Change is a necessary evil of travel. I say evil because I’ve been cramped up in a bus seat for the past 3 hours and my limbs are falling asleep. I’m hemmed in by curtains that dangle in my air space, an arm rest that randomly whacks at my elbow, a travel bags that’s wedged in between my thigh and the window, a book that’s continually falling over as I begin to doze, a computer that self adjusts font size without my permission, and my husband’s arm is touching mine (think of the end scene in “War of the Roses” when Michael Douglas reaches out to touch Kathleen Turner’s hand and she picks it up and throws it off of hers). I’m sure there are worse evils in the world, but being cramped up is my own personal version of mental hell. It gets me grouchy inside and I start to snap at those around me. Unfortunately, Mark’s the only one who speaks English, so he receives the majority of my complaints (for the sake of estimation, we’ll say 99.9%). Let it be known that from time to time I have been known to sit still and simply enjoy myself on a long bus ride; unfortunately, that is not today’s bus reality.
Anyway, change is probably not evil… just occasionally annoying (a word we recently taught our couch-surfing host- he asked, and no, it wasn’t in regards to our behavior). Annoying change struck our liesurely travel plans when political protests flared up in Cairo, Syria, and Jordan. We had planned take buses in small leisurely spurts from Turkey going south through Syria, Jordan, and Israel into Egypt. Unfortunately, Syria is under the impression that Americans are spies, therefore visas are unavailable at the border (they can be obtained in advance for $131, but the paperwork has to be done stateside). When we obtained this information we were already on our way toward Syria, so we rerouted our plans back west through Greece. Heck, we could take a ferry over to Egypt. It turns out that this option was closed too. The Turks cancelled all ferries from Cyprus to Israel and Egypt about two months ago- something about Israel attacking a ferry of food aid bound for Palestine. Well, we could still fly from Greece to Cairo. It was expensive, but Uncle Sam was good to us this year, so we planned to pull the funds from our computer replacement stash and make the trip happen. Getting to Greece created a time crunch (and abundance of bus time) which necessitated a second flight from Istanbul to Athens, another expense, another chunk of the computer replacement savings fund gone. So, those travel changes were slightly annoying.
In addition to our travel plans being in flux, Mark and I have been trying to figure out what the heck we are going to do with the next few years of our lives. We had put all of our eggs in a University of Hawaii Graduate School basket, but Mark got word from University of Hawaii that the professor for his graduate studies program was in the process of being replaced, therefore the program was not a good fit for him for Fall of 2011. We debated about applying to other grad schools with extended deadlines; we even looked into attending graduate school in Turkey, but the area of historical focus was outside the scope of Mark’s long-term interests. We decided and undecided to backpack South America and start our family. Our plans have been in complete flux, which surprisingly, I’ve been okay with. I tend to do just fine with the big factors being crazy; it’s the little ones that get to me… like when we showed up lastnight (a Wednesday) in Konya to see the Whirling Dirvishes, the dancing praying Muslims, only to discover that they only perform once a week, on Saturdays. On our tight schedule, there was no ability to linger in Konya for 4 days; we had a schedule to stay on. So, as soon as we arrived, we had to take another 4 hour bus ride to Gureme, Capadocia. We could come back to Konya in a couple of days… cue the whining.
If I may whine just once more, I’ve finished all of the books I brought with me. It was a bitter-sweet finish because “Shantaram” contained endearing descriptions of India, but dragged on forever with detailed descriptions that got in the way of simply getting lost in the never-ending story. Anyway, I was without entertainment (unless you count Turkish television, which I don’t). I have my ipod and a big open window, but otherwise I’m surrounded by the misery of my ass falling asleep and the occasional gust of someone else breaking wind (and, no, I don’t mean Mark or myself).
At least the scenery out my window is beautiful and ever-changing. One minute it’s like the green agricultural plains of North Dakota and the next minute we’re in the sediment-layered Bookcliffs of Grand Junction, Colorado. Turkey can boast a diversity of landscape including clusters of tall purple mountains and lone jetting snow-capped covered peaks. Plus, the coastline stretches on forever which adds its own excitement and diversity. So, really I shouldn’t be complaining. I mean, cramped bus seat or not, how many Americans get an opportunity like 5 full months to travel? Okay, okay, I’m done whining (until the next bus attendant forgets my free cookie and hot Nescafe).
No comments:
Post a Comment