We left the hotel at 5 am. So we were all exhausted. We had to drive back to Trabzon where we dropped off the two guys at the airport for their early morning flight home. Our flight wasn't until noon so we went back into Trabzon for some breakfast. We had to wait a little bit for a restaurant to open, but we ate buffet Turkish breakfast and pretty much lounged for awhile. Deciding we shouldn't loiter for too long, we decided to walk to a park down by the coast and take some pictures.
Side note- The Black Sea is FULL of jellyfish. Would you ever have guessed that? Kind of bizarre to me, but true.
After this was when my day went downhill pretty fast. We headed to the Trabzon airport about an hour and a half before our flight. It's a small airport, so plenty of time. I should preface this story by mentioning that I've traveled alot, in a lot of different places and alot of different conditions. I'm used to being hassled. I've had Russians burn a hole in my duffel bag with a cigarette. I've traveled 36 hours to Kyrgyzstan and not had a single one of my bags show up for 3 days. I got woken up in the middle of the night on a train from Moscow to Kiev and hassled about my paperwork. Nothing really surprises me anymore and I actually pride myself on my easy-going travel nature. That being said, the hour and a half I spent in the Trabzon airport is by far one of my worst travel experiences.
When you get to the airport they don't have traditional security. When you first walk in, you put all of your belongings through an initial security scanner. Once you are through you get your ticket, check your bag and head to the gate. Our group starts putting everything through the scanner. In goes my backpack, my shoes, my jacket, and my overstuffed bag. Shocker, they didn't like my overstuffed bag.
They take it off the belt and asked me if I have any chargers in there. I say no. Having planned ahead, I put ALL chargers and plugs in my backpack, just in case they wanted to go through it, my backpack would be easier. They insist that I have "bomb connectors" in my bag. Realize that all of this is going through my translator Ernest. The rest of the group went on to get their tickets. I knew it was bad when the original security man left and brought over security woman...
She asked me if she could open my bag. I'm not sure if it was my tiredness or knowing how bad it would be to repack the bag or just a general bad attitude, but I resisted. I wanted to know exactly where in my bag they thought the alleged "bomb connectors" were. She pointed to the top. Without really gaining my position, she unzipped my bag. It pretty much POPPED open and stuff spilled out everywhere. They took out all my souvenirs in the top portion and surprise surprise didn't find any bomb connectors. Not satisfied, she decided to be thorough and empty the rest of the my bag. This is where my unfortunate bad temper lost it. I demanded to know why my whole bag was being emptied. No answer. Then the worst. She started pulling out my dirty underwear, one piece at a time. At this point I pretty much gave up and started crying. It was so humiliating. Everyone in that airport could see my dirty underwear, including my male translator. After she took every last piece out of my bag that had taken me 2 hours to pack, she decided that I had actually told the truth, no "bomb connectors" and just walked away, leaving my mound of stuff all over the place. Poor Ernest didn't know what to do as I sobbed and debated in my mind how bad it would be to let loose some profanity on a mission trip.
Luckily, the other girl on the trip, Emily, came back from the ticket counter and was so kind to help me stuff most of it back in my bag, some of it in my backpack and some of it in her backpack. The more I think back on it, I must say that I glad that the Trabzon airport has very thorough security. But that being said, I've traveled enough to know when I am being messed with just for the sake of messing with someone. I think I was an easy mark and they just took advantage of me. I would have believed in their concern alot more if they told me there was an unidentified liquid in my bag (the honey) or drugs (all the tea leaves). But bomb connectors was a bit much for me to believe.
That being said, once I was on that plane, I put on my headphones, my hood, and slept all the way to Istanbul hoping that I never had a run-in with that security woman in a dark ally for her own sake...When we got to Istanbul we collected all of our bags and made our way outside to the buses. There are a variety of buses out there- charter looking, crummy looking charter, city bus, etc. There is a variety of numbers letting you know where it goes, but no schedule. There is also no line, so everyone just stands around and when your bus shows up, its a shove and push and bite and fight to get on the bus. Luckily we all stuck together and just pushed our way onto the bus and were able to get seats. We were all still in coats and fleeces because it had been cold in Trabzon, but for some reason the heat was on in our bus. It was BLAZING. The bus was completely packed and we had about an hour ride to the last stop of the bus. Most of our group slept, but I enjoyed looking out the window. Istanbul is divided into two sides, Europe and Asia, divided by the Bosphorus. We were on the Asia side which was pretty much covered in a variety of apartment buildings. I was surprised how modern it was. It had a very Mediterranean feel to it.
When we finally made it to our stop, we were in Kadikoy, a neighborhood literally on the waterfront of the Bosphorus. As soon as you got off the bus you were overwhelmed by the smell of fish. There were tons of people out and about. Kadikoy is not exactly a tourist area, its where real Turkish people live. It must be a major transportation hub because there is the bus stop, a train station and a ferry station there. We headed to the hotel which was at the top of a VERY steep hill. After a long day of travel and airport crying, by the time I got to the top of that hill I was wiped out.
Even though we were in Istanbul, this was probably the roughest hotel we stayed in. Our room was painted a pepto-bismal pink color and was about the size of my kitchen. Small, dirty and let's not even talk about the shower. Old and DIRTY. For the first time I was glad I had packed shower flip-flops. Randolph took us out to dinner in the neighborhood and then dropped us back at the hotel to get a good night sleep. It was pretty nice to have a down evening just to relax and work on the interactive prayer guide.
Check back tomorrow for an update on our days working on the Kadikoy and Uskudar prayer guides!
I've loved reading about your Turkey adventures!!
ReplyDelete