Road to Gaziantep
My flight from Stansted to Istanbul left at 11.35pm on Wednesday 3 June.
On Tuesday night I got a bit of a cheer-up after a conversation with Estella. She had called to make sure I got my briefing notes, check I knew the name of the hotel, etc. At the end of the call I asked her how much the accommodation would cost. She couldn't remember for sure, but she thought between 40 and 50 Turkish lira per night -- so, between 200 and 250 for the five nights I will be here.
I then decided to go and look up how much this actually would be. When I lived in Turkey, the Turkish lira was around equivalent in value to the Canadian dollar -- so, a little less than half the value of the pound. Even when I last visited I don't remember it being much different than that, and that was only 18 months ago. So I figured I'd be looking at around £100 for the accommodation. To my shock, when I actually did the conversation, it came out as £60. The Turkish lira has obviously lost a lot of value. That made me a lot less nervous about the affordability of this excursion!
I was in court Wednesday afternoon, and didn't get home until after 4.30, so packing had to be a carefully-timed operation. I dug out what Turkish cash I had left over from my last trip -- just over 10 lira's worth -- and an old "dumb" phone (there used to be a name for non-smartphones, I am sure of it, but I can neither remember nor find it) and an old SIM card I bought a trip or two ago to Turkey. I was certain, though, that I wouldn't be able to use the SIM. Whenever I insert it into a phone it demands a "PUK code," which I don't have. Nor do I have the phone number attached to it or any of the packaging it came in, so there's simply no way to either find or reset the code it wants. I knew I'd have to buy a new SIM once I got here. I packed various long dresses, t-shirts for the sleeveless ones, and leggings for the shorter ones, and left feeling overdressed even in London weather in cords, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and a button-down shirt. I figured I could try and shop here for long dresses in natural materials, but wasn't sure when I'd have time. Further annoyances: two pimples sprouting on my nose, one on my cheek, and the fact that my nose ring came out in court on Tuesday and couldn't be found, so I am making do with a stud earring with no back which is rather larger than what I would prefer to wear, until I can buy a new nose ring.
I met up with Kit for dinner in Highbury on my way to the airport. At my request he brought a suit and shirt that I had left at his house some time ago. Not at my request he pressed on me his spare tablet (to read my Kobo books on, as my Kobo is currently out of commission due to problems with its charging port) and his credit card in case of emergencies. Bless.
I got out £100, planning to change money at Stansted. I got to Stansted OK, after a bit of a panic as the Stansted Express wasn't running past Bishop's Stortford, apparently due to a broken rail "in the Stansted tunnel." There was a rail replacement bus service, but I was worried it wouldn't get me to the airport fast enough for me to check in an hour before my flight (I hadn't been able to figure out how to check-in online). However, it turns out that Bishop's Stortford is only ten minutes by road from the airport, so I was fine.
I don't know why I thought I couldn't check-in online with Pegasus Airlines, though. In a panic on the bus, I logged into their mobile website from my phone and the online check-in option was on the first page. Pegasus charges you to choose seats, so I just took the assigned one, clicked through, and entered my mobile number to have my boarding card sent to me. It didn't arrive. So I went back to the page, and realised that, not only had the "send boarding card by SMS" option not worked properly (I'm guessing it probably only works in Turkey; I should have chosen the option to have it emailed to me), but in fact I had just checked in only to the Istanbul-Gaziantep leg of my journey -- presumably I was too late for online check-in for the Stansted-Istanbul leg.
At the airport, I was in time to check in for my Istanbul flight, but they were unable to print my boarding card for the Gaziantep one. They told me I would have to do it at Sabiha Gokcen airport in Istanbul. (Fun fact or two: Sabiha Gokcen is the second airport in Istanbul. It is on the Asian side. The first, on the European side, is Ataturk International. Sabiha Gokcen was Ataturk's adopted daughter. She was a military pilot. In the 1920s and 1930s. Yup. In Turkey.)
The plan to change my money went awry when I looked at the currency converter and saw that the gap between the "buying" and "selling" rates for Turkish lira was something around 3.5 to 4.8 (so selling pounds for lira, I'd get a rate of 3.5 lira to the pound; selling lira for pounds, they'd charge me 4.8 lira for a pound). I knew there was no way that could be a good rate, especially as they were charging a commission of £3.99. So I took a bit of a gamble and left without changing money. I only had a 5 lira note, and just over 5 lira in change. That all adds up to around £2.50.
