Opposites attract… the same two American tourists: Part 2

Our first two destinations could not have been more different. Turkey was lavish, loud, colorful, full of uncomfortable accommodations and annoying people. It was hot and full of must-see sights. Romania was simple, austere even, quiet, gray, there were perfect accommodations and generous people. It was cold, but full of family.

We arrived to the tiny airport in Cluj-Napoca, Romania and were greeted by Fuddy’s friend, Ali, and her husband, Tibi. They brought us to their car (that they made fun of for its size every change they got) and drove us to their flat in the city.

First Translyvania sighting!

When we got their home, we took our shoes off at the entrance and Ali searched through a bag of slippers for us to wear inside. “That’s so nice of her! And kind of weird…” I said to my sister later that night. Fuddy had been to Romania once and told me it was actually a sort of social tradition ("a kind of must"says Ali). Almost every home has slippers for people to wear inside when they take off their shoes. Every home we went to in Romania, did, in fact, have slippers for us to wear inside. They take that Chinese no-shoe rule to a whole new level.

Ali and Tibi insisted we sleep in their bed while they slept on the coach. This was only our first taste of the unassailable Romanian hospitality.

The next day, Ali had to work, but Tibi got the day off, so he drove Fuddy and I to some of his favorite places. First we went to Salina Turda in the city of Turda (pronounced like Tuer-dah, stop being a 5-year-old), which is a huge old Salt Mine that was created in 1075. Since 1932 it has been a tourist destination and used for children with Asthma to help improve their symptoms. Tibi explained that was the reason why the biggest area of the mine had a ferris wheel, mini gold, bowling and row-boats, among other kid-friendly features. At the end of the visit we went to the gift-window (I can’t bring myelf to call it a gift shop) and Tibi let us each pick out a souveneir he insisted on buying us. This is when we started to call Tibi 'Dad'.

Getting to the Salt Mine through a seemingly-never ending tunnel

Rudolf Hall in Salina Turda (Salt Mine of Turda)

Official Goonies section of the mine. Ok, maybe not "official"

Fuddy and I in the Salt Mine


Mini Golf section of the Salt Mine, of course


Supposedly real salt, but I didn't lick it, so I can't be sure...

Next we did a short impromptu hike to Cheile Canyon, a beautiful canyon near the Salt Mine. The pictures look fake; it was so perfect.

We got Tibi’s favorite for dinner, Kebab. We knew we would get our fill of authentic Romanian food soon, so we were fine with it, especially since it was delicious and in a cool underground cave. At night we went to the town center to look around then to Ali and Tibi’s their friends for drinks and the tried what I can only describe as the Romanian equivalent to moonshine, made by one of their friends. This stuff was ROUGH. 

Freezing on top of a mountain in Cluj.

National Opera house in Cluj

A real ram in the nativity scene... that you could pet like a dog.
This beats the sheep in the Brussels nativity scene.


Fuddy and in front of St. Michael's Cathedral and the
statue of Mathias Rex, former king of Hungarian Empire


Orthodox Cathedral of Cluj and Christmas lights!


Gymnastics in Romania! I had to. It's like a pilgrimage
for anyone who has ever done a back-tuck.

The next day was Christmas Eve, so we drove through numerous adorable villages to Ali and Tibi´s hometown, Simleu Silvaniei.

Adorable Romanian Village

Ali and Tibi tell us this is normal Romanian traffic behavior


A village in Romania that is really famous for onions...
This is their onion statue.

We met Ali’s mother and sister, ate some lunch (but Ali’s Mom made us take a shot of irish cream whiskey first- NOT the delicious Baileys kind, the hard-romanian-life kind), walked around and saw everything there was to see in their town, then to Tibi’s parents for a Hungarian Christmas Eve dinner (his mother is from Hungary). Fuddy and I were left confused and feeling more foreign than ever a lot of the time when Ali and Tibi were visiting with friends and family. Listening to Romanian was perfectly fine with me, though, and I could actually understand some of it! It is like a mix of French, Spanish and Italian; it may even be my new favorite language (sorry Spanish!) After dinner, we returned to Ali’s to open our presents. We were excited to have one present each that Fuddy brought from home (Thank you Auntie Karen!), and we so very pleasantly surprised when Ali gave us presents as well.

Ali's mom, Fuddy, Ali, Oana (Ali's sister) and me at Ali's

Supposedly there is hidden treasure in this mountain. Oh, Romania.

