Van, Turkey

We have arrived safely in Van in Eastern Turkey last night and treated ourselves with a nice comfortable hotel in the middle of the Town. After the 2.500 km in Iran and the stress at the border, we all decided we deserved a day off.

Noelle updating her diary

The hotel beds beat all beds in Iran and we could actually drink a glass of wine while we had dinner. The fist one in 12 days tasted pretty good!
Also breakfast was far better than we had in 12 days (Onno would simply not even bother to get up for breakfast and preferred to stay in bed one more hour a day, eating cookies in the car when he started to get hungry).
Today we took a rest day. With unlimited and unblocked internet, we could restore our frozen Facebook accounts, I could twitter again and I could update our blogs. What a luxury to appreciate after the 'hardship' in Iran. How interesting and eye opening and a learning experience for our children to be in Iran, feeling as isolated from the World Wide Web and all world news like all Iranians.
Name any site and yes, it was blocked.
BBC? Yep! depers.nl (a Dutch news-site), yep, blocked! Try googeling with the word 'proxy' and your laptop explodes!

Local Iranians however did tip me about a proxy server which is widely used, but it was usually overloaded, hard to connect too and once in, IE (the only browser that worked with this proxy server) would freeze constantly (probably had nothing to do with the proxy, it's a well known problem and exactly the reason why I never use it).

A special thanks and word of appreciation for our oldest son Niels (18), who did not join us, stayed in Leiden,  but keeps up with all my tweets and blogs from Iran.  We are very proud and miss him a lot; he passed his bi-lingual IB exams and has been accepted in University starting in September. I guess we have lots to celebrate when we are united again.

My spine also decided to have a protest-day today and as the day progressed, the pain became unbearable. We did however left the hotel late in the afternoon to get some fresh air and see the sunset at Van Fortress.
The Fortress is incredibly old and the view on the ancient city of Tushpa was amazing. This must be a archeologist paradise to start digging!
Like Iran, we have passed amazing sites, still uncovered waiting to release their secrets...

The Fortress is not made for people with double herniated discs and although the climb up the to the restored wall was hard and painful, the view was worth it.
On our way back to town we stopped at a supermarket, the first one we've seen in 12 days (does Iran has any supermarkets?)

It's one day before Ramadan, so lot's of people stocking up and lot's of nice offers that we can't take (like 50 kilo rice bags, sweets and dates)...
To our incredible surprise, we could purchase wine and beers in the supermarket and when we paid at the checkout, we could use our Dutch debit-card.

We can read the signs in Turkey and both Thijs and Onno really enjoy making jokes about the signs and language we see on the street.So a ride on the street usually involves lots of jokes and giggles, not to mention our GPS-voice over, struggling with the street names in Turkey.

Our GPS-guide by the way, became our best friend during this journey and although the map if Iran was basic, he guided us directly to our destinations, had some trouble with the street names and roundabout exits, but his voice made me feel comfortable and he never let us down. I can imagine mister GPS being annoyed about Thijs driving decisions, ignoring his instructions, he never, never protested or decided to quit.

Thank you Garmin GPS, you have lowered our stress level, hope you guide is safely to Leiden!

Thijs and Onno at Van Fortress

Van, Eastern Turkey

the old city, founded 9th century BC: Tushpa