Translating Turkish
The most absurd things will happen to you when you are traveling — I mean, tell me the following doesn’t seem like some kind of weird movie or theater concoction: we buy tickets for a bus trip from La Paz — the capital of Bolivia — to Arica — the northernmost city of Chile. We decided to go with the most expensive but also most comfortable company (obviously Chilean) and, upon choosing our seats, were already surprised how fully that bus was supposedly booked.
Early the next morning — at 6am, to be precise — we get to the bus station and are startled to find a huge group of travelers waiting for the same bus. They speak a language that sounds vaguely familiar but that I do not understand a word of. They look neither Western nor Latin American. They are extremely easily confused, cluster around the bus’ baggage hold while their bags are loaded on — blocking the entire process — and are only moved out of the way by a long-haired dude that manages to herd them into their seats.
Suddenly, the long-haired dude comes to us and starts talking to me: turns out he is the tour guide of a group of Turkish travelers from Istanbul who do a six-countries-in-three-weeks trip through South America. He is the only one in the group who speaks English (along with another guy who spoke pretty good German). Also, turns out that none of them — not even the tour guide — speak a single word of Spanish. Do I speak Spanish? “Ohhh, you do? It would be soooo nice if you could translate for us.”
So, in the weirdest twist of events I have ever seen, I suddenly find myself translating for a group of Turkish travelers on the Bolivian-Chilean border, high up in the Andes on a pass above 4,000m and asking myself WTF!?!?
