Never a failure

I want to tell you about the one of my most confusing travel experiences, which happened during to my first trip to the capital of Turkey - Ankara. Since then I visited this country 5 times and now I know what to be ready for, but back to 2010 it was fully uncharted territory.
I was coming to visit my good old friend and stayed with his family in nice suburban area close to Ankara downtown. My friend had pretty packed work schedule, so he asked some of his friends to show me some part of the city. This memorable day I was guided by Ayhan, student who arrived to study finance from small seacoast town . The place I always wanted to visit was the mausoleum of the most famous Turk ever - Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. So we headed there

Surprisingly, to find the entrance to monument was almost impossible - mausoleum was surrounded by fence and visible from all city parts, but no gates or check point. After 2 hours walk i suggested just to jump over the fence, since it was pretty low and just head towards the mausoleum building through the garden. This is what we did...

In 5 min our way was blocked by two minivans, and dozen of guys armed with guns and ruffles surrounded us. They took our IDs and showed the way to head of security service. None of them spoke any english so I could only guess why they detained us - it did not seem that we did something criminal, after all, it was just a monument.

Long story short - imagine, that you jumped over the fence to the White House, or Kremlin - the reaction would be pretty much the same - as we found out after talk to security head, the simple monument was one of the most guarded military objects in the city. And now those guys was thinking what to do with us. Situation was saved by my passport - the head evaluated the time waste and consequences of calling to Russian embassy, called us with not very polite word and kicked us out to soldiers who checked our bags just in case and then showed the way to the tomb, so in the end we managed to see it.

No need to say after this case I am very careful with all monuments in my trips, but must confessed, its one of my favorite moments to remember. This accident taught me, that even such a failure is nice thing to laugh at with your friends. Just don't tell your mom :)