Malena in Turkey

well it is time for the guest entry…..

so we got back to our hostel after smokıng up and got a cab to the otogar - plans were going perfectly.  we were right on time and everything.  except it turned out that the otobus line that we had planned to take had zero open seats for the buses leaving that night.  whether this was actually true or the easiest answer to give wıth little english and my little turkish will never be known.  fortunately there was a nice old man who took us to another bus line that was goıng to izmir and we got seats on the bus leaving approx 20 min later.  so it seemed things were still goıng well.  until the bus rolled out and 15, 20, 30 minutes later the lights were still on (the bus departed at 1030 pm and was a 9 hr rıde so pretty clearly a sleeping trip). i was startıng to get a little annoyed all the lights were still on when an even more annoying thing happened - they turned on a 1965 era movie, dubbed in Turkish wıth a horrendous laugh track.  i swear it was the longest movie ever because that laugh track kept playıng nonstop until at least 2 am.  i put my ipod on the same song on repeat just to drown out the noise so i could sleep - to no avail.  also in these fırst few hours of the trip the bus made approximately 5-8 stops.  since we got our tickets minutes before the bus left, we had the convenient seats right by the door. and it was no longer nice and warm outside - so every stop resulted in a blast of cold air hitting us directly, and not ending for 5-10 min.  that was until the 1 hr long stop for which the door was left open at least half the time.  so right when the movie was ending the lights went out and i thought Finally!  we can sleep!  that is when the AC was turned on.  the bus had been a comfortable temperature before so why in the middle of the night (2-5 am) the cooling air* had to be turned on is beyond me but they kept it that way for hours and hours.  just long enough so that when the bus started to be a reasonable temperature the sun was rising.  so i think we may have slept 1 - 1.25 hours over the entire 9 hr bus ride.  we also saw a dead cat get thrown out of a Nissan right in the middle of the highway. 

*Editors Note (Malena that is):  I would like to add that the cold air blowing directly on Kate may have been my own fault, because the choice was that I either allow it to blow on me, or redirect the airflow so it was directly on her….  I have a much more delicate constitution, so I, at 3:00 in the morning, rationalized it by telling myself she could handle cold much better than me.  Plus the air was coming out of her vent!!  Of course, even without the freezing air blowing directly on my legs it was still much too cold, bumpy, and loud to actually sleep.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 at 8:48 am and is filed under 01 - Turkey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.