Week 14 - Istanbul
This week...
I was reminded travel isn't always pretty. Sometimes it's quite disastrous. This post will not be my usual travel destination post where I write about cool landmarks and history to include the occasional academic pizazz. Rather, I'll tell you how a weekend of mostly unfortunate events taught me about traveling and about myself. Not to worry though; of course there is some food content. I'm always eating.
There was a Facebook post advertising a sponsored trip strictly for students enrolled in this study abroad program - not my program but the European version. The trip was for students abroad in Bulgaria to go by bus for a weekend in Istanbul, one of the top two cities I wanted to visit this semester. I convinced myself to sign up because we would have a professional guide, and I felt it would be relatively easy. My friend Claire and I signed up on Facebook and told our friends. A total of twelve of us signed up to go together - how fun! We were added to a group chat where we realized there were over one hundred participants. This could be interesting.
On the departure day, we took the 13:45 train to leave Blagoevgrad and meet the group in Sofia. At 20:00 we loaded onto three packed buses and embarked on a ten hour road trip. The border crossing was the toughest part. It was in the middle of the night, and we were in line for three hours! This was expected in the itinerary, so it wasn't a huge deal.
Room Assignments
They did room assignments on the bus. We had four girls and six guys. It was perfect to have five total double rooms. Well, the Blagoevgrad group was the last of the five cities to be assigned rooms, so all that was left were four double rooms and a triple with a lone stranger from another city.
Some girls were willing to take the triple, but like myself, no one was going to claim it. Since it was 02:00 and everyone was cranky, the organizer ended up handing me the clipboard to take care of it. Claire and I signed up to be in the triple with the stranger. We didn't care at that point, as long as the girl didn't snore. The organizer assured us that "it didn't matter who got the triple as we would all be in the same hotel together and be close to one another anyway." I'll give you a hint: This is foreshadowing.
It was neat to drive into Istanbul at sunrise and watch the mosques emerge from the fog. We arrived at the hotel at 05:30. It felt as though we were in an alternate universe because everyone was completely delirious. We walked to check-in.
The organizer calls our names up to the front. "The hot water in the triple room in this hotel isn't working, so we are sending you to a different hotel." I was annoyed, especially because of the assurance we had received a few hours earlier, but there was nothing we could do. We walk to the other hotel with our third roommate.
Let me also mention I had a practical and a quiz to take at 12:30 this day, so I was planning on napping after our 06:00 check-in until my class. We get into the other hotel where we were with a couple pairs from another bus. They reveal to us our rooms won't be ready until noon... I am infuriated.
They told us they could put our bags in an unsupervised corridor for the next six hours so we didn't have to watch after them. The clerk was photocopying passports and handing them back as the others got comfortable in the lobby. While standing in the revolving door, I had to answer the century-old question: Take cold showers for two days or wait 6 hours for check-in and immediately take my quiz after being awake for 28 hours? I take cold showers anyway, so the decision was simple.
Passport Chaos
We march into the other hotel where the organizer is at the front desk and everyone is packed in the lobby. He's calling names to come get room keys, but he won't hand out the keys until he can get the entire party's passports. So if someone from that room is in the bathroom or out smoking, we wait, and wait, and wait, and we do not move on to the next room until the he gets that party done. Inefficiency if I've ever seen it.
After a while I get the chance to tell him we'd rather have the cold water room. He takes our passports, gives me a room key, and tells us to go. I watch as the front desk clerk takes our passports and sets them in a huge pile amongst the other passports. I ask for my passport back. They say no, and that we will get it back tomorrow. I hastily tell the organizer and the clerk that I'll take my passport back now, and I can send him a picture of it, but that I am not leaving it at the front desk for a day while I'm roaming around Turkey. They explained they needed to get information from all our passports before they can give them back. I said to take the information now and told them how the other hotel was performing this process. My message partially got across because they said, "Okay, come down in six hours and get it." I told them no. They told me no. I ended up getting rightfully pushed out of the way by others trying to get their room keys.
We go to our room and against what I've been taught, I left my passport with someone while I went and slept. I go back down at noon, six hours later, and walk up to the clerk who's kicked back in his chair on his phone with a pile of passports laying out on the desk in front of him. I ask for my passport, and he says I can get it that night around dinner. After some words in response, he grabs my passport and starts entering information into the system. I get it back. Others followed suit behind me, and the poor clerk had to start entering our information sooner than he had intended.
Friday Night
Friday evening we had a neat boat tour northbound on the Bosphorus Strait, the body of water separating Europe and Asia minor. It was the first time I had ever seen Asia. After the boat tour, the twelve of us went to eat on Hoca Pasa Sk, a pedestrian street with tons of traditional Turkish restaurants. At the first restaurant we came across that could seat twelve, I had the traditional clay pot - a mix of chicken and pork with peppers, onions, mushrooms, eggplant, and tomato roasted in an enclosed clay pot over a fire and then busted open to serve. You definitely pay for the show in this dish.
Saturday
Saturday was awesome, solely because we all parted from the trip itinerary and went off to have our own days. We had an amazing breakfast at Mivan Restaurant and Cafe where I had the "Sultan's Breakfast," a traditional dish of a yogurt based soup with poached eggs and croutons. They served us apple tea on the house. It was the best tea I'd ever had. We visited the Grand Bazaar like the true tourists we are and were bombarded by vendors asking us to come in their stores. The only stores I bought products from were operated by people who didn't speak to me.
