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Published: February 16th 2009
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Oh dear, it's been a strange and overwhelming couple weeks. It started when I got back from London after which I had a day to say goodbye to Dan (a pretty emotional and messy experience I'll tell you), see some of Istanbul (spice bazaar and basilica cistern with Dan--hint for future reference: the latter is not worth spending 10 lira on), and see my roommates and other people before I left and have way too much being goofy and playing dress-up. After that it was off to Eastern Turkey for me and Kendra, which was a really great experience--it was my first time traveling (or even spending that much time around) some one I am dating and it turned out very well, even better than I expected. I think we both feel significantly closer to each other after it and, thankfully, don't hate each other's guts. There were a couple of rough parts, but that's life, eh? Oh yes, and it was also fun pretending like we were married for the purposes of making it easier to get a room together, hah.
Overall, besides that, the trip was not the most adventurous, but had its share. Perhaps surprisingly, the best
part might have been the food, which was
amazing; we had the best baklava in Turkey (ie. maybe the world) in Antep, ate the best and spiciest kebabs we've ever had in Adana and Urfa, sampled the unique cuisine of the Hatay (an interesting mix of arabic and Turkish food), ate real hummus for the first time in months, and had legit and amazing home-made lahmacun and dolmalar (stuffed eggplant, pepper, and onion--mmmazing) and çiğ köfte made with real raw meat (it's made meatless in most places where you can actually buy it nowadays) thanks to our amazing hosts. Beyond that we were a bit lazy with our adventures at times--definitely never got out of bed before 9:30 except maybe for the last day in Diyarbakır, but we definitely made them happen anyway. We went first to the large city of Adana, then spent several days in Antakya (otherwise known as ancient Antioch, in the Hatay, an area of Turkey that juts into Syria, is largely Arab, and is part of historical Syria), hopped over to the somewhat boring Antep, stayed with a former Kurdish nomad and his wife in the historic city of Urfa (birthplace of Prophet Abraham), and
ended up having time to spend a day or two climbing around the ruined castle and walls of the unofficial Kurdish capital of Diyarbakır. Let me give you a run-down:
Kenders and I spent a night and two days in Adana where the most exciting site was the third-largest mosque in the world (where the unscrupulous employee charged us 5 lira apiece to ride the elevator 90m up to the top of the SW minaret where the view was preeeeeeetty amazing) and the beautiful massive park next to the river. Besides that it was pretty gross and bland. Then on to Antakya which was, as far as we saw, not nearly so empty or full of scary looking military police as I heard, but pretty boring as a city. Thankfully the food was fucking amazing, the archeology museum was good enough to penetrate my chastity belt of old-stuff-fatigue and inseminate my soul with joy (an amazing collection of Roman mosaics) and the hills around St. Peter's cave church were fun to explore even if the church itself was rather underwhelming (though it was like the third church EVER IN THE HISTORY OF ANYTHING and the first place where the
term 'Christian' was used). Antep was a bit disappointing--the castle, the one thing I really wanted to see, had just closed for six-year renovations--but it was redeemed by the best baklava in Turkey (which is only somewhat noticeably better than regular baklava--not quite worth spending twice as much on unless you're on vacation kinda thing), the cheap-ass historic bath house, and our bizarre experience having a 5-person dance party to two Kurdish musicians and the Turkish Eurovision song contest entry for this year with a crazy old lady who apparently thought Kendra was japanese and every so often would look over at us and yell "SAYONARA!" while bowing and the guy working there who danced with the abandonment of a child. Urfa was beautiful; we saw the amazing old city center (and the citadel-castle with an amaaaaazing view and the absolutely beautiful park/mosque/fish pond complex at its base where the Prophet Abraham's birth cave is preserved and the well-fed fish which supposedly are descended from the holy ones that the fire Nimrod tried to burn Abraham on turned into are a delight to feed--they crowd around the banks in giant, disgusting orgies of flesh fighting for air and the chance
to nab a bit of fish food), explored some of the more neglected parts of the city, discovered a centuries-old mosque cut out of the rock now used as some one's personal garage and garbage dump, succeeded in throwing bread into the the gaping maws of fish, stayed with a family of former Kurdish nomads who now run a hostel, amongst other things. Diyarbakır was cool--the ancient walls are massive and still fun to climb on, and we had some fun exploring the ruins of the old castle--though getting harrassed by a surprisingly intimidating group of young boys who had lit a bonfire in one of the city's ruined wall towers and having stones thrown at us by children were not.
Anyway, now I've been back and, as I said, have had very little time. Between getting my registration for next semester figured out (somewhat of a nightmare at this university), saying goodbye to Christina and Afşın (who is moving out tonight! :[[[), writing emails and other things that I've been putting off during a month of traveling, seeing people (like my amazing room mates) now that I'm back, and Valentine's Day, and other stuff, I've barely had time
ÃaÄdaÅ baklava
The best in Turkey to think. I still don't have registration figured out completely (I am waiting for word from my advisor back at UW and to see if I can convince some instructors to let me into courses they already rejected me from. Being overwhelmed isn't too bad--it's a bit stressful, but sometimes I'm simply overwhelmed by my amazing room mates. They really are amazing; case in point, tonight my writing of this travel blog was interrupted for several hours by me going to Kendra and Ariel's (not related to room mates), coming home while it snowed heavily, finding my house full of awesome people, Abba dance parties, and taking a trip down to South Campus at 11PM to have a massive snowball fight and make a snow man (it was going to be covered in mud and thusly called "Barack Snowbama") that instead turned into a freakish-looking snow alien. Yeah, right? Even when Afşın leaves (which now, as of this writing, is tomorrow evening because of the snow) Emma, Mustafa, Auveen, our friends, and even sometimes Uygar (he'll be living here on weekends when he's off duty), are going to continue having an amaaaaazing time.
Life is beautiful. Life is good.
Floor mosaic
from the Antep archeology museum To see the full picture sets from Kendra and I's trip, go to the following links:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2144262&id=120406894&l=c94ee
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2144265&id=120406894&l=c5dca
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