By Bob Van Leer

  (NEW YORK, June 12, 1987) - Today started at 5 a.m. in Ankara, Turkey and wound up in New York City some 18 hours later. There was an initial mix up at the Ankara Airport and it looked as if we might be marooned there for another day, but everything finally smoothed out and we started our journey home.

  At Istanbul we transferred from Turkish Airways (THY) to KLM, the Dutch carrier that would take us to New York with a change of planes in Amsterdam. Incidentally, Istanbul is pronounced by the Turkish people as if it were spelt Stambul. The Is is almost silent and the n sounds more like an m.

  Security at all these airports is tight. Bags are run through x-rays a couple of times, carry-on bags are searched and there are body pat downs.

  Europe was mostly cloud covered. We were able to see the ground occasionally and the Alps stood out with their snow-covered tops. At Amsterdam we changed planes to a Boeing 747 for the trip across the Atlantic. The plane was full, with about 400 passengers. The flight from Amsterdam to New York was scheduled for 7 hours, 30 minutes but was a little longer because we had to wait for a landing okay at J.F. Kennedy Airport in New York. On the flight we saw brief glimpses of England and Ireland through the cloud cover.

  The 747's are so huge that they are cut up into rooms. The seating on this plane in the class in which we were traveling is 10 across, broken by two aisles, so there are three seats, an aisle, four seats, an aisle and three more seats. Customs inspections have been no problem at all on this trip. On arrival at JFK we were waved through without even a question as to what we might have. The declaration we filled out was sufficient and not even read.

  We took a bus to downtown New York (Manhattan) and then a cab to our hotel and plan to rest up a day and take in a Broadway play (A Chorus Line) before proceeding home.

  The trip from Ankara to New York was about 18 hours, and seven time zones, and this is enough for a day. On a similar study mission last year to South Africa we came home in one trip of 47 hours and this was too much. It took several days at home to recover from the trip.