Mass Transit Or Mass Confusion?

     I've been living here for 6 months, but I'm still having trouble finding my way around.  Granted, my sense of direction is abysmal, but that's only part of the explanation.  I don't have a car here, mostly because I don't drive.  I did drive when I lived in Los Angeles, but I wasn't very good at it.  Between my lack of spacial perception (and I'm not talking parallel parking here; I once hit the side of a house) and my general tendency toward absent-mindedness (forgetting to turn the car off and almost running over a valet), I was pretty much a menace.  It was an easy decision to give up driving when I moved back to New York.                                        
     Even those who have cars here rarely use them in town because gasoline is prohibitively expensive.  I met a Belgian woman who lives just a bit further out than I do, and she takes the bus for 3 TL  round trip rather than spending 10 TL for the gas it would take, plus 3 or 4 for parking.  However, it's a 10 minute drive that takes 40 minutes on the bus.
      This is because there is no bus with a direct route to anywhere.  All buses have circuitous routes.  For example, there is a main thoroughfare that runs all through the metropolitan area.  It's called Ataturk Bulvari where I live, and Yuzuncu Yil downtown, but it's the same road.  It would be so easy to get downtown if there were simply a bus that ran up and down this street.  Again, not that New York's MTA is the paragon of mass transit, but isn't it nice that you can hop on the M104 on Broadway in either direction knowing that you'll continue on Broadway?  Imagine if that bus went up and down every side street. It would take forever to get anywhere.  In Antalya, it does.
     There are a few trams ,which are very nice if you happen to be going where they take you, but there are none near my home. There's no subway/metro/underground, so the only options are bus and dolmus.  A dolmus (which means "stuffed") is a mini-bus that stops whenever passengers want.  The buses have regularly scheduled stops.  And that's all the information available on buses and dolmuses here.
     It's not that I was expecting an i-pod app like the ones I've used in NY, London and Amsterdam.  But wouldn't you think that somewhere there would be a printed bus map?  Well, you'd be wrong.
   The entire system runs on trial and error.  The buses do have numbers, and there's a sign in the window with the main stops listed.  But this information is not very specific, and it requires a prior knowledge of Antalya's  geography.  For instance, I almost got on a dolmus yesterday that had Kale Kapisi (the center of downtown and entrance to the old city) listed.  But then I noticed Dokuma listed before Kale Kapisi. Going from Konyaalti to Kale Kapisi via Dokuma is like going from London to Paris by way of Berlin.  So I waited for the next bus.  But if I hadn't known where Dokuma was I'd have been on the bus all day.
     My favorite stop is listed as "Eski Otogar" (old bus station) and appears on many central routes.  At first I thought Antalya had two bus stations, an old and a new one.  I've since learned that "eski"  also means "former", and that the "Eski Otogar" stop is actually "Where the Bus Station Used to Be".  So, not only do you have to know where things are, you have to know where they were before you moved here.
     Another frustrating aspect of the system is that there are no round-trip routes.  In other words, you can't rely on the bus that took you where you are to bring you back home.  In NY I took the 79 crosstown bus, oddly enough, across town, west to east.  And then I  took it east to west. Logical, right?
     When I first moved into my apartment  here I was advised to note the buses that passed by, so I'd know how to get home.  I soon discovered the futility of this effort.  I remember getting on a #82 dolmus, which I'd seen several times near my apartment.  But the driver insisted he didn't go there.  As you have probably deduced from the paragraph above, the #82 that passes by my place is coming from an entirely different direction.
   Okay, I thought, I'll just stay on it until it comes back around.  Wrong again.  When this #82 got to the end of its route, it changed its sign and became a #34 headed for parts unknown.
   The upshot of all this is that buses are constantly delayed by passengers boarding an unfamiliar bus asking if it goes where they want to go.  So, you see, it's really not my fault that I still get lost now and then.
P.S.  I just found out that the stop in my neighborhood  referred to orally as "Garanty Bank" (because that's what's there) appears as "Turkay Oteli"  on the bus signs.  They haven't even bothered to add an E to give you a hint that it's actually "Eski Turkay Oteli" and is no longer there.