Chasing the Right Bus in Dugubayazit

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A town with this charming name was going to be my last one in Turkey. But there's some story connected to it. It all started when I was walking from the train station in Erzurum to the bus terminal. After some time two men were walking by my side and started talking to me in english. They were students at the university in Erzurum and they wanted to fetch a friend from the bus station. I told them, I was looking for a bus to Tehran (Tachran as they say in Turkey) and they offered to help me. This is always a good thing, because as a foreigner you are running around the different bus counters for some time until you find the right one and you never understand where people are sending you to.
There was no direct bus to Tehran, only buses to the border town of Dogubayasit. By the time the students started to get really active, they phoned a friend with a car to bring me to some petrol station some miles out of Erzurum where all the buses going to Iran stop. But before we went there I was invited to have a look at there home and they gave me a huge pack of dried apricot together with a pile of german and english books by a famous islamic author. At the perol station we had a long chat while waiting for the right bus. Finally it was quite late in the evening and the guy from the petrol station was sure there were no more buses coming. So they told me I could stay overnight, but I said I'd rather take a bus to the border town to cross the border early next morning. On the way back to Erzurum we met the bus to the border town of Dogubayazit. The students reckoned it may well be the last one and they made a hard u-turn to chase it. Finally they got the attention of the bus driver and of I was - for Dogubayazit.

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