The bug
I'm not quite sure what brought it on. There was a vegetable pide that could have been sitting in the shop window for too long (I didn't bring my carbon-dating equipment with me), I'd been very adventurous with my shaved lamb consumption, and there is a possibility my concentration lapsed and I accidentally drank some water when I brushed my teeth, but whatever it was, whatever it is has hit me and hit me good.

Sunday, the fifth day of Turkey, was spent in bed either staring at the window through the glaze of several headaches that seemed to be rotating around each other, or in the merciful grip of sleep. Of, and of course variously productive stints on the toilet. When Amanda returned from her tour in the evening she found me in be begging for aspirin. She came back with some bizarre pill she had been sold in the corner store. Gripin, the tablet of mystery, as we referred to it at the time. It was about the size of my fist so we mistakenly assumed it was soluable, but after seeing it float round and roung for a few minutes, the penny finally dropped. Chewing it seemed more successful if a little revolting. After half an hour of waiting for some effects, any effects, it appeared to work. The headaches receded enough for me to realise that my legs and arms hurt as well. Eventually, though, Gripin took care of these newfound ailments as well. To celebrate, I went back to sleep.

And now, nearly a week later, the bug, or as we've taken to calling it, my other little travelling companion, is still with me. He and I have worked into a nice little pattern, with him waking me up around 5am so he can transact his business while I enjoy the pre-dawn call to prayer.

When we make it to one week together, I plan to do something suitable to celebrate like shoot myself or take a box of matches into the toilet with me and go out that way.

The food
Apart from my above, ahem, troubles, I love Turkish food. Breakfast at our place in Istanbul consisted mostly of delicious soft bread, fetta cheese and olives. It's not any form of breakfast I was previously aware of, but I like it. Otherwise there are a lot of kebaps and things cooked on sticks, just like in Australia but only fresher and actually tasty.

Turkish drinks have stolen my heart too. My coffee abstinance flew out the window when I discovered the caffeinated tar they call 'Turkish coffee', but my heart truly belongs to Turkish tea, or chai. It's a little sweet, with a bizarrely full fruity flavour. I've learnt just enough Turkish to get them to bring me a really big cup of this stuff and from the rate that I'm drinking it you'd think it was mother's milk. Or addictive. Take your pick.

Travelling buddy
For the first two weeks of Turkey, I get to enjoy the novelty of travelling with someone -- an old friend from Rockhampton, Amanda Palmer. It's great being part of a pair; it completely changes the experience of travelling. Ordinary little fuck-ups like missing the bus or wonder whether you've been locked in a car park after hours go from being stressful encounters to being something to laugh about. And even better than that, it stops you pathetically approaching other backpackers laden with stupid questions like "Is this the Blue Mosque?" or "Do you know the way to San Jose?" just so that you get to have an English conversation at least once every other day. In fact, I'm on completely the other end of the power equation now -- sad lonely travellers now approach US for conversation! Mwa ha ha haaa.

But anyway, a guy and a girl travelling together, it's only natural that people think we're a couple. Go on, admit it, half of you thought it anyway. And in Turkey, the thought that two people are a couple strangely cannot go unexpressed -- almost everyone has to comment on it. It usually comes to the fore when we check into rooms -- they ask if we want a double room and we quickly establish that we will only accept a room with TWO beds thank you very much. Amanda and I have known each other since we were four. Sharing a bed would be unthinkable.

And fair enough, hostel owners need to know our sleeping preferences. But does every bloody carpet seller on the street have to bring it up? I've adapted a set routine to explain that no, we're not a couple, we're just friends. In fact we've been friends since we were very young, I say, holding my hand so far off the ground to indicate that I was once very short indeed.

But for Fikret, who introduced himself to us outside the Blue Mosque, it was unsatisfactory that we hadn't moved beyond our mutual play-dough eating past. "Why not?" he demanded. "She is beautiful, intelligent girl!" In response to Amanda's cackles of laughter at this, he added "No, no. Is not compliment." Here he paused just long enough for us to wonder just where the hell he was going with this. "Is philosoph. I am philosopher. And writer. I write biography of myself one day. I was bus driver once" he said, adding "trucks sometimes too" for emphasis. And then he tried to sell us a carpet.

Istanbul
Amanda and I flew out of London at the chirpy hour of 6.20, meaning an obscene start of 3.45am. The last week in Edinburgh was still catching up with me and I all but collapsed during our stopover in Zurich, leaving Amanda to her own devices for a while. Still, we arrived in Istanbul at 2.30pm, leaving us enough time to limp painfully around the city for a few hours before sucuumbing to sweet sleep.

The touts and hawkers in the city weren't as bad as I had expected. They are pretty relentless when you have a backpack on, trying to get you into one of their hotels but otherwise you're just one Western face among many so if you aren't interested the next one might be.

