Saturday 24 January 2015

#beyondayasofya - Ankara Part 2

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim 



  We were surprised and speechless. I dropped my backpack on my bed and my friend dropped seated on hers. We both were suppressing our giggles. It was funny but scary at the same time.  I sat with her, "What are we gonna do now?" I asked laughing, half-amused and half absent-minded. She shrugged. We could only exchange looks and laugh, then look at each other and laugh again. "Let's go outside," I suggested. 

  We sat outside of the entrance and tried to figure out how to get out of the mess. We contacted our friends in Istanbul, explaining what we'd got ourselves into. We were panic and we couldn't think straight. Finally we came up with a solution to request for a new room. Luckily, we could change to another room, but all rooms were mixed, too and all the double rooms were fully booked. The Efes-drinking abi (brother) told us that there would be no problem and if the man was ever to harm us we could just call him and he'd kick him out. We went back outside and sunk to the chairs. It was around 9.30 pm.

  We had no choice but to find another place, and we were on the verge of giving up already that we even considered of staying but our fear managed to keep us sane. We walked out from the street to the road and there was a hotel just across the road. Relieved, we walked in to inquire about the room rate only to be crushed again because it was 250TL per night. We walked along the walkway with hopes that we'd find an affordable place. As we were walking a man in his mid age was going the opposite way, dropping cards. We took a look, and there were different cards with different picture, but each of them was displaying indecent picture of barely dressed women with provocative poses and a phone number. We grew more terrified.

  To add up to that, we couldn't find any hotel along the way. We turned back, and saw a restaurant and decided to sit there for a cup of tea and pull ourselves together. All I could think of that time was to get out of the place, one idea popped in and spontaneously slipped out through my mouth, "Let's go to Konya tomorrow." But of course, we still needed to find a place to stay. We looked for hotels online but none of them were affordable. We tried not to cry, and it was 10 already. Then a light bulb lighted up - we asked the restaurant amca (uncle) if there was any cheap place to stay nearby, and he said he didn't know. We grew more tense that I bit my nail. Then another restaurant amca came and asked why we didn't have any place to stay. We burst out telling what happened to us, and he was shocked that we were obviously Muslims but were put together in a room with a male. The whole restaurant staff (they were only like 3-4 of them) was there, and faith in humanity restored. They helped us to find a new place to stay, and the tea was on the house.

The clock ticked to 11 after some waiting and we went to the hotel,accompanied by the 2nd amca, which was just on the street opposite to the hostel. We were so grateful that we kept on thanking him. Upon reaching the hotel he explained our situation to the receptionist and the receptionist was sympathetic too. We asked how much was it per night and he said 120TL. Another faith-in-humanity-restored moment when we he agreed to reduce it to 100TL.

  But we were not done yet with the hostel. Our stuff was still there, and we had to take them and ask for refund as we already paid for two nights. The amca kindly escorted us to take our things. When we reach there we explained to the abi that we were gonna check out that second. There was a slight dissatisfaction and he told us that it was in the description that the rooms were mixed. I explained that we thought the term "mixed" was referring to "mixed with other people of the same gender" and apologised for the misunderstanding. 40TL was burnt that night for cancelling. We went downstairs to take our things, the man was still sleeping. We tried to quietly pack up and and leave without him noticing, but we tried too hard that we were rushing and he did wake up because of the silent noises we made. We couldn't even be bothered to say anything to him and left straightaway, awkwardly greeting 3 men eating in the kitchen next to the room "afiyet olsun".


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