On Traveling, Family Reunions, Istanbul Cats, and Some Other Things

A somewhat lengthy introduction

My first attempted big journey abroad happened when I was in middle school, some 10+ years ago. If my memory serves me well, it was the year 2013. My mum and I applied for a visa to the US to visit my eldest sister. The US Embassy in Belarus didn't accept visa applications then, so we had to go to the embassy in Lithuania. Since that time, things have changed several times, and, currently, they're back to what they were in 2013: US visa services are not available in Belarus. In a recent conversation, my brother-in-law said Belarus is a pariah state. Sadly, it is. It also is many other even worse things. But I got sidetracked; maybe I should dedicate a separate post to my home country with its problems and bright sides, but here and now, I would like to write about traveling, discovering the big world around us, and taking pretty pictures.

So, back to my with my mum's trip to the US Embassy in Lithuania. It was my first trip abroad; we stayed at my sister's university friends' place. They showed us around Vilnius; we had our interview at the embassy... and our visa was denied. End of story.

To compensate for this unfairness, my sister pulled off a family reunion adventure in Europe: she traveled from California, my parents, my second sister, and me—from Belarus, and we met in Prague. And then also visited Munich. And also, Salzburg, where my dad had a hard time explaining to a shop assistant at a small convenience store that he wanted to buy a packet of salt.

My first independent and self-sponsored Europe trip took place in the summer of 2019. I finished the third year of my uni, the most intense and exhausting year, when I juggled studies and a part-time job and was also trying to lead an active extra-curricular life. It rewarded me with chronic neck pains, a hole in my heart, and enough money to afford a 9-day adventure around Europe: Vilnius (hi again, not for the first or the last time)–Milan–Brussels–Bruges–Warsaw. We traveled with my groupmate. In Belgium, we crossed paths with my eldest sister and her soon-to-be husband. It was a nice, well-planned adventure. Sightseeing, sipping craft beer, getting fined by a ticket inspector on a train from the Warsaw airport to the city center for buying reduced-price tickets for students...

Here is one of my favorite pictures from the trip:

In the winter of 2020, I went for a one-semester Erasmus exchange program to Portugal. To get a national visa, I had to travel to Moscow as Portuguese national visas are not granted to people within the borders of the Pariah State of Belarus (PSB). In spring, Covid invaded Europe. Lockdown, worrying about my family, and a lot of time for self-reflection, self-education, and procrastination. At some point, the travel restrictions in Portugal were lifted, and we still had some time to travel around the country. Unfortunately, I didn't have a driver's license. Fortunately, I had friends who had. So, with a couple of friends, we rented a car, and off we went. Sleeping in a car at the ocean coast: check! Waking to the sound of waves hurling against the shore is the experience that leaves one's mind admiring the moment, and one's spine cursing this careless attitude towards their own body.

The semester was over, and I had to return to Belarus. August 2020 and months and then years forward, up to this moment, are the ugly, tragic times in the contemporary history of my country. A few months before, back in Portugal, a guide on a free walking tour in Lisbon had been telling us about the Carnation Revolution and how Portugal was the last European country to overthrow the dictatorship regime. But there's one more European country where dictatorship prospers and oppresses its people. In a few months, the world would start talking about it. Protests, violence of the security forces, arrests, torture and harassment of the peaceful protesters, fear, hope, fear. As a result, thousands of people in prisons, dozens or even hundreds of thousands had to leave the country (some sources say over half a million). The regime did not crack but showed its fangs and claws.

What was I doing? I had one last year to receive my degree at the university. I had friends who had to quit theirs and flee the country.

Our nation lacks a strong self-identity and a fighting spirit of Ukrainians. Our society is split into indifferent and apathetic, those who care and are ready to take action, and those who care but do not care to take any action. There are pro-Russian and pro-system people. There are opposition people. Opposition, in turn, is segregated into different parties with different values. There's a lack of unity in them.

This is the reason. There's also fear, cowardice, self-preservation instinct. There's also resentment and anger. Take and put this bouquet of emotions in a vase.

Eventually, I, luckily, did not get caught in the act of my modest protest actions and obtained my diploma. I did not go against my conscience, but I also feel like I did not do enough. I did not accept things that the repression machine did and still does to my compatriots, but I accepted the thought that there's nothing I can do about it. One more year, which lasted much longer than that, and I found myself starting a Master's degree in Switzerland.

It's recently been 2 years since I came to Switzerland. I finished my MSc and started a PhD. These days, I'm not constrained by visas to travel within the Schengen zone, I earn enough money to afford my travels, and I cannot come home for a visit for safety reasons.

Life is a constant fight. Some have to fight with the system, some with their disabilities, others with their vices. Some fight with their families, some fight for their lives. Some give up fighting. We're not born equal; the world is full of different sorts of shit. Sometimes, I think: do I deserve all the joy, happiness, and fun I can draw from my life? Would I break if life suddenly started giving me only lemons and troubles?..

And here it goes, I've just entered the grey area of my conscience, the Darklands of my mind.

Hello, my name is Andrei. I'm 25 y.o. So far, I've visited 13 countries, not including my home PSB, the starting point of my life journey. (Is it much or not really?) I like traveling (who doesn't?). My brain likes to wander into the grey areas of doubt and overthinking; that's probably why I sometimes have problems communicating with people. There are too many ways to say the same thing and even more different opinions; all of them are wrong to some extent. Even science is not always right because science is also a man-made construct. Paradigms shift, you know? The Earth is spinning, and sometimes it makes me dizzy. Maybe that's why my brain also likes to zone out sometimes. Or maybe it's some sort of mental disorder.