We spent the second day travelling around the Istanbul highlights. The Blue Mosque was incredible, with its huge dome surrounded by size gargantuan spires that bellow the call to prayer five times a day. To uneducated (dare I say infidel) Western ears the call to prayer ringing from a single mosque sounds a bit like a tuneful Turk having his toenails extracted in front of a microphone. But in Istanbul you never hear the call from just one mosque -- they all sound simultaneously, so you hear it from all sides, bouncing off every building. Near the Blue Mosque (it's not really that blue) the noise is so pervasive it seems to emanate from every tile. And in the pauses between verses of the call you can hear the sound echoing back from all over town. It is so cool.

The next highlight was the Aya Sophia, which my extensive knowledge of Turkish tells me means Holy Wisdom. The history of this place is fascinating: some bloke (Constantine? Justinian?) built it around 400AD as the greatest church in Christendom and today it still looks a lot like a domed church in Italy. When the Ottamans rocked into town about a thousand years later, though, they converted it into a mosque. Then around 1920 Ataturk (the big kahuna of modern Turkey) converted it again, but this time into a public museum. The museum must have done some restorations of the original features because now there is a fascinating mix of Christian and Muslim mosaics. Madonna and Child looking down on some verses from the Quran; St John making a cameo next to some Arabic tiles. I felt like I was in a David Lynch movie.

Next was the 'Sunken Cistern', which brings to mind some next form of subterranian toilet architecture, but in actual fact was part of the sewerage system in the Roman era. It was deeply creepy, an enormous underground cave supported by regular roman columns and arches. It really makes you think when a civilisation's sewers are a tourist attraction today. But they were so cool, they deserved it. Do you think future civilisations will be touring Wivenhoe dam? No, me neither.

Rules for a successful experience of Turkey
1. When crossing the road, abandon your foolish Western notions of exercising care and caution, and the particularly ludicrous idea that pedestrians have some right be in transit across the road. Turkish cars have tasted tourist blood and they like it. You must do what the locals do and hurl yourself across the road at speed whenever there is more than a one metre gap in the stream of traffic. Newcomers to Istanbul may find it easier to use this rule of thumb: cross the roads only when a group of locals do. In fact, it is good practice to maintain a shield of at least three Turks between you and the oncoming traffic.

2. You are white. You are therefore rich and guillable. Accordingly, everyone wants to sell you something. Everyone. Sometimes you can get away before the sales pitch, sometimes you can even get them to tell you where the bus station is, but most of the time the sales pitch will begin. But if you pretend that you are going to buy something (say, a carpet) then you can have a good old-fashioned play with the Turk. The joshing and the kidding, the chance to be extremely blunt (walking away after their counter-offer is a personal favourite of mine, or the particularly blunt 'I hate Turkish carpets') and more importantly, the endless cups of tea are all yours.

to be continued...

What a cliffhanger I left you on! What was Copenhagen like? Was it so good that I didn't leave? Did I get mugged and killed, pushed off an overnight train or something? Well, no, I just stopped posting for a while. But I'm back and to bring you up to speed:

Copenhagen rocks. The Danes are a gorgeous bunch of people; I must have walked into ten lamposts because I was so distracted by the stunning shielas around me. Cor. They did all look just that little bit too similar to be completely above board diversity-of-gene-pool-wise, but I've been to Tasmania and I'd pick Denmark any day.

Hamburg is pretty cool too. The first night I went out with a group of about 20 law students from Sydney who were doing some big law thing over there. While that was fun in some ways, it sometimes hit me that I was hanging around with 20 law students from Sydney. I kid you not, at one point in the conversation they actually started comparing which part of the North Shore they were from. Yikes. The second night I hooked up with one particuarly idiotic guy who happened to be from America. I had a scathing characterisation of him all prepared to post up here, including describing his voice as like a demented Muppet after a stroke, but, well, it hasn't made it up has it. But trust me, you hate him.

Back to Berlin which was even better than the last time I was there. It's fantastic for too many reasons to list here. Go there. Then I went quickly to Goettingen to catch up with an old uni friend Tony Gardner and approve of his new Italian fiance. Tony is playing with very big toys in Goettingen in some sort of spaceship re-entry design capacity. Now THAT is cool.

Then to London for a few weeks of relaxing and anything-but-sightseeing. After three months of being an indepent traveller it was truly surreal to catch up with friends that I had had for maybe eight years rather than eight hours, who not only already knew my name but already knew embarrassing stories about me. On the first day I bought a diary to not only keep track of who was leaving and entering the country when, but also to track their phone numbers. I filled a page on the first day. I don't think I'm going to be going lonely in London. I was grateful to still be sporting my travelling beard at that stage, just to throw them off the track a little bit. The beard is long gone now, though -- when I started looking like a rabbi I knew the time was up.

