Most of the flights are delayed, the rest of the flights are canceled – this is something that no traveler wants to experience, but we weren’t lucky enough to avoid this situation. And why? I have no clue, but I want to tell this story for you and for the future myself. And yes, it was in Turkey again (a week ago I wrote about their taxi scammers). Don’t get me wrong – I liked Turkey A LOT, especially their wonderful capital Istanbul, but they really have problems with their transport!
Let’s start with the beginning – after spending a couple of days in Istanbul we had to continue our trip to Bodrum. That morning was very nice, warm, and calm. This time I was undoubtedly sure that we will not use a taxi, so we had to spend a couple or three hours on the way to the airport: we went by walk, then metro, then funicular, then walk again and here we go – a bus going to the airport. Perfect organization! 🙂
At the airport, life wasn’t so perfect. Electricity disappeared 3 times. ALL the flights were delayed or canceled. After check-in, our onboarding passes showed a 40 minutes delay, but all the information boards presented 80 minutes delay and finally we left even later. There were thousands of people at the small airport. We all were like herrings in a can. There was no place to sit, not enough information about the time and gates of the departures. Everybody was checking computers of airport employees and the employees lost control. In a minute after calling “boarding”, the information was changed to “last call”. They sometimes changed the gates and people had to run to another gate. Anyway, people were quite calm and nobody was panicking. It was a good sign because it would be very dangerous to have a panic in one small area full of people.
In the airplane the story was similar – we had to wait almost an hour until pilots got permission to take off. Before the take-off the captain was on speaker telling us some stories in Turkish. All the passengers were listening to him carefully, they laughed, they were surprised, they applauded him twice and I couldn’t understand a word, so it was kind of frustrating – I had to reach Bodrum in a daytime! What was he talking about? Was he talking about the delay? But why for so long? Was he reciting poems? Why were people applauding? Or maybe he was telling that there was some serious situation in Bodrum and we couldn’t go there because of this reason? My husband already slept, but I couldn’t calm myself down so I asked stewardess what was pilot talking about. She only replied “about the delay” and went away! Oh, thank you very much for this comprehensive information! During our flight the captain spoke to passengers a few times, but not in English… The only thing he said in English was “all the passengers, fasten your belts”. Thanks, I didn’t know that…
After one hour stewardesses decided to give us something to eat and drink. One of them asked me in Turkish what I would like to drink. I replied to her in English and guess what… she went away and didn’t come back :DDD After this “incident” I remembered my colleague who worked in the aviation industry some time ago. She told me that there are too many pilots in Europe. However, there is a different story in Asia and some poor countries – they don’t have enough certified pilots, so some of them print fake certifications and continue working! Actually, there are a lot of airlines that do not get a permit to come to Europe due to poor aircraft maintenance or other serious reasons. So this avoidance of the English language in an industry where all the pilot and stewardess exams are in English reminded me about those “printed certificates” :))
At Bodrum airport, a bus was waiting for us. It was scheduled to go to Bitez (a village in which our hotel was), but again unsuccessfully… I usually expect the bus to go to the bus station or something similar, but not this time! The bus stopped in the middle of the road near Bitez!!! The bus driver told us that this place is Bitez and we need to get out of the bus! What the heck, where is Bitez???? He waived us in one direction and left! Gosh, not again!!!!! :((( While my husband was smoking, my all thoughts was about a taxi. Where will we get it?? After a few minutes, we managed to stop a taxi… The taxi driver didn’t know where our hotel is. How could he not know where the hotel is in a village that has no more than 20 hotels??? He started calling to his friends or family and after 20 minutes we were safely “delivered” to the hotel.
Huh, be safe, travel relaxed!