Iptal

The title of this blog is not an Arabic word - it's Turkish, and means 'cancelled'.

With an 8-hour stopover in Istanbul before my onward flight to Beirut, I planned to spend this time taking a short trip into Istanbul's historic centre, maybe checking out the Blue Mosque , relaxing in a café and generally having a lovely time. As the plane bumped down onto the tarmac at Istanbul's Atatürk International Airport at 5am, jolting me out of a deep sleep, I looked out of the window and saw something I hadn't expected - a blizzard of Arctic proportions.

I trudged across the 6-inch deep snow and into the terminal and wondered whether I should have checked the weather forecast for Istanbul as well as Beirut before leaving. In the event I found out that I should also have checked visa requirements, as it turns out that UK citizens have to pay 20 US dollars for a Turkish visa. Good value if you're staying for the 90 days it's valid for, but just for the morning, not so much. I reluctantly decided to knock my Istanbul excursion on the head.

I found somewhere relatively warm inside the terminal and slept for a couple of hours. It was still snowing hard when I awoke and almost all flights were delayed with many also displaying the word 'IPTAL' - 'cancelled'. As I waited for my flight to appear on the board, I received a text message. It was in Turkish, so I couldn't read it, except for one word. IPTAL..

I asked an airport employee what to do about my cancelled flight, and she told me to go to the transit passenger desk to arrange a new one. I arrived to find a scene reminiscent of a scrum in an England v. Wales 6 Nations rugby match. Mine wasn't the only cancellation - this was the most multicultural bundle in front of a desk you could ever hope to take part in. I overrode my natural British reflex telling me to queue in a polite and orderly manner and joined in the chaos, eventually making it to the front. Here I was told that my flight hadn't been cancelled after all, and if I hurried, I could still make it. I dashed back into the main terminal, and... yep, definitely cancelled. Another scrum later and, although slightly harassed, I had a replacement ticket.

And so I came to be stranded in Istanbul airport. My new flight leaves at 22.50 tonight, provided that one survives the weather. Am I fed up? No, not yet at least - I've got the internet after all, hence this long and rambling blog to help pass away the time.

My next blog will, I promise, be from Beirut. Unless of course I end up stuck here permanently with a dodgy Russian accent like Tom Hanks in that film.