All aboard for the Orient Express?

Above: Under the arclights, after midnight, at Kapikule on the Turkish frontier... You need to get off the train for a few minutes here to buy your Turkish visa then have your passport stamped.

Since my family came in mid-May we have had a few more visitors. Marcus & Co. came a week later and stayed through the end of May. It was great to see them and catch up with what all has been going on at Breakaway and in their lives the last year or so. But I have to admit that it was a bit overwhelming having that many boys under one roof. Coming for a family of all girls it has been a big shock to me to live with just one boy, so when you add in three more, it can be eye opening. Basically girls and boys are not the same. I’m sorry, but anyone who argues otherwise obviously hasn’t lived with anyone of the opposite sex. We think differently, we talk differently, we act differently, we eat differently, and we smell differently. Oh my!

We now are hosting two guys, one who works with Sander back in Houston and his friend who has tagged along. They are here in Aberdeen to go to Matt and Faye’s wedding in Nairn (close to Inverness) on Saturday and then they are off to walk all 95 miles of the West Highland Way. We are so excited to join them at Matt and Faye’s wedding and I am even more excited not to join them on the walk! Sander would love to walk some of it I know, but I am so incredibly happy to miss out on that adventure.

The wedding should be quite an event with a traditional Scottish ceilidh and outdoor “marquee” reception. For the occasion Sander is even wearing a kilt!! Our good friend Scott McDonald is letting Sander borrow his, complete with belt, flashes, sporran, sgian dhub, ghillie brogues, and bow tie. I am so excited for him and we will be sure to take lots of semi-professional pictures. I am wearing an old bridesmaid dress that I wore exactly a year ago to Julie and Daniel’s wedding on 10 June, 2006 (happy anniversary guys!). Isn’t it ironic…

We are busy planning out our future plans as our time here is getting really short. One big possibility is for Sander and I to take the last 2 ½ weeks in July and go on a European adventure. We are considering taking our own version of the Orient Express to travel from Paris to Istanbul…by train! Since we have lived in the UK for 6 months we are eligible for the InterRail pass that will allow us travel on any train from here to Turkey for free or for a small reservation fee. The price for an the InterRail pass, since we are under 25, is about $300. A flight from Aberdeen to Istanbul is $850. Yes, we would spend more overall with food and sleeper train reservations, but this of the adventure!

Some possible routes for our own “Orient Express” include:

London-Paris-Vienna-Budapest-Bucharest-Istanbul:
London-Paris-Vienna-Belgrade-Sofia-Istanbul:
London-Paris-Athens-Thessaloniki-Istanbul:

These are just the most direct routes. We can chart our own way and make detours along the way. I would love to stop off in Italy for a few days, but we will just have to see how the traveling goes. It would be quite an adventure!! We were looking at traveling by train to Cappadocia (in central Turkey) but realized we would have to be careful which one we took. There is one train that runs from Istanbul to Tehran and says in bold letters “For International Travelers Only.” Can’t you just see it? Two Americans on a train full of Iranians? Don’t worry though – there are lots of other trains to take and we would be sure and take the local ones, not the Iranian routes!

We haven’t finalized our plans though, but if we do I will let you know. What a blog journal that trip would be! I would love writing about it as it seems a lot more exciting than anything going on here.