Turkey

The very first thing that strikes you about Turkey is that it is a country that is totally mountainous! There are mountains stacked on top of other mountains! Around the coast and inland there are multiple ridges, multiple rows of mountains, all extremely steep and all exceptionally high. In Australia we have very, very low mountains and they ONLY occur in single ridges. In Turkey the ridges keep coming endlessly and the ascents just multiply. In summer Turkey is Tibet without snow. 

Be prepared to climb 

Istanbul, like the other Turkish cities, is built on mountains. Literally you climb very, very steep inclines to go ANYWHERE! Our hotel was placed half way up the hill that commenced at the Bosphorus. Every time we moved out of the hotel we had to descend 114 steps to go anywhere. Not so bad as when we returned! One hundred and fourteen steps UP! EVERY time you move you have the same challenge ahead of you. 

So, you say, change hotel. Not so simple. The other hotels are ON TOP of the same hill. Remember we were only HALF way up! 

Turkey is for seeing when you are young. If you have been training for marathons then Turkey is an ideal holiday location – you don’t have to break training to enjoy yourself. If you are over fifty I’d make it a quick dash to Turkey and if you are over sixty I would advise you strongly to have your ticker and circulatory systems checked out before you buy your ticket. 

Turkey is NOT the place to visit in a wheelchair – it is all up seriously steep hills and stairs. Be prepared to walk The Turks are so accustomed to serious, continual physical challenges that they have made a feature of creating the longest walking routes of any urban area. It is very close to three kilometres from one end of Istanbul’s principal international airport to the other. 

Unless you are an Olympic sprinter it will take you more than thirty minutes to go from the gate indicator to either end of the concourse. Now the gate allocation is only made twenty minutes prior to boarding so you need to have a strategy that gets you onboard before departure. If you wait for gate allocation at the A end on some wild hunch (like that was the gate for the Rome flight yesterday) then you are left with a one- hour sprint to F if you have guessed wrong and you have to create a world record to make it before gate closure! 

There is no system to gate allocation. It works like X-lotto – planes draw gates on the basis of arrivals and availability so DON’T try to work on some elaborate guessing strategy! If you are adept at riding on one of those electric skateboard things then maybe that’s not a bad investment. Get in a bit of practice before departure date.

The Turks have the same fetish for long distance pedestrian transfers at metro stations and ferry terminals. One example is that they have rather recently constructed a tunnel for the train which allows it to cross the Bosphorus Strait mid-city, joining the two parts of the city and creating, in the process, an under-water rail link between Europe and Asia. Instead of constructing a station at either bank they elected (for some unknown reason) to construct the station for the European side at the bottom of the Strait at the half-way point, leaving passengers either embarking or disembarking a one kilometre subterranean walk from the station under the sea to the daylight on the European bank. 

Be prepared for long, fast taxi rides Another striking feature of urban planning is that, given all of those mountains already mentioned, the nearest place to the huge mega city that could be found for Istanbul’s two airports are a long, long, long way from the heart of the city. The principal airport is an hour-and-a-half from the city in a very, very fast taxi. That leads to some serious planning if you want to get to the airport in time for boarding! Now here is another warning: if you plan on arranging interconnecting flights between the major international airport and the major domestic airport bear in mind that one is in Europe and the other is in Asia! Yes, the speeding taxi trip between the two is, at best, two and a half hours! Now you might think that’s a bit of a journey in itself if you are planning to fly from Antalya to Rome via Istanbul because you’ll need to allow the wait time at each airport and factor in a two-and-a-half hour transfer! 

The speeding taxi ride is quite startling. Having been to Napoli and Palermo I thought I had encountered the most hair-raising traffic adventures one could imagine but, then, I hadn’t yet been to Istanbul with its seventeen million residents, most of whom seemed to be in cars. Now the freeways are some of the best you will find anywhere – and they need to be to handle the constant, bumper-to-bumper traffic with everyone traveling at a hundred kilometres an hour plus or minus five kph. As in Naples and Palermo, that leads to some intuitive road-use practices, the golden rule being that the one who has his headlights in front gets right-of-way. It leads to countless cross-lane dashes which, at times, can engage all four lanes. No time for indications. You simply force your way across utilising the golden rule! 

Fortunately everyone is driving according to the same roadway code. Road rage is non-existent because everyone accepts the golden rule. Having given the warnings about the mountain climbing, the transfer marathons and the airport dashes, let me say that, if you survive your trip, you will not only be fitter and stronger but you will have met a lot of really wonderful people, seen a lot of historical archaeology that you didn’t know existed and been amazed at the technological marvels that you have experienced. We saw so many very impressive engineering marvels that we’ve seen nowhere else. 

