Oregon

Last week we flew up to Oregon to visit Sarah and Jeremy and little Elliot.  We were very busy all week, doing lots of fun things with our adorable grandson.  Here are a few of the things we did while we were there:

Watched Elliot play in the pretty fountains at the Oregon State Capital, had Elliot model the Turkish outfit we got him in Istanbul in April, (doesn't he look happy to be wearing that?)

Went to the wonderful Portland Zoo to see all the animals,  went on a great hike in the deciduous rain forest to see a beautiful waterfall, went to the beach near Lincoln City for him to play in the sand and make a castle after eating the best clam chowder in the world, read stories together, and one of our favorites......discovering the E.Z. Orchard Shortcake Stand where we indulged in a huge bowlful of Oregon berries drenched in whipping cream and real Tillimook vanilla ice cream.

We went there a few times....and enjoyed every bite.  We also walked from Sarah and Jeremy's house to Bush Park to go through the Salem Art Festival and listen to the jazz bands, and on Saturday we watched Sarah as she ran a 5K race in 28 minutes!!

We had a good time meeting Elliot's playmates Rowen and Laya.  Elliot and Rowen caught a lady bug and were completely fascinated with it crawling on Elliot's hand.

We were sad to leave them.....we had a very berry fun time!!

Summertime in Heber Valley

We have been enjoying the fine summer weather here in the Heber Valley. After enduring a very long and snowy winter and practically no spring at all, we are finally getting some warm temperatures.

We have been busy, with a nice visit from Sarah and little Elliot, adding a new patio to our back yard, getting the boat ready again and enjoying the water recreation our area has to offer.

Taking the boat out on Jordanelle Reservoir and Deer Creek, we have had our sons Dan and his wife Sara, and Nathan and his wife Kellie enjoy some fun getting up on the wake board, tube or waterskiis.

We have also have been surprised with a beautiful little colt born in the pasture. We have enjoyed a couple of evening campfires, roasting hot dogs and making s'mores, and we had a fun pizza party for Dan's 30th birthday with a few of his close friends.

We are also babysitting little Roscoe (Dan and Sara's Jack Russell Terrier) while they are on vacation.

This is also the last 3 weeks of Nathan and Kellie staying with us before they head off to Williamsburg, Virginia, where Nate will begin his two years in the William and Mary MBA program. We will miss them.

Istanbul -the rest of the story

Istanbul is really a marvelous city. I am sure that if Mark spent a year here he could run for mayor. There are not many americans here, maybe because the dollar is so weak, or maybe because we have become a little paranoid of moslems and their culture. Almost every vendor (and that is just about every male in istanbul) starts by saying something to us in german--guten tag etc. I say that my english is better than my german. Then they say Where you from, I say America. They say I love America, than they ask if we like Bush. The answer we give to that varies from no! to a blank stare depending if we just want to move on with our business. Next they absolutely need to know what state we are from. When we say Utah they get all excited and yell to their collegues in the shops or restaurants While they yell out Mehmet, or Okur (Utah Jazz Star from Istanbul) Then they ask if we are mormons, which I find very strange but I guess Mehmet is so popular on TV here that they all know about mormons. The conversation always ends with them guaranteing us the maximum discount in thier shop or stall or what ever they are hauling around in their wheelbarrows that day. My favorite was when after going through this routine the shopkeeper told me to buy from him because he was the least dishonest man in the bazzar. He was probably from Orem. All Mormons should come to Turkey this is the new promised land for us.

My favorite site so far was the Topaki Palace. They have a fantastic museum full of weapons and swords, the treasury is jam packed with gold and jewels in every form imaginable from baby cribs to swords and guns. But the best of all is the holy relic room where an imman chants verses from the koran 24 hours a day and you can see a tooth of the holy prophet, his whiskers, and and actual footprint set in solid stone of Mohhamed. There are numerous other relics of bone teeth and swords. It is one of the holy pilgrimage sites for all good moslems. There were believers from all over the world looking at these relics.

For Alex who is tired of Japanese food I will tell you that the food here is definately better than Eastern europe. We are eating probably just what you would imagine here, shish kebab, lots of vegetables mainly tomatoes and cucumbers, olives, pita and turkish bread, hummus, gyro like sandwiches, and rice pudding. (My friend Richard Shafer says that only mormons and turks know how to make rice pudding). The Fish is also good. There are street vendors everywhere selling hugel sesame coated bagels, corn on the cob, pistachios and nuts, turkish delight candy, and various other treats. I will include a picture of one of these little carts.

There is an amazing number of sights to see here. Yesterday we went up the Bosphorus on an all day boat ride it was spectacular and hard to compare wtih anything we have ever seen. The boat was loaded with nicotine addicted germans, and japanese caring about 65% of their body weight in camera gear. I wonder waht they are blogging about us as they write home. We stopped at little towns and villages as we cruised up the straits to the mediterranean.

Today we went to St. Sophias a massive cathedral first built in the year 400 (thats right it is not a typo) and rebuilt many times over the centuries. Finally conquered by the moslems in the year 1200 and converted to a mosque. Truly the most amazing church I have ever seen the inside filled with mosaics and the the tombs of christian crusaders, and moslem conquers. It seems as if we can all get along in death OK and create a lovely environment.

I am sure it would be possible to spend years here and never see all the sights, or eat off all the vendor carts, but for us our time here is coming to an end.

