LADRÓN!! (thief)
...and Turkey Time strikes back.
My bus from Olympis was supposed to arrive in Istanbul at a little before 7:00am on 18/08/05, but it pulls on into that station at 8:10. I have an international flight leaving in exactly an hour. Oh crap.
Well everyone's in kind of a bad mood after some 13+ hours of traveling on a bus, and understandably so. Everyone crowds around the luggage undercarriage and just wants to get the heck to where they're going. But they don't have a flight to catch, and if so, not in an hour. So I actually start pushing kids out of the way to get to the front of the line, shouting the word for 'flight' I looked up in my Lonely Planet (uçak!).
I had planned to take the tram from the bus station ten stops up to the airport for about $0.75, but I end up spending $20 on a cab. With my maybe 30 words of Turkish and his maybe 100 of English, I had a really decent conversation with the cab driver on the way. It's amazing how much you can communicate with so few words. Well anyway, he did what he could, swerved in and out of traffic, and got me to the airport as fast as possible. He looked kind of disappointed to be getting anything but Turkish money, but I bet he got over it. I paid him like twice what was due - I didn't have smaller American bills or any more than a tram fare's worth of lira.
The check-in station for Air France's 9:10 flight had by this time (8:40) become the booth for Lufsthansa or something. So I go to the information desk and jump around in line waiting for the dude in front of me to finish, The lady looks at me, looks at her watch, and says, "Ah, you're much too late." The hell I am! So I get her to tell me where the office is for Air France. I run there and skip the line, and the lady looks at me like whatthehellareyoudoingheresolate?. To make a long story short, she makes a few calls, I skip to the front of the customs line, skip to the front of the security line, just hand my luggage to the Air France attendant, and walk into the plane just as the door was about to shut. I don't even know how my backpack got to France.
By the time I sit down in my seat, I am seriously drenched in my own fluids. There's a steady drip of sweat from my chin, and the hole in my face stings considerably. Oh yeah - I got my eyebrow pierced. The other students were getting slight body modifications to commemorate their experiences: Shamala's getting a piercing and maybe two tattoos, Marina's getting like six piercings, Cassandra talks of a tattoo although I don't think that seriously, and so I took up the dare. The ring looks okay now, but I can change it to something smaller and less bulky [read: not goofy looking] in a couple of weeks.
I got the piercing my last day in Turkey. I'm in Antalya with Lea after spending a couple of hours leaving Olympis. I ask the guy in the internet cafe where I can get a piercing, and he points me in a direction and says right left right or something like that. We walk a little bit, get lost, and ask a street vendor where the tattoo/piercing studio is. He says nonono, sits me down, gives me tea, shows me a business card, and makes a phone call. In ten minutes his friend comes walking down the street, backpack slung over one shoulder. He's got long spotty hair, two tasteful tattoos on each arm, a few missing teeth, good English and a wicked sense of humor. After showing me all his individually sealed sterile supplies, I decide, well what the heck, we'll go with the guy that came ramblin' down the street.
His wife just divorced him and he lost his shop in the divorce. Apparently. So we go to another shop of a friend of his, walk up some rickety stairs into some kid's game room or something, kick him off his computer, and sit me down on the computer chair. It didn't hurt or bleed, and total cost was only $30. The others say it would have cost at least $60 in the states, and that wouldn't include the ring either. I think every business transaction in Turkey includes a friend or two, as well as a cup of tea. Or two. I'm really going to miss Turkey.
So my friend Tynan spent a month learning Icelandic for his thesis (?), and our mutual friend Lora's been studying/interning in Berlin for the past six months. The two of them have been in Paris for a couple of days, and we all meet up when my flight lands. We spend the night in a hostel together, but then it's time for Lora to go back to Berlin. Tynan and I decide Spain would be best attacked as a duo.
The night train was ridiculously expensive, and full nonetheless. Instead of spending another day in Paris and catching a train the next night, we booked our tickets to Barcelona for the following morning. I saved like 120 Euro, but I lost a day. Oh well.
We get into Barcelona at about 10pm. Once out of the train station, we try to get our bearings by sitting on a bench and looking at our maps. A man walks by and drops some change around our bags, bends down and looks for it. I pick up my backpack for him, he finds his coin, he walks on. Only when we got up to leave ten minutes later did we realize that he had a friend with him, working in the background. We realized this upon noticing Tynan's day bag missing. Goodbye laptop, iPod, and numerous other valuables. We thought his camera had been in there too (with my memory card since his was full in Paris), which is why I didn't post pictures for the last couple of entries. But it turns out his camera was in my day bag, the only bag we lugged around while in Paris the day before. So, there's one thing recovered, sort of....
We spent the next couple of hours hopping from taxi to taxi trying to find an open police station, and then to the American consulate, me poorly translating all the way. Tynan's mom took care of our lodging problem and just booked us a hotel room for the night.
Other than that, Spain was uneventful but fun. Saw some landmarks, ate some good food, but other than that just laid around lazily at the beach trying not to spend the money I no longer have. I almost budgeted perfectly, but now I'm usin' the ole credit card. If I could find a place that sells phone cards on Visa I'd call home, but they're all at little kiosks in the middle of sidewalks.
Currently I'm in some hodunk French town on my way back to Paris. I fly home tomorrow. I cannot wait. I am ready for my familiar surroundings again, for my family, my friends, my room, food I don't have to pay for, languages I understand, a change of clothes, private bathrooms, and I'll shut up now so you don't get the idea that I was annoyed while traveling.
Seriously, it was awesome, and I am so glad I went. One of those once-in-a-lifetime, learned-so-much-about-yourself, perspective-shifting experiences. I'm just really, really ready to have a cookout with my family.
