So just a week after the attack on the American Embassy in
Ankara, I went to get my passport renewed...at the American Embassy in Ankara.
Fortunately, savvy traveler that I am, I was able to avoid both explosions and
tedious paperwork. Waiting and disappointment, unfortunately, was inevitable.
I began my journey
at a quarter past nine, Turkish Standard Time. The time-zone is actually
completely irrelevant, since I didn’t change time-zones at all. Mehmet drove me
over to the Konya High Speed Train (that isn’t a capitalization error, the name
of the high speed train company is High Speed Train) station. I got tickets,
and got to practice my Turkish to confirm that he’d be back to pick me up.
I learned the
Turkish words for “Departing from” and “Destination,” after giving the chick
the wrong ticket...Yes, I should have checked the times, but it was far too
early for coherent thought.
The interior was
pretty nice. Like economy class on airplanes before they decided that only
First and Business class passengers are likely to travel with femurs (Rumor has
it they’re working on a drug that will temporarily liquefy your bones for the
flight so they can cram even more people onto crappy domestic flights
invariably and inexplicably bound for Atlanta). I guess where I was going with
that is that there was actually a bit of leg room. It was as good as sitting in
the same place for two hours can get without the addition of expensive
electronics, copious amounts of booze or an attractive companion (and a little
privacy).
I elected to spend
my time gazing out of the window at the stunning Turkish landscape...at least
until I realized the area around Konya looks about like southeast Idaho which
I’ve driven through enough times that I know exactly where both of the trees
are (perhaps I’m exaggerating). Instead I zoned out and started trying to come
up with ideas for the sequel to Twin Suns
which I am (supposedly) working on.
The first
disappointment came when I studied the monitors, and noted the train’s speed. It
took a while to get up to top speed, but it topped off at 250 km/s. That’s
right. As you no doubt just calculated, 559,234 mph. While it’s still only a
paltry .08% of speedlight, it’s certainly respectable. The
disappointment came when I recalled that "saat" is hour in Turkish, so we’re only
talking 250 km/h. About 155 mph. Which is still slower than a 1992 Corvette
(top speed 179 mph), which I’ve driven.
When I got to
Ankara, I wandered about in the underground portion of the train station, seeking
an exit. Fortunately, the exploring-underground-structures skills I picked
up playing Oblivion and Fallout 3 came in handy (though I
refrained from killing anyone with an ax/plasma rifle). I found the weird
subterranean market section (oddly enough, it's not all that different from how I envisioned the city on New Vladivostok in Twin Suns), and had lunch.
When I finally made my way to the
surface it started raining (of course). I hopped in a cab, and made my way to
the embassy, where they promptly told me to piss off, since my appointment
wasn’t for half an hour. I had wishfully envisioned a dry waiting area
where they serve complimentary (overpriced would have been acceptable)
bacon-cheeseburgers and ice-cold Budweiser’s. I’ll certainly be writing to the
State Department to suggest this. Fortunately there was a bar across the street
so I slogged my way there.
The bar was closed (of course), so
I trudged back, wondering how water had entered my right shoe. I have yet to
find a satisfactory answer to this question. I loitered under the slight
overhang afforded by a nearby shop, and waited. Since I didn’t have my iPad, or
even a watch, I annoyed those around me by asking for the time every two
minutes.
At long last, it was time, so I
walked right past the massive line of Turkish people waiting for visas, flashed
my blue passport, and went right in. I briefly wondered at the logic of
detonating a bomb near the gate. The very prominent signs saying “walk right-in
if you’re American,” make it clear that none of the people waiting outside are
actually Americans, and all the security personnel are Turkish. You’d have a
better chance of actually getting a few Americans if you hit the bar across the
street from the Embassy around happy hour. Then again, I suppose most suicide
bombers aren’t burdened by an overabundance of logic.
I got in and went straight to the
special window for Americans, and got hassled by old people who didn’t get that
the big-ass flag and the words “US Citizens Only” (printed in both English and
Turkish) meant it was a special line. The person showed up, I signed the forms,
paid them, and was in and out in a matter of six minutes. It was by far the
shortest amount of time I’ve ever spent in a US government building.
The trip back wasn’t particularly
eventful, though I would like to discuss the TV on the train. It cycled through
random stuff, including cartoons, commercials and slide-show things that
appeared to be compilations of pictures from e-mail forwards. I’m 95% sure my
mom has forwarded some of them to me before. I remember some neat custom cars
(including a purple double-decker bus turned into a spaceship that looked a bit
like Astrotrain mid-transformation) and some weird hairstyles (None were as awesome as my mohawk).
The cartoons featured a penguin and
a polar bear. Interesting, as they are the Arctic Circle (where I used to work) mascots,
and two species that never ever come into contact with one another. It was
moderately funny, and visual enough that you could get it without sound (there
was no sound). The most bizarre part was that I heard the middle-aged
businessman sitting next to me laugh, not only at each cartoon, but at the same
cartoon each time it was played. They only had about twenty-minutes worth of material
that they cycled through, and I watched the same cartoons, and heard him laugh at
the same bits all four times. It was like clockwork. Weird and confusing
clockwork.
I would write some sort of conclusion
at this stage, but there isn’t much to conclude. After the trip, I went home,
ate some kofte and taught a class. Pretty typical evening. So, yeah, That’s it.
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