Strays

When I was sitting on campus earlier today, watching the stray cats and dogs milling around in their incessant search for food and attention, it occurred to me how normal the sight of stray animals has become. When I first arrived, I couldn’t get over the novelty of having homeless animals perched on every stoop and street corner.

At first we were worried about petting the strays, but one of the college officials assured us that all the dogs and cats have been given their shots. He pointed out that the dogs all have tags on their ears, signifying that they are disease-free.

After living here for a few weeks, my friends and I began to recognize all the local animals since they tend to reside in the same 3-block area—we even named some of the dogs. Brendon (who we recently found out is a girl) lives right near our dorm and since she doesn’t have much of a tail, she wags her whole latter half when she sees us. We also decided that she is married to the dog owned by our dorm’s gatekeeper since the two dogs sleep next to each other, eat meals together, and regularly bicker. Justin is the dog who you can always count on to bark at the passing cars. And David loves escorting us to and from class.

One of my friends is really good at whistling, so occasionally when we go out at night he will let off one of his whistles and all the neighborhood dogs will come running, excited to act as our entourage for the evening.

There are so many friendly cats on our campus that they have become part of the community. People leave food out for them, some professors take in the mothers and their kittens in the spring, and the cats even wander in and out of class. One cat that frequented my sociology course insisted on sitting on someone’s lap every class.

If you look closely, you can see at least 4 cats in this tree

A cat sitting on my lap during class

I love animals and I miss my pets, so it’s comforting to have so many strays wandering around, looking for some human affection.

This guy clearly isn't a stray, but I
thought his outfit merited a picture

Excursion Day 7 (Final Day)

Breakfast by Lake Van

The Lake Van region is known for its breakfast spreads of ripe vegetables, aged cheeses, fresh breads, and sweet honeys and jams. The hotel we stayed at the evening before was right on the water, so we spent the morning of the seventh day sitting under the sun by Lake Van, sampling the various breakfast options. The highlight of the breakfast, in my opinion, was a honey, kaymak (similar to clotted cream, but better), and walnut spread that I plastered onto every piece of bread I could lay my hands on.

After breakfast, we made our way to a set of Urartian ruins. Urartu was an Armenian kingdom that lasted from 890 B.C. to 560 B.C. in the eastern Anatolian region of present-day Turkey. The Urartians had a written language that only a handful of people know. We were lucky enough to be led around the ruins by one of those select few people. The ruins themselves were not spectacular compared to many of the other things we had seen, but the history of the Kingdom was quite interesting. If you're interested, I would check out the Wikipedia page about Urartu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urartu

Urartian ruins

We then drove along the shore of Lake Van to a restaurant on the water that served some excellent lamb chops. From the restaurant, we took a boat to one of the Lake’s islands to see yet another old Georgian church. The church was similar to the others we had seen: beautiful on the outside, and somewhat drab and bleak on the inside.

After touring the church, our guide allowed us some time to wander around the island on our own. A friend and I stumbled upon a few turtles, which we tried to play with for a little while (they weren’t having it; they insisted on holing up inside their shells). The weather that afternoon was splendid: we were graced with a hot, sunny day—something quite refreshing after almost freezing to death a couple days before. The bushes on the island were flowering and the first leaves were opening up, which added to the beauty of the surrounding lake and distant mountains. There was nothing else I would have rather done than sit in the sun and stare at the view—which is precisely what I did, until I belatedly realized that I was developing quite a sunburn.

 

Mr. Turtle sporting some sunglasses

View of the island from our boat

On the way back to our hotel, some of us stopped off in town to grab some supplies to write a thank you card to our guide. Alican (the program assistant I keep referring to) went with us and when we passed a business offering rides on various motorized vehicles, he convinced us to each ride around on a four-wheeler. It was great fun, and a wonderful end to a wonderful week.

 

Sorry for the blurry picture--turns out it's pretty
hard to use a camera while driving a four-wheeler

The following morning, we woke up early to catch our flight back to Istanbul. The week greatly exceeded my expectations, and I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to see Eastern Turkey.

Excursion Day 6

When I woke up, I parted the curtains in my hotel room to let in some light. I was greeted by this beautiful view of Mount Ararat:

After breakfast, we took a short bus ride up a steep mountain to visit Ishak Pasha Sarayı, an Ottoman Palace named after Ishak Pasha. ‘Pasha’ was an Ottoman title of nobility, so Ishak Pasha translates to English as Lord Isaac. Who knew I had a whole palace named after me? We hiked up a nearby hill for a magnificent view of the palace set against the city of Doğubeyazıt extending across the lowlands with white mountain peaks stretching to the sky on the other side of the valley.

