 | Airport taxes. I paid for them (88.00$ per person!). |
| In Boston we will meet at the gate. All Boston travelers, please check in and go through security to the gate. Those from Bangor will meet you there. Again, if anything goes wrong, please call me at (207) 944 2163 and leave a message on my cell phone. I will turn it on as soon as we land in Boston. |
| Check the bags through to Istanbul. |
| Yes. We will meet at 9:45 AM in the parking lot and ask volunteers (you may ask friends or spouses) to carpool us to the airport. You can leave the car in the BTS parking lot. I talked it over with Jim. |
| YES. Or as say in Turkey: olumlu yanıt. |
Two BTS students will pick us up with two rented vans to bring us home safely. We can stop in Portland, Augusta and drop someone off. Just let me know.
Judith, Lucy (OK), Owen, Rosemary and Art, Michael: You should have received your tickets by mail. If not, contact me immediately.
All others will get their ticket in Bangor from me on Sunday when we leave.
If you want to reach me this week, do not hesitate to call my cell phone: 207 944 2163. I will check email twice a day.
| An updated itinerary with hotel information. |
| Several links to background information on the sites we are visiting. |
| A complete brochure in Acrobat Reader format with hints and tips about traveling – please use it. |
All pertinent information is now updated on the web at www.bts.edu/trobisch. Please pass the address on to your relatives and friends. They can see where we are every day and may leave messages at the respective hotels. There is a seven-hour difference (Turkey being in the east is ahead of the US, noon in the US is 7 PM in Turkey.)
| Please try to reach the hotels by fax or telephone. There is a seven-hour difference between Maine and Turkey. Noon in the US is 5:00 AM in Turkey. |
| Our US travel agent: WTS / Raptim Transport Service Representative. 102 Union Wharf, Boston, MA 02109. Tel. 617-367-6757 or 800-368-6757. Ask for Tecla. info@wtsraptim.com or www.wtsraptim.com. |
For emergencies only: The cell phone of our guide Mehmet Uzan is: Country code:90 Cell code:532 number: 233 3311. From the US dial 011-90-532-233 3311.
The visa fee in Turkey was not included in our price. It was raised from 30.00 to 100.00 in November. WTS/Raptim was so kind to reimburse us for half of that because they had not informed us. This means: please bring 50.00$ in cash to pay for the visa when we arrive in Istanbul. I will pay the other half. Sorry for that.
| Make sure to have medication that you need with you. [Health system in Turkey is excellent but I prefer we do not explore it.] |
| If you have trouble with swollen legs, ask your doctor what you can do about it and how to best prepare for the long flight (about ten hours between New York and Istanbul). |
Bring your passport. Very important.
| One think I learned from traveling with Americans is that you enjoy shopping when you travel. So bring money along for your shopping. Turkey is famous for their carpets, leatherwork, pottery, onyx and jewelry. For larger objects merchants are prepared to FedEx them to the US for an additional fee. |
| We found traveler checks to be awkward to use in Turkey. Cash in US$ can easily be changed – our guide is prepared to do that, most merchants accept American currency as well. Most ATM cards work without a problem, just make sure that you have your PIN number and not the letter code as most ATM machines only have numbers in Turkey. Visa/Mastercard are accepted for larger purchases almost everywhere. To our astonishment personal checks were preferred, especially for higher amounts of money. |
| At the end of the trip you will want to leave a tip for our guide and our chauffeur. They know that we are not rich and there is no rule to this. Most of us left a tip between 40$ and 100$. Tips for waiters, maids, hotel personnel etc. are covered. |
| Extras. Some of us enjoyed Turkish baths, one evening we went to see the swirling dervishes. Alcoholic beverages are not included in the meals. |
| What will David Trobisch do? For my personal expenses I will take 300.00$ in cash, ATM card, credit card, and a few personal checks. |
| Expect temperatures in the 60ies for most of the time. [Winter in Turkey is like Summer in Maine.] |
| In Cappadocia it may come to freezing. So if you are comfortable at the airport in Bangor you are probably OK. |
| Bring your bathing suits. Several times the hotels we stay in have swimming pools. Hierapolis/Pamukkale is world famous for its hot springs. We will spend our day of rest there on Sunday. |
| Don’t count on laundry facilities. When I travel I usually only bring clothes that I can wash by hand and that will dry over night. |
| Don’t count on it. Only in Istanbul will we be in a big city and that is towards the end of our trip. |
| Please try to confine your luggage to one suitcase and one bag per person because the storage room in the bus is limited. |
Bring good walking shoes. Not all terrain is smooth.
Last night, on the news, I saw a caution NOT to put film in the luggage we check through. Apparently new security equipment will destroy it. [Anne]
Some of you have expressed their anxiety about traveling to Turkey because of the threat of war with Iraq. The travel agency, the Turkish guides, and I have been monitoring the situation over the past weeks. I have access to German news, which has covered Turkey in depth these past weeks.
There is no particular security reason not to fly to Turkey now.
As far as traveling in Turkey, there has been one government warning that affects us and this warning is going to expire on January 2, 2003, four days before we arrive. [
http://www.usemb-ankara.org.tr/publict.htm]I can assure you that we are not going to take any risks once we are in Turkey. If indicated we are able to make changes to our itinerary.
No. We do not have a "social event" in our calendar like opera or so.
They could not be issued in time. Our Turkish guide will have them for us when we arrive.
