To Istanbul
We left Sofia at 10 Monday morning on a bus to Istanbul. It was a nine hour bus ride, but thankfully the bus was relatively empty, which meant that we each had two seats to ourselves. As I'm sure you can imagine, that made the trip much more bearable.
The most notable part of the experience was crossing the border. There was no bathroom on the bus, so by the time we reached the Bulgarian side of the border, we had to go pretty badly. After we went through customs, we were permitted to leave the bus to use the WC, as it is called in these parts. You may be wondering why I am telling you all of this, but don't worry, you are about to find out. When we walked into the bathroom, we noticed that it was very different from any of the WCs that we had seen in the U.S. and in Eastern Europe. This is what the "toilet" looked like:
It is basically a hole in the ground with two little places for your feet, and a chain on the wall that you pull to flush it. I have run into a few more of these since I have been in Turkey, but the first time I saw one, it was a bit of a shock.
At the Turkish border, we each had to buy a 90 day multiple entry visa for Turkey, which is this cool sticker that they put in my passport. It took us an hour to go through customs on the Turkish side, because we had to take all of our bags off of the buss to be inspected by a customs official. We arrived in Istanbul at about 6:30 and were greeted by part of our group, as well as Folke (our professor) and his wife and son, who took us to the University.
The most notable part of the experience was crossing the border. There was no bathroom on the bus, so by the time we reached the Bulgarian side of the border, we had to go pretty badly. After we went through customs, we were permitted to leave the bus to use the WC, as it is called in these parts. You may be wondering why I am telling you all of this, but don't worry, you are about to find out. When we walked into the bathroom, we noticed that it was very different from any of the WCs that we had seen in the U.S. and in Eastern Europe. This is what the "toilet" looked like:
It is basically a hole in the ground with two little places for your feet, and a chain on the wall that you pull to flush it. I have run into a few more of these since I have been in Turkey, but the first time I saw one, it was a bit of a shock.
At the Turkish border, we each had to buy a 90 day multiple entry visa for Turkey, which is this cool sticker that they put in my passport. It took us an hour to go through customs on the Turkish side, because we had to take all of our bags off of the buss to be inspected by a customs official. We arrived in Istanbul at about 6:30 and were greeted by part of our group, as well as Folke (our professor) and his wife and son, who took us to the University.
posted by Erin Kay at 8:09 PM
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