Turkey
round two feels quite a bit different than it did when I visited Istanbul with a friend
after my Fulbright. I’m three years
older, traveling without the luxury of a generous Fulbright allowance (at least
in comparison to my current situation), traveling with two boys (at the moment)
instead of one girl, making my way through less touristy parts of the country,
and have had eight months of Georgia to dictate how I think the world works.
Our trip did not start off so well. We found a marshrutka in Tbilisi
that the men said would take us to Sarpi, but we were pretty sure would only
take us to Batumi,
but we climbed in regardless. It did
only take us to Batumi,
but the problem was more in that our shiny, clean Mercedes had a radiator
problem or some other reason we had to stop frequently. We stopped once before we even left Tbilisi,
spent about 45 minutes idling by the side of the road in Gori, which is only
about an hour away, and stopped every 20-30 minutes from there on out. The stops got shorter, long enough to pour
water somewhere under the hood, but it made me nervous as to whether we would
even make it to Trabzon. Thankfully, when we got to Batumi, we were able to hop into a marshrutka
that immediately left for Sarpi. Back in
September, friends and I had spent a glorious day at the beach in Sarpi in the
shadow of the strange structure that is the border. This time, with backpacks on, we stood in the
stuffy tunnel, trying not to get pushed out of the way by Turks and Georgians,
waiting to go through passport control.
When we finally got to passport control, I had another lovely
experience, since Georgian border guards are the friendliest I’ve ever met.
We had made it to no man’s land, which was like a series of
tollbooths for trucks, buses, and cars, with pedestrians running around in
between. We were some of these
pedestrians, bypassing the passport line to get into Turkey so we could go get our
visas, thanks to some advice I had gotten from another TLGer. Then we got back in line. After getting our passports stamped, we
walked back through all the activity toward the end. A man did ask to see our passports to make
sure we had gotten a visa, but the border had a lot more chaos than security. We needed to get a taxi and so kept walking
through what felt like a massive parking lot for taxi drivers to accost us like
they do in Georgia. That never happened,
since apparently taxi drivers in Turkey are very subdued. A marshrutka took us a few minutes up the
road where we were told to get out and wait for a marshrukta (dolmus in
Turkish) to take us to Hopa. Once there,
we got into another marshrutka to take us to Trabzon.
By Rize, we were the only ones left, so the man dropped us off there and
told us a bus would be there in about 15 minutes. The bus was glorious-quiet, high, comfortable
seating, and they even gave other people free water. It took us a while to know we were hearing
Georgian, and we discovered we were on a bus full of Georgians. A little before 11, about midnight Georgia time,
we were dropped off in the “center”.
Someone had scrawled a recommendation for a hotel in the Lonely Planet I
had borrowed, so we set off looking for it but realized we had no idea where we
were in relation to the map in the book.
Thankfully, wonderful Turk #1 approached us and helped us find a dolmus
to where we actually wanted to go. Once
in the center, it was easy to find the hotel.
I got a tiny single room and the boys had a bigger room next door. Feeling a bit like zombies, we set out to
find some dinner and then came back to crash.
The next morning allowed us to explore the city for a while and search
for pastries. I thought I saw a sign for
tea and coffee so used my limited Turkish (by then I had relearned numbers 1-10
that I had learned in Istanbul)
to try to order 1 tea, 2 coffees, and 3 pastries. Instead, the man brought out three teas, one
pastry, and two giant Turkish breakfasts.
Since I love empty carbs, I got the pastry, which turned out to be
similar to achma, a kind of khachapuri, while the boys feasted on eggs, olives,
tomatoes, cheese, and a honey butter combination that I stole some of because I
love honey. And, like Georgia, there
was bread. We were happy with this turn
of events, even if we were a bit bewildered.
We headed back to get our stuff and take us to the airport. It took us a bit of asking to find the dolmus
to the airport, but our driver told us when to get off. The Trabzon
airport is right by the water, so it was a striking view. It’s also pretty small, so it was easy to
check-in and get on our flight. Trabzon round 1 had been
a relative success and a good start to our trip.
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