After that was when the fun really started. In Romanian villages there is a special tradition wherein groups of friends go from place to place, sing Christmas carols, are invited in (because everyone knows everyone else in these villages), fed, given a whole lot to drink, then go to the next house. It's like Halloween, except you sing instead of say "Trick or Treat" and you get alcohol and pork instead of fun size skittles. Don't worry, kids get in on the action too, they go around, sing, and get the equivalent of $2 a house... which they probably use to buy alcohol. We went to six houses and finally got to sleep at about 5 AM. The ironic part is I used to WAKE UP at 5 AM on Christmas to be the first to see what Santa had left. It's funny when your life goes full circle. 

At one of the many homes in which we ate and drank on Christmas Eve

One of the many Christmas Eve traditional spreads we encountered.

There was some lovely cultural confusion during the night but our favorite was when Tibi’s friend (I forget his name, so we will call his Dracula, since we were in Transylvania) asked how to say “noroc” (the Romanian word for “cheers”). Before we could answer, he guessed “church” and I decided to tell Dracula that yes, it was “Church.” We drank to church for the rest of the night (and the rest of the euro-trip), appropriate since it was Christmas day. Our second favorite part of the night was when one young guy shut everyone up and asked Fuddy from across the room:

“Excuse me, I just heard you are 30 years old. And you are not married? Why?” He said it not with disdain, but with genuine confusion and concern. 

Thank god Fuddy has adequate self-esteem. As you can see, Romanians do not tip-toe around feelings, as we Americans so, but I would not have it ay other way; it’s refreshing.

We awoke on Christmas at about 2 PM and had some MORE pork and clementines. Pork and clemetines were the theme of the holiday season for us- every meal, every day. Good thing we aren’t good kosher jews. We napped afterwards, as if we needed any more sleep, then went to where Ali and Tibi had their wedding to meet up with their friends and have drinks. 

Fuddy and I with "DAD" at the location where he and Ali had their wedding

"Dad" and I!! 

What did we do Christmas night? We went to a club in a random village, of course! It looked like a barn or warehous from the outside, but was FULL inside. It was fun but SO smoky, with absolutely no emergency exits (problematic, but clearly we got out alive). When our eyes started to burn so much from the smoke that we couldn’t keep them open, we knew it was time to go.

Fuddy and I sober on Christmas day.


Fuddy, Ali, and I... less sober on Christmas night. 

Ali, Fuddy and me at the club on Christmas

We drove back to Cluj the next day and talked about politics the whole way, including Tibi’s swine-flu conspiracy theories that actually held some weight, American greed, the communist influence and quality of life in Romania, and a bunch of other heavy topics. He was a surprisingly good debater for having such rudimentary English skills and hardly any chance to practice (...and I continue to feel inadequate with my own language skills). We got back to Cluj, packed, and headed to the airport to say goodbye to Ali and Tibi. Before we left, Dad gave us some candies for being good. Saying good-bye to Romania was certainly a lot harder than bidding adieu to Turkey.

Opposites attract… the same two American tourists: Part 1

         In the typical fashion of arrival in a new country, it took about 10 minutes for me to become completely confused in Istanbul. The metro works on a plastic coin system that was very hard to figure out on our own. Chuck E. Cheese is more legit. After that trouble, we took a LONG ride to Sultanahmet, the old part of town where we were staying. If you go to Istanbul, take the 10 or 15 euro shuttle from the airport. It´s worth it. 

On the second leg of our trip to the hostel, a random man asked where we from. He asked where we were staying... and I told him, immediately realizing my error when his creepiness started to emerge. He said he was from Libya and working on his PhD there. He seemed to be trying to impress us, which totally confused me since he was middle-aged and unattractive. Dude, I am 21. I am not interested. My sister is gorgeous, so she is not interested either. He wouldn´t stop talking to us and asked again where we were staying and I knew well enough not to tell him again. He kept pushing and pushing and we got more and more nervous. We were two foreign girls, American no-less, with backpacks and no clue about our surroundings. At the Sultanhamet stop, our stop, he got off and asked us to come to his hotel with him. WHAT??? No, thank you sir. I squeezed my sister to indicate not to get off at that stop even though it was near our hostel. We went to the next stop and turned around, catching the last tram of the night. When I asked a police officer to help with directions, I realized when I pulled out the reservation that I told the guy the WRONG name of the hostel! I screamed with delight and Fuddy did too. The creepy Libyan would have had to go to Budapest if he tried to find the hostel that I originally mentioned to him. A huge weight was lifted, but the ones on our backs remained. The backpacks were like targets on our walk, causing every man we passed to taunt us and attempt to solicit us to go into their restaurant, bar or shop. The voices of creepy Turkish men yelling at us became the soundtrack to our Turkey trip. 

