September 10…….Another Universe

As we started our eighth week of travelling, it felt like we had stepped into another Universe . We had come from the very civilized, cosmopolitan and grand cities of Copenhagen, Prague and Vienna, then transitioned into the cities in Bulgaria and Romania, that were a little less civilized and, certainly, less cosmopolitan, into another world. As we visited the sites in Turkey, Egypt and Ethiopia, one even more ancient than the other, I was thrown into a state of perpetual awe.

But let's start at the beginning…..Our bus to Istanbul was scheduled to arrive at around 7 a.m. but, instead, we got in a little after 5. And, when we went to get our luggage, our worst nightmare was realized….no luggage to be found anywhere. The bus depot was a little scary, particularly at five in the morning, and no one spoke any English. There was nobody at the ticket office and we were told that an agent would be there in about an hour. One man kept muttering something about another bus coming but we couldn’t figure out why our luggage would be on a different bus.

So, we had no choice but to wait . Fortunately, we had purchased travel insurance and I started writing down everything I could remember about what was in our luggage. After about 30 minutes, Bill went to see if he could find an ATM machine, and, wonder of wonders, before he got back, a bus pulled in and a man came into the waiting area with OUR LUGGAGE!!!! I can’t tell you how thrilled I was. The only thing we could figure out was that, when we stopped at the Turkish border to purchase our visas, all the luggage in the storage compartment of our bus was taken off and inspected. Our luggage must have been put back on the wrong bus but, thank heavens, whatever bus it was on was headed to Istanbul.

After that little scare, we went to see if anything was open where we could get a cup of coffee and some sort of pastry. The bus station was huge and pretty grim but we did find a place and then hailed a taxi to take us to our next home exchange. Although we had the directions, the taxi driver had a hard time finding the apartment . Fortunately, we had the phone number of our host, Zeynep, and after the driver called her, she guided him to her home. Much to our dismay, we paid the taxi driver before Zeynep came over to greet us. Had we waited, she would have negotiated the fare for us but, as it was, the driver maintained that we had given him a 10 note, instead of 100 and we argued, with the help of Zeynep, for quite some time but, the driver wouldn’t relent. So, we got stiffed for about $40 US dollars. Not a good start to our Istanbul adventure but, at least, we had our luggage and, if this was going to be the worst thing to happen on our very lengthy trip, we were doing really well.

Zeynep’s apartment was very spacious and comfortable with a fantastic view of a skyline filled with soaring, contemporary glass buildings and the towers of one of the mosques off in the distance. Zeynep was leaving for Portugal and, after giving us all the information we needed about the apartment, markets and restaurants in the neighborhood and how to work the metro system that was only a few blocks away, we thanked her profusely, and she went on her way .

After unpacking and getting settled, we walked over to find the grocery store to buy some breakfast items and something for dinner that night. They had some yummy looking koefte patties (a seasoned beef that we discovered in Bodrum, Turkey, five years ago) that we bought, along with some veggies.   We found a little lunch place and had a swarma sandwich before walking around a bit to see where the metro was and to get ourselves oriented. When we got back to the apartment, we read through some of the tourist pamphlets and flyers that Zeynep had left. We would be taking an excursion to Cappadocia on the 13^th and 14th but mapped out a plan for what we wanted to do and see during the remaining four days that we would be in Istanbul.

We were pretty tired from our all night bus ride and the ordeal with the luggage so, we welcomed the chance to relax in preparation for the rest of our week in this new leg of our travel adventure.