On Being Famous in Turkey.

You may remember that while on our trip we were interviewed by some random Turkish journalist while touring the ruins of Ani. At the time, I doubted that this man was a legitimate journalist. While I still have my doubts, apparently we did make the news. In fact, we made at least 10 Turkish newspapers!

You can find a story here. A complete listing of the stories can be found here.

As Jessica pointed out to me, this journalist did take several liberties with the facts. (Although, to be fair, we have no idea how Celil translated our comments to the journalist.) In fact, Brian didn't really talk with the journalist. And we never said that mosques made us happy. But, there you have it. You never know what is going to happen in Turkey!

Journey Back to the Real World. Whatever That Is.

I have to admit that I have been putting off writing this post, since, to be honest, the end of the trip was fairly anti-climactic. It's hard to top flash floods and hellish immigration experiences, I guess? Or, really, any of the weird and cool and interesting and surreal experiences that we had. (The fact that I got to do this with dear friends makes it even more fantastic! Did I ever expect that my Minnesotan self would go to college in Boston, meet great friends from Tennessee and Washington, attend their wedding in San Francisco, watch them move to Tel Aviv, move myself to Zürich, and then meet in Turkey to vacation in Iraq? Life is so interesting.) I was actually just asked about my Easter vacation by my German teacher, and it was pretty entertaining to see her reaction. At the end of class she was still shaking her head, saying she was having a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that I went to Turkey and Iraq and that I spoke in German with a taxi driver there.

Saturday went something like this: Woke up at smokey hotel due to construction noise. Checked out. Caught bus up to old Mardin. Had lunch in a fancy restaurant. Somehow got separated from Brian when he was looking for a hotel. Helped by a little boy to catch a bus supposedly to the airport and said goodbye to Jessi who went to look for Brian. Bus didn't move for 10 minutes because a tour bus was stuck in a narrow alley. Got out of the bus to walk. Missed bus. Passed by a donkey or two. Bumped into Brian outside of a hotel. Called a taxi at the hotel. Passed a large parade of young people wearing neon wigs, with faces painted, who were chanting something. They stopped to take my picture. Got into the taxi and made it to the airport in time for my flight. A major portion of the safety information time was dedicated to praising Atatürk, given that Saturday was declared Children's Day by Atatürk. At the end of the flight to Ankara, the flight attendant said something in Turkish and didn't translate it. All I understood was the word "American" and then everyone turned around and looked at me. Caught flight from Ankara to Istanbul. Took a normal, metered taxi to the hotel we stayed at when I arrived. Was recognized by receptionist, who gave me a massive suite with two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, dining room and bathroom for the cost of a single. Fell asleep to the thumping base of the club downstairs.

Sunday: Happy Easter! Woke up. Caught a taxi back to airport. Drank the most expensive coffee ever. Made it through immigration. Flew back to Zürich. Everyone clapped when we landed. And we were met at the gate by immigration people, who wouldn't even let us off the plane until we could show that we should be there. Then I really knew that I was back. Of course Swiss immigration would meet a flight from Turkey at the gate, even though there are other immigration stations further in the airport. Welcome home! Took wonderfully on-time public transport back to my flat. Was met by my lovely new roommate, Georgie, who wanted to drink tea and sit on the balcony and chat for hours. The end.


It's not only the anti-climactic nature of the end of the trip, but it's also the summing up that I am struggling with. I feel like I saw and heard and felt and touched and met and learned and experienced so much, and it is hard to divide it into themes or even put it in words. At this point, I'm still mulling and absorbing and thinking and processing, but maybe someday I'll have synthesized this trip into a neat little package.

Really, the point of traveling to this part of the world (for me) was to have a hands-on experience with the people and the culture and the history and the present. The fact that this region is both the cradle of civilization and a focal point of current events makes it rich and layered and interesting and complex, and I wanted to get a feel for it. There are some things that you cannot learn from books and the news- only experience will do. And through all of these experiences, I feel that I have gained an increased appreciation for the complexity of situations (here and elsewhere) and the frequent absence of a right or even a good answer. Not necessarily very satisfying, but I think that reality is layered and complicated and full of snarls, and traveling gives you a glimpse of all of the knots and tangles. And I love it!

**Photo Credit: Brian and Jessica Patton.

Leaving is Hard. Literally.

