Amasya

I guess the good vibes started on the bus ride from Niksar to Amasya. Ashley and I couldn't get a seat together and I ended up sitting up front next to Serkan, the son of one of Ismail's friends. The teenager was so happy to get to practice English with someone, and I was happy to find entertainment on what I expected to be a long and boring ride. At one point he said that he wished I was going all the way to Ankara with him so he wouldn't be so bored. Anyway, I arrived in Amasya sooner than expected, wished Serkan the best and stepped outside.

The first great thing that happened in Amasya was that Ashley and I met Ezgi and Ömer. They are the kinds of people you wish all acquaintances you meet to be... the kinds of people who quickly feel like friends you knew for a long time. Ezgi and Ömer were very busy the evening we arrived in Amasya. They already had two guests with them from France and another guest was coming from Spain. It was fun meeting everyone. We were seven people from five countries, on the first night of Ramadan. While none of us were Muslim (or particular religious at all for that matter), we all agreed that respecting the neighbors regarding the Ramadan holiday was a priority. On the other hand, we a lot of beer in the fridge and free time on our hands. A solution was quickly reached. See image (right) of me filling a teapot with beer.

My first evening with (from left, clockwise) Ezgi and Ömer, Mark, Audrey, Ashley and Agnes was really relaxed. We were eager to explore the city but thought that would be better done starting the following morning. So we drank our 'tea' and had a nice time. In the above picture, notice the condensation around where the top pot holding the ice (usually is where the tea is) meets the cold beer pot (usually hot water). We later enjoyed shots of... "Turkish coffee". To help absorb all of the caffeine, we ate crepes, prepared by our cheery French acquaintance, Mark. They were delicious.

Waking up the next morning was easier than I expected. Full of excitement about exploring the hell out Amasya, I snacked in the kitchen on leftover crepes and a slice of traditional bread from Erzurum while waiting for the girls to get up. None of us suspected that it would be a day we would talk about for the rest of the trip.

Ashley, Agnes and I exited the apartment to go see Amasya. It was the beginning of a long day and the start of the rest of the trip in many ways. The hot weather prompted me to wear my bathing suit and a t-shirt, a staple of my wardrobe for much of the trip. Our first objective was the Amasya castle. It can be seen from anywhere in the city, resting atop a central hill. That's when the good fortune for us began.


Under the heat and taking pains to conceal our consumption of water out of respect for the fasting population, we began to ascend the mountain toward the castle. Not much time passed before a car stopped and the driver invited us for a ride to the top of the hill. I told him we didn't cause any inconvenience, but he insisted saying that he was going there anyway. The scenic, air-conditioned ride to the top was a welcome luxury and we thanked him for it kindly.

Atop the hill it is hard to decide whether it is the castle itself or the view that is more magnificent. Submitted for your approval, the castle and the view:

While we enjoyed the view and the hiking about, we were also trying to find a concealed place for snack. It seemed like there was always a small group of people in view. This next picture shows us sneaking some drinks out of sight, like young sweethearts behind the bleachers stealing kisses. Drinking juice: naughty!

We were rather surprised when we got back to the entrance of the castle to find that the guys who worked the canteen there were all sitting around drinking tea. We sat and drank more water, relieved that we weren't causing any problems or disrespect. I got to talking with the guys and we joked around, though I can't remember what it as about. In any case, they seemed to like that I could speak at least roughly with them, and they started going out of their way to see that we were comfortable. One the men fetched us a watermelon. Another brought us brochures and maps of the city. We took our time snacking on the fresh melon and reading the brochures, enjoying the shade. Ashley impressed us all by cutting an apple in a way that her father taught her. It came apart in her hand like a puzzle.

Sufficiently stuffed full of watermelon and good cheer, we bid our kind company farewell and headed back down the mountain. We were hardly walking two minutes before two of the guys from the canteen rode up to us on motorcycles. "Climb on," their leader invited, "You on mine, the girls on the other." We all looked at each other for a moment, simultaneously in disbelief about what had just happened and about the likelihood of the three of us fitting on the backs of two motorcycles. I mounted the machine and looked back. The girls were laughing as they tried to sit squished on the back of the other bike. The driver was instructing them "Rest your feet there... no, behind that part..." his voice trailed off as my driver started away down the hill. I knew the girls couldn't understand what he was saying, but I smiled to myself as I thought "I'm sure they'll figure it out." Sure enough, about half way down the hill, I looked back to see the comical sight of my two companions laughing and waving as they glided down the hill behind me. I wanted to take a picture, but my knuckles were already white from trying to keep comfortably on the bike despite the rough spots in the road. All in all, it was thrilling.

