Vakıflı

To get to Vakıflı, the only remaining Armenian village in Turkey, for the feast, we had to take a dolmuş (shared ride) west to Samandağ and then a taxi to Vakıflı.  Early Sunday morning, Lee (who had finally arrived after deciding to stay in Istanbul an extra day), Rebecca, Jen, and I set off to find the "umarked dolmuş stand by the [old] otogar" that Lonely Planet had described.  Well, Lonely Planet was a bit off, but we found our way thanks to a friend of Rebecca's from her Ankara study abroad program two years ago who that morning just happened to be hanging out with taxi drivers in Antakya before heading off to Syria and Jordan.  

I must stop and say that Lee, Rebecca, and Jen are all wonderful to travel with.  Rebecca has traveled extensively in Turkey, Jen is incredibly nice and her Arabic comes in handy, and Lee is further along in Turkish than Rebecca and I are but never feels the need to jump in and talk for us.  

Our dolmuş dropped us off in Samandağ:

where we caught a taxi to Vakıflı:

At the church, we ran into one of the people who usually attends services at the Catholic church where we were staying.  She said her mother is Armenian and her whole family was there to attend the feast.  

The church was very small, and Lee, Rebecca, Jen, and I were some of the very few people who stayed inside for the entire two hour service.  It filled up for communion and then most people went back outside. 

The lecture I attended a few weeks ago in Istanbul explained that, while in the rehearsal room priority in the choir went to the older members, the actual church service music was led by the best singer, regardless of age.  Well, this girl here couldn't have been over 15 and was probably more like 12, but she had an amazing voice.  The lecture also said that the choir learned mostly by ear and repetition, which was why when things changed they could sound a little confused.  We saw that too.  

After the service, we went to sit at a little tea garden to wait for the bus back to Samandağ.  They served us Turkish coffee in tea glasses:

Ethnic Armenians from all over the world had travelled to Vakıflı for this event.  One Canadian woman stopped and talked to us for quite a bit, explaining some of the history of Armenians in Turkey and the specifics of the feast.  She also said that if we were going to Samandağ anyway, we should stay a while and go swimming in the Mediterranean...

So we did!  In our clothes.  Compared to other Mediterranean resort towns, this beach was very low key and the majority of people there were Turks.  It was awesome.

Reasons Antakya is Cool

1.  Mountains!

2.  An amazing museum with lots of mosaics.

3.  A nice Catholic church that has boarding houses.

4.  Accidental grammar lessons.  Attending mandatory mass, I noticed that, like the "No Smoking" signs (yes, they do have those in Turkey) that are written in the passive aorist and technically say "Smoking is not done here," Jesus says "My body is eaten here."

5.  Awesome exercise machines in a park.

6.  They're proud of their students.  These two did very well on the national test.  I also saw a sign by a school that said "Please be quiet.  The children are taking an exam."

7.  Hummus!  

8.  Künefe!  

9.  The first church ever, which, unfortunately was closed because the people in charge were on vacation.  We got to hike around the mountain, though.

10.  Cute streets and buildings in the old part of the city, where St. Peter most likely lived.

 

11.  People are used to tourists, because of all the Catholic groups that come through, but with the exception of at the otogar, they don't harass you the way they do in the touristy parts of Istanbul.  They also don't try to speak English to you.

12.  A lot of people speak Arabic, so everyone loved Jen.

13.  I swear the people in the house next door to us were playing "The University of Chicago Middle East Music Ensemble's Greatest Arab Hits."

14.  For once here, I didn't get the sense that people looked down on Arabs.

15.  Things were a lot cheaper, even though Jen was in shock at how expensive everything was compared to in Syria.

16.  Ice packs!

17.  A Cubs fan!  Well, sort of...

Lessons in Bus Travel Part 1:

There may be prisoners on your bus.

I would really like to tell this story to make it sound like Rebecca and I narrowly escaped serious danger, but for the sake of my parents' health and, well, reality, I won't.

When Rebecca and I got to Ankara, we bought our bus tickets to Adana, thinking that since it was the fourth largest city in the country, we'd have to transfer there anyway.  People were quoting outrageous prices, but one bus company said they'd take us there for 25YTL.  Naturally, we bought those tickets.

Well, as we were checking our bags, we noticed that our bus was actually continuing on to Antakya.  The attendant wanted 18YTL for us to stay on the bus for another three hours.  Ridiculous, we thought.  As Rebecca was trying in vain to negotiate a price, I noticed two soldiers lead a man in handcuffs onto our bus.

Rebecca had told me that she had seen soldiers escorting unimportant prisoners on and off busses at rest stops.  Still, all sorts of outrageous scenarios rushed through my head.  

The reaction of everyone else finally convinced me that this was indeed a normal occurrence.  Aside from the shuffling around that resulted from one of the soldiers and his older commander who we hadn't seen board sitting in our seats, nothing seemed too out of the ordinary.  An old man talked with one of the young soldiers about military service, and a couple girls around us seemed entirely in awe of the fact that they got to sit so close to such cute young soldiers.  The man in handcuffs was even asked what he had done.  I couldn't understand, because I'm not exactly up on my crime vocabulary, but judging from the reactions, it wasn't all that serious.

All this happened before we left the station, and if it had been any different, Rebecca and I were prepared to waste those 25YTL and get on a different bus.  But we decided it was safe, so we relaxed and went to sleep.

