a new sunlightkeeper adventure

spring is definetly in the air.
in 20 days the month of March will come to an end, and a new adventure is starting.

sunlightkeeper is heading south to Turkey, to the magic Istanbul, its glorious history and its enchanting twilights on Bosphorous.
it's kinda a dream come true, like most of my travel adventures.

what most attracted me was that this is the only city in the world that lies between two continents, and had played the role of capital to consecutive Christian and Islamic empires. i guess that you can pretty much breathe history and magic over there in your lungs.
Istanbul develops on seven hills, just like Rome. its former name for hundreds years was Constantinople, after the Roman emperor who converted to Catholicism the Roman Empire.

now, first things first.
as i always do before traveling, i bought my guide book. this time i purchased it at Bestsellers, the biggest English books bookstore in Budapest. i know, i know.... i'm old fashioned.
nowadays everybody uses apps, ebooks, or whatever can be contained in a smartphone and can keep well away from printed paper (which is considered both unpractical and not politically correct towards Amazonia Forest). ....my apologies, but i can't help it!
i LOVE guide books. i love the feeling, the smell, the consistence of the printed paper. two weeks before traveling you can be sure that i'm carrying it in my bag wherever i go, no matter if i have time to read it or not, just to be sure that i'm not wasting this possibility. i like to read the history of a place and its highlights before actually arriving there. basically, i always feel to do it for two reasons: to be well aware of dangers as well as the most beautiful things to do, second, and more important, because i hate to have the impression of being wasting time.
there are travelers that love to wander for the streets of the city center lost and happy, completely uninformed about attractions, prefering a spontaneous approach.
i love to wander in the streets too, the difference is that i want to decide if it is really what i want to do, i think that destiny has enough space in my travel without letting also this part of my admiration of the Great Beauty of the World to it. it's my way to participate and provoke destiny as well.

my favorite guides are Lonely Planet guides and Rough Guides.
well, they are actually the best ones.

back in 2006, i remember the first serious travel of my life. i went abroad with a scholarship in Honduras to spend the 4th year of High School studying in Central America. before that period started i had to pass also a week in Miami. it was a lot of first times for me! the first time i left my family for so long, the first time in another continent, the first time in the US, the first time i felt so free... the first time i was so frightened about me.
what would become of me? what if my new Honduran family does not like me? what if i can't understand the teachers? what if... what if...?
i found comfort thinking that the Rough Guide could have helped me to learn about the local culture somehow at least. but almost nothing was written there proved to be of any use on this respect.

a culture must be felt on your skin if you want to cach its inner rhythm. you can't read it anywhere, although you can sense it everywhere.

i learned also, and not at all effortlessly, to not listen to all this pressing questions that my fear whispered in my soul.
risks are part of the game. you can manage the risk-benefits calculation, your brain was designed to do it, but you can never eliminate risk factor from life. i had to accept it.
fears have a place in ourselves. fears tell you that you're a human animal. they have their specific place inside us.
that was particularly important to mind to me. if you put fear at the center of everything, trying to fight or justify it, you will die inside everyday. if you put it in a place when you can't sense it, you will suffer the consequences of it.
fears are always at the second place after what makes your life woth to be lived: love, passions, projects... after a risks-benefits calculation, you can put it where it belongs. and live. and love. and be the best of yourself. and allow yourself to be happy.