Stuffed
For those of you familiar with Turkish and Greek food, the word “dolmas” will make your mouth water. We found out that it actually means “stuffed”, as in leaves, peppers, other veggies filled with rice, meat and seasonings. There is a very similar word in Turkey, “dolmus,” which refers to the local mini-buses, and we now know why.
We flew south to warmer temperatures and arrived in Antalya. To get from there to Kas, we needed to catch a bus which everyone assured us would be very easy. It was, but instead of the big tourist coaches, the only one leaving when we needed to go was a mini-bus, a large van really, with names of various cities it would stop at on the front. It seemed pretty nice and very cheap, so we hopped on and started out with a few other people on board. As we pulled out of town, person after person flagged down the driver and either handed him packages to deliver or came aboard themselves. Pretty soon all the seats were filled, but the driver still stopped for more people. He pulled out some little plastic stools and plunked them down in the narrow aisle between the seats. More people got on. More luggage and boxes were shoved into the space in back of the seats until duffle bags spilled over onto the heads of those in the last row. Finally satisfied that there was no more room he pulled out with 22 passengers in a vehicle about the size of our campervan in NZ.
The next thing he did was to pass around a bottle of what I can only describe as “lemon pledge” scented cologne. Just about everyone splashed on a little, so that soon the whole bus was citrusy. I supposed the smell could have been worse, so we were actually thankful for that. We spent the next 4 hours squashed into our seats, holding our bags on our laps. The bus was truly stuffed and so were we.
The happy ending is that we arrived safely in Kas and woke up to beautiful sunshine, blue skies, and blue sea. It was worth every minute on the dolmus.
halftime
April 28th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
All your comments about Turkish food are reminding me of the Turkish grad student parties at Lehigh.