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Sat 22/8/2009 in a bus somewhere between Adana and Ankara in Turkey
Yesterday, friday, morning Måns and I waved goodbye to Boel who took the bus from Aleppo back to Damascus to meet up with Evelina and Karin, while we took the bus diagonally across Turkey to Istanbul. Our bus was supposed to leave at noon from Aleppo international bus station, cross the boarder to Turkey, stop at Antakya and then continue via Adana overnight to Istanbul to be there the next morning at 9.30. That's at least what we gathered from the broken english the ticket agent spoke. Well, we were told to show up at 11 on friday morning just to make sure, so we did. First the travel agent wasn't even at his office, and when we tried to ask the other men about a buss to Istanbul at noon they started talking to each other in arabic, asked us "tomorrow?" and we got the impression that there was no buss that day.. After a while the agent showed up and escorted us to the bus waiting outside the bus bay on the street. The bus wasn't quite the Turkish standard they had promised us, but being the only people in the well air conditioned car we did not complain. It was still nicer than the Syrian buses!
The weird feeling of sitting in the empty bus with only the driver and the other man we took for a bus attendant (they always have an attendant in the buses here) just got more sketchy when we turned away from the road to Antakya and stopped at an empty gas station. Ok, just filling up with the cheaper gas before entering Turkey, we thought. Then the "attendant" started to carry black plastic bags in to the bus, hiding them under seats and the hat shelf. "No photos" he told us, and that moment felt like we were in a middle of a smugging operation. We had heard that people were smuggling sugar and tea from the cheaper Syria to Turkey, but these bags and the amount did not make any sense. Making sure nothing was put to our bags we sat along and hoped there would not be any hassle, we just wanted to get to Istanbul…
At the boarder things went quite smoothly, the buss was inspected and it seemed that the customs officers found nothing alerting. We only waited for an hour for the bus to get out of Syria and then the same check in Turkey. Entrance to Turkey was anyhow the most smooth entry on this trip, no visas, no waiting, just stamp in the passport and enter. As soon as we reached the nearest village the "attendant" gathered the black plastic bags, waved us goodbye and drove away in his car that was waiting there. While we were not sure what to think of this all, the bus continued it's journey towards Antakya, where to our surprise we were let off at a gas station where another car was waiting for us to take us to the Otogar station of Antakya. So it was no direct bus after all, but just a bus connecting with Antakya where we'd board the night bus. Also from the travel agent we had gathered that our bus would be in Antakya at 3pm and continue at 4pm, so getting to Antakya just 3.45 we thought we were lucky to just make it. Wrong again! Our bus was to leave at 8pm, leaving us with 4 hours to kill, which we quickly decided not to spend at the Otogar but jumped into a local bus to centrum.
Antakya was a nice and friendly small town. Felt very european after all the middle east: women dressing "normally", many showing their hair, men not staring my cleavage, colorful houses and due to it being a smaller less touristic town less tourist stuff on sale. It was kind of nice feeling being again a nobody and not the odd bird! We found a pretty fancy restaurant, where we were the only customers. We could not been treated better, although we for sure were sweaty, smelly and not so very finely dressed. Local transport was also an experience, the cashier boy (conductor?) who took paid was jumping in and out of the bus having 110% control over who had paid and who not, yelling stop names and direction of the bus. And he also had time to chat with us and indicate the sights on the way, although it was a very limited exchange of turkish/english/body language.
Well back at the Otogar waiting for the bus to finally leave, we bumped into the french couple we'd met in Hama. They and another french couple they had met in their hotel in Aleppo were also boarding the bus, so we exchanged some travel stories. All well when we started the journey, made ourselves comfortable in the quite full booked bus watching Steet Fighter movie dubbed in turkish.. After maybe an hour my stomach started to act weird and cramped and made my travel very uncomfortable. Every stop we made I ran to the bathroom and finally when we were closing on Adana we decided we'll hop off the bus, spend the night and continue the day after, because I really needed to be close to bathroom and not sit cramped on a bus seat. Because the bus attendant had very very limited english vocabulary it took us nearly an hour before he, with the help of the friendly and better skilled teenage boys sitting next to us, really understood that we wanted off and they stopped us at the road side hotel just off Adana. This was a real good move, in the morning I felt a lot better. The hotel was also very clean and the staff friendly. And in the morning we woke up to see the gorgeous mountain view out of our window and got breakfast on the terrace. The ever so helpful hotel manager got os tickets to the next bus passing to Istanbul and now we are sitting in an even finer bus than yesterday, on the front seat with the great panoramic windows showing us the beautiful landscapes we are passing. So, yeah, extra hotel night plus new bus ticket, but if that's the price of avoiding disasters in the bus, then ok. I have been lucky with my iron stomach, not having troubles before, so I guess it was coming, damn travel belly..
But it was definitely not all bad: we got to see another beautiful place, plus, now taking the day bus we actually get to enjoy the gorgeous mountain views and green plains we are crossing. We already found a new travel goal, we will come back to Nidge to hike, for sure! And we had not scheduled to be in Istanbul before sunday morning, so it is only this one bonus day we had gotten by taking the bus instead of train that we are loosing of Istanbul time.
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