Hey everyone,
Things are getting slightly more hectic around here; it's the last week of classes, and finals are next week and the week after. I still have no clue when exactly my finals are, but I'm sure I'll get it all figured out. I do know that most of my finals will be the 16-18, except for 1 that's on the 26th. If my cards fall just right, I might be able to fit a trip in the middle there. I'll keep my fingers crossed...
Last weekend, I headed to the region of Cappadocia, the land of fairy chimneys. It was, in a word, amazing. I travelled solo, for the first time ever, and had a really great time. On Friday, I hied to ASTI and caught a bus to Goreme; it was 15 lira, which wasn't too bad. I got to Nevsehir, the regional jumping-off point for Cappadocia, at 5, and was supposed to transfer to a minibus to Goreme, but as I was the only one heading to Goreme, they brought me there in a car, and dropped me off at the doorstep of the pension that I thought I'd stay at. I checked on the price of a single, and was unpleasantly surprised to find out that although Lonely Planet said they had singles, they didn't actually; I was shown a 5-person room, and told that they'd charge me 25 lira for it. Naturally, I didn't want to pay 25 lira, even for the opportunity to sleep in 5 beds, so I hightailed it off to Shoestring Pensyon, which I'd read good things about online, where they showed me a three-bed room and offered it to me for 20 lira. I figured I could do better, so I asked about a dorm room, which I got, for 10 lira, breakfast included. It was just 6, 6:30ish by then, so I strolled around downtown Goreme, stopped for cookies and hot cocoa at the most amazing pastry shop in Cappadocia, and bought some postcards. After wandering around the whole center area of town a few times more, I stopped at a restaurant for some excellent pide, and provided loads of entertainment to the little girl at the table next to me, who was fascinated with my appearance (I don't know if it was the fair skin, the short hair, the reddish hair, the short sleeves, or all of the above), before heading back to the pensyon, chatting with some friendly Australians, and heading to bed. The dorm was pretty cool: it was built into a fairy chimney, as a cave, so it felt half like a room and half like a fanciful playhouse.
In the morning, I got up before 8 (I know, this is really unlike me), because I had to be checked out by 9. After having the best menemen I've had in Turkey (and that's saying something), I headed out to explore Cappadocia. First up was the Goreme Open-Air Museum, a site with Byzantine monastic retreats and cave churches galore. It's really popular with tour groups (I saw mora Americans there than I've seen since arriving in Turkey...), so at first I kept getting stuck behind clusters of tourists and guides. I did eventually find a pace that allowed me to see everything between groups, and ended up with most of the tombs, chapels, and churches to myself, which was nice. Everything was incredibly gorgeous; many of the frescoes had been damaged or scratched, but they still retained magnificient colours and details (links to pictures and in-depth descriptions are posted below). The churches and rooms themselves were amazing: all carved out of the rocks, with furniture and storage carved into the rooms themselves. The scenery was gorgeous, as well, with valleys full of delicate fairy chimneys rising out of the trees. I saw the Chapel of St. Basil, the Chapel of St. Barbara, the Chapel of St. Catherine, the Apple Church, the Church of St. Onuphrius, and the Sandals Church, along with some unnamed tombs and small chapels. After finishing up at the Goreme Open-Air Museum, I strolled through some of the shops outside, and then... I rode a camel! It was really, really cool, and I was so excited: I've always wanted to ride a camel (or an elephant, but the camel came along first...), and I passed this guy offering camel rides through the fairy chimneys. It was one of the highlights of my trip. After that excitement, I wandered back to Goreme Village, passing a sign for the UFO Museum (see? tourist traps aren't just in America!), and booked my ticket back to Ankara for 6 that evening.
With 5ish hours to kill, I decided to go to Zelve, the other Open-Air Museum in Cappadocia. I snagged a bus there, but it let me off at the access road to Zelve instead of at the site itself, so I walked 4 very hot kilometers to the Museum entrance. About halfway there, I walked through Pasabagi, a scenic viewing area with lots of touristy shops, which was a nice change of scenery; I finally got to Zelve, got my ticket, and walked in. Zelve was really interesting: it was a Byzantine monastic retreat center, like Goreme, but it was also a fully-inhabited cave village, up until the 1950s, when the rocks started falling down and the villagers were evcuated to non-cave dwellings about 2 kilometers away. I saw the ghost village first: it was really cool. The houses were in cliffsides, just carved in; if they wanted to expand, they just carved out another room or two. I also saw the village mosque, also cut into the rock; its minaret was designed differently than most of the minarets I've seen here. After wandering through the main valley of the villages, I hopped 1 valley over and saw some churches: one of the cave churches was fenced off, because it was in danger of falling apart and/or dislodging rocks onto visitors' heads, so I didn't see that one, but I did see the Grape Church and the Fish Church, which weren't quite as well kept-up as the Goreme churches, but which were pretty nonetheless. I had a small moment of panic when my camera batteries died after my first photo of the churches, but I was able to leave the museum, buy batteries at a souvenir stand, and go back in to get my photos. After that, I was pretty tuckered out from walking to Zelve and hiking through the valleys, so I had some of Turkey's famous ice cream (the ice cream man hoists the entire slab of ice cream up into the air on a hook, that's how sticky it is) and bought some more postcards before catching a bus back to Goreme village, where I took some photos of the village mosque and a horse before grabbing some more cookies at that wonderful pastry shop and heading to the bus station, where I headed back to Ankara.
It was kind of strange being in such a touristy area, because I don't feel that I'm strictly a tourist, per se (even though I'm there to do touristy things). I was really proud of myself, as I was able to communicate almost entirely in Turkish; although the Turks immediately pegged me as yabanci (a foreigner), some of the tourists heard me asking questions in Turkish and thought I was a Turk(!). The one slightly unpleasant thing about being in a tourist center was all the touts, calling out to me in English. If I didn't respond, they'd yell at me, and keep calling after me as I walked down the street. I figured that if they were calling out in English, they were either trying to sell me something or trying to get something (speaking from experience, here), so I pretended my native language was Spanish or Chinese, depending on my mood (good thing they didn't speak either, otherwise that wouldn't've worked well at all).
All in all, I had an excellent time in Cappadocia: saw beautiful churches and scenery, got horrendously sunburned, walked my feet off, and, of course, I Rode a Camel! It was a great couple of days, and it was nice to get out of Ankara. Due to bandwidth limits at Flickr (I did post some Diyarbakir photos there, finally), I have all my Cappadocia photos on Facebook for the time being, you can see them at:
http://bu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038078&l=5129e&id=911357
and
http://bu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038128&l=93f00&id=911357
This weekend, I'll be heading to Ephesus on a marathon day trip, which should be exhausting but incredible. Ephesus is the best-preserved classical city in the eastern Mediterranean and is the site of the Temple of Artemis, one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. It's also home to the Library of Celsus. While I'm there, I'll also stop in Selcuk, to see the Basilica of St. John (the St. John of the Gospel-writing fame); I'm very excited!
Not much is new on campus; ODTU had Springfest last weekend, which is rather like an enormous street fair with concerts. They had tons of earring vendors, so of course I picked up some earrings; I also tried an ice cream dish that was served in a honeydew half, it was quite good. The Seniors are getting antsy: every once in a while, a caravan of little cars teeming with graduation-robe-bedecked Seniors will come careening around the perimeter road of campus, honking and screaking as much as they can; this's been going on for about a week now, and graduation isn't til June, so I suppose it'll continue for a while. It freaked me out the first time one came around a corner, honking madly, but I'm getting used to it.
Well, that's about all that's new here,
hope you all are doing well,
-R
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Monday, April 24, 2006
updates
Hey everyone,
It's been awhile since I updated here, so I figured I'd post a blurb on the last few weeks. Things have been pretty busy; I had 2 presentations today, and I have another presentation and paper tomorrow. After that, I'll be pretty free for a bit, but then finals begin, which'll be barrels of fun.