Ask anyone what they know about Turkey and the chances are (overwhelmingly) that, apart from it having a very long history and that the Turks defend their homeland gallantly, bravely and very successfully, they don’t know very much. 

History and culture 

Turkey is understated in European history (albeit having played a most significant part from the time that its capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul), was the centre of the Holy Roman Empire for a thousand years after the fall of Rome, that the Ottoman Empire was historically as significant as the Ancient Roman Empire at a different time, and that Mustafa Ataturk transformed an aging monarchy into a modern, secular republic in just thirty years). 

Turkey has always been the most important trade exchange point between Europe and Asia and today Istanbul is one of the world’s ten most prominent cities. It is the fifth largest by population after Beijing, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur and New York City with seventeen million inhabitants. It is highly strategic as it stands guarding the Bosphorus Strait which is the only link between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara and, ultimately, the Mediterranean (remember that in WWI Britain coveted the Dardanelles for the same strategic reasons and sent the ANZACs there to usurp Gallipoli from the Turks!) 

Touring Turkey 

Cinzia and I spent a month touring from Istanbul down the western and southern coast to Antalya. Here is what we found: 

1. Turkey is a very modern, clean, tidy, very well-maintained country with a skyline in Istanbul that will match any major city in the world. The civil construction (roads, bridges, underground railways, tunnels and super highways) are the match of any we have seen anywhere. The public infrastructure is amazing. We saw major projects that were state-of-the- art which have not seen the like of elsewhere. The Turks are very proud of their history, their independence and their engineering and architecture – and rightly so. Wherever we went we found that the public infrastructure worked seamlessly and very efficiently. For example, an Istanbul travel rechargeable card allows access to every form of public transport – ferries, buses, trams, funicular, metro subway system – everything. One card does the lot and fares are a standard 8TL per trip, irrespective of the distance travelled (that’s roughly AU$0.70 – yes, seventy Ozzie cents!)

2. As the link between Asia and Europe, Turkey is a melting pot of ethnicity. We met people (many young folk) who are actual or virtual refugees from all countries to the north and south. We met an amazing number of twenty-year- olds from other countries who were working in the tourist industry because they could speak multiple languages (workers who can speak English get paid twice the amount of Turkish only speaking workers) and we found that wherever we travelled – whether in large cities or tiny towns – someone could always speak English. There are far more English speaking folk in Turkey than in Italy for example. Most of the young people we met were university graduates from Arab countries, many with multiple degrees, who were looking for opportunities in Europe that are denied them in their country of origin.

3. Cats (and sometimes quite large dogs) are cared for by the community. There are a few odd private cats and dogs of the ornamental kind but overwhelmingly cats and dogs literally roam the local area and are fed and otherwise cared for by everyone - but mostly the business operators who place food and drink containers out. No dog or cat goes hungry and each has their own sleeping quarters which are sometimes constructed “motel” style as a bank of single huts, much like a bank of letterboxes at an apartment building, only slightly larger. While there are cats and dogs everywhere there are no visible signs of rodents or other urban pests so the Turks obviously know something that the rest of the world doesn’t.

4. The Turks serve beer really, really cold - usually in chilled glasses, although they don’t drink much alcohol themselves (it is nominally a Muslim country). I thought it was because they had a true appreciation for good beer protocol but it looks like it comes from the fact that the summers are so hot that beer has to be almost frozen if it is still drinkable by the end of the 500ml bottle. You very soon learn that if there are a number of beer drinkers in the group, you DON’T get a bottle for each person, you get enough to pour everyone a drink and then order more bottles as the glasses empty. That way you get a continuous flow of very cold beer!

