Part 1

So I got to Turkey in one piece.

I didn't even go to sleep the night before. I didn't trust myself to wake up. I stayed up all night watching DiVX and cooking. Finally, I called a cab and made it to the train station. Luckily, we had a compartment all to ourselves and I slept the entire journey.

Well, not the entire journey. Romanian trains are possibly the worst in the world. They either have no heat or too much heat. This train was the latter and it was easily 35 C inside. I woke up every few minutes. I didn't mind so much because I was able to check out the scenery. The Danube is beautiful and the Carpathians breathtaking. Especially when it's snowing.

We got to Bucharest and went straight to the airport. Waiting waiting waiting. The flight to Istanbul was without incident except for some major turbulence. When we landed, everyone applauded. Coming out, it was pouring rain. I was nervous for our flight to Ankara. Some major turbulence later and again, we landed in one piece. And again, everyone applauded. Is this a Turkish tradition or something.

The airport was an absolute madhouse. It was packed with old men and women in white, scurrying by with bottles of water. None of us could figure out who they were until it dawned on me: they had just come back from Mecca! I thought those old people would be nice and gentle. Wrong. Old ladies are vicious, vicious creatures. They were elbowing me out of the way, stepping on my feet., pushing me aside. At least I got my luggage!

The first night, we all went straight to bed. The next day, we had a meet a greet where we met all the other delegates. There were Turks, Danes, a Germano-Swede, a Latvian, Romanians, Bulgarians, French and Greeks. We also had an Intercultural Evening where we all brought goodies from our home countries. It was a lot of fun.

Then they played O-Zone's Dragostea Din Tei. My song! Of course, all the Romanians got up to dance and I was jumping around singing at the top of my lungs. I love that song!