11448

It was time to leave Czech Republic. For our way back we decided to take more eastern roads.

 

On the road again

We stopped in Leoben, Austria, where we had a nice Wiener Schnitzel.

Our lunch

We continued our road to Slovenia and all tired we went to bed.

11447

We spent the day in České Budějovice. We had a really nice weather, much better than in Slovenia, where the rivers were flooding the cities.

In the centre of the city

We also visited motorbike museum.

Motorbike museum

After the museum we went to see the local brewery.

 

Budweiser-Budvar

Lovro chose a restaurant, where we ate very nice lunch.

  

After the food we hang out and drank beer in the city. Beer prices were around 1€, 25 CZK in local currency.

11446

Me and my co-workers decided to go to České Budějovice with motorbikes. Weather forecast was bad and it was raining from the morning, but that did not stop us.

What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

Full rain protection

We drove to 3/4 of Austria in rain and we were very cold in parts, where the altitude was above 1500 m.

But in the end, we were rewarded with a nice hostel, nice city, cheap and good beers and food.

Our meal after 9 hours of riding

11445

Nothing special happened today.
I watched some nice videos of people working in high places.

High Voltage Cable Inspection - The top video clips of the week are here

11444

At work, we had a lot of time again. We saw some very nice T-shirts.

And I also saw some nice youtube videos.
A must see is this one.

At home I did a very stupid thing and I deleted some pictures from my last trip to Istanbul. Thanks God for Recuva, a free software, which helped me to rescue all the files. It is almost always possible to do this, you just shouldn't write anymore to disc.

11443

Today, I went to work again after a long time. I delivered Yakut wine to my co-worker Mario.

After work, my sweetheart Yamaha Fazer find the way home again. I was very happy to see her.
And one nice video for today.

   

11442

The time has come to leave Burcu in Istanbul and return to Slovenia, but before I left, I repaired the balcony net, so the cats could not escape.

The Man in action

Then we said goodbye to each other, and Toykan, the delivery guy of Rengahenk restaurant, took me to the Metrobus station.

Start in-front of the restaurant

I switched in Merter to Metro and for 3TL total I was at the airport. The Adria Airways plane, Bombardier CRJ900,  had a small delay. The plane successfully took off and after 2 hours and 2 cheese sandwiches we were in Slovenia, where my sister was already waiting for me. After half an hour of driving we were home in Podljubelj, in a nice village out of the city crowd.

And this is a nice Slovenian song for coming home to mamas.

Ansambel Lojzeta Slaka - Mama, prihajam domov

11441

The sky started to cry when Burcu left Slovenia and so did here, so my last full day in Istanbul we watched some things on TV and in the evening we went out for Rakı & Balık. Unfortunately they had a referendum here in Turkey (Evet or Hayir), so we were not able to drink any alcohol so in the end we had only fish with juice. That is only one face of so called Turkish democracy, not letting people do what they want, and this referendum they had will probably just make things worse, but we all hope it will not.

 

Dinner

Shrimps sauté - a must in Istanbul

   

11440

Finally it was time to get out of Istanbul. Ilhan, Burcak's boyfriend (she is Burcu's sister), lend us a motorbike Ducati Monster for the weekend. Thanks 100x.

Two Monsters?

We decided to take the following route: Kadıköy-Polonezköy-Ömerli-Ağva-Şile-Riva-Kadıköy. After we filled the gas (price in Turkey is around 1,9€ per liter now) we rode through Polonezköy and Ömerli and after some more riding we had a breakfast.

 

Cows on the road and in the football training

 

Breakfast place, our çay master and our breakfast

After the breakfast we continued our road towards Ağva a very nice place with sandy beach on the Black sea.

 

Ağva

Burcu and me in Ağva 

The beach was very crowded so we continued our road to West, towards Şile.

 

Lonely beach on our way to Şile

We stopped at this lovely beach

The beach was nice, you just have to ignore the garbage

I went swimming for a short time, because the water was very cold and after that we took a little break. After a while we continued our road to Riva. It was almost raining, but we were strong and we were continuing on our roads as planned.

Şile

Coast in Riva

It was late so we returned to Kadıköy, where we had a familly dinner.

Yes, I know, food again

The day was finished and with Burcu we made a short video of our trip.

And our Garmin track:

   

11439

On Friday evening we had a short Nordkapp presentation.

First we had a dinner.

Our dinner

After the dinner we watched Nordkapp Panorama film, shown on Norkapp on an 180˚ screen. The film takes you on a journey through a landscape filled with contrasts, lights and spectacular nature. The film is produced by Nordisk Film, who presents North Cape and its surroundings with beautiful pictures and music. The music is made by the sami artist Mari Boine.

   

11438

Today I read a very nice quote from Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi).
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated"


In the evening Burcu and me made a nice romantic dinner. We cooked a soup with red lentils, made pasta with vegetables (young beans, garlic, onion, zuccini, carrot, potato, red pepper, green pepper, tomato paste) and we baked some chicken wings.

Red wine and my favourite soup

Pasta, chicken wings and crunchy bread

   

11437

It was a big day for Turkey and Slovenia. Our basketball teams played in quarter-finals. Asaf arranged the tickets for both matches today. First match was between Serbia and Spain.

At the VIP entrance we met our dancers for tonight- Red Foxes from Ukraine

The favourite for the first game was Spain, but my heart was with young Serbian team.

It's show time

Serbians started pretty good and Spain was always some points behind. Unfortunately they caught Serbians at the end, but Miloš Teodosič, 23 years old, 196cm, shoot an amazing 3-pointer from 9 meters over Jorge Garbajosa, 207cm, 3 seconds before the end of the match and the final score was 92-89 for Serbia.

Between the matches we ate some food - I love VIP tickets

And It was time for the most important match today. Slovenia - Turkey. I was surrounded with Turkish people in the Sinan Erdem Olimpik Spor Salonu (Sinan Erdem Dome). Our guys started quite good, but only for three minutes, when the score was 10:6 for Slovenia. After 3 miuntes, Turkish guys totally destroyed us. In the end it was 95:68 (27:14, 23:17, 21:12, 24:25).

Slovenia will fight for 5th place now (5th place leads to Olympic games 2012)

It was time to go home. We took a taxi, 7 people in Hyundai Accent, but it was cheaper because of that.
   

11436

Ana will leave Turkey tomorrow, so we decided to have a nice dinner with Burcu's family. We had a dinner in one of the best place called "Niyazi Bey" in Kadıköy.

Ana is eating İçli köfte

First we had İçli köfte with lemon.

Our second dish was Lahmacun.

Lahmacun is pizza shaped food. It has thin dough and a top made from minced meat. After that we had one of the best things you can eat here. It is called İskender kebap.

One of the best things, İskender kebap

Family at the dinner

   

11435

U2 concert day.
http://www.u2.com/
Before the concert Burcu made some sandwiches. We met at her restaurant at 13h and first we ate some fish.

On the menu: İstavrit and Hamsi

After that we went to buy some beers and then we took the bus to the stadium. First we had to get the number, so that we could enter the area just in front of the stage.

We were very close to number 2500, last number that can enter special area

Stadium was still empty when we entered (Ana, Burcu and me)

Snow Patrol

 

 

U2 are: Adam Clayton, The Edge, Larry Mullen, Jr. and Bono.

U2 collage 1 of 2

U2 collage 2 of 2

Collage from the whole concert (pictures by Ana Serec)