Thanks.
B
My bus from Olympis was supposed to arrive in Istanbul at a little before 7:00am on 18/08/05, but it pulls on into that station at 8:10. I have an international flight leaving in exactly an hour. Oh crap.
Well everyone's in kind of a bad mood after some 13+ hours of traveling on a bus, and understandably so. Everyone crowds around the luggage undercarriage and just wants to get the heck to where they're going. But they don't have a flight to catch, and if so, not in an hour. So I actually start pushing kids out of the way to get to the front of the line, shouting the word for 'flight' I looked up in my Lonely Planet (uçak!).
I had planned to take the tram from the bus station ten stops up to the airport for about $0.75, but I end up spending $20 on a cab. With my maybe 30 words of Turkish and his maybe 100 of English, I had a really decent conversation with the cab driver on the way. It's amazing how much you can communicate with so few words. Well anyway, he did what he could, swerved in and out of traffic, and got me to the airport as fast as possible. He looked kind of disappointed to be getting anything but Turkish money, but I bet he got over it. I paid him like twice what was due - I didn't have smaller American bills or any more than a tram fare's worth of lira.
The check-in station for Air France's 9:10 flight had by this time (8:40) become the booth for Lufsthansa or something. So I go to the information desk and jump around in line waiting for the dude in front of me to finish, The lady looks at me, looks at her watch, and says, "Ah, you're much too late." The hell I am! So I get her to tell me where the office is for Air France. I run there and skip the line, and the lady looks at me like whatthehellareyoudoingheresolate?. To make a long story short, she makes a few calls, I skip to the front of the customs line, skip to the front of the security line, just hand my luggage to the Air France attendant, and walk into the plane just as the door was about to shut. I don't even know how my backpack got to France.
By the time I sit down in my seat, I am seriously drenched in my own fluids. There's a steady drip of sweat from my chin, and the hole in my face stings considerably. Oh yeah - I got my eyebrow pierced. The other students were getting slight body modifications to commemorate their experiences: Shamala's getting a piercing and maybe two tattoos, Marina's getting like six piercings, Cassandra talks of a tattoo although I don't think that seriously, and so I took up the dare. The ring looks okay now, but I can change it to something smaller and less bulky [read: not goofy looking] in a couple of weeks.
I got the piercing my last day in Turkey. I'm in Antalya with Lea after spending a couple of hours leaving Olympis. I ask the guy in the internet cafe where I can get a piercing, and he points me in a direction and says right left right or something like that. We walk a little bit, get lost, and ask a street vendor where the tattoo/piercing studio is. He says nonono, sits me down, gives me tea, shows me a business card, and makes a phone call. In ten minutes his friend comes walking down the street, backpack slung over one shoulder. He's got long spotty hair, two tasteful tattoos on each arm, a few missing teeth, good English and a wicked sense of humor. After showing me all his individually sealed sterile supplies, I decide, well what the heck, we'll go with the guy that came ramblin' down the street.
His wife just divorced him and he lost his shop in the divorce. Apparently. So we go to another shop of a friend of his, walk up some rickety stairs into some kid's game room or something, kick him off his computer, and sit me down on the computer chair. It didn't hurt or bleed, and total cost was only $30. The others say it would have cost at least $60 in the states, and that wouldn't include the ring either. I think every business transaction in Turkey includes a friend or two, as well as a cup of tea. Or two. I'm really going to miss Turkey.
So my friend Tynan spent a month learning Icelandic for his thesis (?), and our mutual friend Lora's been studying/interning in Berlin for the past six months. The two of them have been in Paris for a couple of days, and we all meet up when my flight lands. We spend the night in a hostel together, but then it's time for Lora to go back to Berlin. Tynan and I decide Spain would be best attacked as a duo.
The night train was ridiculously expensive, and full nonetheless. Instead of spending another day in Paris and catching a train the next night, we booked our tickets to Barcelona for the following morning. I saved like 120 Euro, but I lost a day. Oh well.
We get into Barcelona at about 10pm. Once out of the train station, we try to get our bearings by sitting on a bench and looking at our maps. A man walks by and drops some change around our bags, bends down and looks for it. I pick up my backpack for him, he finds his coin, he walks on. Only when we got up to leave ten minutes later did we realize that he had a friend with him, working in the background. We realized this upon noticing Tynan's day bag missing. Goodbye laptop, iPod, and numerous other valuables. We thought his camera had been in there too (with my memory card since his was full in Paris), which is why I didn't post pictures for the last couple of entries. But it turns out his camera was in my day bag, the only bag we lugged around while in Paris the day before. So, there's one thing recovered, sort of....
We spent the next couple of hours hopping from taxi to taxi trying to find an open police station, and then to the American consulate, me poorly translating all the way. Tynan's mom took care of our lodging problem and just booked us a hotel room for the night.
Other than that, Spain was uneventful but fun. Saw some landmarks, ate some good food, but other than that just laid around lazily at the beach trying not to spend the money I no longer have. I almost budgeted perfectly, but now I'm usin' the ole credit card. If I could find a place that sells phone cards on Visa I'd call home, but they're all at little kiosks in the middle of sidewalks.
Currently I'm in some hodunk French town on my way back to Paris. I fly home tomorrow. I cannot wait. I am ready for my familiar surroundings again, for my family, my friends, my room, food I don't have to pay for, languages I understand, a change of clothes, private bathrooms, and I'll shut up now so you don't get the idea that I was annoyed while traveling.
Seriously, it was awesome, and I am so glad I went. One of those once-in-a-lifetime, learned-so-much-about-yourself, perspective-shifting experiences. I'm just really, really ready to have a cookout with my family.
Thanks.
B