Welcome to Asia!

We made it to Ankara! This was our final goal when we packed up 3 months ago in Ireland.

On Saturday we got a lift to the Bulgarian/Turkish border from Georgi's dad. Although we could now see Turkish soil, there were many formalities to complete before we could step onto it. Through several police checkpoints and showing our passports to multiple guards, we left Bulgaria. We were directed in between borders to a small cashier’s office which resembled a newspaper outlet, where we needed to buy our visas to enter Turkey. We were expecting this and so had been prepared with 45 US dollars each. We gave the man our passports and the money, and as he made a tsk tsk sound he showed us the visa. It said “45USD”, but over this “60USD” had been stamped. Our remaining money, which I dumped from my wallet onto the desk was only 38 new Turkish lira (38 000 000 old Turkish lira!) which was not quite enough. He did not look impressed. We shrugged and showed him my empty wallet and a couple of guilty smiles. He handed back our passports and waved us through. This was great, although we didn’t have a cent left now – aside from 50 stotinki, which is worth 20 cents and that is in Bulgarian currency anyway.

We passed through the remaining Turkish officials and were spat into this big new country, greeted by their red crescent moon flag. There was not the bank machine we were hoping to see, or much else, only long lines of parked semi trucks and a nice wide highway leading 650 km to our destination. As we started walking, a Turkish man walked past and said cheerfully “good morning, and welcome!”, a good sign for our journey.

We performed our usual ritual – found some cardboard and made a sign (ANKARA) – and started hitchhiking. No more than 10 minutes later a semi truck had stopped about 100m past us and was trying to back up to us along the shoulder. Ekrem, the Kurdish driver, helped us get settled in his spacious, comfortable truck. He started driving, and made us cappucino in his dashboard coffee maker. We were able to communicate surprisingly well with his decent German and few words of English, and were taught some of the essentials of Turkish too. He was only going as far as İstanbul which meant we still had to travel the remaining 400km to Ankara. We had a good couple hours with Ekrem and he was very kind to us, sharing his fruit and stopping for bathroom breaks. When we came up to the edge of İstanbul (about 20km from the centre of this massive city of 12 million) he pulled into a rest area and honked at the truck beside us. "Ankara" he said as he pointed to the other truck.

Five minutes later we were loaded into the truck of Sherif, another Kurdish driver, for the remaining leg of our journey. Although Sherif had only a few words of German (even less than we did) and spoke no English, we managed to communicate for the ten hour journey! As we passed through İstanbul, the traffic on the highway became more and more congested. Cars swerved, horns blared and fists shook. It all peaked when we reached the toll booths before the Bosphorous bridge linking Europe with Asia. Inumerable cars, trucks, buses and whatever else had wheels and a horn all jockeyed for position in the “queue” to get through the tolls. Men walked through the jumble selling stacks of bread, Turkish flags, and whatever else they thought people might buy. The booth we finally pulled up to happened to have no attendant, so we couldn’t pay the toll. Sherif cursed, then drove through and pulled towards the shoulder so he could walk back to buy the ticket. A policeman was there fiercely motioning that stopping was forbidden, and Sherif was trying to motion that he didn’t pay yet and so needed to return on foot to purchase a ticket. He stopped and immediately the policeman was at the door yelling at him. After explaining didn’t work, Sherif resorted to yelling and cursing at the policeman. He got out and we watched nervously in the side mirror as they yelled at each other and made raging Turkish Yosemite Sam motions with their arms. After 10 or 15 minutes it all seemed to be settled, he paid the toll and we continued.

We crossed the immense suspension bridge, and on the other side a roadsign said “Welcome to Asia”. Everything looked pretty similar to the European side. We drove for a couple more hours, eating cookies, drinking coffee, and learning Kurdish. Then, Sherif took us to a truck stop for dinner and chay (Turkish tea served in tulip-shaped glasses, straight, sweet, or very sweet). Our first meal in Turkey! Trying to pay for our own food was impossible, as I got waved away when I took out my wallet. The remaining 200km were a bit tedious as we drove through fog, but Sherif was full of spirited conversations about Kurdish history, during which he would slow to about 50km/h. Just after midnight, after about as much hospitality as we could handle for one day, he drove us as far as he could into the suburbs of Ankara and phoned Carli-Ann’s friend Berna to come and collect us. He waited there with us until she arrived; reassured by her presence that we would be well taken care of after he left us, and concerned that he hadn't yet shown us enough hospitality.

So, we are well settled in Ankara at Berna's, Carli-Ann's Turkish classmate from the University of Alberta, and she has already toured us through one of the many massive bazaars selling dried eggplants, intestines, leeches for healing purposes, live ducks at a pet store, and skinned, baked goat heads (and probably many other nice things, but only the gross ones stuck in our memory). Her friend told us our fortunes read from our Turkish coffee grounds, and we included a photo of Carli-Ann's cup of the eagle, which means a protective person will come into our lives in the next few days. Carli-Ann was thrilled to flutter through the stalls hawking thousands of glass and metal beads, and so much exotic jewellery. Now she has to carry it in her backpack for the next month.

Our next stop will be Cappadocia, which is rumoured to be stunning, Troy, and we for sure want to visit Mount Olympus where flames burn constantly from natural gases emerging from the earth, and backpackers can camp out in tree houses! And I think we will discover many other amazing places in the next month. After all, we have had only wonderful experiences thus far, and our coffee grounds say that natural phenomenon will greatly enhance our travel experience... and that our former pet hedgehog is going to have babies. Lisa, what is going on with him there in Nanaimo?

Photos of Turkey...click here!

Hoscakalin!