Saturday, May 12, 2012

Hello again from Sanliurfa!

To be honest, this isn’t our favorite place in Turkey. For one thing, it is a very conservative area, and we’ve been wearing long pants which is uncomfortable in the heat! However, it is certainly preferable to what most of the women here are wearing – long dresses covered completely by floor-length rain-coats and head scarves! We’ve even seen a burka or two here. I don’t know how they manage! We have spotted a few younger women wearing long blue jeans, but those are very few and far between. Also, the geography of the area is for small hills, covered in sand or very low scrub. That, in turn, has actually turned the sky into a dismal kind of gray! Yesterday, it was so dusty that you could look directly at the sun in the afternoon; no problem, the sky was that hazy. I think that the day we arrived, when it was raining, must have cleared the air quite a bit, as we had a lovely morning yesterday. From then on, however, it has been hazy and we haven’t seen any blue sky at all!

So…after Gobekli Tepe, we returned to the hotel for a bit and then took a taxi cab into the city to the local museum, which was really, really good! They have some wonderful figures from the Gobekli Tepe site; some very unusual things, including a life-size figure of a man; just amazing!

After the museum, we returned to the hotel for dinner, which we had here at the hotel. We both had the vegetable egg roll starter, which was great. I followed that with their grilled chicken, and R had their very spicy penne arrabiata. The problem was portion size! My plate included not one, not two, but THREE chicken breast halves! Needless to say, I was only able to eat one! Back upstairs and to bed fairly early for me, although R had some Caltech work he needed to do, so was up at that until all hours.

Up about 6, down for breakfast and out about 7:30 a.m. heading to Gaziantep to look at their famous mosaics. We had breezed past Gaziantep on our way to Sanliurfa, but didn’t want to stop because of all the luggage in the car. So, back about 130 km on the toll way. Oh! We stopped at one point at one of the toll road service areas (gas, restaurant, market) to use the bathroom and get some water, and by the time we were ready to go back to the car, it was being WASHED! Turns out, there are men who basically station themselves with hoses and buckets in front of the rest areas, and when you leave, they’ll wash your car! In our case, it was definitely needed – it was truly filthy from our dirt road driving recently – so we waited until the car was finished, and tipped the guy 5 Turkish Lira – quite a bargain we thought!

As we drove along the flat grasslands, we - the amateur archeologists - occasionally saw small hills and wondered what might be buried in them.
We had the museum entered in Emmy, and even though Gaziantep is a town of over a million and a half people, she led us right to the door – with parking right in front! How neat is that? Until we walked up, and were met by a man at the door – to tell us (we were finally able to figure out, him speaking no English) that the mosaics had been moved and were no longer in the archeology museum! Surprise!! (We have 2 tour books with us, both copyrighted 2011, and NO mention of any new museum there!)

We weren’t too sure what to do after that, and ended up heading through town. Finally, we saw a rental car place with parking next to it, and we pulled up. R went in to the office, and came out 10 minutes later with a HUGE map of Gaziantep, and marked as to where we were and where we needed to go.

So…put new information into Emmy, wound around some very back streets of a very big city and actually found the new Museum Zeugma! Wow! It’s quite a place, and an ideal way to present all the mosaics. There was a former Roman military colony in the area named Zeugma, which contained more than 800 m of mosaics. The problem was that the site was scheduled to be flooded by the opening of a new dam on the Euphrates river. So, the Gaziantep Museum did a rescue mission and got out as much as they could (and to be honest, some of the mosaics were even then being scavenged by treasure hunters). They are now displayed together in a wonderful setting, on floors and walls on three different levels.

No parking lot or garage (obviously!) but we were able to find a place on the street, and in we went.

And wow, the mosaics are sensational! (I’ve always been very partial to mosaics, and even though we have seen wonderful displays in Sicily and in Italy, these were by far the best ever!) The colors were sensational, and the use of perspective in backgrounds and surrounding patterns was very unusual.

The mosaic entitled “Gypsy Girl” is the most famous in Turkey, and is apparently compared by experts to the Mona Lisa, as the eyes follow you wherever you stand; she is exceptional!

Had a good look around the museum – had the upper floor to ourselves for quite a long time! Outside then, and the line to get in was tremendous; quite a queue; obviously we picked the right time to enter! Had my Magnum Classic for the day in the shade outside, then back to the hotel, arriving mid-afternoon.

Late lunch at the hotel – I had a steak sandwich with French fries; R had their mezze plate – cheese, grape leaves, hummus, eggplant spread, yoghurt and dill spread – both of us very happy!

R back upstairs to work, and I took the opportunity to do a quick and last load of laundry before we move on! We now have all clean clothes, which is great heading into next week!

More later!
m
xxx