Istanbul in 36 hours.

Vienna, Austria

On Friday I'll be leaving Vienna for Istanbul, Turkey. Originally I was going to fly that leg, then after taking the train from Barcelona all the way to Vienna, I though that maybe it would be cool to keep taking the train. After some preliminary research, I switched back to thinking that flying would be the way to go since you can fly direct on either Austrian Air or Turkish Air in just over 2 hours. However, in the end, I figured that would be cheating so I booked a train ticket from Vienna to Istanbul via Bucharest. It cost almost as much as a plane ticket and it takes 36 hours but it will probably be a bit more adventurous (though arguably Turkish Airways sounds pretty adventurous as well...).

I leave Vienna at 8pm on Friday night, and arrive in Istanbul around 9am on Sunday morning! It's basically one overnight train from Vienna to Bucharest and then a second overnight train from Bucharest to Istanbul. This keeps alive my dream of at least getting to Cairo completely overland. (Which is apparently a pretty popular route.) I almost feel guilty now for flying from London to Barcelona, but in that case it really was way cheaper.

So, Istanbul is next. No idea how long I'll stay there, but the first order of business once arriving will be to start work on a visa for Syria, since you can't easily get that at the border. Between now and Friday night, I'll remain in Vienna checking out the sights and sounds.

Kenny