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| August 1 - September 1 2009 |
"Nick, could I see you in my office please,"
my boss Dierdre said, as I walked back through the door of my office, even
before I got a chance to put down my bag.
“Nice to see you too,” I thought.
"Yes, Dierdre?" I asked, poking my
head into her office, not fully committing myself to crossing the threshold her
threshold, hoping for a short and sweet encounter. I was expecting her to hand
me my schedule, tell me what classes I would be covering for, and what course
material I would need to use.
"Please, close the door and have a
seat." Hmmm. This didn't sound overly fantastic.
"Is there a problem?" I asked,
already running over my CV in my head, expecting to have to send it out after I
get let go moments from now.
"Well, yes and no," she said, in
her most conciliatory voice. She sat in the classic “boss about to give bad
news” position: back upright and hands folded resting on her desk in front of
her.
"I'm afraid our numbers are quite low
this summer; we can't afford to hire you back until the end of August at which
point we will resign your contr-."
I can only assume she was going to say resign my contract because before she
was able to finish I was up, out of her office, running home in the blistering
humidity to pack a bag before she had a chance to change her mind. My month in
the mountains and the bus ride from Bursa to Istanbul had left me itching to
explore this beautiful country. I had a tiny taste for it and now I wanted
more. I grabbed some clothes, a sun hat, a few books and I was off to the bus
station. I threw a bunch of money at Van to cover my rent for the time I would
be away and I was gone - headed to the nearest bus station to consult a map,
and then make a purchase.
I stood at the bus station, looking at a map
of this enormous country, internally planning out a 5 week trip. I was setting
mental pins down on this map, marking what I needed to see, where I needed to
go, and what I would be stupid to miss. It looked something like this:
It would have to be clockwise, I thought. In
my excitement, I had texted my friend Lisya on the way from work to tell her
about this. She told me that she was
going to be on the Mediterranean coast in 5 weeks and I should meet her and her
friends there. Ok, end in Çesme. Great. That means I would start on the Black
Sea coast. Perfect. I approached the desk and booked a ticket to Samsun with a
connection to Ordu. My grand Turkey loop was commencing.
Cash flow wasn't an overt concern, but I
definitely didn't have the funds to not worry about my budget. I would need to
seek out budget accommodations everywhere I went, cheap street food to eat, and
at every possible opportunity, try to hitch-hike. I had become quite involved
in the Couch Surfing community in Istanbul so I knew that when possible, I
could crash with a fellow couch surfer. I sat on a bench in a park of Ordu,
reading a book and people watching. It had already become apparent that life
was different out on the Black Sea coast. People's accents were noticeably
different, people's physical appearances were distinct, but one thing that was
no different from my experience in Istanbul was the idea of hospitality.
As I sat on a bench in the center of a town
reading my book, I was approached by a guy about my age. He said something to
me in Turkish,to which I tried my best to respond to, but despite my attempts
at discourse, he knew then I was not Turkish. We talked for a few minutes
before he offered me a ride to the top of the mountain that overlooked the sea.
The view was beautiful from the top and I was thankful that I didn't have to
walk up the massive hill.
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| Atop Böztepe overlooking Ordu |
I got back in the car, thinking he was going
to take me back down to the city center but instead, he asked me if I was
hungry. In fact, I was. He drove me in the opposite direction of the city
center. We left the main road, and turned onto a small service road. At one
point, he had to get out of the car to open the shoddy barbed-wire fence for
us, get back in the car, drive through, then get out to put the fence back in
its position. The countryside we were driving through was gorgeous colors of
rolling green hills speckled with blossomed flowers in the peak of their
season. Although he could speak no English, and me just minimal Turkish, we got
along just fine and nowhere ever in the exchange did I ever think that what I
was doing was putting me in any sort of danger. Everything felt exactly as it
should have, sincere.
Apparently, the guy's family owned a
hazelnut plantation in the hills outside of Ordu and tonight was one of the
major harvesting days. Dozens of Georgian field workers were there, having
spent a tiring day in the fields, hauling in nuts that were now set out on
the ground, roasting in the sun. A massive table was set outside the house
where bread, spreads and plates were being laid down. My host introduced me to
his family who greeted me warmly and expressed where at the table I could sit.
I could not believe the friendly, hospitable environment I had just walked
into.
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| At dinner at the hazelnut plantation |
Dinner was fantastic and a few of the
Georgian workers spoke some English which made things easier. The hospitality
was almost as mind blowing as the Turkish-Georgian fusion that was being served
for dinner followed by lots and lots of glasses of Turkish Raki and Georgian
Cha Cha.
