The traditional Turkish toilet - skill is required for use by women.

Alice at the Selimiye Camii - the dome is roughly the size of that of the Aya Sofia.

Sadan enjoying the culinary specialty of Edirne - fried calf's liver

Sadan, Randy and Basar in Greece (Basar was actually a fugitive from the Greek authorities at this point)

Randy, Sadan and Basar with purchases in Bulgaria (from the "Penny Market") - the locals must live on a diet of alcohol, pickles and cheese

The local brew - cute pull top and bottle with tasty lager inside

Alice and her Bulgarian toy boy - our waiter who was friendly and knew about 10 words of English but took dollars (for food, that is :-) )

Typical dish - this a salad drenched in shredded cheese and includes pickles and ham bits

The restaurant we ate at in Svilengrad - $40 bought a lot!

I could not post last night with good reason as the day proved long and interesting.  My student and friend Basar Basaran picked Randy and I up at our hotel around 11 AM (after Randy and I breakfasted well on the hotel terrace and took about a 50 minute walk along the seaside in wonderful weather).  We then went to the airport and picked up my student and friend Sadan Kulturel-Konak who arrived from New York.  We all drove about 2 hours west to the city of Edirne.  Edirne is most know for the Selimiye Camii (Selim Mosque).  This is generally noted as the masterwork of Sinan, the incredible Ottoman architect.  I had wanted to see it.  Edirne was not touristic and had a run down charm.  The mosque was beautifully done with a dome about the size of the Aya Sofia (Haghia Sophia).   No tourists were there and Sadan and I got to use my favorite type of toilet (NOT!) - the hole in the floor (see picture).  We spent a few minutes shopping in the small covered bazaar next to it and then went to lunch at a restaurant suggested by Basar's father.  The specialty of Edirne is calf's liver, fried.  Not something I wanted!  Anyway, we ordered a couple of orders of that with piyaz (white bean salad, one of my favorites) and cacik (yogurt and cucumbers, also a favorite).  It was all great, cheap and relaxing - eating outside - I had one small bite of the liver and the left the rest of it for the others but I greedily downed the salads.

After that we noted that Edirne was about 6 miles from the Greek border and 10 miles from the Bulgarian border.  Well, why not see both of these countries while we were in the neighborhood?  We started with Greece.  The border crossing was a true back water - after successfully leaving Turkey, we entered Greece only to find that Basar's visa was not active until June 15.  Randy, Sadan and I (and the car) could enter, but Basar could not.  We took a few pictures, went to the Greek duty free shop to buy wine and ouzo and drove back to Turkey.

We decided to try Bulgaria.  What a difference in border crossing - instead of a backwater, it was a huge and modern complex mainly devoted to truck traffic.  We went from place to place and succeeded in leaving Turkey.  Getting into Bulgaria was not so easy.  After some rigamarole they stamped all of our passports for entrance (even though they should not have admitted Basar because of his visa date) but did not want to let the car in unless we paid 150 Turkish lira (about 100 dollars) for "insurance."  We did not want to do this and were going to turn back when one of the border guards took Basar away to a building.  We waited in the car for about 10 minutes.  Basar came back and said we got lucky and we crossed the border.  What happened was this - they stamped our passports so they needed to let us in but they could not let the car in.  The guard took Basar to a bathroom (!) and asked for a bribe.  Basar said he only had 5 Turkish lira.  The guard was not pleased but said we had to be let in but the car was illegal so if we had a wreck or were pulled over, we had to say we lost the Bulgarian car papers. 

We drove to the nearest border town, Svilengrad, about 1/2 hour away.  The roads were bad and the buildings mostly deserted and all completely dilapidated.  It was a picture from the 1950's Soviet era - dreary and ugly.  We had no map, no currency (we did not even know what the currency was), no cell phone service and we were getting low on gas.  But we stopped to take a few pictures and went to a modern grocery store and bought wine, beer, cookies and water using a visa ATM card being charged in Levs.  (Drinking seems the main past time of this Bulgarian town as their selection of alcoholic beverages was immense and cheap.) We then decided to eat dinner there and chose a rustic place with an outdoor area across the street.  No one spoke English or Turkish but we managed to get 6 large beers, a water, 4 large salads and 4 large meat dishes, all different.  The food was very salty and everything contained shredded cheese and most contained pork pieces and sour cream and pickles!  Our waiter was pretty awesome but would not take a credit card for dinner.  We had no Levs or Euros - I tried dollars while having visions of being locked up in a Bulgarian jail for the night - dollars were eagerly received and whole meal including tip was $40.  Randy was all for moving to Bulgaria and living like a king.  After getting lost on the dark and deserted streets of town, Basar spotted a car with a Turkish license plate and got directions for the border.  We crossed back into Turkey without too much delay and arrived back in Istanbul around 1 AM.