Istanbul

I needed to get to Bulgaria to present the film No Permanent Address (www.faclimbingfilms.com) so I decide to fly to Istanbul first to do a couple photo days before catching a bus north to Sofia (the capital of Bulgaria). I didn’t have much time to research Istanbul before my trip so everything came as a surprise. My flight landed a 3am and the airport was an hour and half from the downtown core. All I knew was that I wanted to find a hotel downtown without getting robbed. I was traveling with about 10,000 dollars worth of camera gear and I had with me the only copy of my last photo assignment that was four days worth of work.

Istanbul has 19,000,000 people spread across 100 kilometers and everyone has something to sell. My bus arrived in Taksim known for it’s bars and prostitutes but I wasn’t interested. I wanted to get to the old part of the city named Sultanahmet which has the most dense concentration of historical landmarks in the world! I found a taxi that got me to Sultanahmet for 15 Turkish Liras (about 8 euro or 11 dollars) and I stopped at the first hotel I saw. I feel asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Sultanahmet is home to the second largest Mosque in the world. The exterior looks like a futuristic spaceship and inside the grandeur is breathtaking. It is actively used by muslims and everyday high pitched prayers echo through the streets from a network of strategically placed loudspeakers.

I spent time in the markets and wheeled dealed myself a new pair of imitation puma trainers for about 15 euro. You can buy anything including and handy pistol. Made me feel quite safe knowing anyone could buy a gun as easy they could buy a CD player.

After just a couple days in Istanbul I was exhausted. I caught a night bus to Sofia and sat beside an articulate Bulgarian girl who gave me a geography lesson on Bulgaria. As it turns out you can surf the Black Sea.

I made it to the Festival the next morning which was in a little ski town a couple hours from Sofia named Bansko. Bansko is a beautiful town with old Bulgarian homes built to handle the harsh winters. I met up with the Festival Organizers who put all of the guests in a nice hotel. The first night they took our group (Bulgarian climbers, film makers and myself) out for some authentic Bulgarian cuisine. I couldn’t say exactly what we ate other than it was meat or more specifically many meats all wrapped up in some crunchy animal skin….mmmmmm.

CLIMBING
- Although I didn’t climb in Turkey it is a very rocky country with tons of potential and it is cheap.

PHOTOGRAPHY
- It seemed that everyone in Istanbul was a photographer; almost every tourist I saw was walking about with a Nikon SLR around their neck. Since I was traveling with my last assignment I was super paranoid of having my hard-drive go missing. I searched out hiding places in my hotel room to leave it while I was out shooting. I also backed up some important files by secretly storing them on the computer at the nearest internet cafe. That way if I was robbed my assignment wouldn’t have been lost. In the future I will travel with DVDs and mail home back-up copies.

TRAVEL
- Visa to enter Turkey costs 45 euro for Canadians (3 month multi entry)
- Two airports in Istanbul
- Buses in this area are more reliable than trains
- Sultanahmet has the most dense concentration of historical landmarks in the world
- Try and get a fixed price before taking a taxi. If you don’t know the city they will take you on very expense loop to increase your fare.

Out of Portugal

My last surfing day in Portugal was a bit tainted. I was surfing with a girl from Ireland named Lisa. After being in the water for about half an hour a freak set came in that was really BIG. Lisa got snatched by a wave and went for a tumble. When she came out of it her face was covered in blood. She had taken a board to the forehead and that had opened a 2 inch gash just above her eyebrow. At the hospital they stitched her up real nice. She was more worried about the scar on her beautiful face than anything else.

I arrived back in Aix at 3 in the morning after a long day of buses, metros and planes. I had one day to get organized before jumping in the car to meet Philippe, owner or Escalade Magazine, in Avignon (2 hours from Aix) to do an assignment on a sport climbing area named Russan. To access the base of the crag you need to rappel through a large hole in the rock that is wild. After four days of shooting I got back to Aix late Saturday night with enough time to pack before catching a train the following morning to Switzerland.

The first three hours on the train were great: I had a booth all to myself so I caught up on some sleep. In Lyon an older women walked into the booth looking down at me from above her small reading glasses and I just knew this was going to be trouble. It turned out I was sitting in her chair so I moved. The entire booth filled up quickly and the last person to sit down was a young girl. As soon as the girl sat down she jumped up and yelled out, “this chair is wet!”. The old women then pointed at me and said that I had done it! “What!”, I said, and before I could think of anything else to say I said, “it wasn’t me.” The truth is that it wasn’t me and the only reason (my guess) why the older women thought I had done it was she had noticed that I had a water-bottle and because I was the first person in the booth. It was preposterous that the old women would accuse me, but of course I looked like an ass because I didn’t offer the girl my chair. I ended up giving the girl a plastic bag to sit on but the women was still convinced that I had done something terribly wrong.

PHOTOGRAPHY
- For the Russan Assignment everything was lined up: the models, accommodation, locations, food etc. Lining up models can be the hardest part and it that isn’t organized well it is a disaster. Very nice shoot and the guys at Escalade are top notch.

CLIMBING
- Russan has a great assortment of climbs in all levels. The climbs are short but classic. Access is about a 20 minute walk.

TRAVEL
- As it turns out Avignon is super central to a bunch of really good cliffs. Although I didn’t visit it Seynes is really close which is known for its tufas. We stayed in a gite which is a home that is rented out. Gites are really common in France and very affordable if you have a group. A good site is: www.gites-de-france.fr