A little break in Ankara, and the craziest bus ride of my life...

Hey folks,
I'm in a cafe on Istiklal Cad in Istanbul at the moment, working with definitely-not-enough Internet time, so this'll have to be brief til I get to Ankara and stable Internet, inshallah tomorrow. So my summer program ended last week, and it was kind of bittersweet to see most of my Istanbul companions head for home. But, it also was nice, because it meant I had time for travel. Wednesday night, Alyssa, a friend from class, and I took an overnight bus to Ankara, en route to Antakya. We planned it to have a one-day layover in Ankara, which worked well for me because it meant I could bring my huge suitcase and leave it at the Fulbright Ankara offices. We got in pretty darn early after a decent bus--we took Metro to Ankara, which is a more than decent bus company (spendy, to my cheap student sensibilities, but great value. They also have female bus attendants, which pretty much noone else has). We found the Fulbright offices (they're in a really pretty neighborhood), dropped off our bags for the day, were able to shower at the Fulbright office, and headed out to explore my city. We first headed to Anıtkabir, which was even better not ensconced in snowdrifts, as it had been last time I visited. There were a scattered few other tourists there, and the mausoleum part was very pretty and quiet. We then went to the museum part, which is awesome/. It's such a glorification of Ataturk; they have ll his books, and his guns, and his bathrobe, and even his dog, which they stuffed after it died. The next part of the museum is all paintings of the formation of the Republic and portraits of early Republican figures, in between re-created battle scenes, complete with ambient battle noises, of Ataturk's major battles. The final part is row after row of dry clippings and documents about the early Republic, and Ataturk, and Ataturk's aims, all set to overbearing Republican anthems. They sound like the soundtrack to those Soviet propaganda clips shown in high school history classes. It's excellent, although the anthems are a little headache-inducing after a bit.
After fully appreciating Turks' love for Ataturk, we headed over to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, which I appreciated quite a bit despite them no longer offering student admission. From there we made our way through Ulus, down to Kizilay, and over to Cankaya to pick up our bags before the Fulbright office closed. Heavily laden, we tried to find a restaurant listed in Rough Guide as being "eccentric", but it was shut down, so we went to this fantastic brasserie instead: I had a chicken caesar salad, and it was fantastic and delicious, and a strawberry daiquiri, which was similarly excellent. I think I shall have to remember that restaurant for while I'm in Ankara...
After dinner, we made our way to the bus station to catch our night bus to Adana. We were going to Antakya, but had been told that we'd have to switch busses in Adana, so we bargained tickets down to 25 lira and were set. Or so we thought. While loading our bags on the bus, two soldiers guarding a prisoner in chains got on the bus. We were a little nonplussed. We were even more nonplussed to get on the bus and find one of the soldiers and the prisoner in our seats. They wanted to switch seats with us so that the second soldier could be closer to the prisoner, which we were more than fine with. The bus attendant, however, was not, so we got to play musical chairs a few times and finally ended up sitting directly in front of the prisoner, the 2 soldiers, and some sort of military commander who had joined them. The commander I don't think had bathed in the past week or so; still, he was a comforting presence because the soldiers looked all of 16 and both had huuuuge, foot-and-a-half-long guns, and we figured with an authority figure along there'd be less of a chance of an accidental discharge.
Once we got that sorted out, we figured out that our bus actually went through Adana to Antakya, which was where we wanted to end up, so we asked the bus attendant if we could extend our tickets through Antakya, and he said we could, but wanted to charge us an exorbitant sum to do so, so we decided to just get a new bus in Adana. On the way out of the Ankara otogar, the bus engine quit. Luckily the driver got it working again, but on top of everything else it was less than auspicious.
I drifted off a bit, but woke with a start when the bus attendant started the movie for the trip: he chose a Turkish film about demon possession and a Greek Orthodox priest. So the speakers (the mute buttons were broken, of course) were full of demonic roars, and screams, and random Turkish. I think I understood the whole movie though, so that's a bright side there. :P
When we got to Adana, the bus driver didn't want to pay the otogar fee, so they dropped us off on the side of the highway, at 5 am, to take a servis vehicle to the otogar. We got to share the servis with a family who was transporting literally hundreds of pounds of fish food, so much so that we couldn't get out of the vehicle at the otogar til they'd unloaded a good deal of it. It was bizarre. We found a much, much better bus to take us to Antakya thank goodness, and arrived there with no more issues, but that Ankara-Adana bus ride was I think the craziest bus ride I've had here. A note to the wise: avoid SAS bus company. Like the plague.

-R