You Say Antakya, I Say Antioch
Trip Start
Feb 08, 2008
1
29
125
Trip End
Sep 11, 2009
Antioch,
Hatay Province,
Turkey
Friday, April 11, 2008
Not Much Doin' in Antioch
Upon getting into Antioch/Antakya, meeting Koray and taking my gear to his apartment--a short walk from his university office--we met a university friend of his, Varol Topaç. The two of them treated me to a dinner at a local eatery.
Varol is a sculptor/visual artist, and of the university faculty. (He gave me his card. It lists websites to see his work. The first one, at geocities.com, won't show up via Turkish wi-fi. I have to assume there are some erotic works. Why else? (Turkish internet is censored. But there are ways around it. Ask your nearest high school or college student).
Dinner With Koray and Varol
His other site --artmajeur.com/varoltopac--has pictures. The last I looked, two of the pictures there were censored.
After the meal we walked up into the old part of town, to an old Ottoman home that has been nicely converted into a tea house. There is an inner open-air court yard and a couple of side indoor rooms. Koray said hello to a couple of girls. Perhaps students.
After tea we walked back down to the center, and I was further treated to a Hatay specialty, künefe. It is a flat, white cheeze slab with a thin granulated crust, and swimming in thin honey.
Yesterday my main goal was the Hatay Archaeological Museum. I got there after the noon-time closing, so elected to walk out the 3 km to the Cave Church of St. Peter. Lonely Planet describes, "This is said to be the earliest place where Christians met and prayed secretly."
I walked out of town, passing through the "covered" bazar. Nothing new there. I got to the church about an hour before its scheduled 1:30 opening, so I read in some shade. By 1:45 it wasn't open. The guard who had come out said it was closed. I could see through the gate some construction materials. So I guess they are doing repairs in advance of the tourist season.
I walked back to the center via a different route, through some working class area. I do a lot of walking through dismal surroundings. And Turkey, unfortunately, offers plenty of them. Turkish towns, on the whole, are just not very visually appealing. Except for the geographical surroundings--which can be quite varied and beautiful--the man-made Turkish town or city following the Ottoman period, is just plain uniform and dismal. It is almost, "once you've seen one, you've seen them all." This may change as I head east. I'm sure surprises await.
Back to the Archaeological Museum there was plenty of time to tour it. The museum's main attractions are many large Roman-era mosaics. And several are indeed quite impressive.
The post office was across from the museum, so I went there to pay the long over-due phone bill. Unlike Ankara, where I had to wait in lines, then find the computer down, or something, here I walked up to a window and paid the bill. Whether that automatically restores service I've yet to see.
By this time it was around 4 in the afternoon, I'd guess. I decided not to hassle (language-wise) for a lunch in a local cafe; but to relax some.
So I went into the main hotel in town, the Big Antakya Hotel, as it is called. I was directed up to a fairly large dinning room that looked closed. But, they served me a lunch. A single strip of doner kabap with flat bread, some rice, the salad was a plate of parsley and mint. The drink was ayran, a thickish, milk-like salted yoghurt. It takes some getting used to. (In my first experience with ayran it was overly salted, and I nearly spit it out. Since, all others have seemed tolerably mild). For desert there was a small fruit plate.
I finished the day by taking a dolmuş to the coastal town of Samandağ (remember the g is silent [It always make me think, Wasn't there a musical duo named Sam and Dave?]). As mentioned above, except for the surrounding geography, that trip consisted mainly of wending through streets of the endless sameness of the Turkish town: shops, shops, shops. At the end of the line, with the sea just visible beyond, the neighborhood looked so dismal I didn't even get out of the dolumuş. This, of course, gave everyone a confused laugh.Well, it was the driver's end run.
But, for half the fare that it took to come all the way out from Hatay he took me back a ways into Samandağ and parked before a concrete mix shop. He jovially conversed with the shop fellow, who loaded a sack in the floor of the dolumuş. After a spell the driver hailed another passing dolumuş, and directed me to it for the return to Hatay.
I got a couple of beers and some chips and went back to Koray's. But he wasn't in yet, so I had my beer and chips while unsuccessfully surfing the tv for some English language program. And that was the end to a tireing day. I went to bed about 9:30, I think. Now, is that a day to be jealous of?
