hi. here is my life from my eyes. i love taking photographs, good music, self-growth, activism, charity, and sports (mostly wta tennis.) -find my latest trips below.
I can hear you saying “this is the year 2017, who even creates or writes a blog”… well hello! I love expressing my opinions and since I do not use Twitter anymore, I needed an outlet where I can talk/vent about things. I thought of blogging, obviously. What will be on this blog? My life. Without further ado, I want to get my first post going. Today(tonight) I will be talking about Bee, my trip to the Czech Republic, meeting Bee, sightseeing, the tournament, your questions, my doubts, the good, the bad… Let’s go!
We all have our dreams and goals. When you put my dream job and the places I want to see, and the dream of becoming the person I want to be aside, my biggest dream was meeting Bee. I think it’s the kind of dream most people would mock having, by most people I mean the people who never lived the fangirl/boy life. First of all, I want to talk about the costs, because I know money is the only thing stopping some of us from going to these kinds of trips weekly. To give brief information, I’m a third year university student, I work part-time at a library, and receive no help from my parents (personal choice.) So I am assuring you, I am not going to 10 tournaments every year and visiting a new country every month. This was such a new experience for me. I had been to Istanbul Cup and the WTA Finals in Istanbul previously, but going to another country for tennis is a completely new experience. I paid 80 euros for Schengen Visa (you might not need a visa for your trip), I paid 920 liras (230 euros) for the round-trip flights from Turkish Airlines. There were cheaper flights (for 138 euros round trip) which I completely accidentally ignored so that was pure stupidity. The tournament was for free, so luckily I didn’t pay for tickets. For accommodation, I was extremely lucky to have one of the bestest people in the world hosting me, I really felt home and welcomed. For the other expenses like transportation and food, if you don’t do shopping and buy things you don’t actually need, 150 euros should be enough for 10 days. I’m assuming you’ll have fancy food for a day or two. So there’s that.
The sightseeing… As I said, I was very lucky to have my friend Jana hosting me. She took me to amazing places. We drove to Bee’s hometown Plzen, which was something I was looking forward to. Even though I sounded like I didn’t like Plzen when Bee asked me about it, I have to say this city is beautiful. We tasted beer at the Brewery, went to the main square, climbed the worst tower but luckily it had an amazing view of the city, then we went to a cute café which we randomly found on our way back to the car. We went to the Hluboka Castle, I have to say it is one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen in my life. The town is also very small and beautiful. Coming from a city that is more populated than the entire Czech Republic, even Prague felt like a small town to me, but I have to say I deeply fell in love with every single place we went to. In Prague we went to all of the main touristic attractions I think. I found the Astronomical Clock very boring but other than that I enjoyed this city too much and I am afraid I am now in love with this country.
The tournament. I think it was a very well organised, neat tournament with a great venue. The tickets were for free so that is obviously a huge plus. It is very easy to meet players, or to have a conversation with them (as long as they are willing to lol.) The main stadium is great, I also loved watching matches at the outer courts. The food is also OK, personally I struggled a lot because I am not used to the local cuisine and I don’t eat pork. So I had to eat Lays and drink Pepsi on the first day, and for the rest of the week I had the official tournament cocktail (which was absolutely amazing), and counted hours so we could leave and I could get food haha. The problem with free tickets is that the stadium fills up quickly, especially for the matches of the Czech players. You can’t leave the stadium before Bee plays for example, because if you leave, you face the extremely long queue of people waiting to be admitted inside the stadium where there are zero empty seats left. If I had to pee, I had to to wait for Bee’s match to be over. And we had to arrive at 10am to snatch front row seats, for a match that starts at 1pm for example. That is hours of sitting under the sun (Well sun only shows up for 2 minutes here so it wasn’t such a big problem. It was just very, very tiring.) But to sum up, it is an amazing tournament, and if you like the entry list you should definitely visit.
