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Day 11 - Istanbul - Kapikule
Hello again, a new location in this beautiful residence of mine again. This was the most thrilling clip of that day.
I also got another one I can show you.
Unbelievable! Pure madness! But that also means I have more time to talk about the people I met that day.
This is a preperation for next day because it is going to be more exciting again then. The first guy is the train manager.
... of the train I took. I left Istanbul at 10 pm, the day before wasn't that interesting because I was at the PC all the time
... and buyed some food. This time I really had some food: Three Turkish breads, Nutella and enough soft drinks and water.
Turkish bread is very cheap. It only costs 0,70 L (0,35 Euro) and that is a 300 g bread, so you most likely will get along with that.
The train manager was very nice this time: Although I had a 6-person-cabin he arranged that there was only one other pessenger.
And I even was alone there later on. The other guy was a japanese student who traveled around the world for 6 months.
It is a clichee about japanese people, I know, but with him it was the case unfortunately. He took 2 weeks for eastern europe.
But that was more time than I had, so I am the better ... yeah ... his passport looked quite adventurous in any case.
But he was quite cool, even as there were problems with the Turkish border police. He managed everything.
My second fellow in the train was a German/Turkish engineering-doctoral candidate, who had to hold a lecture in Munich.
Therefore he wanted to take a plane back to germany but couldn't, because of the ash cloud above europe.
So there were some organisatorical difficulties and he took a train because he thought he would be on time with that.
I may spoiler you: He wasn't.
After all his family was faster than he was, but he couldn't know that because the situation was quite unclear.
That was the longest part of my journey: I was in one train from 10 pm to 7:10 pm, so for 21 hours and 10 minutes.
And that also means I was in a Turkish train with interesting toilets: It is a hole and you flush with water manually.
There isn't even a seat, you are just cower there. And it was planned to change to the train leaving at 7:40 pm to Budapest.
That would also have been a night train I would have had to reserve. I say "would" because it didn't work out of course.
But what exactly happened - I'll tell you another time.