A city a day is the Bonkano/Danaijo way...

I'm sitting in Gaziantep, updating briefly before heading off to dinner, afterdinner things, and an overnight bus to Ankara. This week has been a whirlwind of cities and adventures: my friend Danaijo flew into town Saturday night, and we've spent the week since travelling from İstanbul to Çanakkale, to Troy, down to İzmir, flying to Adana for Antakya, over the border to Aleppo in Syria, and back across and up to Gaziantep. It's not a route Lonely Planet would ever recommend, but we,ve seen a great and varied swath of the country, and it's been quite fun. I'll leave the detailed explication til I'm back in Ankara, but a few short bites for now:

-Syria is gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. And incredibly cheap. I was a little sad that we could only see Aleppo, but it means I'll just have to return to see Damascus, Homs, Palmyra, and everything else. Also it is delicious, we had falafel every meal, and lıtres of squeezed-in-front-of-us fruit juice.

-Fulbrighters are awesome and hospitality-ful, we stayed at a friend in İzmir's place and also at a friend here in Gaziantep. Both of them have bent over backwards to get us directions, dinner, and anything else we could possibly need while staying with them. It's also great to catch up, as I hadn't seen Dierdre since Thanksgiving, and Alex since Şeker Bayramı. They're both teaching English, and having such different experiences to mine as a researcher in Ankara.

-We still have bought no carpets. Maalesef. I was fairly certain either Danaijo or I would end up with at least one in İstanbul or, failing that, Aleppo or Gaziantep, but it seems fated not to be. We have seen a loooooot of carpets now though, and I'm fairly certain we're both minor experts in regional carpet variations and quality differences by now. We also have a newfound disdain of İstanbul carpet shops; we spent an hour chatting and haggling down to a more-than-fair price until the carpet seller we were talking to suddenly raised the price by almost 1000 lira and refused to reconsider. Inanılmaz. Maybe I'll just have to head back to Diyarbakır for my Turkish carpet...

All right, that's all from Gaziantep. kib,
-R