Leave the Path

I’ve kind of been regretting making this post, in part because it’s probably going to be my last, and in part because there’s a lot to say and I’m not sure I even remember all of it.  Yesterday I watched my first sunrise in Ankara, on the way to the airport, and we watched the sunset from the plane as we hopped from NY to Raleigh. The time between the two events was more than 20 hours. It was a long, long day.

We woke at 4:00 AM Ankara time and hopped into the car.  Hakan drove the Passat, and Volkan brought his Golf so that both brothers, both parents, both suitcases and both carry-ons, as well as both travelers, would make it to the airport.  We didn’t talk much on the way.  It was too early, and too sad.  Even at the airport, I didn’t know what to say.  I said thank you, but it didn’t seem like enough.  We said goodbye, but it didn’t seem real.  Even with the sun painting bright colors on the sky, and with another family waiting for us on the other side of the Atlantic, it seemed grim to be leaving.  We did it, though, hugged, walked, and passed the security point.

Then, while we were waiting for the plane, something cool happened.  A young guy came up and introduced himself as a friend of Volkan’s from school who was also flying to Istanbul, in order to catch a flight to Chicago.  I think his name was Uzgur or something similar.  He knew our names and even had heard about this blog.  We mostly just said the basic traveler niceties (Where are you from? Where do you live?  How do you like it?   Why are you traveling?) but it was a good diversion from feeling sad about leaving.  He seemed like a nice guy. We lost track of him somewhere in Istanbul, though, and I honestly can’t remember if we said goodbye.  (All of yesterday is sort of a blur.)

At the Istanbul airport, Emre and I looked at the duty free shops for last-minute gifts and then sat down for a snack at a café.  We were munching away on French-fries and Efes when a high-school-aged guy came up and said hi.  This guy is the second-cousin of our friend Berk from Chapel Hill, and he’d seen pictures of us before.  He was actually on his way to the states to visit family and to look at schools.  I’d known he was coming because Berk had asked me about places to take him in NC, but it was a huge coincidence that he was, in fact, on the same flight to New York!  Talk about a small world.  He hung out with Emre and me until the trans-Atlantic flight, and we talked about what he would be doing in the States.  In a way, seeing someone excited about going there made me more enthusiastic to be returning.  We sat apart from one another on the plane, and didn’t talk until we were stateside.

The crossing was long.  Really long.  Ten hours is long enough that one, or even ten or thirty minutes isn’t even substantial by comparison; it seems like time doesn’t pass and the flight will go on forever.  I always think “Oh, well I’ll just take a book.”  But it’s not satisfying to read; it’s not like sitting on the couch for ten hours.  Planes are noisy and bumpy and there are other people and a movie going.  There’s not quite enough stimulation to be interesting, but too much to concentrate on anything else.  I did sleep a few hours, and Emre slept much more than me, and every time we woke up, we were still over ocean.  Mostly I just sat.  I watched the movies for a while.  (They were really bad, especially the new Steve Martin version of The Pink Panther.  I think some of my soul may have leaked out during that film.)  I got bored, and grumpy.  Sometimes I woke up Emre, accidentally or intentionally, but he didn’t like it.  I sat some more.

Finally, we reached New York, and as we landed, it looked almost like we might run into the ocean.  We had four hours before our next flight, so we exited last.  We found our bags and carried them through customs.  We re-deposited them for the connecting flight.  The staff were unpleasant, as I have come to expect from JFK, giving conflicting requests and getting frustrated with the foreign travelers for not understanding.  Emre and I looked at perfume in the duty-free, but in sort of a daze, and we didn’t get anything. We sat in a pub watching the World Cup game for a while, and we re-found Berk’s cousin (I unfortunately don’t recall his name) in time to grab a quick dinner of pizza and burgers.  Eventually, we all said goodbye, as he caught a plane to Florida to visit friends before coming to NC, and we boarded the little plane to RDU.

