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Turkish De-light 1999 contd.

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And then it was Saturday, and I was off to Heathrow, to spend a night, well, until 0500 anyway, in a soulless expensive room just a few hundred metres from the runway. I know Heathrow is busy, everybody knows that, but it was still a surprise to look out of the window at 0515 and see an airborne line of ACL’s queuing up for touchdown. Moving lights descending as gracefully as any well co-ordinated rock concert rig could.

Turkish Airlines whisked me on their metallic magic carpet to Istanbul where there was a short wait for a connecting flight to Turkeys capital city, Ankara. Now, it just so happens that only last year, my wife and I visited Istanbul for a city break weekend. Been there, got the T-shirt, etc., etc. Istanbul is a pretty amazing city, believe me, well worth a visit with a few of your air miles, or a few million of your profile points.

As the second smaller magic carpet ascended over the old city of ‘Constantinople’ heading further east than I had ever been before, a nagging doubt visited me, not for the first time. What was I letting myself in for? If I made a hash of this job, not only would my own reputation go down the pan, but, in TRT’s eyes, that of the BBC who had provided them with this ‘expert’. Our training trip to Istanbul might be compromised, and my work with Wood Norton as well. What indeed was I letting myself in for?

The other slightly more logical side of my brain told me that I had been lighting all manner of shows for about twenty years and ought to be able to cope. That wasn’t quite enough to reassure me.

The plane descended through snow capped mountains onto the barren, Russian Steppes type landscape. The guide books say that it had a population of about 30,000 in the 1930’s; now it is more like 4 million. The city is all at a height of about 1000 metres above sea level (we’re talking the top of Snowdon) and as we approached the runway, it seemed that there were no walls and precious few trees or boundaries of any kind.

I will admit to always having fancied coming out of the customs channel and seeing my name up on one of those boards held by a smiling young lady. My luck was in! Mike Baker, in big letters jostled for my attention amongst the many ‘meet and greeters’.

Ebru was one of the two interpreters provided by TRT during my working hours, and she showed me to the chauffeur driven car that awaited me outside the terminal. Ankara was seen through a windscreen as the rain bounced off everything in sight. As we approached the city through a straggling series of somewhat ramshackle establishments, I was gently reminded that Turkey was an ‘emerging nation’ and so it seemed. Nowhere looks good in the rain, how many times have you been somewhere on holiday in the sunshine, only to see the same place in bad weather, and realise that we in the UK have actually got some rather nice countryside, if not the weather, of our own.

From the centre of the city we started climbing to its southern heights, and heights they were. Past all the embassies, government buildings and international hotels we climbed and climbed and climbed for some 8 kilometres. The rainwater cascaded in torrents down the grooves worn by countless heavy trucks, like two parallel streams, testing conditions for the driver, who had clearly got some ambitions to Grand Prix racing.

     Ebru pointed out this floodlit massive building on the approaching horizon. “There is TRT”, she said. The building was built on the top of the hills at the southernmost extremity of the city, and it was huge! I have been in some big buildings but this one took the biscuit. Twelve stories high, and accommodating some 5000 employees, a veritable Broadcasting Megalith. Within its perimeter, it has many shops, supermarkets, dry cleaners - and all just for the use of the staff.