Day 2: To Edirne! (Istanbul/Edirne)

I guess I’m adjusting to the time difference because I only woke up once last night, and I could hardly drag my ass out of the bed this morning (just like home!). When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the sound of rain through the open window. And not just a little rain, either. Briefly I thought about just cancelling my Edirne trip altogether but that would have been being too lazy even for me.

So down the stairs I went to eat breakfast, catch up on the news, check e-mails and chat a bit. I was hoping that the rain would ease up, but no such luck. I stopped in next door to the grocery store to buy some credit for my phone on the way to the bus station. I’m still not entirely sure how this system works. The man pulled out a little machine, took my phone number, put it into the machine and then printed me a receipt. There’s a lot of Turkish on the receipt, and I don’t know if I have to enter a code or something. Oh well. I’ll figure it out later, probably amidst some dire emergency when I absolutely need the phone.

This morning I took the tram to the metro, except the tram stop and metro stop are somewhat far away from one another so I had to walk quite a distance in the rain. The metro conveniently drops you smack in the middle of the Otogar, or bus station, in Istanbul. It’s somewhat of a mad house even in the rain. I went to the first bus company I saw that was from my trusty guidebook only to learn that the first bus to Edirne was full, so I was bumped to the 12:00 Noon. God bless the woman at the ticket counter, she didn’t speak a lick of English so we used pictograms and gestures to explain things. She told me to go to “Peron 127,” which I thought was some kind of Argentine dude but it turns out that on the other side of the station there are numbers indicating different bus lines and destinations. It took me about half an hour of wandering around until I finally broke down and asked the lady at the information desk, who responded the best she could with “There” and “Straight” and “Close.”

It’s a good thing that I like lentil soup, because that seems to be the breakfast of choice around here. I stopped in a local eatery for a bowl since I knew I wouldn’t be eating until arriving in Edirne at 2:30-ish. The soup is a yellowish color with flecks of…I don’t know what. Lentils, I guess. It’s like a thin lentil puree. It’s always served with a lemon wedge and a big bowl of sliced bread, which you dunk into the soup and eat along with it. Even though I like it I’m pretty sure I’m going to get sick of it if I can’t find a little more diversity in breakfast foods.

I guess I’ve only been in areas where people are accustomed to tourists, but so far people have been really friendly and helpful. Smile at them and they smile back, ask a question and they’ll give you some kind of answer even if it’s in Turkish and they don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. And for the most part, you don’t detect any insincerity – people really do want to help you, and they feel bad that you might be experiencing a slight bit of distress.

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Whenever I arrived at Edirne, I was concerned about getting a ticket back on the same day so I immediately went to the ticket office. They told me there was a bus at 6:00 PM and 10:00PM; worried that if I left at 6 it wouldn’t be enough time, I opted for the later one. Although I was rushing, whenever I came back outside I found that the “servis” had left me. The bus station in many towns is far away from the city centre, so the classy bus companies run a shuttle into the city called a “servis.” So without the convenience of the servis, I was forced to take the dolmus. The dolums is like dala-dala in Tanzania, as in raggedy, broke-down and operating with a questionable safety record. They run on pre-defined routes and you pay a low fee to use it.

The directions I received from the Department of Holy Places said I was supposed to get on the #5 dolmus. Naturally, I got on the #3. It’s a well-known and established fact that I don’t know WTF I’m doing when it comes to city buses. Put me within the proximity of a city bus and something will go wrong. So the conductors of these buses are about as helpful as they are in Tanzania, which means you just try to figure things out on your own. I knew that the House of Baha’u’llah was near to the largest and most famous mosque in Edirne, the Sulemiye Camii, so I was peering out the window the entire time looking for its minarets. Eventually I realized that, as it turns out, every mosque built during the Ottoman period has the same type of minaret and there are only about, oh, a BILLION of them around.

Eventually we arrived in a very busy section of town, and I decided I’d had enough of dolmus #3. When I alighted, I studied the map provided in my guidebook. I got pissed off at the map, pissed off at myself, pissed off at the piece of pavement I was standing on…basically I was pissed off. I hate being lost. So I opened my laptop and got the name of the street that’s nearest to the House of Baha’u’llah. I asked a nearby shopkeeper where “Kucuk Arasta Street” was and he mumbled something about the bazaar. I didn’t realize at the time that he was trying to tell me to walk through the bazaar and the street was on the other side; rather, I thought he thought I was a stupid tourist that just wanted the bazaar.

Whenever I walked to the bazaar, I saw the Sulemiye Camii there in all its glory. It had been right next to me the entire time. All I had to do was look up. Just freaking look up! So anyway, I telephoned the caretaker and gave her a description of where I was. She asked me to walk into the bazaar and look for a bread shop; I didn’t realize that she meant the bread shop on the other side of the bazaar. While I was walking through the bazaar, I thought I saw the Greatest Name out of the corner of my eye inside a jewelry shop. Then again, there’s a lot of Arabic-looking script stuff around, I thought. But I went back to see, and there was the Greatest Name and a picture of `Abdu’l-Baha inside the shop. Glory be!

