Blogs from Gündoğan, Ankara, Central Anatolia, Turkey, Middle East

I bought the plane ticket to Ankara mainly because it was so inexpensive. $40 round-trip direct from Canakkale to Turkey's capital city. Get out of town. I think I pay that much in airport tax back in Florida. I figured I would do a solo recon mission for future reference. That was on the 7th of October. At 10 AM on October 10th Ankara suffered, what its citizens simply refer to as; The Event. Canakkale's airport terminal is a simple, square, pre-fab building. My bag was run through an X-ray machine under the watchful eyes of a dozen blue-uniformed security people because in Turkey, as it is in the States, it's all about the jobs. Inside I found a simple 3-table cafe where I had a glass of tea and a cellophane wrapped biscuit for 4 ... read more

Die drei Tage waren Sch.......... Tage. Und was ich an ihnen so mag- sie waren konsequent. Immer Sch..-Tage. Hab jetzt nicht direkt Lust alles nochmal auf Deutsch zu schreiben, daher hier ein englischer Text. Turkey, small road up into the mountains: Bend 90° left hand, road wet, gravel (slippery??), me in 3rd gear, bike skidded, black hole inmy memory. When I resurfaced: bike on right side, snuggled up against stone, me on back next to bike, no longer on it. After a while (non idea how long) car came, nice driver stopped instead of crashing into us. both - Paul and self back in u pright position. Wanted to take me to hospital/doctor to have me checked. I refused. What I really would have loved was Van, Vanman, Vanman's tea and a couple of enncouraging noises ... read more

Geo: 36.9499, 27.4219Here is the first part:Today's favorite part of the day will undoubtedly be the shuttle bus ride from the hotel to the airport. The bus with the driver and another guy showed up about 20 minutes late. This was apparently due to their need to gas up. Luckily, we left ourselves plenty of time. We laughed about this some more as our driver wove over around and through the backstreets of Istanbul, obviously lost. I say obviously because we were revisiting scenes from National Lampoon's European Vacation when Chevy Chase cruised the same streets over and over saying, "Big Ben, Parliament!"Eventually we got loose and onto the freeway and things were looking good. We were only running about 40 minutes behind. Then our bus sideswiped a taxi. Mike was able to get video of ... read more