Yesterday is a story in itself, which is why I wasn't able to finish my update, but I'll get to that.
As I said, Amasra was absolutely incredible. I guess I've been in the city for too long, but this was a much-needed vacation to the country. The Black Sea region is famous in Turkey for good fish, nice, country folk, and beautiful, untouched-by-tourists villages and beaches. That's pretty much what we found. There were tourists, but they were all domestic, and many of them there for the same reason as us: just a free weekend and a relatively short bus trip. Most of the weekend, wait, the WHOLE weekend we just wandered around the town, usually followed by a stray dog or two, looking for views, sometimes stopping for a few minutes or hours to take in the sights by sitting, reading, drinking çay (chai), playing backgammon, talking, or any combination of those. Though there were a couple other girls from the program who came on the trip, my main company consisted of Katie from Montana who goes to school in Wisconsin and is studing geography and I can imagine has been missing the country/open space quite a lot since arriving in Turkey, Yochai, an incredibly enthusiastic and interesting Israeli who is probably the most well-traveled person I've ever met in my life and who also speaks six languages nearly fluently, and James, a San Diego native who hasn't lived in the States since he graduated undergrad 4 years ago. Also incredibly well traveled, multi-tounged and totally chill. Yochai and James are probably two of the most interesting people I've ever met. So you can imagine how much fun it was just to sit by the water and listen to Yochai regaling us with stories of "that time when I was in Kazakstan" or how he got out of Israeli military service. Etc. We also ate some pretty amazing and fresh fish in Amasra, as you may have seen (or should check out) in my pictures. Also, the produce up there was just insane. I've never had fruit that tasted CANDIED. And to think that only years ago the only fruits I would go near were apples, bananas, and grapes. We reluctantly got on our bus to go back to Istanbul, calculating in our heads the career path to take that would allow us to spend much longer amounts of time in Amasra.
Last week wasn't anything extremely special (besides the norm of waking up every morning and seeing the Bosphorus), but Wednesday my roommate Sarah and I took a trip that was partially planned by the university to Kanlica (Kahn-lih-jah), a city a little north of us and on the Asian side of the Bosphorus that is famous for its yogurt. Seriously. Really the best part of the trip was taking the ferry ride from Bebek (the town below - not south of but BELOW - Bogazici University that is right on the water) across the water. Even on the hottest days this ride is fabulous, breezy, and just exploding with view after view of the water, the coasts, and the beautiful Ottoman masions built right along the Bosphorus. The yogurt was good but honestly nothing special compared to Turkish yogurt in general which is fattier, thicker, and a little more sour than yogurt in the States. Sarah and I walked along the coast from the port at Kanlica to a little cafe overlooking the water with a view of half a dozen fishermen out to catch those oh-so-clean fish that come out of the Bosphorus. I took a few dozen pictures. Sometime soon (or maybe at the end of the trip) I'll compile an album of the different faces of the Bosphorus, because it never fails to impress. Most people I know voice the same feeling I have - I will never take advantage of having this view so often. It's always changing, always interesting, always filled with action of small ferries, huge tankers, rowboats, swimmers, sailboats, you name it. Jellyfish! Waste. Everything.
I should probably get to Cappadocia before I leave for Araf, the gypsy bar. When we got back from Kanlica we found out that after 60 days of attempting negotiations with Hava Is, the workers union for Turkish Airlines (Turk Hava Yollari), the union declared that it would go on strike. That was last week. And still no strike. Nonetheless, we had no knowledge of the future and of course freaked out and went to the THY offices the next day, thought up alternate plans, how to get our money back, etc, and after two days of worrying, the nine of us (yes, nine!) got on our plane and departed for the smack-dab middle of Anatolia. We staying in a hostel in Göreme, which is in the Nevsehir region of Anatolia - I came to find that Cappadocia is merely an unofficial area in this region famous for its rock formations and churches carved out of solid rock from the 6th and 7th centuries. Again, if you haven't seen my pictures, I encourage you to see my last post for the link. My stories and descriptions are maybe 2-3% of the attraction of the region. Saturday we hiked around our hostel which was in walking distance of the Göreme Open-Air Musuem, the main tourist site around. The hike over was our first look at the mushroomed rock formations and so-called "fairy chimneys" for something having to do with Paul from the New Testament. From what I understand, these formations are a result of volcanic erruptions, so the rock itself if quite soft and therefore easy to hollow out, and voilá, we have the caves and churches that I have pictures of. So the Open-Air Museum was quality, with almost a dozen churches right next to each other, not just carved out of solid rock 1500 years ago, but with their frescos still intact! Or at least in tact enough for them to be restored in the past 30 years to look how they look now. Later in afternoon we hiked to Rose Valley for the sunset (which, as you can see, was almost to the Amasra caliber). Sunday we took a guided tour with our own minibus (dolmus) around to sites out of walking distance. A few incredible highlights: Derinkuyu, an underground city for early Christians escaping the raids on their above-ground villages by the prejudiced Romans; Ilhara Valley, an incredible gorged valley with trails and a stream and again, views up the wazoo; and Selimle Monastery, which is carved into (out of) the side of a huge rock formation and is climbable and accessible to tourists everywhere. Which there were. Tourists EVERYWHERE. The city of Göreme, I'm convinced, is made of almost entirely of tourists and Turks who own stores and work in hostels and restaurants that cater to tourists. Speaking of hostels, the one we stayed in was adorable, pretty nice, and extremely cheap - 10 turkish lira (which is like 7.50 USD). So if you're going to Cappadocia sometime soon...
Wow, it took me much longer than I thought to write this post.
And there's always more to say. I hope tomorrow I'll be able to write some more about how Turkish is going and general observations of the culture. You know, idiosyncracies of Turks.
Oh, and the election. Can't forget about that. Now off to Araf! Goodnight!
Insallah, iyi aksamlar, adios!
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