On Friday we had to say goodbye to Sulaymaniyah and our friends and head back towards the border. We had a lovely breakfast of pancakes before heading out to meet our driver. The night before we had met some guys at the English center who tried to arrange a way to drive with us. It didn't end up working, but someone's brother's uncle (or something like that) was a private driver and between all of these people, a private driver was arranged to take us from Sulaymaniah to the border with Turkey, and the route was arranged to be the most scenic (and safe). It's so nice to have people taking care of you!

Our driver was an older man who didn't speak English, but our friends actually called him a couple of times during the trip to check up on us and to make sure that everything was okay. Everything was (mostly) okay, although our driver seemed intent on setting some sort of land-travel speed record. It started raining a half an hour into our 6 hour drive and never really stopped, but we just kept driving. We were going 140 km/hr on some of the smallest mountain roads in Iraq! Luckily, these small roads didn't have as many people, so there was less passing-on-blind-curves than on the larger, more busy roads.

Driving in Iraq is really... unique. Lanes are really just a suggestion, but most of the times people don't drive in them. And there appears to be no speed limit, except randomly-placed speed bumps, which all cars will grind to a crawl to cross over. The only rules of driving that I could catch were: 1) honk when you're passing someone because otherwise they won't know to stay in their lane, 2) put on your hazard lights when slowing down to go over a speed bump, 3) if it's okay for someone to pass you on a mostly-blind curve, turn on your blinker and slow down a little to let them know that they can pass, and 4) drive down the smoothest part of the road whenever possible, especially if it's the opposite side of the road.

So, we hurtled through the countryside in Kurdish Iraq. What we could see was quite stunning, but it was really raining quite hard, so our view was obscured. We had a brief stop at a mosque for noon prayers for our driver and a little later a stop for lunch, but otherwise we were on a mission of speed.

After lunch the rain became harder, and even our driver had to slow down, although he was still passing people. We were in the mountains, and we started to experience massive streams gushing across the road, carrying rocks and mud. We really had to slow down to get through some of these, but our driver was not to be deterred. I'm really thankful that we got through the mountains when we did, given how the situation deteriorated.

We made it out of the mountains and were driving on flats near the border when the water situation really got a little out of control. The roads were quite new, but were not built with continued, monsoon-style rain in mind, so it was basically a wide stretch of asphalt with very high curbs and no drainage. And, as we were in the plain heading towards the Tigris River at the border between Iraq and Turkey, basically all of the water was heading toward us. And our driver didn't speak English, so our attempts to get him to stop or turn around didn't really work.

At first, we were just driving through some big puddles. Then we were driving more slowly through some lakes. Then we were crawling through inches of water, and we could feel the water moving beneath our feet. Then the water started hitting the sides of the car, and it sounded like we were in a pontoon boat. Finally, we really couldn't move any further because the water was so deep. People were stalling all around us. Even semis couldn't really move. An army bulldozer came up next to us and literally started tearing up the side of the road to try to open some sort of outlet for the water. (I'm impressed with how quickly they were there, actually.) There were men out knee-deep in this nasty, rocky, muddy water trying to direct traffic and rescue stalled cars.

Yes, we were making a wake.

Note the man in knee-deep water.

While this may sound a little dangerous, we knew that we weren't in danger of being washed away, because there was really nowhere for us to be washed away to. Probably the biggest danger was the potential for CO poisoning, as we started smelling exhausted and realized that our tailpipe was under water. So, we sat with the windows open in the torrential downpour in our taxi that felt and sounded like a pontoon boat.

Finally our driver got bored with waiting and decided to just go. He went slow enough and didn't stall, thankfully, because I didn't want to get out in that murky water. However, I started noticing that my feet were wet and realized that water was pouring into the car! This still did not appear to phase the driver, so we drove the last 10 minutes to the border with approximately 6 inches of water sloshing around in the bottom of the taxi. Thankfully our bags didn't get wet, as the trunk was high enough. Our driver delivered us to the border and began bailing out his car. We felt so bad! I really never expected that our trip to Iraq would involve flash floods.

Once at the border, we really felt like we had just been through the wringer, between the white-knuckle driving and the pontoon-boat experience at the end. And the experience was just starting.

We procured a taxi driver to get us across the border and into Mardin, where I would fly out of the next day. He really knew how to work the system. Since Kurdish people really like Americans, he and Brian would go to the front of a line and get the guards to let us skip ahead because we were American. While Brian was standing for hours in the pouring rain, Jessi and I stayed nice and warm and dry in the car (there are benefits to being a second-class citizen at times). At all of the posts, the people just wanted to see Brian, and Jessi and I got through mostly without a second glance. We got through the Kurdish border formalities in about two hours, skipping past hundreds of people and cars.

