Filed under: Peace Corps Romania | Tags: acrobats, bus, circus, customs, Dacia, Duygu, Harlem, jabber, Peace Corps, Romania, Turkey
Harlem and I tried to leave Turkey on Monday, July 26th.
The bus website listed the time of departure as 5PM. Thereby, Harlem and I showed up at the respective travel office at around 3:40, PM. When we arrived, the place was dark, and its sliding glass door was opened ever so slightly. Bad omens.
Inside, we found a friendly, albeit sleepy, Turk sprawled into two of the arm chairs in the adjoined waiting room. He happily explained to us that, during the summer, the bus leaves Istanbul at 3:00 PM, and that our only option was to come back the following day, at two.
I worried that we’d be imposing on Duygu, by suddenly staying at her place another unexpected night. I considered checking into a hostel for the evening, if only to alleviate our presence from her, our wonderful hostess.
Outside, we explained the situation to Dugyu, and her eyes widened. She excitedly hugged us both.
“One more day with Harlem and Joem!” she exclaimed.
So, we still had a place to stay.
The next day, Harlem and I were on time. We hugged our wonderful hostess goodbye, and took our 20 minute shuttle from the travel office to the main bus station in Istanbul. On the way into Turkey, our bus had been completely empty. Honestly, there were four other seats filled. Today, however, it was quite the opposite. Harlem and I were fortunate to grab two empty seats alongside each other, and there we sat and read and sweated something fierce.
I had noticed that there was a group of young Romanians in the back of the bus (4 men and 4 women), but we were too far away to share words. I put in my headphones and slept hard until the Turkish border with Bulgaria. I am lucky– I can sleep any time, and almost anywhere.
At the border, our stewardess frantically relayed some unhappy news to us: the entire bus needed to be emptied, including its massive intestines filled with cargo, so that customs officials could inspect the entire thing.
Harlem and I went to work alongside the 4 young Romanian men– together we emptied out the bowels of the bus. The contents of it were a little irregular:
- Thousands of pre-ordered pastry containers, ready to be folded into shape and used by some Romanian cafe that sold sweets.
- Enough car parts to re-build an entire Dacia.
- A half-dozen boxes of single-serving water bottles.
- A felt chair that resembled a recliner. It was royal blue, and had a steel support frame.
- A blue tumbling pad, also royal blue.
We emptied out the bus as fast as possible, and then stood by to rest as a few customs officials noted the contents and checked the nooks and crannies of the passenger compartment.
“What was with that chair?” I asked Harlem. “Why would you come to Turkey just to buy one of those?”
Harlem laughed and agreed, and we continued to comment on all of the weirdness that we had just unpacked.
“Well– whatever. It’s a good thing all of those guys were on the bus,” I mentioned. “They’re all jacked.” It was true– each of the young Romanians was in great shape, and it helped make quick work of all the heavy cardboard boxes & car parts from the cargo hold.
Next was a waiting game– for reasons unknown to us, we were informed that we would be waiting here at the border for an undisclosed period of time. A nearby Romanian man who made this trip often speculated that we’d be stuck for at least two hours.
So, to pass the time, I did one of the things I do best– I started jabbering. I started a conversation with two of the young Romanian men, Cătălin and Alex. I asked them what they were doing in Turkey.
“I’m an acrobat, and Alex is a juggler,” Cătălin replied. “We’re in a traveling circus troupe. We go to different countries and perform.”
“No way!” was my reply.
And it was so– Cătălin grabbed his laptop out of the bus, and showed us a couple of videos of his troupe juggling and flipping and tumbling. One special section showed the acrobats using a plank to launch one another into the air, where they would gracefully twist into a big blue recliner hoisted up onto a steel pole– the same recliner that we had pulled from the baggage hold of the bus. Later in the show, they flipped each other right-side-up onto a familiar blue tumbling pad.
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The Transylvania Joem: A Young Peace Corps Volunteer in Romania 