Pedestrian Keyboard

In the US, when you make a change to a travel reservation, there are protocols. You usually call them on the phone, wait for ten minutes listening to musak, tell the person you want to change it, they put you on hold for five minutes to check the corporate database, there is the clicketyclick of a keyboard, and then it's changed. You receive an email confirmation, and are instructed to check 24 hours before to confirm departure and then to have a nice day.

I just changed my bus ticket here in Turkey. I was scheduled to leave tonight, the 9th, and wanted to change it to tomorrow, the 10th.

I asked the receptionist at my pension. They called the bus company. They talked for a while. The receptionist told me I needed to go to the bus station myself to have it changed. Ugh. So, I walked the block and a half to the bus station.

When I got there, they took my handwritten ticket. They crossed out the "9" and wrote in "10". See you tomorrow, they said.

If you were to compare the two systems, I guess I would be the equivalent of the keyboard? I'm not sure who the database is. Anyway, it was pretty efficient, and I got a little exercise.