Out the window the sea undulates far below. Within the motors hum underneath me as the ship cuts its way through the swells of the sea. The interior of the ferry is largely devoted to parking garages with a fancy hotel on the upper decks. Carpeted corridors bathed in mirrors and shiny golden handrails take you through rooms, restaurants, shops and cafes to two huge rooms filled with plush first-class airplane seats, which happen to be the cheap seats here. Where else would you expect to find me?
As the ferry carried me from Greece to Italy I felt disoriented and restless. A year of building a large friend base in Montpellier, and building some exceptional friendships left me unprepared for the loneliness of travel. It is a loneliness that could very well be avoided if I were less shy, more outgoing, but it’s when I throw myself out of my comfort zone that my deep interior shines through once more.
The first morning on the ferry I felt like a modern-day Goldie Locks as I paced the corridors. The open deck was too cold, the covered deck too smoky, cafes to expensive, hallways lacking views and the cabin containing my chair smelled strongly of heavy drinker mixed with unbathed gypsy. The stench assaulted my nostrils as I approached the door. In short, this Goldie Locks could not find a spot that was JUST right.
I roamed the corridors, nodding as I passed fellow travelers, their faces becoming familiar with every encounter. I felt that this experience really highlighted the lessons learned on my recent journey around the continent. The lesson being this: It’s the people you meet over the course of your journey that make it unforgettable. I’m not sure how I have never caught on before. The places that come to mind as my favorites appear on that list not because of the architecture or monuments that I have seen, it’s the places where I have met people and had worthwhile exchanges with them. They are on that list because of the people.
I find that as I grow my needs in a friendship morph and change with me. The desire for a passing friendship, someone with whom to pass a night in a drunken stupor no longer appeals to me. With those criteria for a friend long forgotten, I find it more difficult to find the kind of companionship that I seek. Yet, as it becomes rarer, when these exchanges do occur, when I find a connection with someone, these moments become all the more priceless.
So below I have some vignettes of my summer travels and the people, or lack there of…I hope you enjoy!
The light bulb moment
Istanbul, Turkey
Survival Language 101
Sağol [saou] = Thanks
Merhabā [MEHR-hah-bah] = Hi
Allaha ısmarladık [ah-LAHS-mahr-lah-duhk] = Good bye
Looking out the window I saw flashbacks of Benin. Scars of development that sprang up with no sense of direction and faded away before any sense could be made of it all. Sidewalks lacked an ability to hold pedestrians, nonexistent or crumbling into nonexistence. The buildings were solid cement, square, ominous; dotted by the Turkish flag. The red crescent and star overwhelmed the landscape. I got a sense that a building was not complete without its adorning flag, as if one might forget what country they are in every time they exit a building.
The bus winded through the narrow streets, carrying me, I would soon discover, from the Asian side of town to the European.
I found Marina without much incident. Her bright pink hair making her an easy target, not only for me it seems, but for all the hecklers as well. As the first man harassed her while she waited for me on the side of the street she had no way of foreseeing that the vulgar profanities and lame pick up lines would define our interactions in Istanbul.
We took to the streets blindly, having done little prior research on what to see and do. I had covered what was most important. What to eat and drink. As the ardent coffee lover that I am, passing up the chance of experiencing a foreign countries hot beverage selection is simply unthinkable. But in the large scheme of things, we were lost. We had been told by several fellow tourists to see the famous mosques, including the blue mosque. The dilemma we found was distinguishing the famous mosques from the hillside of other fascinating mosques that dotted the city. Unlike the basic cement mosques of Benin, or the mud mosques of Mali, here the mosques had their unique style; round in the center with a varying number of minarets. We would wander upon yet another mosque, remark on its bluish hue and consider it a job well done, the blue mosque found! We did this three times before finally getting a map and discovering that we had not yet seen the Blue mosque.
Are feet carried us across treacherous streets, our stops for chai and elma chai (apple tea) were frequent and well deserved, but overall we felt like outsiders. We failed to connect with the city, wandering through the city of such ancient origins, looking upon the monuments whose ages we could hardly fathom, partaking in the kebabs and Turkish delight that filled the market place, weathering the tasteless tauntings of the men. As outsiders we arrived, and thus we departed, the same outsiders that we had been when we arrived, though slightly more jaded by tourist traps.
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