Photos of Bulgaria

admin — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 13:43:17 +0000

Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey

admin — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 03:07:23 +0000

This is a three or four country letter from Ankara on machine with no English spell checker and a Turkish keyboard. My last email finished off with me crossing into Bulgaria where I met up with Alex a friend from Australia whose family are Bulgarian. Down into Greece to meet up with Lars for my 30th birthday, island hopping to Turkey and across to Kurdistan where my phone was stolen and I met three Taliban, one of whom was locked in Guantanamo for two and half years, who justified the murder of innocent Jews and Christians. I'm waiting for a visa for Georgia then I'll head over there down through Armenia and into Iran. There has been a slight change in my plans to return home, a visa for Paksitan is looking problematic and a Canadian displayed my lack of climatic knowledge by pointing out the massive snow cover over Nepal and Tibet in Febuary which would prove difficult to traverse. From Iran I'm planning to cover the three stans to the north and west of Afghanistan into China then head down through Laos. An entrance makes all the difference, staying with Alex's auntie, uncle and Grand parents gave me a little glimpse into Bulgaria. Drinking the same poison as the Serbs, sitting around listening to Alex's uncle, a former Bulgarian rock star belt out covers he didn't understand, opening beer with his prized 20 year old fork from Sweeden. Her auntie drives a sports Mercedes without a working speedo at least 20 kmph under the speed limit, hunched over the streering wheel, rarely in the correct gear with flowing curly red hair and other drivers screaming out "eh sheep where did you learn to drive", as she drives onto the tram tracks and pulls in front of the cars waiting at the red light. This is all in the desolate capital Sofia, covered in grey flat functional communist buildings, drivers without licences, caravans of black mafia cars, the central Mosque, Synagogue and Church all next door. Talking to Alex's auntie about life under communism dispelled my conception of one bloc, an empire ruled from Moscow, more a mirror of the west where America although not ruling had a varying degrees of influence. Yugoslavia was outside of the iron curtain, Bulgaria had no Russian troops, people owned their houses, wages were at different levels, her grandparents went on holidays over the Soviet countries and her auntie and uncle travlled throughout the west, demonstrations and strikes were permitted, things are not a lot different now except there is a greater inequality. Her grandmother says things were better under Communism, even though she demonstrated to bring down the regime, Alex says she somplains about everything. Although they were ruled by the Ottomans they don't have the same intense hatred for the Serbs and Islam that is prevalent in Serbia, there is a greater cross of cultures here, a welcome respite from the intense nationalism of the rest of the region. Although there is still the same bravado, not personal arrogance but cultural chauvanism that seems even more tragic when placed against the French. A train to Greece and a chance to count from one to ten, souvlaki's with chips inside, meeting Lars in Athens, the obligatory visit to the Parthenon, then onto an overnight ferry to the island of Ios, sleeping on an unwashed deck, Lars from overpaid programmer to hobbo on a bed of newspapers. There was a wet tshirt compeition on my birthday by a pool next to a beach on an island full of children that looked like a quarry. I was a little concerned about turning 30, now that it has passed I've forgotten about it, the time for seriousness has not arrived, my possesions are dwindling, I am not ready and can't see the point where I will be ready to engage in the long haul towards retirement, I'm thinking maybe I'll go back to university and study medicine. I've been concerned at the decline in the intensity of my experiences, especially on this trip where I feel like I have been going through the motions, ticking off places in a bored stumble that has failed to challenge me, but I'm thinking this is Europe, its not very different home, if I had come here before Asia and Latin America I might have got more excited about the place. As I look back there are few experiences that have had the intensity to burn deep into my memory where age will not touch. Few stories that will give me or others a laugh, maybe what I have got from this trip, so far, is a better understanding of Europe than the bloc view I had before. I had a nieve view of the complexity of Europe, there is a deep history yet still the people, with the exception of a few of the people I have met, are the same narrow minded grunts that you find in Australia, lacking worldliness and full of a fierce parochialism that defies description. They will bicker amongst themselves in their little corner of the world as America runs amuck in the historical delusion that their tiny countries or regions within countries are still important. Anyways things have picked up the further I have moved east, I'll try and ease off on the diatribe. Time to leave Europe and head into Asia, or maybe not just yet this place still looks like Europe with a touch of the headscarf, cars ten years old, red is not aways red and the arrival of chilli. A boat to Bodrum on the Turkish coast where Lars and I stayed a