We didn’t pass much security to get on (they didn’t even want to see our IDs) and the plane was tiny after the trans-Atlantic jet.  We sat in the very back, and it seemed very crowded and closed.  In the seat across from us was a blond, blue-eyed guy with a big beard and a cap doing prayers in Arabic.  Maybe it was the tiredness, or the closed-in feeling of the plane, or the inherit nervousness of watching the sun set.  Or maybe it was the way that this guy seemed so very nervous about being on the plane.  Whatever the reason, I got it into my head somehow that he seemed like a terrorist.  It’s kind of embarrassing now, and I knew that it was silly, then, as well, but once I got the idea, I couldn’t shake it.  I started getting more and more anxious.  I tried to talk to Emre about it (in Turk-Anglo-French so that no one would understand us) but he was really sleepy and kept dozing off.  Finally, he understood that I was upset and what was wrong with me.  He was totally unfazed.  He told me that it is totally normal for Muslims to do these prayers before a flight.  He also tried to tell me that no one who was actually a terrorist would actually look like that, because they’d raise suspicions at security points.  What he said helped, but I was still nervous.  And I felt horrible, even in that moment, for panicking about this.  The power of terrorism lies not in being able to kill all of the people who appose you, but in being able to scare people into respecting you with relatively little force.  I knew that, in all probability, this guy was just a nice college kid who converted to an interesting religion and had a fear of flying.  If I’d been able to convince myself to talk to him, we might have even had some things in common.  But, because I have very vivid images of what happens when there’s a bomb on a plane, and because “very nervous young Muslim man traveling alone on a plane in NY” fits a per-conception that I have of who a terrorist would be, I was scared.  I didn’t want to be afraid, of course, but once I started, I couldn’t stop.It was unfair to him to make this association, and I hate that I did exactly what actual terrorists would want:  I was anxious when there was no actual cause. 

Once we got into the air, it was better.  The guy who scared me started talking to the girl in the seat next to him, who I noticed carried a rosary in her hand, even though she’d been reading absent-mindedly as we took off.  He had a Southern accent, and he sounded calm enough after take-off.  We had some turbulence, but the 2-hour flight seemed short after the Atlantic crossing.

After landing, we had no trouble finding our bags and hiring a taxi.  We rode all the way back to our apartment, exchanging only a few words with the driver.  We dragged our bags upstairs, brushed our teeth, and collapsed on the bed.  I slept very well and woke up at an appropriate time.  I have been running errands today, and I’m not really even that tired.  Maybe I’m going to escape jet-lag this time.

So that’s it.  This adventure is over.  Back to paying bills and washing laundry and turning in paperwork for this and that.  John Stewart Mills suggested that the happiest life is made up of alternating excitement and tranquility.  I’ve had my excitement, and it should be rewarding, now, to have a few uneventful days.

Today was our last day in Turkey. I got up earlier than usual, at 9:30, and we skipped the big breakfast. By 11:00 we’d caught up with Emre’s aunt and cousins and we were on our way to another mini-adventure. This time we visited a lake made and maintained by METU (Middle East Technical University – Volkan and Hanzade went there.) I’d visited this lake once before, and my memories were tainted by the taste of the fish-and-mayonnaise sandwich which Emre forced me to eat, and which may, likely, have contributed to my vomiting spell which started later that night. That was a couple of years ago, when I first visited Turkey, though, and in a different season, so I was determined to give it another chance.

It started off well enough. We drove most of the way in, so we didn’t have to walk on the dusty road. We parked and walked for a ways to a place that Ugur wanted to try fishing. He had a fishing set with telescoping rods, but not reels. Emre had never fished with this sort of set, and he wanted to show him how. It sounded like fun. We all walked down the bank to the place where they would give it a try. Then the smell hit me. The place smelled absolutely horrible. There was a lime-green ring of algae around the shore, which is normal enough, but floating in it were a half-dozen dead fish. The fish may or may not have contributed to the odor. Other possibilities include the goose poo on the edge of the lake, and a mysterious “stagnant” force from lack of circulation. Whatever it was, it stank. We stayed an hour or so, and sometimes I thought I’d gotten used to it, and then it would hit me anew. It can’t be good or healthy for a lake to smell like that.

