my 35 hour escapade home: The Turkish airport bus is the only competent transit agency between Istanbul & Oakland. 30 minutes sharp from Taksim to Atatürk Havalimani. Turkish Airways wasn’t honestly that bad except for being late taking off, thereby compressing my 35 minute layover even more. Made it, miraculously, to the next gate in Rome just in time to get in line. They boarded us, and we sat. Turns out someone had checked 2 bags & then never gotten on the plane, so they had to find those bags & remove them. By then we’d missed our window for flying over France & had to wait for another permission. Arrived very late to Chicago, by which time they’d lost my bags (perhaps that was Turkish Air’s fault too) & i’d missed my flight to San Jose. They put me on the next flight to San Jose three hours later, which put me arriving after 11pm, too late to catch public transit to Oakland, and I didn’t have anyone’s phone numbers to call for a ride, so I camped out behind a church, in short sleeves (since, remember, I didn’t have my bags) till 5am & caught the first bus, first subway to Berkeley then. Nice breakfast with real coffee… now i’m decompressing a little.
I’ll perhaps write about my actual time in Istanbul soon, but for now I’m gonna lay low.