In a Turkish hospital..

"It's not a matter of IF, it's a matter of WHEN!"

I've heard this saying a lot, when documenting about Middle East and stomach problems or food intoxication.

I didn't expect it to hit me so hard.. and in Turkey. I would have bet on any of the other countries, especially Egypt.

Long story short, in the picture above it's me in a Turkish hospital, with an annoyingly long needle in my vein and two packs of ice under my arms - to keep the high temperature in check.

Before I got to the hospital it was horrible: powerful nausea, upset stomach, high temperature and really cold feeling in the same time, moments when I felt that I was about to pass out..

As soon as I had the perfusion installed, I begun to feel a bit better. But, because of the two packs of ice, I was shivering continuously.

Also, I could swear that the solution they were feeding into my veins, had some RedBull inside, as I couldn't stop moving - I had a real excess of energy that I needed to consume somehow.

Overall, the worst part of this experience was sleeping with the freaking needle in my vein..

However, by the morning I begun to feel a lot better; not entirely cured, but good enough to leave the hospital (after the Romanian travel insurance company sent the confirmation for paying the bill).

While in the hospital, although I was feeling bad, I couldn't miss some positive aspects:

- the hospital was incredibly clean (there was a person in charge of cleaning - and he was omnipresent);

- the people working there were really nice to us (smiling all the time, answering to all our questions, helping with calling the insurance company, after our credit run out);

- the room we stayed over the night was better than any hospital rooms we've seen so far: clean sheets, 2 beds with electronic controls for adjusting the position, medical instruments hidden behind a movable painting, a couch and a TV. All in all, we felt more like in a hotel than in hospital; the only thing out of the picture was that needle in my vein :)

When leaving the hospital, the girl that took good care of my case, asked us to take some pictures together - which they will upload in the hospital's album. Unexpected and nice..

To top all of these, they also got us back at the hotel, which was quite far from the hospital (probably more than 10 km).

What's really funny, is that my stomach didn't absorbed water properly and I still felt dehydrated after drinking a lot, so I decided to have some beer and french fries.

It worked like a charm! :)

I already knew that beer is faster absorbed than water, so it wasn't quite a lucky strike, but I'm really glad it worked. Now I also have an excuse to drink more than usual and recover for the 15 days in countries where alcohol was forbidden and hard to come by.

Anyway, as we previously said, we're now ready for discovering the somewhat surreal surroundings from Cappadocia. Hopefully, there won't be any new annoyances to delay us.