Trip highlights

SUMMARY

Number of knocks on room door after midnight: two. The first time was in Tarti on Lesvos, from a drunken and amorous fisherman who taught us the very useful word "malaga". The second time was at Snow's Otel in Kars (see separate post).

Favorite Greek swear word: "malaga." In the dictionary, it means massage. Everybody knows it refers to palmar onanism. It's used in the same manner as "sh*t" is used in English, and intonation is everything. Once we learned the word, we heard it all around us.

Favorite ice cream: Algida Essence (small, chocolate covered vanilla ice cream with a chocolate cookie layer), Algida Choco-Disc (for the full cornetto experience with lots of chocolate and caramel), or Magnum Classic (much like a Dove var). Ice cream chests are as ubuquitous in Greece and Turkey as Starbucks are in the US, and with over 3 dozen choices it's useful to have a favorite picked out in advance.

Favorite specialty desserts: beaten dondurma and iznik pişmaniye. Beaten dondurma, best exemplified at the Mado in Antakya (http://www.antakyamadoevi.com/), is made with orchid root flour as the thickener. At the Mado, it's ordered by just about every other customer, comes in a slice, and is eaten with a knife and fork. It's not as sweet as regular ice cream. Pişmaniye is a cotton candy like substance with a bit of pistachio and wheat flour added to the mix. The name comes from the work pişmani meaning "regret".

Longest stay: About 9 days in Santorini (Teresa's favorite) and 14 days in Ayder (Jim's favorite).

Friendliest guy ever: Ramazan in Coşandere

Friendliest innkeeper: Stratos in Tarti on Lesvos

Best sunsets: Santorini, of course

Best hikes: a tie between the calderimi on Santorini and the Büyükdenizgöl in the Kaçkars.

Most "Lonely Planet" moment: dancing the horon to the tulum at the Doğa Harikası Pansiyon in Ayder. The tulum is a bagpipe-like instrument with two reeds and 6 tones (G to E). The horon is the dance of the Laz people in Northeastern Turkey, with everyone holding hands in a circle. We were all just sitting around drinking tea on the porch after dinner when Gürkhan, our innkeeper, started to play his tulum with not much ado. Soon people came in from the streets and the circle got larger and larger. The tune is in an asymmetric 5/8 beat. Şaban, our other innkeeper, called out the moves, which everyone knew. The whooping and dancing went on until suddenly the power failed and the lights went out.

Things Teresa hasn't done for two months: study veterinary medicine (studied Turkish language instead), operate flying machines

Things Jim hasn't done for two months: work, play hockey

Things we are taking home with us: a dress from Rhodes and a traditional skirt from Ayder, one pair each of traditional Ayder wool socks, three children's books in Turkish

Things I wish I brought: a computer for information and entertainment, Teva sandals
Things I am glad I brought: iPod packed with podcasts; Leatherman for occasional veggie slicing,
Things I brought but did not need: cosmetics

Ayder: Going home soon

There's about a week left of the trip, and our thoughts are turning homeward.

Already, we have a list of things that we are looking forward to. This especially includes a burrito for Jim and Thai food for me.

My grasp of the Turkish language is at its apogee, which still isn't very much, but I'm a bit sad knowing it will soon sift away like a handful of sand.

I sometimes try to imagine what my Turkish sounds like to native speakers:
"Very nice, very nice!" ("çok güzel") - used about a hundred times a day in a very Borat way
"Thank!" ("teşekkur!" It should really be "teşekkuler" or "teşekkur ederim" but I run out of steam at about 3 syllables)
"I am wanting to ... " - the verbs are such a muddle that I just use the present progressive by default

We will be flying from Trabzon to Istanbul on the 15th on Pegasus Air, then from Istanbul via Frankfurt to San Francisco on Lufthansa on the 16th. I hear that the Bay Area is aflame.

Kars: Snow's Otel ... 's no hotel!

Kars, July 4th 2008

The tourism infrastructure is not extensive in Turkey, and especially along the Black Sea coast,
the guidebooks all warn against "natasha" hotels. We may have stayed at one or two without knowing it, and in any case what's really the harm in some other room being used for a trick or two? So we weren't overly concerned about it, but of course always asked if the establishment was a "family hotel" (aile otel).

So far, we've had pretty good luck with lodging during our travels, and aside from perhaps the occasional loud disco, leaky toilet, predatory manager, or damp tomblike cement basement, we've managed to get a decent night's sleep everywhere we went.

In the smudgy pucker that is the city of Kars, the exception was met.

