From the New York Times 4 August 2002

Taking a Seat Inside a Culture
By JO BROYLES YOHAY

THE instant our bus pulled out of the Istanbul station, a smiling attendant rose from his jump seat near the driver and walked down the aisle with a large squeeze bottle. Passengers cupped their hands to receive a spritz of lotion; following their lead, we rubbed the lemony cologne on our hands and faces, and ended with a refreshing sniff. Nestled in our roomy, plush seats, my husband and I exchanged a thumbs-up. A bus steward to tend our comfort? Our guidebooks had been right to call Turkey’s bus system a marvel. Rental cars don’t have stewards.

I love to take public transportation when I visit a foreign country. In India, Mexico and elsewhere, I have often opted for a long-distance bus or train instead of renting a car. True, one forfeits the flexibility to take side trips at whim — along with the ease of throwing luggage in the trunk — but the payoff is enormous. When I’m isolated in a rental car, wrestling with road maps and squabbling with my husband over directions, I feel robbed of a part of travel I crave.

I’m an anthropologist at heart. I like to rub elbows with a culture. Even more than admiring historic treasures, I thrive on trying to fathom what people’s lives are like, how their days unfold. Settled on a bus, cheek by jowl with a random sample of the populace, I can be a voyeur without seeming rude or intrusive.

In India, buses that had seen better days burst at the seams with all manner of humanity and the occasional crate of ducks. People were so appalled at a woman’s traveling alone (as I was on that trip) that whole families would take me under their wing, telling me what to eat at rest stops, where to wash my hands. Their care, far more than I actually needed, proved even more memorable than the tourist sights.

I still remember the old Maya woman on a rural Mexican bus — a suspensionless affair with a deeply cracked windshield — who showed me the fine brown eggs she was taking to market in a recycled spackle bucket. At the next depot, I switched centuries and rode in style on a deluxe bus showing a French movie with Spanish subtitles.

One major difference in Turkey was the language. In India, educated people speak the king’s English, and in Mexico and most of Europe, my husband, Victor, and I speak enough of various languages to make ourselves understood. But Turkish syntax was daunting, with its array of verb suffixes and accent marks. I carried in my pocket a list of useful phrases that I had written out phonetically. Even to say "thank you" I pulled out my crumpled paper and practiced a few times before speaking.

On this, our first trip to Turkey a year and a half ago, Victor, who normally comes down heavily on the side of rental cars, deferred to my bus enthusiasm for two reasons. First, just as we’d been warned about macho Italian drivers, we’d heard rumblings about the propensity of Turks to pass on blind curves at full throttle. (For the record, we didn’t find them to be much wilder than drivers anywhere else.)

The second reason Victor agreed to take the bus was personal. We were going to visit the town where his father was born and lived until he emigrated to the United States as a young boy. Sadly, no relatives remained for us to visit, and we knew of no family friends to contact. But we wanted to see the town, to walk the streets, to try to get a feeling for the place where Victor’s family had lived for generations. We planned to spend at least one night there, then catch a second bus south to the Roman ruins at Ephesus.

With minimal prompting, Victor agreed that it was fitting to approach his ancestral home on a bus, the transportation the family probably used years ago.

After a glorious week in Istanbul, we set out.

While I settled down to study our fellow travelers, the attendant arrived bringing cups of milky tea and small sweet cakes wrapped in cellophane. The man across the aisle, traveling with his wife and baby daughter, leaned over to show us how to unfold our tray tables. I whipped out my cheat sheet to say thanks; both adults smiled and made sounds of encouragement.

Behind the young family sat an ancient man with a hideous cough and work-hardened hands. His flowing garments mingled with his wife’s layers of scarves, head wraps and shawls. As in Istanbul, most men on board were dressed in neat slacks and short-sleeved shirts; most women covered their hair with scarves and wore billowing lightweight coats over their clothes. A man nearby sat reading a newspaper and we could see several ads featuring scantily clad women. We puzzled over the mix of standards.

For a while, the road hugged the coast of the Sea of Marmara. Clusters of garish poured-concrete vacation communities soon gave way to an agricultural landscape with a sprinkling of white stucco houses with cheerful red roofs. Each was surrounded by a tall garden wall. Perched high up in bus seats, we could peek over the top at the neat rows of olive trees, flowering shrubs and kitchen gardens; a car would have been too low.

We made stops in whitewashed towns, each centered on a small mosque with a single minaret, to take on more passengers. As each boarded, the attendant hopped up to point out empty seats.

Every hour and a half or so, the bus pulled into a rest stop and everyone piled off. Vendors offered great stacks of fruit, dried seeds and nuts, breads topped with cheese and vegetables, and the inevitable tea laced with milk. As we wandered about, our fellow passengers kept an eye on us, making sure we didn’t miss the bus. Seldom had we felt so welcome in a country.

After a while, the bus swept inland and rose into hills scattered with herds of sheep with robed shepherds.

From our printed schedule, I knew that my father-in-law’s hometown, Gelibolu, was two stops away. Just ahead, on a bleak hillside, I could see the town that would precede it. Clearly an agricultural center, it lay surrounded by rocky farmland. There was the usual single minaret; there was the shopping district. But where was a hotel? A restaurant? Would Gelibolu be a town just like this one?

Hotel vacancies in Istanbul had been plentiful, so we had decided to find a walk-in reservation when we reached Gelibolu. Now that decision seemed foolhardy. What if we landed smack in the middle of nowhere, without a room, with not a soul who spoke a word of any language we could understand.

I began to dread leaving the bus, the princely attendant bearing canned orange juice, the friendly young family. I imagined getting off at the next stop, then turning back to see our community of bus compatriots wave goodbye as we stood abandoned in a dusty circle of feed stores, poring over our phrase book. This was definitely a downside of public transportation. "Where do you suppose the nearest Avis office is?" I murmured to my husband.

I awoke from my fantasy of doom to see the man with the racy newspaper ads debark. The door swung closed with a swoosh behind him. As the bus pulled away from the station, the driver make a hard left down a steep hill and out of town.

Gelibolu was probably miles away; still, I scanned the landscape for any visible signs. Only a few goats munching shrubs. My vigil continued as the road wound slowly down an incline. Then, a hopeful sign: the glint of water. The Dardanelles. The sea would lie beyond. I perked up, and by the time we reached the tiny bustling fishing dock of Gelibolu, my spirits had rallied. "Look," I said to Victor, pointing, "a pretty hotel overlooking the water."

We said our goodbyes and stepped down from the bus. We were eager to explore the streets where my father-in-law had once walked, to find buildings old enough to have stood in his day, to search for clues to his life. Who needed a car? We were beginning to feel like honorary Turks.

JO BROYLES YOHAY writes frequently about travel.