At the bottom of the hill, the driver of the bike which the girls were on invited us for a tea at a nearby kiraathane (a tea house where only men go to hang out, smoke, play Turkish card and tile games and watch TV). As we entered, I asked our host if it was a problem that the girls were in the kiraathane. He responded something like this: "This is Amasya, so it's not a problem. Besides, I own this place." I think the girls were a little bored since we were speaking Turkish, though I think we were all happy to be in an air-conditioned place drinking a tea. At one point our host, whose name was Yusuf, asked me why we came to Amasya and what we wanted to see. Actually, I was asked this question at least once in every city on the trip. I gave him an answer that I ended up giving all subsequent inquirers. We just want to see the natural and beautiful places, the real life of the city, and not necessarily the most touristic places. We want to meet local people, enjoy simple things and learn about the culture and life in the villages. He smiled and then offered up an idea.

Not five minutes after he put a phone call through to a friend of his, did a car arrive for us. His friend drove the four of us for about 30 minutes away from the center of Amasya in an easterly direction. As we neared our destination, I turned to the girls and said "and now..." -this would prefix many of my sentences for the rest of the day- and I proceeded to tell them something which they had also just realized, "...We're driving on the SIDEWALK on the OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE ROAD in front of a POLICE STATION!!!" The first question on our minds was answered when the cops out front waved and smiled to the driver. We laughed together. A more detailed explanation came from the guys in the front seats, which I translated to the girls. Apparently our driver was a recently retired cop. I saw that his sidewalk maneuver saved us from having to make a u-turn a little further up the road. It seemed as though the transition from city to countryside was instant. We soon arrived at the farm of Yusuf's family.

We set our things down on chairs in the back porch. It was shaded by grape vines which wrapped around a wooden structure. Yusuf asked if we were ready for a tour of the gardens. A couple minutes later, we were picking and eating strawberries from the garden. Those strawberries were unreal. Ashley, after taking a bite said "Oh grandpa!" I smiled broadly and replied, "I never married."

We carried on, sampling the garden's many delights. We then decided to wander over to the orchards but on the way stopped at a neighbor's farm. The kooky looking chickens were a highlight. As we walked away from the animal pens, I heard a sound which made me stop where I was and whirl around. Ashley did the same, because she also knew what we had just heard. A Denizli rooster! (That's a link to some information, with an excellent video at the bottom of the page). I had never heard one, not even when I was in Denizli last year. With smiles on our faces, we continued to hike toward the nearby valley, signified by its vast green lushness. We walked to a spring water stream that was feeding into a reservoir which the farmers apparently shared by draining it in shifts. The water was cold and glassy, and we delighted in splashing it over our heads and drinking thirstily from it.

We continued our hike into the shade of the nearby trees. But they weren't just trees. Like children accidentally stepping into another world through a magical wardrobe, we were instantly lost in the orchards.

From my childhood, I remember at the age of three, being in an apple orchard near the house. The after-rain smell of the trees and fallen apples in the wet grass has always summoned intense positive feelings, a desire to be in nature and to eat fruit. We walked further and further into the orchards, like a recurring dream I've had since years ago. We were surrounded by peach trees, plum, cornelian cherry, apple, black mulberry, walnut and pear trees. Just a few side notes:

peach: We ate a lot of peaches, yet we avoided using the word peach, due to its phonetic similarity to the Turkish word piç, meaning bastard. Ashley and Agnes quickly learned and got used to saying şeftali instead.

plum: I should mention that these came in several different colors. The yellow ones were my favorite, though there were also red, green, blue and dark purple plums. I sampled them all, of course.

cornelian cherry: I had never seen these before and only learned their name in English 2 minutes ago when I looked it up. In Turkish they are called kızılcık literally 'little-red-one'.

apple: They are probably for what Amasya is most well-known. Amasya apples are meşhur (famous). To eat them off the trees, as with all the other fruit, was a real highlight.

black mulberry: They stained our fingers dark red, but of course we didn't care.

walnut: I didn't recognize the fruit. The walnuts weren't ready, but we smashed a couple open anyway and tried them. They tasted bitter with a wonderful aftertaste. We also learned from this experience just how powerful a dye the liquid from the walnut fruit really is. Our hands were green (and also red from the mulberries).

The fruit made us thirsty and so we welcomed a brief reprieve inside an old wooden shack, inside of which was a hand pump drawing water from from the mountain spring. Each scene from our time in the orchards was like a painting. It was hard not to spoil the moments by constantly acknowledging how great they were. Later, the three of us agreed that the orchards will probably remain for each of us one of our 'happy places'.

The adventures continued in spectacular fashion. We came out the other side of the orchards with bags of fruit in our hands. We were greeted by the relatives of Yusuf who ran the farm. They were very pleased to meet us and we, them. They seemed like good natured, hard working and kind people, especially the grandpa was fun to talk with. The conversation was pleasant. Their son was about to make a fruit delivery to a market in the village nearby and would we like to go with him. YES! Of course, why not, roll with it. This was our plan all along. Not in our plan was the mode of transportation by which we were going to go to the nearby village. Motor-tractor.