My final jaunt in the UK was to Edinburgh to catch some of the fringe festival and to, well, drink with some more friends from university and Melbourne. It was great and it would have been even better if I hadn't been spending pounds.

So where am I now? Turkey. I'm travelling for just five more weeks, I promise, and then I'm moving back to London to get a job and sell my soul for some cold hard cash. Promise. But until then, this baby will be more regularly updated with Turkish adventures. Stay tuned...

Warsaw
When you're travelling certain conversation topics always come up, no matter who you're talking to. There are the hum-drum topics like recommending good hostels or comparing worst-train stories (particularly popular in Eastern Europe, I think), but there are some more interesting topics as well. Example: Should one go to Warsaw? In this case, the answer is usually a resounding no. Two Poles told I didn't need to go there, in as many words. Daniel from Melbourne said the same thing, but somehow managed to be even more blunt. The nicest thing anyone was prepared to say about Warsaw was that maybe it was worth stopping in for a couple of hours between train journeys. Maybe. Actually, there was one girl who loved Warsaw, said it was better than Krakow, but when I mentioned her opinion to the next person I discussed this with, he gave me an expression partly like he was accusing me of being insane for making up such a ludicrous lie, and partly like I had just crapped in his passport. He was that disgusted by the idea.

So with these high hopes, I ended up staying in Warsaw for a night on my way from Krakow to Copenhagen. I don't see what the fuss was about really. I had quite an enjoyable stroll for a few hours along the nice street up to the old town (earlier in my travels I would've pulled out my guidebook to find their names, but not now), stopping in at the only WWII memorial I've seen in Eastern Europe that doesn't look like it was calling on WWIII. The whole walk was really pleasant, and so I'm prepared to go against the received backpacker's wisdom on Warsaw: your first couple of hours will be really nice. And after that, you could easily catch up on some sleep or read a good book or whatnot. Movies are in English, too, so there's another option.

Love Parade
My route to Copenhagen took me through Berlin for a couple of hours. The second the train pulled Ostbanhof, I knew something was up. There were crowds of young, dressed-up people milling about, purposelessly, everywhere. I stayed on the train until Zoo station, put my bags in left-luggage and walked outside to see what was up. The second the doors out of Zoo station opened, I could hear techno music, coming from everywhere. It was the first day of the Love Parade, Europe's biggest techno party.

People were all around the bombed-out remains of a gothic church just outside the station. Cool, funky, young people. Berlin's entire supply of hair gel had been used, just for today. Guys absently scratched their biceps at recently-applied henna tattoos, wearing sleeveless t-shirts that look so new I expected to see the price tag sticking out the back of the neck. And everywhere in the plazas around the church were make-shift dance venues with DJs blaring out sounds. Most were empty, maybe one or two really-stoned-looking people gyrating close to the professional podium dancers, but one DJ had a few hundred people going nuts in front of him.

Now, I hate techno music. But walking around the different DJs, free beer in my hand, I finally got it. You don't listen to techno music, you feel it. It pusled through me, the bass rattling my clothes when I got closer to speakers. It's not entertainment, it's like a soundtrack to your night. It's so loud you can't talk to anyone, so you just sit or dance or perve, feeling like you're the central character in a music video - you know, one of the new ones that don't make any sense.

After just an hour of hanging out here, I was back in the station, phoning hostels to get accommodation so I could stay in Berlin. Can you imagine? Finding a bed in Berlin on the day of the Love Parade? Of course everywhere was completely full, in fact one hostel receptionist actually laughed at me. I took the hint and booked my ticket to Copenhagen.

So, confirming the small world theory, when I was in Poland I ran into Justine McNally, an old friend from university. We weren't really in the same circle of friends; it was as though around third year our circles had signed some sort of free-trade agreement or treaty to provide some new people to get drunk around once in a while. Running into McNally in a night on the turps was always good value because we could always spend half an hour being generally hilarious: paying out the various tragedies that made it past the bouncers in Friday's; reviewing the latest batch of speeches at 21st birthday parties, and invariably agreeing that the best one was given by one of us; solving world peace and so forth.

So where in Poland did I run into her? Auschwitz. Fucking Auschwitz. Very little opportunity for witty banter within those walls, let me tell you.

We sort-of half recognised each other a few times, but this is Auschwitz, how could we run into someone from Brisbane here? Admittedly, she may have been thrown off by my two-month-old travelling beard, but I have no excuse. Anyway, we briefly caught up, swapped email addresses, and well, that was it. It was Auschwitz, I don't think you're allowed to have enjoyable conversations. Justine was on one of those bus tours so she had to stay with the collective, and I was leaving Krakow the next day, so, well, that was that. I guess we'll meet in another three years, maybe in Hiroshima that time. That would be great.