However, things then ground to a halt. We got onto the bridge over the Tigris River between Iraq and Turkey and stopped. We were on the bridge (over the raging Tigris River in heavy rain) for 4 hours without moving. I think we literally drove across Northern Iraq in a shorter amount of time than it took for us to cross this bridge. We didn't really have any idea what was going on, but there was no moving forwards or backwards, so we just sat. Eventually we found out that that the Turkish computers were down. Seriously.

Once things were moving again, we got through the Turkish border stations in about 1.5 hours, but, again, we were flying through because we were Americans! They really didn't search our bags or even ask us about the cigarettes that our driver had us carry in for him.

At this point, we had been with this driver for 7 or 8 hours and had gone 2 km or so. We all have decided that we are most definitely flying the next time, war zone taxes or no war zone taxes. I do think it's a little ironic that the major problems that we had at the border coming and going were on the Turkish side, and not the Kurdish side, which doesn't even have reliable electricity!

Our driver drove us to Mardin (not via the road on the border with Syria, but one through the mountains with several army checkpoints). At first he seemed like a granny driver to us, but then we realized that he was just driving a normal rate of speed through the mountains and night. We didn't arrive in Mardin until 2 am, but were able to call ahead and make sure that a hotel room was available. What a day!

Ruins and Random Appendages, or Kars Part II.

On Sunday morning we got up early for our private tour of Ani, which we had arranged by email before we arrived (and which was confirmed at dinner the night before). Ani was the major reason that we chose to travel to this region, as it has only been opened to the public within the past 5-10 years and is really quite vast in scale and accessible for poking around. And we do like to poke.

We were joined by 3 others for the tour- 2 German women and a guy from New Zealand. We all took a 30 minute minibus ride to Ani, which is right at the border between Turkey and Armenia. As in Armenia is literally on the other side of the canyon that makes up the peninsula that is Ani, and we could see their flags (Russian and Armenian) and border guard outposts all throughout our tour. Celil narrated our drive with general history of the area, the local geography, the troubles with Armenia and Russia, etc. The rather unsavory history between Armenia and Turkey was definitely a reoccurring theme, and we definitely got a slightly one-sided take on the situation. On the way, we passed this strange monument to some massacre of Turkish people by Armenians. It was a little unclear to us that the claims made by this monument were actually true. I suppose that is really a major part of the problem in this conflict- there are lots of claims of wrongs that may or may not be entirely true and both sides have done some terrible things. At least that is my unprofessional assessment of the situation.

While we were at Ani, the weather was actually quite miserable. It was cold, windy and quite rainy at times, and all of that rain equaled lots of mud. Not that Ani wasn't still cool, but it is harder to grasp a camera through mittens. Celil was a very enthusiastic guide, although sometimes the combination of my ignorance on the history of the area and his Turkish English meant that I had no idea what was going on, but I figured I could use my guidebook to fill in the gaps. Sadly, Jessi and Brian currently have my Turkey guidebook, as they are continuing their travels in Turkey for another week, so please forgive me if my facts are rather sparse or incorrect.

Ani was a huge city built on a sort of penninsula; it is a triangle with deep river canyons on two sides and a huge double wall facing the plains. It was inhabited from the 900s to the 1700s, was a major stop on the Silk Road, and housed over 150,000 people at its largest. It was abandoned in the 1700s, rediscovered in the late 1800s, looted and damaged during WWI, and seems to have been mostly neglected since. Since it is so close to Armenia and is in the militarized border zone, tourists have only been allowed with special permits since the late 1990s or early 2000s, and photography has only been allowed since 2004 (did I mention that the relationship between Armenia and Turkey does not seem to be that great? and that the border is most definitely closed?). Ani is considered to be an endangered site, and I can see why. The protections that are in place are quite limited/ non-existent (for example, we were in a church with frescoes on the walls from the 1200s, and these men came in, took pictures with flashes, and then started smoking like chimneys), and it seems that little restoration work has been done. And they have resident cows and sheep to keep the grass from growing too tall so that they don't have a snake problem in the summer.

The walls are super thick!

The main gate.

Hello, cow friends.

This church was struck by lightening and cut in half!

View back towards the main gate.

An oil press. Or hamam.

Canyon separating Turkey and Armenia.

