Day 6:
Time to leave Barhal. Up at 6, breakfast at
Everyone had said that it only took an our to get to Yusufeli—an experience we had not had in coming—and we planned to catch the only direct bus to
As we drove through Barhal, we picked up a number of people, including the three that had caused the 30-45 minute detour around Sarigol 1 the first time! Uh-oh, were we going to have to do that again? Funny how the whole trip turned into a number of big circles.
We were on our way but upon reaching Sarigol 1, surprise surprise, we turned and took the detour into nowhereness. The Rafting Guide was in the van with us, heading to his Lord of the River office in Yusufeli. “This is not our usual road,” he said. Yeah, we know.
The rest of the road was winding and beautiful, though without the rain this time it looked a bit dustier. The driver went fast and there were a few close calls, but we made it to Yusufeli at
“were you here two years ago?”
What’s with it?! That’s two times I’d been “recognized.” I must have a spectacular doppelganger if she’d traveled out there.
On the bus, a scraggly, dreaded, dirty, redheaded hippy boy got on and sat in front of me—alert alert, NOT A TURK. We started on our way towards Artvin, and the boy started to fall asleep. He fell this way and that, creeping out all the people around him. Finally, he woke up. The disgusted faces of the people nearby were hilarious. They seemed to actually fear him.
At Artvin he talked to us briefly—a poor lost Israeli kid, I felt bad for him—then he got off because it seemed there was a break. All of a sudden, though, the bus started moving again!
Umm, what should we do? His sweater was still on the bus, he must have been freaking out as he didn’t know a speck of Turkish!
We started laughing—that laugh you get when you panic, unsure of what to do. Then the bus went up a hill and stopped…at an otogar. Then, it turned around…and we went back! What a relief.
Artvin was a gross place, scarred by recent works on the dam project. The evidence of it continued as we moved through the valley—the water was no longer a clear blue but had taken on a murky brown color.
All of a sudden, the landscape changed and it began to feel like rainforest country again.
All of a sudden
We had arrived...in Hopa. The last town before entering Georgia
We stood up to get off the bus and a woman behind me told me to pull down the back of my shirt—oy vey, were we entering a conservative world? I wasn’t ready.
We stepped outside. GROSS! It was hot and muggy, the humidity was out of control, hitting you like a wet sock. We went to the bathroom where the water was running inessently, then it was back to the bus. Waiting around outside, we looked at the little store nearby where I noticed they sold cay scented kolonya!
Then Hippy Boy came to talk to us:
Him: Where were you?
Us: Barhal
Him: So, you’re not Italian?
Me: No, we’re American
I guess he didn’t ask if we were Italian…haha…oops.
Hippy Boy was going to Pazar and from Pazar to Ayder. He was kind of paranoid about it, but I would be too if I were him. The kid had a strange attitude, though, and we decided that we were glad we didn’t go to Ayder after all—it was a popular place for the trekking tourists and there were probably lots of bizarre people there.
And we went on, very…very…very…slowly. All of a sudden, I realized what those bushes were—they were TEA. DUH?! How’d we miss that?!? After all the CAYKUR factories and the knowledge that we were in tea country, how stupid could we be?!
We stopped at little towns on the way, picking up and dropping off. The road was actually a bit desolate. At Pazar, the driver stopped in the middle of the highway, at a most deserted and random intersection, and told Hippy Boy to get off. Poor kid. He could apparently get a dolmus to Ayder from there. I really felt for the guy, I’d be freaking out.
And then, continuing onwards, we came upon a promenade of, at least, 100 cars honking and waving Ak Parti flags. Goodness! Of course I couldn't get my camera out fast enough.
The trip seemed to take forever. In Rize—cay capital of Turkey-slash-the World—we saw the mother of all Caykur factories. Other than that, it was just views of industry on the left and the wide open
From Rize it was another 1.5 hours to
Arriving in
“I’m going there, I’ll take you.”
Sweet. We hopped back on the bus, but there was so much traffic, so he quickly stuck us on another servis. The guy put our bags in the trunk and we got on while the bus was moving.
Downtown, we saw a lot of commotion. OH NO! Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided to make July 20th his day to campaign in
We got off the bus at the city center but it started leaving with our bags still in the trunk. We rushed to jump back on, the closing door almost crushed
“I forgot about your bags!”
No, really?
We were lost. I asked a woman on the street how to get where we needed to go and she showed us some stairs. We walked down them.
We were lost. We asked a store guard and he said:
“I’m from
And he did. He gave us directions and we followed them…right into the heart of the rally.
