Day 78 - (Mis) Adventures in Travel

But first, a beautiful view of the hostel terrace where we had our breakfast overlooking the Maramar Sea which connects to the Bosphorus. It was the only calm and relaxed time we had before undertaking the task at hand.

Now that we have this sorted out - sort of, knock wood, cross fingers, please don't jinx this - we can tell you about it. We were misinformed as to the visa requirements for India. According to our guise, we thought we could pay a small extra fee, and buy our Visa at the airport in Delhi. This is not so. The visa must be purchased ahead of time, preferably at the Indian Embassy in one's home country. The "travel arrangements" which took up all of Wednesday morning were us researching the best way to get an Indian Visa on the road. The Indian Embassy in Vienna, it seemed would be our best best bet, built neither e-mail address nor phone number we pulled from their website connected us to a real person.

We were stymied. We didn't want to make any further moves until we heard from Vienna. Wednesday night, in Istanbul, I remembered that I had the e-mail for American Citizens' Service, through the US Sate Department. The responded within hours with advice, website, and e-mail contact information for the Indian Embassy in Vienna.

This morning, we called Vienna. They felt that, through the wonder of e-mail and fax to the Indian Consulate in NY, they could get our visa approved within 2-4 days of our arrival in Vienna. Again cross fingers, knock wood, please no Jinx, etc. This was the good news. The bad news was that it meant we would need to change our flight out of Vienna. I called Expedia. I got disconnected. I called again. They said that because the itinerary was already en-route that they could not touch the reservation. I spent the rest of the morning and into the afternoon trying 1st just to get Turkish Airlines on the phone, and then trying to change the flight over the phone. Summary of the phone calls: Almost everyone I talked to was very pleasant but we kept getting disconnected. When I finally managed to get all the way through the process, it was discovered that because of regulations, I could NOT in fact change the flight over the phone, but would need to do so in person at the Taksim Sales Office, or at the airport.

We heard that Taksim Square was a nice place to go anyway, so we headed that way. It is a nice area but VERY confusing. We asked directions, and were universally told that it was near the McDonalds. Unfortunately, no one seemed to know WHICH McDonalds. After a solid half hour of searching, we finally found the office. We took a number. It was 208. The line was on number 143. We settled in for a long wait.

This is when our luck began to turn. Number 185 left, and we got her ticket. When we arrived at the desk, the lady was very friendly and helpful. Our tickets were changed with almost no hassle, only a 50 Euro charge each.

End result. We will be in Vienna for 8 days. At the end of it, we will have visas to India. We HOPE. Because we will be in Vienna for an extended time, we may be able to visit some friends from the Camino. Overall, it's not nearly as bad as we feared it might be. Just cross your fingers that the Visas process without a hitch.

It was nearly 7:30 by the time we finished dealing with the travel arrangements. The day felt a bit of a loss, though I took a slightly different route on each trip to the payphone, and living in the Old Quarter as we are, there were new treasures around every corner. 7:30, the squares are just waking up to evening activities, mostly centered around eating and drinking. We have heard that it is best to avoid seafood when sampling "street meat", but there was a man with a tray mussels and fresh lemons that proved too tempting. For 3 Lyra (2 US Dollars) we got 10 mussels stuffed with spicy rice pilaf and topped with freshly squeezed lemon. We also had roasted corn and Doner Kebabs (which taste entirely different than Doner in Europe, but very delicious). All told, our mobile feast cost us less than 7 US Dollars. Not only was it cheap and tasty (Street food is some of my favourite eats), we ate it while wandering the labrynthine streets and courtyards of Old Istanbul.

Upon returning to the hostel, we met and Australian girl who also happens to be...a SET DESIGNER! We spent rest of the evening finishing off the last of our apricot liquor and tasty treats left over from our visit to Germany. It was lovely meeting someone with such similar interest to our own, again proving just how small a world theatre really is.

In addition to Aussie Girl, we have met a host of interesting characters at this hostel, including a few young Americans living and teaching English abroad, and another Aussie by birth, who is now cycling from England all the way to his current home in Japan. As with the albergues on the Camino, one of the perks of hostel living is this conglomeration of like-minded people. In general, hostels will comprise a group of individuals who appear on the surface entirely dissimilar, but who share a similar sense of adventure, of living a little closer to the edge, of grabbing life and shaking out all the possibilities it has to offer.

In hostels, though we are far from blood relations, we still have family.