Flying Dutchman and Mr. Lentil

Flying Dutchman Kanka reports:

Long weekend away in Bellek, Antalya to meet-up with the parents. Waiting outside the gate of our hotel for the mini-bus service to the centre of Bellek, the Ankara Spor players bus comes zooming past. Bellek having besides golf courses many football training grounds, I immediately thought the Ankaraspor team must have been on a training weekend. Especially since there was no league games that weekend due to the 'Milli takım' having to play Spain in WC2010 qualifier match. The bus disappearing at the end of the road I didn't think much more about it, until we arrived in Bellek.

There at the end of the main street was, you guessed it, the same Ankaraspor bus. So we walked up to it and Saadet and my parents started saying how we should go over and have a talk with the players. In spite of my best efforts to tell them they are the 'wrong' team to support in Ankara, even more so as this was on a Friday leading up to the Sunday elections where Melih Gökçek was running as the AKP candidate, they started to walk towards the bus. Chance had it of course that residents of Bellek were just in preparation to form a "motorcade" for the local elect of the AK Parti :-|

At the bus, we found it to be empty except for the driver; thus Saadet asked where the players were. He answered they had stopped in Bellek to accommodate the players for Friday's prayers and that they were in the mosque. So the parents insisted that Saadet and I had our picture taken with the players bus instead. I am still protesting at this stage whilst the first football players started to return from the mosque to the bus. One of them Baki Mercimek stood outside the bus and asked us where we are from… in Dutch! So we start conversation and find out he was born in Amsterdam and was playing football in his youth with Ajax and he is a former Gençlerbirliği player. Finally, I thought, I can start to justify these pictures on my return to Ankara. Seriously I could not possibly have shown these pictures to my fellow Gençlerbirliği friends back in the capital otherwise.

The other players in the bus now peeked with interest asked Baki Mercimek what is going on, he explains whilst I reached for my wallet and pulled out my Gençlerbirliği season ticket to show the rest of the players. They quickly turned their heads and went back into the bus. Too bad I didn't have my Gençler scarf with me but then again we were in Bellek to soak up some sun thus the scarf had been left at home in Ankara.