Puttin' on the Ritz...

Istanbul, Constantinople... The title was Brandon's idea and he started singing, but doesn't know the words to the song. If you don't know what I am am talking about, don't worry about it.

On to other things.
Love the Bazaars! They are full of color, smells, activity, and well, people. Everywhere and I can just imagine how this very touristy area called Sultanamet would be in the summer at the height of tourist season. We toured Topkapi palace yesterday and it took about 4 hours. It was the home of the Sultan built and redesigned over a 600 year period, I believe. Our first stop in the palace was the Harem. I can imagine that this was the most exotic portion of the palace. We have a few pictures that do not do it justice. Once thing I love about the palace and alot of the places here is the porceline tiles in beautiful vibrant colors, but mostly shades of blue, green, and red. I regret that I have to haul my pack around for another 2 weeks otherwise I would spend a fortune on tiles and plates and beautiful ceramics. The carpets are beautiful too, but I love the ceramics. Thanksfully, for my wallet's sake, we are leaving Istanbul tomorrow evening.

Today we left after breakfast (bread, jam, cheese, tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, and delicious turkish tea) on the ferry for a tour of the Bosphorous. It was a great day to do this since it rained the whole morning. In the rain we hiked up to the castle at the entrance of the Bosphorous connecting it to the Black sea. The Bosphorous connects Turkey (Istanbul) to the rest of Europe and Asia. Speaking of Asia...we spent 3 hours on the Asian shore today and tomorrow, our bus departs from the Asian side of Istanbul. I can add another continent to my list, not that I'm counting. :O)

Somehow I forgot that we were coming to an Islamic (partially) country at the height of Ramadan. It ends on 19 September, the day before we leave Turkey. During Ramadan, practicing Muslims fast from dawn to sunset. The foods lines get busier after this point. Throughout the day we hear Islamic prayers over loud speakers from all the many many Mosques around Istanbul. It is very captivating.

Tomorrow we board our over night bus for Pamukkale. It leaves from Istanbul at 10pm and arrives just outside of Pamukkale at 7:30am. Because we're a bit crazy, we are taking the best bus line (Varan) in Turkey, or so the rumor goes. We'll let you know how it goes.

Turkish delights, kabaps, baklava...

We arrived in Istanbul today. We easily took the metro to the area of Istanbul where our pension is located. We stepped off the metro between Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque. Beautiful buildings. They are even amazing at night. We will visit tomorrow. I bought a head scarf at the Grand Bazaar today for the occasion. Being a woman, I cannot enter the mosque without my head covered.I found a beautiful turkish silk printed scarf. :O)
For dinner we headed through town and up a hill. Plenty of flat bread and a meze platter to taste all the goods. Everything was delicious. We then stopped in a dessert shop for turkish delight, which is absolutely delightful.
Tomorrow we will wander through Topaki Palace and eat and eat. Everything we have had so far has been wonderful, hope we don't gain 20kg!

Waddle and Daub

Yesterday we toured more of Kiev including the Lavra (another Ukranian Orthodox monestary complete with entombd monks in a couple of caves with shrivey, leathery hands) and the WWII monument. I'll tell you about that when we get back.
Today we headed out to Alister and Sarah's Dacha (or country home) in the countryside about 1 1/2 hours from Kiev. Beautiful area and the house needs lots (!) of work. We learned to waddle and daub. We're exhausted but are about to enjoy a classic Kiev torte so this is all for now and update this again later. Meanwhile, Google waddle and daub and pray for us because we just found out Istanbul is flooded as we speak.

Do you speak Russian?

How about Ukranian? Neither do we. This has been the most difficult part about being in Ukraine. A lot of countries in Europe speak a lot of English and it's not that Ukranianians don't, but they are less apt to. Additionally, the alphabet is cyrillic, not Roman. This means that I can't read any of the signs. If you have ever wondered what it feels like to be illiterate, come to a country that doesn't use the same alphabet as we do in English, German, French, Spanish...just to name a few. So once I look at a sign, I must change to letters to their roman letter counter parts and not all the letters have a single letter equivelent. Then, I might be able to read the sign and sort of pronounce it, but since I don't have a Russian vocabulary, I can't understand it anyway. It's a sad sad state of affairs. Regardless... drast va tu! Hello!

We spent today and yesterday touring Kiev on foot mostly. The city is very spread out, but different parts of the city are accessible by subway and Kiev's subway is pretty good. We attended a reformed Christian church yesterday. It is Presbyterian. Most Ukranians are Christian, but are Ukranian or Russian Orthodox. Pictures of some of these churches to come. They are quite fasinating if you have never seen one. In so parts of the country are Roman catholic pockets. Kiev has a little bit of every religion I suspect since the population is 5 million people. (Yes, and most people live in apartment buildings built of cement) These past 2 days we have visited 3 churches and will visit the Lavra tomorrow, which is a monestary. Some of the churches date to the 11th century. They are so different from churches that I have seen in the states and western Europe. Gilded. That is my one word for them.

