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Published: June 21st 2017
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After sunset we arrived to Midyat. A small town of the province Mardin. Before we went to the hotel, there was a commercial part of the trip, visiting a silver shop. Silver processing is one of the biggest income of Midyat. It looks like many travel agencies made some agreements with the local silver shops to visit their shops.
After the shop visit and many Euro's lighter, it was finally time to move forward to our hotel, where the dinner was waiting for us.
The restaurant of the hotel was also one of the places for local entertainment. There was live music and a dance floor. Once we sit at the table with our part of the group we looked to each other and were thinking about the same. The side dishes were prefect to have the dinner with Raki or wine. Off course when we started to drink, we felt the very bad looks of the heavy religious part of the group.
After the dinner it was time to party. With a nice combination of raki, wine, meze and live music we enjoyed the evening with our part of the group.
Unfortunately the day ended not
nice as it began. At the latest hours of the evening, someone came running from the balcony and screaming for an ambulance. I immediately ran to the balcony and noticed that a whole corner of the balcony was missing. Once looked down, there was a couple lying unconscious and heavy bleeding between the broken parts of the balcony.
It looks like the decorative railing of the balcony was made from plaster, or other material which shouldn't be used for balcony railing.
The injured couple were brought away by employees of the hotel and the very cozy evening ended up into a complete silence...
DAY 10 After a bad night due to the horrible incident we managed to wake up and went to the reception to ask about the situation of the couple. The information what was given to us was that the girl was fine. The situation of the boy was heavy but under control. More information we didn't get from the local people. Later, months later, I found an article about this incident.
The boy didn't survived it at all. They gave this fake information only to ease us. We continued our visit to
Midyat. Now the mansion was next on the list. The mansion is used by many movies and series. Most recent one was "Sila", A story where the old fashioned traditions in east Turkey are brought into picture.
The streets of Midyat are so fascinating that you can walk hours and just looking to the authentic buildings. Beside nice buildings also filigree handcrafts is one of the traditional elements of Midyat.
Time passes and again it was time to move on. The bus was waiting for us. Mardin was waiting for us.
About Midyat: Midyat is an originally Assyrian/Syriac town in Mardin Province of Turkey. The ancient city is the center of a centuries-old Assyrian/Syriac enclave in Southeast-Turkey, widely familiar under its Syriac name Tur Abdin. A cognate of the name Midyat is first encountered in an inscription of the Neo-Assyrian king Ashur-nasir-pal II. This royal text depicts how Assyrian forces conquered the city and its surrounding villages. In its long history, the city of Midyat has remained politically subjected by various rulers - from the Assyrian Empire to the modern Turks. Due to repeated marauding from invading Mongol and Turkish tribes into Tur Abdin culminating
in the end of the 14th, 19th and beginning of the 20th century - the Assyrian/Syriac population of Tur-'Abdin was severely decimated.
After the so-called Gastarbeiter ('guest worker') era, though, commencing in the early 1960s, the city was soon to be nearly completely emptied from its native inhabitants who choose to leave for a better life offered in Western Countries. Soon other local Arabic and Kurdish inhabitants start building houses in the surrounding areas. The houses and churches belonging to Christians have been preserved although many of them are empty.
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