To be continued..

Almost a month has passed since we've left our country and I'm writing what's supposed to be the last entry while still on the road. As in many previous cases, I'm doing this in a bus.

The flow of ideas sometimes stops and I resort to my "muse": long breaks watching the fast changing environment from the other side of the window.
When doing this, I sometime feel like vibrating at another level, on a bridge between worlds, where my mind is tuned to hear whispers that are either the answer to what I'm looking for, or an entirely new idea.
I have this image about ideas being like invisible schools of fish, swimming around us. From time to time, one of them comes close enough to me, not to see it, but to feel the ripples it creates.
It's there for a split second and then it's gone. I take a break from gazing and write it down before forgetting it.
I forgot a lot of them in the past.. but now I've learned to pick them up and store the unripe ones for later.

Andra interrupts my contemplation; she's telling me she just hurt her foot accidentally - on the chair in front. I discover I'm still not back into this world, I simply note the fact and somewhat coldly continue the introspection.
She's not going to be happy when she reads this.. But I like it here.. it's new and interesting for me. I'm going to stay for a a little while longer.

...

Outside we leave behind an imposing mosque.. an image that we've already grown accustomed with. And suddenly comes the revelation that almost imperceptibly - the new has turned into old - and soon enough - the old will be new again ..for a while.

Off the beaten track in Cappadocia.

It's a shame we had to postpone writing about the wonderful Cappadocia, but it's not too late to do it now. The memories are still fresh, we have plenty of amazing pictures and there's a perfect setting for recollecting and writing: we're both laying on a couch from the hotel's exterior bar, inhaling mixed scents combined with the fresh mountain air, and listening to a good choice of songs.

The people below have started a camp fire as well.. so, let's just start the story-telling:
The first minutes in Cappadocia were quite silent, interrupted only by the camera's shutter clicks and remarks like: "wow", "look at that", "and that".. The scenery was quite unusual and amazing, with cone like structures that were used by people for various purposes, including as houses. Everything looked so fairytale like, that we wouldn't have been too surprised to see hobbits getting out of those weirdly shaped houses :)

Petra.

The day we saw Petra will stay with me for the rest of my life, just like other memories from the Middle East: first time in a mosque, at the pyramids, in Karnak temple, in a hot-air balloon over Luxor..

However, this experience was different than all the other ones. So, I'll do my best to take you there with me, while reliving this particular memory.

We woke up in our first day in Wadi Musa, without having any idea about what lied ahead.

Zachary and Hillary whom we've recently met, joined us for breakfast and some small talk, the kind you have in the morning when the sleep still lingers on your eye lashes.

The hotel provided us with a free ride to the Petra entrance, so around 9:00 o'clock in the morning we were already buying our tickets - which included a horse ride for the first 800 meters. We slipped into the saddle and enjoyed the ride. Nice experience.. it brought back some long forgotten memories from my childhood, when I used to ride the neighbors' horses ..without them knowing.

In the air..

Wake-up call at 4:30 am; this was the hardest part :). After that, everything went smooth: car from the hotel to a boat, we signed the papers for acknowledging the dangers involved in flying with such a contraption (no responsibilities for the company - after having our signatures), then crossed the Nile, went again in small cars that transported us at the edge of the city - were the hot-air balloons were waiting for us.

Before arriving at the field, we got a glimpse from the distance and saw the balloons being fed with hot air. It looked like we had a plantation of huge mushrooms in front of us, some ripe, other still growing.

Seeing those things from 10 meters, was a totally different perspective: "colossal" was the first word that came into our minds.
Well, maybe it was "huge" :), but let's use "colossal" instead, since it seems more fit.

After simulating the landing procedures for a couple of times, we begun climbing.
What a smooth takeoff.. didn't feel that much different than in a good elevator, maybe even smoother.
I'm not usually afraid of heights, but I'm not that happy with them either. However, it was interesting that I didn't feel anything this time; it actually felt pleasant from the start, and it slowly turned into a breathtaking experience. I shared with Andra my idea about having some seats placed on the outside, for a truly crazy experience :)

From above, we saw the whole city, Luxor, Karnak and a queen's temple (Hatshepsut). But probably the nicest thing was the sunrise, for which, unfortunately, I have no pictures that could do it justice.



Next... skydiving :)

Two days and two nights in Istanbul.

Istanbul is a city of contrasts, placed on two continents, with an European side and an Asian side divided by the Bosporus strait.

We enjoyed the European side for its many tourist attractions, interesting mosques, architecture and easy to navigate streets. As for the Asian side, we appreciated it for the nice narrow streets and general architecture. Unfortunately, in two days we didn't have enough time to explore both sides, so we focused more on the European one that had the tourist attractions: Hagia Sofia (considered the eighth wonder of the world), Sultan Ahmet Mosque (or the blue mosque), grand bazaar, spice bazaar, hippodrome of Constantinople, many other mosques, an interesting cemetery with a restaurant inside, pottery shop & textile shop with live demonstrations (Andra participated in both ways at a demonstration, first in the audience and then on the wheel).








We were hosted on the Asian side by a wonderful Turkish couple.
From them we learned many interesting things about the Turkish language, culture, religion, differences & connections between our two countries (it seems we have many words in common - thanks to the ottoman influence in the past).
They took care of us exactly as we take care of our couchsurfers, so we felt just like home in their nice apartment. Comfortable couch, pink bedsheets :) (we have some pink slippers for our couchsurfers), wi-fi and two lovely turtles that I enjoy feeding.
It was great to have Turkish tea and coffee together; the tea glasses were interesting and the coffee came accompanied by an eatable spoon made out of chocolate!


