FIRST DAY IN ANKARA

Monday, June 2, 2008

 THIS HAS TO BE ONE OF THE BEST ICE CREAMS I HAVE EVER TASTED. BLACKBERRY (AMORA) AND VANILLA WITH LITTLE CHEWY BITS OF DRIED FRUIT AND CRUNCHY PISTACHIO NUTS

Downtime at Bilkent University

Waking up in our own spacious apartment after a series of rather small hotel rooms was heavenly. Outside the sun was shining in a cloudless bright blue sky, signalling another day of perfect weather. And soon Hilmi Demir, who is the young philosopher who has arranged everything for us, and his American wife, Leslie, were waiting outside, to take us all for breakfast at a nearby student café, where we sat outside and had queijo quentes (cheese toasts), peach juice and coffee. It was the day of the men’s conferences, so we women stayed chatting with another cup of coffee and then went to stock up at a campus supermarket. Back in the apartment I loaded up the washing machine, and then we met up again to catch the free shuttle to downtown Ankara, which lies 1/2 hour away. When we got off I immediately lost all sense of direction. It is very confusing when you really have no idea of where you are and cannot understand a single word of the written, nor indeed the spoken language. We have heard from various ex-pats how incredibly difficult it is to learn Turkish - almost all remain resignedly at a somewhat rudimentary level after a couple of years. There are no prepositions, for example, just a very large number of suffixes, which all change the meaning of a word. 

Leslie took us through a warren of streets displaying a busy Turkish city life, very far removed from the throngs of tourists at the ancient ruins of the last three days. We had delicious ice creams at Mado, a restaurant with pretty mosaic decorations on the walls. At some point in our trip Güray had shown us an artichoke field and explained that the Turkish variety is too tough to eat the leaves - you only use the bottom. I was lucky to spot a big basket of artichokes with a couple of guys sitting patiently scooping out the bottoms, which were floating in salt water waiting for customers to buy. 

Our walk finished with a goblet of cold draught Efes beer before we caught the shuttle back to the university. There was no air-conditioning in the packed bus, and I promptly feel asleep.

At night it had cooled off considerably and the Demirs led us to a beautiful club on campus with a panoramic view of the city, where we had dinner with a merry group of philosophers.