Two weekends ago, I took a field trip for my Museology class, which was amazing. We toured Gordion, where Alexander the Great cut the Gordion Knot before going on to conquer pretty much everywhere he could find. There was a nice museum there, with a ton of pottery, and some bones, but the really interesting part of the site was King Midas' tumulus (burial mound); it's been excavated, but we could enter the tumulus and see the actual burial chamber. For those of you thinking, "wait a minute....Midas???", yes, it's the tomb of the Midas, he of the Golden Touch. Gordion was a happening place way back when.
After that, we headed off to Midas Sehri, where we saw Midas' Tomb. This was for a different Midas; if you were a Phrygian king, you got you choice of names: Midas or Gordius. There're several of each. Midas' Tomb is cut like a Phrygian temple face, which is really stunning; it was absolutely enormous. The sides were engraved with Phrygian script, which looks very much like futhark/runic. Across from the tomb was a large rock formation with a couple dozen small caves carved into it; apparently it was a monastery at some point in time. Around the back of Midas' Tomb, there was a half-carved temple; it was abandoned at some point in time, and just left, half carved. A little ways into the rest of the Midas Sehri site, we saw a cave tomb, with three sarcophagi (I think...) inside. We also climbed through a Phrygian cistern, past ancient water-collection pools, and saw all that remained of a 6th-century-BC two-storey house (2 post holes in the stone). On the way back towards the bus, we passed an ancient altar, and several more caves, which were really unusual because they were bright green (it was the lichen).
After Midas Sehri, we stopped at a restaurant for a trout lunch, which was pretty good, especially since I'm now used to getting the whole fish instead of trout filets.
On the way back to Ankara (it was a loooong way back-- Midas Sehri is over halfway to Istanbul from Ankara), the most random thing happened: we stopped at a military base for tea. The professor just told the bus driver to turn in, and off we went, past weapons armories, training facilities, and lots of guys in combat fatigues, til we arrived at what looked very much like a regional park: there was a playground, and walking paths, and picnic shelters. It was a little bizarre, especially once the guys in combat fatigues started walking around with trays of tea and pide (Turkish pizza, but closer to meaty bruschetta). There was even a little stream, with ducks, and one soldier was stationed on the bridge over the stream with a tub of bread, to feed the ducks (and the fish in the stream, of course). I've got to say, if I was in the Turkish Army, I'd much rather have duck-feeding duty than Diyarbakir duty.
It was quite an interesting field trip; I've pictures on Facebook, which you can see here:
http://bu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032338&l=67ff2&id=911357
This weekend looks like it should be very interesting: I found out today that I'll be participating in an EU simulation occurring Thursday through Sunday at METU. I'll be representing Estonia, as their Foreign Minister at the Ceneral Affairs Council. I don't know much about Estonia other than its location and general Baltic issues, so I'll be Googling madly in the next few days to become an impromptu Estonian expert. I'm hoping it'll be a fun experience; at the very least it'll be a crash course in how the EU operates. Next weekend, I may get to Cappadochia, or possibly Georgia (the country, not the state...), but we'll see when my finals are scheduled first.
Hope you all are doing well,
I can't believe I've only got a month left here in Turkey,
-R
It's been awhile since I updated here, so I figured I'd post a blurb on the last few weeks. Things have been pretty busy; I had 2 presentations today, and I have another presentation and paper tomorrow. After that, I'll be pretty free for a bit, but then finals begin, which'll be barrels of fun.
Two weekends ago, I took a field trip for my Museology class, which was amazing. We toured Gordion, where Alexander the Great cut the Gordion Knot before going on to conquer pretty much everywhere he could find. There was a nice museum there, with a ton of pottery, and some bones, but the really interesting part of the site was King Midas' tumulus (burial mound); it's been excavated, but we could enter the tumulus and see the actual burial chamber. For those of you thinking, "wait a minute....Midas???", yes, it's the tomb of the Midas, he of the Golden Touch. Gordion was a happening place way back when.
After that, we headed off to Midas Sehri, where we saw Midas' Tomb. This was for a different Midas; if you were a Phrygian king, you got you choice of names: Midas or Gordius. There're several of each. Midas' Tomb is cut like a Phrygian temple face, which is really stunning; it was absolutely enormous. The sides were engraved with Phrygian script, which looks very much like futhark/runic. Across from the tomb was a large rock formation with a couple dozen small caves carved into it; apparently it was a monastery at some point in time. Around the back of Midas' Tomb, there was a half-carved temple; it was abandoned at some point in time, and just left, half carved. A little ways into the rest of the Midas Sehri site, we saw a cave tomb, with three sarcophagi (I think...) inside. We also climbed through a Phrygian cistern, past ancient water-collection pools, and saw all that remained of a 6th-century-BC two-storey house (2 post holes in the stone). On the way back towards the bus, we passed an ancient altar, and several more caves, which were really unusual because they were bright green (it was the lichen).
After Midas Sehri, we stopped at a restaurant for a trout lunch, which was pretty good, especially since I'm now used to getting the whole fish instead of trout filets.
On the way back to Ankara (it was a loooong way back-- Midas Sehri is over halfway to Istanbul from Ankara), the most random thing happened: we stopped at a military base for tea. The professor just told the bus driver to turn in, and off we went, past weapons armories, training facilities, and lots of guys in combat fatigues, til we arrived at what looked very much like a regional park: there was a playground, and walking paths, and picnic shelters. It was a little bizarre, especially once the guys in combat fatigues started walking around with trays of tea and pide (Turkish pizza, but closer to meaty bruschetta). There was even a little stream, with ducks, and one soldier was stationed on the bridge over the stream with a tub of bread, to feed the ducks (and the fish in the stream, of course). I've got to say, if I was in the Turkish Army, I'd much rather have duck-feeding duty than Diyarbakir duty.
It was quite an interesting field trip; I've pictures on Facebook, which you can see here:
http://bu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032338&l=67ff2&id=911357
This weekend looks like it should be very interesting: I found out today that I'll be participating in an EU simulation occurring Thursday through Sunday at METU. I'll be representing Estonia, as their Foreign Minister at the Ceneral Affairs Council. I don't know much about Estonia other than its location and general Baltic issues, so I'll be Googling madly in the next few days to become an impromptu Estonian expert. I'm hoping it'll be a fun experience; at the very least it'll be a crash course in how the EU operates. Next weekend, I may get to Cappadochia, or possibly Georgia (the country, not the state...), but we'll see when my finals are scheduled first.
