Chaos. An uncharacteristic lack of English signage. Heat. Stale Air. Lines. Cutting. Pushing. Delays. Delays. What's That Smell? More Pushing.
Airport happens.
We would say, "The Turks have a plan, and they are sticking to it!"
No sense in changing anything. We have a plan, and we're going to stick with it.
Note that there are few JetWays in Turkey. Virtually all planes load out on the tarmac.
One of the better Turkish plans was to have all checked baggage lined up on the tarmac. Before boarding, each passenger located their luggage and touched, not pointed, touched their bags. Only the pawed luggage was loaded onto the plane. The rest was probably "destroyed systematically," as the announcements repeat, endlessly.
Wait a minute. That is a stiff fine! That'd be about $71 US in 1999.
Welcome to street food.
I cannot recall such 'personal product' (heh) marketing in the US, the ridiculous prudes that we are. We'd euphemize the hell out if it before putting it in plain view.
A news article from Hurriyet:
"The sufferings caused by the
quake
that hit Turkey has brought about
a warm spell in Turco-Greek relations. On Sept. 9 the Turkish town of
Izmir marked the 76th anniversary of the end of Greek occupation, the
day on which the last Greek soldiers had been repulsed from the city --
for the first time without a symbolic re-enactment of a group of 'Greek'
soldiers being driven into the sea at the thrust of bayonets. One day
before that the deputy spokesmen of the Foreign Ministry referred to
Greece as 'our friend and neighbor' for the first time."
The Turks are very very aggressive drivers. This is unfortunate, because unlike many aggressive drivers, the Turks tend to also be very very bad drivers.
I'm sorry, but the Italians are just Driving Miss Daisy.
In 1999, the State department highly discouraged citizens from driving in Turkey. We'd never seen such a strongly worded statement, so we never even considered driving ourselves.
The story goes that, in the early 19th century, a German woman had visions of Mary and the exact location of her house near Ephesus. The details of this vision led to the ruins of a building. The building seen here is obviously some interpretation of what the house might have looked like.
Weird.
I had never heard anything of this story.
