Photo Gallery

Dear followers, readers,

Finally, here is my photo gallery of our journey from the Middle East (Bahrain) to the Netherlands. It will take a while to download the files, so sit back, relax and take your time to watch them all.

And while you're waiting for the download, please do remember that our journey is over and has an happy end, but for many, many people their journey has just began....

Ride for hope, donate!

Warmly,

Mary

ps: for those of you who enjoyed my writing and want to follow our family, please follow me on my personal blog (Dutch).

Looking back at our whole trip

Here are some statistics:

• Distance travelled: 9600 km
• Gasoline used: approx. 950 litters
• Money spend on gasoline: don't wish to know
• Countries crossed: 12 (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands).
• Onno watched 212 episodes of Top Gear at the back of the car.
• Noelle listened to 3 books and read 4 Dutch books on my e-reader while travelling.
• Average Kabab-dishes per day while in Iran: 2
• Flat tires: 0
• window cracks (due to asphalting technique on Turkish roads) 1
• Damage to car: 1 street pole in Istanbul
• GPS-navigators trown out of the window: 0
• Fights and arguments: not to be mentioned, peaceful trip
• Worst hotel: Hotel Ghods in Bandar Abbas
• Nicest hotel: Hotel Silk Road in Yazd (back packers hotel but atmosphere is great)
• Worst beds: Hotel Ishfahan (in Eshfahan)
• Best beds: Prague
• Nicest cappucino: Internet cafe in Hotel Ishfahan
• Best restaurant: Van (East Turkey)
• Worst border crossing: Bandar Abbas (getting in Iran with our own car, please read more here and practical info here.)
• Most amazing ride: from Shiraz to Yazd (Iran).
• Most amazing site visited: Persepolis
• Most beautiful city: Prague
• Biggest disappointment: Mount Nemrut Dagi (interesting place but not worth the detour).
• Person producing worst gas: Thijs (Mary, second).
• Most astonishing moments: border crossing Bazargan (from Iran to Turkey where Mary, Onno and Noelle witnessed the beating of a cigarette smuggler while taking all our luggage out of the car to pass through a x-ray machine).
• Most boring part of the trip: the boat (arriving at 3 pm, departing harbour at 10 pm, 12 hour ride on the boat).
• Most friendly person we came across: Ishmael from Bandar Abbas, who offered to put the 1 month insurance of our car on his and Mary's name so we could obtain our transit plates.
• Most unfriendly person: the officer at the Serbian/Hungarian border.
• Biggest tourist trap: Goreme (Turkey)
• Happiest moment: when we were given the transit plate in Bandar Abbas by the traffic police.
• Scariest moment: when some bureaucrat in Bazargan came up with the idea we had to drive back 2000 km in Iran to return the transit plates.
• Most impressive country travelled: Iran
• Most stupid moment: driving in a speeding trap in Austria (becoming a tradition).
• Most annoying: (teenage- and child Gipsy beggars at the Serbian-Hungarian border)
• Happy moments: a good meal, a nice bed, a clean shower, a glass of beer (in Turkey), crossing borders, a good cup of coffee, coming home...

Home sweet home

On the final day of our journey we left Prague and decided to drive straight home to Leiden. Our big friend, mister GPS told us it would be a 865 km drive. It was weird to put "Home" in the options for our last trip.
"Please drive to highlighted road..." is how we left pretty Prague...

We took turns driving and my spine was holding on pretty well yesterday. Thijs bought a bottle of Vodka (using his final coins in the Czech Republic) and we filled up the gas tank in Germany and bought groceries (for lunch) in a German Supermarket.
We just carried on, watching mister GPS telling us we would be getting closer and closer to home.

Niels spend the last few months in our apartment in Leiden and was meanwhile making preparations for our return. He probably had loads of laundry and cleaning to do. His text-messages asking: "how much longer?" were probably not because he was that excited about seeing us again: it would give him indications how much time he had left for cleaning up his mess...

We crossed the border to the Netherlands around 7:30 and had our first Kroket at the first exit!

At 22:05 we heard Mister GPS telling us: "take turn to right, you are now arriving home..."

We did it, we made it, we're back!!!

Final 197 kilometers

Pointing out on the world-map to Niels and his girlfriend where we travelled

Dreading unpacking...

Prague, final city

Onno is completely fed up with our journey and starts to hate every minute of it, except when we feed him, when he gets a cola, when he can sleep in or when he gets free time to game on the laptop or watch Top Gear episodes. Today his torment was complete: we woke him up at 9, went for a long walk through Prague, stopped for many pictures and navigating, walked up the Prague Castle, visited boring churches and cathedrals,walked back over the Charles Bridge back and to make this joyful day complete, we bought tickets for a violin concert for the evening.
"I'm almost 16 mom, I HATE all this." he tried to explain. "I WILL travel when I grow up and you do NOT need to take me to those boring places.You only make me hate travelling more if you keep dragging me along."

Tomorrow, we'll be heading home to Leiden. It's another 950 km drive and we can do it in one go if we want to or take a rest somewhere in Germany. We're not sure if we want to or can do.