Hope you all are doing well,
I can't believe I've only got a month left here in Turkey,
-R
Friday, April 07, 2006
What a Weekend, Part 2
Hello again, folks,
I finally have time to update this a bit more, as I've handed in one term paper this afternoon, and the next isn't due for nearly a month. So, I'll finish updating on my trip last weekend:
First of all, as I can't upload any more photos on Flickr for a month, I'm posting the links to my Facebook albums from this trip:
Saturday morning, we checked out of our hotel in Diyarbakir, and got directions to "the minibus station," where the front desk clerk assured us we could get a dolmus to Mardin. We set off down the street, skirting the piles of broken glass from the bus stops and broken bottles, and after 10 minutes or so, came upon the minibus station. Except, it was pretty clearly abandoned, and appeared to have been abandoned for years. There were no busses, mini or otherwise, anywhere around the building. There were, however, several people setting up produce stands, so we asked one of them where the dolmus to Mardin was, and ended up being led to a bus to the city bus station by the vendor's son. We arrived at the bus station, got on the dolmus to Mardin, and were off. We were pretty lucky, as we snagged the last 2 seats on the dolmus; everyone else had to stand. I ended up sitting next to a really nice Turkish lady who shared her simit with us (she was very vehement about sharing her simit; she wouldn't take no for an answer!). They charged 6 lira, which I thought was a little high, but it was a posted price, so no bargaining. The dolmus made a few stops about ten minutes out of town to drop off some folks, which was really nice, because there were at least 35 people on the dolmus, and there were maybe 16, 17 seats. We were stopped by a police checkpoint, which was mildly exciting, but it went pretty smoothly: the gandarma asked for the IDs of the guys sitting next to the door, looked at it, talked to his superior, and let us go on. We arrived in Mardin a little disoriented, because the dolmus let us off at the western part of the old town, next to the main road, instead of the eastern part by the bus company offices, as Lonely Planet had said they'd do. We got ourselves sorted out and struck off for the bus company offices, to buy tickets to Urfa later that evening and to leave our luggage. Along the way, we saw a sign for Kirklar Kilisesi, which we recognized as being in our guidebook, so we stopped to visit. In English, the name is the Forty Martyrs Church, it's a 15th century church, and it's still in use. It was absolutely gorgeous, there were tapestries hangingon every spare patch of wall, the apse was incredibly beautiful, and the tabernacle was gorgeously ornate; I took lots of photos. As we were there, a big tour group came in, and we listened in to the tour leader, hoping to learn more about the church, but they were all German, so we remained unedified, and continued on to the bus companies. Again, we found that the prices were fixed and non-negotiable, at 15 lira, which was a big ripoff (I can get from Ankara to Istanbul for 12, and we paid 15 to go to Antalya from Ankara, which is 8 hours of travel, versus 3 and a half from Mardin to Urfa). After booking and paying, we set off again for the historic section of Mardin. We dove into the bazaar, which seemed to consist of the entire old town south of the main road, and windowshopped our way to the Ulu Cami (a lot of towns seem to have an Ulu Cami...), where we took photos of the minaret and the building; we didn't go inside, because even though the mosque itself was built in the 12th century, and by the Seljuks no less, the inside is supposed to be pretty plain, the result of damage to the mosque during the Kurdish rebellion in 1832. It seems like the Kurdish issue isn't such a recent thing... We went back into the bazaar and found ourselves back on the main road, next to the Sehiyide Camii, where we took photos of the minaret and the really impressive below-the-street entrance (I could probably publish a coffee table book of minaret photos by now...) before turning our attention to the attraction across the street: the post office. Lonely Planet calls the Mardin central post office the "most beautiful post office in Turkey," and I agree. It's housed in an old, beautifully restored caravanserai, with intricate architecture and the requisite shrine to Ataturk, of course. We headed back across the street to have tea at a cay salonu next to the mosque, and pondered what to see next. Mardin is built into a hillside, so each street climbs a little higher up the hillside, until at the very top a trail zigzags its way up to the kale (castle), which crowns the hill, and as we looked up towards the top of the hill, we decided to go for it. We hiked up sidestreets perpendicular to the main road that were actually steep staircases, past honey-colored buildings and little kids who just looked at the two odd foreigners and continued playing. We passed one man, who took a look at Le Xuan and called out "Ni Hao!" I called back "Women hen hao; ni hao ma?", and he just stopped and stared. He definitely hadn't expected me to know Chinese!
We left the last row of houses and started up the near-vertical trail, passing two women having a picnic lunch with their kids. As we made our way precariously up the fairly tractionless slope, the kids would scamper by, as agile as mountain goats. We finally made it to the top of the trail, where we discovered...barbed wire and chain link fencing surrounding the castle. We walked along the fenceline for awhile, hoping to find a gate or entrance, but didn't find either, so we settled down on the hilltop to take in the views of the city. Mardin looked very different from the other cities I'd seen in Turkey; the design of the buildings was more Middle-Eastern, it seemed as though we could've been looking at a Syrian town (although I haven't seen a Syrian town, so maybe they're entirely different). Just out of town, the phrase "ne mutlu Turkum diyene" was etched into a mountainside in giant letters, an interesting statement for a Kurdish nationalist hotspot (if I'm translating correctly, it means "How happy I am to call myself a Turk", and it's a quote by Ataturk). We trekked back down the mountain (slowly, precariously), and passed some goatherds with their goats, including some adorable kids (if I ever end up living anywhere other than a city, I want a pet goat). After making it back to the main street, we consulted our map and set off towards Mardin's star attraction: the Sultan Isa Medresesi. We wandered through some really twisty and steep streets for awhile before finding the medresesi, which is an Islamic school; from what I understand (and I know I don't perfectly undrestand the concept), it's very roughly the Islamic version of a Catholic school in the US, but with more religious instruction. It was closed, as it was the weekend, but we were able to see the really impressive recessed doorway, and to walk around it to the back, where we could see into the courtyard, which had really good views of the city. We wandered back down to the main street again, where we sought out a juice shop and had fresh-squeezed orange juice made from blood oranges, and window-shopped our way towards the bus companies, where we chilled for about 20 minutes before boarding the bus to Urfa. At 8:30ish, the bus dropped us off at a roundabout in Urfa (apparently, they didn't want to stop at the bus station), and we set off down the street towards one of the hotels in the guidebook. After walking for a while, we found a different hotel listed in LP, so we popped in to check it out and ended up staying there: it was pretty bare-bones, but it was 10 lira/person, which is really, really hard to beat short of sleeping on the streets.
The next morning, we woke up to a light rain, which was actually really nice. We set off towards Golbasi, the main tourist area, with the sites where Abraham was born and where he was flung out of a fire which subsequently turned into water, and with a complex of mosques. First, we went through the courtyard of Mevlid-i Halil Camii, which marks the spot where Abraham was born. It was beautiful: not many people were there, as there was a light drizzle, but the weather sharpened the colors of the stones and the trees. We ran into some Turkish women wearing Kurdish headscarves and asked them if they could show us how to wrap them, but it turned out they were also tourists, and had it done by the headscarf vendor. This was one of the first times we'd seen Turkish tourists, and as we walked around more of the complex, we saw tons of them. There were also a good deal of Iranian tourists, which was fascinating, as they walked around in large groups of chador-clad women. We stopped by the headscarf vendor, who wrapped our headscarves for us, and met a volunteer tour guide, Cebrail (pronounced "Gabriel"). He was a Junior in high school (or the Turkish equivalent), and wanted to practice his English guiding, as he planned to work in tourism after graduating. He brought us to the pools of water that supposedly contain the water that God turned the fire Abraham was burning into, and which are filled with the carp that were originally the coals in the aforementioned fire. The carp are sacred, and it's good luck to feed them, so I did, of course. Legend has it that anyone who catches one of these fish will go blind, so...no fishing for us. We then climbed up to Urfa's kale, which was huge and had great views of the city. From the kale, we could hear this steady drumbeat, and Cebrail told us that it was from a wedding celebration. As we looked around the gece kondular from the kale, we found the wedding celebration; it was pretty obvious once we noticed the line of people dancing in the streets. Apparently, Turkish weddings are 3 days long, and this particular wedding was on its last day, the day after the actual marraige; they were celebrating the fact that the bride had, indeed, been chaste.
We climbed back down from the kale, through a rock tunnel with absolutely huge stairs; they were not built for my legs! We went over to the Rizvaniye Vakfi Camii and the Halilur Rahman Camii, which both overlooked the ponds with the sacred carp. Halilur Rahman Camii marks the spot where Abraham fell to the ground after being flung from the fire (he landed on a bed of roses, so apparently he wasn't hurt too badly...). We were only allowed in the women's side, as it's a big pilgrimmage site, but it was still really nice; it had a sacred air to it, probably partly because everyone inside was so reverent. Rizvaniye Vakfi Camii was a little plain after seeing the other mosques, but it was quiet and empty, which was nice, and had a cozy feel to it; if I was Muslim and lived in Urfa, I'd want to go to Rizvaniye Vakfi Camii for my prayers.