Emre and Ugur did eventually fish, with the 20-ft telescoping rods. In the process of making the rig to fish, a hook got stuck in Emre’s thumb not for the first time in his life (there’s a really bad story about a barbed hook that left a scar.) In this incident, though, the hook was thankfully small, unbarbed, and fresh from the package, so with a copious treatment of cologne, it was quickly forgotten. The casting looked like fun, but I didn’t want them to touch anything that came from that water, so I wasn’t too disappointed that they didn’t catch a fish.

After the fishing, we walked down the road for a while, mostly for the exercise and the view, which wasn’t half bad once you got above the smell. We stopped for tea and snacks at the METU club team restaurant. We told stories. Emre talked about fishing, and about how much he likes my grandparents and their house. It was pleasant to drink tea and watch (though not smell) the lake and share comfortable, unhurried conversation with good company. I think that may be the distillation of Turkish entertaining, in fact, and it’s really an unappreciated art.

Our next stop of the day was a further chance to enjoy this Turkish talent. Emre and I were invited for “tea” with Hanzade’s parents. “Tea” was actually a pretext for an enormous afternoon meal, with a dozen different vegetable dishes, lamb, cheese and wine, fruit, and nuts, and home-made baklava, and also ice-cream. The actual tea beverage was sort of an afterthought.

It was great, though. They have a lovely home, with lots of neat arches and niches and other architectural details that I didn’t expect to see in a big concrete apartment building. The food was excellent, as well, and we passed another long span of hours just talking and drinking tea. The most memorable topics of conversation were: 1) Bad things that Emre and his brothers did as children and why they were never adequately punished (they were just too darn cute) and 2) Babies. Hanzade and Volkan are expecting a baby sometime after the new year. They had their second trip to the doctor again today, so it’s finally sinking in. They did the good yuppie parent thing and got lots of tests and bought baby books. This will be the first baby on either side of the family, and one of the first among their friends, so everyone is already getting excited. Hanzade’s mother was so enthusiastic, even, that she tried to convince Emre that we should have a baby soon. Though I think it was at least partly in jest, Emre reacted exactly as he does every time someone says the word “baby” near him (and he’ll probably do it when he reads this): he turns pink and looks at the ceiling and stutters “N-n-n-oooo” sheepishly. I think it’s really funny and it’s fun to wind him up about it, though we have no intentions of actually having any children any time soon, and certainly not after I heard horror stories about raising the Saricicek brothers.

We eventually, reluctantly, left Hanzade’s parents’ and, with the company of Emre’s parents, brothers, and Hanzade, went to run a few last-minute errands in town. We frantically tried to find some things before the shop closed, and succeeded in only some of our quests. Then we all came home to drink even more tea and watch Turkish pop TV. Volkan and Hanzade left around 11:00. I didn’t really know how to say goodbye to them without adding “See you soon.” It’s hard to believe that I won’t be seeing them every day anymore. It’s really a shame that Chapel Hill and Ankara are so far apart. I hate that we’ll have to say more good-byes tomorrow.

I know that we have lots of little things to do before we go, though. Emre finished most of the packing, last night, but there’s always a dozen little things that need to be done, no matter where you are, and we absolutely have to do them in the next few hours. Emre is alternating between watching TV and eating sunflower seeds and purposefully, and even frantically, packing stuff. I don’t think he plans to sleep tonight. At this rate, I don’t know if I’ll get a chance either. And after all of the tea, I’m not sure it’s worth it to try.

This will, obviously, be my last post from Turkey. I’ll do at least one more post when I get back to Chapel Hill. I’m not sure whether I’ll keep it up after my travels become less exotic. I could complain about all of the weird cultural things that Americans do, now that I’ve been away from them for a while. Or maybe I could do more exposés about Turkish culture that I just haven’t had time for as of yet. But it’s alot of work, and I’m undecided. If you feel strongly about this matter, please leave encouraging messages and/or shameless praise in the comments section.

Wish me luck on the trip, and I’ll see some of you Stateside. And for everyone who’s reading from Turkey: Sizi ozleyecegim! Cok, cok, cok tesekuler ve hoscakaliniz!