We were lost. We went to ask some policemen for help:
“I’m sorry, you can’t enter the rally with your bags.”
(Yeah, we don’t want to!) “Do you know where Hotel Nur is?”
A policeman got up and directed us:
“You walk through there—where that big crowd is—take a left and you’ll see it.”
Great, thanks.
So, we walked towards the big crowd which, of course, was an area cordoned off by police who weren’t going to let us through with our bags. We managed to maneuver around it but couldn’t figure a way to the hotel without going through the crowd. Then we saw a bunch of skeevie men staring at us and, in an effort to get away, spotted another hotel. There was a slim chance the administrators there would help, but I asked them how to get to Nur anyway. Of course, the only option, they said, was to wade through the throngs of people. Dang it!
I wasn’t keen on paying $100 a night at the Otel Sarioglu, whose logo was the same as the Sheraton...but this was no Sheraton. I was stressed out, so we hastily left. Outside, though, the place was still full of people and
So, we did. And yes, they did have a room. And yes, they did have a student price. That was nice enough. It was a place to stay with AC and a hot shower.
We went upstairs. I was pooped. My brain was killing me. After the adrenaline slowed down a bit, I went to take a shower. Two problems occurred:
1. I couldn’t get the water to go from bath to shower
2. There didn’t seem to be any kind of drain
And there we were, in Trabzon, home of the oh-so famous Trabzon Ekmegi [special sourdough bread made, often as gigantic loaves, in Trabzon]
Post-freshening up, we decided to go explore. I needed to use the internet so we went looking for an internet café. Streets were busy and it took us forever to find one. It was in the basement of a building and the room was so hot and humid that neither of us could handle it for long. Additionally, typing with a Turkish keyboard is beyond annoying and my tolerance for such things is always limited.
We decided to find a place for dinner and finally settled on a basic kebap salonu. I had an Adana Kebap, which was tasty as usual, and
Afterwards, we walked around some more. We stopped by an old timey helva place where we got ourselves a delicious Dondurmali Kagit Helvasi [dondoormahleu kyat helvaseu; wafer helva with ice cream]. I was surprised at the quality of the ice cream [being from an ice cream snob filled family, I have high standards which Turkish ice cream rarely meets...it's just a bit too chewy]. It was the perfect treat after a long and trying day.
We walked back to the hotel as we ate dessert and hit the sack at the raucous hour of…
Day 7—
We woke up and had a surprisingly decent breakfast at the hotel—it was the first time I’d had coffee instead of tea since the start of the trip! Afterwards, we packed our bags, dropped them at the lobby and checked out. Then, we got tickets for a
It was a nice morning—not too busy—and we had the streets virtually to ourselves. Passing a bakery, we picked up a Laz Boregi—a regional
There was one shop, though, selling farm supplies. So, I picked up a few sheep bells because Tiffin reminded me how lovely the sound was when the sheep came home in the village. It was a dusty little shop with all sorts of neat things stuffed into every nook and cranny.
Around
The drive to Sumela took ~1 hour and I slept part of the way. Upon arriving we entered a serene forest, not unlike Barhal but with souvenir shops, restaurants, and humidity.
We started the walk up, the walk that constitutes the the hardest hike I’ve taken in ages. It was long and had a seemingly near vertical incline to it—according to the sign, it's a dangerous route! I don’t think I’ve sweated so much since springtime soccer games. It was out of control. It wasn't until much later that we discovered that that route was the "shortcut"...not that anyone could legitimately call that a shortcut!
We somehow managed to make it to the top and with some strange luck I finagled us a student admission price. The Sumela Monestary is quite old, built originally in 395 AD, and has been protected/attacked/destroyed by a number of groups until 1923 when Ataturk declared it a protected site.
Inside was pretty but not particularly interesting at first glance. There were no signs indicating what the different rooms were. There were some interesting features, however:
Ceilings made of stones sticking straight up and down.
Some seriously short doors.
And other doors floating in mid-air.
What this all adds up to: these people must have been pretty magical-slash-short!
And then…we arrived...
at the most epic and remarkable part of the monastery...
the frescoed Church of the Virgin Mary.
The entire church, every inch of every wall, was plastered with paint.
Many of the frescoes had been destroyed over the centuries by cultural or religious groups who disagreed with the Christian theology. Little holes riddled the walls, inside and out.
Other figures of people had the faces completely dug out. Tiffin said they did that because it was easier to get rid of the face than getting rid of everything; since the frescoes were so prolific, the work would have gone faster this way.
But, despite all the battles people of disagreeing ideologies waged on the place, the frescoes remain remarkable.
