Midnight Express

I got a great New Year's Eve present upon my return to Ankara: my Iranian visa! My joy, however, was tempered by the fact that it is for only 30 days rather than the 90 I had asked for, and so will require further bureaucratic machinations once I get to Tehran. But for the time being those worries are purely academical: I had my foot in the door and was in a hurry to get going ... after a New Year's party in Ankara, of course. After my prolonged stay in the city I had made a few friends which made seeing in the new year more pleasant and normal, and also gave me an opportunity to have one last party before the enforced temperance of stricter regimes.

I had committed the cardinal sin of drinking by mixing my drinks, and so arose on New Year's day with something of a hangover despite not actually having drunk that much the previous night. Luckily I only had to pack my rucksack and walk some 3km to the train station by 4:40pm, when my train was due. I was excited to try out the Turkish railway system as I find that trains are invariably more comfortable and afford better views than buses. That's a big ask here as Turkish intercity buses are more comfortable and pleasant than any in Europe; in fact the only country where I've experienced better buses is Argentina. But I certainly wasn't disappointed on either count: there are only three seats to every row and plenty of legroom besides making dozing off a certainty. And the mountain scenery of eastern Anatolia, clad in its winter finery is worth the trip alone. Where I wasn't too impressed was the speed. Despite being called the Doğu Ekspres, the scheduled time for the 700km trip to Divriği is almost 15 hours (i.e. an average speed of under 50km/h). My train was 2.5 hours late. Must work on punctuality!

Magical Winter landscape seen from my train window.

Hitch To The Unknown

My trip planning is a rather ad-hoc affair. I have a (very) rough idea of the entire route that I bashed out in a basic spreadsheet in 20 mins one bored afternoon, which takes in countries, a couple of stops in each and an estimated length of stay. As I get closer to places the view necessarily clarifies into something more distinct and detailed, and I have a more-or-less set plan 7-10 days in advance. So there I was on Friday in the early afternoon, standing by the beginning of the highway leading south, planning to visit the historical seaside town of Nessebar, some 90km away. A pretty straightforward proposition. After an hour I was getting rather annoyed, especially as the spot I had chosed was really quite good and there was plenty of traffic. But eventually a white family car pulls up with a young couple and labrador. Deni and Kamen were heading to the Rhodope mountains in the south of the country for the weekend and their route passed close by Nessebar, which was perfect for me.

The Rhodope mountains were definitely worth the 700km detour.

Line Dancing In Norway

From Oslo it was due west (when I say that I mean geographically, because due to the country's steep topography, there's no such thing as a straight road in Norway) to Bergen, Norway's second city, erstwhile capital and important Hanseatic trading town (those Hansa guys again). Bergen is renowned for the Bryggen, a neighbourhood of wooden wharfside buildings that date from the Middle Ages, although much more of the downtown area is made of quaint, wooden houses stacked up on the city's steep hillsides.

View of Bergen's Bryggen from across the harbour.

Fietsen In Friesland

Along with tulips, clogs, windmills and cheese the Netherlands is famous for being both the most densely populated country (of any consequence) in Europe, as well as the most intensively cultivated. Given these two pressures on space I imagined the country to be a duotony of cities and fields. The towns of the Randstand - the super-conurbation where two thirds of the population live and that spreads in a crescent from Utrecht in the northeast via Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam to Dordrecht in the southeast - are certainly visually rather samey: sober brick buildings with a historic core both surrounded and bisected by canals. And for most visitors this is the only image they will get of the Netherlands. I wanted to see the other half too; the polders reclaimed from the clutches of the North Sea, the unending flat lands, the most productive farming area in the world. It's amazing to think that such a small country could be the world's third-largest agricultural exporter (by value). I pictured it to be some grim, soulless, bio-factory.

Typical dutch country house with its own, ultra-green patch of garden and bijou canal.