Soldiers and Bad Guys

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To best way to describe the main bus terminal on the outskirts of Istanbul would be by picturing the scene outside of the bar at Mos Eisley on Tatooine as Luke and Obi Wan pull up on the Landspeeder, a mixture of dust,soldiers, peddlers and merchants visible amongst the throng of women and men dragging around dusty suitcases. The two level terminal stood surrounded by stalls with everything imaginable for your journey ahead, my ears blocked from the merchant calls I fixed my eyes on the central cashier office ahead and brought a oneway ticket to Gallipoli. What had left me in this situation was my missing the tour bus earlier that morning which had me booked on a 2 week Tour by Fez Buses and which had left for Gallipoli in the morning at 8.00am. A big night before and a 3.00am bed time had me in no condition to comply. I told the guide I would somehow catch them up that day.
I sat in the top floor departure lounge having an hour to wait. A few people sat around watching a Turkish version of "The bold and the beautiful" Two soldiers come up the stairs escorting what looked like a prisoner. Upon further inspection the man in civilian clothing was handcuffed from the front. The three sat down and the two soldiers started chatting away, I watched in interest as the civilian soon joined in on the conversation. The mood seemed happy amongst the three as they seemed to share a funny story or two. After a while one of the soldiers headed downstairs and returned with three teas, The prisoner was handed a tea, and again they drank and chatted quite friendly like. Now here's the twist, one of the soldiers got up and tried to balance his AK47 against the seat, as it couldn't balance and his army chum had both hands full, the soldier handed the weapon to the crim instead. Now I'm no criminologist but was that safe? After about 5 minutes of visiting the Loo he came back up took his weapon and sat down. The criminal said something to him and the soldier removed his cuffs, then this guy casually headed downstairs to the toilets on his own while the two soldiers watched TV. What the? I thought yes this guy will be half way to freedomville by now, but alas no he returned to his captors and was cuffed for his troubles, unfortunately it was my time to go so I missed out on the rest of the folly's that day. One other weird and wonderful thing happened on the journey to Gallipoli. A first class bus ahead of us had some kind of steward on board to hand out teas and what have you. As the buses were perilously close in transit, I was able to watch the man sweep his way down the aisle of the bus. Now here's the irony, the man opened the back door of the bus and proceeded to sweep all of the garbage outside, so we had coke cans,cups,wrappers, cigarettes hitting us at 100km an hour and all over the road and country side. So a clean bus was essential to him but to hell with the rest? They were rival companies I suppose and us careering off the road to our death would be good for business.

Next Blog..............Gallipoli Sunrise

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