5. The consequence of being mountainous is that there are very few beaches as we know them in coastal Turkey. You can count sandy beaches on the fingers of one hand. In Oz the single mountain range runs along parallel to the coast, there is a broad, flat plain leading to a broad sandy beach. The sand retreats gradually and the water gets a little bit deeper with each stride until you get to neck deep before you are submerged. That doesn’t happen in Turkey where very high mountains plunge straight into the sea, often at a sheer cliff. The water is four metres deep within two metres of the land! Typically swimming occurs along the coast in one of two ways: a. A boat takes you on a short cruise to safe swimming locations and you throw yourself off the boat into four-metre-deep crystal clear Aegean ocean. Usually the boat moves to a series of swimming locations to avoid making swimming in an idyllic environment monotonous. b. A boat takes you to a location in the bay where a man-made construction has created a timber platform on the rocky shore where sunbeds are arranged under large beach umbrellas and you simply throw yourself off the edge into four-metre-deep crystal clear Aegean ocean. There is usually a bar and a restaurant there too so you bathe away the day between cocktails and four-metre- deep dives until you catch a boat back to the town. Looking at the first option: There are quite a few choices. You can get on a very large boat (a coupe of hundred people) that provides lunch (either fish or chicken). You can get on a smaller boat (up to fifty people) and go to all the same places as the big boats but you do it in more comfortable circumstances and you get the same food but usually served buffet style which lets you choose your own selection of salads. The big boats travel faster which means less time on the boat and more time in the water. Probably the older you get the more likely you are to opt for comfort. The cost is the same (about AU$30 each). A third option is to go on a small boat (twelve people) for a tad more but the food is usually a lot better (not just fish and fowl) and they take you to secluded swimming spots where you do not compete with literally hundreds of other swimmers at the “usual” swimming locations. The final option is to go on a diving school boat. You don’t have to dive. You can go for the ride but you will swim in the best diving locations which is pretty cool. At places like Fethiye the tour boats, large and small, line up cheek to jowl along the marina so you simply walk along and choose the one that looks best and offers the best swimming destinations. You’ll never swim in more idyllic locations.

There are a number of visions that are ubiquitous throughout Turkey (besides mountains): 

The flag 

The Turkish flag is absolutely everywhere all over the country – even in the most isolated, remote, tiny places. It occupies the highest spot of historical or cultural significance, even in the big cities. A very much smaller version of the Turkish flag flies on EVERY floating vessel – it must be mandatory. From one-man fishing dinghies to ocean liners and EVERY vessel in between.

Solar hot water panels 

Virtually every building, especially outside the cities, has its roof mostly covered by a large bank of solar hot-water systems. It’s not simply a common feature, it is ubiquitous. 

Glasshouses 

The Turkish countryside is covered in “glass” houses (usually constructed of cloth or plastic). We travelled through the countryside from north to south and we saw no open fields devoted to food production. Turkey has a huge demand for vegetables. Turks eat a variety of vegetables for every meal, starting with breakfast so it needs a huge amount of vegetable production and it achieves this in irrigated glasshouses covering hectares. It is a very sensible idea because all of Turkey experiences a dramatic extreme of temperatures – from scorching heat in summer to snow in winter and the glass houses provide controlled growing conditions. Really good features. Turkey is a very progressive nation. Appearances are that the population is generally very well educated and the nation abounds with all the features of a very modern, well administered European nation. Here are just a few amazing innovations that we noticed in our month’s travels:

Speed traps 

Various countries have smart ideas about how to place and warn motorists of speed traps. In Italy they place them in metropolitan areas (50 kph zones) in strikingly bright and distinctive orange cabinets with a painted London Bobby’s hat on top. They are placed in go-slow zones where it is quite difficult to break into a gallop and I think they are usually switched off. In Turkey they place them on the superhighways.

They are in the form of a cut-out of a full sized front-on view of a cop car, complete with roof-mounted flashing red and blue lights powered by a small solar panel. You cannot possibly miss them – they are visible from a long distance. They did not appear to make a noticeable difference in the behaviour of motorists!

Bum cleaning dunnies 

Europeans and Asians have a different attitude to cleaning bums than the British and Ozzies.

In Europe they have bidets alongside every throne, in South East Asia they have a hose attached to the throne so that you can squirt your bum but in Turkey, universally, in every toilet in the land, they have a tiny little nozzle embedded in the hoop of the toilet operated by a single tap on the wall alongside the throne. This is the single most brilliant innovation I have come across in fifty years of travel around all parts of the globe. Apart from the quite sensual pleasure that the squirter provides you get the satisfaction of spending the rest of the day with a spotless bum. I would make them mandatory on every throne.

Clearing tables 

Ever had a delightful meal and when you settle down to a few vinos or caffe you need to find elbow room on the table but you battle with the destruction you have caused as a consequence of enjoying your meal? Have you been busting to get your meal on a flight only to regret that you ever accepted it because you have to spend the rest of your trip nursing all the packaging, cutlery and unfinished tucker when you had insufficient space to relax anyway! Well wait until you eat in Turkey! Without fail, no matter where you dine, in the air or on the ground or on the sea your completed meal, together with all crockery, cutlery and condiments will be cleared away instantly that it is no longer required. Even when you are dining in company the unrequired paraphernalia will disappear even if someone else is still completing their meal. This doesn’t happen sometimes and in some places – it happens EVERYWHERE. It is a part of Turkish culture! How good is that? 

