So Wendi and I decided to head back to Turkey from Croatia. Maybe we were starved for the friendliness and hospitality, after a year with the dour Czechs. I can’t even begin to explain the hospitality of the Turks. Even the carpet sellers would hassle us to buy carpets and we would tell them, “We don’t have jobs or houses, why would we need a carpet?” and they would invite us in for a tea and a chat. And then they would recognize us and talk to us every time we walked by which meant Wendi and I couldn’t walk faster than about a mile an hour in the areas of Istanbul we knew. I think the ritual of tea is one reason it’s so friendly. Everyone invites everyone else for tea. There are little storefront rooms all around the city where elderly men just brew tea and coffee all day long, and young boys serve as the runners. Local businesses have these “chips” that they give the boys when they arrive with the tea. It’s kind of like a system of credit. But I digress…
Wendi and I found a hostel in the Sultanahmet area that had a bar in the basement! How convenient J Our first day back we walked to the Grand Bazaar to visit our “old” friends from our February visit. They were so surprised to see us, and so happy. Aly, the owner of the leather shop, introduced us to his friend Mustafa. Now Mustafa looks about 50 and his passport says he is 45 but he claims to be 34. Hmm. This tells you how sketchy he is. But that of course didn’t stop Wendi and I from going to dinner with him! (Here is where I remind you that I have not earned real money in a year). Mustafa took us to this amazing restaurant and ordered tons of appetizers and kebobs and drinks. I seriously think hours passed and then he informed us that we were waiting for his friend Mehmet.
So Mehmet arrives and he is really funny, but also 45! We all leave together in Mehmet’s car and literally, 20 meters from the restaurant the tire went completely flat! It was POURING rain (of course). Wendi and I were nice and held umbrellas over them while they changed the tire (well, ok, we had just accepted a feast from them so I suppose it was more like our duty!). Well Wendi had a cold and Mustafa insisted that she get medicine. Ignoring our protests, we drove all over Istanbul and finally went to a HOSPITAL where Mustafa was able to get a prescription for Wendi without her ever seeing a doctor. Okayyyyy…so then we were off to find an open pharmacy (and at this point it was past midnight) and we finally found one. After filling Wendi’s prescription, Mehmet took us back to his apartment. Wendi and I slept in one room together and locked the door, but we found the whole experience a little odd. We slept until almost noon and then Mehmet and Mustafa took us to breakfast and their friend Ahmet joined us. He was a dead ringer for Antonio Banderas! I swear, you can’t make this stuff up.
That night the guys took us out again (at this point we feel like mail order brides or something) but they know all the best restaurants and we had coffee at a café overlooking the Bosphorous and they were just really generous and friendly. Mustafa is obsessed with Wendi so he gave us his mobile phone to use for the month while he goes to Holland. Also, he organized a rental car for us for $10 a day through a friend of his. We figured a road trip in Turkey would be a fun way to see the country.
The guy who rented us the car (no papers to sign, we just handed over a bundle of cash and they gave us keys…) didn’t speak much English. He told us we were going to be driving a taxi. I got this mental picture of Wendi and I touring Turkey in a yellow taxi. But then he clarified that the car wasn’t yellow, but rather pink! Another mental picture! It turns out that the car is white and it is the same make and model as all Turkish taxis. It’s called a Turkish Tofas Sahin. Never heard of it? How would I describe it…well, it’s old and slow. That’s about it. We refer to it as the “yavas tofas”.
We were supposed to get the car at noon, but again, since this was kind of an underground deal, we didn’t complain when the car showed up at 8 pm. We hit the road that very minute. We drove all night, passing through Ankara (where we got lost and had the nicest taxi drivers help us find the right road by climbing in our backseat to physically direct us to the road) to Cappadocia, which is the area of Turkey with the craziest landscape you have ever seen! Star Wars was filmed there, and that’s how it really looks. We stayed in a hostel in the town Goreme, and our room was in a cave. We had a great time there, met tons of crazy people, and hung out each night at a cave bar called “Flintstones Bar”. During the day we visited the surrounding sights, like the fairy chimney rock formations.
From Cappadocia we drove towards the Mediterranean coast. About an hour into the drive, we got pulled over for speeding. This in a country where there are no speed limits posted! And where you share the road with sheep and goats. Of course, theygave us a ticket which we paid on the spot (about $30) and then started chatting with us. By the time we left them, we were wishing each other pleasant days and thanking each other. Like most of the Turkish people we met, they were so nice and friendly and seemed happy to meet American tourists (granted, Wendi and I were a sight, flying by, driving an ancient Turkish taxi with our hair blowing in the wind and Madonna on the discman!). As we pulled away, I thought, “They just gave us a ticket and now we are pals???”. But we drove on (a little slower, but not much) and we were looking forward to the sun and beach of the Mediterranean.