The palace had a certain simplistic beauty to it; the walls were constructed of sandstone blocks and the only decorative features were modest Ottoman designs carved into the arches above the doorways. Many of the other sites we visited had paintings lining the interior and gilded ornaments dotting the walls and ceilings, so I found Ishak Pasha refreshingly sparse.

After touring Ishak Pasha, we regrouped and headed to Lake Van, Turkey’s largest lake. I had a tasty lamb kebab for lunch and then we drove to Van Castle. The castle is built on a rocky outcrop overlooking the lake. We climbed up to the castle around 6pm and hung around for the sunset. Alican, one of our program assistants, had carted a few bottles of wine and some cheese up to the castle, so we sat sipping wine and nibbling cheese as the sun descended over Lake Van. It was a clear evening, affording us a perfectly unobstructed sunset.

Van Castle

A few other pictures from the day:

Excursion Day 5

On the fifth day, our first stop was Ani, the capital of the old Armenian kingdom, situated right on the present-day border between Turkey and Armenia. There isn’t much left of the old city besides some crumbling castle walls and a few churches. The only problem with ancient ruins is you get exactly what you paid for: ruins. However, I think it’s a real testament to the architects that these structures are still beautiful a thousand years later when they’re lying crippled and broken.

I would have been a little more psyched about touring the area had the weather not decided to take a page out of Siberia’s book. Sure, it looks all sunny and nice in the pictures, but the truth is I felt like I was stranded in a desert of snow and ice—except there wasn’t any snow… or ice. But trust me, it was damn cold. Perhaps this picture will better convey my feelings about the temperature:

The Turkish-Armenian border is divided by a river that cuts a narrow, yet deep, valley through the surrounding flatlands. It was cool to stand on the absolute northeastern edge of Turkey and look out at the watchtowers guarding the border across the river.

After being thoroughly chilled to the bone and getting a white spot on my hand that I was convinced was frostbite (turns out it was dust from one of the castle walls), I happily jumped back on the bus. The next scheduled event was a quick stop at a bird sanctuary near the city of Kars.

Before we got to the sanctuary, we passed through some impressive landscapes. One mountain in the distance had a giant cloud situated on top of it. As we drove by, I noticed that the top of the cloud was especially pointy, almost as if it wasn’t part of the cloud at all, but rather the mountain’s peak. I dismissed the idea immediately, seeing as it would mean the mountain was two or three times larger than all the other gigantic mountains surrounding us. I pointed it out to our guide, thinking it was cool to imagine a mountain being that large; she promptly informed me that that was in fact the peak and that I was looking at Mount Ararat. Mount Ararat is said to be the where Noah’s Ark landed, as it is the highest peak in the surrounding region. In fact, not only is it the highest peak in Turkey, it is taller than any mountain in Europe. Its size was truly stunning.

Mount Ararat (Picture taken later that evening)

I didn't take this picture (I found it on google) but I think
it's a better representation of Mount Ararat's size.

The bird sanctuary was in a wetlands area, and to reach it we had to cross a small stream by jumping from rock to rock. The researchers stationed at the sanctuary showed us how ornithologists trap, measure, tag, and subsequently release birds; we even got to watch a live demonstration.

Since we were essentially in a swamp, there were some mosquitoes flying about. A friend and I made the most of this fact, and used a blade of grass to tickle our other friend’s ear periodically during the demonstration. He thought it was a mosquito the whole time and almost went insane trying to sprint away from ‘all the bugs.’ It turns out that playing silly pranks as if we were 5 years old is still wonderful fun.

We reached the city of Kars in the early evening. Kars is known for it’s honey and cheeses, so a few of us went to a local shop to sniff around and see what all the fuss was about. The honey, especially, was fabulous. I’m usually not much of a honey person, but I could’ve lived on this stuff. Next, we took a short walk to the Kars Castle, situated on a small promontory overlooking the city. We sipped some tea at a small café in the castle, before making our way to dinner. At dinner I ordered a lamb, chicken, cheese, and walnut wrap that was hands-down the best thing I’ve eaten since I came to Turkey. I’m not even going to try to describe it because it won’t sound nearly as good as it tasted. Moral of the story: Kars knows its food. 

View from Kars Castle

Cheese and Honey Shop