Current Mood:
Angry
You can read the other traffic entries by following each of these links:
Every Thursday I drive into the city to have dinner and play games with my friends. I typically try to leave at 6pm sharp. That way if traffic is bad, I can still be there before our scheduled meeting at 8pm, usually.
This past Thursday I had quite a bit of misfortune. First of all, Murat was also planning to go the city. This meant that instead of leaving at 6pm as I usually do, Murat finished screwing around and we got on the road at 715 or so. This was problem number one. Murat assured me we would get there before 8pm. I drive this route more than he does so I assured him that we would not.
Driving into the city, we hit what was probably the worst traffic I have ever seen in my entire my life. According to Izzy’s mom, 3 million people are moving back and forth across the city each day. We left during rush hour, which dooms us to a minimum 80 minutes in the car. This particular Thursday, there was a car accident on the highway on the Asian side of Istanbul (yes I am talking about something like 40 miles away) that backed up traffic nearly to where I live. It therefore took us not the typical 60 minutes to get into the city, but instead a whopping 184 minutes (three hours and four minutes). Having left late, I arrived at game night as it was drawing to a close and so I just went back to Izzy’s and just slept there before driving back in the morning. On top of that, Murat got sick so he canceled the meeting he had driven to the city for in the first place.
While angry and pondering how much I hate traffic, I came to an interesting realization. In the car I usually drive, there is a TV that you can only watch when the car is not moving. At first I thought to myself that this is stupid. When the heck would you ever watch that? Thursday night I realized. As we inched through traffic, I saw many people pulled over on the side of the road, watching TV in their cars. What genius! Of course you should have a TV in your car if you live in Istanbul. If the traffic gets really bad, you can simply pull over and wait it out. Too bad the TV sucks here.
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