the 4th of June (2012) we woke up early in the morning, get on the train from our hometown, Göd, (near Budapest, Hungary) and leave..
On the first day a friend Bence Máté (who is a wellknown nature photographer) helped us and take to the romanian border, where after 30minutes waiting a transilvanian truck driver took us to south Romania, Craiova. Everything started become very different, the people, the loud music from different restaurants.
We entered the very first motel, near the main road, and said to them we had only 50 lei, which amount was the half of the price he asked. But he said ok, so we had a room!

2nd day

Next morning we met three turkish truck drivers in the motels bar, but for the request to take us to Turkey they just started rustling something in their language. So then we got some food and then again the road.. when fortunately the guys came and one of them had pity on us, and in the next minute we were on the way to Turkey.
And it was really amazing how this turkish helped us and host us in his truck. It was amazing!
He just offered cola, whisky, red bull, peach, cookies, etc, and when we had a rest, he invited us for lunch. We learned from the transilvanian guy that you should never say no to a turkish, when he offers food or drink, cause they can be hurt easily. One day travelling we got the turkish border, where he took us out (because at the border the truck is checked by police) and promised to take us to Istanbul.
It was one hour for us to buy the visa, and go through the border, and after that we couldn't find him
anywhere. We waited until 5 in the morning.

3rd day

Finally again a truck driver picked up us, what was a very big wretchedness for us. I think he was crazy! He shouted in every two minutes the two hungarian words he knew, which was very irritating after half an hour. He said to Gery to sleep, because ha wanted to go with me for having a tea, and didn't allow me to hold Gery's hand or even sleep. Etc... So it was a horrible 3 hours!!
 And than i would rather say he kicked us out of the truck at the gate of Istanbul. But it was rather annoying than frightening. Then a hungarian guy took us to the other side of Istanbul to a parking place for trucks and cars. There i really felt that the river Bosporus which devides Istanbul into two parts, at the same time symbolize the and of Europe, and the begining of Asia. Everyone was looking at me, there weren't any woman, except me. When G went to the toilette, a guy came closer and closer, so we decieded to take a rest at the back of the parking place, but he followed us, called an other guy, and started talking on his phone during staring at us. We felt really uncomfortable, and a bit scared. But then they had gone.. I don't know what was that.
After this incident a turkish guy who lives in America, took us to his hometown, Sakarya.

Tea called cay.

He was extraordinary helpful! First took us to the bus station to check when the buses goes to Cappadocia, and then invited us for a lunch, (where the waitresses liked us so much that they took a lot of pictures with us), and a tea. Here tea called cay, everyone, everywhere drinks cay, black tea with sugar in a little glass.  Like this:

In the evening went to the bus station, where the officer told us to stay in the office with them, we didn't even understand why should we stay if the bus's gonna go, but we stayed.
Two hours later, at midnight ( the bus was late) we realized we were in a bus station, in an office, invited for icecream and tea, had a fun with officers, who were really happy to met us. It was very funny because we spoke with them through google translater program.
Then all night we were travelling on the bus. When in the night a went out to the toilette, for a place like an "auto grill" i didn't even know where i had been. Everything was same but in a very eastern style, turkish sweets, everywhere rugs, turkish people.

Baklava chocolate! :)

4th day

In the morning, arrived at Cappadocia, we met 3 german girl, and spend a day and camp with them in Love vallye in Cappadocia.




 I think i should't explain why it got the name Love vallye:

Cappadocia is a big miracle. You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocia

And you can see better pics about it here!! This is Gery's website:
www.lightandnature.hu

One afternoon in Cappadocia..

Where the fairies live..

And their watchdogs.. :)

And if you want to come here, you should count with a very strange bellows sounds comes from the sky, very early in thte morning.. and you open your eyes and you will see something like this:

More shots from Gery:

This is Rose Vallye, because of it's colour..

One of the cave-houses' window

So we spent there two days. And went to Göreme in Cappadocia, to find a camping place, where we could have a shower etc.
Finally we found one, where really nice people helped us all day.
I can only recommend this place.
We spent 3 days there. It was really clean, safe, and had a nice view from there.
Our hosts were very friendly and nice.
They have also camping places and nice bungalows:

Our friendly and helpful hosts!

The camping sights

One of the bungalows.

