I wanted to love this new bus station. Really, I did. And certainly whoever designed it has tried to make it interesting, having opted for a box-like structure that looks as if some outsize mouse has dropped by after dark and nibbled holes of varying sizes in its side. But the truth is that it’s yet another example of the new breed of bus stations that have been built so far away from the towns they serve that there’s no longer any possibility of walking to them. In this case thank goodness we do still have the network of “servis” buses to forward passengers to the surrounding settlements. I hate to imagine what it would cost to take a taxi back to Göreme.“The city is expanding in that direction,” someone said hopefully. “In 10 years’ time it will be close to town again.”
Well, that’s as maybe, and in that sense it reminded me of one of the overly long school uniform skirts my mother used to buy me on the understanding that I would “grow into it”; then for the next year or so I’d have to roll the waistband over and over so as to avoid tripping over the hem. In the meantime, though, the bus station stands in splendid isolation, beyond even the Martyrs’ Memorial, itself so far away from the center that although I’ve always meant to pop by and look at it I’ve never actually gotten round to doing so.
Of course unlike the old and interim versions, the new bus station comes with airport-style security at the entrance, which I must say is not what you want to see when trying to manhandle a suitcase, laptop computer, handbag and cat basket into the warmth. For the time being no one seems to be taking the barrier too seriously, and once through it I gazed in bewilderment at the handful of functioning ticket desks lost in a sea of non-functioning ones. A cluster of chairs and tables huddled apologetically some distance away from the tea counter.
Still, I suppose we should give it time. Not 10 years, perhaps, but time enough to bed down properly; time enough for a few more bus companies to take up residence and a few shopkeepers to move in. For that we will probably have to wait until the spring since business over the winter offers meager pickings. Come the new tourist season, things may look very different. In any case, once the sun comes out again we won’t need to struggle through the security barrier. Instead we’ll all be able to loiter outside with the smokers.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