For lunch we had street food. There were stands at every corner with just two items: grilled corn and roasted chestnuts. Definitely takes the cake on street corn I've had in the past. I don't think I had ever had a chestnut before, but these were awesome. They were roasted in the shell and had a hearty dense texture like the boiled cashews on cashew chicken. They were super savory and only a little nutty. The little charred bits ensured no seasoning was needed. At another stand, we grabbed a spiral potato - a thinly spiraled potato on a kebab skewer, fried, and sprinkled with "potato seasoning."
There are dozens of Turkish delight shops, but one that advertised seasonings caught my eye. I wanted to stop in and grab the potato seasoning because it was the first thing I've had in months that has had some kick. There was a line, so the owner told us to snack on some dried fruit while we wait. Once we were the last two people in the shop, I was ready to ask him to package the smallest amount of seasoning he sells and that's all. Before I could order, he invited us to sit at these two tiny plastic chairs while he made us tea. We tried to stray; we didn't want him to give us free stuff just for me to buy one little pack of seasoning, but he insisted. The sultan tea he served us was so amazing that it beat the apple tea for the best tea I've ever had. This turned into an hour long show of him having us try four or five different Turkish delights, candied nuts, two types of tea, and, well, the perfume of the native flower "ful." The man knows how to sell; we both walked out with a bag full of products.
After a great dinner at the Hidden Garden and some ice cream that was apparently a sort of street performance (I got ice cream shoved in my face and up my nose), we returned to get ready for an organized boat party. It was so much fun to be together with the other study abroad students in an environment other than our Bulgarian town. This was the best part of the organized trip, aside from me losing my credit card, driver's license, and university card on the boat.
The Journey Back
We woke early Sunday to begin the trip home. The bus was to leave at 08:30 so we could be back in Sofia by 20:30. The bus didn't leave until about 09:30. Not a great start. Before border crossing it started pouring rain, but we were still to stop at a mosque and get out to buy snacks and return to the bus in exactly 30 minutes because "the bus is not waiting on anyone." 55 minutes later the bus shows up, and we're all soaked. Not to mention it was freezing outside.
We arrive at border crossing, and there's a line of buses. We're prepared to wait three hours or so as we did when we were coming the other direction on Friday. Two hours goes by, and we've moved up in line about ten yards. Another hour goes by. We haven't moved. My toes are freezing in my wet socks and tennis shoes, and I've hung up my hoodie to dry faster.
No one knows what the hold up is, and it's a tad difficult for us to get off the bus and walk around to get fresh air because it's pouring and freezing. Another hour goes by; we've been stuck in the same 20 yard stretch for four hours! We're all going crazy, and at this point most of us have run out of food and water, so I rationed my last eight crackers. Oh, and the bathroom on the bus was "broken," so we had no access to a restroom. Apparently you can get fined 200 euros or so for going to the bathroom on the outside property of a border crossing.
We had arranged for two vans to be in Sofia at 20:30 to pick the twelve of us up from the station and drive us the hour and a half back to the university. Since we still had a 4.5 hour drive back to Sofia after boarding crossing, I was playing phone tag with the van drivers trying to keep them updated on our arrival time. Due to some language barriers and messenger issues, the drivers arrived in Sofia at the originally scheduled 20:30. It was 20:00 at this point, still stuck at the border. We crossed our fingers that the drivers would wait on us. At some point my mom called to say Happy Easter. I told her I hoped she wasn't celebrating with wet socks and eight crackers.
Looking back, we had arrived at the border at 16:00. At some hour we went through passport control where they took our passports and sent us away. I don't know what the deal was with this trip and our passports getting taken. I'm going to let you guess what time we finally got through border crossing and entered Bulgaria. Go ahead, guess. All right, you're probably wrong. We got through at 23:30, 7.5 hours later! No food, no water, and sopping wet clothes. Thank goodness they let us go inside once and use the restroom at the crossing.
Another 4.5 hour drive put us in Sofia at 04:00 where our drivers had waited nearly a full work day on us. We arrived at our dorms at about 05:15, just in time to shower and take a quick nap before classes.
For a journey that can be done in 8.5 hours, a distance of about 400 miles total, we were traveling for 21 hours straight. In 21 hours, I can quite literally drive cross-country from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border.
Lessons
Would I do this trip again? Absolutely not. Was it worth it though? I haven't decided. Regardless, I did learn a lot.
- I am never booking a trip through an organizer again unless there are hiking conditions or animals that prevent me from carrying out the trip on my own, like Patagonia or Tanzania.
- I'm not a fan of itineraries like I thought I was. If something is written to go a certain way and it goes drastically different than it should have, I'm annoyed. Now the whole schedule is thrown off and no one knows what's happening. Whereas if there's no itinerary, and something doesn't go as planned, it doesn't matter because there was no plan.
- While I do want to revisit Istanbul and do it right, I don't plan on entering or leaving Turkey on ground again.
- I should look at going into operations.
- Although all but about twelve hours of this trip were unenjoyable, I'm still incredibly lucky to have opportunities like these.
- Turkey has a lot of mosques... and good tea.
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