Christmas in Turkey

Wow what a semi white Christmas with our travel mates Lynn and Alan.

It was a difficult day in some ways not being with our families, however on the other hand a great relaxing day for the girls not having the usual Xmas rush with cooking and preparing for guests. So from that point of view it was good.

Today Xmas day we all got busy building a snow man in the park opposite the resort hotel. Plenty of laughs and giggles. As the snow man took shape many locals took an interest in what we were doing. Most of the local population here are Muslims and do not celebrate Xmas. As you can see in some of the photo’s sent to Deb for the blog we draped an Ozzie boxing Kangaroo flag on one side and a Turkish flag on the other. The comments from locals were fantastic. Lots of fun was had with beer and wine on completion along with the odd wrestle in the snow also shown in some pic’s.

We arrived in Turkey about a week and a half ago. On entering the country we all had a great feeling with the landscape following the Black Sea for most of our way through the country, the people are great, the food is superb.

We have spent the last 3 days in a snow ski resort with a little snow around. It is supposed to snow tomorrow as we leave and head to Istanbul.

Alan and Lynn are flying back to Australia at the end of the month. They have some special events to attend with family and friends.

We were going to take our time getting to Istanbul however as we learn from forums etc on the internet, Alan and Lynn may have some issues with leaving their car in storage. Apparently our passports are noted as having a car with us and if they leave the country there has to be some sort of guarantee with Turkish customs that they will return to take their car out of the country. Well I guess they will find out soon enough.

Going back a few days Donna and I almost met with a major issue. On leaving Georgia we decided to fill the cars with fuel as well as our 2 x jerry cans because the fuel in Georgia is cheap, but in Turkey about the same price as back home. For the first time since commencing this trip I neglected to tell the bowser operator which fuel to put in the car. After he filled the car and jerry cans I started to move off, one of the attendants rushed over to me in sign language got me to cut the engine. I was confused and got out to ask why and again in sign language he indicated he put Benzine in the car in lieu of Diesel. If he had not stopped us we would have blown the motor for sure. So we pushed the car away from the filling bowsers and proceeded to drain the 121 litres from the car. To my amazement they just unscrewed the drain plug, 50% of the fuel spewed onto the concrete pavement and the rest into buckets. All we needed was for somebody walking or driving past to flick a cigarette onto the pavement then it would have been good-bye Charlie.

All worked out in the end and we got on our way heading out along the Black Sea towards Gerede. This was a great drive, the scenery has been spectacular.

Plenty more stories but no memory at the moment, so until next time.