So I left you in Van in the depths of Kurdistan, we were heading to some sort of concert involving a guitar. Quite an experience that turned out to be, let me tell you! So we follow these two new "friends" of ours down some side streets in the dark of 11pm and finally come to this unlit alleyway leading to a doorway. At this point I'm convinced that we are about to be kidnapped by the PKK. Not wanting to be rude though, I follow them in and we found ourselves in this spacious appartment belonging to this artist friend/brother of theirs (the distinction between friend and brother among males in Turkey is very blurred). This new guy is the coolest yet: expressionist art covers the walls of his bedroom/living room, he's got musical instruments all over the place, and this serenely benevolent look to him. This last was in stark contrast to the look on the face of the elder of the two men that brought us... he was looking lecherous and wouldn't stop clumsily complementing Karin. Anyway... this guy got to be a bit (actually a lot) too much and so we got out of there after only about fourty five minutes and a beer each. He seemed to have this feeling of entitlement where he expected that if he so debased himself by giving her compliment after compliment he didn't need to take no for an answer. We left Van very very early the next morning.
The next stop was Dogubayezit and Mt. Ararat towering above. The town turned out to be a bustling border town (Iran was all of 20 clicks away... we went to the border! :D). That day we ended up on this tour of the region which we got for a steal of 20 lira each. First stop was this amazing palace/fortress about a kilometer up on a bluff overlooking the town. You shall see pictures, as I keep promising, later. Next we were onto muddy roads heading to the highly dubious "Noah's Ark", but that's not really worth talking about. What was far more interesting was getting marooned for 4 hours in a tiny Kurdish village en route. Halfway through the wait the clouds across the valley opened up and Ararat was just there... first the small peak, and shortly after the main 51-hundred metre snow coated temale. Between the three of us I think we probably took several hundred thousand pictures of it happening. The village children and ladies found us vaguely interesting. It was interesting, whereas the cities in Eastern Turkey were 80% occupied by men, the village was pretty much 100% women... It's funny how things come together. A few men turned up shortly before we unstuck ourselves. They were either commuters or had been minding livestock grazing on the mountain plains. ON the topic of those mountain plains: the landscape in this area was the cherry on the cake of landscapes that was Turkey. If you're a landscape lover and you go nowhere else... go to Eastern Turkey. Getting back to the tour though, after unsticking ourselves we pulled briefly into the visitor centre at the supposed site uncovered by some rabidly evangelical american, where the ark eventually landed. No one takes the dude seriously except the Dogubayezit tourism industry who I suspect of an ulterior motive for doing so. So we moved on quickly and headed for a glance at the Iranian border over which we saw the sun set, and then to another slightly larger village at the foot of the Mountain where we got some good pictures of Brent and I gamboling around looking ridiculous (we were trying to reproduce a picture in the Turkey Lonely Planet of 2003 in which Children are running and playing in a field below the mountain.)
I'm going to start a new paragraph now because I feel like it's been a while. We headed back to town and had a very pleasant anniversary dinner (we had been on the road together for exactly 2 months!) which was interrupted by this very drunk, very flamboyant old man with the oddest mannerisms. He would routinely lick his fingertips with a slightly mischievous look on his face, and then groom the wings of his hair with them. For whatever reason he payed for our dinner and refused to hear any of our protests. He kept repeating that he "likes... people." He took us back to his rather lavish office about a block away, furnished with several poofy leather couches and a huge mahogany desk, and proceeded to ramble to us randomly about the nature of wealth, and how he has lots of gay and lesbian friends, how he left his wife, that his son converted to christianity, that money is to be spent, and something incoherent (but not positive) about Jews. We left after about 25 minutes mostly because we were all exhausted and a bit wary of a repeat of the previous night. He was just getting drunker and drunker and less and less coherent as it was, and we thought it better to leave him to pass out in peace.
The next morning we took off for Erzerum where we were catching a late flight back to Istanbul. This was a day earlier than had originally been planned due to a relatively last minute change of my ticket by my travel agent (which we'll return to shortly assuming the time remains... if I don't get to it, ask me about it some time. It's a story). Erzerum hosts the central command against Russian and Persian (they probably mean Iranian, but I'll agree that Darius seemed rather intimidating in the 300... at least I assume he did... I didn't actually end up seeing the movie this spring... I heard it was ethically problematic). The town was a shot of modern bussle after a week in the poorest region of the country. I couldn't really enjoy it though (skip the rest of this paragraph if you don't want to hear me be grossly culturally insensitive)... I had a pretty bad case of traveller's diarrhoea which was exacerbated by the total lack of normal, sit down toilets and bathrooms stocked with toilet paper. That's one respect in which I'm a total Western cultural imperialist: I think access to regular sit-down flush toilets and plentiful toilet paper when one has diarrhoea should be a universal human right. Squat toilets... although probably more hygenic for the lack of ass contact... are stupid and unpleasant.
13 minutes left. *choke*
I'm going to skip over the hell that was my Airplane/visa/accomodation
I spent pretty much all of today (my second day) in the Hermitage, being slapped in the face by the veined but glowingly lit hand of Rembrandt's Old Jewish Man... and the 20 something other paintings by Rembrandt in the collection. And everything else that I saw in the collection. And the architecture and decor of the palace itself. And pretty much everything about the damned place. Long story short... I'm probably going to spend all of tomorrow there too.
Non-sequitor:
Food is stupidly expensive here. As such I've been eating a lot of American fast food and giggling internally at the possible political interpretations of my motives for doing so (kind of kicking a man when he's down isn't it?). Gaah! 2 minutes. I'm going to publish this now and hope for the best. Typos, spelling errors and everything.
May the peace of the lord be with you always.
[your line: and also with you]
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