Urfa, Adiyaman, Nemrut and Eastern Anatolia

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Behind the Scenes in Bible-Land

It’s a good as week as any to bring you inside a week of filming and life on the road. After all, I’ve been to Turkey before, covered much of the ground that tourists usually do - Istanbul, Ephesus, Fethiye, Cappodicia. We’re heading east this time, towards the Euphrates and Tigris rivers that have shaped civilizations for millennia. It will form a backdrop of Biblical proportions, literally, to the 8th episode of Word Travel’s second season. Lets begin in Bucharest with a taxi fiasco, commencing our journey in Europe, head to the crossroads, and then over to the other side.

I’d read that the Gare Du Nord in Bucharest is notorious for the most sleazy, sketchy taxi drivers on the planet, and after disembarking the slow, cramped, 10-hour train from Transylvania , I can confirm that everything I read is true. I won’t go into details for fear of my blood boiling over, but suffice to say the drivers took advantage of our confusion and later our wallets. Since this is a production expense and doesn’t cost me anything personally, I don’t know why it grates my very being, but it does. Even with flights, meals and accommodation paid for, you can take the hostel out of the backpacker, but you can’t take the backpacker out of the hostel. Meaning: Years of edge-of-the-budget travel has imprinted itself in my core. I still carry my own bags to my hotel room, because dealing with the awkwardness of tipping a porter, simply because I’m too lazy to carry a backpack, just isn’t worth it.

An early morning pick-up (fortunately through a driver service), drops us off at Bucharest airport, which has a small town feel considering it’s a major international. Check-in, with slight confusion since our booking number isn’t in the Turkish Airlines system. A 3 euro cup of much needed coffee. We board, we fly. At the same time in Madrid, a passenger jet bursts into flames, 154 souls go to heaven. Strong onshore winds cause the landing in Istanbul to be one of the rockiest yet, and I’ve landed on moon craters in the past. Even frequent flyers sweat when metres from the ground the wings swing at a 45 degree angle.

Canadians have to pay an outrageous $60 visa fee on arrival, a full $40 more than any other country. I’m convinced an Ottawa diplomat hit on the Turkish Ambassador’s wife - there’s just no explanation for the exorbitant fee. Production picks up the tab of course, but again, it stokes the fire of my backpacker soul. Worth noting that the fee is reciprocal, so Turks get the same treatment on arrival at Vancouver International. Bag retrieval is always a gambit. We’ve only had our luggage go astray once, in Colombia, on the first day of filming for the entire series. Since then, other than a missing boompole, we’ve been fortunate, although my backpack has an annoying habit of always coming out last. This time, there is a tear in the tripod bag, and the faceplate is severely damaged. A faceplate costs about $1000, so Sean is off to file a claim. He has Star Alliance Elite status, a fact he reminds us constantly of, but that doesn’t get him to the front of queue this time. Fortunately, he can still use the tripod, no doubt sparing our production assistant Chris a torrid first day in Istanbul.

With a crew of six people, I have come to appreciate the little man with a sign who greets us on arrival at every airport. Figuring out how to get into town is a painful task of modern travel, and lord knows I’ve done it more than anyone should ever have to, but on a tight schedule with a ton of gear, there’s no time, energy and patience to deal with it. Hence the Bucharest train station fiasco, in which a $5 dollar cab ride ended up costing $50. Anyway, there no man with a little sign waiting for us at Ataturk International, and there should be. The only contact number we have is in the U.S. We withdraw some local currency from the ATM, stress and moan our lament, when suddenly Ahmed appears, apologizing for being late, there was a bomb threat en-route to the airport, and traffic is a mess. A good excuse as any. Since we’d had to drop Georgia as our next destination, forgoing our plane tickets and hotel reservations because the Russians invaded, the threat of violence seems to follow us around like bad odour. As it no doubt does for just about everyone else. Yet the relief of having an air-conditioned van to shlepp us to our hotel in scorching Sultanahmet far outweighs anything as annoying as a bomb threat.

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