ANKARA

Our first stop was Ankara. Luckily Bayram, met us at the airport. From there we took a bus (one of many outside the airport terminal) to a main bus station from where we took a taxi to the university (where we were staying). We probably could have managed if we had had to, but it was nice to just follow his lead. Ankara was much bigger and more spread out than we had expected. It took us close to an hour to get from the airport to the university. We also discovered that the campus of the university - the Middle East Technical University (abbreviated as ODTU in Turkish) - is 45 square kilometers and has about 20,000 students. It has housing for students and faculty, day-care centers, schools, shops and restaurants and feels a bit like a small town. There are busts of scientists everywhere, along with other statues and pieces of art. It has large areas that are wooded with picnic tables and benches (that Elyse used when reading and writing in the travel journal). ODTU is one of the primary technical schools, so the students are among the best in the country. Gerald was giving a series of talks there, but we had the Sunday (we arrived Saturday night) to explore the city together. Saturday night we grabbed a quick bite with Bayram at one of the places on campus after we were settled in the guesthouse. We were introduced to the culture of bread (different varieties before and during the meal) and tea (served after the meal in small tulip-shaped glasses). The tea is very strong - strong enough that we both had to succumb to drinking it with sugar.

Ankara has been the capital city of Turkey since it became a republic in 1923. Before that, it was a village of little importance. So, other than a citadel, there is a not a lot of ancient history to see in the streets. There are lots of government buildings and grand statues (mostly military-like, honoring Atatürk) and a lot of shops, but one has to go to museums to see the history. The good news is that they have a great museum in Ankara (European Museum of the Year in 1997): the Museum of Anatolian Civilization (Anatolia is the central part of Turkey). It is well laid out and has artifacts from the 6th millenium BC (see cave painting picture below) up through Roman times (the coin collection actually goes up through the first Turkish Republic coins). These included cave paintings, jewelry, goddess statues (no men), pottery, huge stone reliefs, metal work and even some wooden tables. There were pieces that Elyse teaches about in her classes that made the history all the more real to her. And some of the pieces were exquisitely crafted, especially the metal work. The garden area is strewn with reliefs, pieces of columns and statues, along with man-sized pottery urns that had been used for storage. Below is a small sample of what we saw. The bull was tiny, the geese mid-sized (they made us laugh - they look so modern despite being thousands of years old), and the stone relief and the urns were huge.

Before we had started our visit in the museum, we had split a simit while sitting in the garden. We experienced our first call to prayer then. From each mosque, verses of the Koran are chanted over the loudspeakers attached to the minarets. It becomes a chorus of voices with that wonderful middle Eastern/Asian combination of notes. It would become our replacement for the chorus of church bells we hear regularly in Heidelberg.

After spending many hours in the museum, we walked up the (very steep) hill to the nearby citadel. The view from the top of the hill reinforced how big and spread out the city is. Lots of terracotta roofs and minarets filling the hillsides. The fortress's main parts date from the 600's (!) and there are about 40 polygonal towers around the defensive walls. Makes it look different from Western castle walls. We went through one of the gates and past some timbered houses and started down the narrow laneways. Ends up that people live here in some of the most run-down houses we have seen (or had seen up to this point). There were a few old houses that had been restored into nice-looking restaurants, but mostly it was depressing looking. We were walking down one narrow street and were worried that it was turning in the wrong direction and would not lead us out the way we had come in. We started to turn around to go back and a woman we had just passed sitting on her doorstep indicated that we should continue on. (Somehow the Turks were always able to pick out that we were tourists.) We did, and very shortly found ourselves where we wanted to be. Once again language barriers did not block their friendly help.

Our 2-week eating frenzy began Sunday night when we went out with Bayram and his wife, Deniz to a restaurant whose specialty is baklava. We had only had a simit for lunch, so we needed something real first, but Bayram skipped dinner and only ate baklava for dessert. The food in Turkey is unbelievably good. The spices and flavors are subtle and delicious, and the meat (usually lamb) is superbly tender. Despite eating a relatively light dinner (anticipating dessert), we were a bit overwhelmed when each of us received a plate with four different varieties of baklava on it. They were all fantastically good - not too sweet and stuffed full of nuts (walnuts or pistachios) - but we couldn't finish them all, so we took home a doggy bag.

The next day, while Gerald was working, Elyse stayed around campus since most of the sites in the city were closed on Mondays. She explored the museum on campus (small, but including artifacts from the four bronze-age settlements discovered on the campus as well as those from elsewhere in Turkey) and went to the library to read the (English-language) Turkish newspaper. It was fascinating to get a different perspective on events in the world. It was also confusing to try to understand their system of government/elections (parliamentary with a twist). It is in the midst of a challenge to determine the balance of power between the president and parliament, and between secular and religious forces.

