February 21, 2014
Killing time in Ankara: And visa collection day
The next few days passed with glorious warm sunshine and me being a little frustrated that I had to sit around in a boring city instead of being out there cycling. My host Merve was really nice, but she was working all day, leaving me home alone with her cat, Lola Lupack. At least this cat was as entertaining as her name, and as she had just had an operation she had to wear a big plastic funnel collar to stop her scratching the wound, which made her even more entertaining and, if I may be so bold, look utterly ridiculous. I took some walks around the city, spent a lot of time sitting in parks, finally finished the Dostoevsky that I'd been reading since Moldova, revisited Ataturk's mausoleum, watched some more 'Flight of the Conchords' and went shopping for a new bike. In this last task I was aided by a man named Hakan, who was another that had offered to host me in the city and, despite my rejecting his offer on the unusual grounds that he lived too far away from the Kazakhstan embassy, he met with me and acted as translator at the bike shop so they could understand what kind of bike I wanted. You may be wondering what I was doing looking at buying a new bike. Was I finally giving up on the useless piece of junk that has carried me this far? Of course not, I just fitted an expensive new bottom bracket to it! No, no, I had just been feeling that my bike was getting a bit lonely and could use some company for the onward journey, so naturally to try and somehow have another bike next to me was a logical and completely sane course of action for such a long distance cycle tourist in complete control of all of his mental faculties.
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In the end I didn't buy a bike (I don't think it would have been possible to tether it to my current one anyway) but on Thursday I went to a couchsurfing meeting at a bar with Merve. This was rather an interesting couchsurfing meeting because, instead of the usual crowd of traveler types, the attendees were mostly Turkish people with real jobs that only hosted travelers and didn't travel much themselves. Some of them also held rather important jobs, such as a senior police officer and a Presidential security guard. Another introduced himself as the Foreign Minister. That seemed like rather too much of an important job. "You're the Foreign Minister?" I asked.
"Yes. I work. Foreign Minister." but he looked confused. He didn't speak much English.
"I mean, that's a really important job isn't it?"
"Yes. Foreign Minister."
Just then an American girl who was sitting near us interjected, "I think he means that he works at the Foreign Ministry."
"Oh! That makes more sense."
The American girl, Lauren, was herself doing an internship at the American embassy. I guess now you are getting a picture of what kind of city Ankara is. I didn't meet very many people that weren't working either in diplomatic, polictical or security circles. I felt like James Bond. Lauren was nice though, she hailed from Texas but traveled a lot and told me that she could speak very good Farsi although, as an American, it would be almost impossible for her to get a visa to visit Iran.
"It's even more difficult because I can speak Farsi," she explained, "as soon as they find that out, they assume I must be a spy."
"Yes, this is why I try very hard not to learn any languages," I said, although in truth it's because I'm lazy.
"But languages are fun."
"Languages are not fun, languages are difficult. What was the point in you spending all that time learning the language of a country you aren't even able to visit? You could have spent that time watching 'Flight of the Conchords.'"
I think she might have thought I was a bit of an idiot but that was okay because I was pretending to be one, on account of the fact that I thought maybe she was a spy actually working for Iran and keeping an eye on me. Having been granted an Iranian visa, I naturally assumed I was being watched now. There was also an Iranian couple that came, stayed twenty minutes and then left. This was undoubtedly suspicious, I was definitely being trailed by someone. On the walk home with Merve (played by Ursula Andress) I was sure we were being followed, the prelude to an exciting walk-chase scene in the movie involving nervous looks over the shoulder, a slight quickening of the pace, and pulling into a restaurant to buy some fava. We made it home to the apartment safely and triple bolted the door.
But before we left the bar I met a couple of interesting characters that were not moving in diplomatic circles and I'd like to rewind back and describe them too. For example there was a fantastic Englishman named Robin, in his forties and a resident of Ankara for about fifteen years. He worked as an English teacher and he had wild hair and a slightly eccentric manner that will mean he'll be perfectly played by the Doc from 'Back to the Future.' He spoke with great enthusiasm and charisma and was tremendous company. Also speaking with great enthusiasm was a young Turkish man who was going rather bald. He told me that he had studied in England, in Southampton, and that he hated it because the English were so unfriendly.
"Oh, you should meet Robin over here. He'll change your mind."
"And I worked in a Kebab shop in London for a Turkish man. I was paid 22 pounds a day for 12 hours work." He had ignored my comment about Robin.
"Well that wasn't very nice of the Turkish man. And you think the English are unfriendly? He wasn't very friendly."
"I worked seven days a week. I was living in a flat with a Polish guy." He had ignored my comment about the Turkish man.
"And how much were you paying for this flat?" I was wondering why he did this at all.
"I paid 110 pounds a week." I did the maths, it would take him five days to make rent, leaving him 44 pounds to live on.
"I spent all my time partying, drinking, f*cking, gambling, going to strip clubs."
I doubted the truthfulness of this final comment, on account of the fact that he was apparently working for 84 hours a week and only had 44 pounds to spend. They must have been some cheap strip clubs.
The credibility of this young bald man's tales were further called into question when he started talking about his female housemate that he was 'f*cking' and then told me that he had previously been living in a house with six girls.
"Where you f*cking all them too?"
He looked deep in thought for a moment then said with a straight face, "No, I was f*cking five of them."
I looked at his prematurely bald head and thought, 'I know a man named Gerry, you and him would get along really, really great.'
The next morning was Friday, visa collection day. I got up at seven and walked again through Dickmen Valley to the Kazakhstan embassy, arriving just as the gates were being opened. I was greeted by the cheerful little cuddly teddy bear in the lace underwear and was handed my passport complete with 30-day visa valid from the 5th of July to the 5th of August. I'm pretty sure that is 32 days, but lets not split hairs about it. I thanked the cuddly bear and headed off towards the Uzbekistan embassy.
Another hour of walking later I arrived and found the side gate, which had been locked before, unlocked and I walked down to the door, which had been closed before, now open and walked into the little room and up to the service window, which had been open before, now shuttered up. I could see on the wall that the opening hours were from 10.00-17.00 and it was now 10.20 so I just sat down and waited. Ten minutes later a man appeared and opened up the shutters, to whom I explained that I was here to collect my visa. He took my passport and flicked through a tray of applications, fishing mine out. I'm pretty sure my application had been sitting in that tray untouched for the past week and only now did the man begin processing the visa, which fully explains why they initially said it would take 12 days.
He asked me if I wanted a 30-day visa and I said "Erm, no, a 15-day visa. It says right there on the application form there, number of days, you see, 15."
"Okay, how many entries you want? One, two, three?" he asked.
"Just one please. Again, you see on the form there, where I've written the word 'one' in the 'number of entries' box."
"Okay. 15 day visa, one entry, is 70 dollars." He started to explain to me that I needed to go to a bank to pay for it, and there was another man who was also going to the bank for me to go with. But then I was just told to give my money to this man and he would go and do it for me. So I gave him 70 dollars and sat back down. This was great because it saved me from another long wait in the bank, but instead I had a long wait in the Uzbekistan embassy, because I evidently wasn't going to get my passport back until this complete stranger that I had entrusted my money to came back with the receipt. Fortunately he did and I was given my passport back complete with one Uzbekistan visa. Visa collection day had gone off without a hitch, I now had visas for Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan and I had only one more 'Stan' visa to obtain (relax mum, its not Afghanistan)
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