Back from Ankara

This weekend I headed to Ankara, Turkey’s capital, for an interview with professors at a grad school to which I am applying. I could have flown to Ankara, which would have taken 50 mintutes, but the melodramatist inside me opted to take the train instead — which took 9 hours — with the chance that I could be inspired by viewing the countryside by train to write some wretchedly horrible prose about my romatic journey throught The Orient.

Anyway, I got in town at 7 a.m., changed into my suit in a public bathroom stall, and arrived at the university through a tricky comibinatino of buses and shared vans. I was interviewed by two professors who were both well-settled into their middle ages and ready to grill a young buck such as I on history knowledge. The interview lasted for an hour, mostly due to the professors’ tendencies to ask me a question, which included a two-minute monologue; then once I gave my answer to comment on it with a five-minute statement. They were somewhat quirky, but in a good way, so if I get accepted at that university then it won’t be too bad being those guys’ grad student, having to run their errands and get them coffee.

After the interview finished I met up with a Turkish Christian friend for lunch and we made fun of the dorky tendencies of American Christianity. We also hypothesized that Jesus and the disciples were actually turks, because the way that they hung around and ate fish sounded suspiciously like a meyhane.

Then I got on a 5-hour bus back to Istanbul and returned home at 9 p.m. there you have it: Within 24 hours, 16 of those were spent on some form of public transportation. I believe that there should be some fruits of my sitting around for all that time, so my next blog post is going to be a melodramatic travelogue inspired by my train trip across The Orient.