That trip to Turkey
This happened some years past, I fogot when, maybe it was in ?2015?
I've told the story enough times that I thought it'd be nice to write it
down, lest I forget it myself. What follows here, is, the most accurate
account I can remember.. It may not be of much interest to anyone, but, as a
favor to myself.
The last-minute all-inclusive
It was near summer-holday time, I was sitting at work, and caught myself
slacking off, dreaming of summer-vacation. My girlfriend and I were renting an
apartment at the time (she did not live close to me), and we had a week left
before she would move back (to finish her studies), and I thought it'd be nice
to be impulsive, and treat us to a nice holiday before our already great time
together would come to an end (for the time being). I didn't think too much
about it, and found a pretty good deal on a week long all inclusive stay on a
4 star hotel in Turkey. Called my girlfriend and explained that we'd be leaving
for the airport in 2 hours.. When I got to the apartment she had finished
packing, and we struggeled quite hard to get through traffic, we nearly missed
our flight! Rushed through security and ID control, on the plane, great!
Airport security
We both live in the EU, at the time, she lived in a country that have ID cards
that are good enough that they can be used for travel within the EU, I lived
in Denmark, (we don't have actual ID cards, our National Health Insurance cards
are the de-facto identification, and they have no ID card or secure identifiers,
so almost everyone her has a fully qualified passport. I thought nothing of this
and either of us had considered the detail which is the cause for this story.
Not all ID cards are passports
We were let through ID check at the airport in Denmark, since we both had the
right ID, except, the airport security didn't notice that my girlfriends were
travelling on an ID card, not a passport, and were leaving the EU... So..
We arrive in the Turkish airport, I think it was Antalya, and I went through
passport check, and slowed down to wait for my gf, she didn't get through.
They didn't accept her ID card (since it was not a valid passport, only a
national ID card), this is the point in our journey where we realized, that
Turkey was, the matter a fact, not a member of the EU. I somehow got back into
the "international" zone, so I could try and help my gf.
Meeting the authorities
One young security officer, who could speak a bit of broken English, expressed
some sympathy for our situation, and explained to us that things would be okay,
we didn't realize our situation, they asked us to sign some papers, basically
permitting them to take our airport (there didn't seem to be any choice in this
regard, as I discovered after trying not to sign). So, anyway, our passports
were taken way.
The room
We were led into a small holding cell, no windows, and an AC running at 100%
capacity (noisy, windy, but maybe better than none, who'd know?).
The door to the room was not to be closed, and a security officer was stationed
at a desk outside of the room.
Drawing not to scale at all... +---------+
+---------------------+--------------+----+ |TTT B| <- Our cell,
| | Visa Office | | | C B| One table (T)
-- +--------------+ | | B| And two beds (B, b)
>> <- Gate | | bbb | b was a bunk bed
-- | | +-------+ B a single bed
| | | |
-- +-+ +---+
>> D | <- The security officers
-- Gates / +-+ D C| Tiny tiny room, the D
| International zone | | D | a desk, the C a chair
| | +-----+
| |
+--------------------|V|--|V|--|V|--------+--+
| ^Passport control |
| Turkish zone, public part of airport |
| |
|.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:|
At first
We laid in the bed together, talking about how to solve the situation, but
apparantly that was not allowed, the officer directed us, with not one word
of English, that we were to inhabit seperate beds (yay religion), even when
fully clothed. Anyway, she didn't speak English.
We observed that someone had written both in Russian and English..
Someone had scratched those stereotypic "prison day counts", hopefully they
were fake, I think it counted 18, bit I don't remember..
-- It's important to note, that this story is not intended to criticize anyone
involved, the error was securely on our side, I am simply retelling the
experience as I remember it, systems are interesting, so enjoy the exploration
of one -- We tried calling the embassy of my gf, but they
did not care much, it was late Friday, and it was her mistake anyway, she was
told that she would have to wait until monday to talk to someone. I called the
Turkish embassy in Copenhagen, and got someone who spoke excellent Danish,
Turkish and English, she was actually off duty, but she helped us anyway,
thanks to you, whoever you were! The lady at the Turkish/Danish embassy acted
as a translator, and talked to the security officer, who reluctantly got hold
of a superior, who could explain the situation to her, and then she explained
it to us. The system was rather robotic.
