A' travelin'

In these waning weeks of my 20's I'm hitting the road south and east. Berlin, Prague, Munich, Vienna and then to Croatia, Bulgaria and Istanbul. But first, my friendest friend Kiel is coming to Copenhagen to visit. We'll both be here three days, then I hop on a train to Berlin and he stays in Copenhagen with some other friends visiting from Norway. Then he's popping down to Prague for another couple of days, including a possibly drunken, greasy post-election breakfast on the 8th. Then I'll be headed to Munich for a very brief visit with my friend Andreas while Kiel heads back up to Copenhagen for his last two days. A bit complicated, no?

Then I'll be headed through Vienna and down to Croatia. Split and Dubrovnik are the planned stops in that country. I may go over land or I may fly to Bulgaria or straight to Istanbul.

Here's a rough map of my route.

It's gonna be all trains on the first half, probably
a lot of buses and maybe flights for the next.

I've wanted to go to Istanbul for a very long time.

I must have first learned about the Byzantine Empire playing computer games... I think I first got excited about playing as the Byzantines in Medieval Total War when I was 15 or so.

Constantinople, now known as Istanbul, was their capital.

It's got what I love in a historical place: it scrambles our expectations of time, place and culture and (probably because of that) it's generally overlooked in the popular consciousness of history.

Briefly:
Constantinople was founded by the Roman emperor in 330 AD as the empire's second capital and the center of administration for the more prosperous, populous, and historically richer eastern half of the empire. As the western half of the empire, centered on Rome, collapsed in the 400's, the eastern half carried on fairly well and has come to be known by historians as the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople was the largest and richest city in Europe during the middle ages and was never captured by foreign armies until a surprise attack by western crusaders in 1204 (who were overthrown by Byzantines 60 years later). The only other time it was captured was by the Ottomans in 1453, bringing to an end the Roman empire once and for all. The Turks revived the city and changed its name. Between the Romans/Byzantines and the Ottomans the city was an imperial capital for almost 1600 years.

Here is a map I made several years ago to demonstrate how much of a nerd I am. Each territory is marked with that last date that it was part of the Roman Empire.




It's always been the fulcrum between Europe and Asia, a point through which trade, armies, and ideas needed to pass through.

I am very excited to be there, if just for a few days. I'm going to see the Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque, the old city walls, and just the huge city itself.
I'm also excited to spend my 30th birthday there on 11/24. It will be a good place to start a new decade.