We visited the city square yesterday, where the Orange Revolution took place. Passed by huge government buildings. Strolled through the city's center square park. Took in some Ukranian live music. It was a fun way to pass a Sunday. Of course, Sarah topped it off with a roast chicken with carrots and potatoes. I can 99% guarantee that there were no antibiotics or hormones in that bird. It was delicious.

Today we visited the Chernobyl museum. It obviously is a newer museum since the tragedy occurred only 23 years ago. It was and is a tragedy. There still exists an exclusion zone. I was hoping to see recent info about the area, but the museum mostly focused on the 6 months after the tragedy, understandably.

Before coming to Ukraine, I knew basically nothing about the country and it's people. Considering all we have learned about their history, these people have my respect. Most people we have met are kind, gracious, and friendly really. If you ask for help (well when Sarah asks for help since she speaks Russian), they often take you right where you need to go but at the very least will point you on your way.

24 hours of travel

The first time I am able to hop on the internet.

Brandon and I left the morning of September 1st. We had hoped to catch an earlier flight out of Pittsburgh to Newark to assure ourselves that we would not miss our flight to London. We were unable to catch an earlier flight, but it didn't matter since all flights were on time and we connected to our international flight in the same terminal. The flight to London was long, but the air time was only about 5 1/2 hours which was pretty short. We had personal TV screens and we each watched a bag movie before attempting to sleep. Key word: attempt, we were pretty unsuccessful such that, when we arrived in London at 7am, we were pretty tired. We were in London long enough to take a bus to another terminal and figure out that they really do drive on the other side of the road, go through security again, and take in just enough British accents.
Our flight to Kiev was delayed by an hour or so; the only flight in the British Airways terminal to be delayed. I did not think this was a good omen. Our flight was smooth, but not in the literal sense since we experienced quite a bit of turbulence. We flew with a pretty rowdy group too and I think most of the people on the plane got up to use the bathroom at least once, maybe 2 or 3 times. Since we sat in the back by the bathroom, we noticed this and if we had not, the stewardesses yelling at people to sit down would have drawn our attention.
Since our flight was late, we arrived with 2 other international flights into Kiev. Passport control took about 45 minutes. I still don't have a stamp in my new passport either, but I must hold onto a slip of paper saying that I'm legal to be in the country.
Once we arrived at Sarah and Alister's apartment, we freshened up and repacked for our bags for an overnight train to Lviv. Our train left at 10:15pm and arrived at 6:30am. We had a new sleeper car. Although Sarah said a new car wasn't quite the experience of an old one, it was still a good experience. Brandon and I both slept well, probably because we were so exhausted.
Lviv is a pretty city near the Polish border. Being so close to Poland means that it has more European influence than Russian/Soviet. People mostly speak Ukranian in Lviv, opposed to Russian in Kiev. It didn't matter much as Brandon and I don't speak either, which has already gotten frustrating. Thank goodness for Sarah and her friend Olga! We stayed in a nice apartment at the City Center; close to all the action and food!
We took 2 buses to visit a castle out of town. Don't get any ideas of Sleeping Beauty's castle, it was much smaller and much less grand. It was recently restored and still being worked on. The ride out of the city took about 1 1/2 hours in a stuffy bus. It was worth it though! We saw plenty of countryside, part of the reason we toured this particular castle.
The next day we criss-crossed the city center, probably 6 times or so. We climbed over 400 stairs to the top of the court house clock tower to take in the entire city of Lviv, just less than 1 million people. We visited quite a few churches of many denominations, the armory and just before dinner climbed to the top of the nearest hill to have another overview of the city. Just about then the fog rolled in, obscuring our view. Did I mention that Lviv gets a lot of rain? We were lucky the first day, sunny with 80 degree temps, but not so lucky the second day.
We spent the rest of the evening in a cafe. We had our bags and our train didn't leave until 10:45pm. So we had dinner (Ukrainian food-drunken pork for me and meat/bread/veggies for Brandon), tried a bit of honey vodka (yum!), and local desserts (huckleberry strudel and baked apples...yeah, not so local, but tasty). We then took a very Soviet-era tram to the train station and settled in for the night. We unfortunately didn't sleep to much, not because it of the train necessarily, but probably because it was 5pm Eastern time and we still aren't quite adjusted. Ahh well, will probably get a cat nap sometime today.
Speaking of cats, Sarah's cat was definitely thrilled we were back home, safe and sound.

The day before...

Dealing with a few minor hiccups. I decided that we would go to Pamukkale, Turkey because there was an express overnight train and we could have had a sleeper car. The state website still lists this train, but apparently it is canceled. That leaves us with an overnight bus. Fewer hours than the train, but I don't think it will be nearly as comfortable. Oh well...

Our flight from Pittsburgh is scheduled to leave around 3pm tomorrow. We are going to try and take an earlier flight from Pittsburgh to give us more time to change to our international flight out of Newark tomorrow. The flight we are trying to catch leaves around 11am. We leave the house around 9am tomorrow morning. Sadly, our cell phones will stay behind. I will feel so disconnected with out my cell. I realized yesterday that I needed to bring a watch because I won't have my cell to check the time.

