Returning to Turkey with Fez Bus finding different
Bus travel at night is not too bad, actually bus travel in general is not too bad. I am sorry that Greyhound has ruined the experience for all of us, because all walks of life take the bus in Turkey, the buses are clean and fast, and not all together unsafe. A mandated mileage recorder keeps tabs on speed, so the buses are rarely doing over 100 kph. When the bus stops for breaks, I hear a dot matrix printer clattering.
When we woke up, we were still many hours from our destination, but the scenery had changed dramatically. Instead of being in what looked like South Dakota, we were now in what looked like Oregon. Cotton and tobacco fields had given way to hazelnut groves and apricot orchards. At 0730, we stopped for a break at a diner/truck stop. I had been on the bus all night and was groggy. Breakfast was a bowl of tomato and rice soup with a side order of fresh bread. The soup was flavored heavily with mint. Washed it down with a glass of chai with two lumps of sugar, and now wired to the gills, got back on the bus. It was still three hours to Trabzon.
The road follows the coastline of the Black Sea. It is a shitty road, underbuilt and over utilized, the ride is bumpy. Alongside the highway are hazelnut groves and scads of stands selling fresh-picked hazelnuts. Hazelnut groves are not terribly impressive, by the way. After 22 hours, we finally pull into the Trabzon bus depot.
Both the "Let's Go" and the "Lonely Planet" guide to Turkey suggested the Hotel Nur as a good budget hotel. Trabzon has plenty of cheap hotels, oodles in fact. The only problem is that they are all loaded with "Natashas", i.e.: Russian prostitutes. The guidebooks go out of their way to only list hotels sans Natashas. The hotel Nur is clean and has a working shower with plenty of hot water. The Hotel Nur is right in the center of town, close to the main mosque, very close. The call to prayer came from speaker horns that were aimed directly at me and were situated at the same height. No problem, I didn't convert or anything, don't worry.
From my hotel window I had a splendid view of the Black Sea and could occasionally see fishing boats doing their thing. The guidebooks encourage one to order fish when eating. And to that, I say, "yum!" I wandered along the street until I found what looked like a decent restaurant, one that didn't just serve kabobs, and sauntered in. There were a few fish displayed in a refrigerated cooler. Some sort of whole saltwater fish, definitely not a holy carp, and I just pointed to my future entree and took a seat in the dining room. It appeared sooner than I expected, filleted, grilled and served with lemon. Very fresh. No fishy afterburn.
This is hazelnut and tea country. Everywhere, every shop window displays hazelnuts (in the shell) sold in neat little parcels weighing a kilo each. Oh yes, I bought some hazelnuts. The USDA beagles are going to have a field day with my luggage.
Trabzon is situated on a steep hill that drops straight down to the sea. (When you are walking down the hill you are OK, but the walk back up to the hotel was a real drag.) I walked down to the "Russian Market" which was, sure enough, a Russian market. Trabzon is close to Georgia, Azerbejian, etc., and the market here reflects the proximity. Amongst the usual Turkish knickknacks sold everywhere, I also found Russian 35mm cameras, Russian binoculars, nesting dolls and other cool stuff. I was in flea market heaven. I scored a bootleg Gypsy Kings cassette, a Russian wristwatch (which weighs about 2 pounds!) and a cool switchblade knife. I walked back up the steep hill to my hotel and napped.
Early the next morning, I took a shuttle up into the mountains to look at an old monastery. Frescos purportedly painted in the 9th century in a building constructed in the 19th century with some 20th century graffiti, just to spice things up a bit. The monastery is up on the side of a mountain, and is a real bitch to get to. The trail is steep graded with switchbacks every 10 meters or so, and took me nearly an hour of huffing and puffing to make the ascent. It was supposed to take only 35 minutes according to the van driver. (Insert laugh track here.) The walk down the hill was hell on my knees, but I got a chance to sit occasionally in the dense forest and check out the trees (Doug firs and Alders) and look for lizards. This is one of the prettiest places that I had ever seen in Turkey, by the way. Very lush and green. The shuttle van brought me back early enough to go shopping (!) again, and I picked up a pair of brown shoes for $25 that look like they might be just the thing to wear to the office.
Back to hotel for another nap, and woke up at about 11:00 pm. I went outside and walked a few blocks. The shopping district where I had been earlier had changed. It was now cluttered with Russian hookers and their scary looking pimps. The ladies all looked like Jessica Rabbit. I hightailed it back to my hotel as fast as my big butt could carry me, and this time stayed put until the morning.
Early am the next day, I packed and checked out, then went downstairs to the hotel lounge for the (included) continental breakfast. At one table were a couple of Israeli hikers that I recognized from the tour, at another table sat a very nice middle-class Russian family with an obnoxious son, of about eight or nine years old, who whinged constantly in Russian. Grabbed a taksi (taxi), another in a series of Tofas Fiats. We beeped and merged our way to the airport so that I could catch a flight to Ankara. The flight was short and sweet, and the Havas shuttle luckily was waiting to take me to the otogar. A bus was leaving for Goreme in just under ten minutes, and I got a good seat for the four-hour ride back to Cappadocia. I read most of the way, and slept well that night.
Pg1: Trip to TurkeyPg2: Oludinez and GoremePg3: Sidetrip to Syria?Pg4: Sweat shop near Mt. NemrutPg5: Sacred pools of carpPg6: Trabzon's Russian Market