It’s our second day back in Ankara. It kind of feels like home, since we were here so long before, and there are lots of friendly faces. We went out last night, to a pub, for only the second time in the entire vacation. Hakan came with us, and we met up with Emre’s friends Baris and Sefa. (They came from seeing “Eternal Sunshine…” in the theatre. It was just re-released here, which makes me happy because I really l liked that film.) The pub is called “New Castle” and they try very hard to be British. It was okay, but super-expensive and not really spectacular. Also, they don’t serve Efes, the common Turkish beer, which seems sort of elitist to me. (As a side note, American domestic beers like Miller are considered “import” beers here; they’re more expensive and considered kind of gourmet. I think Efes is better, though.) Anyway, it was kind of a slow night at this pub, being a Thursday, and we had a few quiet drinks and went home.

I must admit, I’m kind of afraid to drive home at night in Turkey. On five separate occasions, we’ve been around people who were drinking, became clearly intoxicated, and then decided to drive. On only two of these occasions were they successfully dissuaded from doing so. All of these incidents happened in Istanbul, so maybe it’s less socially acceptable in Ankara, but it’s terrifying that I saw three people drive drunk in only a week, especially given the normal traffic pattern in Istanbul. Turks drive on the edge of control. They like to take risks and test their skill while driving. It is, in my opinion, a dangerous way to drive, even when you’re sober. To think that some of those people slinging their cars into the incoming traffic lane are less-than-maximally aware is not a comforting thought. Fiona was surprised by the drunk-driving, as well. In both of our countries, and in France, there have been massive anti-drunk-driving campaigns, but they don’t seem to have reached Turkey.

Speaking of dangers in Istanbul, there was a bombing yesterday in one of the places we had been. The district is called Eminonu and it’s usually busy with bus traffic and street venders. It’s near an underground passage that we used every day we were in Istanbul. Someone planted a bomb in a garbage can, which went off in a crowded place at a very busy time. Luckily, the city has seen this sort of terrorism before, and uses super-reinforced garbage cans. Four people were injured, but no one was killed and the people injured are all doing okay. (Yay for the super-strength garbage can!) One of the most interesting aspects of attacks like this in Turkey, in my opinion, is that credit for them is almost never claimed immediately. Officials suspect the PKK, or Kurdish “Freedom Fighters,” but they haven’t admitted to it. In fact, when the government accuses militant groups like this one, they often respond by saying that it was actually a government conspiracy to make the group look bad. Sometimes a group comes back later and claims credit for the attack, but sometimes it just stays unresolved. This seems highly unlikely to me that the government would bomb its own civilians in order to make a militant group look bad, but then it also seems strange that someone who goes to the trouble of planning a terrorist attack wouldn’t want attention from it. Isn’t the point of terrorism to make people afraid of you? Anyway, whoever is planting bombs should obviously stop. It’s bad for the people who are injured, it’s bad for the prosperity of the country, and it’s bad for the peace of mind of its citizens – who really have more important things to worry about.

Today, we’ve been running errands, mostly, and trying to prepare for our trip back to the states in a couple of days. I am sad about departing from Turkey. I feel like I’m leaving things unfinished. For example, I’ve just gotten to the point that I can understand most signs and advertisements in Turkish, because I can usually pick up a few words and context. This is a big breakthrough because it means that I can learn things on my own, casually, like I learned English and a lot of French. But we’re leaving, and it will be a while before I see advertisements in Turkish again. My Turkish is so limited that if it gets rusty, it’ll be essentially like starting over again, and I don’t know how often I’ll actually think about it when I’m in the States.

I am excited about getting back, though. I can’t wait to see my friends and family, and I have lots of stories to share (though it seems that most of you are reading the website anyway, so maybe you’ll know them already.) I’m also excited about my stuff, my bed, my favorite non-Turkish foods, knowing how to get places, and not having to ask the waiter what he meant three different times. Interestingly, Emre seems keener to get back than I am. He’s been doing lots of bureaucratic-type stuff and is sick of the Turkish business/government model. He’s also eager to get back to his own projects and also to his T3 internet connection that doesn’t hop in and out like the one here.

We may have some trouble with our luggage. We’ve accumulated a lot of stuff during our stay, and our baggage allowance for the domestic Ankara-Istanbul part of our flight is only 20 kg each (about 50 lbs). I think we may just have to pay extra, because there’s no way we’re under that limit.

