Rendahl: From Yerevan to Athens

It was already evening in Yerevan when I boarded a bus bound for Istanbul. My round-trip ticket cost $70, it was January of 1998, and I was 22 years old. When I reached Istanbul the following day, I had planned I would spend a few days touring the city before taking another bus to meet my dearest college friend, Cathy, in the Plaka in Athens.

The closed border between Armenia and Turkey made it impossible to take a direct route between the two cities. The bus would travel north through Armenia, and west across much of Georgia and all of Turkey, adding at least an extra 100 miles to the journey.

I got a lot for my money. There were only seven people on a charter-sized bus, so I had plenty of personal space. But it didn’t have a bathroom. No matter, I thought, surely I’m not the only person who will need to stop for one.

A few hours later, we had only reached a northern province of Armenia and nature called, but I was too embarrassed to request a stop so soon. Ever the Girl Scout, I knew that I could manage a solution. My scheme, inspired in part by years of going behind bushes when necessary, was to drink the juice I’d brought with me, then open the box and pee in it. (That’s entirely too much information for readers, but it is the absolute truth.)

You may expect this story to have an unfortunate ending, but I can assure you that it was as brilliant in practice as it was in theory. Privacy was not an issue, since there were so few passengers. Fitting between the seats, aiming into the mini-box, and stopping the flow when it was full were all tricky maneuvers, to be sure, but well worth the effort. I left enough room at the top to fold down the carton, then I placed it standing up in the trash can attached to the bench in the aisle. And so the journey continued.

When we reached the Georgian border, we encountered no significant issues until we tried to cross border control on the Georgian side. The process, if one can call it that, took hours. I fell into a very peaceful sleep, as I am able to do yet today in most any place or position. I slept until another passenger, an older woman, woke me to say that they wanted $5 from each of us, that otherwise they wouldn’t let us cross the border. Fair enough, I thought, as long as they’ll let me go back to sleep, and I groggily handed over the cash.

At one point during the hours that it took to actually cross both borders, I was at the front of the bus with the other passengers who were from various countries in the region. The bus was lit with a black light. I remember because it brought to attention the detergent that glowed in my jeans from poorly executed hand washing. I saw the other women notice the offensive blotches. “She can’t even wash her own clothes,” they thought, “These Americans can’t do anything.” Shame.

It was daylight when we stopped to eat in a rest area of sorts. The others immediately began cleaning the bus, sweeping the floor, and clearing our trash. I did my part and carried out my box with no one any the wiser.

There were mandarines on the trees and shit all over the floor of the bathroom facility. Quite a juxtaposition. We all opted to line up outside as we had behind a building on the border. “Are you done yet?” an older Armenian woman asked me as she stood up. “No,” I said. Performance anxiety, I thought. “Go ahead without me.”

Everyone shared their food with the others, so there was plenty to eat. It seemed a microcosm of what the world ought to be doing.

When we reached the Georgia-Turkey border, I was told that I could not cross, that I needed a Turkish visa. The border agent, who happened to be Armenian, and I had been living in Armenia for seven months at that point, instructed me to go to Batumi. What is that, I wondered, some kind of governmental ministry? Not intending to visit the Republic of Georgia, I hadn’t done enough research to learn that Batumi was in fact a city in Georgia. I stood there forlorn, while my travel companions got back onto the bus.

Already 11 p.m., the border personnel told me I could wait there until morning when a bus would be coming through en route to Batumi. They offered me a white plastic chair for the night.

Dreading a nine-hour overnight sit in now-slovenly clothes with border guards and my stuffed backpack, I assumed a genuinely pathetic look and asked if there were a hotel nearby. Bewildered by how I’d gotten myself into this mess, two-parts impatient and one-part taking pity on my high-maintenance request, they directed me to a man who was going to Batumi that night.

Now clear that Batumi was a town where I could get a Turkish visa, I got in his car and silently hoped that the stuffed animal hanging from his rearview mirror was indicative of a man with children. And a conscience.

Just 10 miles or so back into Georgia, he took me to the front desk of a hotel and explained my curious predicament. He told me, or them (it’s hard to recall), what I needed to do in the morning. Not a smile crossed this man’s face, but he’d gone out of his way for me. Lingering a bit before leaving, perhaps wondering if his kindness would reap rewards of some kind or another, I closed the evening with a handshake and a grateful smile.

The next morning I saw that I was on the shores of the Black Sea. I’m told it’s much more beautiful now, but I thought it was more than fine then. It was big and beautiful and still. The Turkish consulate didn’t open for several hours, so I sat on the rocky beach and watched the cargo ships. For a different reason this time, I drank another juice box.

I showed up at the consulate on time, but there was already a line of people. Mostly Georgians who were curious about an American’s presence, they insisted that I go to the front of the line. They brought over a Georgian girl who spoke English and who, in effect, asked me what on earth I was doing there. They were incredulous about the American girl who lives in Armenia, but is traveling through Georgia en route to Turkey on her way to Greece.

But they were happy to help, and so showed me to the afternoon shuttle traveling to Trabzon in eastern Turkey. The driver of the shuttle, a lively chap, sat me in the front seat and became quite animated about taking the damsel in distress closer to her destination. He remained so until we reached the border, my second time in two days, and I was turned away once again.

The border agent was not Armenian this time. It was a repeat of my first border crossing attempt, but this time I was missing Georgian paperwork. Unlike the first driver, this one looked truly remorseful to leave me behind.

