Summer Trip 2008

.. And once again nothing special, the same as yesterday. Laura was photographing cats around the city, we were supposed to meet some Couchsurfing people at the evening but they were not able to come because of their work.. Some pictures below.

At least something special was happening today: It was raining in Istanbul at the morning. We haven´t seen a single raincloud for weeks, and I have never seen it raining anywhere around here. The rain made the day quite refreshing, as the air was cool all the day.

.. With nothing special happening. Just took a few pictures around the city, walked a bit..

Seems like we are going to leave Istanbul at Thursday morning, and our next destination will be Bucharest, Romania. We will spend just one night in Bucharest, and then drive to Sibiu in Transsilvania for Artmania festival.

Today we slept very long.. Well, at least I did. I was trying to get better and avoid a museum tour with my still hurting ear, while Laura was trying to wake me up :)

When she finally succeeded in that, we took a ferry to the European side of Istanbul, had a kebab, bought some souvenirs and walked around a bit. A few hours later we met Evrim and Evryn in Taksim and after relaxing for a while with some cold coffee got back to their house. We ordered some chicken etc from a local kebab place and are spending the evening doing nothing special.

Judas Priest was performing today in Istanbul, and Evren already had tickets to the concert, so we decided to join him. The concert was held on an arena built right on the shoreline of Bosphorus, and we took a boat from the Asian side to the European side of Istanbul, directly to the concert arena.

The atmosphere of the concert was great with ships sailing past us and some random fireworks lightening up the night sky of Istanbul. Seemed like all the black-dressing heavy metal fans of Istanbul had crawled out of their caves to attend the concert. It has been a long time since I have been attending a concert of a big famous band, and no place would have been better to do it than this open-air concert.

Continuing the positive news,seems like I really got the right diagnosis and medication for my ear. The constant untolerable pain is gone, just some random pain spikes remain. My hearing ability has also been almost totally restored just after the first medications. Back alive, and I still love Istanbul just as much as I have always done :)

Damn Greek trainee ( I think she was, as she had an old guy supervisoring her ) doctor obviously messed up. Our friends took us to an ear specialist of a private hospital in Istanbul as the ear pain was getting really bad, and the doctor diagnosed me having an infection on the skin of the ear tubes, and not really on the hearing system itself. So, the medication was totally wrong and not working at all, like I noticed.

Now I got working painkillers instead of the totally ineffective Aceclofenoc, some painkiller and anti-inflammation eardrops and the right antibiotics. I guess I will survive :)

After countless hours and about 1200km we made it to Istanbul, and after some searching found the place where our local friends live. Its already morning, but right now we need some sleep. ZzZzzzh..

Turkish border was once again incredibly slow and it took almost three hours to cross. Those three hours were torture to me, as I ran out of pain medicine for my ear a few hours before, and it was really hurting.

In Greece shops and gas stations dont sell painkillers, and all the pharmacies were closed at saturday. Luckily in Turkey the shops do sell painkillers, and on turkish side of the border I got a box of paracetamol. Never been that happy of such a small box of something.

Laura is driving, and Im waiting for the painkillers to work. Just as last year, it will be 5am before we reach Istanbul.

Laura´s account run out of money, so we had to stop at Thessalonika for a while to get a WiFi connection and move some cash into there. We had a bit exciting journey towards Thessalonika, as we were running out of both, cash and fuel. Managed to get here however, and now as the cash situation is fixed, it´s time to move towards Istanbul.

My ear is still hurting pretty f*cking much and I ran out of painkillers, but seems like the antibiotics are working. Maybe this will be better tomorrow..

The clinic was not open at the time we arrived to Athens, so we had to go there the next day. Today we visited a doctor at the morning, and she confirmed the diagnosis as an ear infection. I got some antibiotics and painkillers, and maybe they will start to work at some point. The pain is still getting worse, but with painkiller overdose it´s tolerable.. Tomorrow the antibiotics should start helping.

As if the ear pain was not enough, I also got another problem. I have never seen any pickpockets anywhere, but I guess in this kinda cities where a lot of tourists go they are common. Lost my wallet in the metro.. Well, there was nothing important in the wallet, no money, no credit cards, nothing else. Just my driving license and some useless cards, and I can always get new ones when I get back to Finland. The driving license is the only annoying thing, getting a new one costs 40€ and explaining the missing driving license to some foreign policeman might be difficult.

Besides of visiting the doctor, we also walked around the Athens a bit, visited the Acropolis and bought some souvenirs from the flea market...

We left Patras, and are currently driving towards Athens where we will stop just for one night. Somewhere between Patras and Athens there was a small village, where we could park our car next to a beach and a restaurant. Swimming refreshed us a bit, and the Greek meatballs and tzatsiki are always good. Today is also a warm day, our car temperature meter is showing 41.5C

I got hit a bit by the air conditioning of the ferry earlier, for some reason I usually cannot stand air conditioning without getting a flu. My ear is hurting quite badly, and I guess I have some fever also. So, it would be a good idea to visit a doctor and get some antibiotics for that. I wrote down the addresses of two medical companies in Athens that have an agreement with our travel insurance company, and when we arrive to Athens we will go to either one of those.. Damn, always annoying to get sick while travelling. Luckily this is not bad though, I can live with the hurting ear and a bit bad feeling until the antibiotics start to work.