Family reunions, Istanbul, and its cats

Our family is somewhat scattered around the world. My eldest sister, her husband, and my 2-year-old nephew live in the US, near Boston. My second sister had lived in Saint-Petersberg for quite a long time; now she's back in Belarus but does not like it there and plans to move elsewhere. My parents live in Belarus in a village where they have worked for their whole life, built a house, and raised us, their three children who chose to scatter around the world.

And because we are separated by miles and miles and oceans, we have this wonderful opportunity to get together once in a while and have a family reunion. It's not that easy to have all of us gathered at one place at the same time. More often, it had been that somebody would be missing due to these or that circumstances. But this summer, we finally made it: all of us–me, my parents, my two sisters, my eldest sister's husband and their son, my nephew–we traversed these miles and oceans separating us and met for a one-week holiday in Istanbul, Turkey.

Weeks before the trip, I was quite busy with my PhD life: different meetings, experiments, and stuff; therefore, I did not do any planning for our Istanbul visit. I didn't have many expectations. I've visited quite a few cities around Europe, and they all can be pretty much described by the following map:

In other words, they all, at some point, get boring, and one starts to prefer doing hikes and seeing waterfalls and caves to visiting cities that all resemble each other. I was looking forward to seeing my family and playing with my nephew. I expected Istanbul to be noisy with all its bazaars and street vendors, crowded with locals and tourists, but nothing more. Well, also, my colleague, who visited Istanbul not long ago, told me that Istanbul has a lot of cats sauntering up and down its streets. So, I was kind of a little bit excited to meet these cats. But I did not think I would really like the city.

Istanbul has quite a remarkable geographical location. It is spread on both European and Asian continents. The European part of the city is separated from the Asian by the Bosphorus Strait. Istanbul is the 15th world's most populated city, being home to more than 15 million people and hundreds of thousands of cats (and dogs, too). It is real big. When buying a ticket from the Istanbul Airport to the city, I asked a ticket seller which bus I should take to get to the city center. She asked me which city center I needed.

Istanbul felt so different from every other city I've visited so far. It's a city of contrasts: rich and poor, neglected and pompous, cheap and expensive; very alive, and still one can find quiet corners within its fuss and buzz. Smells, food, cats, mosques, street art, stands with simit, roasted chestnuts and corn, streams of people walking, talking... With so much going on in the streets, the city is a real paradise for street photographers.

I will not write much about the attractions of Istanbul. There are loads of resources on the Internet. There are many places worth visiting–mosques: Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, and over 3000 others; Ottoman palaces: Topkapı, Dolmabahçe, ...; Galata Tower and its neighborhood; İstiklal Avenue; Basilica Cistern; Kadıköy—the Asian side of Istanbul (Anatolian side), it's where the city began. We had a rather short stroll on the Asian side—after taking a ferry boat across the Bosphorus after a late lunch—as I and my dad had to hurry to a hammam place we had booked earlier that day. Kadıköy is less popular with tourists; I could tell that the place was quieter and somewhat cozier than on the other side of the strait.

Here comes my first recommendation: if you enjoy a good sweat in a sauna, with its soul-and-body healing effect, go try a Turkish bath (hammam). My dad and I picked Ağa Hamamı. It appeared to be the first mixed hammam in Istanbul, which has welcomed bath-takers since 1454. The hammaming ritual looked like this: we started by lying our bodies down on a heated tiled platform (something between 40–50 °C) situated in the middle of the main hammam room (I bet it has a name, but I don't know what it's called correctly)—sweating, opening up our skin pores, and listening to relaxing music; then scrubbing and foam massage followed where my bones were properly counted—now I know there are 206 bones in my body; next, we additionally took an oil massage; and finally all this was washed down with a delicious herbal tea.

My second recommendation is food. Eat expensive, eat cheap. Eat in fancy restaurants, eat in shabby cafeterias. Munch on kebabs and baklava. Taste Ottoman cuisine and taste Anatolian cuisine. One hallmark of Turkish restaurants—and something you won't generally have in Western European eateries—is free (on-the-house) dessert after the main dish... baklava, so much baklava! Sometimes, it can be accompanied by a cup of Turkish tea. In one cafe-restaurant, before the main dish, we also got on-the-house soup. And I'll just leave the restaurant name here to do it justice: it's called Last Ottoman. Highly recommend.

Are you a cat lover? Istanbul is the city where cats abound. In all sizes, colors (and shapes😁). All the cats I've seen on the streets of Istanbul looked quite well-fed, were friendly, and behaved themselves. They were everywhere: in convenience stores, on car tops, on rooftops, at the door of our Airbnb apartment...

Most probably, there is a dark side to Istanbul cats' lives; but there's a dark side to everyone's lives. Let's not talk about it today; maybe next time.

I'll stop here. It's now three days since I've been back to work, to my everyday PhD life. Crazy busy these days. I kind of like it. It's just that there are also so many more things I like. Which made me recall this comic strip:

Would be nice, huh? Well, honestly, I tend to think that I do like solving my life problems (as long as they know where to stop). What would be really nice though, is to be able to experience multiple lives at the same time: one part of you goes to work, another part goes traveling, and still another one does some crazy-risky stuff you would not dare do if you didn't have some few reserve copies of yourself.