On the way back down, we stopped and had our lunch of laz boregi, dried mulberries, and mixed nuts. Hit all the food groups, right? Yeah, we were eatin' healthy.
The laz boregi was sweeter than we expected, filled with a delicious custard. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really what I was looking for at the time. It was, however, undeniably delicious and I will go great distances to eat one again before I leave Turkey. Luckily, I discovered today that the pastry shop down the street sells them during Ramazan. Huzzah!
We thought the walk down would be better after a rest, but it wasn’t. It was steep and my knees were really ready to give out. But, we made it to the bottom and refreshed ourselves with some tea, killing time until
The ride back was interesting because we went through a long dark tunnel that neither Tiffin nor I remembered going through on the ride in. Befuddled, we were.
Back in
He gave us the address of the ticket vendor down the street and we went. We decided to take the night bus as it would get us to Sinop early and we could avoid paying for another hotel that night. A good plan…?
At that point it was about
As we reached the port we noticed a boat with lots of passengers and music luring us in.
We got on and sat down. In front of us was a young posh couple—a man wearing a bright turquoise shirt and a headscarved woman with high-heeled open-toed sandals—and a family consisting of two young kids and two women, one scarved, one uncovered.
The trip was an hour cruise down the
It was relaxing, save for all the stares we got. The posh headscarved woman kept turning around to look at us in a not-so-sly manner. So did the uncovered woman in the family group. The other headscarved woman, at some point, just blatantly turned around and stared at us. We weren’t talking particularly loudly, but I guess they heard English and were intrigued. Plus, Turks have no qualms about staring, so it doesn’t come as a surprise when you catch someone in action.
The two groups of people actually served to be quite good for people watching and inspired some interesting discussion concerning the subject of headscarf culture in
The first time I came to
Now, here’s [some of] the deal with headscarves in
1. It is illegal to wear them in public governmental and educational institutions. Consequently, you can not wear them in the Presidential Mansion or on any university campus.
To get around this, women will wear wigs and hats.
2. All levels of dress code are followed amongst covered women: headscarf with jeans and long-sleeved shirt; headscarf a long-sleeved shirt, and a long jacket covering pants/a skirt; headscarf with half- or full-length skirts; a full black burqa covering all but face, nose and eyes, or eyes; high heels, open-toed shoes, stockings, socks, flip-flops...
3. Some women seem to care about the fashion—matching styles and patterns of scarf and dress—but many ignore it.
4. Out East and in small villages, some girls start wearing headscarves at an incredibly young age, i.e. <10>
5. There are religious wearers and there are those who just wear a scarf on their heads—the latter tend to be older women, like my aunt Nebahat, or village women working in the fields. Sometimes there is religious reason behind this, sometimes it’s habit.
6. Many covered women in big cities like
7. It is acceptable for a covered woman to smoke. I've seen many serious chain smokers.
I find it fascinating to watch covered women, to see what they do and what they don't do. To me it seems there is no consistent way in which people observe, which means I'm always seeing something different or unexpected.
In the rural regions, it’s not surprising in any way to see women wearing headscarves. I’m not sure how much of it is an actual reflection of religious conservativism and how much is just traditional. In Barhal and Sahmuratli, I never felt like I was stared at for not wearing one, but then again both places were used to having uncovered women around.
The women on this boat in
About the Posh Woman [and other stuff]
She was kind of obnoxious, very snobby, and smoked like a chimney.
She was wearing a nice patterned headscarf and tight clothes with open-toed high-heeled sandals and no stockings. How does that work? Isn’t the point of wearing a headscarf to detract from leering eyes?
She was in public with a man who, while he might be incredibly pious, seemed quite the opposite. But, I admit, that is an unfair assumption. I've never gained a real grasp on religiosity in this country.
I guess my main question is: how religious are these women? What is their motivation for wearing the headscarf? Why would a woman make herself suffer to the nth degree in the sun-heat-humidity if she isn’t a particularly religious person. I am all for freedom, that’s not my problem. I’m not offended by headscarves or those who choose to wear them. I’m just curious because I really don’t understand and I really don’t know. It’s an especially big question for me in
I also don’t know how they handle it in the summer! Turks love polyester and denim. Covering yourself in head-to-toe polyester or long denim coats and skirts, never ever rolling up your sleeves…How?! Why?! I could never do it.
