Note: Ten days ago I arrived in Istanbul. I wrote this piece for the newsletter that goes along with this blog but I’ve posted nothing since for the blog itself. Subsequently I rethought the the idea of a newsletter and decided that everything I write should be on the blog and that the newsletter should be for other uses, not to send exclusive posts only to subscribers.
So for those who didn’t subscribe, I encourage you to do so, but here’s the first post that was only in the newsletter, describing my anxious flight to Turkey.
Travel’s Back and It’s Real On The Road Again
My post-pandemic travels began 10 days ago when I boarded a flight from Dulles Washington, D.C. airport for an overnight trip to Frankfurt Germany. After a three-hour layover, I flew Turkish Airlines to Istanbul, arriving mid-Saturday afternoon.
I spent about five months of the pandemic in Hawaii, and almost nine months in Mexico since the pandemic lockdowns began in March 2020.
Then I spent the last six weeks in Alexandria, Virginia, getting my Covid vaccination shots, scheduling a Covid test in order to fly, gathering medical records, making airline reservations, ordering an online Turkish visa, booking a room in Istanbul, and reading everything I could to prepare for travel again.
Since 2016, I’d been on the road full-time as a senior solo traveler, and I felt as though I was hitting my stride when sidelined by the pandemic. I wanted to make sure I still had it all together.
I left Alexandria with a doctor’s letter affirming my recovery from an asymptomatic Covid infection in March; a proof-of-Covid vaccination document from the Virginia Department of Health (somehow I lost my card); and a negative test for Covid from a private lab in Alexandria. I had a folder full of documents that also included my flight itinerary, insurance policy and accommodations at my destination, all ready to produce for authorities at any stage of the journey.
Just for fun, I purposely picked a country I’d never been to, with a language I’m totally unfamiliar with, and where I knew no one — Turkey.
First Stop — Trouble On the Tracks
The first leg was on the Alexandria Metro to Dulles airport. I had a route mapped out but the friendly guy in the train station booth advised me differently. I trusted him to know, right? Mistake #1. Right out of the gate it wasn’t right. When we reached the stop for the Pentagon, I knew that was the wrong way for Dulles.
I checked the route map inside the train and with help from a friendly local couple seated nearby, I got back on the right track, only losing about 20 or 30 minutes of travel time.
That’s why I like to leave early, allowing myself plenty of time for such missteps. Better to be waiting in the airport if you leave too early than sweating over whether you’re going to make your flight when the weirdness happens.
Only two things still worried me. Whether the visa I bought online was real or a scam, and about having a printed document confirming my vaccination instead of the standard, handwritten Covid vax card, even though the Virginia Department of Health assured me my document was much more authoritative than the card.
I arrived at Dulles without further problem, but encountered turbulence at the United Airlines pre-boarding area.
First I went to one of the self check-in computers when an attendant approached and asked where I was going.
“Frankfurt, then Istanbul,” I said.
“Oh, you need to walk down to the windows at the end of the terminal and make a right,” she said.
I wanted to ask, “Well, what are these here for?” But my better travel sense said don’t go there, just roll with the flow now, big boy.
When I got to said windows and turned right, I saw an ominous jam-up of people pushing carts piled high with teetering stacks of luggage, all trying to get at three or four scales to weigh their bags.
I decided that wasn’t for me and went directly for an attendant standing by herself behind a lectern at the head of an empty roped-off aisle. I presented my passport. Her response was to pick up her lectern and move it to the next roped-off aisle. I followed. There she asked if I’d weighed my bags.
“No, you want to weigh them?”
I was afraid she’d direct me back to that scrum around the scales when she looked at my sweet new 110-liter wheeled duffel. Then she asked me if I thought it weighed more than the 50 pounds allowed. I responded confidently. “No, I’m quite sure it isn’t.” And with that, both my concern and hers were no more.
“Right this way,” she said, directing me down a cordoned-off aisle straight toward the check-in counter. Sweet job she had.
Blue Blazers, Big Help
I was intercepted by an officious man wearing a snazzy blue United Airlines blazer. He asked whether I had all my documents. Confidently, again, I said yes. But his brow crinkled. He couldn’t find an important Turkish visa addendum that I was supposed to have already filled out. I said I think I did that, already
No matter, he said, “just scan this barcode.” He pointed to a sticker on plexiglass protecting the check-in counter. “You know how to scan a bar code?”
