Steps to interrail: 2

Yesterday we bought our interrail tickets from Genctur at Taksim. We are in the process of collecting papers for visa .
The pic shows the interrail tickets together with corendon airlines tickets to the Netherlands which I bought online but obtained the printed versions for visa application from their office in Kozyatagi , guidebooks, superfast ferry brochure which they kindly posted via mail upon my request and passports. There is one huge step left: getting the visa.




We are signing papers in the Genctur office for buying the railpass.


The previous step

Book Review: Europe Through the Back Door 2006

Title: Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door 2006 : The Travel Skills Handbook
Writer: Rick Steves
Year: 2006
Pages: 630

This is the first book review from the series listed in my previous blog entry: My Book List for Summer 2006 Interrail Planning I hope more reviews will come soon.

This is not a guidebook in the commonsense.It is so-called as 'Read-before-go book '. The book is organized in two sections, the first section is a travel skills handbook dealing with Planning an ininerary,transportation,money,sleeping and eating.. etc. as the title already implies

And the second section gives what the author calls 'backdoors'.List places that are not discovered by tourism agencies yet or not getting necessary attention. The counties mentioned includes: Italy, Portual, Spain, Morroco, Frace, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, British Isles and Scandanavia.
The auther list few ,if not one, cities in each coutry and gives hints and beautities of that city.

The first travel skills section is helpful although you might find these information everywhere and also internet.It is still good to have all these information packed in one place completely.

The second section is for people looking for not crowded, relatively calm places in Europe. If you are looking for info about popular sightseeings of these countries you should get a guidebook which is also recommended by the author.

Accompanying site for the book can be found at ricksteves.com . I can not decide whether to recommend buying or not buying this book. The amazon link is here for you to further investigate.

Book Review: Yolculuga Cikanlarin Kucuk El Kitabi

Title: Yolculuğa Çıkanların Küçük El Kitabı Okumaları, Hatırlamaları ve Paylaşmaları İçin; Öneriler, Gözlemler ve Andaçlar
Writer: David Scott, William W. Forgey
Year: 2003
Pages: 184

As the book name already tells this is a handbook for travellers.It contains 377 tips for travelers before and during the travel period.The book should be even smaller but the publisher prefered to use big fonts to make the book look 'useful'.


I don't think the book contains life-saver tips, you may still want to give it a try since it is cheap 3.58YTL. I bought it from Ideefixe.

Book Review: Moskova ve Petersburg Cep Rehberi

Title: Moskova ve Petersburg Cep Rehberi
Writer: Neil Winson
Year: 2003
Pages: 140

I bougth this book before my second trip to Moscow.Although I did not have time to validate the contents of the book due to hard work I still will mention about the book.
It is a small sized thin pocket book as the name implies, has a small map of cental Moscow and Moscow metro in the front cover and a small map of central St.Petersburg and Petersburg metro in the back cover of the book.
The book gives short history, important places to see and hotel&restaurant info for the two cities.

I bought it from Kadikoy Alkim bookstore, you may pferer to buy online istead.

Steps to interrail:1

Today I competed the first step to interrail. I talked with my managers in the company that I want to resign and leave by June 30th. And they accepted.Now it is clear that I have a one month holiday I can devote to interrail.

I have already bought my plane ticket from Corendon airlines for 19EUR(54EUR with tax) to Amsterdam and my 5 travel books that I have already listed in my previous blog entry "My Book List for Summer 2006 Interrail Planning " already arrived.

The brocure I requested from Superfast Ferries for the Italy-Greece passing arrived, including information about timetables and fares.



Now the next and the hardest step of all is to obtain the visa.

The BEST! Music Album Ever!!

Metallica ...And Justice For All

Today I realized that I've been listening to this album for 14 years! (since 1992) and I still love it . When I bought this album I was at 2nd year of my secondary school education. I keep listening it over and over and never get bored. I can not even choose which song is the best. Every single song is this great album is a masterpiece.

The album is definitely number 1 in my list of Best Metal Albums of 90's

You should definetely buy this album.Here is the amazon.com link. For Turkish fans here is the Ideefixe link.

You can Google me

Since 1996, I've been posting questions or answering other posters' questions on several sites, forums and newsgroups. Most of them are about Java and related technologies, few are on database ,Linux and older ones dated between 1996-2000 are on C. You can find some of them here, mainly from the usenet archieves.