We had the 7-bed room to ourselves, but the next day two more girls came, one from Sweden and another incredibly annoying girl from northern Californian who thought she was cool because she had a uniquely heinous lisp and “the only Europe (she) had been to was this side of Istanbul.” There was one point that I almost beat her up, but realized a Turkish prison would be no fun at all; the streets were rough enough.

We woke up the next day to go to the famous Blue Mosque, only about 60 meters from our hostel, but it was closed for prayer time. Istanbul was my first experience in a place where they have a call to prayer and although the prayer music is nice and I don´t want to be culturally insensitive, it is easy to get sick of it when it is blasting throughout the streets five times a day. We went to see the Hippodrome, a sort of ancient athletic complex built in 203 AD when Istanbul was Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, but it was kind of a disappointment.

Obelisk erected in 390 AD... so it is fairly old.

Fountain given as a gift to Sultan Abdulhamit from German emperor Wilhem II in 1901.

Next was the Grand Bazaar. The bartering is insane, almost as insane as how much we were solicited to buy things and probably less insane than the sheer amount of STUFF in this city. One store-owner with a championship unibrow (which says a lot, because most of these guys had unibrows) befriended us and gave us free apple tea, a staple in Istanbul. He was nice until he tried to get us to go out with him that night. He may have meant well, but after the first night, we did not trust any man in Turkey again. This same thing happened three more times that day, apple tea included.

Are you overwhelmed by all the pictures you just saw? 

Yeah. Imagine being there. There are over 4000 shops.

Fuddy and I and our free apple tea (the locals call it "tourist tea")

Silly little sister

Silly big sister

The activity of the night was the Blue Mosque, commissioned by Sultan Ahmet I in 1609. It is unique for it's six minarets, whereas most mosques have two or four at the most. The pictures do not display nearly how beautiful it is on the outside.

Blue Mosque excitement




Blue Mosque interior

The next day we went on a Bosphorous cruise, where we got to cruise along the Bosphorous strait and go to the Asian side of Istanbul. We got a really great deal with an overly friendly guide. He let my sister and I sit up front and gave us personal Turkish lessons. I learned how to say everything from “sisters” to “thank you” to “adventure.” The lessons were much more welcome than the incredibly strong drinks he gave us.

Europe side...

...Asian side. So different!

Unfortunately, our experience on the Asian side was… culturally unsatisfying. After we were haggled by 5 men at the same time to go their waterfront restaurant we chose one that offered us a deal on fish. We decided how much we wanted to spend and ordered accordingly, accounting for the fact that they would probably charge us for bread. We ordered a spicy tomato puree for the bread as we waited for our fish. The waiter brought out tea as well. When our fish did not come for an hour, we told them we had to leave to catch our tour group, they brought out the check that should have been for about 8 Lira, and the total read 22 Lira, charging us for the tea that is ALWAYS free, water glasses (with no water in them) and the bread. I was furious. Screaming and castigating does no good when the two parties do not speak the same language, but I did it just the same. The waiter at the adjacent restaurant laughed to himself as he looked on as if to say “this would never happen at MY restaurant.” The owner played dumb, but I played bitch. We left a pile of euros and lira equaling around 15 Lira, only because Fuddy insisted we compromise. I was so enraged during the entire trip about being scammed that day. It was not because of the 7 Lira I lost, of course, but because of the complete lack of business integrity I experienced. This will be one of my vivid memories of the trip and I could not be more upset about it. Things did get a little better once our captain gave us free gigantic fresh seafood sandwiches when we admitted we were hungry.

We were so ready to have our relaxing Turkish bath to wind down and went to the famous Suleymaniye Hamam to get our spa treatment. It was relaxing, but they were serious about the scrubbing, and I don´t even want to think about the cleanliness of the tools they used.

