My good friends know that I drink ginger ale non stop. It´s partly because I love the taste, but mostly because ginger ale calms my fussy stomach down after meals, reducing my chances of indigestion. Sometimes I get too adventurous for my own good...
On our last night in Cappadocia, we ate a monstrous meal and headed for our packed shuttle bus to catch our return flight to Istanbul. My stomach started hurting almost immediately so I popped 2 peptos and started praying. We didn´t remember the drive taking this long, but that´s because we slept the entire way into Cappadocia (our 19.5 hr travel day). We´re riding along and the road is really bumpy, repeatedly jarring us out of our seats, and I can´t sleep or relax because I need a bano so badly I´m sweating; I start stripping off clothes to avoid passing out.
An hour and a half later, we pull up to Kayseri Airport and I leap out of the van. The driver can´t find our records and starts insisting that we owe him money, a very large sum of money. I´m begging him to let me go to the airport terminal, hopping from one leg to another, but he refuses to speak to me. Meanwhile, our luggage is locked in the back of his van. He is finally patched through to our tour operator who confirms that we are all paid up. By this point, I´m practically in tears; my stomach is officially in sh-t/pee-my-pants territory. Of course, we are parked about 3/4 of a mile away from the terminal; due to safety precautions, vehicles are not allowed to pull up directly in front of the airport. I am sprinting with my heavy backpack on and a roll-on behind me. We run up to the terminal and a huge crowd of people are massed in front of the single entry-way. This is when we found out that in Turkey, you have to pass a security checkpoint just to enter the airports.
In desperation, I ran over to the arrivals exit area where we used the restrooms when we first arrived in Kayseri. There were 3 officers standing outside of the exit, and they started laughing at me as I explained my predicament in English. They refused to allow me to enter, but they seemed to be offering me help when they directed me back towards the departures area and said "to the left of the building" in broken English. I frantically ran back to where I started, thinking that maybe there was a bathroom outside of the building. This is when a teenage Turkish girl who I'll call Angel decided to step into my life and start translating. Angel informed me that the only bathroom was inside the terminal. My only hope was to get past the enormous group of people. Angel started telling everyone in the line what the issue was; some passengers were kind enough to let me pass while others moved into my way to stay ahead of me! I finally made it to the front of the line, dumped my bags on the x-ray machine, passed through the metal detector, and RAN... leaving all our stuff on the conveyor belt for Jaime to retrieve.
I made it with a millisecond to spare. As I emerged from the bathroom, I saw Angel with a crowd behind her; they started cheering and clapping when they saw that I had made it. This was not one of my finer moments in life, but I smiled and thanked them all profusely.
Needless to say, I was in no mood to take pics outside of the airport. However, here's two pics to give you an idea of the sheer terror I felt when we first ran up to the entrance. If it was this crowded and unorganized on the inside, well, it shouldn't be too hard for you to picture what it was like on the outside. Also, as you would imagine, not too many people in Cappadocia are frequent fliers. Most of them had no idea how and what to put on the x-ray machine conveyor belt. I really started feeling desperate when I watched it take one lady 6 attempts to get past the security checkpoint. The non-passengers took the longest because they were carrying all kinds of electronic devices in their pockets.
The inside of Kayseri Airport's departures area, with the mix of passengers and non-passengers...
There was also a large group of Muslims headed to Mecca for the Hajj, their once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage.
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