I’ve also picked up 5 or 10 lbs each in chocolate-related body weight during this trip. Luckily, we won’t be charged extra to take it home, but it’s harder to leave behind than clothes or souvenirs. Already I’m thinking of nice meat-free, low-fat foods that I will be eating in the next few weeks as I try to recover. My raisin cereal with skim milk is top on the list. I think I’m having withdraw cravings even now. I’ll miss the fruits, though, and the apricots in particular.

This evening, we had another dinner with Volkan and Hanzade. Nurten made a delicious eggplant and chicken dish. (I think her cooking is much better than the restaurants here, and I was very thankful not to be eating more kofte.) The major topics of conversation were cars (specifically what kind we should get in the States now that our old Esek has kicked the bucket) and some hairbrain scheme that Emre concocted to get Volkan and Hanzade’s child American citizenship (no one else was going for it.) After dinner we all visited Mado again for ice cream. I had a banana split.

It’s funny, I prefer Mado banana splits to any that I’ve ever eaten in the US. They actually have as much fruit as ice cream, including not only banana, but also apple and kiwi. There’s a little bit of nuts and chocolate/molasses sauce drizzled over the top for flavor, but no whipped cream, and no caramel sauce. I get them with the delicious fruit ice creams (they are actually fruity, not too sweet, and more like sherbet than American ice cream.) It’s awesome, and I’m sad that I realized this new love so late. Maybe I can make my own after I get back to NC – but only after my post-Turkey diet.

We also had a visit from Emre’s aunt and cousins for tea. They’d just come from a wedding and looked very sharp for a late-evening tea. We discussed current events in Turkey, including a tick-borne blood disease and what seems to be a huge natural uranium deposit on the Aegean coast. Actually, to be more accurate, Emre and his cousin discussed these things, and I pestered Emre for translations for the bits that I missed. Maybe I will find time for another Turkish class; not understanding is annoying.

Tomorrow is our last real day in Ankara, and so I think we’re going to try to sqeeze in several things we’ve been meaning to do. I should get some rest.

Two days ago, about the time that I made my last post, the Emres developed a great plan for our last day together in Istanbul. It was thorough and complete, involving getting up at 8:00, leaving the house by 9:00, a boat, a tour guide, a stop at a hamam, meals, evening entertainment, time with Emre2’s family, and more. Fiona and I laughed when we heard it. The first snag was obvious: we haven’t gotten up before 10:00 on then entire vacation- small chance it would happen now. And we were right. It was noon before we were all up, fed, dressed, etc. We also met a couple of other snags: the tour guide friend couldn’t meet us that day, the weather was really cold and grey and wet, traffic was backed up, etc. We accidentally went shopping for a couple of hours. Then we had lunch at a famous meatball shop. It was 3:00 before we got around to actually doing anything on the plan.

Sultan Ahmet Koftecisi, where we had lunch, was a neat restaurant. It’s a couple streets away from the Blue Mosque, and so the view is great. The restaurant is several stories, and narrow. (I was joking about how such a little, crowded place must be a fire hazard. There is, however, a clearly marked fire exit from the top floor, so I guess I underestimated the owners.) From the window, we watched a car get towed that had been parked on a side-walk. The only annoyance was the Americans at the next table talking really loudly about things that they didn’t actually know anything about.The specialty is, of course, kofte (spicy Turkish meatballs.) I have, unfortunately, become sick of kofte, and definitely didn’t want any. The salads, which were meant as side dishes, had white beans and onions, as well as the normal tomato and lettuce mix, and they were fortunately very filling. Fiona and I each ordered a salad, and then a plate of kebap meat to share. It was a great meal.

We went strait to the Blue Mosque after lunch. I knew what to expect, but it was still impressively big. There were more little boys in prince costumes, this time. I explained to Fiona why they were dressed like that, and she wanted to grab them and help them escape. (Apparently I’m not the only one to find this custom odd.) While we were discussing this, one of two brothers wearing soft Ottoman-style slippers with their prince costumes slipped on the wet marble and hit his head on a step with a resounding “thwack” that echoed through the courtyard. He lost consciousness for a few seconds, and then started crying as his family rushed him off to the hospital. My head hurts just thinking about it. It was a terrifying scene, and all the more so because I realized that I don’t really know what to do about this kind of emergencies in Turkey. I hope he was okay. And that they didn’t make him get the operation on the same day; that’d make for a miserable week. Interestingly, the kid hit his head on the same step where the men had been fighting last time I visited the Blue Mosque. I think I’ll enter from the other direction next time.

