The Big Freeze

The festive period has been and gone again for another year. Santa has returned home to the south of Turkey and for the rest of us work has started again. Hopefully, everyone enjoyed themselves and has happy memories. For the last two weeks, I've been doing what I love most; travelling. Two very different trips to two very different kind of places, both very cold - though only one prepared for.

On Christmas Day, Anna and I went to the small village of Safranbolu. We had decided a couple of weeks earlier that we had wanted to make the most of the extra days off and not just waste them doing bugger all. We checked the weather on four different websites and all agreed that it was to be a warm December 25th. However, we soon found out that this was not the case!

Safranbolu is perhaps Turkey's best preserved Ottoman town, with many of the original buildings still intact, though in various stages of disrepair. Many of the houses are still lived in and the market is still in full operation. With tourism offering places such as this the best route to financial security, it is refreshing to see that the tourists the village has in mind are more local than foreign. Safranbolu allows Turks to see the way of life their grandparents would have experienced. Another draw to this idyllic spot is the saffron-flavoured lokum (Turkish Delight), which is delicious.

As mentioned in an earlier blog post, my New Year was spent in Berlin, Germany. Fortunately, for this little trip we were much better prepared for the freezing temperatures and the heavy snow fall. The last time I had been out and about in weather like that I was living in Kyrgyzstan and unable to get around much. Berlin, thankfully, is far more developed and the transport system intact.

I had travelled through Germany during the summer of 2002, but I didn't make it to the capital on that trip. Berlin is a city that spent much of the 20th Century at the centre of politics and history; from Hitler's demise to the fall of the divisive wall via the brinkmanship of the Cold War. Visiting Checkpoint Charlie and the remnants of the wall brought back memories of watching on TV as history was being made 20 years previous.

The highlight of the trip, though, was the million-person strong party at the Brandenberg Gate to bring in the New Year. Drinking, dancing and trying to keep the snow out of my shoes made this a great experience. This was definitely a good little break from Istanbul and one of the best New Year's I've celebrated. The best thing? Knowing that this was just the first of many trips of the new decade!