Ramazan Bayram: Hiking with Goats and Swimming with Orenciler in Alanya

Alanya harbour

Happy Bayram!  Because I have nothing to do, officially, until classes start in a few weeks, I decided to take advantage of all this free time I have at my disposal and go South to Alanya for the Ramadan Bayram holiday this week. 

view of Alanya from Mcghee center garden

Not only are the abroad students for this semester assimilating themselves at the villa I studied in last year, but my host family just had a baby three weeks ago.  So I contact the handful of people I know in Alanya to alert them of my arrival.

Of course I forgot my camera SIM card in my computer at home, so you guys will have to settle for recycled images from my semester abroad last year....

view from the Mcghee center of the Seljuk Red Tower

at sunset

After flying to Antalya with my Guardian Angel friends (re: last posts) who happen to be traveling to Antalya for the weekend, I take a cab and get into Alanya at about 9:30 on Wednesday night.  I check into the awesome hotel, Hotel Kaptan, that my undergrad University has a deal with where people affiliated can stay for approximately $33 a night.  breakfast included.:)

patriotism!

I should start by explaining what Alanya's deal is.  Alanya is a town on the southern coast of Turkey in the province of Antalya, about 2 hours East of Antalya city.  Beginning in the 1960s, small towns such as Alanya, Antalya, Bodrum, Kas, etc. started being developed by the tourism industry of Turkey.  When my dad was in Turkey in the 60s, there was 1 hotel in Alanya (that my half-sister Jean remembers!) and now there are hundreds, as well as countless shops, bars and clubs.

Alanya peninsula - look for the small monastery!

One reason Alanya was developed as a tourist destination (aside from it's absolutely wonderful beaches and peninsula) is that it has a wonderfully-preserved Seljuk castle, complete with a historic district enclosed with the old Seljuk walls.  One of the best things to do (in my opinion) is scramble around the historic district and hike up the hillside up to the castle.  So after the official orientation tour, on Saturday a few of the students from this years' group and I walked all the way up the Seljuk wall from the very bottom of the historic district by the harbour and climbed off at a picture-taking spot tourists tend to gather in, and received some gawking stares from the photo-taking lobsters.

I should also say that these issues of how to manage and deal with cultural heritage in a place such as Alanya are exactly what I will be dealing with in my Masters program.  As we saw on our tour around the Castle in Alanya, even since last year there have been major changes in the scenery.  Electrical power lines are being planted in the ground underneath the road that goes up to the top of the peninsula so that that area can be developed...which will greatly help the economy of what is a town that entirely relies on its tourist season to keep it afloat, economically.  But still, it raises a lot of questions about how to preserve such wonderful cultural and historical  artefacts...

Iznik tile, from Topkapi Palace in Istanbul (totally unrelated to Alanya)

Alanya and towns like it attract tourists from Eastern Europe, Russia, Germany and Scandanavia....mainly of the drunken variety.  The lack of sun leads to extreme stir-craziness that results in the need for Raki and excess amounts of sun and a 5 minute faux tour of the castle.
 
One wonderful, or excruciating result of being a tourist town is the nightlife.  Despite it being a Wednesday, the bars and clubs on the harbour are impossibly loud - the same Eminem, vintage Madonna and Black Eyed Peas songs I heard last year are still being played on repeat.  So the first night I watched the 2010 World Basketball Championship tournament and tried to drone out the music.  Yes I am old. 

boat in the Alanya harbor

The next night, instead of hitting up the clubs on the harbour, I took my new friends to Cello bar (pronounced like the instrument).  Cello is a traditional "Turkey Bar", playing free live music and catering to a more hippie-esque crowd of Turks.  But even this scene has been tainted by tourist drive.  These bars are decorated in a more Ottoman-style, with lanterns, kilims and carpets and paintings/mozaics.  We were particularly entertained by the Che posters decorating the walls.  And while some of us enjoyed the Efes beer, others (myself included) had amaaaazing herbal tea...for 5 TL...which seems very silly to pay in a country where cay is given for free everywhere - I mean, even at gas stations.  but it was worth it for the ambience that once, especially to show the new kids on the program that they don't have to go to the harbour bars. 

