Preparation

Murphy’s law as it applies to flying is as follows: If you have a plenty of time to transfer between planes, your incoming plane will be early and your outgoing plane delayed. But if you only have a short time for transfer, that’s when the incoming plane leaves with an hour’s delay, then lands at Singapore and stays parked on the runway waiting for another plane to clear our gate, then for that plane blocking our gate to have a technical malfunction that prevents it from leaving. Of course the latter is what happened to me. So as we were waiting for our plane to park at the gate, boarding at my connecting flight had already started. When I finally got off the plane and checked the departure board it showed that my connecting flight naturally is at a different terminal too. I ran for the terminal train which thankfully didn’t take long to get there, but on getting off the train I spotted a sign saying that my gate is an 18 minute walk and it’s at the far end of the terminal. After a mad dash through the terminal, I just made it! Even better, as it turned out, so did my luggage!

The customs queue at Istanbul was very long, but it’s interesting watching the people arriving there. Most were from all over the Arab countries and I got the impression that in the Arab world, Istanbul, despite not being an Arabic city, seems to hold a similar rank to what New York, London or Rome do for the western world.

Being the cheapskate that I am, I had taken both, the Swiss and Australian passport along. I normally travel on the Australian but with that one you’re required to buy a $30 visa at the airport whereas the Swiss can travel visa free.

From the airport I took the train and tram into Sultanahmet and checked into my hotel. It was still early morning so I wandered around Istanbul a bit before heading back to the airport in the afternoon to pick up Conny and Toni who were bringing my bike along. Being oversize luggage, it took an hour before that appeared. But the good news is that it made the trip fine. Conny had packed it so well, you could have rolled over it in a tank without denting it!

I assembled the bike the next morning, which basically meant I was ready to go now. But it’s not every day I’m in an amazing city like Istanbul and I hadn’t seen my brother and sister in a while either, so we spent a day lounging around Istanbul instead.