Onno will turn 16 on Monday the 15th of August. He started the wishlist with expensive gift suggestions but has now downgraded his list; he has only one birthday wish left:
"I just want to be home on my birthday, that's my biggest wish." he said this week.
I guess, after dragging him to all those amazing and special boring places, that's the least we can do...

Charles Bridge

view from the Castle

Budapest

We acknowledged our children's hardship and let them sleep in this morning as we all skipped breakfast. As we arrived last night at midnight, we didn't care about getting up early too...
We started our day with an early lunch and simply walked from Pest to Buda and back to Pest again. The view and the architecture is amazing.

20 years ago, Thijs and I (young and unmarried) visited Hungary and I don't remember Hungary being so European as it is now.
We made a trip (by car) to the Balkan and started in Berlin 8 months after the wall collapsed with Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' Concert. (What an amazing experience that was! And yes, we went there without tickets but as the gates opened, we were able to watch the concert with 250.000 other people on former no-mans-land).
During our travels through Yugoslavia (which would fall into war only a few years later) we travelled to Hungary passed Budapest, but never stayed here. I'm so delighted to be here now with the same guy and 2 of our children...

We took the children to the House of Terror, where they learned more about Hungary in Fascist (WW II) and Communist dictatorial regimes in their history. The dungeons in the former Headquarters of the Secret Service made quite an impression on them.

I wished I could tell the children that humans learn from their mistakes. But we don't...

Budapest from Buda-side

Noelle's lizard from Buda to Pest across the bridge

The 'Brooklin Bridge of Budapest'

Parliament

Hungarian Flag with the hole in the Middle

The hole in the Hungarian Flag originates from the Hungarian Revolution in 1956

From Sofia to Budapest

From Sofia to Budapest was an ambitious trip, but we want to head home now. We're all tired and we have loads to do once we get back. As our journey progresses, we start thinking about the next chapter in our life: Thijs' new job, the new school for the children, Niels leaving the house starting his study in Maastricht and our new house for which we receive the key in a month time.
All exciting new things happening in our life and all things we look forward to.

There are however a few more places we want to briefly visit: Budapest and Prague.
The trip from Sofia to Budapest is a more than 750 km ride and we could never foresee that the border stop to leave Serbia would be such a delay.
Getting into to Serbia wasn't a big deal, but leaving it was a nightmare: we lined up with thousands of other cars and there seemed no end to the huge line waiting for the boots ahead. Thijs complained that even crossing Saudi borders was more efficient.
As we approached the line we were swarmed by beggers: young children and teenagers (with younger chilren) all begging for money. They knocked on our windows, kept talking despite us waving them away. The kids felt uneasy to see this: children their age making a living out of begging.
Some fat Germans (obviously very busy eating) in a similar fat car lowered their windows and started handing out coins to the crowd. Thanks to people like this, the problem persists...

We spend a total of 3 hours waiting in line and once it was our turn we handed our passports to the most unfriendly lady we have seen in our entire trip. Heavy make up, botox-lips, uninterested look and obviously not pleased. I'm sure she's pissed up about Mladic being a guest in our country being tried for war crimes against humanity...
Many cars were looked through with unimpressive thorough search tactics: "luggage?" the lady asked Thijs. "Camping stuff, normal stuff, clothing." Thijs said. (and a lamp from Istanbul, and 6 pair of shoes, and three Saint Christopher Year books, and millions of phone and gadget chargers, and 5 different travel guides, and presents and a huge bag of dirty clothes).
"Anything to declare?" What the hell are we supposed to declare when we leave a country??? I thought you declare goods when you go in?
"Go!"
Yes, please, let's leave Serbia, not my favourite place on earth...

From Istanbul to Sofia

As Thijs woke up feeling a lot better, we did regretfully had to leave Istanbul. Our plan was to drive to Sofia, a 580 km drive. We left the lovely hotel and felt sorry for the children to have found yet another box in the car. They are extremely annoyed about their lack of space in the back-seat of the car, but we try to cheer them up telling them how beautiful the Istanbul - lamp will be in our new house.

Crossing the border from Turkey into Bulgaria was easy. No issues, just show the right paperwork. Our license plate did raise some questions at the Bulgarian border so many questions were asked about the car: "Iran?" "Iraq." (what a strange question if your license plate is from Bahrain and the ownership certificate states that the care comes from Bahrain... Again, our little google-map print with the highlighted route (from Bahrain, through Saudi, Dubai, ferry, Iran, Turkey, etc.) proved enough to make our point that we are on 'transit' and that the car is not from Iran but we travelled through Iran.
No more questions asked, we could pass. Incredible easy compared to the ridiculous paperwork we had to endure in Iran (going in and out).

Sofia felt like Russia and Onno enjoyed looking at the buildings and architecture. It must have been once a beautfiful city, but it looked old, run down, lot''s of drunks and alcoholist on the street and the same familiar Amsterdam-Central-Station smell.
We checked into a small hotel and as we were all hungry, tried to find a place to eat.

We found such a place where they served German size beers and young girls with very short skirts serving the food.

I guess we have left the Middle East...