Back from the Southeast

I managed to survive, and actually thrive, one of the most interesting experiences I've ever had in Turkey. I took a week-long trip through the country's Southeast -- the poorest part of the nation and mostly populated by Kurds, an ethnic group within Turkey that has their own language and culture, but few legal rights to express them.

The trip started out in Van, located on the shore of a high-altitude lake called Lake Van. Their my roommate Andrew (who was there with me on the first leg of the trip) and I saw a 1,000-year-old church on an island. We also spent the day with a Turkish Christian family that was sweet.

The second day of the trip I went solo. Since I heard from friends that people in the Southeast are friendly, I decided to test this theory and hitchhike from city to city. Not only did I get a ride from the first person I flagged down, he even bought me some ayran from a roadside ayran stand. Before hitchhiking I put my credit card and money in my sock as a precaution, in case I was mugged, but it turned out to be totally unnecessary.

Other cities that I saw included a medieval town called Hasankefy, and Mardin, which is on a big hill that overlooks the Syrian plain. Mardin looks almost exactly what a stereotypical middle eastern village would look like. Many of the people even use donkeys to transport their goods around.

Highlights of the trip include visiting a Syrian Orthodox monastery and meeting its Metropolitan (an Orthodox version of a bishop), staying in the dingiest hotel of my entire life (if my auto mechanic father decided to convert part of his shop into a hotel it would look like this), and spending four hours trying to explain Christianity to a Muslim religious scholar who completely railroaded me in the conversation. Being talked at for several hours and interrupted whenever you try to speak is no fun, especially when it's your second language.

I haven't figured out how to post pictures on blogspot yet, but if you are on facebook then you can see my pics there. I just put up about 60 of them.