Van is the cat's pjamas

Van has a short list of things it is famous for, in order of appearance: the Van Lake Monster, breakfast, a castle, and white cats with one blue and one yellow eye. No one may believe me, but I could have sworn that in the dawn hours of our overnight bus ride from Mardin to Van, I saw the shifty shape of a sea monster slowly swimming alongside our bus. Van was the only place on our tour to have a Fulbright teacher, which meant we had a local guide who spoke impeccable English. This particular teacher is a tall blonde chap from Arkansas, so needless to say he attracts a lot of attention on the streets of Van. The restaurants, grocery stores, and dolmuş routes he frequents are filled with people who recognize him. He also had such insider knowledge as how to easily to avoid the 3TL entrance fee to the grounds of Van Castle. Van Castle usually has an admission fee, but not if you're a Van insider...

Van Lake at sunset as seen from the castle.

Unsatisfied with only Van, however, again we took the better part of an afternoon after our Van kahvaltı to take a 3 hour jaunt yet further east, to Doğubayazıt. This jaunt was worthwhile for so many reasons: one, Ishak Pasha Palace is beautiful, two, we were able to see Mt. Ararat, that famous mountain of Biblical lore, and three, we were able to marvel at the Turkish military presence near the border of Iran. Many of the mountainsides around the town have Ataturk quotes emblazoned upon them in towering letters, “Ne multu Türküm diyene” being the most common and famous (“What happiness to be a Turk”). We were told that this is to “inspire” the many troops there, but the quote I mentioned especially is often used as a conversational ultimatum by way of answering The Kurdish Question (to simplify: it sometimes is seen as calling out Kurds in their dogged determination to not embrace a Turkish identity). Generally the East is both distressing and beautiful.
The former dining room of Ishak Pasha Palace was one of my favorite parts, but the mosque was also stunning.


The next morning after a rest in Van we headed to the island in Van Lake which boasts an Armenian church and stunning views. Due to happenstance and warmer weather, a large group of Fulbright teachers had descended on Van (9 to be exact), and we had an impromptu picnic of sorts on the island. Usually the ferries don't leave the dock until they have what the captain deems to be a profitable number of people on board, and in this case the sudden presence of 9 Americans and a handful of Turks meant that we didn't have to wait long for departure.


The carvings on the church are remarkable. It was an excellent end to the weekend and a picturesque last glance at Van Lake before the assembled Fulbright crew all headed back to their respective Turkish hometowns.

Sacred Fish

From Kahta it was on to Şanlıurfa, or Urfa for short, famous for aptly named Urfa Kebabs and the “Balıklı Gol”, which literally means “Lake with fish”. Upon arrival at the bus station, my three companions and I were in the midst of deciding what to see first when an elderly couple began beckoning us. “Where are you going?” they asked, not quite waiting for an answer before shuffling us into the backseat of their tiny car. “We want to see the lake with fish!” we replied, earnestly. Before we knew it, we were whisked away in the car with the now-familiar stop-and-start jerkiness of a driver who is still not completely comfortable with the necessary act of changing gears manually. While exchanging pleasantries and being complimented on our Turkish, we learned that our chauffeur and his wife had two daughters who were about our age and that they wished we were staying longer so they could treat us to a home-cooked meal. Ah well, we had other fish to fry.

Urfa has more character than most of the Turkish cities I've seen in my time here. It has charm. It has a lake, with fish. Sacred fish! They are sacred because apparently they are made of the ashes of Abraham (the story behind it is unclear as per usual, and we deduced that it probably comes only from the Koran and is not featured in other holy books, because otherwise one of us might have remembered that one time Abraham was engulfed in flames and then his ashes turned into fish). The lake is more of a pond on the grounds of a mosque, but there is a whole park nearby which unites it with Urfa Castle and a small bazar. The whole area is reminiscent of what one probably imagines when one thinks of Turkey, based on Hollywood notions of “The Orient” and the like. It is beautiful nonetheless.