The setting of Ani is really quite beautiful- mountains on horizon (Georgia to the North, Armenia to the East, Mt. Ararat to the South-ish), plains extending to the west and canyons surrounding the rest. The spring greens were really intense, probably thanks to the lovely rain that we were getting. The scope of Ani was really incredible- ruins and buildings for at least a kilometer each direction. We saw multiple churches, a mosque, a caravanseri (hotel for caravans), oil presses, hamams, houses, streets, a Zoarastrian temple, walls, bridges and cave villages in the distance.

Mountains to the South.

Ani is huge!

View towards Georgia. I think those hills in the distance are Georgia.

View towards Armenia and a guard station.

Cave village.

We had a strange encounter in one of the churches, where we had retreated to admire the frescoes (from the 1200s!). Up until this point, we had been alone in Ani. Suddenly, a mass of about 40 Turkish men streamed into the church. And started taking pictures of us. Not the 800-year-old frescoes. Us. In fact, one man had a video camera stacked on top of his camera and was both videoing and snapping photos. 

It gets better. The camera/video man then approached our tour guide and asked to interview Jessi, Brian and I for some local news. He made us trundle out in the rain to stand in front of the church (better light, I guess) and proceeded to interview us (with Celil serving as our translator). He wanted to know where we were from, how we liked Kars, how we heard about Ani, what we liked best there, etc. And then, as suddenly as all of the men had descended on us, they left. I'm not convinced that he was a legitimate reporter, but, either way, it was a rather strange experience.

Church with frescoes.

Frescoes!

Inside.

There's a depiction of Palm Sunday! And it was Palm Sunday!

Our tour of Ani was about 3 hours, and I was definitely chilled to the bone by the end. While I do enjoy ruins and things such as this, I have come to realize that I find real, live people so much more interesting.

Hamam.

View towards the point of the peninsula. The part past the mosque is closed.

The cathedral.

Our tour group.

Inside the cathedral.

The cathedral was huge!

Mosque.

Residential street.

Ani is ginormous!

Another church.

More cave villages.

Ceiling in the Virgin's Chapel, possibly?

Zoarastrian temple. A fire bowl was supported on the 4 big pillars.

Heading out.

Brian, Jessi and I at the main gate.

Ani from the front.

On the way back to Kars, we questions Celil about the "bizarre" monument above Kars, and we got a pretty interesting story. Apparently, the mayor decided to build a monument and chose whatever location he liked, despite the presence of historical sites in the area. Locals attempted to stop it, but the mayor got someone to say that there was no problem with building in the area and just went ahead with his project. He got a famous artist to design the sculpture, but then the builders ended up being incompetent (possibly corruption involved) and made the heads too big. So they had to make new heads. Then the hand was too big, so they had to make a new one. At this point, a new mayor was elected, and a lawsuit to remove the statue (due to the underlying historical sites) succeeded. The artist apparently raised a stink, and Western news outlets grabbed the story and spun it as though the statue was going to be torn down because the government were Islamic extremists. Which leaves a bizarre statue built on top of historical artifacts with several random over-sized appendages hanging out on a hill above Kars. I thought this was so interesting! A little view into life in Kars...

Back in Kars, we had a delicious home-cooked meal at a small restaurant that Celil recommended to us. Once properly fed and warmed, we tackled the rest of our Kars to-do list: the Kars museum and seeing the bizarre statue and its appendages in person.

On the way to the museum.

The Kars museum was slightly underwhelming, although the cultural information on the weaving of messages into local traditional weaving was entertaining. (Apparently embroidering chili peppers on your husband's hat meant that he was in BIG trouble!) The most interesting item was a train car located in the yard that turned out to be where the treaty was signed that created Armenia. Quite a large event for a train car, I'd say.

After a trek along the wrong side of Kars in which we were followed by about 10 kids and watched garbage being bulldozed into the river, we made it to the monument. There were quite a few men there that we seemed to be disturbing, but they evacuated and let us poke around. After seeing the statue, we walked around a building under the monument, and the men started tearing apart the building right above where we had just been standing. We decided it was time to go.

Kars.

Statue. And random hand!

Why yes, this is a very large hand.

And large heads.

The faulty hand mold, possibly?

Kars Castle on the opposite hill.

The building before men started tearing it up even more.

We ended up spending the rest of the evening in the hotel room, as we a) had a large lunch and weren't hungry, b) didn't have the energy to be stared at and followed any more, and c) had pretty much exhausted the store of things to do in Kars. Plus, our trek to Iraq started the next day! Excitement!