I hesitantly stepped inside and said, “Allah’u’abha?”. The man jumped up and grinned at me, extended his hand, said “Allah’u’abha!” and then started jabbering away in Turkish. I asked for the bread shop but whenever I say the word for bread, I guess it sounds like kebap. He makes a quick phone call and the next thing I know this little boy, dressed in a suit, shows up at my side. He leads me to a kebap restaurant, and then I start protesting. A waiter sidles up next to me and says, “Allah’u’abha?”. It seems we’re everywhere in the town!

I called the caretaker and gave the waiter the phone. They communicated…something…and then the little kid suddenly began leading me somewhere else. Along the way we met the caretaker, who lovingly guided me to the visitor’s house. Shortly after we arrived, the place fills up with about ten people. The caretaker tells me they’re also visitors but from Turkey.

No matter what else I do in this country, this experience will be near the top. These other Bahá'ís…it’s hard to describe. It’s hard to explain how you can travel to another country where you don’t speak the language, you don’t know a soul, 90% of the time you don’t have a clue what’s going on around you and then you meet these people and you say, “Allah’u’abha” to them and their faces light up. There’s an instant connection between hearts. An instant bond. You’re overwhelmed with the feeling of the true oneness of humanity; you really feel that you are a global citizen where national boundaries fade away and language and understanding become irrelevant because there’s that spiritual love between you. I’ll admit, I cried a little bit after I left because it touched me so much. Wherever you go, wherever you are, if you wander around shouting “Allah’u’abha!” enough someone is going to find you and take care of you.

The people were from two families on vacation together. They were from a town called Meksin in the southern part of the country on the Mediterranean. At first their kids began to speak to me in snippets of English, mostly identifying animals, but then the father of one of the families began to talk to me. We’re immediately like brothers, laughing and joking and trying our damndest to understand each other. Using the map in my guidebook and my Turkish phrasebook, we worked out a lot of things. I began to understand that they come to Edirne once a year on their vacation and that they live in a house on the sea near Meksin. They were so enthused to meet me and to find out I’m sticking around to teach in Gumushane.

Because the kids were restless, they departed early but not before they gave me their phone number, directions to their house, sentences in Turkish to ask at the otogar (bus station) for people to direct me to their house and a very firm directive that I WILL be their guest in Meksin before I leave Turkey. Okay, hakuna matata!

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The actual House of Baha’u’llah was pretty amazing. The caretaker, apologizing for her English (for no reason, it was fine), explained to me that the Holy Family lived in several places near each other. She pointed out the first one and the place where Mirza Yahya administered the poison and then we visited the actual House and the garden down the street where they moved afterwards. Apparently while in Edirne, He revealed the Tablet of Ahmad, the letters to the Kings and Rulers of the world and quite a few other things. I was able to pray in the House before we all went down to the garden area. Once there, I had sour plums, ripe plums and mini-apples with the others.

Taking the 10:00 PM bus was probably a bad idea. I mean, I know it was a bad idea but I didn’t want to feel constantly rushed about being here. So now I’m typing this up in a kebap restaurant while waiting for the servis to take me to the otogar. Then it’s about 3 hours back to Istanbul at which point I have to get back to my hotel…”somehow,” as we say in Tanzania. I think the public transport will have stopped working by 1:00 AM, so I might have to track down a “taksi” (taxi). Or just sleep in the gutter, which is probably what I’m going to feel like doing once I get there.

But here’s the bright spot in all of this: Turkish buses are amazing. Yes, amazing. That’s right, you heard me say it. I never thought I’d say “bus” and “amazing” in the same sentence, but there it is. Each seat has its own television with 15 channels; there’s a video-game control where you can play games (I played Tekken 2); and there’s a steward on board who serves you your choice of beverage, water, a snack, a newspaper and tea/coffee. The seats are large and comfortable, and there’s plenty of air-conditioning for everyone! No chickens, no goats, no people who forgot to bathe for 3 weeks, no crazies, no luggage in the aisle. It’s like I died and went to transportation heaven!

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I've given up on maintaining my dignity. We arrived in Istanbul just prior to 1:00 AM, but not at the main otogar. We were at some auxiliary otogar, but the bus company ran servis to various places around the city. So I stumbled out of the bus muttering "Aksaray servis?" asking about servis to the nearest place I assumed they would go. The driver was very patient with me, and I caught a taksi the rest of the way. However, whenever we arrive at the place I told him (Cemberlitas) I started arguing with him that it wasn't the right place. Then suddenly it dawned on me...uh, this is the right place. It just looked radically different at 1:00 AM, so different that I couldn't even recognize it.

I'm supposed to meet my friend Theresa tomorrow at 9:00 AM for some touristing. I expect to be absolutely dead by the end of the day. I'll rehash my brief experience with the wrestling festival in Edirne tomorrow; now it's bed time.