My first flight was good. My assigned seat was an aisle seat, which is my preference, and there was no one sitting in the middle seat between me and the woman by the window. I slept the whole flight apart from when she had to wake me up (from quite a deep sleep) on one occasion so she could go to the loo.
In Istanbul, chaos reigned. First there was a massive queue to get my boarding card for my second flight. I was fuming when a family of four managed to elbow their way, not only in front of me, but about five more people further up the queue. Then I got my visa, which cost £20 where it used to be £10! (Which of course took the amount of money in my wallet down to £80.) Then an even larger queue to go through passport control. However, I was still well over an hour early by the time I arrived at my departure gate. My flight was at 7.45 Istanbul time (5.45 London time). I'd had somewhat less than 3 hours sleep. It's perhaps not surprising that I didn't even think to look around for somewhere to change my money. It just completely slipped my mind.
Again, I slept most of the flight to Gaziantep. So deeply that landing surprised me -- I didn't even notice the descent.
There was an amusing incident at baggage collection. As I was stood round the conveyer belt with everyone else from my flight, a member of the airport staff came up to me and asked where I had come from. I showed him my boarding card from Istanbul, and he pointed out it didn't have a sticker for my bags on. So I dug out the stub of my boarding card from Stansted, which did, and which showed that (as I'd been assured at Stansted) my bags were supposed to go straight through. The man gestured me to follow him (how he knew to approach me out of all the people on the plane, I'll never know), walked me out the back of the airport (ie, back towards the planes), and then back in through another entrance. I was fairly convinced that my bag hadn't made it and that I'd be taken to lost baggage to sort out having it sent to me.
However, we then arrived in another entrance hall with conveyer belts, which was almost completely empty and dark. The only other people that I could see were an annoyed looking Turkish couple, looking disconsolately at the moving conveyer in front of them. My bag was on it. Apparently theirs wasn't! I realised I was in the "international arrivals" lounge. In the middle of it there was a single X-ray bag check conveyer with a guard sitting by it. There were no barriers making you go to it or preventing you walking around it, but it had a sign up saying "security," and the man smiled at me and asked me to put my bag through, so I obliged!
Once through to arrivals, I realised I'd made what might turn out to be a fairly major tactical error in leaving the arrangement of money changing, and obtaining a SIM card, so late. Gaziantep is a tiny rural airport. There was no money exchange bureau, and the one cashpoint was out-of-order. Again, I had only 10 lira on me. I knew there was no way I could get a taxi anywhere, let alone from an airport into the city-centre, for that. And I was unwilling to pay with pounds as I knew I'd be ripped off even worse than one normally would when getting a taxi from an airport.
Thankfully, there was a public bus. I went on and asked the driver how much a ticket was -- still quite worried it might be something like 12 lira -- but no, 4 lira 50 kurus (cents). Relief. I asked the man if he knew of the Ibis hotel, and he said the bus went quite nearby. Then he said the payment machine was broken, and could I write down my name and telephone number (gesturing to a list where all the passengers who had got on so far had done just that)! I found this adorable, a real "Burasi Turkeys" ("That's Turkey") moment, I thought. I explained that I didn't have a Turkish telephone, would my email address do? (Well, actually, with the quality of my Turkish, it was actually "I don't have a Turkish number... email address... OK?"). Yes, this was fine. So, in the end, I didn't have to pay anything, unless they send me an email with some instructions I can follow for how to pay it back.
The airport is around 10 miles from the city. We went first through multiple orchard fields, with rugged, rustic looking trees. I have no idea what grows on them. Nothing at the moment, presumably now is not growing season. Peaches perhaps? The area is quite famous for them.
Then a small town, dominated by a metal-domed mosque, semi-rural. I saw a horse tied up beside a building, and then another pulling a plough in a field with a couple working alongside it. Lots of other people working in fields.
Then suburbia. A lot of characterless developments of high-rise buildings set out in parallel lines. For a while I began to get nervous as it seemed that whenever there were turn-offs for "Sanliurfa and Adana" we seemed to follow those instead of the ones going to Gaziantep. However, no one on the bus seemed at all bothered by this so I decided not to panic.