I got in touch with a couch surfer in
Giresun which was just down the road from Ordu but still on the coast. I jumped
on a shuttle bus and headed further down the coast. I met my host, Çağlar, who
was an English teacher at a local university. We swam in the Black Sea and
spent the next couple of days hiking around the yaylalar (plateaus) of the
area. As soon as the Black Sea coast ends, it seems to quickly jut into the
air, forming these gorgeous, jagged cliffs and mountains glazed with mist and
clouds. The hospitality was in no short supply. We went out for dinner, beers, and
he introduced me to his friends he lived with. Their English was fantastic and
we went out for the night. They acted as if I had grown up with them all their
lives. A very pleasant experience.
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| Hiking with my host Çağlar in the plateaus |
I had one more stop along the Black Sea
before I went inland, and that was in Trabzon. One of the things to see on the
Black Sea is the beautiful Sumeli Monastery, an old Greek Orthodox monastery
dating back to 380 AD which is settled on a ledge of a cliff that is nearly
4,000 feet up in the mountains. After a forty minute slog up the mountain, the
view from the top was incredible. Perched on the edge of the cliff, the
monastery has been protected by the mountain and elements, but unfortunately,
not from the people of Turkey. A lot of the ornate and delicate frescoes had
been vandalized by people throughout the years, leaving most of them
unrecognizable and in dire need of restoration. It was a sad thing to witness
actually.
In Giresun, I mentioned that I wanted to do
some hiking so Çağlar told me about the Kaçkar Mountains. I decided to take a
detour to Aydın, a village in the mountains more populated with hiking trails
and picturesque views. There were a few villages up in the mountains of the
Kaçkar that were predominantly populated with Laz people who are a small ethnic
minority of people that are speckled throughout the Black Sea of Turkey and the
Caucus mountains of Georgia.
As I made my way into the mountains,
everything seemed and felt different:
the clothing that was worn, the dialect of Turkish that was spoken, the
way headscarves were donned and the greetings that were given. This was
obviously a special and separate enclave of the country, tucked away in a
gorgeously secluded valley of a massive mountain range. I found a place to stay
for the night, got some street food for dinner, and consulted a map at the
center of town to see where I could go the next morning. It had been raining
heavily so I would have to walk the few kilometers up the service road instead
of hitching a ride. No problem, I thought. The trails will be less crowded with
people.
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| Last stop before the trail in the Kaçkar mountains |
I spent the next day all by myself, hiking
through the gorgeous mountains of the Kaçkar above Aydın. I saw next to no one
the whole day and I was in awe of the stillness that was on offer from this
place. I visited lakes, rivers, and waterfalls, and walked on ambiguously
marked trails that sometimes lead to nowhere. In the early afternoon, I fell
asleep on the grass to be woken up hours later by the sound of Laz sheep
hearders playing instruments with each other. I peeked over the rocks I was
sleeping under, sheltering myself from the wind to see a group of men singing,
drinking tea, and eating bread.
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| Hiking the Kaçkar |
They didn't know I was there, perched just
on the other side of the rock
outcropping, so I just sat and listened to their eloquently simple music and
watched as they laughed and (I assume) joked with one another. This was a side
of Turkey that I hadn't even known about, let alone experienced before and I
felt honored and special to be a part of it. I could not understand a word of
what they said but I could tell that they were happy. They were simple people,
tasked with simple jobs and at the moment that was being put on hold to enjoy
the simple ambiance of the mountains, the whistling wind, and the company they
kept. And there I sat, listening to their shared joviality and song, taking a
break from their job for a few moments to create music for no one else to
hear but us, because as soon as
the music was played, sent out into the world as sound, the wind would pick
it up, hurl it through the valley and cause its dissipation. Never to be
replicated or heard by anyone else again. Its uniqueness would only be shared
by us for the rest of our lives.
Getting down and around the Kaçkar proved to
be more of a laborious and arduous journey than I had thought. I had asked how
long it would take and was told that it would only be a few hours trip to my
destination of Yusefeli but 8 hours in, I gave up on any notion that we had to
be almost there. The horrible journey took us around and down the backside of
the Kaçkar, making it impossible to read on the horrendously slow and turn-y
bus ride. With nothing to look at besides the side of the mountain the road was
cut into, hours passed without any recollection of how they were spent until
the bus attendant was standing in front of me, conveying that it was now time
for me to get off. I had arrived at Yusefeli. Fantastic.
The day had turned into night as I stepped
off the bus with my bag. I was anxious to see why Yusefeli had been so highly
recommended to me from everyone I met when I realized that instead of a
beautiful town butted up against tall mountains and a river, I was in a dirt
parking lot with one street lamp, weakly flickering, but still providing enough
light to attract the bugs and moths to its light. I turned around to ask the
bus driver but in classic movie scene fashion, the bus drove away and I was
left coughing on the dust it had kicked up. Not fantastic.
