Ankara

Day 12 July 22, 2001 Erzerum to Ankara

After we booked our bus to Ankara and phoned our friends to let them know when we were coming we resumed our hunt for the citadel. We eventually found it but it was a great disappointment. All that was left of a great military site was a small, empty fort that would have been the centre of a larger fortified area. We did see a couple of other buildings in the Seljuk style (the madrassa and a caravanserai) but after the elegance of Iran they seemed heavy and provincial.

In daylight though the city itself seemed much more liveable. We had lunch at local "point and eat" restaurant then sat under a tree and talked and read for a couple of hours before our bus left. Our eating at Burger King the night before may have reflected how tired we were but today's lunch at a restaurant full of Turks (men) certainly helped us get back into travelling mode. Then it was off for a 14 hour overnight bus ride to Ankara.

Erzerum from the citadel

Day 13 July 23, 2001 Ankara

We arrived in Ankara feeling relatively alive, even though the salad the day before seemed to be causing some of us some trouble. As a result we learned that toilets in service centres cost money (20c) but they were free in gas stations and mosques. The mosques in the towns along the road struck me as strange. After having been in Istanbul they seemed modelled on Agia Sophia which had been converted to a mosque after the fall of Constantinople but had originally been built as an Orthodox church. It is ironic to see mosques all over the country built on the "cross in square" model of an orthodox church, only pointed at Mecca and with a minaret, even as the state still seeks to eradicate relics of the Christian past.

Our friends picked us up and took us home for breakfast. It was good to see people again that we hadn't seen in 20 years.

Day 14 July 24, 2001 Ankara

Today we took our host's advice and visited the museum of Annatolian civilisations. This was well worth the visit. Although it is quite small the exhibition is well laid out and it goes from Neolithic times through to the recent past with only a few "white spaces" where the Christian Greek and Armenian communities in Anatolia should have been. Everybody else is there though including the Hittites, who were once thought to be mythical.

Just up the hill from the museum is the "citadel", an encouragement after Erzerum. The citadel itself (in Europe it would be called the Keep) was closed but it stands in the middle of a little walled town, right in the centre of Ankara, where people still live and work. It is in the process of being "gentrified" and there are some very nice restaurants and some hotels amongst the half timber houses, but the atmosphere is still very authentic and it is hard to believe you are in the middle of a sprawling, modern metropolis.

This evening we were convinced that we shouldn't leave Turkey without seeing Cappadocia so we booked a bus for 9:00 the next morning to go to Nevshehir.

Our pictures from Turkey

Half timbered houses in the old city of Ankara