Sure enough, then we began to drive along beside a train line on which all of the stations had written on them "Gaziantep Belediyesi" (City of Gaziantep), so I knew we were heading in the right direction. One of the stations was for the university, which had an extraordinarily grand entrance. I wondered if I had heard before that Gaziantep is a university town. Oddly, more and more people were getting on with big bags, and no one was getting off. It got to the point that there were so many suitcases in the middle of the bus that the aisle was impassable. I wonder if perhaps the bus goes in a big loop, so if you want to go to the airport from anywhere in Gaziantep, you just get on wherever it passes you.
On the ride, I got a bit nervous as I hadn't posted anything on Facebook since Stansted, and I knew Mum would be worrying and would continue doing so until she'd heard I'd arrived safe. I looked into purchasing some mobile data through Orange but it was prohibitively expensive. £3 just for 100MB. So I decided to wait and see if there was WiFi at the hotel.
There was quite a bit of campaign material about. I saw banners and bunting for the AKP and the MHP (a hard-right nationalist party) and I believe the local campaign headquarters for the CHP (the secular "Republican People's Party" of Ataturk, which was mostly the party of government until the AKP came to power). I didn't see anything for the HDP.
Finally we arrived in central Gaziantep. We arrived at a very large intersection with a little park beside it, and the bus driver said to me, "The Ibis hotel is back behind us!," (we had just turned onto a main road, and he was pointing down the road in the opposite direction from the way we had turned on it).
Off I got, and immediately spotted an HDP campaign bus passing, blaring cheerful traditional music. This made me happy and I grinned like a lunatic at them. There was a police car nearby, so I went and found the officers belonging to it, to ask where my hotel was. They pointed down the road and said the Ibis hotel was "direkt" that way. I looked at the address for the hotel and sure enough it was on "Yaprak Mahallesi" ("Leaf Street") just off "Istasyon Caddesi" ("Station Road"), the latter being the very large main street on which I was standing. The hotel was, in the end, less than 200m away. And better than that, there was a bank on the way, where I got my money changed, at a much better rate than the one offered at Stansted (around 4.08 lira to the pound). So I was justified in waiting!
It was almost noon by the time I arrived at the hotel. Despite having had nothing to eat since my Thai dinner the night before except two packets of crisps and a small bag of Jelly Bellies, I was much more tired than hungry. I unpacked, showered, and was asleep before 12.30. I didn't get up till after 4pm. To my relief, the room comes with free WiFi.
The hotel is right next to a posh-ish, large-ish shopping mall called "Gaziantep Forum" which I considered my first likely stop for both food and a SIM card. Normally I'd prefer shopping in "ordinary" shops, down side streets, in markets, etc, but I was still tired and hungry. I hadn't woken up refreshed -- I never do after sleeping in the day -- though I knew I had now had sufficient sleep to make up for what I'd missed the night before. I just wanted an easy option.
So I went to the shopping mall and wandered around a bit. There were some mobile phone provider shops, including a Turkcell, where they indicated they'd sell me a SIM for something over 40 lira. However, they needed my passport, which was back at the hotel. I took the opportunity to get a bite to eat -- some potato pogaca, and a tea -- before going back and fetching it. When I went back a family was being served but the staff seemed inclined to queue-jump me ahead of them (even though it was different staff to the guy I'd spoken to before, so it's not like they were waiting for me). I said I'd wait, though, and sat reading Witches Abroad on Kit's tablet until the family were done.
Well, the young man helping me took me through the various package options, I chose one, he got the SIM out, took it out of its wrappings, detached it from its card, put it into my phone (all without money changing hands), and the phone promptly announced "Invalid SIM card." I couldn't believe it. I was sure the phone was unlocked. Apparently not. The young man indicated there was no way he could get it to work, and I'd have to buy a second-hand phone. But did I just want to take the SIM card anyway? I could then just go and buy a phone, and it would work. Where, I said? Any second-hand retailer, he said, making use of Google Translate. He didn't seem to think I could get one in the mall, though. Oh, very well. I felt badly as the SIM had been completely unwrapped and he wouldn't have been able to sell it to anyone else.
It was fine in the end, I got a phone in a little shop for just over £20. I expect -- actually, I'm sure -- I was ripped off at that, but I didn't want the hassle of haggling any longer. I got the guy down from 70 to 60 lira and then gave in.
