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Thursday, September 8 - Taking the bus to Erzurum, Our first experience with Turkish Internet cafes, Arnold on the Bus
Mehmet knocked at our door at 6:00 am. The dining room is full, everyone is leaving this morning. I asked Mehmet for omelet for breakfast and he served us great breakfast. Last breakfast with the bees. Benny said, “ignore the bees”. But how could I?
Mehmet greeted us “good-bye”. Good man, nice sons. Bakir, the younger son put our backpack on the omega, and down it goes. The dolmush is waiting for us. It looks full, but somehow we managed to get in, our luggage on the roof. Benny insisted on covering the backpack with plastic. The driver goes up to the roof of the car to cover our backpacks. Everyone waits, nobody mind. Time has different meaning in Turkey. We actually enjoy waiting, looking and letting things happen. After about one hour we arrived at Yusufeli, now a familiar place.
We need to take the bus to Erzurum. The bus leaves at 9:00am. Turkish time. No rush. We have time. During the three hours drive the conductor sprinkle lemon colon on everyones hands. We get to Erzurum at around 12:00. We are at the Otocar (bus station). We buy the tickets for Urfa. The bus leaves at 4:00pm. We have plenty of time. We leave the luggage at the ticket office and headed to the internet cafe.
Our first experience with Turkish Internet cafes. The keyboard is different, it has letters in Turkish, I cannot find the question mark or other marks. I cannot read the commands. I could not log into our email. I could not open Gmail. Now I know the reason. They have two I’s in Turkish. One with the dot and the other without a dot. To spell Gmail or Shifra, you must use the I with the dot, which is in a different location on the keyboard. The Internet cafe attendant could not speak a word of English. Finally we managed to open our email and write to the kids. I miss Yael Gary, Dean, Chad, Karen, John, Owen, Miles, Guy, Hannah and Ari. I feel much better after I emailed them a message.
The man in the Internet cafe does not speak any English. When I asked him something, he asked me to write it, and the computer translated it for him. He answered me in Turkish and I could read it in English. Pretty neat!
We bought veggies, fruits, yogurt and tuna and we ate in the “park” next to the otocar. There were many restaurants around but the main dish is meat or fried vegetable.
The bus to Urfa finally leaves at 5:20pm. The bus is very crowded. The conductor moved few people and somehow there were two seats for us. We have nine hours to get to Urfa. The bus is crowded with young Turks, all of them students; nobody can speak a word of English.
The conductor wants everyone to sit, he put some carton on the floor and few young men were sitting in the isle. They seemed to be happy friendly crowd. Lowd conversation goes on all night.
During the drive we were served with coffee, tea, cold water and soft drink. The seats were comfortable and we managed to get some sleep. The bus stopped every two hours to allow passengers to go down to the toilet and get some food. On one of the stops I felt hungry and went to check the food. Everything was meat. I order a dish that looked like vegetable. It was pieces of livers with pepper and onion. I ate it anyway. I did not get sick. Turkey does not go to sleep. In many places stores are opened all night.
On the way we passed many villages, cities, some stores were opened.
Arnold in the bus. There was a television screen and I was wondering what was it for. All of a sudden, the screen came to life, and who is on the screen. Our governor was speaking in Turkish, Terminator 3, Arnold was naked, another naked lady in the heart of Muslim land.
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