Go home!
Make a Run Across the Border and Don't Come Back!
In June of 1996, when I was serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Armenia, a friend and I decided to take a bus from Yerevan to Istanbul. The trip was going to take about three days, but you couldn't beat the price. I think it was about $75 or so... I'd have to look the exact sum up in my diary. But as Americans, we were novelties. In fact, when we were in line buying our tickets, some of the other passengers pointed, whispered, and stared. They wondered why in the world Americans would subject themselves to such a primitive transportation mode.
We left for Istanbul at 5:00pm on June 22nd, 1996 and headed for the northwestern Armenian city of Gyumri, which is near Turkey. We were going there to pick up more passengers. I wish I could tell you that we were going to cross into Turkey from Gyumri, which would have made our travel shorter and easier, but because Armenians and Turks are not friendly toward each other, we had to detour into Georgia. We drove northward into the night, crossing into Georgia sometime around 10:00pm. That was a simple affair. Customs officials came on board the bus and checked our passports, then allowed us to pass. We continued to drive in a northwestward direction. I couldn't sleep because it was chilly and noisy, but I couldn't look out the window because it was dark. So I sat on the bus and waited for the sun to rise.
Sometime around 5:00am, the bus came to a screeching halt. I squinted and saw that we were in a line. There were several buses and cars ahead of us. A sign with Russian and the squiggly letters that comprise Georgian script was posted to the right of the beat up road we were parked on. There were a couple of small grassy areas nearby that were dotted with luminous wildflowers. Upon closer inspection, I saw that human feces, trash, and vodka bottles also littered the area. People from our bus had staked out an area and were eating bread and fruit and were drinking vodka. My friend and I were invited to join them. As the day wore on, we drew closer to the border. The huge fences that marked the end of Georgia and the beginning of Turkey came into view. The movies I had seen in the 1980s about people who had defected from Communist rule came to mind.
When we finally reached the border, my friend and I saw very young Russian soldiers carrying machine guns and looking very cocky. They were surprised when they found out we knew Armenian. When they looked at our passports and saw that we were Americans, the Russian guards told us that we needed visas in order to leave Georgia. We knew this was a blatant untruth, since we had checked this out both at the American and Georgian embassies. As holders of multiple entry Armenian visas, we were allowed to pass through Georgia without a visa. The guards were trying to intimidate us into giving them bribes. We had heard this would happen and were prepared to deal with it. Somehow our bus driver managed to get us out of Georgia and into Turkey without incident, although it had taken about six or seven hours to do it.
The Turkish border guards were very professional. We had no trouble stamping into Turkey and we were very happy to see the end of our border purgatory. As the bus continued to meander its way into the country, I noticed how beautiful the landscape was. There were trees in Turkey and it looked like something out of a fairyland. I started to relax a bit, although I was tired. We were stopped by the police who came on the bus, no doubt looking for wayward Kurds. Finding nothing amiss, they allowed us to go on our way. We worked our way upward to the Black Sea coast, to the city of Trabzon. A couple of the passengers would be disembarking there.
I recall thinking that Turkey was so much more modern compared to Armenia, and it is. The further west we went, the more modern things became. In fact, just crossing the border made me immediately notice that streelights were working. At that time in Armenia, they weren't. But as the travel continued, I grew crankier and more tired. I can't sleep when I'm on transportation. My friend, by contrast, was able to nap. I was up for three days. When we finally arrived in Aksaray, on the Asian side of Istanbul, she and I quickly found a hotel and crashed. The next day, we went to Taksim, which is on the European side. We stayed in Istanbul for several days and had quite a few adventures. I don't remember being much fun to travel with at that time. I'm surprised she was still talking to me at the end of the trip.
We went to Bulgaria next, taking the trip by bus. I was accosted by a creepy man in a bus station when I asked him where a restroom was. Apparently, he liked my ample bosom and decided to reach out and grab one of my breasts. I ended up punching him. About two hours later, I decided to change clothes in a bathroom and asked another man where one was. As I was changing, he barged in on me, told me I was sexy, and asked me to go with him! I think I screamed a few epithets at him and he took off in a rush. Had I not been so angry, it would have been a very funny sight.
At the Bulgarian border, I was harrassed. A border guard made me empty my entire backpack out on a table. I'm not sure what he was looking for, but it sure scared the hell out of me. I couldn't understand a word he was saying. He was just shouting at me. When he found nothing, he allowed me to pack up again. I was royally pissed off, of course, but there was nothing I could do about it.
We went to Sofia and stayed for several days. My friend went to Blagovgrad to see a friend who was at a monastary and I stayed with a Peace Corps Volunteer posted in Bulgaria. He very graciously allowed me to stay with him for several days. I'm sure he was ready for me to go by the end. I went out and got him a basket full of goodies as an appreciation gift. He had a pet cat named Stigabey (Stop it! in Bulgarian), so I got him some cat food and lots of other stuff. He was very touched... I could tell by the emotion in his voice. Our Bulgarian PCV friend took us to the police station and registered us as his guests. That turned out to be a huge favor because, although the Bulgarian government gives tourists cards to have stamped by hotels, they don't make it well known to tourists that they must be registered throughout their entire stay. If they aren't properly registered, tourists can be heavily fined when they leave the country. I ended up bumping into our gracious Bulgarian PCV friend in Washington DC after we had both finished our tours. We had lunch. Small world.