McGhee center garden

I called it an early night Thursday and got some good sleep before our official Castle Tour scheduled with the Seljuk-guru, Dr. Redford (former Georgetown Professor and current Professor in my graduate program).
I meet up with the Professors at Yamac cafe (the best cafe in Alanya, all homemade food; their specialty is homemade manti which is a meat-filled ravioli that is then covered with garlic-yogurt and fresh red pepper mmmm if only I still ate meat.  They also make jams right there in their little restaurant, it's halfway up the road to the Castle, if you ever find yourself in Alanya....)  So I am already feeling kind of old, meeting up with the Professors beforehand for a cay, but I must get used to my new role as teacher's assistant that I will officially take on before too long. 

Our hike up to the Castle (Kale) is amazing.  We go all the way up, stopping to go through a fortress halfway up, as well as tasting carob from a tree on the side of the road (which is an emulsifier used in gum, it has a cocoa-taste to it) and very fresh rosemary - so good!



part of our Seljuk castle wall hike

 We talk about the issue of gentrification which is all too obvious to me - there are tunnels being dug up all the way up the road where electrical wires are being put in place so that houses and restaurants can be built up by the Castle.  These issues will be examined in future blogs regarding my coursework.  For now, I want to tell you all about...the baby! 

I went to visit my host family in Alanya, who I absolutely adore. They are a young couple who own a hotel where I took cooking lessons last year...so anyone that has enjoyed any of my Turkish cooking back home has Deniz to thank.  Deniz and Suha had a baby girl, Melisa, three weeks ago, which is funny because Deniz, who is only two years older than I am, made quite a few comments last year about how she was not entirely ready for a baby.  But life works in mysterious, surprising and wonderful ways, and baby Melisa is here with us...and she is ADORABLE.

I stopped by the local grocery store on my way over to their house to pick up some toys for Melisa.  Although she is only three weeks, I thought it important that she get some good motor skills right off the bat.  I perused the barbie doll toys for girls, and opted for a big red giraffe sticker and a sand dumpster truck, it will help with her coordination more than barbie ever could.

I hang out with Deniz, Suha and Melisa for a few hours, complete with some amazing baklava, a visit from Deniz' parents and some veeeeeery interesting tidbits from Deniz about all-things-baby.  I won't get into it on the blog, but...food for thought!  We also watched the Turkish movie "AY LAV YU" (say it out loud...it's a Turkish movie about an American girl, blonde of course, who falls in love with a Kurdish man) and much cultural clashing ensues, quite entertaining.  I have decided to watch it again in a few months and see how my Turkish is.  Anyway, Deniz, Suha and Melisa have plans to come up to Istanbul in a few months to watch some volleyball games (they're very into volleyball), so I'll be really excited to host them here once I get my bearings.

just another day walking and swimming in the Mediterranean

Saturday turned out to be my last day in Alanya, though I had planned to stay until Sunday.  However, my guardian angel  family had to head back to Istanbul a day early, and I happily agreed to travel back a day early - honestly, I don't think my skin could take another day of the hot Mediterranean sun - it burns!

So I pack up my things, check out and order a sandwich to go from my hotel.  As I wait for the sandwich, I watch Venus Williams lose to Kim Clijsters of Belgium, which I was OK with, the underdog always appreciates it more.  So then I have another Turkey-is-awesome-moment when my sandwich comes.  5 TL (like $3) for a massive hunk of fresh bread, tomato and cheese slices, with not too much mayo, a little ketchup (I think it's impossible to get a sandwich without ketchup here) lettuce, with cucumbers, and extra lettuce and tomato on the side.  mmmmm

another view of the Seljuk wall and the sea

The second Turkey-is-awesome moment of Saturday relates to the bus system: I take a quick cab to the bus station, where as I climb out of the cab, a man immediately filters me to the appropriate bus to Antalya, where I pay 14 TL (!!!!!) for a ticket.  I paid 160 TL for the cab going the other way when I got in Wednesday night, because I got scammed, basically :) 

The flight home was great, I helped the 10 year old neice of the family with her math homework, which were word problems related to facebook...this is now the world we live in.  A wonderful weekend, all in all!  Now I just have to find a way to kill the next two weeks before classes start...tata for now!

Alanya sunset