Now, some interesting facts.
- We arrived in Istanbul around 5:30 in the morning and decided to visit until the open hour for the exchange office and public transportation. It was the best decision we took (we could have waited in the tourist agency instead, and get bored to death). It was great especially because there were just a few people outside at that hour, and we could see the hippodrome and Blue Mosque in a quiet (almost serene) atmosphere. The first time we entered the mosque, it was such an impressive sight, almost breathtaking. The silence and the echo were unbelievable.
It is was far less nice to visit the same places again, with a lot of crowd around us. So, we'll repeat this experience with visiting at early hours, as often as we can - for the rest of the trip.

- Our daily budget was around 15 euros per day, for each of us, enough for free sightseeing and eating. As said in the beginning, Istanbul is a city of contrasts: clothes are a lot cheaper than in Romania (in bazars and some shops), food prices depend on the location (you can eat plentiful traditional meals from kiosks; restaurants can be really expensive though - especially near tourist attractions), transportation is quite expensive (1$ per ticket) and there's no way around it; the city is huge and you can't walk everywhere.
It's best to choose each day an area with many concentrated attractions, rather than jumping from one place to another, as it will cost you also a lot of time beside money.

- Turkish hospitality is amazing. You won't experience it everywhere, but when you encounter it, it is overwhelming. There was this bakery boss that started asking us where are we from (we were just searching for corn flower to prepare "mamaliga"/polenta for our hosts), then he offered free cookies. The next day we passed by his place, he saw us and yelled "ce faci"/"how are you" in Romanian, then gave us other free bakery specialties - despite our initial refusal. He wanted to know many things about us: where we work, if we're married (we did a funny head salute when he heard that we are together for 7 years). The next day when we went to offer him a small pottery pot, we found out from his workers that he told everyone about us :)








- Call for prayers from all mosques. This thing happens 5 times per day and it can be easily heard inside the houses. The mosques have really loud speakers; the locals say they are too loud, but we liked it. They don't start all in the same time, but random, and the sounds build up in the first minutes, then slowly fades away. It feels relaxing every time..

I intended to upload more photos, but the internet here is incredibly slow, almost the same in Istanbul. So, I will never complain about internet speed in Romania :)
You can see more photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/IonRazvanCiuca/Istanbul?feat=directlink

Hidden in plain sight.

We're staying 10 minutes away from this amazing place:





The bad part is that we've just discovered it entirely, although we've been living in this area for about 6 months.. We should definitely go out more often :)

This place is great for relaxing after a hard day at work. One evening, on the way to a couchsurfing meeting, one very tired Andra and a hasty Razvan turned into better, fully relaxed people - just by walking for a few minutes in the area.

Even 5 minutes by the lake can work wonders, so we will be visiting it regularly from now on.
Care to join us?

For those interested in the creating panoramas, it's quite simple with the Photomerge tool from Photoshop:
1. You need to have a tripod, or at least try to keep the camera as best as possible on the same line, between shots.
Now, in order to avoid having shots with different exposures, do the following:
2. Press the shutter button halfway while looking at the landscape, and note the aperture number and the shutter speed.
3. Switch to manual mode and punch in the previous numbers. Also, switch the focus to manual and leave it that way (if it correctly focused in the previous step).
4. Each shot must contain at least 20% elements from the previous shot, so that Photoshop can align them afterwords. Make sure you always include enough elements from one photo to another.
5. Try to shoot in Portrait mode, not just Landscape. It will take more pictures to cover the whole scene, but it also covers more in terms of height.

3xCouchsurfing; 1xPhotography

A while back when there were no couchsurfing requests for more than one month, we got a bit puzzled and worried that it may take some time until we can meet new couchsurfers.

Soon after that it started raining with requests, so many that we couldn't accommodate all of them.

This week we had Gaelle and Samuel from France, Amanda and Robert from US (..actually from Romania as they want to establish here) and Garrett from US.

It was really great; we got to see the whole Herestrau park with Gaelle and Sam.
Unforgettable experience, since we circled the huge lake for more than two hours. This was kind of a unique experience since we hadn't done it ourselves before, and we certainly won't do it again any time soon :)
As usual, I had the camera with me and took some pictures.


In the evenings, we all raced in the Dominion game:


On Saturday, Amanda and Robert joined us for a picnic organized by one of Andra's colleagues - Razvan - who celebrated his birthday.
If we ignore the sunburns and the muscular pains from football :), it was really nice, the weather was almost perfect, plenty of food, drinks and games.
Robert and Amanda played football quite good; we didn't stand a chance against their team.

Right now we have Garrett from US with us, and tonight we're preparing to race in a board game. There's a bet involved, so wish me luck :).

Close-up, Macro and SuperMacro (50mm; 55-200mm)

Sunday afternoon in Cismigiu park, with the D80 and 55-200mm lens - which I haven't used for almost a year; too bad... it does take some really nice wildlife/macro pictures.
Because of the lack of light (overcast sky), I had to make a compromise and increase the ISO to 800; so, most pictures have a noticeable amount of noise.
On the other hand, I noticed that not all of them required such high ISO, as quite a few got overexposed. Also, I had to post process most and decrease brightness / increase contrast. Next time I'll try to use more suitable settings.
Slowly, but surely I'm getting closer to using Manual mode, because automatic modes always seem to screw things up.

Last week I bought a lightweight tripod for the one month traveling.
Using as an excuse the need to test it, I spent an entire evening with experiments (50mm reversed with the help of the inversion ring):

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