Istanbul

On Earth there is a city, vast and populuos, bright and colorful, busy and loud, appealing with its beauty and yet filled with mysteries and secrets. An ancient city connecting modern Europe and exotic Asia. A city that bears a mark of many civilizations and stood the test of time. That is the magnificent Istanbul - the heart of Turkey! Known by many names, the city was the capital of glorious empires and thus an unreachable goal for many Bulgarian rulers throughout milleniums. There is something magnetic in this city that makes you want to visit it, to explore it. I personally had never been there, although it's so near, but knew that I'll see it one day soon.

And this day came. Although it was one of the top destinations for my next trip outside Bulgaria, I didn't plan to go there that soon. But I couldn't resist to accept Silvia's invitation to join her and go to surprise our friends from AIESEC that had a huge conference there. At first I was thinking to reject the offer, but when my other plans for the week collapsed, I had no choice but to happily accept and go there. During that time Adam was visiting me so I took him with me and the three of us headed to Istanbul with the night bus on Monday.

The trip wasn't without trouble. We had to wait 7 hours on the Turkish border :( You can imagine our frustration knowing that we are stuck there and will miss the opening of the AIESEC conference. Nobody knew how long we are going to stay on the border so everybody was relived when we finally passed it at 8 o'clock in the morning. We were late, very late, but still had enough time to see our friends. At 13:00 we reached Istanbul and started looking for our hostel. After we found it we changed clothes and went to the site of the Global Village where AIESECers from 102 countries were gathered to present their countries!

So some words for the AIESEC conference: It's called Intenetional Congress (IC) and gathers the MCs from all AIESEC countries. This is the biggest and most important conference in AIESEC! There you can feel the spirit on internationalism; the passion of the young and ambitios future leaders of the World; and test your phisical and mental limits in a 10days marathon of high-quality sessions, many new contacts from the whole world and plans and strategies for cooperation and everyday parties :) That's the place we went to spend our first day in Istanbul. We managed to catch the Global Village and the official openning where we heard speeches from the mayor of Istanbul, PAI, CCP,MCP of Turkey, HR Manager of HP and saw performances of the famous "Fire of Anatolia" and the Whirling Dirvishes. It was amazing! And beside all we managed to surprise or friends from the AIESEC :) I saw many friends from Denmark, Serbia and Bulgaria. Of course I couldn't resist to go to the stage and join the AIESEC dances :) There we saw another friend - Piotr - the CEEDer of LC VTU, who was also there to see the city and the openning and joined us for the rest of our stay there.

The 4 explorers :)

So after the openning the 4 of us (+ Piotr) went to the hostel and after some preparation went out again to see the nightlife of Istanbul. We went to a disko but I we didn't like it. And maybe it's not a good idea to go in a disko full of Turkish men when you are with a beautiful girl like Silvi. Anyway, we found a really nice classical turkish place - a narrow street full of small tables with short chairs, where you can drink Turkish tea, smoke nargile (shisha) and play tabla (backgamon). That's exactly what we did :) Me and Silvi taught Adam and Piotr how to play tabla while drinking tea and smoking nargile. It was magical :) It was so typically turkish and so pleasant :)

In front of Topcapi Palace

Traditional military costumes procession

In the Blue Mosque

The next day we started our sightseeing. Adam really wanted to go to Asia so we separeted. The rest of us went to SultanAhmed - the old city. There we went inside the Blue Mosque and showered in a fountain :D I can tell you one thing about Turkey - you walk and sweat, stay and sweat, breathe and sweat! I just couldn't count how many litres of water we drunk during that day :) We separeted again - Silvi went to an Islamic museum while I and Piotr went to the Kapali Carsi (the Grand Bazaar) and in Hagia Sophia. I just won't say anything about the last one because words are not enough to describe it! During the 2 days Piotr made over 500 photos so I can't wait to see them soon :)

In front of Hagia Sophia

In the afternoon we all gathered again and saw some more things. We went to 2 other mosques (Silvi is just amazing with the scarves around her body :D) and again to Kapali Carsi. I caould even bargain and bought a little souvenir :)

Unfortunatelly we had to go back :( So our short trip to Istanbul ended but we had a really great time there! I want to thank Silvi espacially for making me go there and also Adam and Piotr for sharing this trip with us!