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After a few great days at Selcuk, it was time to move on the capital city, Istanbul. Getting from Selcuk to Istanbul involved an overnight bus journey. Now we've seen all kinds of buses on our trips, and have come to loath them. In fact, I loath all overland journeys. And now I can add sea journeys and air journeys as well. Which either means that we will never leave Australia again or I'll have to focus on arriving rather than the trip there 😊
But we had heard great things about the buses in Turkey. Comfortable, stewards who wait on you hand and foot, as many drinks as you like, when you like. So wasn't feeling that bad about it...
We met up with an English couple at the bustop, who had also had great experiences on the buses. We got on, were suitably impressed with the nice bus, great seats, seat controls, etc etc. Definitely beats the Peruvian buses, which were our previous all time favourite. And it had been barely 10 minutes before they started plying us with drinks!! They also come around and pour cologne into your hands, after meals, so that your hands can smell nice and lemony. Definitely countered the otherwise pungent atmosphere!
So here we were, 4 intrepid travellers sitting amongst a horde of turkish men, who were doing their best to stare at the girls in the most obvious way. I found that if I stared at them, they kept staring. Aargh. Ignoring them, we were chatting away, and then suddenly the guy in front of me turns around, stands up, and starts yelling at us in Turkish. Since we didn't understand what he was saying, it was a bit hard to know what he was going on about. Turns out he knew some english anyway - enough to yell 'Shut Up!" at the end of his turkish tirade. The four of us were confused - it was only 9pm, the lights were on, and everyone else around us were talking. But we continued talking in a much quieter tone. But not good enough for our pungent friend. He kept snapping his newspaper in the air to indicate his displeasure and finally turned around and yelled at us again. We were suitably cowed (catherine and I) but the English girl behind us kept making faces at him while he was talking!! Which made him even madder!! Some of the turks around us had to tell her to stop and he finally ended his tirade.
So we had to make the rest of the journey in silence. It was awfully disempowering not being able to speak the language. In Australia, I would have had a nice civilised conversation with the man, reasoned with him, invited him around for dinner, you know how it goes. Not here. Plus, in the event of any violence, we weren't sure we could count on the busload of turks to help us either!! Not nice. And I didn't fancy getting stabbed when we got off the bus either.
So... silence. Catherine can sleep anywhere and promptly did so. Leaving me to my thoughts. It's at times like this, when you're riding along a bus full of turks in a strange country, that your mind turns to greater things. You ponder deep meanings of life. you ask the whys that you so often neglect to consider in the bustle of everyday life.
In my case, I was thinking about my tongue. 😊 You know when you're just sitting in one place doing nothing... with your mouth closed... are your teeth together? Or slightly apart? And does your tongue rest on your lower palate, or rest on the rim of your teeth? I observed that my teeth were apart, and my tongue was resting lightly on the lower set... and this worried me greatly. What if the bus suddenly lurched and my teeth shut together and bit my tongue off? Oh the blood. I spent a good hour trying to keep my teeth together and my tongue our of danger's way, but every time I stopped concentrating, I found myself reverting. Aargh. But at least distracted me for at least one or two hours.
Silence is definitely a difficult thing to maintain. Didn't help that the bus also stopped every hour for about 10 minutes, Driver was probably being safe, but it annoyed me to no end!! I would rather he drove dangerously and got us there on time. We ended up arriving in Istanbul after 13 hours, 3 hours late.
So as you can see - a long dark and restless night. By the time we got to Istanbul, I was a wreck.
And here's where the fun begins...
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anonymous
non-member comment
about bus trip
hey there, I am glad to hear that you are enjoying my country,Turkey,and sorry for the happenings on the bus as well. It is sometimes also difficult for us to live with those jerks!Please just ignore him and the ones like him that you will probably meet during your journey and just enjoy my beautiful Istanbul!