It was January, and cold. Kate, our friend Ingo and I set out for a week long adventure in Turkey. Our plan was to take the night train to Konya and from there to go to Kapadokya. We got to the train about five minutes before it left, and for the first couple of hours had the compartment to ourselves. Apparently all of this time was spent just getting out of Istanbul! It really is a massive city. Then a couple of Turkish guys boarded the train. They were in our compartment. For the next hour it was really quiet. No one wanted to break the silence and everyone was feeling a bit shy. And then, as if by magic they got out their food and we got out our food, and we offered them our food and they offered us their food and the ice was broken. They had homemade pastries from their mothers, which was much more exciting than our food. They were both students in a city named Isparta, which is in the south west of Turkey. Ingo and I only know very little bits of Turkish, so Kate did the talking. It's a lucky thing that she knows Turkish! The guy with the pony-tale, named Cihan was studying the leather trade, and Beyhan, the younger one was studying textiles.
The sleeping part of the journey was not nearly as good as the company. The seats folded down into beds, but under the bottom bunk was a heater that was either on or off. And because Turks are very afraid of getting cold and then getting horribly sick, they didn't want to turn off the heat. And I was on the bottom bunk and sweltering. If we opened the window then the people on the top froze. It was January after all, and we were going inland. In the middle of the night Cihan traded places with me so that I could at least get farther away from the heater. I didn't really sleep much at all, which is strange for me. Because usually I sleep so well on trains! I love the motion, it's like being rocked to sleep.
When it got light the next morning we saw that the ground was covered in snow. We hadn't had any word from the friend we were going to stay with in Konya, so we decided that we would just go straight to the village of Göreme in Kapadokya. We got on the tram across town to the bus station. And then, on the way the tram hit a guy. I've never been on any public transportation that has run over someone! It was surreal. Here we were in a strange city, on a tram, with our big backpacks, stalled in the snow because a man had been hit. And then the television guys, police and ambulance arrived. And everyone on the train got up and was trying to see what was going on. I'm surprised that they didn't start to take photos themselves. After waiting 20 minutes the tram was allowed to leave. By the time we got to the bus station it was snowing really hard. Inside we found the counter advertising buses to Göreme. The man at the counter said they were closed. How can the bus be closed? Not understanding, we walked to the next counter where they explained that the roads were closed due to snow. After asking several times if we could go today, and always getting no as a response, we started to ask when we could go. We were told that tomorrow there is a big chance. Allah Bilir (God knows). In Scotland you never would have had this answer. Everyone would know when the roads were opening. Although it never really snows enough in Scotland to close the roads.
So much for that plan. We were now stuck at the bus station. We found the cafeteria for some soup and tea. We decided that we didn't want to stay in Konya. After the tram incident we weren't really excited to stay. We had already decided we were leaving. We started looking at buses to see where we could go. Van? Very very far in the east, a 24 hour trip. Kate went back inside to ask where we could go. You can go to Eğirdir lake they told us. Then Ingo remembered he had been there before and loved it. So we decided to go to Eğirdir.
Considering how snowy the road to Eğirdir was, and the fact that it was still open, I find it hard to imagine how snowy the other road must have been. At one point we stopped because there were cars in the oncoming lane, as well as a truck that had pulled over into our lane. And naturally, all the Turkish men on the bus needed to stand up, see what was going on, and give advice. I was reminded of the tram. Fortunately this time no one had been hit. The truck in our lane eventually moved back to his lane, and we continued on.
As we drove through the hills, the sky was the same color as the snow, a light gray, making it sometimes impossible to tell where the land ended and the sky began. And it also began to snow again. We arrived four hours later at Eğirdir, in the dark. I let out a sigh of relief when the bus stopped. I had been sure we were going to slide off into the snow.
It was the next morning when I woke up that I got to see what was on the other side of the lake. The view was absolutely beautiful. The lake is surrounded by mountains, that, at this time of year, have snow on them. My breath was taken away. What an amazing place to have arrived in the middle of the night. It was warmer and the sun was out, and apparently had not snowed so much in Eğirdir.
From the town on the shore, it is a 2 km walk to the islands. No, the lake was not frozen. They've made a walkway to the islands. So I guess that means that they aren't really islands anymore. There's a small one that's mostly been made into part of the 
walkway, and then a bigger island. It's called Can Ada, which means Can Island, but the name makes me think Canada. On the way we found the most amazing icicles ever. Eğirdir is really windy, and on the windy side of the land bridge we were walking on, the waves were very strong. So they blew the water from the lake up onto the shore. And probably since the beginning of winter the ice has been accumulating on the ground, trees, rocks, and a table and chair. The chair was so covered in icicles, it really looked like it had very big teeth. For a moment I thought it could eat me. Ingo, being a photographer, got out his camera and spent a long time walking around it and taking photos from different angles.
The island is really cute. As Ingo put it, if this was Germany, the island would have been totally cleaned up for the tourists. But it hasn't been, and so there are still old houses and dirt paths, and well, it has not been sterilized. There isn't really much on the island though besides cafes, pensions, a playground, lots of very nice views, and even more wind! Oh, and there are lots of hungry street cats! It looks like it would be the perfect place to come in summer – have breakfast outside, read a book, take a boat on the lake, go for a nice walk. We were really cold by the time we made it round the island, and so stopped to have a nice cup of tea and warm up before we walked back to the mainland.
Returning to the bus station we discovered that there is a direct night bus to Göreme, and being poor, decided to skip paying for a hotel and to take the night bus. That left us with the rest of the day. While eating lunch, we got to witness the beginning of the döner (the rotating meat on a spit) making process. The dönercu (guy making the döner) sliced the meat into very thin slices, and then put them all into
a mixture of yogurt, milk, onion and other stuff and mixed it all around. He then put the meat back in a pan, and told me it would sit overnight like that. Then, the next day they would stack it up, and put it on the spit and cook it.
We decided it was much too cold to walk back to the island, and so instead walked along the lake, finding more giant icicles. As we returned the sun was setting over the lake. While waiting for our night bus we wasted time in a pastry shop, and the in an internet cafe before we boarded our night bus to Göreme. The road was now open.