Climbing at Balikaylar

Tuesday was a national holiday here and many companies took the day off, with the exception of Berlitz of course, to the dismay of some of the staff. Since my classes got cancelled I took the opportunity to get out of the city with a friend and head for the beautiful gorge of Balikaylar. Only an hour or so outside Istanbul, surrounded by beautiful walls just waiting to be scaled. It always amazes me how fast the skill and stamina required for this sport fades during prolonged periods of inactivity.

The day was absolutely gorgeous and it was good to be once again out on the wall. My body was sore for the next week or so but the pain was well worth it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A shot of the valley. A great place to chill out for the day or even the weekend if you got the right camping equipment.

Insanity Pure

Insanity pure, that’s what I should call my book. The book, which central idea is insanity and should not be read without a prior understanding of the monster that is the Berlitz establishment of Istanbul. At this moment, I can say with more certainty than what the past five years of life have taught me, that I may not be spending as much time with humans as I should. I think that individuals should know and understand its own species, especially as intelligent one as we humans would like to label ourselves.

Since our decisive move out of our own apartment and into Berlitz housing, I have only one thing confirmed more than anything else, “People are insane”. I am not sure if this is all of the society, all of the world, but this label certainly applies to this bunch of people working for the Berlitz school in Istanbul. Within the past 2 weeks I have been blatantly lied to, I have had to listen to more people complaining about their so called “friends”, more times than I care to mention, and who knows what people are saying about me behind my back.

Fun days at the grind

Wednesday 6 of May. Woke up earlier than desired but not really regretting it. Plenty of time left in the day to do the things that need to be done, or at least some of them. Events at the school are unfolding. JaeKyoung and I have moved out of our apartment and moved into Berlitz housing. I didn’t tell any of the management about the move only to avoid the hustle and bustle of what could follow. That and the fact that they don’t allow couples in their housing set ups. I’ve talked to the guys occupying the residency and they were pretty ok with us moving in, which in my eyes was good enough. When “The Boss” found out, I was immediately informed that I had 4 days to move out. I made an appeal to my supervisor for an extension at least till the end of the month. Currently I am still waiting for a response from them. Either way we have to move. A month gives us enough time to put our affairs in order.
If you have any questions regarding living in Istanbul or the city in general, just leave it in the comment section. I will try and do my best to answer your question.

Sopanca

It happens every single weekend, regardless of whether the weekend falls on a Sunday or Saturday or on any other given day that happens to be my off day and thus my weekend. Currently Mondays are my weekends and of course the curse of bad weather has fallen upon those days.

In any case, this Monday we decided to go for a trip. We hoped the local train and headed for Sopanca, a small town outside of Istanbul. Well actually it turned out to be quite a way out of Istanbul. It’s 5 stations past the city of Izmit and it takes a nice round 2 hours, or more, to get there. We realised this only upon the purchase of train tickets which indicated the arrival time at Sopanca. The train didn’t leave until 1pm which meant that we wouldn’t get to our destination until 3 o’clock, which would have been fine if the weather had been warmer as our supply of clothing was rather scarce as was the light that day.

Either way, Sopanca turned out to be a very small, quiet town on the banks of a lake of significant size. We spent the next 4 hours just walking about the local area rather than walking around the lake. There is a path running along the shore which most likely leads to the next station and makes for a great hike as it is surrounded by hills and of course the lake itself on one side but its unfortunate location to a rather busy highway makes it for a bit of a noisy experience. Maybe not noisy, let’s just say that it’s not completely devoid of noise. We chose not to wander all the way to the next station however, and returned back to the town of Sopanca to spend an odd hour walking about taking photos of the locals. It’s a good day trip with nothing special to see at the end of it but if you’d like to get away from the hustle and bustle of a busy city, this may be a good alternative.

If you have any questions regarding living in Istanbul or the city in general, just leave it in the comment section. I will try and do my best to answer your question.