Iain & Ruth Travel

Sun - October 21, 2007

Weekend in DC

We are still at Calvert Marina awaiting the genset parts so decided to spend the weekend in DC as their was a minor Feicht family gathering. Nell (and her girls) and Erin were in town to try and finalize details of Erin’s forthcoming wedding. Needless to say we stayed well away from that but we did head into DC to see the solar decathalon and enjoyed the party at Ann’s on Saturday night. The wheelbarrow race was quite a site to behold (Ruth and Claire won this heat) - not surprisingly the wine was already flowing. More pictures here. We even managed to get back to the boat in time to use up a complete tube of caulk on Sunday....... I have updated the new blog site with wider pages and underlined hyperlinks now I have figured out how to specify them.

Posted at 10:02 PM

Thu - October 4, 2007

More Photos

We finally found some time to sort through the rest of the wedding related photographs, so check out the web gallery for pictures from the stag night in scotland, the cocktail party and the post-wedding cruise......

Posted at 05:32 AM

Mon - October 1, 2007

Wedding pics

The first wedding pics have finally been 'organized' and published, go to our gallery and there will be 4 galleries of wedding related pictures (2 more should follow by the end of the week). These galleries allow downloads and uploads so feel free to add your favorites. The first page of the wedding gallery will take a long time to load so please be patient....

The pictures came from a number of cameras which, in addition to differing exposures and aspect ratios showed an interesting survey of time settings to correct so that the pictures were in order. Here were the corrections:

Darin: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT (add 1 day, 7 hours, 5 minutes)
John: Nikon D2X (add 8 hours 4 minutes)
Janet: Olympus u10D (each picture was 1 second apart so each had to be corrected)
Jim: Sony A100 (add ~2 hours)
FemaleX Casio EX-Z50 (add 7 hours 30 minutes)
FemaleY: Olympus u810/S810 (add 6 hours 50 minutes)
MaleX: Casio EX-S3 (add 21 hours 30 minutes)
MaleY: Sony DSC-T50 (subtract 4 hours 53 minutes)
Jane: Nikon Coolpix S50 V1.0 (add 2 hours)
Malcolm: Panasonic DMC-LX2 (subtract 17 days, 16 hours, 24 minutes)
Wynn: Nikon Coolpix S50V1.0 (add ~7 hours)
Rhona: Panasonic DMC-FX3 (subtract 10 hours)

At least some people had the correct time for their home cities (we are not sure what planet Malcolm was on)

Posted at 10:07 AM

Fri - September 28, 2007

We have been married less than a week

and Ruth has already jumped out of the bedroom window.....

We are back from the cruise and will be on our own from Sunday morning. This will give us a chance to start sorting through the 1,533 photographs of the wedding and publish some on the web.......

Posted at 10:53 AM

Sat - September 15, 2007

Stamp Collection Almost Complete

One of the downsides to getting married in Turkey (instead of being married by Elvis in a convertible in Las Vegas - our 2nd choice) is the paperwork involved. The good news is that by around 4pm yesterday we finally had all the paperwork required for the wedding completed other than the final signatures on the big day. This was a big step and involved a lot of signatures and stamping.

1. British Consulate in Atlanta posted the notice of marriage for 21 days before sending an electronic copy of the unchallenged notice with their stamp and signature to the British Consulate in Istanbul for a not so small fee.

2. At Bedriye and Nuran's urging, Ruth went to the marriage office in Bodrum to confirm the date. This was a good thing because they didn't have it reserved for our wedding despite Ibrahim having done it. Fortunately Vildan was there to help get the whole thing sorted out and the manager, Gazi Bey, was really good. Ruth's Turkish is ok, but it is not up to the task of government bureaucracy (ask Vildan about the woman with the earrings and Nazi tattoo).

3. The British Consulate in Istanbul didn't receive the document from Atlanta, however, with a few emails prompting them and the Atlanta consulate it was located somewhere on a server (no extra stamps, signatures or money required)

4. The US Consulate in Istanbul required Ruth to complete a form in English and Turkish stating that she had never been married and was eligible to marry and had to raise her right hand and confirm this verbally to a consulate employee who was behind an inch of bulletproof glass. They only required a small fee however were outside the center of Istanbul. Thank you Aslan and Zeynep for providing us with a driver for ALL of the Istanbul stuff, we couldn't have done it without Kaya Bey. Also, the security guard at the consulate gave us advice for the wedding... we needed to have raki at the wedding and a belly dancer - whom Ruth should make sure dances with Iain.