By then, we were a little tired of Cebrail; nice as he was, he couldn't understand our Turkish and we couldn't understand his English, and he had showed us the touristy places and wanted to take us back to his house, which we didn't particularly want to do, so we set off towards the bazaar, which was mostly closed as it was a Sunday, but which had a kervanseray in the center which was supposed to have good tea. We had a nice cuppa, and headed out in the direction of the hotel section of town, telling Cebrail we were heading for our hotel and the bus station. We window-shopped our way back to the hotel, still accompanied by Cebrail, who offered to wait outside the hotel for us, which we politely declined. We met a lot of really nice Turks (and Kurds!), and I was really impressed by Turkish hospitality, but if anything they were a little too hospitable: in Diyarbakir our city walls-guides offered to meet us at our hotel the next day and accompany us around the city, the curator at the museum invited us to his village for the night, and then for the next day, and escorted us back to the main road, Ali the photojournalist invited us to hang out at his place, and to crash at his house to save on our hotel bill, and offered to meet us at our hotel the next day to show us around the city; in Urfa Cebrail invited us to his house, and offered to wait at our hotel to escort us to the bus station, and pretty much anyone that we asked for directions offered to escort us there. Oh, and pretty much everyone treated us to tea. It might be a cultural norm, but it was a bit overwhelming; and as two female travellers in a pretty tense and emotionally-charged region, it didn't seem wise to get off the beaten track much (unfortunately, it might have been different if we'd had a guy along...such are the realities of life, I suppose).
Back at the hotel, we sat in the lobby talking for 10 minutes or so before looking outside and noticing that it was pouring, so we stayed in and talked and watched some Turkish music videos. By the time it finally cleared up, we were about ready to head to the bus station, so we set off. We took the wrong fork in a road, where our map showed a cemetery on the wrong side of the street, but we were pointed in the right direction by some friendly Turkish ladies who seemed to be pretty used to foreigners getting lost in their back yard: they knew we were headed to the bus station, and called out to us in German that we were going the wrong way before switching to Turkish, which we understood much better. Once we were on the correct side of the cemetery, we made it to the bus station, and bargained the prive of our tickets to Ankara from 40 lira to 35, which was still high, but not too bad. We settled in the bus company office, and did some of our copious amounts of class reading before getting on the bus back to Ankara. We arrived in Ankara at 5:30 AM, and found that the dolmuses didn't start running til after 6, so we went into the bus station and killed time staring blankly (we were pretty darn tired) before catching a dolmus back to campus at 6:30. By 7, we were back in our dorm, with just enough time to check email and catch an hour of sleep before heading off to our morning class.
It was definitely one of my more memorable weekends; all in all, it was a great trip!
Hope you all are doing well,
Happy Belated Birthday, Kelly!
-R
I finally have time to update this a bit more, as I've handed in one term paper this afternoon, and the next isn't due for nearly a month. So, I'll finish updating on my trip last weekend:
First of all, as I can't upload any more photos on Flickr for a month, I'm posting the links to my Facebook albums from this trip:
http://bu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031030&l=55352&id=911357
http://bu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031038&l=78bd6&id=911357
http://bu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031046&l=dc2dc&id=911357
The first two albums are from Diyarbakir, the last is from Mardin and Urfa (or, as the locals call
it, "Sanliurfa" meaning Glorious Urfa)
Saturday morning, we checked out of our hotel in Diyarbakir, and got directions to "the minibus station," where the front desk clerk assured us we could get a dolmus to Mardin. We set off down the street, skirting the piles of broken glass from the bus stops and broken bottles, and after 10 minutes or so, came upon the minibus station. Except, it was pretty clearly abandoned, and appeared to have been abandoned for years. There were no busses, mini or otherwise, anywhere around the building. There were, however, several people setting up produce stands, so we asked one of them where the dolmus to Mardin was, and ended up being led to a bus to the city bus station by the vendor's son. We arrived at the bus station, got on the dolmus to Mardin, and were off. We were pretty lucky, as we snagged the last 2 seats on the dolmus; everyone else had to stand. I ended up sitting next to a really nice Turkish lady who shared her simit with us (she was very vehement about sharing her simit; she wouldn't take no for an answer!). They charged 6 lira, which I thought was a little high, but it was a posted price, so no bargaining. The dolmus made a few stops about ten minutes out of town to drop off some folks, which was really nice, because there were at least 35 people on the dolmus, and there were maybe 16, 17 seats. We were stopped by a police checkpoint, which was mildly exciting, but it went pretty smoothly: the gandarma asked for the IDs of the guys sitting next to the door, looked at it, talked to his superior, and let us go on. We arrived in Mardin a little disoriented, because the dolmus let us off at the western part of the old town, next to the main road, instead of the eastern part by the bus company offices, as Lonely Planet had said they'd do. We got ourselves sorted out and struck off for the bus company offices, to buy tickets to Urfa later that evening and to leave our luggage. Along the way, we saw a sign for Kirklar Kilisesi, which we recognized as being in our guidebook, so we stopped to visit. In English, the name is the Forty Martyrs Church, it's a 15th century church, and it's still in use. It was absolutely gorgeous, there were tapestries hangingon every spare patch of wall, the apse was incredibly beautiful, and the tabernacle was gorgeously ornate; I took lots of photos. As we were there, a big tour group came in, and we listened in to the tour leader, hoping to learn more about the church, but they were all German, so we remained unedified, and continued on to the bus companies. Again, we found that the prices were fixed and non-negotiable, at 15 lira, which was a big ripoff (I can get from Ankara to Istanbul for 12, and we paid 15 to go to Antalya from Ankara, which is 8 hours of travel, versus 3 and a half from Mardin to Urfa). After booking and paying, we set off again for the historic section of Mardin. We dove into the bazaar, which seemed to consist of the entire old town south of the main road, and windowshopped our way to the Ulu Cami (a lot of towns seem to have an Ulu Cami...), where we took photos of the minaret and the building; we didn't go inside, because even though the mosque itself was built in the 12th century, and by the Seljuks no less, the inside is supposed to be pretty plain, the result of damage to the mosque during the Kurdish rebellion in 1832. It seems like the Kurdish issue isn't such a recent thing... We went back into the bazaar and found ourselves back on the main road, next to the Sehiyide Camii, where we took photos of the minaret and the really impressive below-the-street entrance (I could probably publish a coffee table book of minaret photos by now...) before turning our attention to the attraction across the street: the post office. Lonely Planet calls the Mardin central post office the "most beautiful post office in Turkey," and I agree. It's housed in an old, beautifully restored caravanserai, with intricate architecture and the requisite shrine to Ataturk, of course. We headed back across the street to have tea at a cay salonu next to the mosque, and pondered what to see next. Mardin is built into a hillside, so each street climbs a little higher up the hillside, until at the very top a trail zigzags its way up to the kale (castle), which crowns the hill, and as we looked up towards the top of the hill, we decided to go for it. We hiked up sidestreets perpendicular to the main road that were actually steep staircases, past honey-colored buildings and little kids who just looked at the two odd foreigners and continued playing. We passed one man, who took a look at Le Xuan and called out "Ni Hao!" I called back "Women hen hao; ni hao ma?", and he just stopped and stared. He definitely hadn't expected me to know Chinese!
We left the last row of houses and started up the near-vertical trail, passing two women having a picnic lunch with their kids. As we made our way precariously up the fairly tractionless slope, the kids would scamper by, as agile as mountain goats. We finally made it to the top of the trail, where we discovered...barbed wire and chain link fencing surrounding the castle. We walked along the fenceline for awhile, hoping to find a gate or entrance, but didn't find either, so we settled down on the hilltop to take in the views of the city. Mardin looked very different from the other cities I'd seen in Turkey; the design of the buildings was more Middle-Eastern, it seemed as though we could've been looking at a Syrian town (although I haven't seen a Syrian town, so maybe they're entirely different). Just out of town, the phrase "ne mutlu Turkum diyene" was etched into a mountainside in giant letters, an interesting statement for a Kurdish nationalist hotspot (if I'm translating correctly, it means "How happy I am to call myself a Turk", and it's a quote by Ataturk). We trekked back down the mountain (slowly, precariously), and passed some goatherds with their goats, including some adorable kids (if I ever end up living anywhere other than a city, I want a pet goat). After making it back to the main street, we consulted our map and set off towards Mardin's star attraction: the Sultan Isa Medresesi. We wandered through some really twisty and steep streets for awhile before finding the medresesi, which is an Islamic school; from what I understand (and I know I don't perfectly undrestand the concept), it's very roughly the Islamic version of a Catholic school in the US, but with more religious instruction. It was closed, as it was the weekend, but we were able to see the really impressive recessed doorway, and to walk around it to the back, where we could see into the courtyard, which had really good views of the city. We wandered back down to the main street again, where we sought out a juice shop and had fresh-squeezed orange juice made from blood oranges, and window-shopped our way towards the bus companies, where we chilled for about 20 minutes before boarding the bus to Urfa. At 8:30ish, the bus dropped us off at a roundabout in Urfa (apparently, they didn't want to stop at the bus station), and we set off down the street towards one of the hotels in the guidebook. After walking for a while, we found a different hotel listed in LP, so we popped in to check it out and ended up staying there: it was pretty bare-bones, but it was 10 lira/person, which is really, really hard to beat short of sleeping on the streets.