It was now well after 6pm. I am staying in a different part of Gaziantep than where Alex, Bev, Bev's mother-in-law, and I stayed when we came on a coach tour of eastern Turkey in 2011. That bit of Gaziantep, I remember as having broad, elegant squares, parks, ponds/streams, a nearby market, and a jewellery bazaar. Where I am, I saw nothing I recognised from that trip (I still haven't). I googled for shopping in Gaziantep and found the market, the Bakircilar Carsisi (Coppersmith's Bazaar), which I am fairly certain is where we went shopping on that trip (I bought an inlaid backgammon board for Kit; not the greatest present as he already had a travel backgammon set, but we had only been together a month or so at the time!). According to Google maps, the bazaar was around a half hour walk from my hotel. Given the time, I decided not to go just then. I wouldn't be able to check my bearings online outside the hotel, as I still have no mobile data -- I am just using WiFi as and when it is available.
Instead I had a little wander and found a local eatery with tables outside that provided me with lentil soup and a Turkish shepherd's salad for dinner. There was a lad around 10 years old waiting tables who seemed quite unsure what to do about me but relaxed when he brought me my water and I said "thanks dear" in appropriate Turkish (the word used is "canim," which literally means "my soul." Everyone calls everyone canim in Turkey).
As soon as my soup and bread arrived a bevy of dirty, ragged boys descended on my table. The leader was pointing energetically at my bread. I gave him a piece, whereupon he boldly demanded to be able to have some of the soup, too! No, I said. I couldn't remember the words for sorry. No, canim. He wasn't giving up, still clamouring loudly to be permitted to dip the bread in the soup. I couldn't remember any appropriate Turkish word or phrase except "Git" ("Go," not terribly rude, basically means "Shoo") which I promptly said. That appeared to be having an effect when the lad from the restaurant came out, shouted at them, pushed them away, and grabbed the bread off them, which I was sad about. It was taken away with great ceremony and replaced with a fresh slice. The boys disappeared. I ate the rest of my dinner unmolested, in quite a leisurely fashion, and had tea afterwards. It came to 11 lira (around £2.50). So, yes, I'm not too worried about money provided I shop and eat locally instead of in malls and tourist traps.
After dinner I came back to the hotel and since then have been, well, doing this really. And playing a bit on my phone. I circulated my new Turkish number to all of the other "delegates" but have heard from no one except the person who arrived in Gaziantep yesterday. He has apparently been out and about on the HDP campaign bus and to an energetic campaign meeting organised for local women. I am jealous. Hopefully I can get in on some of this action tomorrow!
On Tuesday night I got a bit of a cheer-up after a conversation with Estella. She had called to make sure I got my briefing notes, check I knew the name of the hotel, etc. At the end of the call I asked her how much the accommodation would cost. She couldn't remember for sure, but she thought between 40 and 50 Turkish lira per night -- so, between 200 and 250 for the five nights I will be here.
I then decided to go and look up how much this actually would be. When I lived in Turkey, the Turkish lira was around equivalent in value to the Canadian dollar -- so, a little less than half the value of the pound. Even when I last visited I don't remember it being much different than that, and that was only 18 months ago. So I figured I'd be looking at around £100 for the accommodation. To my shock, when I actually did the conversation, it came out as £60. The Turkish lira has obviously lost a lot of value. That made me a lot less nervous about the affordability of this excursion!
I was in court Wednesday afternoon, and didn't get home until after 4.30, so packing had to be a carefully-timed operation. I dug out what Turkish cash I had left over from my last trip -- just over 10 lira's worth -- and an old "dumb" phone (there used to be a name for non-smartphones, I am sure of it, but I can neither remember nor find it) and an old SIM card I bought a trip or two ago to Turkey. I was certain, though, that I wouldn't be able to use the SIM. Whenever I insert it into a phone it demands a "PUK code," which I don't have. Nor do I have the phone number attached to it or any of the packaging it came in, so there's simply no way to either find or reset the code it wants. I knew I'd have to buy a new SIM once I got here. I packed various long dresses, t-shirts for the sleeveless ones, and leggings for the shorter ones, and left feeling overdressed even in London weather in cords, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and a button-down shirt. I figured I could try and shop here for long dresses in natural materials, but wasn't sure when I'd have time. Further annoyances: two pimples sprouting on my nose, one on my cheek, and the fact that my nose ring came out in court on Tuesday and couldn't be found, so I am making do with a stud earring with no back which is rather larger than what I would prefer to wear, until I can buy a new nose ring.
I met up with Kit for dinner in Highbury on my way to the airport. At my request he brought a suit and shirt that I had left at his house some time ago. Not at my request he pressed on me his spare tablet (to read my Kobo books on, as my Kobo is currently out of commission due to problems with its charging port) and his credit card in case of emergencies. Bless.