Then my friend and I went to a very charming beachside resort called Sozopol. We stayed in a private home for several nights and we were warned by the proprietors that they didn't have stamps. We were happy to tell them that we were covered.
On our way out of Bulgaria, we were waiting to leave the country and the border guard saw our American passports. He had a huge grin on his face because I'm sure he thought he was about to pocket $200. Then he saw the properly stamped tourist cards and his face just fell with the deflation that comes with utter disappointment. It was classic.
We went to Izmir from Bulgaria. Sometime in the course of that trip, I developed an abscess under my right arm. It hurt something awful and it kept getting bigger and bigger. By the time we got to Izmir, I could barely move my arm without extreme pain. I remember buying a hat pin at some point and holding it in my hand, wanting so badly to use it to drain the abscess, but knowing I could make the infection worse. My friend had gone to Ephesus without me. I couldn't go because I was in too much pain. I finally had to puncture the abscess. When I did, I experienced great relief.
My friend and I finally decided that it was time to start going home. We took a flight from Izmir to Ankara, which shaved a good portion of time off our trip back. Once we got to Ankara, we tried to find another flight going east, but they were all booked! After several hours in the airport, we ended up taking a bus to the Ankara bus station and getting a ticket to the city of Erzurum. As we drove eastward, I noticed that things got more and more primitive. When we got to Erzurum, which is pretty far east, we bought another ticket to Kars, which is only 15 miles from Gyumri. When we got to Kars, things were looking decidedly Armenian. That's because Kars used to be part of Armenia. We asked around about how we should get to Armenia. At first, we were told the border to Armenia was open. That was entirely possible, since it did occasionally open on a spasmodic basis. There was a minivan going to a border town called Posof, which was near Georgia. My friend and I sighed. At least it wouldn't be the first border crossing from hell. Except it was...
We got into the minivan with a driver and two Muslim village ladies. We were driven about two hours away from the Kars bus station, way out into the country. Then, when the village ladies were dropped off, the driver continued on with my friend and me. We paid him extra to take us to the actual border and not just to the town. As we drove along a dirt lane, he decided to pull off at some point and said we were going to have a picnic. At least, that's what I thought he said... I don't speak Turkish, so I don't know for sure. My friend and were tried to be patient, until he started hitting on us. Then we insisted that he drive us to the border. We spotted an Armenian bus coming in the opposite direction, so my friend flagged it down and asked if we were headed in the right direction. It turned out we were, but we were warned that the border was about to close. We hadn't considered the fact that the time in Georgia is two hours later than it is in Turkey!
When we arrived at the Turkish border, which turned out to be the same terrible one that we had passed through the first time, it was 3:00pm. However, it was 5:00pm in Georgia. We had already stamped out of Turkey and the Georgia border was closed for the day. We were told we could either spend the night in a crappy motel nearby or spend the night on the border. We chose to sleep on the border. The Turkish customs people were friendly, however, and it turned into a party. The customs staff had food and alcohol, which they shared with us. Unfortunately, the customs manager got drunk and propositioned me. He wanted me to go home with him. At that point, my friend got very angry. She screamed at the man that we would not separate. Thank God someone took pity on us and managed to get the customs manager to go home. He unlocked an office for us and we slept on the dirty tile floor.
The next morning, I went outside and waited for the border to open. There were some people nearby who seemed curious about me. They asked me a question in Russian and I answered in Armenian. They were very surprised that I knew the language and asked me where my bus was. I told them that my friend and I didn't have one. It turned out they had come from a trip from Greece and were going to Yerevan. A bus goes from Yerevan to Greece every couple of weeks. This one was coming back with goods to sell. I went and got my friend up and we ended up hitching a ride. This time, however, we had to pay a bribe to the cocky Russian guards to get across the border. We were glad to do it, though, because we were ready to go back home and didn't want to argue. And it took forever to go through customs because the border patrol had to check everything. So many people had brought goods and the government had to get its share of taxes. I think we were stuck at that border, all told, for about 17 hours.
We had to make a couple of stops in Georgia because a couple of people on board had goods. We also had to stop for Armenian barbeque in an ethnic Armenian village in Georgia. One guy was particularly funny. He lived in an area where there were NO roads! The bus had to follow him as he ran towards his home for his tractor. What made it funny was that the man was half nuts. He looked like a giant rooster as he trotted in front of the bus. We had to wait for him to get the tractor and load up his goods. It took a long time.
When we finally reached the Georgian/Armenian border, I had to relieve myself. I went behind a shack for some privacy, but there was no light. I didn't see that there was a big trench. I ended up falling and cutting my right hand deeply. I have a nice scar there. At the time I didn't care about the cut, though. We were back in Armenia and the end of the trip from hell was near.
We had to drop off a bunch of people on the way back to Yerevan. I believe we arrived at mid morning. I was too impatient to wait for the bus to deliver me to my door. I just wanted to go home and enjoy peace and quiet again on my own terms. I had taken the trip to get away from it all, but boy was it nice to get back.
I am very happy to have taken that trip. I learned a lot and saw a lot. And now I am even happier to be an American than I ever was before because I know that that is not the way that Americans usually travel. On the other hand, it's a great thing to be able to say that I did it and was strong enough to have survived it intact.
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