Turkish non-motorway
I may have posted this before, I can't remember. About 20 years ago, the company I worked for at the time, sent me to Turkey to install a demo system in the Turkish central bank in Ankara. It was a great 10 days and was more like a holiday than actual work. After the demo, we had some kit to transport back to the office in Istanbul, and my colleague thought that all the time he had been working in Turkey, he had seen little of the country. So he decided (and I was quite willing to go along with him) that we should hire a car and drive to Istanbul on the main highway, like the M1 but in foreign. So we loaded the car up and started our trip, me, a young Londoner not very world wisely, and the other fellow, a scouse salesman. Between us we could order a couple of beers but other aspects of the turkish language were a complete mystery. The road from Ankara started off as you would expect ie 3 lane motorway, but once we were into the countryside this quickly settled into two lane blacktop. However the scary part of this was when we approached some roadworks where they were widening the road. There were plenty of signs warning us of the impending construction work, what we weren't prepared for was the change from tarmac to rough unsurfaced road with oncoming traffic coming on all sides. It seems in Turkey that once you are off road, all road laws cease to exist, we had lorries driving straight at us even though we were as far over as possible and technically in the right. It was very scary but thankfully over after a couple of minutes. I was scared and a small bit of wee came out in my pants.
(urgle-splurgle molesting small goats since, Tue 27 Apr 2010, 13:18, Reply)