Cities and Mountains

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Kayseri (Silvan alone)

This Central Anatolian city is one of Turkey´s fast growing cities. A brand new tramway (is it a Bombardier?) is being built on the central Cumhurriet square, a lot of streets are being completely re-done and an ultra-modern otogar (central bus-station) will open next month. For sure this city will look quite different in a few years.

By arriving in Kayseri we left most of the tourists behind us. Not many go further east from Cappadocia although it is really worth the trip.

In Kayseri, I assisted for the first time to the Friday Prayer (theoretically, all adult men are required to attend Friday prayer (one of the five daily prayers, but most of the time the second one of the day) at the mosque). I was pick-nicking in a small park in front of a mosque when more and more men arrived with something under their arm. Rich men had their carpet and poor men a simple cardboard. Soon the square in front of the mosque was full with praying men and I can tell you it lasts a long time! Wow!

A 15-hour train trip brought me to Erzurum. I did sleep well even though the couchette was full of smoke from my Turkish friends!

Erzurum (1830m.)

Silvan spent 3 days alone in Erzurum before Annamaria joined him after the wedding in Switzerland. As expected, it took us an entire day at the Iranian consulate but finally we got... the visas allowing us to stay 30 days in Iran!! Victory!
Erzurum is a middle sized city with a mix of conservative and modern Turkey. As we went eastward, we see more and more veiled women and women with the complete black chador only revealing their eyes. We also saw groups of girls coming back from school with the Koran in their hands. In the Internet Cafes, men and women are separated! On the other hand, there are also a few young and modern women without veil wearing t-shirts, jeans, make-up and perfume.
In public spaces, you see mostly men. Women seem to have disappeared in the East. We never saw a woman sitting at a table of a typical Çay Evi (place where only tea ıs served - and nothing else). When we both sat down at such a place, everybody was looking at Annamaria in a strange way and little girls were pointing at her and giggling. The grand father sitting next to us was amused and not shocked at all... we could not even pay our tea, he paid the bill for us!

About the relationships between men and women, Annamaria had a interesting experience while travelling alone from Göreme to Ankara. In the bus, a men was sitting on the seat next to me. The controller asked if we were travelling together and as we responded with No, the man had to sit on a different seat! Generally, I never had problems, even if I feel more comfortable not to travel alone!

After having hesitated between the northern part of Eastern Anatolia (Georgian and Armenian heritage) and the southern part (the Van region, mostly Kurdish) for our last 10 days in Turkey, we opted for the first one (closer to the Iranian border of choice and more divers).
The bus that brought us from Erzurum to Yusufeli was packed and we were the only tourists together with a couple from Israel. We grabbed the last two seats at different places in the bus. Annamaria was quickly adopted by a nice old couple: the women gave me a hug when I arrived and held my hand during the first hour! She gave me some snacks and told me the names of the villages we were passing through!! We passed through incredible gorges and canyons - a beautiful bus trip. Unfortunately, all this (including Yusufeli) is going to be flooded after the completion of a huge dam project (in order to produce electricity).

Barhal (1300m.)

In Yusufeli we immediately took a dolmuş to the small mountain village of Barhal, in the Kaçkar mountains. It turned out rapidly that the Kaçkar mountains are very popular with Israeli mountain lovers. The pension was full with Israelis.
We made a beautiful hike up to a lake called Karagol. The scenery is indeed very similar to the Alps and it feels like hiking in Switzerland if there were not the veiled female farmers that we could observe at their work in the lower parts of the hike.
The rest of the stay in Barhal was to relax from the last 3 weeks... all the men of the tiny village (10 houses) and some higher neighbour villages came together for the Friday prayer. It was very interesting to observe these men after the prayer. It seems to be the highlight of the week. They drink tea, eat Kebap and discuss a lot.

Kars (1790m.)

Our next stop, Kars, lies only 45km from the Armenian border. A nice couple of Italians that we met in Barhal offered us to give us a lift with their rental car facilitating the journey a lot! In addition to make the trip a lot shorter, cheaper and more comfortable, it gave us the opportunity to practice our Italian (Papa, tu serais fier de moi!), to spend time with nice persons and even to visit the ruins of an Armenian church lost in the steppe. We passed through the Georgian valleys, where the landscape is just incredible (see the multiple colors on the pictures, from grey to yellow and purple). Then, the landscape turned to the yellow of the steppe and we arrived in Kars.

As we go further east, the landscapes change... but some typical Turkish elements are the same in all the places we visited:
- çay (tea): everybody drinks and offers you tea at any time of the day independent of the weather and temperature! In the bus, at the hairdresser, in the hotel... everywhere people offered us tea. It's a sign of hospitality and we always appreciate and enjoy it!
- cigarettes: Turks smoke like... Turks!! Everybody smokes everywhere: in the hotel rooms, in the internet cafes, at the hairdresser (the hairdresser himself smoke while he cuts!) and even if it is formally forbidden to smoke like in the bus, all the bus-drivers smoke anyway!
- breakfast: bread, tomatoes, cucumber, olives, cheese, honey, jam and a sort of grape molasses that is supposed to give you energy! And of course... çay!!

Today, we saw the major attractions in Kars. It's quickly done so that Silvan had time to go to the barber for shaving and a new haircut! Great! I never want to shave on my own again!

Tomorrow, we will visit the ruins of Ani an ancient Armenian capital. At night, we should arrive in Doğubayazıt the border town. We plan to cross the border to Iran on Wednesday.

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