Rally tasks

When we first subscribed to the rally, we had a more idealistic view of the whole adventure; I even thought that it would be nice to rank as one of the top teams finishing the rally. With time this view slowly eroded. It started with not binging together six people (and three cars) as one of the important rules for participation. This small detail turned out not to be important as we consider ourselves a part of the “Jordanian Team”. However, we had to travel alone, since our colleagues couldn’t obtain the necessary visas and had to take the ferry from Venice to Greece.

As for the tasks stated in the rally road book, we started quite well. We picked up the stone from the river, colored it and made nice photographs. We found the place, selling the “last Schnitzel” and didn’t forget the 30cm measuring stick (needed to give a measure of the depth of the Bosporus!). With some tasks, we allowed ourselves a certain measure of “interpretation”. For example, with the team members in telephone booth photograph, we chose an open one (haha).

The heavy task of finding the Istanbul Fenerbahce stadion on the Asian side, singing the fan song in front of the camera by heart and delivering the flag of our football club to the Fenerbahce officials we solved thus: Our hotel manager is a fenerbahce-fan. We gave him the flag and took a nice photo with him. He and we were very happy. This saved us from crossing the Bosporus today on ferries with 300 other cars and allowed me to stay one more night in the comfort of our hotel! Maybe tonight I will finally get my original Turkish pizza from Istanbul.

Oh by the way: We should have documented every border crossing with a picture of the whole team with the “border stone”. We had two problems with that: The first was that I (Al-Fasih) missed the page in the road book stating that. When I discovered it, we already were in Serbia. And to be honest, we had enough trouble on the Turkish border with grim officials after midnight than to even attempt to take out a camera (brrr)!

Thankfully the rally is not a corporation led by Jack Welch, where those who perform badly and do not align to the corporation visions and ideas are kicked out.