6/6 – 6/8/17. Northeast Turkey
6-6
From a distance, Kayseri was beautiful. Ericyes Dag, a conical snowcapped peak, loomed over orderly ranks of buildings and park-like groves. Birdsong competed with the hum of traffic. Then I left the highway, and the mask fell away. Beeped at, cussed out, and whirled around roundabouts for forty minutes, I was thoroughly disenchanted by the time I found the archaeological museum. As usual, I was the only visitor. After peering through dusty cases at pottery shards and the like, I decided to continue the excitement with a long walk around the medieval buildings of the city center. All were closed – so I washed my hands of Kayseri, fought my way back to the highway, and continued eastward.
After pausing for lunch at the deserted site of Kultepe, I drove straight through to Sivas. Along the way, in addition to the usual aggravations of driving in rural Turkey (cows on the highway, etc.), I was routed into oncoming traffic in the wake of an accident, which made for some interesting maneuvering.
Sivas appeared like a mirage after three hours of rolling and treeless steppe. As in Kayseri, however, traffic was heavy and the streets bewildering. I lost a full hour trying to find a parking spot within a half-mile of my hotel. But once out of the car, I found myself rather liking this seldom-visited city. Among Sivas’ impressive collection of Seljuk monuments, I especially liked the glorious façade of the Cifte Minare, built as an Islamic seminary in the thirteenth century. Equally evocative was the Gok Medrese, located at the end of a street of crumbling half-timbered houses.
6-7
Besides a run-in with a Kangal mastiff, the long and hilly drive to Amasya passed uneventfully. To avoid the hopelessly snarled traffic of the city center, I parked on a quiet street and walked to the historic district, sprawled picturesquely on either side of a rushing river. True to form, however, I was less interested in the quaint Ottoman houses overhanging the river banks than in the tombs of the Pontic kings, cut into the cliffs overlooking town.
Like so many provincial cultural attractions, the Amasya archaeological museum was empty and more than a little dusty. With the exception of a darkened room inexplicably filled with mummies, the contents were unremarkable. The Amasya castle was another pastiche from many eras. Little of the ancient fortress was visible – but virtually all of Amasya was, spread out below against the backdrop of the Pontic Alps.
On the way back to Sivas, I detoured down an empty highway to the village occupying the ruins the Comana, a major city in ancient Pontus. Even for a minor site, Comana was pretty rustic – a herd of cows was coming down the access road, and a farm dog wandered by with her pups as I tried to force the rusted gate open. Although it was obvious that fairly extensive excavations had been undertaken in the 2016 season – several blocks of late antique housing stood exposed in a series of raw test pits – knee-high weeds made it equally clear that nobody had visited since last summer. As usual, fortunately, the solitude was worth the burrs.
6-8
Five hundred kilometers of nothing in particular separate Sivas and Erzurum. Bad roads liven the drive a little, but only a little. Altintepe, an archaeological site atop a grassy hill in a valley rimmed by blue mountains, lies about halfway – but the site is closed. I contemplated wriggling under the fence, but a lack of interest (and a reluctance to seed my shirt with burrs) interposed.
As usual, my hotel proved elusive. After frantically parallel parking near what turned out to be a street with the same name as the one on which my hotel was actually located, I wandered until I found the right neighborhood. Once I did, the manager’s flunky, sent to help me find a nearby parking spot, moved my car onto the sidewalk in front of the hotel – which was convenient for me, if not for pedestrians.
The historic center of Erzurum, only a half-mile from my hotel, was compact enough to explore in a couple hours. As in Sivas and Kayseri, the most impressive monuments are medieval and Islamic. The clear highlight was the Cifte Minareli Medrese, whose tiled minarets glistened against a backdrop of snow-streaked hills.
In this conservative city, I had little choice but to eat at sunset like everyone else. Making my way to a large kebab place, I was seated at a long communal table loaded with the traditional components of a Turkish Iftar: baskets of bread, platters of salad, dishes of honeyed pastries, etc. Lentil soup was brought out, drinks were poured – and then everyone waited expectantly for sunset. The instant the muezzins began to call, they were drowned by the clatter of a hundred spoons. Frantic waiters with platters of food ran between the tables, delivering entrees – in my case, kofte (spiced meatballs). Within a half-hour, all was over. The guests departed en masse, leaving heaps of empty dishes strewn like so many picked bones over stained tablecloths. Pleasantly stuffed, I followed in their wake, pausing to admire the full moon rising over the Cifte Minareli.