Niceness and tolerance 

Of all the nations that have existed from the earliest times, that which is now Turkey has the longest history of religious and cultural tolerance. It has been history’s principal “melting pot”. Nowhere else has there been such widespread acceptance of ethnic minorities – and it shows. There are people in all places who welcome strangers and are caring and helpful to others but you will find more of them in Turkey than anywhere else. Never, throughout all of our worldwide travels, have we found so many complete strangers who have been so eager to help. There are many examples of their caring but the one that comes to mind most readily occurred when I was concentrating on other things and stumbled on the foot of a shop display in a clothing shop. I was headed for the floor until a young man in about his late twenties literally caught me in mid air and set me down serenely on my feet. A fluke event no doubt but I think if I had stumbled a hundred times in Turkey I wouldn’t have suffered too badly. 

I have been to quite a few places where I have travelled on public transport and occasionally younger people (although not the really young) offer me a seat when the bus is crowded but when I was catching a multitude of trams, trains, ferries and funicular around Istanbul I was not allowed to stand! People simply won’t accept a declined offer, even if you are getting off at the next stop! 

The people of Turkey are super friendly and helpful and gracious and very softly spoken and very embracing of strangers. That not- withstanding it is the climbing that will kill you, not the kindness. 

Caffe and frizzante 

Now, if you have gone to Turkey after visiting Italy there are a couple of things you’ll miss, or almost miss. I have had my share of Turkish coffee over the years but you’ll never convince me that it is anywhere near a substitute for the real thing - an Italian espresso. If you are visiting Turkey after Italy then I strongly suggest that you pack an espresso machine and a barista! We tried our hearts out throughout a month’s travel in Turkey and failed to find a decent espresso until we paid a one- day visit to Greece. 

Kastellorizo is a Greek island in the heart of the south western coast of Turkey, precisely two kilometres from the port of Kas. Yes, just a two kilometre boat ride but you need to pass through immigration and customs on both sides of the journey both outgoing and on return. It is not a very large island, about five square kilometres but it is the most fought over piece of land outside of Rome. It has always been a most strategic trading exchange spot for more than two thousand years. It is on the cusp of Asia – only barely in Europe and it is a logical stopping off spot in the Aegean immediately before the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, Bosphorus Strait, the Black Sea and Asia.

Kastellorizo has a very rich history and is a very small and beautiful village on a very safe, protected natural harbour. We sat at one of the harbourside cafes and ordered cappuccini, bruschetta and fettuccini carbonara and found ourselves immediately transported to Italy. The familiarity of amazing tucker was overwhelming. Incidentally make a note of this if you are planning a trip to Turkey: if you want an acqua minerale frizzante (rather than naturale) you need to ask for “Soda water”. NO, it is not real soda water, it is acqua minerale frizzante in disguise. Once you come to terms with these small matters Turkey, along with Greece, Spain and Italy is one of the most pleasant and civilized places to spend a part of your lifetime.

Islam, secularism and dictatorship 

Turkey is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, although no-one seems to take religious practise too seriously. We stayed in and visited a dozen different places, both metropolitan and country and at 5am, 1pm and 8pm without fail, wherever we were, whatever we were doing, we were called to prayer by the very, very loud broadcast system connected to every mosque (and sometimes there are up to six mosques in the panorama, especially if you are on a hill – which you ALWAYS are in Turkey!) You do see a number of women wearing complete outfits that hide their identity (mostly black) but they are few and are mostly Arab rather than Turkish. In any case they are vastly outnumbered by tall, slim, young ladies with hot pants half way up their bums with really long slender legs that run all the way up to their breasts. There are probably equally as many young handsome men but, frankly, I didn’t notice them. 

The extremely long history of religious and ethnic tolerance along with Mustafa Ataturk’s decision in 1923 to sever the relationship between religion and government has left Turkey with a social and government system free of sectarian animosity. Unfortunately it’s equally long history of autocracy (albeit on the most part benevolent) has left it with an anxiety about dissent. The Polis are most evident along the centre of town in Istanbul – at Taksim Square and along the main street hosting most of the embassies. They are in groups of about fifteen or so in full body armour with riot gear stationed at close intervals just in case someone does something that the government finds unacceptable. They stand in blazing sun in caged areas (yes, the Polis are IN the cages) for four-hour stints with a small bottle of acqua minerale naturale for comfort. We found it a challenge to stand in full sun for more than five minutes! In the middle of summer Turkey is a very, very hot place! The other consequence of the absence of a culture of independence is that people are really reluctant to make decisions or to exercise authority. It is though everyone is waiting to be told what to do. 

