Saturday, November 12, 2011

The Elusive 59H

This is the area of Istanbul in which I live: Beşiktaş. My neighborhood is Bebek but the district is Beşiktaş, which also contains the neighborhood called Beşiktaş. Stay with me. 


Anyway, this is a picture of a bus map. All those tiny triangles are bus stops. What the map doesn't show is that the middle of this pink area sits on top of a HUGE hill. Massive. And I live at the bottom, by the water. And I get to walk up it everyday. Now, I see on this map that there is a bus (59H) that would take me directly from Bebek to Akmerkez but according to the bus website, there's is no such bus. So I hike an hour everyday day to Akmerkez and then about forty minutes back. Yep, this hill is so massive that going downhill shaves off 15-20 minutes of total walking time.

When I'm lucky enough to experience transportation that does go directly from Point A to Point B, it still goes wrong. This morning I was on the tram, and it was a little crowded. I could barely make it inside. What I didn't realize was that I was a bit too close to the door and my hair had greatly expanded (shout out to humidity!). When the doors to the tram slid together, my hair got caught. Yep. That was me! It didn't really hurt but it was uncomfortable when my head wanted to move but couldn't actually go anywhere. 

My friend Berker and this old man laughed at me. And you know, the ridiculousness was hilarious. It wasn't a big deal, the doors would open at the next stop, right? Wrong. The doors opened on the other side of the tram at the next stop. The old man started laughing again. And enough people got out at that stop to make it obvious that I was stuck in the door. One acceleration and deceleration later, I was released, and my ride continued uneventfully. 

The lesson is this: Friends, never take your freedom for granted because you never know when the tram doors of life will come and take it away. 

4 comments:

  1. May I join the old man and laugh away?

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  2. Haha. Yes, you may :) I felt so silly...

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  3. Awesome stuff .....you crack me up

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  4. Yeah, I was laughing out loud when I was reading this. I miss your misadventures!

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