Monday, January 7, 2013

Van: Friendliness redefined

Arrived in Van under a sheet of the purest white snow, snow so white it made Snow White look like a Negro by comparison. 
But allow me to backtrack a little. We decided to take the train to Van, experience some rail travel in Turkey and all that jazz. The journey would take us 20 hours from Kayseri to Tatvan. We boarded the train at 1845, 16/12 and we were on our way. We purchased a 4 person couchette, suffice to say it wasn't my favourite tale of travel and 20 hours in a train is way too long, there's only so much reading, music, oohing and aahing one can do. Also there wasn't a cafeteria on board despite the website claiming the contrary. We'd packed 2 wafer bars, 2 Snickers, 1 mandarin, 1 apple and 1 bottle of water. What joy?!!!
We enquired with Suleyman, the train attendant regarding a cafeteria, he gestured something, said something and then offered us cay, so we sat, had some cay with Suleyman, not understanding each other but in fellowship together over a cup of tea.
Long later we reached Tatvan, and the city was enveloped in white. Like whooah, where's the blacktop mate? I ain't no longer dreaming of a white Xmas. The next adventure was finding a bus or dolmus (Turkey's variant of a mini bus, think Thailand and it's red song thaews) to Van. You see Tatvan and Van are separated on either side by the enormous Lake Van. We had at that point befriended a young kid who was on his way to Van too. A generous station officer dropped us off at the otogar, we checked with the bus companies there and nope, no luck, no more busses running to Van that evening but we could try for a dolmus further up the road. As we were leaving the otogar, this guy on his cellphone asked us where we were heading, we answered Van. He then beckoned us to follow him, whistled down a dolmus on the other side of the road and packed us in with instructions to the driver. At that point in time the dolmus was already sardine canned and we were left standing, keep in mind the ride to Van takes about 90 minutes. Throughout all of this though people were constantly smiling, trying to talk to us, them in their limited English and us in our limited Turkish. I'll also have you know we weren't even sure the dolmus was heading to Van at this point.
Soon enough the dolmus emptied out and we managed to get seats, there was a slightly elderly gentleman on the dolmus who made sure Gaelle and I got to sit together.
Suffice to say we did manage to get to Van at about 6.30pm, stuffed our faces with pide and kebab, contacted our couchsurfing host, Cesir, met him, talked for a bit and settled in for the night.
Van though that night was magical, with lights glinting off the snow and the warmth of its Kurdish folk. I couldn't have asked for more. Oh I forgot to add also that the kid we befriended in the istasyon invited us home with him. I declined mostly due to my own inhibitions but I hope he understands that I was grateful and humbled nonetheless.

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