Turkish Trains

This past weekend, I went on a retreat with the local church that my roommates attend, and overall, it was a wonderful experience; however, what stuck out to me the most was the train trip there.

First of all, buying the train ticket in advance was the first excursion that I accomplished by myself and totally in Turkish. Well, when I say by myself, I mean my roommate gave me her ticket with a little post-it note that read "This is my friend's ticket; I need the same one please." Essentially, my role was reading the ticket-agent my script, and then handing it to her just in case I was completely un-understandable. But, still- I was alone when I did it. Honestly, I felt accomplished in just finding the train station by myself. :) When you live in a foreign country, things you did by yourself as a 5-year old in the States feel like monumental achievements.

Anyways, we rushed to leave for the train station well over an hour before our train was about to leave- which I felt was a bit unnecessary, seeing as how we already had our tickets. How wrong I was. We were leaving at the start of the Turkish "Bayram" holiday which is a 2.5 day celebration of the end of Ramadan. By the time we made it to the station, we had 45 minutes before our train left and every single seat on the train was already taken. I thought people were on the wrong train. Or maybe we were on the wrong train. Surely the train station would not overbook a train so that people would be expected to stand for a 1.5 hour train ride. Wrong again.

Standing doesn't really accurately describe our train experience; it was more like leaning against the two (or four) people who were smooshed up against you. I was actually one of the fortunate ones who got to lean against the front wall as I stood facing the people in the front row seats while I shared their leg-space-area with their luggage. I felt bad for the people who were in the car's entry-way as they didn't really get any of the air-conditioning and were more tightly packed than any metro I've ever been in.

In the midst of this hot, miserable, and slightly smelly car, I got to see a whole different side of Turkish people though. As people began crowding the entry-ways and up and down the aisle, people were moving over to try and fit 3 people where normally only 2 would sit; people were letting strangers' children sit on their laps so they didn't have to stand; and when we stopped at every station (where of course no one got off) they waved the new people in with smiles, saying "there's always room for one more." While this statement might be accurate for cookies or jell-o, I'm not sure that it was 100% factual at the time- but generous nonetheless.

In the end, it was worth it. I had a fabulous experience at the retreat, and got to take a mountain hike at sunrise to see Ephesus.

For the record, we took the bus back where we had seats, tons of leg room, and even a free beverage :o)