Stuck in a lift - tentatively related to Saint Adrian of Nicomedia (Turkish)



Stuck in a lift in Istanbul

I have worked in Istanbul a couple of times.  The first time I was there as part of a conference, I was staying in a hotel near to where the conference was being held.  However, it turned out that not many people spoke English in the hotel, although in fairness, their English was better than my Turkish which is non-existent.



I was staying on the 5th floor of the basic hotel; the first floor housed the gym.  One evening I was heading to dinner and got in the lift on the 5th floor with a couple of local men, to head to the ground floor which housed the very basic restaurant.  We stopped at the 1st floor where a couple of, I believe German, men got into the lift, they had just come out of the gym and were rather sweaty.  The lift set off – or at least should have done but nothing happened, we were stuck.  The Germans guys could speak some English, but the other men could not.  We had to be rescued, fortunately as the lift had not moved, it was just a case of an engineer forcing the door from the other side.  

It probably only took about 20 minutes in total, but it felt an awful lot longer than that, being stuck in a lift with some sweaty men with little common language between us all!  Dinner was not worth it; it was underdone chicken with some vegetables with no taste!  You can probably tell Istanbul was not my favourite place.

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