How the tasty homemade bread is made

Ayran with pide

After these 3 days we hitch-hiked to the next city, Kayseri, where we didn't know where is the best place to go out from there by hitch-hiked. We walked here and there in this soo hot. Everyone looked at us, as we would stand out at one main street in Budapest, with a Valagyivostok label. So fortunately a nice guy picked up us, and took us the train station, and then invited us for a bug dinner in a nice restaurant, and then a tea, and took us around the city. Here in Turkey there is a drink called, ayran which is made from yoghurt, water and salt, and chilled it is really cooling in this hot, so you can get it everywhere. I love it so much!



It was really incredible how turkish people behaving with there guests. If you want to meet nice people you should come to Turkey! But not to the very touristic place!
In the train in one hour we could gain that everyone in the wagon, was listening and asking us, and a young boy translated for them. Everyone was very curious about us. We saw that our train would arrived in Malatya, at 4 pm, and the guy from couchsurfing, couldn't meet us in the morning.

With Latif

But this situation solved this problem, because a very loud man, Latif who was very attracted about us, offer his home for us to stay after arriving to Malatya. So we by taxi to his home. This guy was amazing actually. He could't even wait for us to wake up, to give breakfast for us. He was so hospitable. We had a huge breakfast, with very interesting food like rose jam.
This family was quite closed, poor, very muslim family. All day we had to pay attention to Latif, he wanted to show us everything, and always asked if everything is fine. Of course he could't speak english at all, so we could speak with him with our turkish which was 3 words only, it was very very tiring to find out what he wants to tell us, by his phantomim game. As i said they were muslims, so we had to be very careful not to hurt them, even we could't sit down on the same sofa with G because, Latif told him to go to the other one. Here it's a bit difficult for us, because everyone, but really everyone 's 2nd question after "Where do you come from?" is "Are you married or are you friends?". So we don't know what is the best answer, because, if we say "we are married", they look for our rings and don't believe us. If we say  " we are friends" they don't even allowed us to walk near each other in the street. Here  a lot of woman wear scarf on there heads. And people formally can be in love without marriage. But of course  not everywhere. So we don't know what they mean under "friends", someone knows it means we are a couple, someone doesn't thinks that at all.

Latif cut the girl's head :)

Back to Latif family, finally we found out, they were kurdish, which is a very old (4000 years old) culture, they are spread in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, and don't have an own autonomy, which causes often some kind of wars. Normally turkish and kurdish people are friends, but kurdish and foreign policy can make them enemies.



So after Latif's amazing hospitality, on the 13th of June, (wednesday), we met Ercan (the couchsurfer guy) at Malatya, and then his friends who's social status was exactly the opposite than Latif's. He was a soldier and at the same time a student at a university. Ercan was also extremely nice and helpful. We love him so much. The first evening was very interesting, we met his friends in quite rich coffe shops. And next day he took a day off, and took us to many places in Malatya, like old Malatya, and Kervanseray, so we had a busy and nice day. We tasted a lot from turkish culture and art. Ercan (his nickname is süpercan like superman) who is really open minden, informed, told us a lot about his culture and religion what was really useful for us.

With the great Ercan!! :P

Here in Malatya the all day is about, meeting with his friends and they compete for inviting us for cay or icecream etc..  :D :D like this i've never seen before.
Then we had to :D :D to go to salsa dance club with him. What was really funny because we never dance like this. But it was really good, bacause we learned a lot from turkish young people culture and thaughts. We noticed their songs are always sad and romantic. We talked about it with Ercan, he said here if the parents don't allow for a couple to marry, they have to break. Here the parents have an omnipotence on their children.
It is also like religion here. Here the Islam is not a religion, it is rather embedded into the culture and everyday life. People (even Ercan) :) says they're not religious go to the mosque, and belive in Allah, and says Asis Allah (what means Holy Allah), when they hear the muezzin's prayer, etc.. You can hear the muezzin' singin 5 times a day.  Now when  i hear that i also says, because i got used to it. :D
In this salsa club, they were very careful not to call this night party, because it is not allowed to make parties here, or drink alcohol in public places. They even turned off the music when it was prayer time.
And here it is very funny, because our light hair, skin, and eyes are very rare, so everyone is amazed about it. Everywhere, everyone's smiling at us, and whispering. Without the skill of speaking any english words, they don't know english because here they can't take advantage of it, no-one uses it.

So here in Malatya, we feel like in Paradise :) With Ercan, i feel like brother and sister, as we've known each other for ages! Out train is going on Monday, so we stay with him until that. Yesterday we a had picnic in an awesome cool place, near a big stream. So we enjoy every moments here, while Latif the nice kurdish guy calls him twice a day to take care of us, so today we want to meet him, and give some presents to him.

This caffe is made by a green berry called terebinth, what is  typical here