I don't know if anyone even realised I was gone, I haven't exactly been posting much recently.

We went on a trip to Turkey and got back on Monday night. In short:
We took the train from Dresden to Istanbul, spent three days in Istanbul and then a week in an all inclusive resort in Antalya. It was perfect.

In long:
On Friday, March 6th, I had my last exam. I'm officially done with my first semester of computer science. It's easier than I had expected, but I'm not sure I want to continue. I'm currently looking for full time jobs and will probably drop out if I find one. Anyway. Back to the trip. We had some friends over that weekend and went hiking, which was really cool. I worked Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday night we met our friends at the station and took the night train to Budapest. The journey was pretty funny. We had two 6-couchette compartments and there were 10 of us, so we had a free bed in each compartment. Right after we got on the train the conductor offered to "sell" us those couchettes for 18€ (each? I can't really remember). We considered it... and in the end paid 10€ and a beer for both of the free couchettes. I'm still convinced that no one was actually booked on those places, but props for the conductor for knowing how to make extra cash.
There was a rando Hungarian guy, who apparently worked in Berlin but spoke all of three words of German. "Entschuldigung Bitte?" "Name?" "Schön", which he kept repeating, telling everyone they were schön. He also bought us enough beer to last til Sofia (no kidding!). We arrived in Budapest at 8am-ish and our train to Belgrade was leaving at 10. We had already bought tickets and I had already been to Budapest, so I just ate some muffins I had for breakfast outside the station and we got on the train when in arrived. The train seemed reasonably long, until we realised only one wagon was actually going to Belgrade. We got on it and it smelt like cold cigarette smoke. This was the only time we travelled during the day. The trip from Budapest to Belgrade took 8 hours and it seemed even longer than that. The train was travelling at the breathtaking speed 40km/h and once we reached Serbia the rails were so bad, it felt more like being on a ship. The Serbian border guards were super unfriendly (but I got a stamp in my passport! so yay!) and in Serbia people started smoking in the areas by the doors, so soon the whole train reaked of smoke. Ugh. Rural Serbia isn't very interesting to look at, though there were some pheasants and deers, so I was glad when we finally reached Belgrade and got off the train (fresh air!). It was 6pm and we had about 4 hours until our train to Sofia left.
We changed some money, bought the tickets (which took a while, but was surprsinigly easy) and tried to get some food. It was dark already and we didn't really know where to go, so we ended up getting fast food, which was ok. Back at the train station, the guys watched football in a pub at the station and I walked around some more to get fresh air. I also had a look at the bus station which looked about 100x better than the train station. Trains are obviously not very popular in Serbia (and considering the state of their rails, that's not surprising). Then we got on the train to Sofia. We had two 6 couchette compartments again (and there were only 8 of us, because two ppl stayed in Budapest). It was slightly less comfortable (less sheets!) than the first night train, but good enough. I was really tired, so I went to sleep pretty much right, the others had a party in the other compartment. At 1am-ish (?) we were woken up border guards (Serbia/Bulgaria is an external EU border) who shined their flashlight in my half-sleeping face and checked our passports. I really have no idea how long it took, because I kept falling asleep, but we eventually got our passports back and then arrived in Sofia.
There was snow! I had no idea it would be so cold in Sofia. We managed to resist the army of taxi and bus drivers going for our bags, found out how much the train tickets to Istanbul would cost and had surprisingly good and cheap breakfast. Then we had what felt like endless discussions about whether we should take the bus or train to Istanbul. Normally this would be a no-brainer, we were going by train after all. But the route to Istanbul is being renovated (or something) and we would have to change to a bus somewhere along the way anyway. So it would have been pointless to go by train (right? Right?). We asked like four bus companies and the last one was about 10€ cheaper than the train. We bought the tickets and set off to see Sofia.
I went to some random hostel to get a map for Olek and he put together a little sight seeing tour. Then we had dinner in one place and drinks at another. After that we still had so much Bulgarian money left, because not only our tickets were 10€ cheaper than we had thought, but Sofia as a whole was quite cheap. Which is why we ended up having drinks at some fancy bar. They totally tried to cheat us with the bill, though.

