"Hayır! Saat dokuz buçukta Taksim'den geldik!"
"Epic. Top five nights of my life." This was the lone text message I sent on Sunday to the other trainees in Istanbul after David, Saurabh and I traveled double digit hours to the Aegean Sea. The madness began Friday night...
David and I joined other folks for dinner on Istiklal Friday evening. Staying aware of the time, we decided not to eat as to make the service bus that would take us from Taksim to the bus station in time for our 10:30 bus to Izmir.
Everything was going well. We had made the service bus in time and were sitting patiently at the bus stop amidst strange looks and little kids selling 101 dalmation pillows for "Bir milyon! Bir milyon!" As David and I were making fun of the pillows, Saurabh came around the corner equipped with a blue pillow and a content smile. From 9:45 onwards, I would ask the bus company employee "Otobüsümüz mü?" I would quickly receive a "Hayir", or the funny click sound that means no in Turkey. This went on until around 11:15 when I decided it was time to get some answers. I went inside and asked the employee when our bus was coming. He looked at the ticket, then at me, ticket, me, "It already left." I should have been shocked or mad at this point, but because I had asked the guy repeatedly if each bus was our's, I knew we weren't completely at fault. The next 5 - 10 minutes was spent witnessing a few employees and regular men hand each other the tickets all the while arguing. I was picking up random words and numbers when one of the guys came to me and said in Turkish, "How many are you? Where were you?" I pointed to my comrades sitting on the bench. It seemed he was throwing the blame at us so I, very nobly and proudly, proceeded to argue, in Turkish, on our behalf that we were not at fault. I was pretty damn shocked; they believed us.
Quite soon thereafter, we were shuffled onto a bus with multiple employees pointing and saying, "this is your bus, this is your bus." We felt a sigh of relief as we sat down and had a laugh at our unfortunate situation. Content that we were headed to Izmir, I jokingly laughed with David about where this bus was actually going. This lead Saurabh to nervously ask the bus attendant, "Dude, where is this bus going?" With a smile, he said, Akcay, Baliksehir. "Shit!" We handed him our tickets and his face immediately changed to something like he had just received a shitty report card. "You're on the wrong bus."
30 minutes later we were thrown off at a farely large bus station on the Anatolian side of Istanbul. It was now almost 1230, and we looked across the Marmara Sea at Topkapi Palace, only a 20 minute walk from our own dorm. We were assured there'd be another bus going to Izmir in about 30 minutes, so with that we walked over to a small eatery to get something to drink. I grabbed an Ayran and laid it on the counter. The cafeteria guy, the "dude", immediately started up a conversation about where I was from, what I was doing here, etc. He was very warm to the presence of Americans, but was even warmer to Saurabh when he told him he was from "Hindistan." After hearing this, and the fact that Saurabh grew up in Saudi Arabia, he asked him in Turkish if he was Muslim. Now either Saurabh was very clever or just didn't understand, he calmly said "Yes". In a matter of 2 minutes, we were gathered around a table drinking free tea and eating free porça. Blessed we were.
By this time, only about 20 minutes had gone by since boarding the wrong bus and being thrown off still in Istanbul. It had been almost 2.5 hours in all and we were still in the city we were trying to leave. The "dude" asked to see our bus tickets, and at the sight of them, made a similar "shitty report card" face and started repeatedly yelling, "Come! Come! We gotta go!" We rushed out the cafeteria with our teas and followed the "dude" as he talked to multiple bus drivers and bus company employees. We went to our company's desk and were surrounded by curious employees wondering what the hell was the fuss. Multpile report card faces later, one of the employees slammed the ticket down, pointed to the 10:30 written on it, and said "Sorry." I spit off a few words attempting to make a hasty argument, when the "dude" suddenly interrupted me and fought on our behalfs. Fortunately, it worked, and again we were shuffled onto a bus. With another sigh of relief, we boarded our new bus and searched for a seat. Well, there were no seats, so the bus attendant sat us 3 on the front stairs of the bus right next to the quite intimidating bus driver. At this point is where our period of, we'll call it, "speechlessness" began. Not knowing what the hell was going on, or where we were going, we sat quietly on this crowded bus, wondering just how we would get to Izmir.
