Turkish Delight
Merry Orthodox Christmas! I spent New Year's with my host fam. We had a supra, and after midnight we walked around to all the neighbors to make a few toasts. (In khutsubani this involves much drunken stumbling through the mandarin groves.) They have the tradition in Georgia that the first person who enters your house on New Year's Day will determine the events of the next year, i.e. a good person will bring a good year. Do they have that tradition in other parts of Europe?
I just got back from a short trip through Northeastern Anatolia in Turkey. Traveling outside Georgia is a good way of reminding myself of what corner of the world I live in, exactly. Not that I need to be constantly reminded, but the ability to communicate my basic needs, the network of friends and acquaintances in Georgia, and a familiarity with the random “surprises” I confront everyday, can make life here seem pretty comfortable, mentally if not physically. Not so in Eastern Turkey. A combination of factors, my inability to speak even a single word of Turkish, the occasional military checkpoint where some men with big guns give the perfunctory look through your documents, and the end-of-the-world, frontier quality of some of the towns among them, reminded me that I am not, in fact, at home in this part of the world. And telling folks you’re an American always elicits an interesting response; reactions ranged from the hotel manager who explained to me that Saddam Hussein’s death was very bad, America did it, Bush is crazy, and “All Americans should kill George Bush, or soon you will have many problems in with other countries” to the old Kurdish man who just said “Eh, America, good. English, good. Israel, good. Kurdish, good. Turkish, eeeeh. Iraq, eeeeh. Iran, eeeeh. Terrorist.” In both cases I just raised my hands to make the universal sign of “I didn’t say it.”
We saw the ancient, ruined Armenian capital at Ani and the Ishak Pasha palace in Dogubayazit at the foot of Mt. Ararat. Here are some photos:
John explains to us what we're looking at in Ani
I contemplate the decline and fall of empires
We enter the "forbidden zone" (the ruins are right on the border of Turkey and Armenia; not a friendly border.)
Ruin of Armenian Church
John, Lizzie and me at the Ishak Pasha Palace
Our hotel in Dogubayazit. It was very cold in the room, and there was a mouse. Mt. Ararat is in the background.
Sheepdogs in the snow
Ishak Pasha Palace
I just got back from a short trip through Northeastern Anatolia in Turkey. Traveling outside Georgia is a good way of reminding myself of what corner of the world I live in, exactly. Not that I need to be constantly reminded, but the ability to communicate my basic needs, the network of friends and acquaintances in Georgia, and a familiarity with the random “surprises” I confront everyday, can make life here seem pretty comfortable, mentally if not physically. Not so in Eastern Turkey. A combination of factors, my inability to speak even a single word of Turkish, the occasional military checkpoint where some men with big guns give the perfunctory look through your documents, and the end-of-the-world, frontier quality of some of the towns among them, reminded me that I am not, in fact, at home in this part of the world. And telling folks you’re an American always elicits an interesting response; reactions ranged from the hotel manager who explained to me that Saddam Hussein’s death was very bad, America did it, Bush is crazy, and “All Americans should kill George Bush, or soon you will have many problems in with other countries” to the old Kurdish man who just said “Eh, America, good. English, good. Israel, good. Kurdish, good. Turkish, eeeeh. Iraq, eeeeh. Iran, eeeeh. Terrorist.” In both cases I just raised my hands to make the universal sign of “I didn’t say it.”
We saw the ancient, ruined Armenian capital at Ani and the Ishak Pasha palace in Dogubayazit at the foot of Mt. Ararat. Here are some photos:
John explains to us what we're looking at in Ani
I contemplate the decline and fall of empiresWe enter the "forbidden zone" (the ruins are right on the border of Turkey and Armenia; not a friendly border.)
Ruin of Armenian Church
John, Lizzie and me at the Ishak Pasha Palace
Our hotel in Dogubayazit. It was very cold in the room, and there was a mouse. Mt. Ararat is in the background.
Sheepdogs in the snowIshak Pasha Palace
posted by Paul Stephens at 11:53 AM
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