The course of study to become a Customs officer must be universal. Yesterday, when we left Georgia we were scolded and growled at. And when we entered Turkey we were snarled at and misled. Nowhere, will you find more ridiculously authoritative, utterly miserable human beings than you will at border crossing frontiers. It’s just the way it is.

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Altogether, it was an almost six hour, 200 kilometre journey that brought us to the city of Kars in Eastern Turkey. From the front seats on one segment of our Greyhound-like bus trip I’d wished I had a hand-held device with video capability. If the driver wasn’t talking on his cell-phone he was Googling with it. Then he must have gotten tired of technology. He threw the damn thing onto the dashboard, fished what looked like a grocery receipt from his pocket and began doing what appeared to be an accounting reconciliation. All the while he smoked one cigarette after the other. At one point I wanted to get up and offer to hold the steering wheel while he searched through his pockets for his lighter and a new pack of smokes, but our language barrier would have made it awkward.

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I was planning to write about what happened after we arrived Kars yesterday, but last night Elenka sent an e-mail to a friend that covered it beautifully. Here are her words in excerpt:

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“... Jack and I are now in Kars. We have experienced so many acts of kindness today in Turkey that I ended up in tears. The bus station we were dropped off at in Kars was way outside of the city. A man who spoke English saw that we were struggling to get info and got us onto his bus into the centre for free. We then went to the train station to buy a ticket from Ankara to Istanbul. Again, the reservation man didn’t speak any English, but he called over a young couple who not only helped us out, but took us to a very good local restaurant for lunch. Lastly, I went into a little veg/fruit market to buy a pomegranate. The husband and wife refused to take any money for it! That’s when I lost it.  Renews my faith in mankind!”

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When we left the fruit and vegetable store we both had tears in our eyes.