19 May 2015

Samsun

Outside, in the alley the rain is pouring down hard. Big, heavy drops drum on the pavement and glisten in the yellow light of the street lamps. For most of the afternoon the city smelled of hot dust and ozone. At sunset the thunderstorm finally broke and I got back to the pension drenched. Now I’m sitting in the small lobby, sunk deep into the worn sofa-cushions. I sit by myself, surrounded by pillows, throws, thick carpets and a huge bookshelf. On top of the shelf, barely visible in the dim glow of the glass lamps, the owner has arranged decorative plates and glasses, and a few family photographs, too. Next to it, the wooden counter is dwarfed by the photographs and flags on the wall behind it. In the half-dark I can’t make out where the old clock is, but its solemn ticking fills the room. When I concentrate on the moments between its ticks, the place feels as if time itself has stopped.

The clock’s rythm contrasts with the continous pitter-patter outside, intermingled with the occasional distant rumbling of thunder. I hadn’t really noticed any of that until a few minutes ago, when I put down John Le Carré’s ‘Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy’. Mentally coming back from Cold War espionage to the present, I also realized that the pension’s owner must have gotten up from his paperwork at the counter to attend to one of the rooms upstairs. There isn’t much to do though, since I am the only guest.

No doubt that’s part of the reason why I am still in Samsun: The pension is neat and very quiet. The owner is a stately-looking man in his early 50s who uses the phrase “no problem!” almost exclusively and brings me coffee without me asking. That, too, is part of why I’m still in Samsun, a city in which there is nothing to do. A city which I intensely disliked when I arrived here:

I hadn’t slept much on the night bus from Göreme (I’m sure I mentioned that). When I arrived at Samsun coach station at 04:00h, I barely knew where I was. My mouth felt like a hamster had slept on my tongue. The station was devoid of people but I managed to find the metro lounge, which had a TV tuned to a sports channel. So I saw some of the run-up fights to Mayweather vs. Pacquiao. I also noticed that somebody on the bus must have nicked the cookies I had kept in a plastic bag under my seat. Whoever you are, cookie-thief, I hope those chocolate chips bring you joy, and not diabetes. Just before the big fight started, a shuttle appeared out of the thick fog outside and took us the city centre.

What I saw of the city looked dire as hell in the fog and under a light drizzle. I got off at the city centre and wandered around in search of caffeine, wifi and processed carbohydrates for almost an hour. It would only occur to me a few days later that I had arrived on a sunday morning, at 06:00h. This would have explained nicely why nothing was open and there were no people around at all. As it was, I felt very much betrayed by the universe. Finally I managed to find a bakery with wifi (yay!), puff pastries (yay!) and tea (…). From there, I looked up this one pension and then crossed the road to a Metro coach ticket office, on the off-chance that there was a way out of this hellhole on the same day. Since there wasn’t (probably - my Turkish isn’t so good), I marched off in the other direction and found the pension. The room I was offered was a double, for a price which made haggling feel pointless. I lugged my bag up to the fourth floor and collapsed on the bed. Outside, the sun rose behind hazy clouds, stores were opened and cars started. Windows were flung open, tea was brewed. Inside, I drifted off and slept the sleep of the all-but-dead.

The promenade

Fried egg on top of my beef-bacon pizza/pide? Don't mind if I do!

As I have been in Samsun for two weeks now, I will spare you all the details. The main points are these:

After staying in so many places for relatively short periods (2-5 days), I wanted to take a break and stay somewhere for a bit longer. While hopping from town to town is great fun, it’s also a flood of new impressions which need to be processed at some point. I simply did not want to be one of those travelers who live by their itineraries. The kind that gets off a bus somewhere with glazed-over eyes and trembling hands.

Also, my other stays had been at hostels. That had turned out great in terms of the people I met and I’m actually amazed how easily groups formed between people from very different backgrounds. Yet, after I while I felt like I needed a break from people. Some time to shut up and think (or precisely not think). This was made all the more pressing, as I kept remembering all the things I had set out to do on this trip: Study, write, read, program. So far, I had done preciously little of that.

In the past two weeks, I started doing some of what I had planned, and Samsun turned out to be just the right place for it: Population of 1 million, but not too crowded. Affordable, yet modern. No major attractions meant: no major distractions. In Samsun I didn’t feel the least bit guilty about spending entire afternoons and evenings in cafes, just reading or writing. I knew I wasn’t missing out on anything.

Samsun's port

Instead, I did things. I read:

• Joe Haldeman, The Forever War (I loved this one.)

• Terry Pratchett, The Nightwatch (Deeply philosophical satire, one of his best!)

• John Le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (enjoyable)

• Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5 (not sure)

• Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game (not convinced)

I also finally managed to commit Kipling’s “The Palace” to memory, though I struggled for ages.

Usually I would read in the mornings and at night, and program in the afternoons. That way, I got some Python exercises out of the way and completed a script which manages the photographs included in these articles (more on that later). I also found out how shockingly simple it is to write a script to generate and guess Finnish Social Security Numbers. I started working on some simple pattern recognition for data analysis in Python. I hope to continue that in the coming weeks. Finally, I set up a virtualized Arch Linux system, which is a great thing to do if you ever need a system which feels like it’s been made of broken household appliances.

Not quite sure what this is...

Between the reading and the programming, I spent an unreasonable amount of money on coffee and don’t regret a thing. For breaks, I took plenty of long walks along the promenade and exercised fairly regularly. All in all, the past two weeks have felt refreshingly productive.

As enjoyable as my stay here has been, I’m beginning to feel restless. Luckily, a coach ticket to Batumi, Georgia (No, not that one. The other one.) is only ~20 EUR. I’ll leave at 23:00h and reach at 07:00h. Hooray for overnight coaches!

Until next time,
Arne