Thursday, January 10, 2013

We Arrive in Istanbul and it is not Taken 2




Finally landed in Istanbul and am safe and sound and snuggly in my host’s apartment (more on my host later). Getting here though, is another story. I landed in Turkey at 4:27 pm, slightly earlier than scheduled, and expected to find Julie outside my gate all smiles, ready for us to embark on our travels. Of course, she was not there. And the airport has no wifi, so I had no means of contacting her. Welcome to Istanbul! Commence immediate panic attack! At this point I am trying my best to keep my wits about me. Get myself past customs with a fake semblance of calm while neurotically checking my phone for wifi, and alas, there she is, my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (passport check). I have never felt so relieved to see a brown haired white person in my entire life. From then, I thought, all is well. As long as we found each other, whatever happens, we will figure it out. WELL, “figuring out” how to get from the airport to our host’s apartment ended up taking 5 hours. Yeah, we got it aaallll figured out.
Long story (a mistaken taxi ride, multiple friendly stranger encounters, lots of awkward language barriers, an emergency starbucks-tervention, a long bus ride, and a lot of walking around the same street) short, we made it. And in the process we discovered how friendly the Turkish population is!
So after months of our “strategic, detail-oriented planning,” we still end up being stupid bumbling American girls who have no idea where they are going. Great. But if there is any good thing about Taken 2 being made into an actual movie (I mean seriously, the plotline alone is…questionable…), it is that now, whenever we majorly fck up we can say, “hey, at least we were not kidnapped and sold into sex trafficking and had to be rescued by our dad only to have to later rescue him when he gets taken in Istanbul.” Half glass full (of delicious Turkish tea), eh?

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