Within minutes we were zipping down the road to the next village in a wooden cart being drawn by what I have decided to call a motor-tractor. We were sitting on top of crates of fruit, feeling the wind in our hair and taking pictures. As if the whole experience wasn't unusual enough, like a scene from Waking Ned Devine, grandpa suddenly came from around a bend, hot on our tail, riding a scooter. We made a couple of stops along the road. At one of them, I was offered the opportunity to sit up front and drive the motor-tractor. It took more concentration and strength than I had anticipated to keep the thing on a straight course, though I quickly got used to it. I turned back to the girls and yelled over the sound of the motor and the wind, "and now..."

Yes, 'and now...' I am driving a thing with a cart full of fruit and girls in tow along a river to a village in what felt both like the middle of nowhere and the middle of no-time.

At one point, Yusuf saw a friend of his down by the river fishing. We stopped so that they could chat and I could rest my hands from the vibrations of the motor-tractor. The man invited us to eat any fish he might catch for dinner. Tempting. However, we would decide on dinner plans a little later.

Later, we stopped at tomb from the 2nd century, Aynalı Mağara (the mirrored cave). It is one of 21 ancient rock tombs which dot the Yeşilırmak valley, though not one of the five famous ones in the city center.

Once in the village, we stopped for drink in a shady tea garden. Ashley had fun playing with a puppy who took great interest in a broom she saw and wielded. During this rest, we also made dinner plans. There was a tough choice to be made between going home to have dinner with Ezgi and Ömer (with whom we were all anxious to share accounts of our day and the fruit we picked), eating freshly caught fish with the friend from the river, or having a home-cooked meal at the castle. Yusuf made a phone call and a friend arrived with a car a couple minutes later. The day was still bright, yet the sun was starting getting lower as we headed for the castle.

When we stepped out of the car, another fragment of my past was presented to me. One of the men at the canteen introduced us to a Danish tourist. I smiled and approached with a "Hei! Hvordan har du det?" Delighted and slightly confused was a young Danish man, Fredrick, with whom we conversed, met with again later that evening and again, by chance, a week later in a city 500 kilometers away. More about all that later. Besides Fredrick was on his way back down the mountain to reconvene with his friend and travel-buddy, Eva. We were eager to see the view of the city under the new, late afternoon sunlight, and so we walked briskly toward the point with the best view. What a view it was.

 

We walked through wind-swept tall grass with its light gold color complimenting the setting sun and blending nicely with the pale green and gray hues of the rocks, castle and shrubs. We arrived at edge of the most prominent drop-off overlooking the city. Assembling at that point was a 7 or 8 piece band, which proceeded to grace the city with a musical performance commemorating the first night of Ramadan. It felt one those impromptu Sigur Ros concerts depicted in their wonderful documentary, Heima ("Homeland"). I can't possibly express in way worthy of the truth, how perfect a feeling it was to be surrounded by friends, magnificent scenery and triumphant live music, with delicious fruit in my stomach and fresh memories of a wonderful adventurous day.

A savory home-cooked dinner was served to us at a table overlooking the east part of the city with the village in which we had passed most of the day beyond it. During the meal, we heard the firing of the castle's cannon, indicating the end of the fasting day. Toward the end of the meal, the mayor of Amasya came to the castle for the İftar meal. We saw him, but we didn't get to meet him. However, this didn't bother me at all once I learned of his political affiliations. After dinner, we thanked Yusuf and the others who had made transportation and dinner such wonderful experiences for us. We turned to hike down the mountain when Yusuf stopped us, made a phone call, and sent us down the mountain in a shuttle van that took a couple of other people as well. What was more, the driver asked for the address of our destination and insisted that it was no trouble for him to drop us off there. We were soon back at the apartment, though Ömer and Ezgi were out in town. We freshened up and went back outside into the warm night air.

We met Ömer and Ezgi near an old clock tower in the center of town. As we walked there, we were amazed at how we hadn't really seen much of the city yet, despite our adventures. Our hosts were happy to hear that we had had such a positive experience that day. As the girls were eagerly recounting the highlights of the day (which was the whole thing really), I wandered off to a guest house nearby to meet the Danes. Frederick introduced me to Eva as well as Chris and Katerina, a German pair whom they had met making their way through Turkey. The Germans had invited the Danes to join them as they went along the Black Sea in their truck-converted-caravan. In any event, they all wanted to get some beers and drink them in the garden of the guest house. I talked with the girls and they agreed. Ezgi and Ömer, however, needed to go home for they were tired had work the following day.

We all ate watermelon and drank our beers into the night. It was such a relaxing way to end the day. Frederick and I agreed that it had elements of hygge. 

After this long day, Ashley, Agnes and I looked at each other in a new way, that is with knowing smiles. Though we promised to write lengthy blog-posts about our first day in Amasya, we were all also aware that the real glory of the day would be well contained yet confined to our memories. As we got ready for bed, Ashley told me that Agnes had expressed to her an interest in joining us on our adventures around Turkey. We agreed it would be nice, and so the fellowship was formed. We selected Trabzon as our next destination, and the three of us left Amasya with a night bus the following evening.