Ships of Fools

Sat on the 1 pm ferry to Bandırma, reading Foucault's musings on the Renneissance connection of travel, madness and water, and thinking morbid thoughts in the 'am I going the right way' vein. Madmen were often expelled from medieval cities by being handed over to a crew of a ship and forced to wander a strange landscape on the other side of the sea. An ultimate enslavement to ultimate 'freedom.'

In Bandırma, I asked some guy about the Bus Station. He went out of his way to push me into the right dolmuş. At the bus station I got a ticket in 2 seconds. It's easy - each bus company has guys trying to veer customers to their booth.

The conductor on the bus to Edremit was very much interested in me. Unfortunately, he spoke no English. When he found out that I didn't follow soccer, he quickly lost interest.

Got to Edremit at 7 pm. The next bus to Bergama was at 8. Within 5 minutes, the dudes from the bus company had sat me down for some tea and were asking me to play them some songs. I tried to explain that I was learning and pulled out my learner's book. They looked at the songs and started singing them to me. Half an hour later, I was listening to their tape collection in their car. Amazing what you can convey with no language - marital status, circumcision, army service, favourite soccer team, etc.

Got to Bergama at 11 pm. More precisely, got to a field in the middle of nowhere at 11pm, where I had no choice but to share a taxi to get to Bergama through the pelting rain. At 11:30 the doors of Pension Athene were shut, all was dark. It was an immense relief when a similing motherly type opened the door and showed me to a lovely room in a 160 y.o. Ottoman building, turning on an electric blanket.