When it started pouring rain around dinnertime, we were still on the road and we were a little bummed out. We stopped for dinner at a random roadside restaurant in the middle of nowhere at 8 pm. Our waiter was really cute so we invited him to sit with us and have a cup of team. Unfortunately he spoke hardly any English, but when Wendi went to the bathroom, I was pretty sure that he had invited us to sleep at his house. I was a little embarrassed to clarify this (what if that is not what he had asked me?!) but by miming and with his limited English and our limited Turkish, we realized that he really had invited us. Well the speeding ticket had put a dent in our pocket so we thought “Why not?” and we all drove to his house.
He lives with his family in a village. Literally. His family welcomed us warmly and didn’t seem to think that Adem bringing home two unscarved chicks with a car was abnormal. There was no furtniture in the house, only Turkish carpets. And don’t forget the Turkish toilet – that would be the hole in the ground. Wendi and I sat cross-legged on the floor across from Adem, his mom and dad, his brother and his wife and their baby, and somehow we managed to communicate. I use that word loosely since our “communication” consisted of Wendi and I looking up a word in the dictionary, repeating it, and having them nod vigorously. We were very comfortable there nonetheless, and on our way out in the morning, Adem’s mom (who was sitting on the dirt floor in the kitchen baking bread) sent us on our way with some fresh breakfast. We dropped Adem back at work and went on our way.
We spent the next two nights in Olympos, which is the site of the burning flame (Chimaera) that has been burning for centuries. Olympos is cool since it is forbidden to build using concrete there. So we slept in treehouses! Our tree house even had a bathroom. There was a beach nearby and a bar with a firepit in the middle, and it was fun, except that there were only other travelers there and we enjoy hanging out with the Turks, so we left after two days and drove to Kas, a beach town about two hours west of there.
In Kas (which means “eyebrow” in Turkish) we stayed at a really nice hotel that set us each back $4 per night. Incredible! Immediately we met really nice people and had fun partying with them. One guy, Meki, who had a restaurant, and his Dutch friend Edmund decided to go with us on a day trip to a town called Kalkan. Of course Meki had a friend who had a restaurant there and his cousin had a disco there, so we were hooked up in that town! We went to a restaurant in the mountains where you picked out your own trout from a stream, they caught it and grilled it for you. Super delicious! We were out with them until 5 in the morning and then we slept for a few hours and then left town – onto the next adventure!
We drove to Fethiye, another town on the Mediterranean. The weather was nice and the first day we were walking along the harbor and I mentioned to Wendi that we needed to meet boys with boats…and we did about five minutes later! They invited us for a bbq later that night and for a boat trip afterwards. Poor Wendi got stuck with the psycho who started crying when she turned him down. Who then proceeded to get so drunk he wouldn’t and couldn’t drive his boat. Who kept us out on the water until 2 am! But again, that’s another story. Until then, we did have fun with them and the weather was great. Bobbing on a boat on the Mediterranean with a bright moon overhead is pretty awesome!
We spent the following day on the beach nearby in Oludeniz. We laid out and when we went back to the car at the end of the day, the cutest little 9 year old boy hitchhiked with us back to Fethiye. The following day we went on a 12-island boat tour. The pervy 50-year old captain hit on me and offered me a job on the boat, but I turned it down. Unfortunately this is the town where I got a throat infection and had to go to the local hospital to be treated for it. Never mind that when we pulled up there were goats tied up outside. Never mind that the doctor spoke no English and burned the white spots out of my throat while I didn’t know what was going on and Wendi was flirting with another doctor. Never mind that my VISA balance is now $100 higher!
So we drove back to Istanbul through a cute ceramic producing town called Kuthaya and spent another week visiting our friends around Istanbul. We finally bought souvenirs, drank tea with everyone we could (that was our goal and we managed to get invited to tea at the usual carpet and leather and souvenir shops, at a gas station, at a pharmacy, and with the police!) and basically chilled out. What an amazing experience the whole trip was!
Now I’m back in Prague saying good-bye to everyone. I feel ready to be home, partly because the flat we are staying in has either fleas or bedbugs and Wendi and I are covered, literally COVERED in bites. Also, as I am writing this from the basement of the school where I used to teach, Wendi is sitting next to me and some man just knocked on the door and when Wendi looked over he flashed her. I guess it might be time to go home.
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