The next morning, we woke up to a light rain, which was actually really nice. We set off towards Golbasi, the main tourist area, with the sites where Abraham was born and where he was flung out of a fire which subsequently turned into water, and with a complex of mosques. First, we went through the courtyard of Mevlid-i Halil Camii, which marks the spot where Abraham was born. It was beautiful: not many people were there, as there was a light drizzle, but the weather sharpened the colors of the stones and the trees. We ran into some Turkish women wearing Kurdish headscarves and asked them if they could show us how to wrap them, but it turned out they were also tourists, and had it done by the headscarf vendor. This was one of the first times we'd seen Turkish tourists, and as we walked around more of the complex, we saw tons of them. There were also a good deal of Iranian tourists, which was fascinating, as they walked around in large groups of chador-clad women. We stopped by the headscarf vendor, who wrapped our headscarves for us, and met a volunteer tour guide, Cebrail (pronounced "Gabriel"). He was a Junior in high school (or the Turkish equivalent), and wanted to practice his English guiding, as he planned to work in tourism after graduating. He brought us to the pools of water that supposedly contain the water that God turned the fire Abraham was burning into, and which are filled with the carp that were originally the coals in the aforementioned fire. The carp are sacred, and it's good luck to feed them, so I did, of course. Legend has it that anyone who catches one of these fish will go blind, so...no fishing for us. We then climbed up to Urfa's kale, which was huge and had great views of the city. From the kale, we could hear this steady drumbeat, and Cebrail told us that it was from a wedding celebration. As we looked around the gece kondular from the kale, we found the wedding celebration; it was pretty obvious once we noticed the line of people dancing in the streets. Apparently, Turkish weddings are 3 days long, and this particular wedding was on its last day, the day after the actual marraige; they were celebrating the fact that the bride had, indeed, been chaste.
We climbed back down from the kale, through a rock tunnel with absolutely huge stairs; they were not built for my legs! We went over to the Rizvaniye Vakfi Camii and the Halilur Rahman Camii, which both overlooked the ponds with the sacred carp. Halilur Rahman Camii marks the spot where Abraham fell to the ground after being flung from the fire (he landed on a bed of roses, so apparently he wasn't hurt too badly...). We were only allowed in the women's side, as it's a big pilgrimmage site, but it was still really nice; it had a sacred air to it, probably partly because everyone inside was so reverent. Rizvaniye Vakfi Camii was a little plain after seeing the other mosques, but it was quiet and empty, which was nice, and had a cozy feel to it; if I was Muslim and lived in Urfa, I'd want to go to Rizvaniye Vakfi Camii for my prayers.
By then, we were a little tired of Cebrail; nice as he was, he couldn't understand our Turkish and we couldn't understand his English, and he had showed us the touristy places and wanted to take us back to his house, which we didn't particularly want to do, so we set off towards the bazaar, which was mostly closed as it was a Sunday, but which had a kervanseray in the center which was supposed to have good tea. We had a nice cuppa, and headed out in the direction of the hotel section of town, telling Cebrail we were heading for our hotel and the bus station. We window-shopped our way back to the hotel, still accompanied by Cebrail, who offered to wait outside the hotel for us, which we politely declined. We met a lot of really nice Turks (and Kurds!), and I was really impressed by Turkish hospitality, but if anything they were a little too hospitable: in Diyarbakir our city walls-guides offered to meet us at our hotel the next day and accompany us around the city, the curator at the museum invited us to his village for the night, and then for the next day, and escorted us back to the main road, Ali the photojournalist invited us to hang out at his place, and to crash at his house to save on our hotel bill, and offered to meet us at our hotel the next day to show us around the city; in Urfa Cebrail invited us to his house, and offered to wait at our hotel to escort us to the bus station, and pretty much anyone that we asked for directions offered to escort us there. Oh, and pretty much everyone treated us to tea. It might be a cultural norm, but it was a bit overwhelming; and as two female travellers in a pretty tense and emotionally-charged region, it didn't seem wise to get off the beaten track much (unfortunately, it might have been different if we'd had a guy along...such are the realities of life, I suppose).
Back at the hotel, we sat in the lobby talking for 10 minutes or so before looking outside and noticing that it was pouring, so we stayed in and talked and watched some Turkish music videos. By the time it finally cleared up, we were about ready to head to the bus station, so we set off. We took the wrong fork in a road, where our map showed a cemetery on the wrong side of the street, but we were pointed in the right direction by some friendly Turkish ladies who seemed to be pretty used to foreigners getting lost in their back yard: they knew we were headed to the bus station, and called out to us in German that we were going the wrong way before switching to Turkish, which we understood much better. Once we were on the correct side of the cemetery, we made it to the bus station, and bargained the prive of our tickets to Ankara from 40 lira to 35, which was still high, but not too bad. We settled in the bus company office, and did some of our copious amounts of class reading before getting on the bus back to Ankara. We arrived in Ankara at 5:30 AM, and found that the dolmuses didn't start running til after 6, so we went into the bus station and killed time staring blankly (we were pretty darn tired) before catching a dolmus back to campus at 6:30. By 7, we were back in our dorm, with just enough time to check email and catch an hour of sleep before heading off to our morning class.
It was definitely one of my more memorable weekends; all in all, it was a great trip!
Hope you all are doing well,
Happy Belated Birthday, Kelly!
-R
Monday, April 03, 2006
What a Weekend!
Hello, everyone!
I'm back in Ankara after an exciting time in the Southeast of Turkey, as you can probably tell from my last post. I went to Diyarbakir with a friend on Wednesday; we took the overnight bus and arrived in Diyarbakir at 8:30 Thursday morning. After checking out a hotel, and checking into another one, we set off to see Diyarbakir's fabled city wall (it's the second-longest wall in the world, after the Great Wall of China).
