Still looking for my new neighbourhood here in Sofia, which is taking up quite a bit of time. It’s not as easy as 1.5 year ago, since the city got remarkably more expensive. I’m not worried though, patience and perseverance are the key to the keys of a great flat, in a great neighbourhood. If you know something good however, not more than 10-15 minutes by public transportation from the center, you can email me at 
The following shot was taken at a big bazaar that’s held every Tuesday and Friday in Istanbul’s Kadıköy area, which is on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. You can find food like fruit, vegetables, spices, nuts and grape leaves there, but also clothes such as the headdresses below. I was walking around there with a blond girl and boy, do you draw attention if you’re a young, blond, European woman in Istanbul. People were yelling out “Obama, Obama”, “hoş geldiniz” (welcome), “hello!” and “buyrun” (come in please/come here).
I apologize for the recent lack of updates. I had a friend from Holland visiting me here, but will now resume my posting about life in Istanbul. 🙂
I plan on posting a lot more pictures and short stories like this one in the coming time, so if you’re not yet subscribed to updates from this blog, do so now either by RSS or through email updates.
click on the photo for alternate version
Just before dawn, Istanbul’s fishermen get in their boats and move onto the Bosphorus or the Marmara sea. If you walk or sit along the coastline, you can hear them talking or listening to music. A great place to visit in Istanbul, if you want to sit along the coast, is Kadıköy, which is also where this picture was taken. Inspired by the work of Michael Kenna.
Tell me, which is better, the above or the alternate version?
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Just uploaded another album to my Picasa with pictures of my stay in Sofia, Bulgaria this week. Click on a pic below to go check out the album!
Or click here to see all of my albums, including older albums of Sofia, Istanbul, Brussels, Holland, Macedonia, and Bulgaria.
My first batch of Istanbul pictures is now online. Go check it out at Picasa.
A few years ago I was walking through my hometown Utrecht in The Netherlands quite bored, but I had to kill some time. For some reason while I was walking I looked up and suddenly found myself marvelling at a beauty I had never noticed before. I believe a lot of things in our surrounding go completely unnoticed, because we don’t look up much. That’s why I’d like to encourage you all to LOOK UP MORE!
Every Monday I will post a photo or two of shots I took while looking up. This is the first installment with some shots from Istanbul, Turkey.
The last one is a shot by my girlfriend Tsvety (visit her DeviantArt page) and was taken in Ephesus, Anatolia, Turkey. It contains the Library of Celsus, completed in 135 AD.
If you would like to participate, just post a pic every monday taken from an upward angle and post your link below! For this week don’t worry if your post is a day late. Just post your link and visit the others.
I took this picture during my trip to Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria. I was having dinner on a terrace and this stray dog kept begging people for food, shoving its head through the fence and putting it on people’s tables. First time I really saw a stray dog like that, but during my five month stay in Bulgaria I saw many. It was also featured as photo of the day on the website of Radio Bulgaria (the international service of the Bulgarian National Radio).
To see the whole album of the pictures I took in Veliko Turnovo, click here.
Got a story to share about stray dogs? Your experiences in Bulgaria or Eastern Europe?
If you have a colourful picture of your own to share and you’re a PhotoHunter, be sure to leave your name and link below! All PhotoHunt posts get Stumbled!
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That evening we celebrated a birthday at a bar in town. Isabelle turned 20 and as Leni and her boyfriend Vlado joined us, they surprised her (and us) with cake and chocolate. We had a drink, chilled out and called it a night at an unridiculous hour for a change.
The next day I could sleep in a little, because Mite and Isabelle had some stuff to do at the NGO’s centre. At around 12 I was picked up by Mite and we were going to have some coffee before our afternoon activity. This afternoon activity was something I’d been waiting for since the moment I decided to go to Bulgaria last year, so naturally I was very excited. In the afternoon, we’d be heading over to the Roma neighbourhood to visit the host family of one of the American girls, Alex. In this neighbourhood however, you are never left alone (that’s a positive thing), so I knew I’d see a lot of stuff I normally wouldn’t, or never have… and that there would probably be some great photo opportunities too. 😉
Mite and I headed outside and saw a guy sitting behind a car. It was the crazy man we’d seen the day before as we were sitting outside a bar. The guy seemed to be completely in his own world, or even dimension, and today was no different. Mite asked for my camera and he managed to inspire me quite a bit. He knows no shyness and that’s the reason why he gets great shots. Definitely a motivation to get out of my own comfort zone. The crazy guy hardly noticed the camera and I wonder whether he had any idea of what a camera is and what was going on around him.
Later that afternoon we visited the Roma neighbourhood. It was quite the experience. I’ve often heard Bulgarians complain about the Roma, saying they’re dirty and their neighbourhoods are like landfills and though they might be right, I wonder if they cannot see the beauty that’s right there. A speck of mud on a flower does not destroy the flower’s beauty, the obsessive and judgemental mind does.
I’ll try to explain what’s not captured in the pictures, but then I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Entering the neighbourhood, as a group that clearly was not from around there, we drew quite the attention. Children loved the cameras and came to pose for us. We walked around and immersed ourselves in the noise and continuous chaos of the neighbourhood. It was great to have people from Alex’ host family as our guides, this made the neighbourhood and the people so much more accessible. Also, Mite and his colleague Leni have been working with some of these kids for years, so they too knew quite a few people there. It’s hard to put into words what the neighbourhood is like though, so without further ado, the pictures.
As said we visited the host of Alex who had a huge house. They lived in Germany for decades, working there to earn money and went back and built a house the size of a villa. After having some coffee, we were offered to come up to see the view from the top balcony of the house.
Following the Roma hospitality, we headed back to the city so we could all go to dinner. On our way back we visited a mosque which was still under construction. An interesting fact about the Roma people here is that a lot of them see themselves as Turkish and even speak Turkish. Some don’t even speak Macedonian. A fair share of them is also Islamic (evidently). Turkey won’t recognize their claims for Turkish nationality however.
As the sun went down and the evening stole the day’s presence, more new experiences awaited me.
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The second day in Strumica I woke up with a bit of a hangover. We all got up and I went along with Mite to bring Isabella to the centre of his NGO where she would go to work with other American volunteers and then the plan for Mite and I was to go for coffee. Once there, Mite was put to work, so plans changed. I was standing around a bit and a guy was hooking up computers, so I figured I’d help out a bit. After hooking up some computers, I went to find Mite who was in another room with the American girls doing some activities to teach English to Roma children.
They were busy with an exercise to write down three things about the first impression you had about a particular person in the room. The children stated some pretty sweet and funny things. After that we were put to work to make badges for ourselves with our name on it, but we had to draw something on it too. After that we did ‘Simon Says…’ to teach the kids some more English.
See the pictures of the children in my Picasa album…
After this Mite and I went for lunch and got some of the biggest sandwiches I’ve ever seen.
We then met the girls in the centre who were done with work by now and Mite and Leni (who also works for the NGO) showed them the ways home. This was very interesting, because one of them was staying in a Roma neighbourhood. You enter quite a different place when you walk into the Roma neighbourhood; it’s like a village of its own and a very busy and noisy one at that. One of the girls was picked up by the family where she was staying and we were all invited to come around for coffee some time. This plan’s definitely on the table and I’m very excited about it.
We then went home, had dinner, chilled out a while and Mite and I went out again to meet some more of his friends.
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