Once we did get in, I was overwhelmed by the smell of wet feet. Shoes are not allowed in mosques (they’re entirely carpeted on the inside) and the persistent rain and long tours had made foul odors in the shoes of all the tourists. (Maybe this is the reason for the ritualistic foot-washing before Muslim prayers?) Despite the beauty of the place, I didn’t feel the same calm as last time and I couldn’t wait to get back out into fresh, foot-free air.

Next we visited the Hagia Sofia. I really really liked it last time, and looked forward to visiting again. I worried a little, though, that a different day, with different weather and different company might make for a different and inferior experience. It was different, but I still loved it. Emre2 had decided not to join us because of the entrance fee (it is a little steep.) I got in for free again, by showing that I have both a student card and a Turkish name. Fiona, Emre, and Hakan were interested and willing to go, and at least tolerant of my enthusiasm for the place.

There weren’t many people around, so we had the place almost to ourselves. We saw a fledgling pigeon being fed by a parent. I also noticed more fake windows painted by the Ottomans (I still don’t get why they did this. Lack of inspiration? Desire to paint things in perspective? Just felt their should have been more windows?) I also felt the same solidness, openness, and reflective atmosphere of the place. I think the second floor of the Hagia Sofia may be one of my new favorite places in the world. I like to think I’ll be there again someday.

In fact, I like most of Istanbul. I’m even glad I saw it in the rain. It was cold, and the foot smell was gross, but the weather changes the mood of the place. I feel like I know the city better now that I’ve seen it in a few different states. I’d like to be here once when it snows. I’ve heard that’s the best.

Continuing with the top tourist attractions theme, our next stop was the Kapali Carsi, or Grand Bazaar. Last time we ran through and snapped photos. This time I actually bought a couple of pairs of earrings and a couple of gifts. No one from the city actually shops here, and I think Emre2 was a little annoyed with us for wanting to come at all. The prices are greatly inflated, but we managed to talk down our purchases a little. We also took a look at some of the antique stores, which had awesome authentic pieces like sets of Ottoman armor.

We were scheduled to meet with Emre2’s family for dinner, and we were running late after the shopping. We walked quickly through the slippery streets outside of the bazaar, we passed through the Spice Bazaar down to the dock where we caught another ferry. This one rocked wildly in the white-capped waves, and the bad weather also made for a huge crowd. The Emres were so tired that the kind of melted into their seats. We saw no dolphins, and I was glad to step off on the other side.

We walked to the car in the cold rain. It was maybe a kilometer or less, but when we arrived we were all wet, cold, and miserable. We got caught in traffic crossing town, as well, but by some small miracle we were only a few moments late for dinner.

We ate with Emre2’s parents, both of his sisters, the eldest sister’s husband, and the younger sister’s two daughters and their nanny. The kids were great. Aged 10 and 4, they’re both black-eyed, clever little girls. The older one is studying English, and she was very patient when I spoke Turkish with her. (That part of the family owns the house where we stayed near Olympos, so we talked about the house and the animals in the yard.) The younger one is the baby of the family, and she knows it, and she is adorable.

Dinner was at a specialty Black Sea region restaurant. Emre2’s father is from that region, and he recognized a grammar mistake on part of the menu where they’d used an old Northern language. Without my notice, someone ordered up a huge spread of Black Sea specialties as “appetizers”. Two reassuringly familiar common ingredients were corn and green beans. There was corn bread served with something like fondue, and a hot green bean salad. There were also lots of little fish (anchovies?) served with rice or vegetables. It was wonderful. By the time my main course came, I was too full to eat it. We stayed at dinner a long time, and had a couple of cups of tea. It was very comfortable.