The bus to Kas (pronounced “Kash”) 

The regional bus services in rural Turkey, like the public transport system in the cities, is excellent. Very modern, well equipped (air conditioned) coaches travel very frequently (every forty-five minutes or so) and very cheaply (100 TL = AU$9) between the larger towns. You can book your seat for a forthcoming journey or you can elect to hail the bus down on its trip and push a hundred Turkish lira into the hands of the driver as he negotiates a merge into the traffic on departure from the “bus stop” which is simply the spot he has chosen to pull over to add a passenger. So, it is little wonder that the bus can occasionally have more passengers than it has seats but the customers seem to cope with it reasonably well. 

On the way from Fethiye (“ Fet-ee-ay”) to Kas (“Kash”) we had a couple of less usual incidents: Firstly there was only one available passenger seat left on the bus when a fifty-year-old gentleman boarded enroute. Now, the problem was that alongside the only available seat was sitting a forty-five-year-old Muslim lady clad in traditional style with hair completely covered and a veil concealing her identity. As is the custom amongst the fairly devout Muslims it was simply not acceptable that she sit alongside a mature male who was not an immediate relative or, at least, someone familiar. The issue was resolved by the lady moving into the “jump” seat (the seat near the driver which is often used by tour guides). The lady resumed her previous seat on the disembarkation of the man fifty kilometres later. 

The bus was full to the brim with luggage and passengers (even the “jump” seat) so it was interesting when an elderly couple of “locals” in one village boarded the bus as part of their move to another home, about four stops down the track. The only available space on board for the two passengers plus all of their household effects was the aisle of the bus. So everything was stacked into the aisle – thankfully the new passengers had made alternative arrangements for shipment of the livestock! No-one worries too much about this sort of thing. After all, that’s why they call it PUBLIC transport! Having just packed up a not-so-large apartment into a fair-sized freight container I have a little bit of sympathy for my wife’s view about minimizing personal possessions. I can’t imagine, though, that I could possibly accommodate all our possessions in the aisle of a forty-five- seater airconditioned bus! 

Well, that should have been the end of this resoconto, but, alas, it isn’t. 

From Turkey we had tickets and seat allocation on a Turkish Airlines flight Istanbul to Rome but, rather than the two-and-a-half-hour flight, it took us six more days and 1,055 euro to reach our destination – but that is a ‘nother story. So, who gets to fly? Often you plan things out in detail or the course of circumstances is fairly obvious – predictable – but things can often intervene to bugger up those anticipations. Ask anyone who has played in a losing grand final (any sport) and they will vouch for the authenticity of this statement.

The blessing is that, irrespective of your age, you learn a little bit more about how life really works. And so it was when Cinzia and I prepared for our short flight home to Giulianello, near Rome. Cinzia doesn’t much like leaving things to chance so we usually make it a point to be at the head of the queue at check-in, even if we get there well before the time that check-in actually opens, three hours prior to departure. 

They have streamlined check-in during COVID. Now all you need do is present your passport to the lovely young, attractive, bi-lingual lass on the way to the check-in desk and she instantly can tell you a whole string of useless information about you, including all the details of your bookings. 

“G’neiden Ms Trinci and Mr Forby, have a good trip after you drop off your bags with the young gentleman at the desk next to the conveyor belt. You are in seats 6A and 6B” - just as we had booked three months earlier. Now somehow, by some slight of hand, somewhere between that lovely young lady at the entry and the smart young man at the conveyor belt, someone had SOLD our seats to somebody else! 

Yes, the young gentleman informed us that we were actually on standby. Why, pray tell, when we had bookings and a receipt for payment for seats 6A and 6B? That’s when these seasoned travellers learnt that, when you make a booking for a flight and you choose your seats and select whether you want pheasant or flounder for your in-flight meal and you get out your credit card and pay for it all months before you actually travel you don’t, actually, have any guarantee that you will be permitted to board the plane, even if you abide meticulously by every little micro condition of travel and smile at every airline personnel. In technical terms, it seems that what we are purchasing is a reservation, NOT a guarantee of travel. You ONLY get to board the plane when you have in your hand a boarding pass with seat clearly displayed. If you DON’T have that, you don’t get on the plane. 

