622 - Sprechenstein Castle
Today I vomited all over Turkey.
Welcome back, folks. After almost a two year hiatus of sending out emails, I’m back. And I’m hitting you with a top tier special, straight out of the land of Turks.
It all started on a brisk fall evening, on the eve of a photography montage across Europe. The plan was to land in Turkey, soak in the Mediterranean vibes, then hit Germany, Austria, and the photography gem known as Italy.
We just had to make it there first.
If you missed my previous Turkey adventures, check them out here:
The Bosphorus | Topkapi Palace | Nevmekan Sahil | Maiden's Tower | Ephesus Ancient City | Agora of Smyrna | Pergamon Ancient City
They’re filled with all the wonder and awe you can expect from visiting an Ottoman influenced country for the first time. I’m not going to rehash it- because after that first trip, you can consider me a local. (Despite barely knowing a lick of Turkish.)
The real culprit to blame for this adventure is Turkish Airlines, which Alara (my girlfriend, if you need a little catching up,) explicitly told me not to throw under the bus during this little recall.
She respects the airlines, and I can see why. She’s ridden on Turkish Airlines her entire life, without error. So when I foolishly decided to eat three day old cod, or whatever ocean-minded delicacy it was they decided to serve me, food poisoning didn’t even cross my mind.
At least for the first 12 hours, that is.
In fact, those first 12 hours were glorious. There’s nothing quite like living when there’s a stew medley brewin’ in your stomach. We met her parents, caught up with the local cuisine, and paroozed the Bosphorus, watching tea-drunk fishermen catch lüfer like tomorrow wasn’t ever gonna arrive.
But it abruptly arrived at 8am the next morning, in the form of an anxiety-riddled nausea wave. You know that feeling when you jolt awake and the first thing you think is “I’m going to throw up today?”
Well, for the next hour I denied that feeling. Vigilantly. I refused to believe that, in this random three day stretch visiting Alara’s family across the world, a stomach bug would decide to strike for the first time in almost a decade.
The last time I’d thrown up was damn near eight years ago when I’d drunkenly decided to chug 5 shots of olive oil in an attempt to put on a few pounds. That was warranted.
But you can only hide the truth so long. I woke up the entire family dry heaving into a toilet. Then I chugged some water and actually threw up.
And that’s how the next couple hours went. Me, trying to maintain my composure in front of Alara’s family, but shamelessly vomiting into every gutter I could find in the small Istanbul municipality known as Arnavutköy. It wasn’t pretty.
The good thing was that Alara might be the most compassionate person I know, and that clearly stems from her mom and dad, who went into full parenting mode. I couldn’t have asked for a better support system as they handed me a seemingly endless stream of bananas, bread, and nausea medication.
To return the favor, I powered through the day like a soldier sent to war. I insisted that no plans were to be changed- we’d flown all the way out here, and there was no way I was going to let my stomach ruin things.
Which is where things get interesting. I know, by now you’re thinking, else could possibly go wrong next in this love letter to Turkish transportation?
Well, a boat. The plan for the afternoon was to ferry over to the Princes’ Islands, which was the literary equivalent of doubling down in the “things that make you sick” category. But like I said- I was committed to the game.
Only it wasn’t me that got sick this time. As a suited man paraded down the isles slinging his version of a fruit slicer to inspired patrons, Aleyna (Alara’s twin sister,) asked for my plastic bag, and proceeded to vomit as quietly as one can do in a crowd of onlookers.
And it was as if a chord of realization had suddenly been struck. Not because the salesman continued to pitch his fruit slicer to the entire boat right in front of us, but because we realized it had to be something we all ate. Like the fish on that airline. A fish that not only Aleyna, but Alara had eaten as well.
The timer had now shifted to Alara- who felt perfectly fine at the moment.
The day continued as one might expect. Not one of us, but two of us now vomiting in every planter we could find. All it would take was a single bite of food to set off another deadly chain reaction, one that we kept pushing every two hours or so.
And even then, Alara somehow managed to escape it all. The day ended at their aunt’s house, where we were treated to a traditional Turkish meal that for me, only involved watermelon. And for the first time all day, I miraculously held it down. Nutrients ran through my body like a gift from the heavens. Aleyna didn’t even bother.
But we had one more mission left in this quest to complete the Turkish Transportation Trifecta- the taxi ride home. We hopped in the back, hoping for the best, despite knowing in the depths of our hearts that the odds of us making it back without disaster were slim to none.
That’s when I caught a glance of Alara, and I knew her moment had arrived. See, in Turkish taxis, the back seats face each other- which is something I’d only experienced in a vehicle once as a kid. My friend’s mom had a minivan setup like that, and it was the greatest thing I’d ever seen at the time.
Now, as I stared into the depths of Alara’s beautiful eyes from the same setup, the circumstances were all too different. It was a strange mix of love and fear, as we held eye contact for the entire trip. Alara, holding down those waves of nausea, and me, trying to comfort her with the only tool I had.
But I’m not the hero of this trip. Alara is. She held down the fort until we arrived at our Airbnb, where she casually walked inside to the sink and let loose like a blender missing its top. Chunks of eggplant, borek, and baklava swirled around, vaguely resembling the matter that hangs on the side of boats that’ve been docked for far too long.
Planes, boats, and automobiles. The transportation vomit slot machine had struck gold.
This is a photography blog however- so I will bless you with the first photo of many from this European vacation:
A castle. Because my camera ceased to exist for those first few days in Turkey. Fast forward three days and we’d now arrived in Germany, fighting off the tail end of that unruly mess we’d found ourselves in.
If I’m being quite honest, it’s not even that great of a photo. But all I could think about when I saw this scene unfold in front of me was how much the sky resembled vomit. Then Alara threw up again about ten feet to the left of me, painting the Lidl parking lot with her own explosion of color. We weren’t quite out of the woods.
But this sky… This magnificent sky… It was a beacon of hope to us that things would soon turn around.