We had taken most of the day to drive to Kars, going from the mistladen mountaintops of Ayder to Pazar, along the Black Sea coast to Hopa near the Georgian border, over the Cankurtaran pass to Ardahan, up the river valley past Artvin, through the national forest surrounding Şavşat, then over another small pass into the high plains. Here were wild horses ambling, herds of cattle grazing, tent settlements blooming like mushrooms overnight, old women crossing the road with flocks of geese, and one-horse carts rattling alongside the highway.

We kept an eye out for suitable sojourns, and had already passed by well-turned-out motel near Şavşat. I wanted to find something before we reached the city of Kars, and like an godsend there appeared a large new hotel proudly emblazoned with three stars, next to the highway 10 kms from the city. SNO 'S OTEL, the letters read, the W having fallen off. It is a three-story concrete structure painted in warm culinary pastels - lemon, custard, and avocado. So what if the stars might have been self-awarded? At first sight it certainly looked comfortable, quiet, and respectable.

We entered the lobby, which was new and tastefully decorated, including a large painting of a triumphant sultan entering the gates of the city, banners flying, and vanquished Crusaders littering the foreground. There were half a dozen men in hotel employee uniforms, and they soon summoned what appeared to the manager. The boss looked like he stepped out of the frames of a film noir. His upper incisors are gone leaving a wide gap between two short canines, and his frequent smile is at once alarming and disarming. He had on an immaculate white shirt beneath a dark pinstripe suit, and the outfit was completed with impeccably shined black leather ankle boots with tapered toes and a row of small buttons up the side. We must have appeared just as curiously outfitted to them, in our T-shirts, jeans, and khakis. He spoke passable English and gestured us to sit for a cup of tea.

There we sat in the salon, beneath the gaze of the triumphant sultan, and said mostly nothing. We watched the flickers on the flatscreen TV, sipped tea, nibbled at cherries, and talked only infrequently. The essential facts escaped periodically into the air like puffs of cigarette smoke - yes, we're from America; yes, we need a room for the night; yes, Turkey is beautiful; yes, we're going to Ani tomorrow. We mirrored his companionable silence and waited patiently. Finally, he asked if we'd like to see the room. Up we went in the tiny elevator that barely fit 3 persons. The room was viewed, the price was set, the passports were handed over, and we were set. When one of the attendants was posted on our floor and seemed almost to follow us around, we thought nothing of it.

So far, so good, and we were rather pleased with ourselves to have come upon a relatively peaceful oasis in the middle of desolate plains. We drove the 10 kms to Kars city, peeked inside the Georgian church, clambered up to Kars castle, and came back to settle in for the night.

The excitement started around midnight. The disco had started early but we were used to that by now. Then we heard raised voices outside our door, footsteps to and fro. There were several knocks on our door. I asked Jim to wedge a chair under the door. The phone kept ringing.

The sequence of events were now cast in a more sinister light. While we were sipping tea in the salon, was the boss waiting for Jim to begin negotiations on the "merchandise"? After all, why else would one bring a Japanese girl to a hotel if not to make some profit? Was our man not so much a floor attendant but our personal sentry posted at our door by the boss, once he realized we were hapless tourists that needed protection?

Our sentry scolded the rowdies away from our door. We heard the clicking of high heeled shoes, a woman giggling, then a brief cascade of moans next door followed by shower sounds. Now came another set of male voices, more insistent and authoritative. It was the jandarma. Our sentry knocked on the door and announced "hotel servis." For him we opened the door. The two jandarma, in fatigues with machine guns slung over the shoulder, had a looked inside the door and, seeing our startled and grumpy faces, were satisfied and left. What were they looking for, we wondered. Illegal migrants? Unauthorized working girls? Or were they just curious about the American tourists? Whatever it was, their presence seemed to have put an end to the incessant banging around outside. An hour later, their jeep was gone, the music finally died down, and we managed a few hours of fitful sleep.

The next morning, we decamped very quickly and, waving off several solicitous offers of breakfast, and jumped in the car to put as much distance between us and Snow's Otel as we could, as fast as we could. We drove over crumbled roads to the remote ruined city of Ani, the ancient Armenian capital that once had 100,000 inhabitants. There, amidst the sun-scorched thistles swarming with gnats, I had a John Woo moment in the dark hull of a church with the dome missing and the dressed facade crumbled away revealing the rubble core of the walls. The light was just so as sooty swallows swirled and keened. On the highway out of Kars, past the hotel, we didn't stop to take a souvenir photo, but merely snapped a quick shot through the windshield.

P.S. We were stunned to find their website: http://snowsotel.com/

P.P.S. The constrast between the Lonely Planet description of Kars and what we found provides a benchmark of the insane optimism of that publication.    "Subtle charms" my foot!

