[EXPAT VOICE] The kindness of Bolulular

Bright and early, we woke up and asked the front desk where the bus to Kartalkaya left from. “Bitti,” (it's finished) the clerk replied, looking at us like we were insane for wanting to go up the mountain. Apparently the municipality had stopped regular city bus service to the ski hotels. “But how will we get to Kartalkaya?” my friend, Cat, asked. Perhaps a cab, was the reply.

We weren't keen on spending TL 100 each way on cabs up and down the mountain, so we stopped by a few more hotels to ask if they knew how we could get to Kartalkaya, striking out each time until we stopped at a Turkcell store, where the employees suggested we try asking at the belediye (mayor's office).

Cat and I headed off to the belediye, where we walked in and essentially announced to the slightly bemused man at the information desk that we were looking for a way to get up to Kartalkaya. He decided that the mayor's secretary could best handle this request and ushered us upstairs, where we repeated our mission to a middle-aged woman who, like any good Turkish bureaucrat, immediately offered us tea.

After a brief flurry of phone calls, she came back to tell us that, while there was no public bus up the mountain, she could get us a cab for TL 70 with the mayor's office discount. This was better than the other options in front of us, namely pay TL 100 for a regular cab or give up on skiing and hang out in Bolu (it's a nice town, but we'd traveled to ski), so we accepted. As the secretary turned back to her phone to call the cab company, a man waiting in her office spoke up and offered to drive us up the mountain. While usually I'm highly suspicious of guys offering rides here, the secretary leaned over and mentioned that he was the chief of police. We figured that he had business up with the ski hotels and were more than happy to accept a lift up. On the way out of the belediye, we ran into the mayor, who chatted with us for a bit before declaring us guests of his office for the day. After a quick stop to pick up the police chief's English-speaking female friend, we were off.

The trip up started fairly uneventfully. We learned that our hosts actually didn't have any business at the top of Kartalkaya, but wanted to make sure that we two yabancı girls got up the mountain with no problems. About halfway up, the snow started to come down with a vengeance, and our little intrepid car got stuck. We all piled out to push the car, and to buy snow chains from a handy snow-chain salesman at the side of the road.

On we went and finally turned up at one of the hotels at the top of Kartalkaya, where our hosts refused any repayment but did let us treat them to tea. I had brought homemade chocolate chip cookies along, and we shared them with the chief and his friend -- it was highly successful cultural diplomacy.

Before they left to head back down the mountain, our friend the police chief found the hotel's manager and told him that we were guests of the mayor, asking him to help us find transportation down the mountain at the end of the day.

The skiing itself was well worth the effort of getting there; the slopes were not too crowded because the wind was pretty malevolent and the snow falling around us was roughly the consistency of Dippin' Dots, traveling at a speed roughly equivalent to that of a sandblaster.

At the end of the day, we retired to the hotel's café for salep and the last of my chocolate chip cookies before finding the hotel manager to ask him how we could best get down to the city. After checking around, he came back with the news that none of the hotel guests were leaving that evening, so our only option was to get a cab, which we could again get for the mayor's office rate. Figuring that we really could only luck out with a free ride once a day, we accepted, and he went off to call the cab company.

Not two minutes later, the manager was back, with a sporty-looking college student in tow: a representative of Bolu's university ski team. They had heard we were trying to go back to town and were about to head back down themselves after spending a week at Kartalkaya honing their technique. They offered us a ride on their bus back down the mountain, and we eagerly accepted.

We boarded the ski team bus to a cacophony of Turkish pop karaoke. The students were really excited to have two yabancı students on the bus and serenaded us with a capella versions of Turkish pop and traditional songs before demanding that we sing something as well; I think we managed an oldies hit or two before they dissolved into laughter at our woeful melodic attempts. As we chatted with the students next to us, we mentioned that our plan was to grab dinner, hopefully mantı, in Bolu before heading to the bus station, where I would hop a bus for Ankara while Cat would grab a bus to İstanbul. The guy next to us promptly invited us to dinner at his family's mantı restaurant, which was right downtown and two blocks from the bus company offices. Kısmet again.

After extending our thanks to the university's ski coach for the ride back to town, we made our way to our new friend's restaurant. We walked in and grabbed a table, only to hear “Rebecca? …Cat?” It was our friend from our ride up the mountain that morning, out for dinner with her father. We ended up having a huge communal meal of mantı with all our new friends plus the owner of the restaurant. It was delicious, and a truly fitting cap to our day in and around Bolu.

While Turks in general have a well-deserved reputation for hospitality, I'll always hold that the most hospitable, kindest Turks I've met are Bolulular. Cat and I started our day just a pair of American researchers, trying to go skiing on a budget, and ended up meeting the mayor, becoming guests of the mayor's office, getting a ride up the mountain from the chief of police, getting a ride down the mountain from the local university ski team, running into our friend from that morning at a restaurant and being treated to a wonderful dinner of mantı. Just one of these would have made for a noteworthy, pleasant day, but all together it was an overwhelming outpouring of hospitality from a great little mountain town.