I got out £100, planning to change money at Stansted. I got to Stansted OK, after a bit of a panic as the Stansted Express wasn't running past Bishop's Stortford, apparently due to a broken rail "in the Stansted tunnel." There was a rail replacement bus service, but I was worried it wouldn't get me to the airport fast enough for me to check in an hour before my flight (I hadn't been able to figure out how to check-in online). However, it turns out that Bishop's Stortford is only ten minutes by road from the airport, so I was fine.
I don't know why I thought I couldn't check-in online with Pegasus Airlines, though. In a panic on the bus, I logged into their mobile website from my phone and the online check-in option was on the first page. Pegasus charges you to choose seats, so I just took the assigned one, clicked through, and entered my mobile number to have my boarding card sent to me. It didn't arrive. So I went back to the page, and realised that, not only had the "send boarding card by SMS" option not worked properly (I'm guessing it probably only works in Turkey; I should have chosen the option to have it emailed to me), but in fact I had just checked in only to the Istanbul-Gaziantep leg of my journey -- presumably I was too late for online check-in for the Stansted-Istanbul leg.
At the airport, I was in time to check in for my Istanbul flight, but they were unable to print my boarding card for the Gaziantep one. They told me I would have to do it at Sabiha Gokcen airport in Istanbul. (Fun fact or two: Sabiha Gokcen is the second airport in Istanbul. It is on the Asian side. The first, on the European side, is Ataturk International. Sabiha Gokcen was Ataturk's adopted daughter. She was a military pilot. In the 1920s and 1930s. Yup. In Turkey.)
The plan to change my money went awry when I looked at the currency converter and saw that the gap between the "buying" and "selling" rates for Turkish lira was something around 3.5 to 4.8 (so selling pounds for lira, I'd get a rate of 3.5 lira to the pound; selling lira for pounds, they'd charge me 4.8 lira for a pound). I knew there was no way that could be a good rate, especially as they were charging a commission of £3.99. So I took a bit of a gamble and left without changing money. I only had a 5 lira note, and just over 5 lira in change. That all adds up to around £2.50.
My first flight was good. My assigned seat was an aisle seat, which is my preference, and there was no one sitting in the middle seat between me and the woman by the window. I slept the whole flight apart from when she had to wake me up (from quite a deep sleep) on one occasion so she could go to the loo.
In Istanbul, chaos reigned. First there was a massive queue to get my boarding card for my second flight. I was fuming when a family of four managed to elbow their way, not only in front of me, but about five more people further up the queue. Then I got my visa, which cost £20 where it used to be £10! (Which of course took the amount of money in my wallet down to £80.) Then an even larger queue to go through passport control. However, I was still well over an hour early by the time I arrived at my departure gate. My flight was at 7.45 Istanbul time (5.45 London time). I'd had somewhat less than 3 hours sleep. It's perhaps not surprising that I didn't even think to look around for somewhere to change my money. It just completely slipped my mind.
Again, I slept most of the flight to Gaziantep. So deeply that landing surprised me -- I didn't even notice the descent.
There was an amusing incident at baggage collection. As I was stood round the conveyer belt with everyone else from my flight, a member of the airport staff came up to me and asked where I had come from. I showed him my boarding card from Istanbul, and he pointed out it didn't have a sticker for my bags on. So I dug out the stub of my boarding card from Stansted, which did, and which showed that (as I'd been assured at Stansted) my bags were supposed to go straight through. The man gestured me to follow him (how he knew to approach me out of all the people on the plane, I'll never know), walked me out the back of the airport (ie, back towards the planes), and then back in through another entrance. I was fairly convinced that my bag hadn't made it and that I'd be taken to lost baggage to sort out having it sent to me.
However, we then arrived in another entrance hall with conveyer belts, which was almost completely empty and dark. The only other people that I could see were an annoyed looking Turkish couple, looking disconsolately at the moving conveyer in front of them. My bag was on it. Apparently theirs wasn't! I realised I was in the "international arrivals" lounge. In the middle of it there was a single X-ray bag check conveyer with a guard sitting by it. There were no barriers making you go to it or preventing you walking around it, but it had a sign up saying "security," and the man smiled at me and asked me to put my bag through, so I obliged!