Part of the original plan had been to go out to a concert after dinner, and to stay on the Europe side with Emre2’s friend Umut. We drove over the bridge to Umut’s apartment, but after the long day and the big meal, no one could be bothered to go out. Umut’s apartment is really neat. It’s on the ground floor of an older apartment building on the European side of Istanbul. It’s small, but it has real marble in several key places that adds an air of luxury. It kind of reminded me of the NY artists’ apartments in _On the Road_. When we arrived, Umut had some friends over, and we sat with them for a while, but then Emre put on a DVD, and I fell asleep.

The next morning, Emre woke me up early to get on the road back to Ankara. I was tired and disoriented. We had to say good-bye to Emre2 and Fiona who, to their credit, got up to see us off, though I know it was very hard. I almost didn’t want to leave them. For two weeks we were comrades, traveling together, eating together. It was fun, and it felt like a natural return to the dynamic we had in France. I’m sad that it came to an end so quickly, and I sincerely hope that it doesn’t take another two years for all of us to meet again.

Emre and I found Hakan and got back on the road. It was raining again as we left Istanbul. We stopped at Burger King and ate Whoppers for breakfast (there wasn’t much choice) and Hakan bought some sort of “cotton candy” that looked unpleasantly like a hairball, but tasted like candy should. I took a long nap and tried to perk up a little, but it didn’t work.

Going back to Ankara marks the tail end of our stay in Turkey. We’re heading to the States on Sunday, and while I’m excited to see my family and my apartment and vegan food, I feel like it was only yesterday that we arrived. I’m not quite ready to go. Not only do we have to pack and do another 24-hour travel-a-thon, but there are people who I like here, and things that I still haven’t learned.

Yesterday we drove across Turkey, south to north. It took us about 13 hours all together. I thought that there’d be a big motorway all the way from Antalya to Istanbul (after all, Antalya is a big city) but there wasn’t. It was a long, windy trip through farm land.

In the morning we washed the sheets and tidied up (one of those responsibilities that comes along with a borrowed house.) We also ate a little breakfast and Emre2 went to pick up some other relatives who would be staying in the house just after us. They came, we left.

We saw a big tortoise crossing the road as we left the Olympos area. (You may have noticed that we saw many turtles here. They’re famous. There are sea turtles, as well, which come lay eggs on the shore, but we didn’t see any. Someone’s comment about sea turtles was that they’re quite strong and he’s seen children 6 or 7 years old sitting on their backs as they crawl back to the water. This may, in fact, explain the current scarcity of sea turtles, if people harass them when they’re on land. The trash on the beaches and development for tourism are, of course, big problems, too. And sea turtles are supposedly delicious, so in on beaches that have been inhabited for so long, I’m surprised that there are still turtles at all. The turtles are protected, today, though, with little cage things to go over the nests and signs about not being loud or shining lights at night on the beach.)

We’d been in the car a lot of this trip, so we settled back into a comfortable routine. The Emres took turns driving. Fiona alternated between sleeping and chatting. I took pictures and loudly admonished bad drivers, though of course they couldn’t hear me.

A note about Turkish roads: Often, there are three lanes. One lane on each side for each direction of travel, and then a center passing lane that is supposed to be open to one direction at a time, but is constantly abused. In theory, you drive in your lane, and then, when necessary, over-take other cars on certain areas where the line between your lane and the center becomes dotted. In fact, however, drivers often stay in the middle, and routinely pass when it’s the turn of the other direction. In addition, there are sometimes cars in both the outside and center lane when a new, fast car wants to pass, and, more often than not, that driver will simply go into the lane reserved for on-coming traffic. Sometimes there will also be a motorcyclist, no helmet, weaving between these cars and driving on the shoulder of the road. And often the vehicle being passed is an over-loaded truck or two, swaying in the wind and dropping tomatoes. It’s hard to capture the horror of watching this kind of driving in still photos. Fiona and I had several conversations similar to this: “What does he think he’s doing? Oh my god, he’s not going to pass here?!? Look, look, two of them are going now, in the other lane! There’s a car coming! They’re going to hit!” And then the driver would always bully his way in between the cars in the lane that he should have been in.

