We’ve never really gave this part of the trip a name. So just wrote it as The Great Crossing in our schedule and name stucked somehow. It’s the bit where we cross the whole European continent along the Mediterranean in one trip, from Istanbul to Barcelona.
We started off with a flight from Istanbul to Rome via Turkish Airlines. Pretty much a non-event because I was so flat out tired from the Conference.
When we got to Rome, the Airport “Express” was late and drove us nuts. Fortunately in a very Italian way, the train to Civitavecchia (Rome’s seaport) was late as well so it worked out.
This is one big chuck of a ferry. More like a cruiser but not really a luxury liner. It’s like a four star hotel on water with propellers. It was a good break cruising for two days on the Mediterranean.
This is the spike that went through the stomach of my good friend, Constantine the Great. As you can see it is very long, very sharp and rusted at the same time.
If you somehow missed it below. While I was hanging out with the bunch of Greeks, Constantine was trying to collect a UIA (Union of International Architects) Congress poster behind a cast iron fence and got his belly punctured. And it happened about 4:30 in the wee hours of morning at Taksim Square. He was taken to a public hospital by a police car but it was too dodgy. Then they found a private one which landed him a fat bill of TRL2,000 (about AUD2,000 or RM5,800). I still don’t know if he bought travel insurance. This picture above was taken in the evening of the next day.
By the way bro, if you’re reading this. You promised you’ll give me your email the next day but landed in hospital !!
July 11, 2005 at 5:39 pm · Filed under Culture, Turkey
Oh my gosh, my concept of FUN is really forever redefined. The Greeks I hung out were amazing. We attended the lectures at the conference during the day and then we were out almost the whole night, I was like only sleeping two hours each day. One minute we’ll be talking total nonsense, next minute we’ll be discussing philosophy. Incredible! I’ll introduce them to you …
From left to right, Dimitra “The Greek Goddess”, Stella “French Master”, Danai “The Blonde”, Alkis “The Stud”, Constantine “Cambridge Genius”, and Elena the hmmmm …. “The Weak” … hahahha just joking !!!! Okay, Elena “Of Troy” !!
Here you can see more, there’s George, Spiro and CONSTANTINE THE GREAT, my BROTHER !!!
And there’s more, like Gary “The Nargileh Master”, Jon “The *** Master”, Nikos, Mika, Christina, Vasilius “The Hagia Sophia Super Genius” (if I miss out someone, tell me!). All of which I did not take photos of. Please send them to me and I’ll put them up here !!!
Oh man, it was highlights all the way but I think there were three super ones. The first night out with them we went to Tophane where we smoked Nargileh which is like the LARGEST BONG MACHINE I’ve ever seen in my life. (HEY THESSALONIKI FRIENDS, if you have good photos of that night, please send it to me !!)
Later that night we decided to group up with a bunch of Turkish conference attendees. There was this guy who was like a total alternative rocker. We were speaking real bad english but ROCK transcended our barrier.
The final day has to be the funniest. We went for a “hamam” (Turkish bath) and unfortunately I can’t take my camera in. Anyway, we were fully getting slapped, bashed and wringed by big bellied moustache Turkish men. When we came out, one of the girls, Mika, just walked out of the women’s bath and explained that she fell unconscious !!! She stood up too fast in the sauna, knocked her forehead and was out cold for 2 minutes !!! And there were like bruises on some of the girls because of all that scrubbing and “massage”, how mad was that??
Constantine The Great definitely lived up to his name. He decided to collect (steal) the UIA World Congress of Architecture posters to take home. On our way to Taksim Square at probably like, 5am in the morning, he decided to try a really hard one. It was set back half a metre of a SPIKED FENCING, the spikes were like 20cm long. He went for it, got a puncture in his belly, and had to be taken to the hospital immediately. Found out next morning that his admission fee was TRL2000 (AUD2000, RM6000) and had to get stitches.
Crazy! I actually took a photo of that spike, I will upload it in the coming days!!
GIA SU TO MY GREEK FRIENDS, PLEASE SEND ME PHOTOS SO I CAN PUT THEM IN HERE !!! KEEP IN TOUCH, MAYBE I’LL RETIRE IN GREECE ONE DAY !!
Sorry for this super duper massive update. First of all, there’s no internet in Athens. Then we had to spend 24 hours (literally round the clock) to travel by train from Athens to Istanbul. And now that I’m here for the next 7 days at the UIA World Congress for Architecture in Istanbul, there’s just no time left in the day for blogging. So I figured I’ll put up as much reading material as possible until the conference is over by the next weekend. Also, I haven’t had tıme to read comments or reply, bear wıth me!
But I have to say I’m loving this crazy hectic schedule. Yesterday I went to lectures by Denise Scott Brown, Mario Botta, Glenn Murcutt and Zaha Hadid !!!! I just heard from Peter Eisenman, now going to Dominic Perrault and Hans Hollein. The coming days will include Tadao Ando, Robert Venturi, Shigeru Ban, Moshe Safdie, Ken Yeang (Malaysia Boleh!!) … MAN, the list goes on !!!! Truly a massive privilege to hear these people directly talking about their own work, all in one place.
Bad picture of Mario Botta.
Now’s a good time for those who just discovered my site, or those who skipped my videos to backtrack and vıew them. The latest videos are not up yet because last night Istanbul suffered a blackout, sigh. Anyway, you don’t have to register to leave comments!
Okay, hope you’ll be back to check out the vıdeos, and more frequent updates in a week’s time.