Once through to arrivals, I realised I'd made what might turn out to be a fairly major tactical error in leaving the arrangement of money changing, and obtaining a SIM card, so late. Gaziantep is a tiny rural airport. There was no money exchange bureau, and the one cashpoint was out-of-order. Again, I had only 10 lira on me. I knew there was no way I could get a taxi anywhere, let alone from an airport into the city-centre, for that. And I was unwilling to pay with pounds as I knew I'd be ripped off even worse than one normally would when getting a taxi from an airport.
Thankfully, there was a public bus. I went on and asked the driver how much a ticket was -- still quite worried it might be something like 12 lira -- but no, 4 lira 50 kurus (cents). Relief. I asked the man if he knew of the Ibis hotel, and he said the bus went quite nearby. Then he said the payment machine was broken, and could I write down my name and telephone number (gesturing to a list where all the passengers who had got on so far had done just that)! I found this adorable, a real "Burasi Turkeys" ("That's Turkey") moment, I thought. I explained that I didn't have a Turkish telephone, would my email address do? (Well, actually, with the quality of my Turkish, it was actually "I don't have a Turkish number... email address... OK?"). Yes, this was fine. So, in the end, I didn't have to pay anything, unless they send me an email with some instructions I can follow for how to pay it back.
The airport is around 10 miles from the city. We went first through multiple orchard fields, with rugged, rustic looking trees. I have no idea what grows on them. Nothing at the moment, presumably now is not growing season. Peaches perhaps? The area is quite famous for them.
Then a small town, dominated by a metal-domed mosque, semi-rural. I saw a horse tied up beside a building, and then another pulling a plough in a field with a couple working alongside it. Lots of other people working in fields.
Then suburbia. A lot of characterless developments of high-rise buildings set out in parallel lines. For a while I began to get nervous as it seemed that whenever there were turn-offs for "Sanliurfa and Adana" we seemed to follow those instead of the ones going to Gaziantep. However, no one on the bus seemed at all bothered by this so I decided not to panic.
Sure enough, then we began to drive along beside a train line on which all of the stations had written on them "Gaziantep Belediyesi" (City of Gaziantep), so I knew we were heading in the right direction. One of the stations was for the university, which had an extraordinarily grand entrance. I wondered if I had heard before that Gaziantep is a university town. Oddly, more and more people were getting on with big bags, and no one was getting off. It got to the point that there were so many suitcases in the middle of the bus that the aisle was impassable. I wonder if perhaps the bus goes in a big loop, so if you want to go to the airport from anywhere in Gaziantep, you just get on wherever it passes you.
On the ride, I got a bit nervous as I hadn't posted anything on Facebook since Stansted, and I knew Mum would be worrying and would continue doing so until she'd heard I'd arrived safe. I looked into purchasing some mobile data through Orange but it was prohibitively expensive. £3 just for 100MB. So I decided to wait and see if there was WiFi at the hotel.
There was quite a bit of campaign material about. I saw banners and bunting for the AKP and the MHP (a hard-right nationalist party) and I believe the local campaign headquarters for the CHP (the secular "Republican People's Party" of Ataturk, which was mostly the party of government until the AKP came to power). I didn't see anything for the HDP.
Finally we arrived in central Gaziantep. We arrived at a very large intersection with a little park beside it, and the bus driver said to me, "The Ibis hotel is back behind us!," (we had just turned onto a main road, and he was pointing down the road in the opposite direction from the way we had turned on it).
Off I got, and immediately spotted an HDP campaign bus passing, blaring cheerful traditional music. This made me happy and I grinned like a lunatic at them. There was a police car nearby, so I went and found the officers belonging to it, to ask where my hotel was. They pointed down the road and said the Ibis hotel was "direkt" that way. I looked at the address for the hotel and sure enough it was on "Yaprak Mahallesi" ("Leaf Street") just off "Istasyon Caddesi" ("Station Road"), the latter being the very large main street on which I was standing. The hotel was, in the end, less than 200m away. And better than that, there was a bank on the way, where I got my money changed, at a much better rate than the one offered at Stansted (around 4.08 lira to the pound). So I was justified in waiting!
It was almost noon by the time I arrived at the hotel. Despite having had nothing to eat since my Thai dinner the night before except two packets of crisps and a small bag of Jelly Bellies, I was much more tired than hungry. I unpacked, showered, and was asleep before 12.30. I didn't get up till after 4pm. To my relief, the room comes with free WiFi.