Now here is a little background information. Airlines, for some time, have allowed passengers to change their mind between the reservation and the flight. In fact, given the high uncertainty of commitments given border closures and other COVID related restrictions, it has become the well-worn practice of airlines offering “cash back” guarantees in the event of last minute cancellation of reservations (bookings). Now we thought that airlines were being very understanding in making this offer and that may be so BUT it was naïve of us all to think that they were not going to protect their profits in some way. 

What the airlines want to guarantee is that every single seat on every single plane has a bum in it on departure so what they do is they oversell the seats. If the plane accommodates 300 passengers and the airline’s statistics tell them they will get a 20-30% cancellation rate, then what the airline will do is sell 360 seats confident that sixty will cancel prior to the flight. I guess they have very smart folk working on those calculations but quite often they will be wrong. What if only 10% cancel? Well, guess what, they have more passengers at check-in (all holding a confirmation of their reservation) than the plane can accommodate. So the airline arbitrarily, determines who boards the plane and who doesn’t. They have a system to do this. It is called “on-line check-in”. Usually, three days prior to flight they allow you to confirm your reservation on- line. I might have a receipt in my hand that I purchased seat 6A but if the plane is full with on-line check-ins my seat gets allocated to someone who has. 

The short answer to this issue (and you are missing out on the tale of woe that transpired over the next twenty-four hours) was that an alternative flight to Rome on Turkish Airlines that day would not get us to Rome in time for us to make our way back to Giulianello so we elected to spend the night in Istanbul as the guests of Turkish Airlines. We, along with fifteen others who were bumped off (that’s the official airline term for this not very rare occurrence) had to give up a day of our lives in the interests of the airlines making a quid. Want to go to Rome? What about a stop-over in lovely Bolognia at no extra cost? So, that’s the end of the saga? NOT bloody likely!!! 

It is rare that lightning strikes twice in the same place. Well it wasn’t exactly lightning but misfortune most certainly struck these poor passengers twice – and in successive days! So good old Turkish Airlines put us on the same flight the following day (it was fully booked but they “bumped” a couple of passengers to make sure we had seats). 

Everything went marvellously well. Pleasant flight, pretty good conditions, edible in-flight meal – until we were landing at Fiumicino. Well into the descent, through the low-level clouds, eight minutes from touchdown, at about 8,000 feet and the captain decides to abort the landing (no doubt on instructions from ground control). The plane climbs slowly and those of us watching the in-flight progress reports notice that the tiny print on screen indicated that, rather than eight minutes to landing at Fiumicino we were now enroute to Bolognia, thirty-five minutes away. 

There was no in-flight announcement. The plane load of passengers was on its way to Bolognia even though that is not where the passengers wanted to go to. No explanation for the rerouting has been given to passengers – not then and not since. A plane full of Turkish Airlines passengers summarily dumped in a place they didn’t want to go to. 

Because the plane was an unscheduled landing it meant that there were no ground staff to manage the passengers or their luggage. Bolognia is an international airport but all its resources were placed to handle the numerous plane loads of passengers landing (mostly from Heathrow). Because our flight was unscheduled at Bolognia we had to wait one hour onboard on the runway and then three hours in the terminal waiting for suitcases to emerge on the carousel ALL without any explanation from anyone. All terminal personnel had vanished. Only the polizia were visible and they knew less than we did. 

The sole representative of the airline was bombarded with all kinds of approaches but he knew nothing either. His sole part in the drama was apparently to organize buses to transfer the passengers from Bolognia to Rome – a three to four hour trip starting close to midnight with no provision for food or drink. Cinzia and I, now fairly experienced in dealing with Turkish Airline ballsups, complete lack of communication and absolute refusal to face the problems which they had caused – a hands-down refusal to take any responsibility or to assist its passengers in a difficult situation, elected to put ourselves into a hotel in Bolognia, have a meal and arrange a fast train to Rome the next day. 

No, that’s not the end of the saga either but surely you don’t want any more – you’ll only cry yourself to sleep or look for a descent length of rope and a tree just a bit more than your height and a kitchen chair. 

We spent three days in a hotel in Rome so that we could front at the Turkish Airlines office on Monday 8:30am. Negotiations for the reimbursement of our additional expenses incurred continue and the Turkish Airlines officials are making it very, very difficult for us to pursue them. None of the other passengers were at the office that morning. I guess they all went home from their bus trip and scoured the neighbourhood for sturdy trees with lowish lying branches. Fortunately the typical, unique Roman pines have all of their foliage right on the top, well out of climbing range.