A series of unfortunate events

A series of unfortunate events. That's exactly what our trip this weekend seemed to be. Not that anything went seriously wrong, just that things didn't seem to go quite right. And really, all I'm talking about is the transportation. I expected there to be issues - Seker Bayram is one of the big holidays in Turkey (the end of Ramadan) but it wasn't too bad in terms of crowding until we were making our way home on Sunday. But the story starts early Friday morning. We got up and out before 7 in the hope that we would make it to Pendik in time for the 8:15 ferry. After waiting over 45 minutes for a minibus in front of the school we weren't holding our breath anymore. So imagine our surprise when we got to the ferry terminal and could still see the ferry. Rush, hurry....run on out....oh - the ferry just pulled away. So close, and yet so far. At least there's no real schedule for the rest of our transportation. So we waited for an hour and a half for the next ferry, at least there was no way we could be late for it! The only part of trip that worked out exactly as it should have was the bus ride from the ferry in Yalova to Bursa. No problems there. Arrive in Bursa, easily find the bus that our book said we should take into the area our hotel is in. Things are looking up, until we ride the bus directly past where we were supposed to get off. No signs made it apparent that indeed this was it. Eventually we made it back to our hotel, just a bit later then it could have been. Afterwards we chose to walk a bit more - seemed safer...or not...definitely took the long round about route. It was a bit of a trying day.

Day two: hopefully this will be better. Or not. We went up to Uludag mountain, fairly pleasant and a lovely view of the autumn leaves. Only there isn't really any way down. We start walking, get on a minibus which takes us where we are *supposed* to be able to get a minibus back to Bursa. Not so much an option. Instead we end up heading back up the mountain to the town we just walked down from. Tried to get a hotel to call a taxi for us, seemed to be a miscommunication (not so surprising with my bad Turkish), finally the doorman took care of us and we had a minibus entirely to ourselves back down. Thinking we had learned our lesson we took a dolmush back to our hotel area...better then walking in the rain. Only we end up in the rain anyways since it didn't go quite where we were expecting and dropped us a 30 minute walk from our hotel in the pouring rain. Completely soaked upon return (and we even tried to do the smart thing that time!). That is it for today!

Sunday we had to get back to campus, and while nothing really went wrong (unless you count our bus in Bursa just stopping on the side of the road for 20 minutes for no apparent reason - the driver just thumbed the wheel several times, waited, did it again, and then unexpectedly got back in and drove the bus off again. Still don't understand that one) it was just a long trip. The way there took us 4-5 hours, coming back was more like 9. Lots of traffic, a 3 hour wait for a ferry since the other ones had already sold out, a long wait in the cold for the minibus back to campus.

There's a certain sense of satisfaction in having made all these things work, but also a sens that we were definitely under a transportation curse this weekend. I just hope it doesn't last much longer!