5. The British Consulate in Istanbul issued a Turkish translation of the 'Certificate of non-impediment [to marry]' for another not so small fee. This took a few hours since we arrived just before lunch, and lunch was not to be delayed by some paperwork. Eventually the papers were duly stamped and signed.

6. The Turkish versions of the consulate documents had to be taken to the Istanbul mayor's office for official validation of the consular signatures (i.e. more stamps and signatures). This took 3 people in a room around 5 minutes for 3 stamps and 2 signatures on each of our documents. No charge and only a few minutes!! This was the easiest part of the process - one of the officials even managed to wield two stamps in one hand (probably against union rules in most places).

7. A couple of days later in Bodrum we took the stamped and validated documents from the consulates to the city marriage office (Gazi Bey again), where another 2 forms were filled out/stamped and 5 passport sized photographs of each of us handed over.

8. One of the forms from the Bodrum marriage office had to be taken to a city health clinic for authorization. This was a bit of a waste of time as 2 foreigners marrying in Turkey don't require medical checks (Turks marrying get some basic blood test for major diseases and the prospective spouses must see the results). This required one very helpful person to write on the form (in Turkish) that we were foreigners, had declined the tests, understood what we declined and a doctor had to stamp the form and sign it. Oh, yeah, and another small fee. [Btw, Gazi Bey said if we had any trouble we should ask to see Bulent Bey and tell him that Gazi Bey sent us.]

9. Back to Gazi Bey at the marriage office to had over another larger fee (which included the cost of the official attending the wedding) and the final stamps were in place!!

...see why Elvis and the convertible are appealing. :-)

Posted at 07:02 AM

Wed - August 29, 2007

Florida

Our last trip before our wedding was a short trip to the LutzLodge in Florida - as usual a lot of fun with Ken and Alan joining us in addition to the locals. The picture below is of the meal on Saturday night. Ruth has now left for Turkey with a long 'todo' list for the wedding while I spend another 6 days on the boat 'todo list' before heading to the UK. If anyone in the London area who knows me reads this; I will be having my last evening in a london pub as a 'single man' on friday at the Doric Arch (near Euston) 5pm or so on Friday 7th before heading to Scotland on the sleeper at 9pm.

Posted at 10:38 PM

Thu - July 12, 2007

Lübeck

We are now back in London in the land of Teletubbies and Top Trumps after flying back from Lübeck (our German airport of choice since the Ryanair flight from their to the UK cost 1¢). The city of Lübeck was heavily bombed in the war, however, has been carefully restored and has some very interesting buildings with narrow streets of crow stepped buildings being particularly attractive. As was normal for our stays in German cities, we found the Turkish quarter pretty quickly so we could order food and understand what we would get (we speak almost no German and had tired of fried food by this point). Can definitely recommend the city for a weekend trip........ Sorry, no pictures due to the bad weather.

Posted at 10:31 AM

Wed - July 11, 2007

Lutz & Kim's Wedding

The main reason for this trip was to attend Lutz and Kim's wedding in Bömitz, Germany with the wedding weekend spent at the Rittergut Bömitz Hotel near Anklam in the former East Germany. The hotel is run by Nicky (sister of Lutz) and is in a small hamlet surrounded by fields (Rittergut means 'knights house') - her wedding present to them was the use of the hotel for a wedding on the most popular date of the year, 7/7/7. She has done an amazing job of turning round the hotel in less than a year of buying it and thoroughly impressed all the guests with the service, food and accommodation (we have never had cherries marinated in a pepper sauce or cold radish soup before - amazing). The only complaint could be at the weather which forced the wedding itself indoors. Lutz and Kim looked great and appeared to have a great time as did the guests with side trips organized to a cold war (and 2nd world war missile site), U-boat, Polish market in addition to the horse and carriage ride around the countryside. Some more pictures in UK & Germany in July.