All of a sudden my doubt about that online visa was at a new high.
On my third attempt to re-answer all the confounding questions with fumbling fingers on my tiny phone screen, while hordes of travelers with their carts and bags were banging my elbows, maneuvering toward the check-in counter, while others argued loudly with attendants about Covid tests, I completed my assignment.
Then my friendly attendant, while casually perusing his computer screen, wondered aloud why I didn’t have a Covid test within 48 hours of my arrival in Frankfurt.
Now starting to think this guy’s just screwing with me, I explained that nothing in all the info I’d read said I needed that. I’m only in transit through Frankfurt, not leaving the airport. I have a vaccination certificate, a letter of Covid recovery, and a negative test 72 hours before arriving in Istanbul. “Where did it say I was supposed to get a test for Frankfurt?”
My United guy glibly eyed his screen and, without looking at me, muttered, “Travel can be very complicated these days. Just a moment, please.”
He went over to confer with another blue-blazered United attendant, standing idly by, for about five minutes. He returned cheerfully. “It’s OK,” he said. “You’re good, the Germans will accept your vaccination.”
So then I was concerned about my visa status with the Turks and a Covid test in Germany, not having full confidence in the United guy.
At that point, though, there was nothing more to do but move on. I was sent to the check-in clerk, who accepted my 50-pounds-or-less, 110-liter duffel, and awarded me two boarding passes stamped in large red letters: “DOC OK.”
Fun on the plane
I reached my seat, which I paid extra for to have more leg room on the seven-hour flight.
A woman carrying an infant was sitting there. I stood patiently while a couple of three-or-four-year-old kids screamed and a man I assumed was their father scurried around trying to arrange with attendants to have four seats together for his family of five. Apparently he’d previously booked his own seat somewhere else on the plane.
A harried flight attendant found a solution and put the family together all in my row, just one empty seat and an aisle away.
For at least five of the seven hours in flight, the feckless father couldn’t control the two brats, and the helpless mother tended only to the infant who screamed whenever the brats would grow tired, or when dad pushed a pacifier into their mouths.
I carry ear plugs on flights for just this kind of situation, but the penetrating levels their screeching could reach was uncanny.
Reading and sleep were no longer options, no matter how much legroom I had. We were all, flight attendants and passengers, in the helpless, head-shaking grip of this flying family from hell.
At least the food was good, a full hot meal, some kind of chicken and quinoa concoction, unlike previous pandemic flights when only snack bags were available. This was an encouraging sign of progress toward the new normal travel world.
But the knots in my stomach tightened the closer we got to Frankfurt. Concerns about having no visa for Germany, and perhaps a bogus visa for Turkey, were troubling.
But in Frankfurt, an uninterested German official glanced at my passport and only asked that I pull down my mask for a photo. Next!
I was on my way to Istanbul, worried only about that online visa.
Thankfully the flight to Istanbul was calm. But I was too frazzled to sleep by then, anyway.
After getting off the plane and queued up in the wrong line, the one for Turkish residents only, I was waved away to the international passport holders’ line where my moment of reckoning awaited.
One again, I straightened up, put on a look of confidence — sheaf of supporting documents in hand — and walked toward the booth to accept my fate.
The Turkish official glanced at my passport, asked me to pull down my mask for a photo, and stamped a nice clean new visa in my passport. Next!
Welcome to Turkey! Easier to enter than Mexico.
While waiting for my 110-liter, 50-pound duffel at the baggage carousel, a fellow traveler and I expressed our mutual amazement at how easy it was getting in.
Just be ready, stay calm, don’t worry and sing — what’s that Bob Marley song?
“Every little thing, is gonna be alright!”
Then while still in the airport, I bought a local SIM card for my phone and pulled some Turkish lira from an ATM. A 20-minute bus ride to Fatih and a short taxi trip put me in my Airbnb, and now I’m loving life in Istanbul!
That simple. Life is good.
(Update: The online visa company sent me an “urgent” email on Thursday asking me to send that form that I’d now completed twice, once from home and then with the guidance of the United guy in the airport. The company suggested that if I hadn’t received the form, then I should check my spam folder. I replied that I’d filled out the form and submitted it twice already, that I’d been successfully vetted by Turkish immigration and customs officials, had received a handsome new visa stamp in my passport, and was currently enjoying life in Istanbul. Then I suggested they check their spam folder. I haven’t heard back from them.)
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