Lonely Planet's Eating and Drinking section of their Diyarbakir entry starts out "A stroll along Kibris Caddesi reveals plenty of informal places to eat." Hah. A stroll along Kibris Caddesi revealed nothing but metal security grates, pulled down and locked securely. We'd read about the demonstrations on Tuesday, but the stories we'd read noted that the demonstrations were strictly in response to the Tuesday funerals of PKK fighters killed last Sunday in the mountains. The stories also noted that most of the fighting was localized in the mountains, and that things seemed to be settling a bit in Diyarbakir. Apparently noone told the Diyarbakirlilar, because they were locked up and hunkered down. It didn't seem too strange at 9 that very few stores were open; Diyarbakir's a hot city, so we figured that maybe they got a late start to their days. However, after we walked through the park next to the walls, and clambered up onto the walltops, we began to think it was a bit strange that the stores weren't opening yet. Two Kurdish college students struck up a conversation with us on the wall, and showed us around the ruins on the walltop (according to Lonely Planet, that's completely normal; they wanted to practice their English a little). After we saw the cityscape and the ruins, we walked back down to the park, where we chilled on a bench and remarked on how even in the playground area men outnumbered women by about 30 to 1. We asked about the pazar, as my friend wanted to buy Kurdish headscarves and salvarlar (Kurdish old lady pants; they're excellently horrible!), and the two students started to take us there before remembering that it, like most of the businesses, was closed Thursday, as well as Wednesday, and perhaps even Friday, because of the civil unrest. We headed off towards our hotel to look for some lunch, and couldn't find anything open, so we asked the front desk guy for an open restaurant, which he found about 5 minutes later. While he was looking, we popped up to our room and watched the live report on NTV from Diyarbakir, which showed recaps of some of the clashes. The restaurant only served kebaps, and it had raised its prices since there was an utter lack of competition and a lot of demand (oh, economics...). We headed off to the Tourist Office to ask about the current situation and to pick up some information; they didn't speak English there, and didn't tell us how the city was, but they did give us a map, and they pointed the way to the Archaeological Museum. At the Archaeological Museum, the staff was really surprised to see us; we were their first visitors in a while. We toured the museum with the chief curator, Ramazan, and had tea with him afterwards. He was very interesting; he's Kurdish, lives in a Kurdish village, is married, and has 7 kids. His brother has 3 wives and 22 kids (ughhhh...); Ramazan's the only guy in his village with 1 wife. He used to work at Incirlik, the US military base in Adana, but now he's the head Turkish archaeologist in the area. He invited us to see his village, but we figured that would be not so safe, so we politely declined. After that, we walked back towards the kale, passing a vehicle roadblock outside the police station, and were stopped by Ali, a photojournalist for BBC, who was stopping by his hometown (Diyarbakir) on his way from Iraq to London; he thought we were journalists, as we were obviously foreign, and he didn't think there would be any tourists in Diyarbakir. He showed us the Ulu Camii (Great Mosque), and tried to bring us to the pazar, except it was closed, of course, and as we walked away from it we heard drums behind us, meaning demonstrators were gathering nearby. Ali invited us to have dinner with him and 2 of his friends, but the only place we could find that was open was where we'd had lunch, and Le Xuan and I couldn't eat that much meat and bread again, so we had tea, and we had a really interesting discussion about Kurdish relations with Arabs and with Turks (all 3 of the guys were Kurds); they were vehemently against the demonstrations, as they didn't see any progress for the Kurdish cause coming from them, and they opposed violence as a means of attention to their cause. I learned a lot by talking with them. After we finished our tea, we headed back to our hotel, then went back out to get some bread, fruit, and chocolate, and spent an enjoyable evening talking with two other travellers, Lina from Ireland and Andre from Holland.
The next day, we ambled on down to the bazaar, which thankfully was open, and went shopping. I picked up some Kurdish headscarves, and some salvar, and we spent a lot of time exploring, before heading to see some mosques and the kervanseray. We walked outside of the main walls to the Hazreti Suleyman Camii, which was built in the 12th century and which houses the tombs of Islamic war heroes, and we had such a delightful time there! The courtyard was full of old men getting prepared to pray, women, and children running around. After we paid our respects at one tomb that was set aside for veneration, at the direction of a very nice Turkish lady, we said hi to the kids, and started talking with them in our limited Turkish. They were really excited to talk with us, and when we brought our cameras out, they were fascinated: they took as many photos as they could with my camera, of each other and of us. They laughed at our haphazard headscarf-tying jobs, and played with my sunglasses for a while, til we left to see another mosque. From there, we tried to walk along the eastern side of the wall, but were stopped by locals who pantomimed that people would throw rocks at us if we went down there, so we headed down the main road. There were policemen everywhere, and dozens of armored personnel carriers, police Hummers and tank-looking things with machine guns mounted on top; they all looked fairly battle-worn, I'll post pictures later. We stopped by a pastanesi, or pastry shop, and while we were sitting there, they were replacing their front window, as the original one had been shattered the night before. In front of the pastry shop, a police battalion was getting ready for a raid or police action of some sort, we watched them all read an official-looking paper and then get all their riot-y gear ready before loading up into a police transport vehicle and driving off. We headed off and found the Kasim Padisah Camii, also called the Four-Legged Minaret, because its minaret stands on 4 thin pillars. We visited the ruins of an Armenian church as the sun was starting to set, which was absolutely gorgeous, and tried to see another, which was closed, before heading back to the hotel and talking with Lina, Andre, and some French and German tourists for awhile. The next morning, though, we were out of there like a home run out of a ballpark, and we took a dolmus to Mardin to explore that city a bit, which I'll write up hopefully tomorrow.
I do have some photos up on Flickr, but unfortunately my bandwidth for the month is used up, so I'll have to figure out an alternative for the rest of my photos to post them here. Hope you all are doing well!
-R
I'm back in Ankara after an exciting time in the Southeast of Turkey, as you can probably tell from my last post. I went to Diyarbakir with a friend on Wednesday; we took the overnight bus and arrived in Diyarbakir at 8:30 Thursday morning. After checking out a hotel, and checking into another one, we set off to see Diyarbakir's fabled city wall (it's the second-longest wall in the world, after the Great Wall of China).
Lonely Planet's Eating and Drinking section of their Diyarbakir entry starts out "A stroll along Kibris Caddesi reveals plenty of informal places to eat." Hah. A stroll along Kibris Caddesi revealed nothing but metal security grates, pulled down and locked securely. We'd read about the demonstrations on Tuesday, but the stories we'd read noted that the demonstrations were strictly in response to the Tuesday funerals of PKK fighters killed last Sunday in the mountains. The stories also noted that most of the fighting was localized in the mountains, and that things seemed to be settling a bit in Diyarbakir. Apparently noone told the Diyarbakirlilar, because they were locked up and hunkered down. It didn't seem too strange at 9 that very few stores were open; Diyarbakir's a hot city, so we figured that maybe they got a late start to their days. However, after we walked through the park next to the walls, and clambered up onto the walltops, we began to think it was a bit strange that the stores weren't opening yet. Two Kurdish college students struck up a conversation with us on the wall, and showed us around the ruins on the walltop (according to Lonely Planet, that's completely normal; they wanted to practice their English a little). After we saw the cityscape and the ruins, we walked back down to the park, where we chilled on a bench and remarked on how even in the playground area men outnumbered women by about 30 to 1. We asked about the pazar, as my friend wanted to buy Kurdish headscarves and salvarlar (Kurdish old lady pants; they're excellently horrible!), and the two students started to take us there before remembering that it, like most of the businesses, was closed Thursday, as well as Wednesday, and perhaps even Friday, because of the civil unrest. We headed off towards our hotel to look for some lunch, and couldn't find anything open, so we asked the front desk guy for an open restaurant, which he found about 5 minutes later. While he was looking, we popped up to our room and watched the live report on NTV from Diyarbakir, which showed recaps of some of the clashes. The restaurant only served kebaps, and it had raised its prices since there was an utter lack of competition and a lot of demand (oh, economics...). We headed off to the Tourist Office to ask about the current situation and to pick up some information; they didn't speak English there, and didn't tell us how the city was, but they did give us a map, and they pointed the way to the Archaeological Museum. At the Archaeological Museum, the staff was really surprised to see us; we were their first visitors in a while. We toured the museum with the chief curator, Ramazan, and had tea with him afterwards. He was very interesting; he's Kurdish, lives in a Kurdish village, is married, and has 7 kids. His brother has 3 wives and 22 kids (ughhhh...); Ramazan's the only guy in his village with 1 wife. He used to work at Incirlik, the US military base in Adana, but now he's the head Turkish archaeologist in the area. He invited us to see his village, but we figured that would be not so safe, so we politely declined. After that, we walked back towards the kale, passing a vehicle roadblock outside the police station, and were stopped by Ali, a photojournalist for BBC, who was stopping by his hometown (Diyarbakir) on his way from Iraq to London; he thought we were journalists, as we were obviously foreign, and he didn't think there would be any tourists in Diyarbakir. He showed us the Ulu Camii (Great Mosque), and tried to bring us to the pazar, except it was closed, of course, and as we walked away from it we heard drums behind us, meaning demonstrators were gathering nearby. Ali invited us to have dinner with him and 2 of his friends, but the only place we could find that was open was where we'd had lunch, and Le Xuan and I couldn't eat that much meat and bread again, so we had tea, and we had a really interesting discussion about Kurdish relations with Arabs and with Turks (all 3 of the guys were Kurds); they were vehemently against the demonstrations, as they didn't see any progress for the Kurdish cause coming from them, and they opposed violence as a means of attention to their cause. I learned a lot by talking with them. After we finished our tea, we headed back to our hotel, then went back out to get some bread, fruit, and chocolate, and spent an enjoyable evening talking with two other travellers, Lina from Ireland and Andre from Holland.