We did see the aftermath of one bad crash that seems to have happened in this way, though. We passed a car which had been smashed so that it looked like a Persian cat. The front grill was over the front axle, and the driver’s side was more damaged than the passenger’s. Once again, when we passed there were no injured people, and no ambulances, so I guess they’d already come and left. Or maybe some person trying to be helpful pulled the passengers from the car before the ambulance arrived. (Emre tells me this is common, as well.) It was scary, though, and we were very cautious drivers thereafter.

We did, however, have a little snag in our travels. There are many places where the roads, even big roads, are not good. We hit a pothole going about 70 mph, towards the center of a big road. With cars weaving back and forth, we didn’t see it until we were right on top of it. It made the car skip a little and surprised all of us. We took a look at the tires shortly afterwards, and there was a big bubble on one spot. We drove on it for a while, but the roads were still pretty dodgy, and I was increasingly paranoid about having a blow-out on such unpredictable roads.

We finally stopped and talked to an expert. He said “maybe” it would make it back to Istanbul. Given the Turkish standards for safety, we took that as a “no” and asked him to track down a new tire. Fiona and I waited at the truck-stop restaurant while the tire was delivered. Truck stops are truck stops, all over the world. Big, dirty guys came in and had big bowls of indiscriminate food and little cups of tea. The waiters were surprised and a little confused by the appearance of two Anglophone girls, but he was polite enough. The bathroom was deplorable, and black with mosquitoes, but other than it was okay. It took a couple hours to get the tire changed, but it was worth it to not worry as much about accidents.

We stopped once to look for ceramic gifts in the town of Kutahya, where the Ottoman sultans used to have their ceramics made. There were factories and outlet shops. Nothing amazing.

We also saw a cave. Emre noticed the signs from the road and remembered that he’d been there once and liked it. We stopped. Outside the entrance, there was a political rally for the most conservative nationalist party in the country (surprise!) and so the Emres were a little uncomfortable and we didn’t spend much time wandering around. The cave itself was interesting. It was a natural limestone cave, this time, with drip formations and an underground lake. I spent most of my time being annoyed by the poor management, though. Like most other “attractions” in Turkey, there was an entrance fee and then an entrance, but no guide. There were signs saying “Please don’t write on the walls or touch things.” There was a pathway of shiny, wet marble to guide the way, and speakers played a message in Turkish, occasionally, which may have been pre-recorded information. Groups of unsupervised children ran back and forth, though, and I saw 50-year-old ladies walk away from the designated walkway to rub their hands on the limestone formations. People smoked cigarettes as they walked, despite no-smoking signs.

Limestone formations stop growing and turn a dirty brown color when they’re touched with bare hands or exposed to smoke. It’s a sin to do bother them on any cave tour I’ve ever taken, and it really irked me that people in this cave didn’t seem to know or care. I think that having guides in caves is a necessity. Not only does it keep visitors from destroying delicate features, and give them interesting information, but it is also important for safety. Teenagers don’t stay where they’re supposed to be, and having people wander around in caves is dangerous. We saw groups of kids running through arches and columns, trying to find short-cuts from one part of the path to another. Even for people who heed the signs, if there’s a cave-in or an emergency, there’s no way for the people outside to know how many people to look for or where they’d be. It would raise the price of admission, though, and I guess people don’t really care that much.

With all these diversions, we didn’t get around to dinner until 10:30 or so, and then we didn’t make it to Istanbul until almost midnight (nearer to Istanbul, the roads are safer and wider, though, so it wasn’t a big problem to drive in the dark.)

We stayed with Emre2’s family. In the morning, his mother prepared us a fantastic breakfast spread, complete with home-made strawberry jam, and also French fries. When we finally left the apartment, we spent the entire day walking around, meeting up with old friends, and drinking tea. We crossed the Bosporus and saw a dolphin in the water (a very rare sight in such a busy shipping lane.) We also shopped half-heartedly, but didn’t get much.

We met up with Emre’s brother Hakan and Umut (he visited Emre2 in France) and two other friends, Arda and Giray, who both speak Chinese. The group of us had beers and dinner together, and then went our separate ways. Hakan’s staying with us tonight, and we’ll see some of the others tomorrow. It was relaxed and cool, and I felt pretty comfortable with Istanbul this time. It’s really a fantastic city.

(Emre may make a great pirate, but Emre2 is secretly Popeye.)