Saturday, August 22, 2009

Saturday, August 22, 2009 - No comments

Anatomy of a Turkish Bus Ride

I've never been a Greyhound rider (too many sketchy people on board, or so I hear) but riding long-distance buses is a pretty regular part of my in-Turkey life. Sometimes it's an adventure to some intriguing corner of the country, but most often I find myself on overnight buses between Istanbul and Antalya, heading up there to see my Turkish family, leaving the country or returning home from who-knows-where. I usually end up opting for the 12 hour overland trip instead of the similarly priced 55 minute flight due to the fact that my inability to pack light means I am always trucking way more weight than the airline baggage allowance permits. But I don't mind the trip - it's become sort of a familiar ritual - one I can, and often do, perform in my sleep.

This is how it goes. I usually buy my ticket in advance from a bus company office in town, and they are always kind enough to make sure to seat women with women and men with men. (This is much appreciated, since the passenger beside me often ends up asleep on my shoulder!) Inter-city buses in Turkey are pretty cushy - you almost feel like you are on an airplane, and, contrary to any "rural images" you may have conjured up in your mind, there are most definitely no chickens roaming the aisles. There's a seat for everyone, usually with headphone jacks for the TV, which you have to hope will be playing something benign like the news or a game show and not the horror films Turks seem to be so fond of. (On my most recent ride, there was a national team soccer game on and I got swept up in the collective cheering every time we scored a goal.) :)

After the bus attendant comes through to check tickets and find out where you are getting off, he comes down the aisle with a little cart and serves coffee, tea and snacks. Kamil Koç, my preferred bus line, has the jumbo sized Tutkus (my favourite chocolate-filled cookie) and ice cream in the summer. It's easy to see how they earned my loyalty... :) I love the fact that when you get coffee, they have special "half-sized" 3-in-1 Nescafes - perfect for those little cups you get on the bus. I always enjoy them going down, and then come to regret them later when they make their way to my bladder and I have to wait for hours til the next potty break!

Smoking is "forbidden", though the driver seems to be exempt from this rule, and happily puff away all night long. The other smokers pile off the bus en masse every time we stop to pick up new passengers in order to hurriedly satisfy their nicotine cravings.

Around eleven o'clock they shut the lights off, and I always seem to be the only one with my reading light on. Once my lids start to get droopy, I contort my body into some semblance of a comfy position and attempt to get some sleep. (Tylenol PM is often added to the mix if I am too wired from the craziness of getting ready for whatever journey I am embarking on.)

Every couple of hours, the lights come one and the little man at the front of the bus and gets on the microphone to announce that we are pulling into a rest stop, usually for half-an-hour. (Back in the day when I didn't know Turkish, these announcements always scared me cuz I didn't know how long we were stopping and was afraid of getting left behind in the bathroom!) Rest stops are kinda like mini-malls - a department store, market, souvenir shop and food court all rolled into one. (Since I almost always travel with the same company and they always stop at the same places, they are pretty familiar, which is good since I am often groggy and my contacts are, by that point, sticking to my eyes. Once, a waiter even recognized me from a previous trip and asked me how my trip home to Canada had been! Talk about being a regular!)

I am usually about to burst from my previously ingested Nescafe and make an immediate beeline for the bathroom. Bus station bathrooms can be pretty ghetto, but the rest stop ones are normally decent and clean, even modern, with automatic flushers and hand dryers. There are usually a couple of western toilets, and then a bunch of "squatty potties" - porcelain holes in the ground. (I have yet to see a squatty with a sensor-flusher, but I think that would be pretty nifty!) At some places, the bathrooms are free, but at most stops you have to pay 50 or 75 kuruş to the guy in the booth on your way out.

Next comes the food. They always have a yummy array of my favourite home cooked foods, like patlıcan (eggplant) and kuru fasulye (white beans), but those tend to be pretty expensive, so as of late, I am more likely to opt for soup. I have to say, there are few things more comforting in life than a hot bowl of yayla corbası (a yogurt, rice and mint soup) in the middle of the night! This little pause is always my most relished part of the trip. A cup of Turkish tea would be the perfect companion, but I have learned by now that my bladder can't handle both soup and çay!

Then comes a browse through the market, where there is always an amusing variety of tacky gifts, cheese and nuts, self-help books, and Turkish delight, just in case you forgot to pick something up for whoever is collecting you at the other end. What always tempts me is the bags of Konya Şekeri - this chalky candy that tastes kinda like those French mints you used to get at weddings. I love the stuff, but I have been accused by my roommates of eating half the bag and then leaving it to rot for months afterward, so I have been forbidden to buy any more. :)

This leaves just enough time for another potty trip (just to be sure) and a stroll outside for some leg-stretching and fresh air (difficult amongst the crowd of smokers.) An announcement over the loud speaker lets you know it is time to get back on the bus. (After accidentally boarding the wrong one once, I have learned to carefully check the signs on the front!) The attendant guy checks to make sure no one is missing and then, as we head off once more into the night, he goes around with a bottle of lemon cologne and splashes it on everyone's hands to freshen up. Sometimes they even spray it into the AC vents for good measure!

Throughout the night, unless it is an express bus, there are stops at otogars (bus stations) in every city along the way to drop off passengers and collect new ones. These are always a chaotic flurry of activity, even in the middle of the night. Tearful relatives bid each other farewell, girlfriends press their faces to the glass to blow one last goodbye kiss, and (my personal favourite) crowds of well-wishers pound drums and wave flags and throw their young men up in the air before sending them off to their askerlik (compulsory military service) to shouts of "En büyük asker bizim asker!" ("The greatest soldier is our soldier!")

By the end of the ride, in the early hours of the morning, either the Antalya seascape or the infinite Istanbul skyline comes into focus through bleary eyes. My knees are sore and my bladder ready to explode. It's off to collect luggage and either head for home or embark on the next leg of the neverending journey....