That is until we were awakened by a blood curling scream.  It seems the bus company had chosen to play some zombie/demon possession movie, and they had just gotten to the part where the man dumps holy water all over his demon possessed wife.  

I think the soldiers felt sorry for us, because they kept offering us cola, which we refused on the basis of it being 3AM and us wanting to sleep.

We eventually got to Adana.  Well, sort of.  At about 5AM, the bus stopped at the side of the road, where a small van was waiting to take us to the otogar.  A bunch of us, including a family carrying five giant bags of fish feed stuffed into the van.  We got to the station just as the ticket offices were opening, and still with no bargaining power spent 18YTL on tickets to Antaka, where we were greated by a war-hating, democracy-loving talkative man who generously told us exactly how to get to the Catholic church where we were hoping to stay.

And look!  A bus to Batman!  Apparently it's a gross truck stop of a city that used to be worth staying in until the town next to it became a dam.  

Ankara!

Actually, I'm in Kapadokya. But I am behind on my blogging. So today you get Ankara.

When I told people I was going to Turkey this summer, I often got this response: "Don't go to Ankara." But Rebecca's take on the city was that, while it probably wasn't all that fun to visit, it was a great city to live in, so much, in fact, that she had decided to do her Fulbright there. My general feeling was that I stuck out a lot less. Compared to in Istanbul, not a lot of money is to be made off tourists, so people pretty much left me alone. This also probably had to do with the fact that, as Ankara is the capital, they are used to foreigners living and working in their city.


After getting off the bus, we went to drop off one of her suitcases at the Fulbright office, which was in the embassy part of town. The people working there let us take showers, which were greatly needed.

Then Rebecca showed me some sights. Ataturk's tomb is ginormous. The museum part of it had some of his personal belongings-- for example, his dog, which had been stuffed. We passed by plastic battle scenes with battle sounds playing in the background. Then there was the hallway with the children's choir renditions of Russian propaganda film esque national songs.



It explicitly states that you're not allowed to sit on the lions.
















Then it was the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations:







Here are some other random pictures of Ankara:

Then we had dinner at a nice Western restaurant in the embassy part of town. I had pesto, and Rebecca had caesar salad. Our tea at the end of the meal came with, well, stuff:

Wait, real quick

One more before I'm off to Ankara...

The construction going on in our dorm has been so loud that we've been picturing guys in the rooms directly above us randomly swinging hammers and destroying everything in sight.  Turns out, we weren't all that wrong.  We walked out and saw this:

The Kıraç and Moğollar concert was amazing, especially considering neither Rachel nor I had any idea who Kıraç was.  I think this tied with Kardeş Türküler for best concert I've seen here.  There was the same progressive feel as Barışarock, but this time with Avea commercials and those free packs of household and personal hygiene supplies you get at Turkish arenas.  Oh, and the headscarved women scattered around the audience who were seriously rocking out.

And today in the middle of our proficiency exam, a fight broke out.  Between cats.  The TAs all jumped up and scurried to get them out of the room.  I should remind you that seeing, even encouraging, cats in the classroom is just part of everyday life:

Travel Plans

I just took a final.  Tonight is the Moğollar concert, tomorrow is the proficiency exam, and then I'm off on, what would you call it, vacation?  Those two weeks I'll be able to look back on and say "well, when I was backpacking through Turkey..."

Here's the plan:

Tomorrow night (well, Thursday morning if you want to get all exact about it), Lee, Rebecca, and I take the 12:30am bus to Ankara.  We'll spend a day there and then get on a night bus to Antakya.  Friday afternoon we'll meet my friend Jen from Chicago who's been studying abroad in Damascus.  We'll have Saturday to look around Antakya, and Sunday is the big Armenian feast in Vakıflıköy that Melissa recommended I go to.

Sunday evening, Jen and I leave for Kapadokya, specifically, Göreme, where we'll spend Monday night at a hostel that Rebecca stayed at during the midterm break this summer.  Tuesday night is a bus back to Istanbul, and we'll stay here Wednesday and Thursday nights and hopefully be able to meet up with Yiğit.

Friday Jen and I go to the airport.  She flies home, and I fly to Kars to meet Josef.  We'll visit Ani and stay in Kars until Monday.  Then I have until Thursday in Istanbul.  

I made a little map in Microsoft Word that shows approximately where I'm going.  I should mention that while Kars is pretty close to Georgia, South Ossetia is much further north and east.  

I'll of course take lots of pictures, but I doubt I'll be able to update much while I'm there.  My parents will be getting lots of "I'm in such and such a place" text messages.

Dinner

Our writing and speaking instructor (the same one who took us out to ice cream) invited us over to her apartment for dinner.  Not everyone could make it, but those of us who did had a great time.  She and her roommates cooked us Turkish food, and we made Americanish food.  I made nectarine pie/crisp, Ruth made mushrooms, Michelle made brownies, Rebecca made boiled peaches, and Rachel did all the chopping and pealing that no one else wanted to do:

Here it is, minus the pie.  One of Betül's roommates gave me recipes for the one in the far left corner (red lentil thingies) and the one in front next to the brownies (sweet cracked wheat thingies).  The dish in the front left was the first macaroni salad I've ever been able to eat, because it was made with yogurt instead of mayonnaise.  And in the back center is eggplant salad:

  

Once again, the Turks were fascinated by pie:

The end.