The question of the heascarf was a key part of the drama over the recent presidential election here. Abudullah Gul is married to a woman who wears a headscarf. As a result, to become the president and move into the presidential mansion would be entirely unacceptable. While the President in
Conversing about these issues consumed most of our trip, though photo phones also had their place. In
The kids and women in front of us were involved much of the trip in taking photos. The uncovered woman refused to smile but later we discovered why—she had quite a bad rack of teeth. Nonetheless, it seemed her intention was to look entirely nonplussed and too-cool-for-school. Why am I mentioning this? Merely because we spent a lot of time watching these people because they were hilarious.
After the boat ride we walked around the park a bit but we were so tired that it was hard to move. We stopped and watched some break-dance practice before deciding to hunt for presents in the bazaar.
We trekked back up the hill, a difficult task after the morning hike, and stopped by the hotel to pick up our bags. It was nice and air-conditioned in the lobby, so I didn’t’ mind it much when the deskman invited us to sit and talk a few minutes. Eventually, we left, dropped our bags at the bus stop, and headed back to the bazaar.
As we were lazily walking down the streets, a guy started following us quite closely. WE dodged and weaved, but he was hard to lose. Eventually, we did, but it was kinda creepy.
The weather was nasty—not sunny, but incredibly humid. Crowds swarmed the market and we walked in circles, not finding much except a store with nifty copper pots hanging outside. Eventually,
Suddenly, I needed water. I was feeling frighteningly dizzy, so we left the bazaar and got some. We people watched for awhile, still unable to understand how in the world Turkish people never seemed to look sweaty and how the covered women managed not to faint.
At that point, we still had a long time before our bus. Planning to have our dinner late, we tried to waste time by walking around even more. We thought about visiting the Aya Sofya Cami but by the time we thought about it it was too late. Shucks.
The election was the next day and we weren’t sure if grocery stores would be open, so when we came upon a produce pazar we strolled through thinking we might get some emergency tomatoes and cucumbers. We didn’t get anything, but it’s always fun to walk the pazars. I’m not sure if this was a daily or weekly one, but it was pretty extensive, with cheese, meat, and chicken shops in addition to produce.
Upon reaching the end of the produce pazar, we turned right and eventually found ourselves wrestling through the regular bazaar again. Ugh. We had walked the same three streets 15 times by that point. So, we passed quickly through and headed to the big plaza in the middle of Ataturk Alani [basically, the center of social
LP doesn’t do justice to the food choices in
Now, we were nervous and so we headed straight to the upper room. What we didn’t realize was that we were supposed choose our food first, from the dishes downstairs, and then go sit down—they would bring it too you. So, the waiter came up looking a tad confused and asked us what we wanted. I ordered ezogelin soup and taze fasulye [Ezo the Bride’s soup and fresh green bean dish],
It was so so good, especially compared with Turkish fast food—kebap, pide, and the like. We had time, so we savored our food, coming out quite satisfied. There was also a good window to people watch from and after a long day of trolling around, it was nice to just sit down, have a glass of tea, and watch people.
We finished dinner but still had time to waste, so we decided to go somewhere else for dessert. Earlier, I’d seen a pastahane selling cold chocolate pudding, which I had been craing, so we tried going there.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t find it and all the shops were closing. It was odd,
The sutlac was good and it hit the spot, though I’m not sure why it’s famous because it didn’t seem particularly different from any other sutlac I’d had. The restaurant, though, was a bit strange. At one point, I asked if there was a bathroom:
Me: “Excuse me, is there a bathroom here?”
Waiter: “No, I’m sorry, we don’t have any chocolate desserts.”
Me: “No, no, is there a toilet?”
This went on for a few more minutes before he understood. I had to say it so loudly that everyone around stopped what they were doing and looked at me funny.
Luckily, though, they had one and the guy escorted me to it…all the way down to the basement, past the kitchens. My presence startled the people working in the kitchen and the bathroom left much to be desired. The guy had to turn on some loud machine before I went in and it was anything but clean. Ah, bathroom adventures.
After the sutlac, we couldn’t think of anywhere to go, so we went back to the ticket office and checked the LP for accommodation suggestion in Sinop. We called and made a reservation at one, which brought us to a 45-minute countdown before our service bus to the otogar would leave. Trying to whittle away the time, I talked to the guy at the ticket desk.
At the otogar, we had a little more time to wait. Another woman traveling alone called me over to talk to her for awhile. She was from
Our bus came, I said goodbye to the woman, and we went to board. I asked if it went to Sinop, to make sure it was ours, and the young attendant had such an attitude:
“This goes to
That’s it, that’s all I got. I was confused as all hell—I knew we weren’t taking a direct bus, but I thought it only stopped in
Eventually, though, we were assured that it was our bus, so we settled in for what would become a most awful night ride.
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