Inside of the Turkish Bath 

SO relaxed post-bath

After that we went to Rumist Café, a restaurant featured in the New York times and recommended to us by the owner. He gave us two recommendations for meals so we decide to trust him. We did the same for dessert. All good decisions. We met a bunch of Americans there, a huge black guy from DC, a recent graduate from Ohio, and two students from Walpole. It was such a homey place with authentic and quality food, not to mention the great people who work there; it turned out to be one of our favorite parts of the trip.

Our new friend from the local travel agency who we saw literally everyday
during our time in Turkey. Becoming a local and meeting people in
our neighborhood was one of our favorite parts of the visit.

My delicious dinner that came OVER A FIRE. Awesome

The next morning we went to Hagia Sofia. Built in 360 ADIt was once a church, then a mosque and now a museum. It was completely breathtaking inside. One of the major facets was the alter- the only place in the world with both the Virgin Mary from Christianity and a Muslim "Mihrab". 

Insanely beautiful

Alter-piece.

The last stop before we left was the Spice Market to sample a little too much Baklava and Turkish delight.

The site of our lovely and gigantic 2 Lira sandwiches. 2 Lira = approximately $1.60

Turkish Baklava, Hazelnut candies, Turkish delight

Spice Market craziness

Although it was an exciting and different experience, when we left Istanbul, we were ready to go.

Here are just some of the Famous lines from our unofficial Istanbul soundtrack that Fuddy and I heard every hour of every day:

“Lady lady lady, you beautiful. Would you like to come in my shop?”

“You. Eyes. Very nice”

“Kebab lamb? Chicken? Lady, you hungry?”

“Lady look at bracelets 10 Lira, but I give you special price. 8 Lira. Just for you. Lady! Lady!!!!”

“Hey girl. Hello lady.”

“Hola guapa”

“Hola eres española?”

“Angelina Jolie???” This one was our favorite, naturally.

Two Mollohan girls in Madrid

Of course there was a 4-hour delay for my sister’s flight. It was hard to mind though. The arrivals section of Barajas has free wifi, but more importantly, the arrivals section has… arrivals. At the risk of getting too sappy, I will just say that if you ever loose faith in love or the significance of human connections, go hang out at arrivals in your nearest airport (free therapy!). I have never seen so much live emotion in one place in my whole life. When I finally saw my sister, Stephanie (who I have called Fuddy since I could talk-there is really no need to explain this) emerge from the luggage claim section, I was feeling more warm and fuzzy than ever, even though my plans for the day got completely messed up by her planes delay.

On our walk to El Parque de Buen Retiro later in the day, Fuddy was pick-pocketed. This further delayed my plans. One good thing about the tragedy though, was that I learned I am much better at Spanish in stressful situations where I am trying to help English speakers. Yay! We decided I would lend Fuddy money for the entire trip until she could get to her money again in the U.S. Fun stuff.

After the wallet fiasco we went home, with nothing on my daily to-do list checked off. I was very unhappy.

We started early the next morning with Templo de Debod and Plaza de España, then to El Palacio Real, Museo de Reina Sofia, Puerta del Sol, El Tigre (for cheap Tapas and Sangria), El Palacio Cristal, Mercado de San Miguel (coffee to recharge), La Plaza Mayor and El Museo del Prado. I know, I know; I may have overdone it, but we were on a tight schedule. 

Epic guide with a moustache in Museo de Reina Sofia 

Vertical Garden at Caixaforma


Sissy and Templo de Debod


Mercado de San Miguel


Sisters and Sangria at El Tigre Bar


El Palacio de Cristal at El Parque del Buen Retiro


El Palacio Real

At night, we went to get Indian food in the Lavapies neighborhood then to Sol to get some drinks. We planned on just beers at Dubliners until we saw my friendo Guillermo, who works at Kapital so we decided to go there with him. Now, we had an amazing time and I love my sister, and she doesn´t LOOK 9 years older than me, but she is, so I have to admit it was the slightest bit odd to be get down on the dance floor with her at club Kapital.

Christmas at La Puerta del sol

Kapital craziness

I had to show my sister La Chocolatería de San Gines and introduce their chocolate with churros, so we went Sunday morning before the Rastro Market. The Rastro was the typical stressful experience, but I am glad we went as it proved a lovely warm-up for the crazy shopping experiences in Istanbul.

When we got back from the Rastro, we packed quickly (and I really DID lay out all the things I wanted to bring, removed half, and put the remainder in my backpack) and headed to the airport. Destination: Istanbul, Turkey.