The bug
We were told, that since we (my gf, I could technically have had the vacation
alone, and an (I'm fairly certain) ended relationship) were not allowed into
the country. So, as far as they were aware, we were now responsible for
arranging travel back home. BUT WE DIDN'T KNOW THAT?! Alrighy, armed with this
new knowledge, I called the company whom I bought the travel from, who kindly
informed me (they have since gone bankrupt, wonder why) that since I've already
accepted the terms of service (clearly stating that we were fully responsible
to bring valid travel ID), there was really nothing we could do but wait for
our scheduled return flight. I dialoged with her a bit, then called back to the
lady at the Turkish/Danish embassy, who talked more with the security guy,
then she informed me that, since I was allowed to enter Turkey, I was allowed
to enter the Airport to buy tickets back home, but that I should be aware that
the tickets had to be directly out of Turkey, since we didn't have valid ID, we
weren't even allowed to hop via Istanbul (which is what we were supposed to do
on the planned trip back home!) That's the bug! Had we waited, we'd actually
not have been allowed to board the plane! But nobody in the system would catch
that before we were to board it! Glad that I decided not to wait.
The best chicken burger ever
At this point, we'd spent maybe 20 hours in the little room, and we had had only
a bottle of water. So I started rather annoyingly to ask for food. It took some
more hours, and someone decided to get us some food. To this day, I'm not sure
how that worked.. If someone took pity on us, and decided to buy the food out of
their own pockets, I think so, since there seemd to be no system in place to
ensure that we were being fed. So, if that's the case, shame on you, airport,
and thank you very much for the food, person who bought it for us! I've never
seen my gf devour a burger in such haste before :)
The golden way home
Armed with information that I had to buy tickets, and a credit card, the hero
at the Turkish/Danish embassy arranged that a security person (Can't recall if
it was police or G4s) escort me from (and back into) the holding cell, to buy
a ticket. She spoke good enough English that she instructed me how to haggle for
the price of the ticket, that I should act slightly offended and start to leave
if the price wasen't right.. So, I ended up in an office of Lufthansa, with the
most stereotypical slick, underachieving douchebag lowlife sales type I've
ever imagined (like, the guy had a magazine cutout of a Ferrari as a poster in
his office, sorry, but stereotypes, they just sometimes make themselves).
I don't recall this too well, except that after seeing him, I decided there was
no where in hell he'd ever touch my credit card... Which probably worked out
the best for him as well, I'm certain he sold those tickets as low as he could
get away with, and pocketed the rest of the cash himself.. Does not matter,
the tickets were, by Danish standards, not terribly expensive, and they
actually existed! So, we were booked! Back to the holding cell. The golden way
part, comes from the fact, that even though the tickets were reasonably enough
priced, they still added up, for those two single tickets, to the same amount
as the complete two-way-flight-one-week-all-inclusive-hotel package....
EU is home
We were escorted, this was actually kind of thrilling, and very fun, multiple
security personnel to the Lufthansa plane, we didn't go through security again,
since we'd never left it.. We walked to a gate, and then into a rather fancy
car, leather seats and stuff, I think it was some kind of VIP taxi gate bus..
The security officer carried our documents. We went into the plane as the very
last people, I didn't see anyone boarding, so I believe they actually delayed
the flight a tiny bit so that regular boarding could be completed.
Inside the plane, we were shown to our seats, and flight-staff were handed our
documents with strict instructions that they be returned to us only after
landing on German soil. This worried me slightly, because I'd not actually had
a chance to inspect the documents, to verify that they were indeed ours. I
voiced this, but staff was simply not allowed to open the envelopes.
We got a few extra bottles of water, which was super nice, since we were a bit
dehydrated from staying in the cell.. The world changes dramatically when you
go from hungry and thirsty and insecure about immediate future needs, to...
Being in the hands of a German airline.. Things were good!
When we landed in the German airport, I think it was Hamburg, we were asked
to wait until the other passengers had left the plane, then we were escorted,
by whom I recall not, to the airport police station, I don't recall if we got
our documents before, or if they were opened at the police station, but, they
looked at our documents, smiled at us and welcomed us to Germany, HOME!
I'm Danish, living in Denmark, but still, HOME! A place where we have rights!
Corrupted memory detected
I believe that we arrived during the evening.. Oh!
Correction, I believe we actually landed in Frankfurt, and took another
plane to Hamburg (as it was just closer to Denmark), but really, I don't recall.
If I remember (the sweet irony) to ask my gf, she may fill me in and I will
correct this. < Maybe we took a train from Frankfurt to Hamburg??)
