I looked around, hoping to find some sign of anything that could be on offer. I didn't see anything, but a couple of toddlers and I was sure they weren't the subject of my host's question. I obviously looked as confused as I was because my host rephrased his question; "Would you like anything?" I stared at the computer screen and typed in my response.
Murat read my answer and asked his mother for some tea. This had been going on for some time and appeared to be continuing for a while. I didn't mind, though, as this was definitely a unique experience for me - conversing soley through the use of Google translate!
To understand why, we have to go back a couple of days to my sudden departure from Georgia. Faced with the pospect of spending a couple of days at the beach while construction crews dug up the city I would be staying in, I had decided to hop on the first bus to Turkey, for wherever it was destined. It happened to be bound for Tranbzon, a city on the Black Sea coast. As my sandals had fallen apart the day before, I spent my time waiting for the bus to depart searching out cheap footwear.
The journey itself was great, with an almost unbroken view of the sea for much of the 7 hour journey. I was back in Turkey and ready to begin the next stage of my trip. I took out my guide book and swotted up on my destination, a place I hadn't expected to visit and therefore knew very little about.
Trabzon turned out to be a nice place, and a million miles away from the seedy port town the book had portrayed it to be. The sun was shining and everyone was in summer mode; performers singing and dancing, children playing in the park and everyone looking relaxed and smiling.
The highlight of my stay there, however, was my day trip out to the Sumela monastery, a Byzantine construction. The monastery had been carved out of a sheer cliff and seemed to hang suspended high above the valley. I had seen a similar thing with a Buddhist monastery in China, but it didn't make the feat here any less impressive.
A few weeks previous, I had arranged to have a Couchsurfing host in Ezurum as it was to be my first stop back in Turkey. Due to my change of plan, I contacted my would-be host to inform him and ask if it would still be OK. He assured me that it would be and arranged to meet me at the bus station of the town just prior to the city I had expected to stay. As the bus pulled up to a deserted station, though, I began to worry that he may not appear and that I would be stuck in a town I knew nothing about at midnight. Luckily, the guy sitting next to me on the bus saw that sometihng was not quite right and whipped out his phone. A minute later, I had the mobile pressed to my ear and I could hear a tiny voice in English ask me what the problem was. I explained my situation and the voice asked me to give the phone back. A couple of minutes later I had the phone in my hand again and Tiny Voice informed me that everything had been taken care of. I was going to stay the night with my bus companion - the brother of the Tiny Voice, and his family in Ezurum.
One of the most surreal encounters of my life, though, was complete when it turned out that among the household of 12 people no-one spoke a word of English apart from Tiny Voice, who was in Istanbul at that time. The whole family obviously had questions to ask, but felt powerless to converse with me. That was until the little 10-year old girl suddenly jumped to her feet and raced away, to return a minute later holding a laptop. When she opened up the translation tool page I had to admit to being impressed by her ingenuity. So, a couple of hours of questions back and forth between the whole family ensued and it was great fun.
The next day, Murat (my bus companion) took me to the otogar and helped me get the right bus for the next part of my journey. That was how I spend my first few days back in Turkey and reminded me why I loved the country so much.
No comments:
Post a Comment