Kesan

We left Istanbul as prospective hitchhikers. Young pioneers in a world with an overabundance of automobiles. Ben had never hitchhiked before, and I had never done so successfully, apart from short rides to and from the ski hill when I lived in Fernie. Our intended destination for the day was a city called Kesan in the North-Western corner of Turkey. In the early morning we took first the tram, then a metrobus, and rode for three hours, going pretty much as far out of town as we could. We carefully selected our hitching spot and stood by the side of the road for about 30 minutes, watching hundreds of cars pass, before relocating. After repeating steps 1-3 a couple of times, we were pulled off the road by a couple of guys who had been laughing at us. They didn’t speak English, but did help us to get on a bus that brought us about one quarter of the way to our destination. After getting on the bus (which was next to free) we realized that Istanbul doesn’t really end. The city goes on and on, and there really isn’t a suitable place to hitchhike. That was hitchhiking lesson number 1: it doesn’t work in a city.

Once in the countryside, we found a highway and were just about to stand confidently beside it when a bus stopped beside us. Out popped a chubby little man who immediately started running frantically towards us, looking flustered and waving his arms in the air. Despite not being able to speak English, he still managed to ensure that our hitchhiking plans were thwarted for the second time that day. We got on the bus and handed over nearly all of what little money we had in our pockets. We were left with only a couple of dollars worth of Turkish lira. Ben fell asleep to the song of the bus engine while I watched Wall-E in Turkish (which is about the same as in English, since there is hardly an dialogue in the movie). When we got off the bus we found a phone and called our Couchsurfing host, who arranged to come and meet us at a grocery store near the start of town.

Ben and Talat preparing to chow down

There are only three people on Couchsurfing from Kesan. One has no information or photo on the profile, another doesn’t have a photograph of themselves (only some cartoon drawing of a scary guy with sunglasses), and the third seems relatively normal. Thankfully, I managed to convince the third to let us stay with her while we were in Kesan. However, she did cancel at the last minute. I immediately sent a request to cartoon profile picture guy, who was also kind enough to accept.

His name was Talat, and we didn’t really know what to expect from him. Turns out that he was, like everyone else we’d met in Turkey, incredible kind and hospitable. We bought some things at the grocery store and he cooked us dinner in his apartment. Since there isn’t really much going on in Kesan, we didn’t do much apart from walking around a little bit. To be honest, it is a bit of a creepy town. People walk around without smiling or looking up, and the day that we were there seemed exceptionally dreary and stagnant, as if time moved slower and everybody had a secret to hide. I felt almost as if I were in a Goosebumps novel. People would speak to us in Turkish, and when we didn’t understand, they would speak to us some more in Turkish, casually, as if they were certain we understood all that they were saying. The public transportation in Kesan consists of a few large vans that drive around at 15 km/hr on a single route through the city. Still cheaper, better, and more widely used that LA transit (the nostalgia is overwhelming when I remember trying to get around as a student using public transportation in Lethbridge). I think the most interesting thing about Kesan was the way that they announce each day over municipal loudspeakers whether or not anyone had died the day before. If people had died, they proceed to list their names in a monotonous drone, while residents stand around and listen respectfully.

Jamming by candlelight

Since Talat is a bit of a musician, we sat around and played some music after dinner, and he eventually had his friends over as well. We had a full band (nearly) with two guitars, a flutist, and a drummer. We played well into the night, and made arrangements for the following morning to bring our skills to the streets. Over an incredible “students” Turkish breakfast, Talat explained to us that he had never before seen anyone busing in Kesan, and that he had always wanted to, though had never found the courage. We played for about an hour in the city centre square, attracting absolutely no attention. Not one single person stopped to listen, though one guy did drop a lira (50 cents) in my guitar case while walking by. In fact, the only things that we accomplished was to 1) break Ben’s camera, which was blown off a wall by the wind, 2) break a guitar string, and 3) get some teenage groupies, who were apparently hiding behind a bush listening to us, and who came out to talk to us after we had finished playing.

We left Kesan immediately after busking. We bade a warm farewell to Talat, who gave me a guitar pick for the road (which has since been in my pocket), and proceeded to go stand on the side of the road. We were actually going to hitchhike this time. Nothing would stop us.

It turns out that we weren’t the only ones trying to get a ride. When we arrived, there was already another guy standing on the side of the road. After nobody picked either of us up for 10 minutes, a fourth person came and started waiting with his thumb out as well. There didn’t appear to be a line or an order, and Ben and I were getting concerned that we would be standing there for a long time. Eventually someone stopped, and since Ben and I didn’t want to be left behind, we ran frantically to be the first ones in. The guy let us in, and proceeded to stop two more times to let the other guys in as well. He was initially alone in his car, which was now completely full with 5 big men. He didn’t say a word, and for the most part seemed quite grumpy. He drove us all the way to the Turkey-Greece border before turning around to drive back the other way with his passengers. Turns out he was a pretty nice guy. We sat in no-man’s-land for 30 minutes and used our last lira coins to buy a grilled cheese salami sandwich. Then we went to Greece.

Busking in Kesan