It was 11pm and I was on the side of a
deserted highway with absolutely no idea where I was, where I needed to go, or
how I was going to get there. I could, however, ascertain that the reason my
back hurt so much could probably be attributed to the bus ride. So not all was
unknown I suppose.
The dust settled and when my eyes adjusted I
could make out that I was at a junction in the road and that there was a
building on the other side of the street with a group of men, sitting down,
bent over canes and playing backgammon. I approached the elderly gentlemen with
a big smile and a warm greeting which was returned with confusion and guarded
wariness. By this point, I had become well versed in conversing with people on
seldom-used communicative platforms where hand signals, broken Turkish, and the
occasional guttural noise were used to show my interest in doing something,
purchasing items, or in this case, finding out where the hell I was and how the
hell I could get to Yusefeli. When all was said and done I was able to deduce
that I was about 40kms west of the village and that no buses would be
continuing on in the direction I needed until tomorrow. My query regarding my
predicament to the older gentlemen was met with shrugs, talk amongst
themselves, and then finally a few of them waved their thumbs at me and said,
"Oto stop."
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| Yüsefeli |
Now, I wasn't totally opposed to
hitchhiking, but my ideal setting for my inaugural hitchhiking attempt was not
the scenario that was manifesting before me. I left the men and walked in the
direction of where they said Yusefeli was. More of this junction was now
becoming visible. Not only did it consist of a dirt parking lot with a
flickering lamp, old men hunched over a backgammon board and flipping prayer
beads, there was also some sort of gas
station-garbage heap joint venture, stray dogs gnawing on indiscernible bones,
and an old burnt-out car on blocks. It bore a striking resemblance to several
opening scenes of Stephen King novels I had read over the years.
Well, given my desire to be anywhere else
besides where I was at the time, I decided to start walking down the road
instead of waiting in front of the gas station for cars to drive by.
Surprisingly enough, only about 15 minutes had passed before I was picked up in
the windy canyon I was walking in. I was picked up by 2 younger guys who were
obviously very excited at the novelty of picking up a foreign traveler who
could put a couple of words of Turkish together to talk about Turkish cuisine,
pop stars, and living in Istanbul.
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| My hitching post in the daylight |
Yusefeli was a very quaint town, jutted up
against the steep sides of the Kaçkar mountains and split in 2 by a fast
rushing river running through the town. The town was beautiful and everything
about it and its inhabitants had a relaxed vibe to it: friendly, hospitable,
and scenic. I wish I could have stayed longer. But since the hitch-hiking was
easy enough, I was off the same way I got there. I hitch-hiked back to the
junction and then proceeded to wait there for 6 hours for the only bus of the
day to drive by on its way to the eastern border town of Kars. I bided my time
exchanging words and tea with a structural engineer who was in the area to help
with a construction of a dam and a bunch of kids who were playing soccer in the
parking lot. My bus came and I was off to Kars and the ancient city of Ani.
I got in touch with a Turkish ornithologist
who took in couch surfers in the summer months because his staff were all out
of town. I walked around a sleepy Kars, posted up in the park to read my book,
and found the bus station that would take me out to Ani the next morning. Ani
had been one of my mentally dropped pins on the map in the Istanbul bus
station. I had long heard about its eerie mystic and picturesque backdrop. It
literally lay on the other end of the country from Istanbul. I could not go any
further east and not cross into Armenia.
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| Ruined church in Ani |
Ani was once the capital of the medieval
Armenia kingdom that dated back to as early as 960 AD. The city was located in
a strategically defensive valley right at the present day border between the
two countries. It straddled a strong running river and various important trade
routes through the region. At the height of the city, the population was said
to be as high as 200,000 people.
I arrived with a couple other tourists early
in the morning to find the site absolutely deserted. We had the entire expanse
all to ourselves, to wander where we would with no one around. Ani had been
described to me as an "eerie" and "unsettling" place before and it wasn't until I was there that I
truly understood what they were talking about. The massive city was left in
complete disrepair with just a few crumbling monuments left standing to tell
the city's story. Palace walls crumbled into the river, half of the church was
completely missing, and stones were left overturned on the ground, amassing
grass and dirt all around them. A few squared off areas of foundation were
visible, denoting where luxuriously grand buildings had once stood but they
required large stretches of the imagination to envision the true grandeur that
the city had once retained. Ani had been a desolate ghost town for 3 centuries
and what few artifacts were left spoke of the poor state and high tensions of
Turkish and Armenian relations. The feeble few upright buildings and monuments
left attested to this sad and eerie truth.
To Be Continued...
To Be Continued...