The Bee. First of all, I have a huge thank you for her and I think it would mean much more if it was directed at her, so here it goes. Bára, thank you. Lol that was such a lame start. I am thinking of more things to say but only thank you comes to my mind. I guess now I can relate to you thanking me five thousand times since day 1 because sometimes there really isn’t anything else to say. Thank you. Thank you for accepting the support I try to give you. Thank you for always taking the time to read what I have to say, even when they are footlong paragraphs. Thank you for letting me pick you up after a bad loss, thank you for picking me up after a bad day. Thank you for making me feel loved as a person and not only as a fan. Thank you for sharing your happiness with me. Thank you for being excited to finally meet me. Thank you for the hug. I know that is a lot to ask from a Czech person. Thank you for the hearts. Thank you for feeling bad when you don’t respond to me. I feel bad too. *snort* Thank you. The support, you know..continues. Always. I know I said it a million times before. It is an honour to be your fan. Thank you for having me in your journey. Thank you for telling me it would be a much harder one without me. Thank you for the fast reply when I told you I couldn’t sleep. Thank you for our DM conversation which sometimes looks like I am sending sentimental messages to myself. Thank you for realising that you have to respond sometimes. Thank you for always writing me long, thought-out messages. Thank you for always taking my support first. You are loved, and supported. Even if you get broken while serving for the set/match every single time, lose tiebreaks from 5-0 at 6:40am and basically kill me, and always miss the volley at break point.
The questions… I think so far I answered all of them. The meeting was beautiful. Bee was practicing with JJ which killed me because I was having so many feelings about it. I also got a selfie with JJ and my eyes are closed on it. That’s why I ended up taking 4 selfies with Bee actually in my first try. Imagine if my eyes were closed on them I would have stabbed myself. Did we talk? Yes we talked. Well she talked and I gave stupid responses because I was simultaneously dying. At some point I blurted out something like “sdfjdjferwer??” and she was like ????. *snort again* She was so attentive and it made my heart burst from happiness. At some point she was talking about how sad Plzen is as a city I mean that is so cute and so random. TBH I never imagined we would talk about that you know. Which reminds me that I wasn’t the only nervous person and she seemed like she was slightly nervous too. It was very cute. I think a moment I can never forget in my life was when she walked directly towards me after her practice as if we were friends that hadn’t seen each other for a while. I hope she will never read this post this is embarrassing lmao. I won’t go into every single detail because that is actually creepy, guys. But I know that’s what everyone really wants to read. The bee glasses are a different story. I saw them at a store and pointed them to Jana and we both fell in love. I’m shy for these kinds of things so she bought for herself and I didn’t. I couldn’t wear them at Bee’s match for example. I am introverted and weird. But then I turned back to buy a pair for Bára, without a doubt. The next day, I forgot the glasses at home. Bára saw Jana’s glasses and complimented them from afar, I was like fffssss I am so stupid. That day we didn’t end up meeting Bára, which was totally fine I think back to back would have killed what’s left of me. The next day, Jana dragged me to Bára’s post match practice. “Dragged” because I didn’t think I could handle meeting her again :D Anyways I gave her the glasses and her eyes shined like a little kid eating ice cream. Making her happy really makes me happy. It was such a beautiful moment. She screamed BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. <3
The doubts, the good, the bad… It was a tough week for me on a personal level. I constantly felt like the worst daughter ever because of the money I spent (even though I was spending my own money) and I felt like I couldn’t care enough for my father who had a heart attack. He doesn’t live with us in Istanbul, and I couldn’t make the time to go all the way down south to visit him with this trip upcoming. Then I had to call him for money because I spent more than I planned to and I was out of funds. I am not embarrassed to say that day involved some tears, with Bára’s contribution because she did a really, really stupid thing I won’t say here. I am sure from her POV it is not as stupid as it is, but really, it was such bad decision-making from her. It’s all fine now. <3
The end….I want to thank Jana. I told her I would write two pages to thank her actually but she will just have to do with a paragraph for now. I am the luckiest person in the world because I genuinely think I am surrounded by the best friends possible, and she is one of them. Thank you for hosting me. Thank you for loving me as a person. For defending me. Protecting me even from the people I don’t need protecting. Thank you for the McDonald’s’. Thank you for sharing everything you have with me. Thank you for 10/10 crisis management, thank you for always making sure I was well fed. Thank you for being the grown up (well, you are older.) Thank you for not hating me even though I constantly dragged you. Thank you for pushing me when I was too shy to do half of the things we did. Thank you for never judging me. Thank you for accepting me as the biggest sneaky bitch you’ve ever met. Thank you for telling me I have a huge heart. Thank you for this trip. It was a pleasure. I cannot wait to see you again. Thank you for your lifetime friendship and constant support.
Sorry for this long post and let’s hope I won’t forget the fact that I have a blog! Until next time.
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