Travel diary, part 2: Turkish hospitality

Sheep in a truck last night, unaware that it was their last night on earth.

Happy bayram! Yesterday we spent the afternoon in Amasya, a town midway between Ankara and the Black Sea coast.


It's known for its classical Ottoman style architecture and the castle built into the mountain overlooking the city.

We had some friends to show us around the town and cook us a nice Turkish dinner. Then this morning we began the more exciting part of our travel.

Let me back up a moment. Last week we went to buy bus tickets in Ankara. We wanted to get to Amasya, spend the night there, and then go to Trabzon the next day. When we went to the bus company, they told us that they could get us to Amasya and no further. So when we left on this trip, we had three tickets to Amasya and simply prayed that we would be able to find tickets to get us the rest of the way.

When we arrived in Amasya last night we had no trouble getting tickets to Trabzon today. Our Turkish friend gave us a lift to the bus station this morning and showed us off. It was an eight hour bus ride along the coast, and we arrived around 8:30 with a vague idea of where our hotel was and no clue how we were getting back to Ankara. I was a little nervous as we pulled into the bus station, because I knew that although we could get a taxi, there were probably other shorter, cheaper ways to get to our hotel, but that we couldn't find them with our complete lack of knowledge of the city and minimal knowledge of Turkish.

We were in for a surprise, though. When we got on the bus, our Turkish friend in Amasya had told the bus driver the name of the hotel we were staying at, so when we got off the bus in Trabzon, the bus driver, who spoke no English at all but was very patient with our awful Turkish, told us to wait and he would get us to our hotel. He called a guy with a mini-bus to take us there.

While we were waiting for the mini-bus, we went over to the ticket counter to see if we could get back to Ankara on Saturday. The bus driver followed us over there, and when we asked him about tickets, he looked at us with a raised eyebrow. "This Saturday?" he asked. He glanced at the ticketing agent, then he shook his head and clucked his tongue. "That will be very difficult." The other guy behind the counter, shook his head and told us that there were no tickets available. At this point the mini-bus driver had arrived and was waiting to take us to our hotel, so we resolved to give it up for tonight and try again in the morning.

However, our chauffeur had no intention of stranding us in Trabzon. Along the way, he suddenly pulled over and took us to another ticketing office for his bus company. The ticketing agent there also told us that it would be difficult to find tickets, but they worked and finagled things until they scrounged up three tickets to Ankara on Sunday night. Then he dropped us off at our hotel, where we're relaxing now.

It seems like everywhere we go in this country, we have been running into the nicest people. Everyone is so willing to help us out and take care of us. We have been really blessed so far in the people we've met.

I'm also really looking forward to exploring Trabzon now that we made it here and we know we won't be stuck forever. Check back for more pictures later!