5 Take-aways.
1. I found that a British credit card did not work on TCDD (the Turkish rail system) websites – often after filling in all my details. If you can, go to any station and try to buy tickets there.
2. Snow in April! It may be worth checking what the weather will be like before you go.
3. There is a metro system in Ankara but most of the stations outside the centre do not have working escalators – be prepared for some climbing.
4. The BiTaksi app didn’t work for me in Ankara, but I found the ordinary cabs to be cheap and not trying to scam me.
5. Make plenty of time to see all the Ankara has to offer. There are many museums, mosques and galleries spread out across the city with differing opening times – plan what you want to visit.
From Istanbul to Ankara by train.
My journey to Ankara started about a week before I actually departed Istanbul. Foreign credit cards appear not to work in Turkey, at least they didn’t for me, so I made the trip over to the railway station to book the ticket in person.
The station it leaves from in Istanbul is called Söğütlüçeşme, good luck with pronouncing that; luckily I didn’t have to. More by luck than design, the station was within walking distance of my accommodation although it also has a bus station and a Maramay (local train) stop on the same site. Buying the ticket was no problem at all, as the person who served me spoke good English and I just had to come back on the day of travel.
At the station on the day of departure, I had to wait for about 30 minutes to get through the security line. I was surprised to be charged an extra few lira for my bag (just over £2.00) but there were no issues getting on the train, nor on the journey itself. I had booked a first class seat and got a small box of goodies including a cheese sandwich, a bottle of water, a carton of juice and a small piece of cake. Sadly I managed to leave the latter two items in a bag when I got out of the taxi. I caught the taxi outside of the station as the BiTaksi app didn’t work in Ankara – but the journey was fine and only cost me around £2.00.
Hotel fail!
Unusually, I had to book a hotel room, because it was difficult to find an Airbnb. Partly because of the restrictions now placed on the platform by the government, but also because when I looked on the site, nearly all the listings were made by the same organisation – often showing the same picture of stays in different parts of the city and all with very low ratings. I decided not to take the chance. Sadly I am not as savvy when it comes to choosing hotels and once again this one was a let down. When I arrived I had to wait about 30 minutes whilst they got my room ready, so I asked for a cup of coffee. I am not sure if it was a language problem but what I got was a cup of hot water.
I was then shown up to my room which was – well not as described would be putting it mildly. Gone was the comfy chair and nice desk from the photos on their website. I had a hard wooden seat with a table which wouldn’t have been accepted by a charity shop. The seats out in the corridor looked more comfy than mine – so I snuck out and changed it. Then there was the wifi …
It worked for the first evening. It wasn’t fast, but then I didn’t expect it to be, but towards the end of the night it just gave up altogether. I waited until the morning and as it was still not working I went to reception to report it. I was told that it was the snow, but the wifi was working in other areas of the hotel so how could it be the snow? Nothing happened all of that day and I was forced to go down and work in the reception area that evening.
Day three (of four) and I at last felt I was being taken seriously and there was some movement to try and fix the router on my floor. Eventually I think they got someone in to replace it – so on my last day I had working wifi, but given it is one of the things I most look for when I am staying anywhere I was not impressed. I reviewed the hotel as a 4/10 but I am very clear that I want to avoid hotels as much as possible in the future.
Seeds, snow and a student meet-up.
Did I mention snow? Yes – I had gone to Spain to escape the snow in this part of the world, only to meet up with it in Ankara. To be fair it was only for the couple of days that I arrived, but it did mean that I had to be very careful with my footing and I was so glad that I had bought some new shoes during my stay in Madrid. But being in a hotel did force me to go out more (especially on the day when there was no Wi-Fi) so I was able to take some snowy photos which are not usually in my repertoire.
Ankara is another of these cities where there seems to be mini enterprise zones – so all the pharmacies are in one area, fabric shops in another, etc. I was in the nuts and seeds zone and after passing several places with tempting displays, I gave in and bought some … not something that someone with diverticular disease should do. I am now fairly sure that this contributed to my hospital stay in Tbilisi, Georgia –(which you can read more of here,) but at the time I was blissfully unaware of the consequences of that decision.
One of the reasons for going to Ankara was to meet up with a student of mine. Gamze (name changed) has been with me for about a year and is hoping to gain a good enough score in IELTS, the international English test, in order to pursue a post-graduate course in the Netherlands. We met up for the day and I let her choose where we should go. She didn’t want any photographs of the meeting to be made public, so I’ve just posted a few of the venue we went to which was the Anitkabir – the mausoleum for Ataturk the founder of modern Turkey. It is a big and impressive site and we didn’t have time to see all of it, so it would be somewhere to go back to if I ever return to Ankara.
Finding my way out - the station saga.
Soon I found myself coming to the end of my time in the city, but there was one last task that I needed to do and that was to find my platform for the train I had booked onto to leave.
The Dogu Express is the longest train journey in Turkey and can take up to 30 hours – but my journey was timed at 26. It leaves from platform 1 at Ankara Station, but all the blogs and videos I had looked at said that the platform is not easy to find – given that it is in the old Ankara station and not the super brand new one which I arrived into from Istanbul. So I did my usual thing of doing a reconnaissance journey – a ‘reccy’ to see what the situation was. I was so glad I did.
I took the metro to the station and soon decided that it was not a suitable route with my rucksack and case as there were lots of stairs and the escalator looked as if it hadn’t worked in months. At the station itself I found all the platforms easily from 5-15 … but where were 1 to 4. I asked (with the help of Google Translate) at the ticket office – but all I got was a gesture to keep going to the right. So I did to the end of the (very long) station. Back I came and went out to the front to see if it was accessible from there. No. I asked a couple of people but they didn’t know. I guess not many take the Dogu Express. I came back into the station and having explored to the front and to the right and left, I went the only other way, to the back – and success. Over a footbridge across most of the tracks and there is the old station with it’s frontage on a street parallel to the one the new station is on.
It meant I had to be VERY clear to the taxi driver which station front I wanted … but although it took about 30 minutes to find the platform, it was better than struggling on the day of that very long journey. So my time in Ankara came to an end and the next part of the journey across most of the country will be for another blog post. Look out for it soon.
Support the blog.
If you have enjoyed this post – why not buy me a coffee – all donations appreciated and will help to keep the blog going. Just click here.
Subscribe for more!
If you haven’t already – enjoy a subscription for free by clicking THIS LINK – you will then receive a free monthly newsletter detailing where Steev is at the moment + other goodies. If you have subscribed – thank you for your support!
Comments
Comments are closed.