Another edge-case
As far as I recall, we ended up at Hamburg airport around 2 in the night.
We couldn't figure out how to get a plane to Denmark, and we were super tired,
good chance we were not thinking our straightest at this point. But we figured
it'd be best to just take the train back to Aalborg. So we haggeled a cap, I
think I got a good deal on the fair, because the driver spent the whole trip
complaining that he'd make no money from the trip (20 eur for 10 minutes, I'm
pretty sure he made enough to pay for the gas, and there were nobody else
around anyway). We found ourselves at the station, a crazy place in the middle
of the night really! We attempted to use the ticket machines to buy tickets
to Denmark, but somehow, we couldn't.. We went to the Information desk and
hit another stereotype, maybe this is not true, but, sometimes one might get
the idea, that in Germany, "one ought to know the system, one is only entitled
to assistance should the cause be that of failure in the system, which seldom
fails." again, maybe not true, but after attempting to get help, I was pretty
convinced that the reason we'd get no help navigating the German train system,
was because we didn't know how to navigate the German train system.
The actual edge-case
Rambling I do. We were unable to book tickets the whole way..
But it seemed we had no trouble finding a trip one part, and then the next part.
So, a bit naively, I bought tickets for the first of a two-leg train-fare.
We ended up just south of the Danish border, in a station which had very little
but a platform... I went to the ticket machine, and found the next trip,
it would arrive within the hour! Blessings! Except, I couldn't buy a ticket for
it... Now, it didn't reveal this information before one actually attempted to
buy the damn ticket! So, I wouldn't have known! And, when one tried, as I
previously did, to buy a ticket for a fare that included this particular train,
I was not told that either, there was simply an "Something went wrong" type of
error, which indicated a technical, not procedural, error. So, here we were,
no means of buying a ticket, and the train rolled in, it stopped, and we went
aboard, attempting to find a way to buy a god-damn ticket! After quite a while
we understood that this was an overbooked train from somewhere in the nether-
lands. Filled with bicycles and sleeping people, and, as we discovered, people
trying to slip past ticket inspectors. When we met the ticket inspector, I
attmpted to explain our situation, and was met with "please wait a while, stay
where you are", which honestly didn't inspire a lot of confidence in us getting
anything but a (rather hefty) fine for our honest troubles of trying to pay for
our fare.
The escape
I decided it prudent to slowly work our way to the back of the train, hoping it
would stop so we could get off before getting into trouble. Again, what we did,
I must argue, was not wrong, we were faced with a system that didn't have room
for reason, and we did was we had to, I'll gladly pay for the tickets, if asked
by an actual human, should one still work within the infernal machine that
operated those trains. But, indeed, luck would finally kiss us, the train was
coming to a stop, as the train-staff made eye contact with us, the doors opened
and we stepped out into freedom.
The Final Station, devils spawn
Was our next stop, we were now just north of the border, and this station not
only offered a platform, but an underground shop, where we bought supplies for
the next part of our trip. I can't remember exactly, something vaguely
resembling a sausage in a bread blanket, but more.. artificial and evil.
I was hungry though, so it was... acceptable.
Tickets bought, we were so tired, but we'd made it, we waited an unmeasured
amount of time, then the train arrived, which took us through almost
the entire longitude of Jutland, we arrived in Aalborg, we were home, we had
survived. Of the whole trip, what I recall as the most annoying, the worst,
were two kids who were badly diciplined above average.. They were making
so much noise, were rude to the other passengers (to me, only once, then
they understood that they would not survive another attempt), and only their
poor sister (whom, rudely informed her, were not required to listen to since
she was a girl, and only the father can rule the family (more religion)).
I rather considered taking a man-to-man talk with their father, but decided
against it since he'd probably rather hit the sister for failing to control
her younger brothers, than give the devil-spawn themselves the lashing they
so deserved. (Note: I don't beleive in hitting children, or people, but these
rats were neither).
Postscript
That was it. Maybe I've fogotten stuff, maybe I've made up extra, I can't
remember, but it's been my honest attempt at a recall.
Nothing much to say about it, it was, in the big picture, not a big thing,
but for us, small normal people, in our lives, for the two of us, it was
something extraordinary.. Maybe not in a good way, but maybe not in a bad
way either.. The all-inclusive stay would probably not have made the same
impression on us as this did.. Also, we're likely not going to Turkey again
anytime soon...
