The Kindness of Bolulilar

I went skiing yesterday, with a friend from Istanbul. It was one of the most wonderful, absurd, and essentially Turkish days I've had yet. Cat and I had decided to meet up Thursday night in Bolu, a town of about 120,000 located directly between Istanbul and Ankara, to hang out and do a little skiing at Kartalkaya, the nearby ski centre. As Bolu is just 2 hours from Ankara but apparently 5 hours from Istanbul, I got to town first and got busy checking hotel prices and bargaining. I was quite pleased with myself, as I managed to get this gorgeous hotel down from 160 lira/night to 100 even, but in the end we went with the 75-lira place across the street (Bolu and Kartalkaya have reputations for being very expensive, and this is a case in point: I've never paid over 20 lira/person for a hotel in Turkey, except at Palandoken, which was an all-inclusive package ski deal). Having secured that, I grabbed a sandwich and a coffee before meeting up with Cat. We had a great time catching up and gossiping, of course, and turned in early so we could get up early Friday and hit the slopes.

Friday morning we got up unconscionably early, because Bolu is still 40 km from Kartalkaya, so we had a bit of a journey ahead of us. We asked at our hotel about transport options up to the ski centre, and were told that there were no busses or dolmuses, and that our only option was a taxi. We were a bit shocked, as we'd heard there was a bus up, and were determined to not take a ridiculously-expensive taxi. So we headed for one of the town's squares, and stopped at a shop to ask if they knew of a way to get up to Kartalkaya. They suggested the Belediye, which is the town hall/mayor's office. While we were a little confused as to how the mayor's office might be able to help us go skiing, we set off for the Belediye, and ended up on the second floor, asking I think the mayor's secretary about ways to get to Kartalkaya. They had us wait, and offered us tea while they got on the phone. When the woman came back to us, she told us that a taxi was our only option, but that we were now Guests of the Mayor's Office, so we could get a special discount on the taxi: 70 lira instead of 100 lira. We were a little nonplussed, as 70 lira one-way was still more than we were hoping to spend, but we were a little stuck, so we agreed and she went off to call us a cab. A few minutes later, she came back, to report that she had cancelled the cab, as a man in the office had offered to drive us up. The guy turned out to be the Chief of Police. We headed out of the Belediye, running into the mayor on his way in, and stopped to chat for a bit with him. He, like most people we'd met so far that day, seemed a little bemused by us. We headed out with the Chief of Police, Erol, stopping by a police building briefly to pick up a friend of his, a woman named Eylem. Erol had called her to come along because she spoke English, as he didn't know that we spoke Turkish. We had a really fun ride up the mountain, chatting the whole time about Bolu, what they did, travel, and why we were determined to get up the mountain. Part way up, the car got stuck, and we had to rent snow chains from these guys on the side of the road. Erol wouldn't let us pay for them, even though he was driving up only because we wanted to go to Kartalkaya. We eventually made it to one of the mountaintop resorts, Dorukaya, and Erol and Eylem came in with us for a tea before heading back down the mountain. Again, they wouldn't let us pay for the tea, or anything for gas for the trip. We repaid them as best we could, by giving them some of my freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies, which they had never seen before and really appreciated (this is how I spread my Fulbright goodwill--one cookie at a time, apparently). Before they left, Erol took the cafe manager at Dorukaya aside and told him that as we were Guests of the Mayor's Office, he should help us find a cheap way down the mountain once we were finished skiing.
We said goodbye to Erol and Eylem, and headed to get our skis and passes. We were able to successfully bargain down the ski rental price by 15 lira, and the lift passes by 10, although the passes were still exorbitant. We headed out, and started skiing finally. It was decent skiing; the best part about the slopes is that they were almost empty; I don't think there were more than 15, 20 people there skiing that day. Of course, this was partially because the winds were so high that all but 2 lifts were closed, but it was still quite nice and empty on the slopes. Cat grew up in Colorado and could ski before she could walk, so we were at very different skill levels, but I improved a bit and even skied off course a bit with her (not necessarily successfully, but it was pretty darn fun). I stayed pretty much on red pistes, as those were what was open. The snow was fierce; it whipped around in the wind, and the falling snow was roughly the consistency of unflavored Dippin Dots, so on the lifts we had huge pellets slapping into our faces. It was a bit like being sandblasted with sea salt.
After we'd spent a full afternoon skiing, we headed back in to Dorukaya to figure out how to get back to Bolu, so we could grab dinner and a bus back to Ankara and Istanbul. We talked to our guy Ahmet, who Erol had spoken with earlier, and he checked around before telling us that there wasn't anybody heading down the mountain that evening who could take us with, and offering to call us a taxi. We figured our luck couldn't be awesome twice in one day, and asked him to get us a discount on the taxi if he could. While we waited, we chilled with some sahlep and cookies (incidentally, they were the perfect post-ski snack). Ahmet came back, and told us that "there would be no taxi". We were a bit perplexed, but then he told us that there was a bus we could hitch a ride on. One of the guys on the bus came to escort us, and we started talking. It turned out that we were on the local university's ski club bus, heading back to Bolu after a week on the slopes. And the guy we were chatting to was a basketball player who had spent a good part of last year playing ball and studying in Lithuania. The entire bus was pretty interested in us, and we spent the trip down the mountain chatting and singing loud Turkish songs at the top of our lungs. Our basketball player friend offered to help us buy our bus tickets and take us to dinner, so when we got out at the town center, we did just that. We ended up at his family's restaurant, a manti restaurant (manti might just be my favorite Turkish dish...) just off the main street of Bolu. We met his father, his cousin, and his 5-year-old cousin, who was adorable and had just spent a month in America. The 5-year-old was incredibly excited to practice his English skills with us. As we sat down and started chatting, we heard our names being called: we looked up to see Eylem, from earlier that morning, having dinner at the same restaurant, with her father. We ended up all eating together, and she admonished us to be safe with our adventuring. It was a really great meal, delicious, and a little bizarre to be eating with our friend from the morning and our friend from the evening ride, along with their respective families. After taking a quick photo and attempting to pay for dinner (the owner wouldn't let us), we dashed off to the bus station, and on our respective busses, back to our cities and flats and everyday lives.
I was just blown away by how the Bolulilar we met just went out of their way to help us out and get us where we needed to go. And they all refused payment; we saved over 150 lira at least, figuring in 2 taxis at a ridiculously discounted rate plus dinner plus tea. And we had great conversations, in both Turkish and English, got to share some Americana through the guise of chocolate chip cookies, and were Guests of the Mayor's Office. Simply Incredible. Cat was one of my travel buddies both in Cappadocia and in the Southeast; I'd say we're pretty legendary travel companions.
And Bolu is just a fantastic city full of wonderfully nice people.

-R