The hotel is right next to a posh-ish, large-ish shopping mall called "Gaziantep Forum" which I considered my first likely stop for both food and a SIM card. Normally I'd prefer shopping in "ordinary" shops, down side streets, in markets, etc, but I was still tired and hungry. I hadn't woken up refreshed -- I never do after sleeping in the day -- though I knew I had now had sufficient sleep to make up for what I'd missed the night before. I just wanted an easy option.
So I went to the shopping mall and wandered around a bit. There were some mobile phone provider shops, including a Turkcell, where they indicated they'd sell me a SIM for something over 40 lira. However, they needed my passport, which was back at the hotel. I took the opportunity to get a bite to eat -- some potato pogaca, and a tea -- before going back and fetching it. When I went back a family was being served but the staff seemed inclined to queue-jump me ahead of them (even though it was different staff to the guy I'd spoken to before, so it's not like they were waiting for me). I said I'd wait, though, and sat reading Witches Abroad on Kit's tablet until the family were done.
Well, the young man helping me took me through the various package options, I chose one, he got the SIM out, took it out of its wrappings, detached it from its card, put it into my phone (all without money changing hands), and the phone promptly announced "Invalid SIM card." I couldn't believe it. I was sure the phone was unlocked. Apparently not. The young man indicated there was no way he could get it to work, and I'd have to buy a second-hand phone. But did I just want to take the SIM card anyway? I could then just go and buy a phone, and it would work. Where, I said? Any second-hand retailer, he said, making use of Google Translate. He didn't seem to think I could get one in the mall, though. Oh, very well. I felt badly as the SIM had been completely unwrapped and he wouldn't have been able to sell it to anyone else.
It was fine in the end, I got a phone in a little shop for just over £20. I expect -- actually, I'm sure -- I was ripped off at that, but I didn't want the hassle of haggling any longer. I got the guy down from 70 to 60 lira and then gave in.
It was now well after 6pm. I am staying in a different part of Gaziantep than where Alex, Bev, Bev's mother-in-law, and I stayed when we came on a coach tour of eastern Turkey in 2011. That bit of Gaziantep, I remember as having broad, elegant squares, parks, ponds/streams, a nearby market, and a jewellery bazaar. Where I am, I saw nothing I recognised from that trip (I still haven't). I googled for shopping in Gaziantep and found the market, the Bakircilar Carsisi (Coppersmith's Bazaar), which I am fairly certain is where we went shopping on that trip (I bought an inlaid backgammon board for Kit; not the greatest present as he already had a travel backgammon set, but we had only been together a month or so at the time!). According to Google maps, the bazaar was around a half hour walk from my hotel. Given the time, I decided not to go just then. I wouldn't be able to check my bearings online outside the hotel, as I still have no mobile data -- I am just using WiFi as and when it is available.
Instead I had a little wander and found a local eatery with tables outside that provided me with lentil soup and a Turkish shepherd's salad for dinner. There was a lad around 10 years old waiting tables who seemed quite unsure what to do about me but relaxed when he brought me my water and I said "thanks dear" in appropriate Turkish (the word used is "canim," which literally means "my soul." Everyone calls everyone canim in Turkey).
As soon as my soup and bread arrived a bevy of dirty, ragged boys descended on my table. The leader was pointing energetically at my bread. I gave him a piece, whereupon he boldly demanded to be able to have some of the soup, too! No, I said. I couldn't remember the words for sorry. No, canim. He wasn't giving up, still clamouring loudly to be permitted to dip the bread in the soup. I couldn't remember any appropriate Turkish word or phrase except "Git" ("Go," not terribly rude, basically means "Shoo") which I promptly said. That appeared to be having an effect when the lad from the restaurant came out, shouted at them, pushed them away, and grabbed the bread off them, which I was sad about. It was taken away with great ceremony and replaced with a fresh slice. The boys disappeared. I ate the rest of my dinner unmolested, in quite a leisurely fashion, and had tea afterwards. It came to 11 lira (around £2.50). So, yes, I'm not too worried about money provided I shop and eat locally instead of in malls and tourist traps.
After dinner I came back to the hotel and since then have been, well, doing this really. And playing a bit on my phone. I circulated my new Turkish number to all of the other "delegates" but have heard from no one except the person who arrived in Gaziantep yesterday. He has apparently been out and about on the HDP campaign bus and to an energetic campaign meeting organised for local women. I am jealous. Hopefully I can get in on some of this action tomorrow!