I got up after only a few hours of sleep and made my way downstairs. The woman at reception insisted that I not hail an Uber to the airport because she knew someone who'd provide a discounted rate to hostel guests, so I trusted her since the hostel's reputation is somewhat on the line with a claim like that. The driver was nice enough but spoke no English and made a rather annoying detour to get tea. When we got to the train station, he ended up asking for significantly more than the Ubers would have cost, so I refused to pay that and gave him an amount a little higher than what Uber would've charged. Very annoying experience on the whole and I'll mention it in my review of the hostel.

The train to Ankara was nice enough, but I don't really have much to say about it. It didn't seem very high speed despite the marketing. I was so exhausted and overstimulated from the past few days that I loved having 5 hours to just sit there doing nothing. When we got in, I wandered around Ankara for a few minutes. The train station is a little outside the center of the city and so I only saw the mostly rather depressing, run down industrial neighborhood. I rode the subway for a stop just to see what it was like. Very modern and clean, but eerily huge and empty. I could see the downtown in the distance but didn't feel any need to go there.

I bought a bunch of groceries at the train station and stuffed them all into my backpack, hoping that this will cover me for the next day of train travel. The train is nicer than the one I rode from Belgrade and the sleeper compartment is both larger and has fewer beds in it than that one. Though there are 4 beds, there's only this one other college aged Turkish guy in here. He's nice but doesn't speak much English. When I was booking the website said that there were 2 men and a woman scheduled to be in here, so I'm not sure if they're joining somewhere later in the journey or if they're just no-shows. We've stopped in the town of Kayseri at the moment and will probably head out shortly. I've already slept for a few hours and am looking forward to sleeping more, I honestly don't think this huge block of train travel could have come at a better time.