They were on their way to Pamukkale, site of an ancient city and natural wonder: a miles-wide calcium formation dubbed "cotton castle" for its dazzling white color.
The trip was part of a much-needed vacation on the Turkish Riviera, roughly 1,400 miles from their home in Germany. But their perfect getaway turned into a nightmare when the tourist bus in which they were riding overturned on its way to the World Heritage site, ostensibly because of rain.
Now our friends are stranded in a Turkish hospital, one of them in critical condition with collapsed and lacerated lungs, while their children wait and worry and try to hold their lives together back home.
Their story actually begins on Christmas Eve, when the matriarch of the family suddenly became ill. It was the start of a long ordeal that would involve surgery, treatment, recovery and more surgery for a serious infection surrounding her artificial knee.
Three months after it began, she was recovering well enough that our friends could take a well-deserved respite on the Mediterranean, leaving their daughter, who had just returned from a law internship at the European Parliament in Brussels, in charge at home.
With its warm climate, seaside resorts and hundreds of archaeological and historical sites, Turkey has become a popular destination for European tourists, often competing with Greece, Italy and Spain.
Most tour the country by bus, the easiest, cheapest and most popular way to travel in Turkey, as evidenced by the mammoth Istanbul International Bus Terminal with its 168 ticket offices and boarding gates, Metro station, hotel, restaurants and shopping centers.
But poor road conditions, overworked drivers and a lack of safety regulations, among other factors, have led to frequent road crashes in the country.
In May 2005 one Russian died and 36 were wounded, four of them seriously, when their tourist bus overturned on its way from Pamukkale to Antalya, a resort city on the Mediterranean coast. In July 2007, 18 more Russian tourists were injured on their way to Antalya when their bus flipped over on a mountain highway.
In May 2008, four Polish tourists were injured when the bus they were riding in hit a barrier on the highway (the Polish consul in Turkey said the road where the accident took place is called "the road of death" by the Turks). Four months later, 16 Iranian Armenian tourists were killed and 32 injured when their bus careered off a bendy road.
Now our friend is in a coma in a foreign country, while her children -- aching to see her -- suffer through their classes back home. Her husband spends his days at the hospital, where he's not allowed near her bedside, and returns to an empty hotel room at night.
Thanks to travel insurance, their medical and other expenses will be paid. But even if they recover from this accident, nothing can heal the emotional scars it's sure to leave behind.
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