Bus to Pergamum

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Left in the morning for Pergamum, what the Turks call Bergama. Since the towns are so old and small in the center, you have to take a shuttle out to the bus station, which is usually somewhere on the fringes of town. Then you can finally get on the bus and get going. It was a beautiful drive down - we followed the coastal rode most of the time, and only really cut inland when we turned off for Bergama.

One thing: it's incredible how long it takes to go relatively small distances. The trip to Bergama logically should have taken a couple of hours. But the Turks are very slow, patient people, and don't seem to really care about time. Randomly the bus just stops in the middle of nowhere, and some person gets off and wanders away. I'm not sure where these people go, since literally we are in the middle of nowhere. Then we'd make so many stops at gas stations so people could get out and have a quick Turkish tea. It ended up taking a little over 5 hours.

My favorite part of the trip, though, was when we reached Bergama. The guy who hands out drinks tapped me on the shoulder and said we were there. I got out on the side of the highway, right across from a gas station. The bus station was maybe a half-mile in the distance. It honestly made me laugh out loud. Think of it: a giant bus stops on the side of the highway, you get out, and the bus peels away, leaving you in the dust. It was too absurdly funny to get angry about. So I walked over to the bus station and took a dolmus about 20 minutes into town. The driver was really nice and he let me sit in the passenger-side seat.

Anyway, I'm staying at the Athena Pension, a renovated Ottoman mansion, and this is definitely my favorite hotel yet. I'm right below the Acropolis, Pergamum's most important site. It's beautiful here, and tomorrow I'll take plenty of pictures - there was no time to take any today.

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Comments

[GrandDad]

Pictures
Matthew: If you have time send some pictures of the local people and places...Granddad