This trip, much like a Russian nesting doll, also involved an inner jaunt to Mardin, a mere three hour bus ride away from Urfa. Mardin is a tiny, tiny city on a hill, and it is famous for its brilliant panoramas, a former monastery, and I believe the type of stone used in building the majority of its buildings. Here in Mardin the Turkishness of the story continues, since again in our quest for our next bus we were offered a tour of the city from a native. This time the native in question was a cab driver, so he requested a nominal fee. Still, we felt looked after. Our driver was very gentlemanly, patiently smoking by the car while we took pictures and even stopping at an ATM so we could all replenish our cash reserves. He spoke a mixture of Turkish, Kurdish, and Arabic, as most people do in that part of Turkey, which sounded very interesting as he chatted on the phone.
After a whirlwind hour and a half in Mardin, we headed all the way back to Urfa in order to catch our next bus to Van.

Eastern Adventures

The week after I gave my first exams I had another first...I took my first trip towards the east of Turkey. In fact, I ended up going almost as far east as one can possibly go before winding up in Iran (Doğubayazıt, Turkey). I visited not one, but two famous mountains, I went to churches built before America was even discovered, and I saw both sacred fish and a famous breed of cat (not in the same city, however). But I get ahead of myself. Even though this trip was only five days long (the week after midterms, students have what they call a "head vacation", or a week when they just ditch classes to go home and let their mothers do their laundry), it it was so jam-packed that it will take a couple of posts to do it justice. Without further ado...

Kahta and Mt. Nemrut
Mt. Nemrut is a darling of the Turkish tourism bureau. They simply love putting pictures of the ancient stone heads of uncertain origins on various propaganda. As a result, tourists such as myself are drawn to the top of this mountain they would probably otherwise not pay any heed to. One of the starting points for the ascent is the town of Kahta, which, I was later informed, is known as the “rip-off capital of Turkey” or somesuch by the guidebooks. My companions and I did not really get ripped off there, but Kahta, in mild terms, was not a favorable introduction to the East for me. (Happily other cities would prove better.) It is a man-dominated town and with a pervasive aura of utter depression. It wasn't long, though, before we were in a dolmuş speeding towards the base camp of Mt. Nemrut, with several stops to see ancient things in between. The countryside surrounding Mt. Nemrut is absolutely gorgeous (as is the east in general, as I would learn).

Possibly the sketchiest ferry I've ever seen. Possibly. For a few minutes I lived in fear that we were going to try to drive on to it.

This is the approach to Mt. Nemrut. You have to hire a driver to get even close to the mountain because it is so far away from the nearest towns. In any case, right before we got to this hill we were stopped by local gendarmes for a routine roadside ID check. Our driver, however, had no ID, no money, and no registration for the bus. He got out of our bus and slowly approached the gendarmes' van with a wry look in his eye as we all watched anxiously from within. Eventually we saw him laughing, and decided that this was probably not a good sign. He sauntered back to the bus and explained: "I used to be a firefighter in town. I would bring the water to the men. I told them, are you remembering me? I was bringing you the water. Maybe I don't bring you water any more. So they say to me, 'Yes, we remember, you can go.' Ha ha ha. Maybe I not bring them water, ha ha." So...our driver quite literally carried a lot of water in that town. He told us that story triumphantly about four more times during the day.

There they are, all majestic and whatnot. They were really cool but the climb was a bit snowy (i.e. treacherous). Also there is a chain in front of them so you can no longer get right up next to them, unlike what pictures of past tourists might have you believe.


Stay tuned for more Eastern Adventures!

Brought to you by Fetih Bey

Remember how Atatürk wore whole yachts as neck ornaments?
Fethiye does. Fethiye (formerly Telmessos, renamed after Fetih Bey, a pilot in the Ottoman airfoce, in 1934) is almost a typical Turkish-Mediterranean resort town with one twist: it is a natural harbor, so it feels more like a lake than a seaside getaway. Of course like any resort town it has its charms...the boardwalk stretches on for meters and meters and features cafe after cafe directly on the water's edge and also numerous illuminated pictures of Ataturk (see above). I had lunch at Cafe Mavi in the old town, where the owner asked me a few questions about myself and then gave me a free delicious piece of homemade carrot cake. Not everyone gets such generous handouts, as I was to learn...
(That box says "Help the Pelicans...For Fish, For Money".)

