A long week in Ankara

October 21, 2009

It is the eve before I travel by train with bike to Tehran. I cant wait, I have been stuck here in Turkeys capital, Ankara for over a week now and I am completely bored out of my skin. I sit here with two stark choices. Either stay here in my hotel room and watch Man Utd play in the Champions league, or venture out from this cheap hotel, avoiding propositions from the multitude of working girls who seem to hang around the nearby streets (classy area). I am not feeling that brave so decide to stay in and suffer.

I arrived in Ankara on a wet afternoon 6 nights ago. I immediately took a dislike to the place on account of the air pollution and the nightmare I had, in trying to find my way around. Unfortunately this opinion has not softened over the week. The place is like London without the attractions, there seems to be little in the way of monuments or historical buildings of any worth and unlike Istanbul there is no Asian feel to the place. In fact it could be mistaken for any large city in the UK with an imported Turkish population.

The reason I have been stuck here for a week, is on account of there being only one train a week travelling to Tehran and as sod’s law would have it , I actually arrived in Ankara on the day before it left last week . It was just impossible for me to be ready to go on that following morning. For one I hadnt even collected my Visa for Iran . I resigned myself to the fact that I would be spending a week in Ankara, finding the cheapest hotel I could to accomodate this.

Collecting my Visa for Iran was relatively pain free, apart from trying to locate the place. Having found it and being let through a number of large remotely operated steel doors, I found myself seated in a large white waiting room with large glass counter with no one at it. I sat there for some time looking from wall to blank wall acutely aware of the immense two way mirror, which occupied the space in front of me. Was I being observed and weighed up for suitability for entrance to the Islamic republic? I had taken a shave that morning and looked fairly presentable. I felt more comfortable when I heard one of the electric doors click and a couple of scruffy Spanish backpackers walked in and sat down, unshaven. Eventually one of the staff appeared and I explained that I had a reference number since my Visa application had already been authorised via an agent in Iran. He asked for my passport and the reference number, before giving me details of a bank account into which I was to deposit 95 Euros . having done this and returning an hour later I was advised to return the next morning and collect my passport with visa. As easy as that 30 day visa in the bag. My next problem was to arrange my finances for my month in Iran. There are no ATM machines in Iran and in fact no means of using plastic at all there. Basically any money you will need, has to be taken into the country in hard cash, preferably dollars. Being an HSBC account holder and a premiere one at that, I thought it would be easy for me to visit the large branch in Ankara and withdraw $2000 from my account. Not on your Nelly, it had taken me , what , 2 hours at the most to get a visa for the so called “Axis of Evil” but it took 4 hours to try and get money out of my account, in my bank, and changed into dollars, I was interviewed by the bank manager, he took copies of my passport and driving licence. I had to speak on the phone to the head office, and god knows who else. eventually after all of this , The bank manager came over to me smiling and said that he was happy to confirm that I could have the money out of my account, but that due to some banking policy they were able only to give me the money in Turkish lira not in Dollars and I would then have to go and change the money at another bank. I was absolutely livid and went into the usual rant. I had wasted four hours of my life stuck in the bank, to be given money in a currency that I could have simply withdrawn from the cash point machine outside of the bank. what morons. Never the less, I now have my visa , $2000 in cash and a single rail ticket to Tehran costing the princely sum of around £40 , not bad for a 36 hour train journey, complete with bed cabin and meals.

I really would have loved to cycle over the border into Iran, but things have become a little dodgy with the Kurdish terrorists in the region calling off their ceasefire with the government troops, and I also fear that the weather will just get too difficult in that area to manage on bike (lots of snow is usual) So I am quite happy to arrive in Tehran by train and cycle down into the warmer weather around the Gulf where I can catch a ferry across to Dubai. So I will sign off for now and start packing for tommorrow and load a few photos of Reading , sorry meant Ankara onto the blog.