The next day, we ambled on down to the bazaar, which thankfully was open, and went shopping. I picked up some Kurdish headscarves, and some salvar, and we spent a lot of time exploring, before heading to see some mosques and the kervanseray. We walked outside of the main walls to the Hazreti Suleyman Camii, which was built in the 12th century and which houses the tombs of Islamic war heroes, and we had such a delightful time there! The courtyard was full of old men getting prepared to pray, women, and children running around. After we paid our respects at one tomb that was set aside for veneration, at the direction of a very nice Turkish lady, we said hi to the kids, and started talking with them in our limited Turkish. They were really excited to talk with us, and when we brought our cameras out, they were fascinated: they took as many photos as they could with my camera, of each other and of us. They laughed at our haphazard headscarf-tying jobs, and played with my sunglasses for a while, til we left to see another mosque. From there, we tried to walk along the eastern side of the wall, but were stopped by locals who pantomimed that people would throw rocks at us if we went down there, so we headed down the main road. There were policemen everywhere, and dozens of armored personnel carriers, police Hummers and tank-looking things with machine guns mounted on top; they all looked fairly battle-worn, I'll post pictures later. We stopped by a pastanesi, or pastry shop, and while we were sitting there, they were replacing their front window, as the original one had been shattered the night before. In front of the pastry shop, a police battalion was getting ready for a raid or police action of some sort, we watched them all read an official-looking paper and then get all their riot-y gear ready before loading up into a police transport vehicle and driving off. We headed off and found the Kasim Padisah Camii, also called the Four-Legged Minaret, because its minaret stands on 4 thin pillars. We visited the ruins of an Armenian church as the sun was starting to set, which was absolutely gorgeous, and tried to see another, which was closed, before heading back to the hotel and talking with Lina, Andre, and some French and German tourists for awhile. The next morning, though, we were out of there like a home run out of a ballpark, and we took a dolmus to Mardin to explore that city a bit, which I'll write up hopefully tomorrow.
I do have some photos up on Flickr, but unfortunately my bandwidth for the month is used up, so I'll have to figure out an alternative for the rest of my photos to post them here. Hope you all are doing well!
-R
Friday, March 31, 2006
Quick update from Diyarbakır
Hello everyone,
I'm in Diyarbakir right now, and it's been the "most interesting" place I've been to so far in \turkey. We got here yesterday to find pretty much the entire city shut down; there were 14 PKK members killed in the mountains last weekend, 3 of their funerals were here on Tuesday, and demonstrations accompanying the funerals killed another 3 people. There were more demonstrations yesterday and last night, and 6 more people died. We're doing the smart thing and leaving early tomorrow morning, instead of late Sunday; this is the first place where multiple local citizens have told us it's unsafe. On the bright side, they did say it would be better today, and it is: stores are open, and women are out on the streets, and the pazar was fairly normal. Still, yesterday was pretty interesting: there were two eateries open in the city, and perhaps 5 or 6 shops. Even the street-corner simit sellers were packed up and empty. Of course, I checked my email here today to find a nice warning from the US Embassy saying "The Department of State advises U.S. citizen traveling or residing in Turkey to avoid [the town of Diyarbakir]." Would have been nice to get that on Wednesday, but oh well. Just figured I'd post an update so that those of you who knew I'm here this weekend know that I'm just fine, and that I'll be moving on to somewhere with fewer machine guns and police tanks tomorrow.
more updates later, of course,
-R
I'm in Diyarbakir right now, and it's been the "most interesting" place I've been to so far in \turkey. We got here yesterday to find pretty much the entire city shut down; there were 14 PKK members killed in the mountains last weekend, 3 of their funerals were here on Tuesday, and demonstrations accompanying the funerals killed another 3 people. There were more demonstrations yesterday and last night, and 6 more people died. We're doing the smart thing and leaving early tomorrow morning, instead of late Sunday; this is the first place where multiple local citizens have told us it's unsafe. On the bright side, they did say it would be better today, and it is: stores are open, and women are out on the streets, and the pazar was fairly normal. Still, yesterday was pretty interesting: there were two eateries open in the city, and perhaps 5 or 6 shops. Even the street-corner simit sellers were packed up and empty. Of course, I checked my email here today to find a nice warning from the US Embassy saying "The Department of State advises U.S. citizen traveling or residing in Turkey to avoid [the town of Diyarbakir]." Would have been nice to get that on Wednesday, but oh well. Just figured I'd post an update so that those of you who knew I'm here this weekend know that I'm just fine, and that I'll be moving on to somewhere with fewer machine guns and police tanks tomorrow.
more updates later, of course,
-R
Monday, March 13, 2006
Olympos photos!
Hey everyone!
I got back this morning from Olympos, where 7 of us exchange students spent the weekend. I'll post stories and such later, but I'm trying out online photo sharing right now, so I'll just leave the photo link here:
Or, try this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26857704@N00/
Kodak didn't work so well, so here's hoping Flickr is more idiot-proof!
apparently, Blogger doesn't like Flickr's javascript. I am really not the person to be fiddling around with that, so I'll just hope whatever's above this works
I'm hoping this works out, because it takes a really long time to upload photos to this blog. Also, this way you all can comment on photos, should you care to.
Olympos was very nice; I'll write it up later,
-R
I got back this morning from Olympos, where 7 of us exchange students spent the weekend. I'll post stories and such later, but I'm trying out online photo sharing right now, so I'll just leave the photo link here:
www.flickr.com
|
Or, try this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26857704@N00/
I'm hoping this works out, because it takes a really long time to upload photos to this blog. Also, this way you all can comment on photos, should you care to.
Olympos was very nice; I'll write it up later,
-R
Sunday, March 05, 2006
updates
Hey everyone!
I figured I'd update this, as it's been nearly two weeks since I last wrote anything. I haven't done anything horribly exciting (no exotic trips or anything...), but I've been settling in and exploring Ankara.
The weekend before this, I spent a lot of time exploring Kizilay (the big, central, shopping district) and Armada (the big, new shopping mall); Armada has one of the two or maybe three Starbucks in Ankara, and I needed some cheering up: As many of you know, Joy (my dog, Evensong Joyfully Singing) died on February 24, of cancer, and it's been really tough being here and not seeing her one last time; it wasn't something I'd prepared myself for or even thought about before coming here. I did make an effort to not cloister myself in my room, though, so I went exploring in Kizilay on Saturday, and bought some cute scarves. I actually bartered, and got the price down from 6 lira each to 5 lira each. The guy was very quick to accept my offer, though, so I think I was still overcharged, but compared to prices in the US, it's cheap and a half. On Sunday, I went to Armada, where I sipped my mocha (it was soooooo good!), and window shopped, as the prices at Armada are pretty astronomical in my book (95 lira for a shirt? it's a shirt! and it's cheaply made! it'll fall apart by the end of summer!), mainly because most of the stores are Western. They have a Marks & Spencer, an American Eagle, a Puma store, and dozens of others. It was my lucky day, because they were having a China exhibition that day at Armada, so I got to browse Chinese handicrafts, look at Chinese art, look at photografs of Chinese culture, and watch a Chinese dance demonstration. It was right up my alley! I went back to Armada Sunday night with some friends to see a movie (there's a cinema inside), and we saw Match Point, which wasn't as much of a chick flick as we'd thought it'd be, but it was really very good.