The best part of the town is the old amphitheater in the hillsides.
The director of Fethiye's adorable museum lived on the slope overlooking the harbor and decided one day that some work needed to be done on his house. In the course of some construction-related digging they happened upon the ruins, and then with the help of a sizable group of local volunteers they uncovered the well-preserved 6,000-seat Roman theater pictured above. The patrons of said theater would have had a miraculous view of the harbor. This is all simply in situ, as are a few scattered Lycian tombs (such as the one fenced in next to the post office, but also there are some in the hillside), and the aforementioned adorable museum has a lovely relic-filled garden to peruse. Fethiye is certainly more interesting than a typical resort town; it's not a must-see, but it's definitely not a bad place to spend a warm day.

Snow Problem!

I woke up to the first snow in Uşak today!

In case you were wondering, the Turkish word for "snowball" is kartopu and "snowman" is karadam.

Nature's Candy

Yesterday two of my coworkers (one being the other Fulbrighter, of course) went to a neighboring town in Uşak province called Ulubey in order to see the second largest canyon in the world.

It's pretty big.

We went not really knowing what to do or expect, and as we girlishly wandered around what may or may not have been a path we happened upon two gentlemen who had helped plan ULUBEY CANYONFEST 2K10! Namely, these two men had designed the hiking routes around the canyon for said festival earlier in the year. They offered to show us the best views and then got bottles of water for each of us, so we accepted. Little did we know that this would be a two-hour long hike fraught with terror! Most of the hiking felt great, but the climbing downward after we had rested on the peak in the middle of the canyon? SHEER TERROR. Sheer like the canyon's rocky sides that we could have easily slid down...to our doom! Occasionally our guides would kick loose rocks down the slopes and laugh at our fearful moans as we watched them bounce and roll away, imagining our potentially similar fate.

That is the middle "peak" which had the terrifying downward climb, as seen from about halfway along our hiking route.


That same "peak", as seen from Usak University's Ulubey campus.

Luckily because I am not at all clumsy and the very model of grace and balance, I made it back alive. (In other words, I have no idea how I made it back alive.)
BUT! this was my reward....

A pomegranate fresh from the tree! We ate them overlooking the canyon from the restaurant where we had started our hike. Then our two guides took us back to Ulubey's main street and bought us each a loaf of Ulubey pide, since apparently it is known for its delicious bread. This is what pide looks like plain, with the incredibly scrumptious Turkish cream cheese our guides recommended putting on the bread waiting nearby.

It was a lovely Sunday afternoon (Pazar öğleden sonra). We might meet our two guides next week to see other provincial wonders in other parts of Uşak province.

Uşak, A History

Uşak University is being built from the ground up, literally. The building which houses the foreign language office had no railings on some staircases on Monday, and on Tuesday a man wearing a sleeveless jumpsuit was sawing metal tubes to make the railings with no protective equipment whatsoever, sending sparks flying across the hallway towards unperturbed students and teachers. The chemistry labs have sinks and gas feeds laying on the ground in boxes waiting to be installed. One of the two access roads from Izmir Road to the campus is still gravel, and is almost unnavigable. It's incredible. The guest house, however, where we stayed for the first five nights, is complete, not to mention utterly beautiful inside. My pictures don't do it justice so you'll have to take my word on that.

Campus construction.


Uşak as a town is almost equal parts rubble and new construction (inşaat), with the currently used and maintained buildings of course in the majority. According to our department head, 30 years ago (otuz yıl önce), Uşak was a "village" of about 30,000, but there has been rapid development in the past 20 years. I have no concept of how old the buildings are or what alleyways are interesting. As it is, I can just manage to find my way back to my apartment from the grocery stores on Izmir street and/or "Compulsory Street" (Ismet Pasha Caddesi).

The lands around Uşak, in addition to being home to packs of wild dogs, are dry rolling hills. Today on the bus ride to campus we saw a herd of sheep on the side of one of the hills. It is very scenic (as one of the men who met us on Saturday said, "If you like The Nature, you will like living Uşak"), but I really miss being anchored (pun intended) by some kind of large body of water.