After enjoying Gِoreme it was time for us to head to the Eastern part of the country.
We knew that the east would be totally different experience from the more touristic west. From here on we would be dealing with fewer fellow tourists, the people would be more conservative and more religious and would speak much less English. We would also be dealing exclusively with squat toilets.
From Goِreme it was a 16 hour train ride to Erzurum, in the northeast of the country, which we enjoyed from a pretty nice sleeper train cabin. The scenery along the way was high elevation mountainous steppe which was extremely dry and lightly populated. It looked very similar to the northwest of Argentina.
After arrival at the train station we decided to walk to the hotel where we wanted to stay at (bad decision). We ended up lost in the middle of an open air market with our packs on our backs and a crowd around us as we tried to figure out where we were going. After shaking hands with half the crowd we got someone to show us our hotel.
Erzurum has a population of 360,000 and is at a windswept 6115 feet above sea level. It apparently has brutally cold winters and even in the summer it has little to offer besides some old buildings, but we decided to stay there for a few days to recharge our batteries and rest up a little.
Most of the women in this part of Turkey wore head scarves and many of the men had on Islamic hats. We found most of the people to be pretty devoutly Muslim. The shorts and the short sleeve t-shirts we were wearing in the West got us stared at so we had to cover up more.
Ramadam had started on September 1st. With the west being heavily touristy, we would always find places to eat during the day but now being in the west it became quite an issue for us as all the restaurants in town would stay closed during the daylight hours and right when the sun went down the city would literally shut down and everyone would eat. Thus our food during daylight hours became snacks bought at the supermarkets.
Very few people knew any English so we bought an elementary dictionary and used and abused sign language to try to communicate with them. This led to some confusing situations including some memorable restaurant mess-ups but we just tried to go with it.
After a few days in Erzurum we were ready to move on and cross the mountains and visit Trabazon on the Black Sea.
Steve
We knew that the east would be totally different experience from the more touristic west. From here on we would be dealing with fewer fellow tourists, the people would be more conservative and more religious and would speak much less English. We would also be dealing exclusively with squat toilets.
From Goِreme it was a 16 hour train ride to Erzurum, in the northeast of the country, which we enjoyed from a pretty nice sleeper train cabin. The scenery along the way was high elevation mountainous steppe which was extremely dry and lightly populated. It looked very similar to the northwest of Argentina.
After arrival at the train station we decided to walk to the hotel where we wanted to stay at (bad decision). We ended up lost in the middle of an open air market with our packs on our backs and a crowd around us as we tried to figure out where we were going. After shaking hands with half the crowd we got someone to show us our hotel.
Erzurum has a population of 360,000 and is at a windswept 6115 feet above sea level. It apparently has brutally cold winters and even in the summer it has little to offer besides some old buildings, but we decided to stay there for a few days to recharge our batteries and rest up a little.
Most of the women in this part of Turkey wore head scarves and many of the men had on Islamic hats. We found most of the people to be pretty devoutly Muslim. The shorts and the short sleeve t-shirts we were wearing in the West got us stared at so we had to cover up more.
Ramadam had started on September 1st. With the west being heavily touristy, we would always find places to eat during the day but now being in the west it became quite an issue for us as all the restaurants in town would stay closed during the daylight hours and right when the sun went down the city would literally shut down and everyone would eat. Thus our food during daylight hours became snacks bought at the supermarkets.
Very few people knew any English so we bought an elementary dictionary and used and abused sign language to try to communicate with them. This led to some confusing situations including some memorable restaurant mess-ups but we just tried to go with it.
After a few days in Erzurum we were ready to move on and cross the mountains and visit Trabazon on the Black Sea.
Steve
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