Erzurum
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2005
1
280
354
Trip End
Ongoing
Erzurum,
Turkey
Friday, February 22, 2008
Turkish buses are large and modern, compared with anything I've seen to-date. Many are Mercedes models. Inside you feel more as though you are on a flight, ten feet above the pavement. An attendant gives you snacks and drinks that you can put on your folding traytable, just like a plane. Once in a while you get a little dash of lemony cologne, and an automatic fragrance spray spurts every so often, keeping the air fresh and clean.
Erzurum was more than just a break between bus rides. The mostly modern earthquake prone city was full of twelfth century mosques, tombs, and medreses (known as medrassas further east, slight difference). To me, it showed the ties between Turkey and its Central Asian Turkish roots. At the time these structures were built, the Turks had only recently arrived in Anatolia, through Persia. The minarets in Erzurum could easily be at home in Samarkand.
This plateau was also the source of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, who irrigate and bathe the Fertile Crescent in their waters. The bus slowly descended from the mountains, the whýte snowy landscape slowly changed into brown hill country, with newly-plowed spring fields, and shepherds.
