Out and About in Anatolia

The last few weeks, Colin and I have put in some serious bus, car and plane time to visit some of the places and people still on our "Turkey 2012" bucket list.

Two weeks ago, we headed to north-central Eskisehir. A university town known for its fried meat pastries, parks, large street dogs, thorough shoe shiners, and a street of pubs and bars.  Colin and i met u with our Ole friend Sarah there, and we enjoyed all of the above list of things, and also, booked some good time in the local shopping mall at a Kahve Dunyasi where I finished yet another round of grading exams.  The weather was cold for us, though--it kept snowing!! None of us had really brought adequate snow clothes (ironic considering our midwestern connections), so though we made the rounds through the city's various parks and appreciated its "Venetian canal" with motor boats and typical Turkish architecture, we took more taxis than normal and definitely enjoyed our time indoors.

 

Venice! Below, Sarah and Colin pose with Nasreddin Hoca,favorite character of Turkish folktales and Eskisehir's current mascot??

On Sunday, we accompanied Sarah back to her Fulbright placement city, the small hilly town of Bilecik. It was really nice to finally see where she lives. Her town is beautiful for its remoteness--Bilecik is on the top of several hills, looking out toward more hills and mountains in all directions. After a quick tour of the downtown area, we headed out to a local "lake" (man-made) where her English club students were having a little picnic. The food, conversation, and walk around the reservoir were a very nice nice way to wrap up the weekend.

 

Above: the view walking from Sarah's place toward downtown Bilecik. Below: Colin and some students on our loop around the lake. (The were actually quite good speakers!)

This past weekend, Easter weekend, we went south, south, east to Hatay. A city that some of my very favorite students from last year and this hail from.  We spent most of our time in the capital of Hatay province, the ancient city of Antioch, modern Antakya, Turkey. 

With Sarah and Dorothy and Mackenzie from Sivas, we walked from Antakya's city center to St. Peter's cave church (allegedly the first place Christians adopted that name), visited several beautiful mosques and a tiny little Catholic church (where Colin and I stayed for out last evening in town), and  enjoyed a lot of tasty Syrian-infused foods like humus, local spicy doner, ubiquitous mint salad, and plenty of kunefe (cheese filled shredded wheat, heated up with a honey syrup poured over top).

On Saturday, we rented a car with our friends and drove to one of the only remaining majority  Armenian communities in Turkey. Those 35 household are all that remain of a very interesting Armenian kingdom that in the early middle ages adopted French as its official language, had a feudal social structure, and was one of the most economically successful and stable societies around. 

 



From there, we continued to a seaside town, Cevlik, where we had a HUGE lunch at a crummy restaurant, and then went for a hike and spelunking adventure through an old Roman tunnel/water diversion system. After that, we wanted to go to this small town that was talked up by our guide book, so we took a coast road which we knew wouldn't be the best, but should be passable, to get there. 45 km, 1 forded river, serval cliffs with falling rocks, and lots of potholes later, we pulled into Arsuz, Turkey. Arsuz turned out to be a bust (everything was closed for the season), but the drive was pretty fun and totally beautiful. After Arsuz, we drove the girls to Iskenderun for their evening bus to Adana and its exciting nightlife, while we old folks drove home for a long night's rest. 

The next day we had fun touring Antakya more thoroughly. We went to the museum, bazaar, a few mosques, etc, and then took a big hike up to a city park with a bunch of cool fortress-like gazebos. Easter dinner was an unconventional but delicious combination of doner, ayran, a few bites of mint salad, and a large portion of kunefe with ice cream and pistachios on top.  

 So, three cities have been well checked off our list, but more remain to be explored. The adventure continues!