I don’t expect a lot of updates on this website from now on for a little while. I’d like to say thanks to everyone who showed interest in my stories, hope you enjoyed reading them. Please do keep your automatic updates on, so you’ll know when something is happening on my website again. But for now hoşça kal or görüşürüz!

Today the six of us went to the Turkish Consulate in Rotterdam to apply for our work visa. You really don’t want to see the bill of that baby! Unbelievable, why isn’t Turkey part of the EU yet? Then it wouldn’t be necessary to go through this whole fuzz. I read on the internet that there was a Consulate in Deventer as well, right in my backyard so I thought well that’s convenient. But sadly they don’t hand out visa’s there. People, what do you do there then? Meanwhile the Consulate in Rotterdam was really crowded with Turkish people applying for passports and visa’s, not queuing or respecting the number-system. We had to wait quite a while, mainly because there was only one desk available for visa applications. And of course we didn’t exactly know what to fill out on the request form, but that fortunately all became more clear when the first person of our group was up. And because we all applied for the same visa, the lady behind the counter could speed things up a bit. Three hours later we were outside again. Hungry, with a big chunk taken out of our bank accounts, we went on our way to the Mac and Subway : )

The apartment is also almost arranged. Contacting the guy isn’t going really smooth now and then, but hopefully we’ll seal the deal by the end of this week. My sister knew a guy and he knew a guy and he could fix us up. All in time : ) Well, if your leave is announced three weeks on beforehand, getting an apartment on such short notice is quite the challenge…

My weblog is also shaping up nicely. Photos can be put on the site and viewed quite easily now, and I’ve tried to integrate Google Maps so you can see the location of where I train and live. I’m sure there will be a lot more changes coming, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise : )

See you soon!

My career in aviation is finally about to begin! In two weeks I’m getting on a plane to Turkey to start a Type Rating course for the Airbus A320 at IFTC (International Flight Training Center) in Istanbul. After that I’m really hoping to get my first experience flying for Freebird Airlines, a small charter company based in Istanbul. I’ve had to wait quite a while for this to happen, mainly because of the economical crisis. Not the best time to be a graduate looking for work. Join the club. But I did it, assisted by my flight school. I’m going with five other graduates, so should be fun and beats going just by myself!

Priority number one at this moment is arranging everything. Searching for a place to stay, requesting my visa, arranging transportation and not the least financing. I’ve only got two weeks left so I’m on a tight schedule. IFTC (www.iftc.aero) is located near Atatürk Airport Istanbul, in the western part of the city. This is the main airport serving Istanbul. Unfortunately also the more expensive area to reside, assuring renting a place to live will be a little more expensive than elsewhere. But with my recently made connections it’ll all come together, I’m sure.

The timing however is rather unfortunate. My girlfriend returned around the end of December from a five months study in Finland so another goodbye for the same period of time, only it will be me whose leaving, is really tough. But we’ll get through it, like we did before. And being a pilot has advantages like staff travel. I’m not sure yet what the rules for that are at Freebird, but I have no intentions whatsoever to not see my girl for six months!

The art of blogging is fairly new for me, so along the way there will be changes in the looks and feels of this website. One of the pros is that I’m hosting the website myself so disk space for pictures won’t be an issue at all! : ) For all you whose interested enough to actually read my stories I’ll try to keep you updated as much as possible, with some snapshots attached once in a while. So keep visiting!

Yours truly,

Maurice

Allegedly, a Pan Am 727 flight waiting for start clearance in Munich overheard the following:
Lufthansa (in German): “Ground, what is our start clearance time?”
Ground (in English): “If you want an answer you must speak in English.”
Lufthansa (in English): “I am a German, flying a German airplane, in Germany. Why must I speak English?”
Unknown voice from another plane (in a beautiful British accent): “Because you lost the bloody war.”

A huge C-5 cargo plane was sitting near where a small plane was waiting to take off. The private pilot got a little nervous because the military plane was closer than normal, and asked the tower to find out the intentions of the C-5. Before the tower could reply, a voice came over the radio as the C-5′s nose cargo doors opened, saying, “I’m going to eat you…”

I’ve just created categories and will assign my stories to one. When you reach my webpage, my latest story will be displayed for you to read. You can find the (older) stories in the different categories in the top left corner of the page.

Home

Brings you back to the homepage.

News

Here you can find posts like this one.

Travel

Here you can find travel stories besides my Istanbul adventures.

The Big City

Under this category I’ll put my not every day experiences in Istanbul. Nothing to do with my training.

Flying

My adventures about my training and career in aviation will be found here.