Neile's Turkish Holiday

July 2nd

as transcribed from my journal

We got into Ankara still fairly early in the morning. Ankara is the city where Christina and Matt taught last year. Christina's former student, Nasmeen, picked us up at the train station, and drove us around the city while we looked for a hotel. Ankara seemed more compact, newer, busier, dirtier, dustier, less European than Istanbul in many ways--more like the image I had in my head of middle-eastern cities. We found a hotel just below the old area of the city, the Citadel, called the Hitit (Hittite) Otel. We dumped our stuff in our rooms then sat around in the hotel lounge talking to Nasmeen for a while, then we went out to look for sandals for Jim. Didn't find what we were looking for, but the markets are wonderful--bags of grains and nuts and all and great veggies and fruits. We definitely stand out more here--very few tourists come to Ankara--it's the government city not a tourist destination.

We went to a department store, where we all got cheap silly sunglasses (mine only lasted a day or two before they broke!)

Five million Turkish lire. One million was worth about $2.50 U.S. when we were there, so this is about $12.50. We didn't know it could be so easy to be multimillionaires! That is Ataturk, Turkey's national hero, on all the bills (and on many statues in all the towns).

 

Stopped and had drinks at a tea garden (yes, it's hot--that's why we keep stopping for beverages) in a square, then Christina and Jim went into the surrounding jewelry stores and found a lovely amber (not colour amber, the thing amber) pendant for this stepmother. I fell in love with a silver necklace with two pieces of mother-of-pearl in it, which Jim then bought for me. It had been designed by the shop owner, though he has someone else do the silversmithing for him.

Then Matt left to meet up with a friend, and the three of us looked at more shoes, then gradually climbed up to the Citadel (stopped for drinks at a tea garden along the way) then up through the gate in the wall, then up through the narrow streets. The buildings have second-storey overhangs, and there are all kinds of signs that make it seem like things had not changed there much in hundreds of years. Narrow, winding alleys, old old houses--a close-in feeling to what I imagine Medieval streets to be like.

A view down one of Ankara "hisar" (citadel)'s main streets. Obviously, cars aren't allowed in here.

 

Sun very hot, though occasional breezes. We walked then came to some carpet stores, where Christina was brought tea and she bought some pillow covers, then another where she bought some little one-foot-square rugs, the storekeepers patiently pulling down each one in huge piles to display it.

I was really getting overheated and hungry, so we turned around and went to restaurant and had a snack, came back to the otel, talked to Matt and his Albanian friend who had shown up in the lounge for a while. (The friend spoke French better than English, and I realized that while I understood most of what they said in French I couldn't construct a sentence in less than five minutes. Damn.) Then the friend left, and Nasmeen returned. Christina had gone upstairs to rest and we were starting to get sleepy so when Matt left with Nasmeen to see other friends, we came upstairs and dozed till 9:00. I woke first Christina then Jim up and we talked for a while and wished for food to magically appear but we tried calling for room service and they didn't have anything obvious that Christina could eat (no rice or soup) so we sat there stunned for a while. Finally Jim and I went back to our room and Jim slept while I washed things.