Good bye Erzerum

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Not going into too much detail on our timely but somewhat meloncholy departure from Erzerum.

We bade a fond farewell to "Ayran alley", walked along "overhead bridge" road once again, and finally strolled pass "piece of shit car" path. All these places having been given these rather odd names due to spending way too much time in Erzerum.

Ahhh, how many hours did we spend discussing the relative kebap attributes of the half dozen kebab houses along Ayran alley.
"well, kebab house a put on some extra salad yesterday"
"hhmmm good point, but house b does the creamer ayran. you have to agree on this"
"granted, and that is a pertainant point. but lets get radical and goto house c"
"ok"
and so we would munch and crunch. inevitably the conversation would then fall to where to go for desert.
"well wall mart (a large supermarket that we gave this name) has a discount on ulker 60grm bars"
"oh yeah i remember now, but BIM has the nestle crunch bars for 35cents. a good price"
"yes indeed-e-doo"
"ooorrr we could go and check out a bakery"
and so on and so forth the discussion would lamentably extend for scores of mintues before the decision was made.

this continued for too long while we kicked tyres in erzerum.

but we ended up getting the visa! eventually!

to celebrate we hit Palendoken mountain again for an afternoon of boarding. the snow was a bit crap but was still lots of fun- especially watching spider eat it big time!

the next morning we said goodbye to our adopted kurdish brothers of Bahar Hotel- Abduraman, karim, and Mostafa (the cheeriest and most upbeet short turkish man in the history of the world), and headed for the otogar.

of course erzerum wasnt letting us go that easy. the 9:30 bus seemed to have changed to a 12:30 bus. hmm three hours to kill at the frosty erzerum otogar- will we ever be released of this cities frosty clutches?

to kill time made a few phonecalls (good bless skype). was great to talk to the oldies and chris from home. brought on some pangs of homesickness but was too excited about iran to let it get to me.

soon enough we were back at the otogar and arguing with the bus driver about the extra costs of getting the bikes on the bus. ahhh the joys of travelling.
after a few firey words from spectacle and I we managed to get his price down a bit; boarded and were off towards Dorbygzat.

got to Dorbygzat in the early evening. a bodertown if there ever was one. it was cold, the streets were muddy and litterstrewn but like many places in turkey behind the somewhat unclean outward appearance of the town the people were super chillen. a guy escorted us to our hotel, and we chated to heaps of randoms along the way.

ate my last meal of Eskander (loads of kebap meat on a layer of bread with tomato sauce, and best ever swimming in melted butter), and slept early.

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Photos

Piece of shit car
The now world famous piece of shit car! Inexplicably it dissapeared a few days after this was taken. Its where abouts a complete mystery.

The man with attitude
After the seven hundredth visit to the Iranian emabssy there was no mood for cameras.

The boys
Thats not a stick of meat;
this is a stick of meat.