day and moved on to find out we had missed one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It has been destroyed, apparently some of the rocks of the old have been used in a fort that I took a photo of. Down to Olympos with a pebble beach, a polluted sea an Australian with absynth, tequilla night and a Turkish water pipe that left Lars and I sick for a week. Off to Capadocia which was really cool, 1500 year old cave churches, the place looks like Luke Skywalkers home, full of Hobbit villages, homes and Churches tunneled into giant stone hats, underground, into the side of hills. Off to Istanbul where we saw the blue Mosque which was pretty unimpressive, although large. I have had mixed feelings about the Turks, the night before Lars headed off to fly back to Australia we went out drinking met two Turkish guys, went and scored some hash on a street full of transvestite hookers and went down to the sea to smoke. This guy takes half an hour to lay the groundwork for a joint, puts in two cigarettes, loses half the hash amongst the rocks and I'm starting to get a little tense, I've paid for this stuff. So I ask him for some papers and the hash, he starts crowing on about how I don't know how to roll a spliff, fucking idiot. After ten minutes he relents and I get to start breaking it up, then he tries to stop me and get the gear back off me to roll it saying I don't know how to roll, after he's just rolled the most unsmokable and aesthetically unpleasing joint I've seen in years, dick head. Lars headed off and I had another week to wait for my new passport, my old one had only 3 pages left and I figured this would be a good country to get a new one. Went to the bus station and got a bus going east to a place called Trabzon, a hole of a town, my ten hotel search for the cheapest left me in a place that stunk and was full of middle aged Russian hookers. Time to leave, a bus south and east, the bus broke down during the night and we froze in the bus for five hours waiting for a replacement. The new day brought the squat-o-matic, scruffy looking beggars kids, men who look like they have just walked out of the mountains, covered by the smell of the bus, the hijab everywhere, Mosque stops for prayer, the arrival of the burka and military checkpoints every ten kilometers, I arrived at my hotel in Van to be greeted with "Welcome to Kurdistan". I know I am getting somewhere good when I have to carry my own toilet paper, the lights flicker, there is no hot water and I'm speaking with my hands. I gave the Virginia Woolf book I just finished to a Kurdish girl in a hijab learning English. Met some cool Kurds who despise the Turks although no where near the way the Turks view them, as backward people that refused to be civilised, the Turks kicked into this region about 1000 years ago, Kurdish is closely related to Farsi, the Iranian language and have been around here forever. They look a little Indian, which is probably historically back to front, 100km from the border with Iran and Iraq, Iran is the land of the Aryans, the Brahmin left from this region and headed to India about 3000 years ago. Ataturk, the father Turk, the man who fought back the Greeks when they were on the verge of retaking Istanbul, then Constantinople after their defeat in World War I by the unfathomable aggression of the allies, the historical amnesia that forgets Turkey's alliance with Germany, the man whose quotes, portrait and bust adorns all public places, streets, restaurants, hotels, rings, shops has vanished in Kurdistan. I should note that the Ottoman empire was in fact a community of nations, the Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians all joined and lived in harmony with the Turks. The Turks exist in a vacume of knowledge. Now they fight a war that has cost 30,000 lives with a people who they view as scum who either want to be independent or at least incorporated into modern Turkey. This country is insane, the western half has the vaneer of Europe, Kurdistan is asia, they should lose the east and then it would make sense for them to join the EU. The Turkish elite is dragging the entire country into Europe and no one I have met wants to joint the EU. A Kurdish guy said the Europeans are right, it would be a problem if we joined there would be a massive clash of cultures. The history of modern Turkey is the people electing Muslim governments, not Taliban style, who then get dismissed by the courts for violating Ataturks secular consititution that decrees there will be seperation of religion from politics or there is a military coup and the military quel the rising religiosity. The current PM was gaoled and dismissed a few years ago when he read out an Islamic poem. There is a massive rift in this country between the elite and the people, the EU will be finished if they let these people in, the people are not secular, they are not democratic adn they don't want to be. Sorry I'm getting a little worked up in the internet cafe, take it easy. The PKK the three most hated letters in Turkey is the terrorist organisation that is fighting for Kurdish independence,my reading up on these guys suggests that are definetly fucked up, suicide bombings and all levels of barbarism. This Kurdish guy reackons the PKK get alot of funding from America, in order to keep Turkey in its place. I met a Kurdish teacher who asked me whether I'ma Chrisitian, my face crumpled and I said I wasn't religious, he said that people will react badly to a comment like this, I should say I am Christian. Good advice