Travel does NOT love me...

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired 

~ Fannie Lou Hamer ~

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all people cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try to understand each other, we may even become friends. 

~ Maya Angelou ~

Now back to why traveling doesn’t love me. First, I really do not have fond memories of flying. It has gotten better with time, but I was the child on the flights with the ear problem.  So all my trips start with a little routine— purchase gum (I am really not a gum fan), try not to get any water stuck in my ears and a lot of prayer and hopes that I am near the front of the plane because the further back I go the worse it is. This routine used to involve exhausting myself before the flight so that I could sleep the entire time, but that has slowly changed…I too love my sleep. Sigh…Travel does not love me.

Now, on top of the ear thing, I seem to be the person who no matter how hard she tries, ends up with the stomach ailment. That one fool who spends at least one night becoming intimate with a foreign toilet…Stupse!!! What’s worse, for the first time in a little while I managed to leave my ‘home’ country without any medication, no Paracetemols, no Pepto Bismol, no vitamins, nothing!!! So here I was, again, but with no medication whatsoever… Sigh. Despite this set back I was intent on making sure that I did not miss any of the sightseeing or ruin any plans. I was not coming all this way, managing the flight (successfully I might add, well, with minimal ear issues) and not seeing what I had planned to see, upset stomach or no upset stomach. So even if it meant adult pampers I was going to see this through. Travel and I really don’t agree.

Not being able to use yeast as some fungus makes life difficult on a normal day… no pizza, no bread, no mushrooms, and no to some cheeses. I however draw the line at the cheese; it’s bad enough that I walk past bakeries and pizzerias where the smell makes me want to float in on it like a cartoon character, but you can’t take my cheese away from me… well, not yet. But imagine being in a country where almost every meal involves bread and the locals say to you “If you don’t eat bread you will never be full.” It was torturous trying to find anything to eat sometimes especially when the special tummy usually dictates bread, biscuits or bland foods and sprite or ginger tea to settle your stomach.

Bland foods certainly do not exist in the vocabulary of the Turkish, or so it seemed to me. Everything is tasty, spicy and rich in vegetables and never, I mean NEVER have I seen so many tomatoes consumed in my life, so bland was largely out. Bread was already out, so here I am on a great trip, enjoying great sights and nibbling constantly on pretzel sticks…STUPSE!!!!  Ginger tea…what’s that? In a country where tea is a staple, you have it at the end of every meal, in between meals and it is constantly offered to you by everyone, you would think that ginger tea wouldn’t be that hard to come by; but largely, the Turkish enjoy good Turkish and Arabic teas and ginger tea I never saw. You know when you ask someone a question and they give you that huh look? That is what I got when I asked about ginger tea, so I was left with Sprite or clear soda (I don’t like soda). Sigh… Pretzel sticks & Sprite… how frigging delightful…I love to travel honestly, but travel really really does NOT love me.