This weekend, I went to Kizilay on Saturday, to try and find a bazaar that I'd stumbled upon before while slightly lost. I started picking random directions to walk, and lo and behold, I found it again! According to my cell phone locator, I was in Sihiyye, which I'll have to look up at some point. The bazaar was really good; I got 3 kilos of oranges for a lira, and a lemon, half a kilo of strawberries, and a kilo of tomatoes. At the edge of the bazaar, I picked up these Amazing earrings for 2 lira that I've pretty much been wearing ever since. As I left the bazaar, though, I had my first Really Uncomfortable Experience here: this guy started following me and calling out to me, so I ignored him and walked faster, at which point he sped up, caught up with me, and started talking to me. I said "hayir, tesekurler," which means "no, thanks," several times, before he physically leaned into me to try and get me to go somewhere. When I kept saying "hayir," and tried to walk around him, he grabbed my arm and tried to pull me somewhere. At that point, I put my foot down, gave him the nastiest look I've ever given anyone, and said "HAYIR!," then walked quickly away. He didn't bother me after that; I'm just glad there were people around. It was, all in all, an interesting experience, and not one that I'd recommend for anyone.
Today, I headed to Ulus (the "old" part of the city) with a friend: we walked up to the citadel, to watch the city for a bit, and met some really cute kids, who all knew amazing English. Of course, as soon as we got to the citadel, I realized that my camera was still on my desk in my room, so I have no photos of the views or the kids. I bought some jewellery from the vendors who line the entrance to the citadel; I bartered, which was fun, but I may have gone a bit overboard, as I now have 8 bracelets, in an assortment of colors, from the citadel. From the top of the citadel, we spotted the really big mosque in Ankara, and I mentioned that I used the mosque as a directional point to get to the Sihiyye bazaar. Michael (my friend) wanted to buy some fruit and veggies and such, so we set out down the hill to try and find the bazaar. As we were operating from "as the crow flies" directions, our route was definitely not the main tourist path! We passed all kinds of women doing laundry and men washing their cars, and stopped in a cafe for tea where I was the only female, and I think the server asked if we were married. I'm pretty sure it was an all-male cafe (they have quite a few of them here), so I'm sure I provided weeks worth of stories for the 2 dozen-ish Turkish guys there. From there, we zigzagged around before stumbling on the bazaar (I still have no clue how we got there), where I bought a cooking pot. From the bazaar, we tried to get to the Dolmus (shared taxi minibus) stop in Kizilay, but somehow ended up at the huge mosque and then the Belgian Embassy, before finally making it to the Kizilay dolmus stop and back to campus. I was really impressed with how much Turkish I actually knew, as Michael isn't taking Turkish lessons, so I had to translate most things for him. I was able to barter for both of us, talk with storekeepers, ask for directions, talk with the little kids by the citadel, and ask people if Michael could take their photo. I hadn't thought I'd retained that much, but apparently I have :-)
This week looks to be fairly fun; I may get to Safranbolu this weekend, which is known for its Ottoman houses, and I'm planning a trip to Van in a few weeks, which I'm really excited about. Hope you all are doing well!
-R
I figured I'd update this, as it's been nearly two weeks since I last wrote anything. I haven't done anything horribly exciting (no exotic trips or anything...), but I've been settling in and exploring Ankara.
The weekend before this, I spent a lot of time exploring Kizilay (the big, central, shopping district) and Armada (the big, new shopping mall); Armada has one of the two or maybe three Starbucks in Ankara, and I needed some cheering up: As many of you know, Joy (my dog, Evensong Joyfully Singing) died on February 24, of cancer, and it's been really tough being here and not seeing her one last time; it wasn't something I'd prepared myself for or even thought about before coming here. I did make an effort to not cloister myself in my room, though, so I went exploring in Kizilay on Saturday, and bought some cute scarves. I actually bartered, and got the price down from 6 lira each to 5 lira each. The guy was very quick to accept my offer, though, so I think I was still overcharged, but compared to prices in the US, it's cheap and a half. On Sunday, I went to Armada, where I sipped my mocha (it was soooooo good!), and window shopped, as the prices at Armada are pretty astronomical in my book (95 lira for a shirt? it's a shirt! and it's cheaply made! it'll fall apart by the end of summer!), mainly because most of the stores are Western. They have a Marks & Spencer, an American Eagle, a Puma store, and dozens of others. It was my lucky day, because they were having a China exhibition that day at Armada, so I got to browse Chinese handicrafts, look at Chinese art, look at photografs of Chinese culture, and watch a Chinese dance demonstration. It was right up my alley! I went back to Armada Sunday night with some friends to see a movie (there's a cinema inside), and we saw Match Point, which wasn't as much of a chick flick as we'd thought it'd be, but it was really very good.
This weekend, I went to Kizilay on Saturday, to try and find a bazaar that I'd stumbled upon before while slightly lost. I started picking random directions to walk, and lo and behold, I found it again! According to my cell phone locator, I was in Sihiyye, which I'll have to look up at some point. The bazaar was really good; I got 3 kilos of oranges for a lira, and a lemon, half a kilo of strawberries, and a kilo of tomatoes. At the edge of the bazaar, I picked up these Amazing earrings for 2 lira that I've pretty much been wearing ever since. As I left the bazaar, though, I had my first Really Uncomfortable Experience here: this guy started following me and calling out to me, so I ignored him and walked faster, at which point he sped up, caught up with me, and started talking to me. I said "hayir, tesekurler," which means "no, thanks," several times, before he physically leaned into me to try and get me to go somewhere. When I kept saying "hayir," and tried to walk around him, he grabbed my arm and tried to pull me somewhere. At that point, I put my foot down, gave him the nastiest look I've ever given anyone, and said "HAYIR!," then walked quickly away. He didn't bother me after that; I'm just glad there were people around. It was, all in all, an interesting experience, and not one that I'd recommend for anyone.
Today, I headed to Ulus (the "old" part of the city) with a friend: we walked up to the citadel, to watch the city for a bit, and met some really cute kids, who all knew amazing English. Of course, as soon as we got to the citadel, I realized that my camera was still on my desk in my room, so I have no photos of the views or the kids. I bought some jewellery from the vendors who line the entrance to the citadel; I bartered, which was fun, but I may have gone a bit overboard, as I now have 8 bracelets, in an assortment of colors, from the citadel. From the top of the citadel, we spotted the really big mosque in Ankara, and I mentioned that I used the mosque as a directional point to get to the Sihiyye bazaar. Michael (my friend) wanted to buy some fruit and veggies and such, so we set out down the hill to try and find the bazaar. As we were operating from "as the crow flies" directions, our route was definitely not the main tourist path! We passed all kinds of women doing laundry and men washing their cars, and stopped in a cafe for tea where I was the only female, and I think the server asked if we were married. I'm pretty sure it was an all-male cafe (they have quite a few of them here), so I'm sure I provided weeks worth of stories for the 2 dozen-ish Turkish guys there. From there, we zigzagged around before stumbling on the bazaar (I still have no clue how we got there), where I bought a cooking pot. From the bazaar, we tried to get to the Dolmus (shared taxi minibus) stop in Kizilay, but somehow ended up at the huge mosque and then the Belgian Embassy, before finally making it to the Kizilay dolmus stop and back to campus. I was really impressed with how much Turkish I actually knew, as Michael isn't taking Turkish lessons, so I had to translate most things for him. I was able to barter for both of us, talk with storekeepers, ask for directions, talk with the little kids by the citadel, and ask people if Michael could take their photo. I hadn't thought I'd retained that much, but apparently I have :-)
This week looks to be fairly fun; I may get to Safranbolu this weekend, which is known for its Ottoman houses, and I'm planning a trip to Van in a few weeks, which I'm really excited about. Hope you all are doing well!
-R
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