Big Bertha*

Are you, like, really into physical geography?  I’m not.  Not one bit.  In fact, despite giving intro Physical Geography 101 the ol’ college try, it was a try barely worthy of college-level academic rigour.  What I am interested in, however, is the ramifications of human alternations of physical geography, and how humans subsequently interact with their new built environment.  Turkey is like a big project in which the state says, “Hey guys, let’s [give some project the ol’ college try]” and everyone is all, “Umm” but can’t even articulate a coherent thought because the state doesn’t care and goes ahead and does it anyway.  Like build a massive dam and shift an entire city uphill.  Like Artvin.  The Nelson, BC, of eastern Turkey. 

What I liked about arriving in Artvin is that my driver, a kindly tow-truckist, took me right to the bus depot where I was able to purchase a ticket for Erzurum and also have time to sit an eat a kebab, which eastern Turkey had the market cornered on in terms of quality.  Nothing seems to be cheap in Turkey, however, and I clutched my 25 lira ticket and $5 durum kebab greedily.  I think I may have also splurged on either orange juice, or ayran, but not both.

The bus ride to Erzurum was so relaxing and well deserved in my opinion.  I got to plug in my iPod and really appreciate the Turkish road network.  We stopped for a food break around 8pm at some outpost in the desert and a young student started talking to me.  His main question was, “Why did you choose to come to Turkey?” and it was hard to explain that it wasn’t just Turkey I was interested in and that Turkey just happened to be the current overarching state apparatus governing Asia Minor, one of the crossroads of history.  The role Turkey plays in the Western imagination is hard to grasp myself, much less explain to one from Europe’s own Other. 

We arrived in Erzurum in good time and at the train station I discovered that all the second class berths were sold out and that I must purchase a first class ticket if I wanted to continue on.  It was 11pm, and my alternative was finding a place to sleep and waiting all day to get on a train the following evening, and I doubt I would have made up the savings the following day so I splurged on a first class berth for $50 and couldn’t have been happier with my decision to this day. 

I wandered around the city for an hour or so trying to find an open kebab shop—which, let me tell you, is the easiest thing in the world when you’re in any other country in the world with even a marginal Turkish population (which would be every country in the world—but there was not one to be found or open.  Turks don’t drink Turkish coffee or operate round the clock kebab shops.  Huh.  What next, do Chinese people not all eat greasy pork fried rice all the time?  Travelling is the worst when your deeply ingrained cultural stereotypes are rocked.  I went abroad to confirm my prejudices, not challenge them.

Anyway, what I mean to say is that I had a hard time stocking up on provisions for the train ride.  I went into a grocery store and discovered that half of the entire store consisted of candy aisle, followed by an aisle for tea, and then a few canned goods and things that would be of no use to me on a train.  So I bought about 4 kg of plain yogurt and got ready. If I had only known that my first class berth would include a mini fridge (that worked!!!) then I would have bought some juice.  Nothing like a good juice.

The train was late by 1 hour getting into the station and 4 hours getting out of the station so in that time I was able to enjoy a very peaceful sleep.  This is preferable compared with my usual experience on trains where I get all excited about the prospect of an overnight train and how I get to sleep on one and then ultimately can’t sleep at all because of all the jerkiness and then arrive at 5am all tired and bleary-eyed and end up passing out in a park later on in the day because I’m tired and grumpy.  So way to go, Turkey, in being totally incapable of managing your rail network.  

*There was some sort of cannon used by the Byzantines or Ottomans named "Big Bertha" that caused women to give birth it was so powerful and loud.  I don't know if the Turkish name Bertha and the word birth are connected but this title is nothing if not apropos.