Istanbul, Turkey

We've packed away our jackets and layers of clothing and traded it all in for t shirts and sunglasses.
We've now gone from the lands of Onion domed churches to Mosques and Minaretes calling people to prayers. This is a Muslim country that seems quite tolerant and it is full of absolutely fascinating people and interesting things to see.
We are here for the week, and we're busy exploring the grand bazaar, the Blue Mosque, among other beautiful mosques, the spice bazaar and palaces. It is a huge city that sits upon a hill overlooking the Straits of Bosphorus and there is a lovely breeze blowing through the tiny, winding streets.
We are having a really time just wandering around all day, doing a little shopping and visiting with the extremely friendly Turkish people. Its so interesting seeing women wearing black Burkas,
merchants anxious to sell their wears to you, and tasting the delicious food. It is a wonderful place and I recommend this place to anyone. It is very touristy, and that in itself is fun to see because people come here from so many places....Australia, Japan, Germany, USA, etc. The climate is so pleasant here, you can stay outside all day. Hope you all enjoy a few of the countless pictures we've taken of this place.

Out of Darkness and into the Light

I only wanted to spend one night in L'viv, Ukraine, even though we were staying in a lovely hotel and had a delicious dinner at a delightful small restaurant called "Amadeus". I just felt uncomfortable after going through that crazy border crossing and all of those initmidating guards checking all of our papers. I guess I have just read too crazy stories about people disappearing!!

We got up early on Wednesday and headed west to the Polish border. This time there was a cold drizzly rain going on which didn't seem to make the two hour crossing and dealing with those guards again any better. Did't help either that the unibrow woman guard thought we had stolen the car from somewhere because she couldn't figure out our lease papers.

But once we were across the border the weather brightened up and rain went away and we turned south heading for the Slovakian border and Hungary just a couple of hours past that.

We almost ended up back at another Ukrainian border crossing from a mistake in map reading but we realized the mistake just about 30 miles before there and quickly turned around.

This put us into Hungary a little later than we had hoped but what a beautiful part of this country...this is where the famous (to wine lovers anyway) "royal rot" wine is made. We've never seen so many miles and miles of vineyards and orchards. It is a really pretty spot.

We ended up staying the night in a little village right in the middle of the Tezsa river area and then we spent the next morning walking through the town of Eger. One funny thing that happened on the little road to Eger was Mark spotted a small statue of a gnome next to a tree, which I didn't see so we swung the car back around so I could get a picture. As we drove slowly past it turned out to be a real little man fast asleep next to a tree, so I quickly got a picture before he stirred and woke up. It was a very odd sight indeed! It was very pleasant.

So we were able to drive back into Budapest by late afternoon, back to the Stucki's lovely house. It is nice to be back with some good friends and relax for a few days, do a little laundry, etc, before we head out for Turkey Sunday morning.

Food

For those of you that have asked about the food on this trip this post is for you. Since a picture says more than words it will consist mainly of photos that we have taken along the way.



Now just a few comments about the food in eastern europe. First pork is the king of foods and the food of kings. Every meal has some kind of pork product involved with it. Other than pork the other main food groups are potaoes, cabbage and peirogies, or PCP as we call them collectively. Pieogies are like ravioli or pot stickers, dumplings stuffed with pork and them covered with bacon and grease. After a delicious meal of pieogies, oh say 10-20, they bring out a delicious plate of desert pierogies filled with a single cherry, or a small piece of apple these are covered in sour cream instead of bacon. We have noticed that the farther north and east you go the pierogies get bigger, the amount of filling does not change just the size of the dough container. When you finally reach lithuania and latvia they are called zepplins and about the size of a large baked potato. Cabbage comes in pierogies, on pierogies, with pierogies fried, boiled or as sauerkraut. Or if you are lucky and order the combination meal (Polish happy meal) you get all of the combinations.



The appropriate drink for these foods would be a warm glass of water with about a half teaspoon of detergent dissolved to aid the cleaning of your system. If you can't drink that then vodka or beer is probably the best second choice. If you don't drink alcohol well.....



Probably if you want to feel your best from a digestive point of view it would be wise to concentrate on desert as your main dietary staple. The cakes, rolls and pastries are quite acceptable, but I would not reccomend dropping one on your foot as they could cause a severe injury. And remember like so many things in life they look better than they actually are. But never the less it is important to try everything and as I mentioned they are acceptable





There is also some American influence like McDonalds and Pizza Hut available, we espescially liked the bike up take out windows of the McD's in Vilnius. American ingenuity adapated to local requirements.



So just enjoy the photos and have a few vegetables or a salad for us!

Change of Mind

Last night in our hotel room we were mulling over our options to get to Romania. We looked in the guide book and it was full of praise about what a wonderful place the Ukraine was and how Liev is the undiscovered Prague of the east europe. We checked and found that no visa was required and our car is covered by insurance in the Ukraine so we decided to go for it. The Border crossing was very reminiscent of crossings we made inot eastern europe in the 1970s. 4 different stations and about an hour later we were cleared into the Ukraine. The ladies doing the paperwork looked light the russian models from the night wear/ swim wear adds some years ago. They were constantly mad at us because we always gave them the wrong papers and after it was all done they sent us back because we didi not have our customs form stamped correctly. A lesser man than mark would have given up. Also there trucks lined up over 3 kms waiting to go through the process.

Then we go into the country and we realized that we had no idea of what anything said since everything is written in russian. Even in poland and hungary you can follow signs that say centrum to the main part of they city. Finally after asking directions many times and driving around aimlessly swearing we arrived at the most expensive hotel in europe. Which we gladly accepted since we were too tired to start searching again

We are making this post to document where we are in case we never find our way out of this crazy place. we are going to spend one night here and then head back to poland to try and reach rumania.

Other than that Liev is a truly beautiful city with a wonderful old town that has not been over developed nor destroyed in the war. It also has they say the most beautiful cemetary in Europe, so if we don't make it back this will be a good place to end our journey. It is full of churches and very beautiful buildings. Mark has resisted the tempatation to buy the nazi souvenirs they sell here. He was espescially taken by an original gestapo hat but came to his senses.