At 10:30 our bus to Istanbul left. It was MUCH more uncomfortable than I had expected. I guess going with the cheapest company, you kinda get what you paid for. In the middle of the night we arrived at the border, had to get off the bus, take our bags and go through a scanner-thing. Our bus driver smuggeled serveral huge bottles of whiskey! Our Turkish friend one beer (by courtesy of the rando Hungarian guy!) for his brother. Alcohol is super expensive in Turkey. A small can of beer costs about 1.50€ in a shop (it's about 0.30€ in Germany!).
I woke up about and hour before we reached the bus terminal in Istanbul and.. whoa! I had never been to such a huge city. The whole hour before we arrived, we were already going through the city (and not suburbs, real skyscraper, apartment building city) and the bus terminal was crazy. There were a few hundred busses (not exaggerating!) a whole muti storey car park of busses. So many busses!
We went to our hostel, but because it was early we could only leave our luggage. I was really, really needing a shower by then. I felt so gross. I had been relatively fine in Sofia, because at least I could change into different clothes for sleeping. But having slept in the same stuff that I had been walking around Sofia in and not having brushed my teeth... ugh. Shower! Now!
We went to get breakfast (at a place with a wonderful view over the old town in Istanbul!), walked around the bazar, had coffee... and finally got to go into our hostel rooms and shower. The shower was sort of lame. The water was sort of dribbling, but I wasn't one to be picky.
Unfortunately the three days we stayed in Istanbul we had awful weather. Between 1-3°C and rain. It was still super impressive. We visited the Hagia Sofia, blue Mosque (it was only the second time I was inside a mosque. And the first time was a tiny wooden Tatar mosque in Poland. Does that even count?!) and Topkapi Palace. Istanbul is a very exciting mix of Europe and Exoticism. The muezzin prayer calls are super strange and exotic.
We had a really good time!
Monday morning we took a small bus to the airport. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to survive that trip. Traffic in Istanbul is my worst nigtmare come true. At one point our driver bumped into the car in front of us. I thought they were going to call the police and we would surely miss our flight. But they both just got out of their respective cars, looked at them, shrugged, yelled a bit... and got back in their cars. On a second thought, there was no way the police could have gotten anywhere near us anyway, we were in the middle of the biggest fucking traffic jam I had ever seen.
We made it to the airport on time and shortly later arrived in Antalya. Immediately after we had left the airport, my first thoughts were "Sun! Warm! Finally!". We took a taxi to our hotel, which was mainly inhabited by German (and to a lesser degree Dutch and English) retirees spending the whole winter there. Man I would go crazy. It was perfect for one week. Doing nothing, lying on the beack and reading trashy novels was exactly what I wanted to do after my exams and our trip. But eight weeks+? I would die of boredom!
Still a week of free (well, prepaid) booze and food! Yay!
Our last days there were some Iranian holidays, so there were lots of Iranians. One night they had a fight in the hotel bar (surrounded by the bewildered retirees) and the "disco" played lots of Iranian music, which was interesting and strange at the same time. One of them looked SO MUCH like Borat! (I have to check our photos for a photo of him!)
One day we went for a walk on the beach and because it's literally one hotel next to the other and we wanted to walk back on the street, we had to go through one of the hotels. Their holiday reps asked us to play minigolf. But I'm a bit of a chicken shit and was too worried they'd find out we were technically gate crashing and kick us out, so we just tried to find the exit as fast as possible.
We also went on a day trip to Antalya city.

And then the next Monday we got on a plane to Berlin, took some trains (!) back home and... that's it.
I'm going to add some photos tonight or tomorrow, as I'm currently wasting time at work and don't have them here.

This weekend Olek's mum is staying with us for one night. She was in Switzerland and is visiting us on her way back home. On Thursday next week we're going to my home town to stay with my brother over Easter. I haven't seen my brother and my grandparents since easter last year, so I'm super looking foward to that. Also to meeting my mum's new dog!