David and I joined other folks for dinner on Istiklal Friday evening. Staying aware of the time, we decided not to eat as to make the service bus that would take us from Taksim to the bus station in time for our 10:30 bus to Izmir.
Everything was going well. We had made the service bus in time and were sitting patiently at the bus stop amidst strange looks and little kids selling 101 dalmation pillows for "Bir milyon! Bir milyon!" As David and I were making fun of the pillows, Saurabh came around the corner equipped with a blue pillow and a content smile. From 9:45 onwards, I would ask the bus company employee "Otobüsümüz mü?" I would quickly receive a "Hayir", or the funny click sound that means no in Turkey. This went on until around 11:15 when I decided it was time to get some answers. I went inside and asked the employee when our bus was coming. He looked at the ticket, then at me, ticket, me, "It already left." I should have been shocked or mad at this point, but because I had asked the guy repeatedly if each bus was our's, I knew we weren't completely at fault. The next 5 - 10 minutes was spent witnessing a few employees and regular men hand each other the tickets all the while arguing. I was picking up random words and numbers when one of the guys came to me and said in Turkish, "How many are you? Where were you?" I pointed to my comrades sitting on the bench. It seemed he was throwing the blame at us so I, very nobly and proudly, proceeded to argue, in Turkish, on our behalf that we were not at fault. I was pretty damn shocked; they believed us.
Quite soon thereafter, we were shuffled onto a bus with multiple employees pointing and saying, "this is your bus, this is your bus." We felt a sigh of relief as we sat down and had a laugh at our unfortunate situation. Content that we were headed to Izmir, I jokingly laughed with David about where this bus was actually going. This lead Saurabh to nervously ask the bus attendant, "Dude, where is this bus going?" With a smile, he said, Akcay, Baliksehir. "Shit!" We handed him our tickets and his face immediately changed to something like he had just received a shitty report card. "You're on the wrong bus."
30 minutes later we were thrown off at a farely large bus station on the Anatolian side of Istanbul. It was now almost 1230, and we looked across the Marmara Sea at Topkapi Palace, only a 20 minute walk from our own dorm. We were assured there'd be another bus going to Izmir in about 30 minutes, so with that we walked over to a small eatery to get something to drink. I grabbed an Ayran and laid it on the counter. The cafeteria guy, the "dude", immediately started up a conversation about where I was from, what I was doing here, etc. He was very warm to the presence of Americans, but was even warmer to Saurabh when he told him he was from "Hindistan." After hearing this, and the fact that Saurabh grew up in Saudi Arabia, he asked him in Turkish if he was Muslim. Now either Saurabh was very clever or just didn't understand, he calmly said "Yes". In a matter of 2 minutes, we were gathered around a table drinking free tea and eating free porça. Blessed we were.
By this time, only about 20 minutes had gone by since boarding the wrong bus and being thrown off still in Istanbul. It had been almost 2.5 hours in all and we were still in the city we were trying to leave. The "dude" asked to see our bus tickets, and at the sight of them, made a similar "shitty report card" face and started repeatedly yelling, "Come! Come! We gotta go!" We rushed out the cafeteria with our teas and followed the "dude" as he talked to multiple bus drivers and bus company employees. We went to our company's desk and were surrounded by curious employees wondering what the hell was the fuss. Multpile report card faces later, one of the employees slammed the ticket down, pointed to the 10:30 written on it, and said "Sorry." I spit off a few words attempting to make a hasty argument, when the "dude" suddenly interrupted me and fought on our behalfs. Fortunately, it worked, and again we were shuffled onto a bus. With another sigh of relief, we boarded our new bus and searched for a seat. Well, there were no seats, so the bus attendant sat us 3 on the front stairs of the bus right next to the quite intimidating bus driver. At this point is where our period of, we'll call it, "speechlessness" began. Not knowing what the hell was going on, or where we were going, we sat quietly on this crowded bus, wondering just how we would get to Izmir.
posted by amartin4 at 12:46 AM
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