All the errands are done, house is clean, laundry clean still needs to be folded, lawn mowed. I will pack our bags this afternoon and pray we are less than 50 lbs, but need to be certain that they will be less than 20kg (44lbs) for our Ukraine to Turkey flight. We will lose probably that much when we give Sarah and Alister their Peanut Butter, Pam spray, saltine crackers, and chili powder. I don't want to pay for overweight bags.

Our last thoughts before falling asleep last night--getting a bit nervous: with anticipation and not knowing exactly how everything will go. However, we are really excited to be off. It has been a long time since we have traveled abroad.

Preparing for a month long journey

Many of you know that Brandon and Gyna are taking a month off. Call it our 2nd honeymoon, call it our 1st real honeymoon (Crater Lake was very wonderful.), call it the chance of a lifetime. Whatever you want to call it, don't call us out lunch. Really, we have wanted to travel Europe for a long time. I mean, we have wanted to take this trip since maybe 2002, but we did decide to be gone "a long time." For people who just bought a house, we sure are keen to leave it so fast. We've been saving, so we're going. The timing couldn't be more right. Brandon just graduated, Gyna has had it with the commute and has quit her position at Children's. Time for a break.

We're headed to Ukraine to see friends in Kiev. We have been friends with Sarah for about 10 years now (almost exactly since I remember starting at Linfield on August 28, 1999). She and her husband are living in Ukraine. After 9 days or so, we'll head off to Turkey. Thought we would see friends, but turns out one actually lives in a big city we won't be traveling to and the other will actually be in Pittsburgh. We're going to try our hand at moving around Western Turkey without knowing turkish. After 10 days of this, we'll fly out at 5am local time to Salzburg, Austria via London. Sigh--I would have loved a direct flight. Fortunately, we'll meet up with Brandon's dad in London, who is on the same flight as us to Salzburg. His first time to Europe and Austria. Brandon has his hands full dealing with two rookies in Austria. He has also decided to wear us out by hiking and biking to work for our beer. Yum! Thought we would see friends in Vienna, but turns out they'll be traveling around New Zealand at that time. Sad for us, yippee for them.

We leave on September 1st. Stay tuned for our adventures. The guest bed is covered with the items for our packs. Yes, we are taking backpacking packs. I'm trying to decide if we're crazy, but we're not backpacking camping; least we'll have a roof over our heads every night...even if it is a plane or train roof.

I have to get one last Pirates game in before this season ends. Must make time before we leave.

Our house!

I realized it is long past due for some real pictures of our house with our stuff in it. Same layout, new stuff. Although not really, just the table and sofa. :O)

We really do love our new house. It's size is just right, but it still takes about a day to clean, sadly. I am working on getting some flowers planted in the front yard and we're going to get a fruit tree for either the backyard or the front yard. It's too late in the season to continue planting, but I plan to get some more flowers (dahlias, cosmos, zinnias) into the front yard to give it more color. In March or so, we will set up our raised beds in the backyard for the garden. I plan to be busy weeding and harvesting next year. The three dead trees came down for a very reasonable fee. No one was hurt in the taking down of these trees.

The inside is perfectly livable. We haven't painted a thing. Still waiting for inspiration to hit. Have curtains to hang yet, our bedroom will be first. Apparently the shades in our bedroom are see-through so we covered the windows with a sheet. I don't want to hang curtains until I figure out exactly what I'm doing with the room though.

We love our quiet little neighborhood. We try to get out and walk on a regular basis. In doing so, we walk hills and valleys. It very good exercise in the course of an hour. Lots of trees and deer. Almost as good as living in the country, but there is no real substitute.

Visitors to Pittsburgh and Graduation!

At long last, Gyna's parents made it to Pittsburgh, with our niece Valerie in tow. I'm told it is a long haul from Susanville CA. As if I didn't know that. They flew in on August 12th. We made some minor repairs on the house including a new basement door with a screen, updated some wiring, and installed a new stair banister. Since I am pretty clutzy on stairs, this is a good thing. We visited Phipps, the Cathedral of Learning, the Strip District, Ohiopyle, and the Incline. It was so hot, the hottest it has been all summer, that we were content to work inside our air-conditioned house rather than play outside. We did go biking, swimming, and made a slip and slide in the backyard. We still had fun.

During the week they were here, Brandon successfully finished his last classes at Tepper. He says he isn't a graduate until he gets that diploma, but that could take months. To me, he is now the proud recipient of an MBA from CMU. It has been a long haul, but we both think it was the best course for Brandon to have taken. He loved being a student. Yeah!!

Home inspection

We had the home inspection today. Nothing glaringly wrong. Some maintenance issues to attend to, but otherwise everything looks good.

The front of the house is better landscaped than the back. This is fine since I have some ideas for the back anyway.

This is the view when you walk in the front door. Not a huge living room, but big enough.

The new house!

Never thought I would be so excited about a structure. Buying ones first house, really, that is one thing you do once. We are, as you can imagine, very excited. So excited that I started a blog to update you on everything that is going on in our lives.
Mortgage rates are really low and with first time homebuyer credits and the tax incentive, it is a great time to buy.
It continues to be in Western PA. Yes, we liked it so much we are staying.
I will post our own pictures when we do the inspection this weekend.