Welcome to Abant, where you can drive 6 hours round trip for 45 minutes of fun!!

Ahh the end of January, my how time does fly!!!

The following was written on Sunday night, on the bus ride home….

So for our final day of the month, we ventured 3 hours up to Abant, a “chok guzel” mountainous area with a giant lake in the middle of it. The ride up was fun as many roadtrips on buses are, complete with plastic cups of red wine and ridiculous picture taking.

We stopped for lunch at a place serving kofte and barbecue lamb, twas delish as always. Most importantly, there was a giant chicken statue at the restaurant, with a sign on it saying “2 Turkish lyra” well 2 actually meant 3 lyra but all the same once the money was in, the chicken literally laid an egg. We now have a new mascot…….his name is eggbert.

We finally made it up to Abant, and it was beautiful, albeit it a bit muddy, and by a bit I mean I am currently on the bus ride home writing this covered in mud. We walked along a boardwalk path, then had a seemingly undefined option for a further destination. We were told we had three hours to walk around, yet we found ourselves wondering what we should do after 15 minutes. A snowball fight was attempted, my camera battery was dead, so we figured…well….lets walk around the lake. I later found out the estimated walk is about 2 hours, but when u are trying to dodge mud flying from the car tires of asshole Turkish drivers, you can do it quicker.

Midway through the walk we came upon a clearing, where there were a ton of people sledding, barbecuing, and dancing. Naturally I thought, this is the perfect time to liven up abant and do what I do best…..

Party crash.

So we all jumped in, hand in hand with the drunk dancing people, and proceeded to have dance party 2010. We danced in a circle to the music of a bagpipe like instrument for a good half hour, then everyone randomly stopped, and went in separate directions.

This country never ceases to astound me with its weirdness.

We continued around the lake, at one point I think we were even walking in the lake, but regardless I was able to make it back on the bus safe and sound.

UPDATE:

So I lay my head against a window to take a peaceful nap on the bus ride home………

Only to be jarred awake by the screams of drunk people saying “HELLO WHERE ARE YOU FROM” in broken English. I could have sworn I had only closed my eyes for 5 minutes, but apparently that was all it took for the entire back of the bus to get sloppy and decide to harass me. After telling everyone me and Jamar were an item, dodging a beer being thrown at me and leading the drunks in several rousing 90s songs, I concluded that the bus ride was the 7th layer of hell and this country never stops getting interesting.

I can only imagine what will happen in February...