Snow is in.

Public transport in Istanbul is somewhat touchy issue. There are loads of choices to choose from but it all depends on the money on your pocket. If you are to buy on-board tickets everytime you get on the bus and say you are not lucky to live in an area close (read: takes only 1 bus) to your school/job then you are doomed as the price can go overboard. I live very far away from my school (I live very far away from everywhere but thats not the point). If i would to buy on board tickets everytime, in the end it would've cost me around 8 bucks a day, more than 100 bucks a month (and my student loan ashamedly low at 150 bucks a month) . Pricey. Very. But thanks goodness we have a clever tool to reduce this kind of stress, named akbil (akıllı bilet-smart tickets for long). If you have an akbil you can buy monthly passes which costs 50 bucks a month for a student. See an akbil is the cleverest thing on earth, and looks like this;

And has readers which looks different depending on the transport type;

There was a time that monthly paid akbils were making horrible sounds to tell you and all the other 100 people around you that you are a poor monthly akbil bearer and therefore "you shall not pass" when you try to get on the city ferry (vapur as we call it.. gee how i am great to give out useless info). So as a poor poor student with a monthly akbil, i used to take busses and it meant to bear with hectic bridge traffic and whatnot. I even get accustomed to sleep in the busses and not skip my bus stop, hell yeah! In 2003, in the very first year of my school, one day it started to snow lightly but it was enough for all the traffic to go nuts and i started to wait for the bus.. and wait.. and wait... finally when it was arrived, i was extremely cold and wet and the damn bus was this old kind with no ac and it was all the same experience being inside or sticking your head out of the window for all the ride. It took hours to arrive and there i was making the wrong choice by getting off the buss to take another bus to home instead of get off one bus stop away and sleep over in my grandma's. I made that stupid mistake. By the time we spent hours inside the bus trying to move inside the crazy traffic, the snow outside was now a storm. As i was walking through snow, the wind was so strong that i couldnt even move. When i finally reach the traffic lights, i realized that i wasnt feeling my hands. Oh panick! Thankfully, there was a coffee shop i can drag myself into.. I asked for help. Ashamedly out loud. Ashamedly, crying.. Two guy helped me to wash my hands and offer me some hot tea and one of them, the younger one rubbed my hands while we sat down.. Oh, god! It was another challange to go to my grandma's but i was not alone this time. A girl asked me to walk together as the wind is too strong to walk through.. We managed to not become a Marry Poppins. Later on, in the news they talked about how people spent their night in the busses and cars inside the traffic. I was lucky.

Why all this story you ask? Yesterday, it started to snow in Istanbul. It is the first time since 2006. My akbil needs to be renewed and refilled which means i have to go out and it snows. Nooooooooo!