The border employees connected me with yet another person driving to Batumi, this time displaying only pity, and I wondered if I would ever be allowed to leave this country.

The man, George, knew some 100 words in English, which is surprisingly adequate for communication. When we reached Batumi, he asked, “Friend, Turkish consulate, friend?” The irony that he didn’t understand or didn’t acknowledge was that Armenians and Turks are not the best of friends, despite their shared border and similar customs, and I was coming directly from Armenia.

I shrugged to say, “I don’t know,” tears silently falling down my face. He gently mocked my crying before getting out of the car to see if anyone at the Turkish consulate could help. His insensitivity was quite like the grin-and-bear-it kind of upbringing I’d had in a Scandinavian family in the Mid-West. I immediately felt better.

When he returned to the car, he told me that someone was going to help. That someone had remembered me from earlier in the day and was apparently some kind of high-level police officer in town. He regretted my situation because it could have been avoided if he’d noticed I was missing the Georgian visa, which I had been told was not an issue when you have an Armenian residency card.

Remarkably, the officer invited me to stay with his family. He did so with the translation assistance of an Armenian grandmother from the neighborhood. “They’re a good family, jan,” she assured me in Armenian. And so I went to their third-floor apartment across the street from the Turkish consulate. His wife greeted me warmly, even if confused by my sudden and rather unannounced appearance. They invited over the English teacher from the high school to have tea and discuss my situation. With this kind of graciousness, it was obvious at this point that my problems would be solved, though I didn’t know exactly how.

The family had a wonderful pink bathtub with hot running water, which was most welcome after another day on the road and the prior seven months without either. She made a delicious khatchapouri in the morning and he sent over two police officers to guide me through my day. God knows I needed a guide at that point.

Our first stop was to take visa photos, which they kindly paid for. Then we went directly to the Georgian consulate across town, where they began processing my application and told me to return later that day. As we left the consulate, to my great surprise, we ran into two Americans I knew, Hannah and Ritchie, also Peace Corps volunteers in Armenia at the time. They were encountering the same problems and were accompanied by another man named George, a paper salesman, who had gotten out of the bus to help them at the border.

Now veterans of paperwork hassles, the police officers expedited their processes, so that we could all make the 4 o’clock shuttle to Trabzon, a religiously conservative town in eastern Turkey. While the consulates did their work, we went out for a joyful lunch with Georgian wine—me, the police officers, George the paper salesman, Hannah, and Ritchie. George was a gifted artist and entertained us all by sketching images of our situation, complete with tears that were shed on the border.

The days of kindness had filled my heart and it was sad to leave for Trabzon that afternoon. A gypsy child pretended to cry while begging for money just as our shuttle was to pull away. I pretended to cry, too, and a smile splayed across his face. I was confident that I’d get out of the country this time, so I gave him all of my Georgian lari.

At the border, there were friendly smiles all around as we successfully crossed into Turkey. A Georgian woman who was on her way to sell her pottery in Turkey gave each of us a beautiful vase she’d crafted. The vase still sits on my piano.

George the paper salesman, who was bound for Istanbul, was also in the shuttle and he checked us into a hotel once we arrived. One room for the girls, one room for the boys.

Hannah and Ritchie stayed to tour the area, but I was running low on time before I needed to be in Athens. George and I made plans to take a domestic flight to Istanbul the following morning. No more buses. The flight was at 4 a.m. and he bought my $50 ticket. “Why are you being so generous?” I asked him. “The next time you see someone who needs help, what are you going to do?” he asked in response. Point taken.

He already had a hotel selected in Istanbul, so he got me my own room there, too. That day was Orthodox Christmas and he’d arranged to see friends for dinner that evening. We gathered for the festivities in the hotel’s restaurant in the basement, where we ate and drank for hours.

I rested easy that night knowing that George had already researched the station from where I could take a bus to Greece. He’d also given me a first-rate tour of the city’s main tourist sites and insisted that I call my father from his cell phone to tell him of my whereabouts. My father sounded suspicious about such a charitable stranger. “Are you sure he doesn’t want something in return?” he asked. After nearly three days together, it was clear that his expectations were as pure as a father could hope for.

He took me to the bus station the next morning and I got my ticket for Athens. We gave each other parting kisses on the cheek, a hug, and I was on my way. I’m only sorry to say that we haven’t kept in touch.

On the ride to Athens, I was talking with a Chinese tourist and it came up that I was living in Armenia. A guy about my age sitting across from me was listening to our conversation and finally asked me why I kept mentioning Armenia. He was Greek-Armenian, he told me in English, and so we switched to speaking Armenian. We talked until we reached his hometown of Alexandroupoli, a port city in northeastern Greece.

At his stop, we said goodbye, but he came back a few minutes later with a bag of treats for the journey and gave me a fast peck on the lips. I heard a loud disapproving tsk from the man seated in front of me, but I thought it was terribly sweet and oh-so Armenian. I’d told him where I’d be staying in Athens, so he called to say hello a few times over the next two weeks, but we were never to meet again.

The two weeks with Cathy in Greece were full of other stories, but the time finally came to return to Armenia. I’d intended to return by bus, but I would have had the same problems, so I bought an airline ticket with the credit card my parents gave me for emergencies. At just over $400, it cost the equivalent of nearly four months of my stipend as a Peace Corps volunteer.

But no credit card in the world could have bought that trip from Yerevan to Athens.