for what comes next, the most exciting and disturbing 3 hours of the year. Sitting in a restaurant on my own I was approached by a guy speaking English, after a week with no conversation I took up his offer to join him and his two bearded companions at a nearby table. The guy who spoke english launched into rant about the greatness of Islam, I figured these guys were pretty extreme, using my basic knowledge of Islam, "aslaam walikhum", I constructed a picture of myself as a disillusioned Christian who could not accept the divinity of Jebers, I had the read the Koran and liked the emphasis on justice, my skills in the art of two faces honed, I should be a secret service agent. They asked me about my opinon of the Iraq and Afghanistan war, I did not need to lie, they thought they were close to a conversion. The bearded elder brother, translated through the younger brother with a good command of English, told me his story, at 18, enraged by Christian attacks on his Muslim brother he went off to Chechnya to fight the Russians, later on he ended up fighting with the Taliban. The Americans picked him up on the border with Pakistan a month into their Afghan adventure and took him to Guantanamo where he spent two and a half years. He had both his arms broken, reackosn he was interrogated for five days straight without sleep and had the humilitation of an American woman soldier play with his dick!!! Afterwards I went online and did some searching on his name, Ibrahim Jan, and his story seems to be true, about the Guantanamo lock up bit and getting picked up on the border anyway. A fair way into the conversation I asked if he knew Osama bin Laden,they talked quitely amongst themselves for a minute, then he said yes, he is a great man and misunderstood by the world, he is welathy and gives his money to the poor, has a wife and children. You are all two degrees of seperation from the worlds most wanted man. There was a load of questions I wanted to ask these guys which I didn't ask them, I was pretty scared, most of our conversation was about the legitimacy of murdering innocent people. It goes like this, the Koran says to kill an innocent person is to kill the entire world, to save an innocent is save the entire world, it also commands Muslims to defend themselves. Say you are sitting on a ship and another ship fires at you, even though that other ship may have innocent people on board you must fire back otherwise you will be destroyed, even if there is only guilty man on the ship. The Christian world has declared war on the Islamic world, therefore we must defend ourselves. No Muslim country has ever invaded another country, I didn't mention, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, East Timor, Iran-Iraq, India, Israel. The Americans going into Kosovo and Afghanistan in the 80's was for its own self interest. Because our governemnts have gone to war against Muslim countries we are guilty. It is the simplisitc flip side of the war of civilisations, it is the logic of racism, the motivation the perceived injustice against the Islamic world, the murder of our women, who they treat like cattle and innocent children. They are not the medieval goat fuckers that I imagined, the yougner brother speaks very good english and is studying english literature, they are trying to understand us in order to destroy our cultur, to destroy secularism and democracy. They dislike Sufi's and follow no Imam's, have no teachers the only authority is the Koran, every child is born a Muslim then he converts to somethign else, anti-capitalist the attack on the world trade centre was perfect, I suggested the white house would have been better, they said the Americans shot down the plane that was goign to fly into the white house. I am at a loss as to how to confront these people, they have no leaders, no preachers, just man and God, a terrible self perpetuating ideology has been put in place, the west and these lunatics are now locked into a descending cycle where any military confrontation with the Islamic world will fuel their drive and recruitment. I think the war in Afghanistan and Iraq will be seen by history as the most massive of stragetic blunders in defeating these anti-modernists, its as if America and her colonies are on their side, running their PR campaign, delivering droves of young men into their arms. He laughed at the suggestion that terrorism has anythign to do with poverty, he said nearly all are educated and middle class or above. It is because we have declared war on them, London, Madrid, Bali and New York are all justified. A philosophy of immense contraditions that makes my own mess look coherent. I organised to meet them the next day, got their phone numbers and booked a bus out of Van. Onto Diyarbakir, still in Kurdistan, where a guy who showed me to a cheap hotel stole my mobile phone, onto another overnight bus to Ankara to collect my passport. I’m getting a bus tonight to go to the Georgia border for a little ancient Christianity and a break from Islam before Iran. In tragic news that makes me want to become a doctor, Nena the girl I went out with in Kahkabila, Nicaragua has died, she went into hospital with chest pains, the doctor gave her an injection which she said made her feel worse, she asked not have another shot but the nurse inisisted on giving her another one, she died thirty minutes later.

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Jesse's Travels » Bulgaria

Photos of Bulgaria

Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey