The Saga: Part One; A('s) Perspective on Our Travails... Err... Travels (Part One)

Confused about why we're in Morocco and not Turkey? Start reading here and here.

So, J's given you a bit more background on why we're on a completely different continent than we're supposed to be. That leaves it up to me to tell you how we got there (unless J decides to chime in on this too).

There's no reason for this to be here except that we took it in
Turkey, and we thought it was fun. Not sure what Nas
means in Turkish, but I'd like to think it means "Rocket."

We left our apartment at about 8:30 PM on Monday night. We were, upon leaving, completely exhausted. J was exhausted because a bad bed combined with a ten mile trek the previous day had left her in some of the worst pain she's had in quite some time. I was exhausted because while J was busy packing and cleaning, I had spent much of the day out and about running various errands. Well, I didn't actually run, but I walked a great deal.

Anyway, so we're exhausted. Not realizing that we would be moving to Morocco within a month of arriving in Turkey, we had backed five bags. All of those bags, now repacked (with two of them filled with expendable items, because we weren't sure what our baggage allowance was), had to be loaded into a taxi and taken to Ankara's main train station. The loading isn't so bad, but everything in between is not fun. J had two large rolling bags weighing in at about eighty-eight pounds. I had two rolling bags and a duffle bag which weighed in at well over a hundred pounds. I only managed by putting the duffle onto the larger rolling luggage, which put a hundred pounds on one arm. Oh, and yeah, we both had back packs with our laptops in them too.

Seriously, an amusement park with rides and everything.

Right at the beginning, Turkey started to get its revenge on us for leaving. It was sad to leave our apartment, and as if to add insult to injury, the Ankara train station is located across the street from an amusement park. Seriously, an amusement park.

We waited a few hours at the station, then were able to board our train: the Ankara Express. It's a sleeper train from Ankara to Istanbul, where our flight was (there didn't seem to be a whole lot of traffic between Turkey and Morocco, and we were happy to get what we did). I slept fine, but I woke up around six in the morning, and J barely got any sleep at all. When we got to the station, we broke our fast with a couple bagels. So we were tired and underfed as we dragged our bags off the train and into a taxi.

The ride from the train station to the airport was not a pleasant one. There are a great many cars on Turkey's roads, and their taxi drivers seem to be correspondingly aggressive. I was alright, but J's motion sickness was bad by the time we got to the airport.

Once we were in the airport and looking for the line to check in, we noticed something peculiar about our tickets. In the US, we show everything in AM and PM. However, the Europeans, always out to have more practical measurements, keep counting up to 24:00. So right now, I'm writing this at 21:53. Well, we realized at the airport that our tickets did not say that we would be taking off at 1:35 PM, but at 1:35. It was only then that we realized the check in counter opened at 22:35 the day before.

We don't really have many photos from this portion of the
trip. So here's the train station. Gar means station.

 We were crushed. We were supposed to be at our hotel in Rabat within just twelve hours, and now we realized that we didn't even have a valid plane ticket. We were exhausted, J was nauseous, we had no ticket, and we had no place to stay. Just going on was probably one of the hardest things I have ever done. I would say the same for J too, but she’s faced a lot more problems in her day and she’s a lot braver than I am. Speaking for myself, I had to fight repeatedly the urge to break down into sobs. We had invested a great deal of time, effort, and money to get as far as we had, and now we were faced with the prospect of putting in a whole lot more.

Fortunately, the airport we were at provided free internet, and we were able to strategize our next moves. We booked a hotel, looked up bus schedules, and a two hour bus ride and a one hour taxi drive later we had all of our things settled in a hotel room for the night.


Still not many photos from this part of the trip. But look! The
Turkish flag. This kind of thing was everywhere. One of the
things J and I wanted out of the trip to Turkey was a better
understanding of Turkish nationalism. While we didn't really
get to talk to any Turks about it, we definately got a lot of
graphic examples.

I just want to stop and say at this point that I’m married to one of the most fantastic people in the world. I was on the verge of breaking down like a three year old and sobbing, and I had gotten sleep in the past three nights. I was fully recovered from the taxi ride. I was barely functioning, and I was in much better condition than J was when she looked up public transportation in Istanbul, booked our hotel, and found us a flight for the next day for only a mildly bank busting fare. She did it because she’s done almost all of that kind of work for all of our trips, because she’s one of the most capable and hardworking people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. The fact that she did it in the state she was just goes to prove that she’s also the strongest person I know. I would say I don’t know what I would have done without her there, but the truth is I never would have made it so far. I am the luckiest man in the world, and I don’t mind telling you either.

(Note, when I read the preceding paragraph to J, her response was, “Suck up.” Can I just say that I also married the funniest woman in the world, as well)



Look! Another Turkish flag! And yes, I was
very tired when I wrote these captions. Why
do you ask?

So anyway, J got us a hotel five minutes from Istanbul’s other airport (the two are almost as far apart as you can get in Istanbul, they’re literally on separate continents). It goes without saying we were tired, but I’m going to say it anyway. We were very, very tired. It was in this context that we read the note on our hotel mirror, that while the tap water was fine for brushing teeth, it was not drinking water



That would have been fine, except that the hotel charged five Turkish Lira for a half liter bottle of water. For context, a half liter is about the size of bottles in the states (maybe a bit smaller, I’m not sure), and five Turkish Lira is about $3.30. To give that further context, the same bottle would cost .35 Turkish Lira in the grocery store or .50 Turkish Lira almost anywhere else.


At this point, I want to say something about greed. Greed is charging ten times the retail value of an item essential for human survival, and then telling your guests that they are not allowed to bring in their own food or drinks. Greed is charging more than 13 dollars, dollars mind you, for a can of Red Bull. Greed is charging a price because you can, and it, like other degrading evils is best met with nonviolent protest. In our case, nonviolent protest consisted of going to the shopping center across the street, buying two 1.5 liter bottles for one Turkish Lira each, and then thoroughly hydrating ourselves with the banned items in our hotel room.

Just writing all this out makes me tired, so, on that note I’ll end for now. I’ll complete the rest of this saga later.

Ankara and Our Apartment: First Impressions.

So J and I are in our apartment in Turkey.

All I can say at this is: WOOO-HOOO!!!

We didn't have much of a view in our

hotel in Ankara, but we didn't stay

 there long anyway.

 We've been bouncing from place to place for a little while, and we're quite ready to be done with it. Since the beginning of August, I have slept on nine beds, one floor, and two airline seats. I have moved all my junk from last year from Oklahoma to Kansas. I moved all the junk I plan to have for the coming year from Kansas to Illinois, from Illinois to Munich, and from Munich to Ankara. I've unpacked about half of that junk, and I don't think I can convey how good that feels.

I would be happy about it even if I had just moved from my dorm in Norman to an apartment in Norman. I did not, however, move to an apartment in Norman. I moved to Turkey, and I'm pretty happy about that all by itself. 



This was taken from the corner of the

street our hotel was on.

I don't know why, but the air just seems to smell better in other countries. I stepped outside our hotel in downtown Ankara this morning to get some money from an ATM, and just breathed in. The smell was intoxicating. Morocco had a smell too, but I think it's even stronger here in Ankara. I practically ran up the street to the ATM. Everything just felt so good and clean and right.

The taxi ride from the hotel to the apartment confirmed what the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel had led me to believe: Ankara is a beautiful city. At night everything was lit up with lights of all different colors. The street lights are the standard orangish yellow. But then the trees along the highway are lit up in a bright green color. Walkways over the highway are lit up in neon blues and purples. Add to that the standard billboards and roadway signs, and Ankara at night is mesmerizing.

Taken from the taxi ride between our hotel and our apartment.

 Ankara in the day is just as good. There are trees everywhere (which probably has something to do with fantastic smell). They seem to mostly be evergreens and pines, so I can't wait until we get our first snow. Ankara is a modern city with lots of parks, lots of tallish buildings, and lots of traffic. It's settled among a bunch of hills, which I hadn't realized though it makes sense. Being from Kansas and living in Oklahoma, I love hills. They give the landscape so much more personality, and Ankara has plenty of personality.

That brings us to the apartment. It is small, but fully equipped. We have a bathroom and the bedroom/kitchen/dining room. On the bright side, It'll be nice to be able to get out of bed, walk eight feet over to the fridge, grab a snack, and walk back.

J lying on the bed in the not

bathroom part of our apartment.

To be honest, I really don't mind the size. It should help keep the amount of stuff we have to bring back at the end of the year manageable, and it's more than enough for what we have now.

The thing we're really excited about how well equipped it is. We have a dishwasher, microwave, oven, silverware, pots and pans. We've got a few towels, sheets, pillows, plates, a cutting board, two tea pots, a few hangers, some lamps, and furniture. We even have salt and pepper, a corkscrew, and dish soap. We had been a little concerned 

This is part of the view from our

apartment.

that we'd end up having to spend hundreds of dollars equipping the apartment, and now it looks like all we really need is some food.



One last thing. The view from our apartment is fantastic. We look right up a hillside filled with evergreens. Again, the first snow will be gorgeous. Admittedly, it isn't as good as the view from my apartment in Morocco, and the apartment here doesn't have a balcony, but it's still fantastic.

We're so grateful to be here, I can't even tell you.



This is part of the view from our apartment. If you look at the building on the

left, you'll see that one of our neighbors has a beach umbrella on his patio.