P.P.S.  Even though Kars is grim, dull, and dreary, it is intensely atmospheric and the mood gets under your skin.   After returning home, I started reading Orhan Pamuk's "Snow."   Here's a passage from the book that captures the desolation and despair:

someone had written the lines that Ka would incorporate into “All Humanity and the Stars,” the poem he would write tomorrow while sitting in the Lucky Brothers Teahouse:

Even if your mother came down from heaven to take you into her arms,

Even if your wicked father let her go without a beating for just one night,

You’d still be penniless, your shit would still freeze, your soul would still wither, there is no hope!

If you’re unlucky enough to live in Kars, you might as well flush yourself down the toilet.

Ayder: Büyükgöl

Today was another big hiking day. Today's destination was Büyükgöl, just beyond Yayla Avusor. Our hiking companion is Ali Riza, the young man who works at the Pansiyon.

Again, we drove the car up as far as my lily-liver would allow. Then we parked and walked. This road was not as well plied with minibuses as yesterday's, and we only saw one dolmus and no tourist groups. At the village we stopped for tea and asked for directions. Ali, age 25, had just finished his military service, and though he smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, he can also smoke me on the trails any day. He sets a fast tempo, and we head up the hills. With each gain in altitude, Jim's grin gets wider, until it reaches its five-beer width. Here, he is truly in his habitat.

Halfway up, we came across a high-altitude soccer playing field, with improvised goalposts, boundaries scratched into the grass, and a few rocks still embedded in the turf. The fast-moving streams, the meadows, the glacial moraine, and the wildflowers were as mesmerizing as yesterday. There were rhododendrons, but not in giant fields. This time, we could see across the lake. We picnicked at the top, but it was chilly and we soon descended back out of the clouds. In Chinese mythology, the gods lived on the clouds, and this indeed felt heavenly. (Jim comments: those Chinese gods must be cold and wet!)

The hike was capped off with a nice round of muhlama (Turkish fondue) at Y. Avusor. This valley is mostly setteld by the Laz people, who are distinguished by beaked noses that outshine even the Turks. An older gentleman sat with us for a chat, and his proboscis could have hosted a good flock of birds. We headed back down after 5 hours of tramping, tired and happy. In Ayder village, we stop for grilled corn. An excellent day!

Ayder: hiking, choked gazelles

7/1

We had a big day today. All the restless energy from being cooped up yesterday was unleashed. We got up early and headed for the hills. Taking the car as far as the road was good, we parked it and walked the rest of the way. The hiking plan is simple in these parts: just follow the river up, up, up, until you reach the lake. Today's lake is Büyükdeniz Göl, just beyond Yayla Yavrun.

We walked up the road for about 6km to reach Y. Kavrun. We were passed by a good dozen minibuses, and the obligatory caravan of Israeli adventure tourists. The Israeli group tours seem to dominate the tourist population here. There are very few Western independent tourists here. At Y. Kavrun we saw our first bona fide yayla village, with very simple wooden houses and cattle wandering all about. Our map is wildly not to scale but we headed in the general direction of Büyükdeniz Göl.

There isn't much of a trail but the alpine meadows are mostly easy to cross, so we just headed up the river. As the fog rolled in and the terrain became rocky, the path became less clear and we were lucky to run across another hiking trio. The father, Yusuf, is a wheat farmer who grew up running all over these very hills, the son Ali works in Izmir, and the daughter-in-law Esma is a nurse. They invited us to tag along. As we ascended, the air became thinner, and we came across giant fields of rhododendron. Back home, rhododendrons are nice but hardly breathtaking. But this was spectacular. With the roiling mists, the whitewater cascading over boulders, and the saturated colors of the wildflowers upon the green meadows, the setting was like something from Akiro Kurosawa's movie "Dreams."

We spread out into a single file, with Yusuf leading. After he asked us our ages and told us he was 65 years old, he seemed to pick up the pace in demonstration of his strength. Jim was next, then me, and Esma and Ali brought up the rear. Children of any age seem to regress when they are with their parents, and they not infrequently asked "Baba, daha ne kadar?", or "Dad, are we there yet?"

Although we were conserving our words due the exertion and thin air, as the landscape became more and more beautiful, we all broke out in exclamations of admiration, saying "çok güzel!" This sounds a lot like "choke gazelle," and soon Jim and I were speculating on how many gazelles must suffer by the end of the day.

After about two hours we reached the lake. It was not frozen, but there are patches of snow here and there. With the mist, we could not see more than 10 meters from the shore, so its lakeness was taken on faith.

The descent was much easier, and we ended the day with an open-buffet feast at the Yesil Vadi Restaurant.