Strays Follow You Home; Gentlemen Don't.

This post was supposed to go:

Hisar Taksi is the worst place to try to catch the E-5 bus home. I flagged down and missed four buses to campus while I talked to this couple of guys at the stop. At least I got to practice my Turkish.

This post is actually going to go:

I am really grateful for the security station at the gates to Abant Izzet Baysal University's upper campus. I am not entirely sure how I would have gotten home safely tonight otherwise.

Because Hisar Taski, on a rainy night, is the worst place to try to catch the E-5 bus home. I flagged down and missed four buses to campus while I talked to this couple of guys at the stop.
They were curious about me and why I was in Bolu instead of Istanbul or Ankara. I put on the face that I've developed for such occasions: strangers who can tell I'm a foreigner, either because I'm wearing a hot pink coat or because I've just been speaking English at my cellphone. This face's neutral position is a very large, slightly stupid grin-- I want people to know that I'm friendly, but I don't want them to assume that I know Turkish very well, because I don't.
On most other occasions, I've been able to meet people and have brief and interesting interactions. Tonight, these two remained polite in tone but increasingly more insistent that I set my bag next to them or that one of them hold it for me; I don't know how many times I said, "No, thank you," but I moved away from them because I began to suspect that they would impede rather than help me catch my bus.

I don't need help catching a bus, by the way. Or holding a bag.

I made my stance bigger.

By the time my fifth bus actually arrived [I ran after it], I wasn't going to even give them so much as an "iyi akşamlar," but to my real frustration they got on the bus after me: these two who said they were taking a different bus. Tch.

The driver and three other passengers stared at us as I sat down and arranged myself in such a way as to occupy both seats with myself and baggage. One sat directly behind me; one sat across the aisle from me. I ignored them visually, but that didn't prevent my overhearing a low discussion between the two about where teachers live on campus.

Okay, Jessica. You have fifteen minutes. How will you get off this bus and get to your apartment in the middle of the woods? Will you ask to be let off at the student center and just drink tea alone until the coast is clear? Will you ask to be let off at your usual stop and hope they don't get off? If they do get off, what kind of scene will you make?

By the time the bus got to campus, I and these two are the only passengers left on it.

And I'm ready to make a scene if I have to.

We approached the security gates to the upper campus and I pulled my AIBU ID card out of my wallet, preparing to show it as usual to the security officer who briefly patrolled each bus that entered campus. I could see out of my periphery that neither of these two were getting theirs.
The security officer-- if I'd seen his name tag, I'd be writing him a thank you card right now-- looked at mine, and then looked to these two for an explanation of their presence. They didn't have cards. They tried the next best thing: association.
One of them tried to tell the officer that "our friend, the foreigner, needs help getting home to lojman," and before I could holler, "No, I don't know what these maniacs are thinking!" the officer was escorting them off the bus and barring them from campus.

What were these two strays thinking? I am one of three American foreigners working at the university-- all the security officers at the gates station recognize my face, or at least my ridiculous hot pink coat, and they know that I don't bring home stray pairs of strange men! What is this insanity?!

And on the other hand, I will never lack appreciation for the security station at the campus gates. It might be "intense," as a couple of my visitors have expressed, but I'm grateful for its no-nonsense policy. I'm grateful it wasn't any weirder or any worse.