Tuesday, Elyse headed into Ankara to visit the Ethnography museum she had read about. Neither Bayram nor any of his colleagues had been to it, so he couldn't give me a better sense of how to get there that what we could discern from the map. Unfortunately the map wasn't all that clear, so it took a bit longer to find it than she would have liked (including asking directions from many folks by pointing to the Turkish name in the pamphlet she had), but she found it...just in time for it to be closed for its lunch break. So, she bought a simit to eat as she wandered around the streets of the neighborhood and then sat on the benches outside the museum that overlooked the city. The museum was relatively small, but very interesting. As its name suggests, it is focused on the traditions of the area, including their crafts (e.g., weaving, textiles, metal work, porcelain, woodwork and calligraphy) and ceremonies (weddings, circumsions). They had models of the rooms and ceremonies including mannequins wearing traditional costumes (see below), and many examples of the art work and the carved doors/pulpits. Elyse laughed at herself when she realized that she was dismissing the pieces from the 15th and 16th century as new. The museum had been used as the gravesite/mausoleum for Atatürk when he first died (not the first time he died, but right after he died) until they built the mausoleum that now holds his remains. The main lobby still has a huge marble memorial to him, surrounded by pictures and memorabilia.

Elyse's next stop was the nearby ruins of Roman Baths (see below, left), dating from 211 AD (and used until the 6th century). It was a challenge to imagine folks using the huge complex that is now in the middle of this bustling modern city, but kind of interesting, too. Apparently the warm and hot rooms are bigger than is usual for Roman Baths - probably due to the cold Ankara winters. She gave up trying to find the (supposedly nearby) Temple of Augustus due to her poor map, and walked back down the main boulevard that is lined with shops and the occasional statue (see below, right) She was impressed to see how quickly and completely they had repaired the damage from the bombing the week before in one of the central malls - probably to make a statement. We decided that the number of Turkish flags being flown had probably increased after the bombing similar to how they increased in the US after 9/11. Nationalism often seems to reap more harm than good....

Elyse took one of the minivans back to ODTU and waited for Gerald to finish work. Then a few physicists (all but Elyse since Deniz is also a physicist), including Gerald's "new" graduate student from UCONN - who had been at UCONN this year, but whom Gerald only met when he got to Ankara) and we went to a former home of a pasha (noble) that has been renovated into a restaurant by the citadel. We had a fantastic view of the city sprawling across the hills and enjoyed watching as the sun sets and the lights of the city came on. It looked beautiful. The house was also partly a museum with examples of costumes and household items that were fun to see. The food was fantastic (and plentiful, as usual). There was superb bread (flat, but more dough-y than pita) with butter and honey. Then we started with an assortment of mezes (hors d'oeuvres), as is the custom here. These included things like mashed grilled eggplant, a white (feta-like) cheese and tomato mixture, and a mixed salad (tomatoes and cucumbers usually). There was a dramatic display when their signature long pita was brought out (see picture). A guy came out in traditional dress and a HUGE, slightly curved knife and proceeded to slice it into thin pieces. [The picture shows, from left, Deniz, Bayram and Gokçe (Gerald's student), Murat (and Gerald).] In case we hadn't eaten enough by then, the main courses (kebabs) were next. They were delicious, but we were all too full to partake in dessert. After a cup of tea, we waddled out.

Wednesday, Elyse also stayed on campus, partly because she had noticed that there was a lecture in the afternoon by Lord Chris Patten, currently the chancellor of Oxford University, but formerly (among other positions) the governor of Hong Kong when it was handed back to the Chinese. The title of his talk was something about Turkey and the EU and she was mostly curious to see what kinds of reactions and questions he would get from the audience. She also wasn't game to try to find even more obscure sites in Ankara than what she had found the day before.

In reading the Turkish newspaper that morning (and being struck, once again, by the number of people who came to read multiple newspapers available at the Reserve Reading Room), she noticed a picture of the parade that had taken place the day before (May 29) to celebrate the 554th anniversary of the "Conquest of Istanbul" by Mehmet II. She chuckled at the caption as Western history books always refer to this event as the "Fall of Constantinople" (and the end of the Eastern Roman Empire). Point of view is everything, isn't it?

It ends up the reason Patten was here was for a ceremony to mark the beginning of a formal Oxford-Ankara Academic partnership that includes Oxford, ODTU and an Economics and Technology University in Ankara. This will include exchange programs and research collaborations across the institutions. So, there were a series of talks from dignitaries from the various institutions and a signing ceremony before Patten gave his talk. The other talks were actually interesting as well. One gave a history of ODTU (including the fact that it had been a barren landscape and that every one of the many trees covering the 4,000 hectares was planted by the university), and others talked about the importance of this academic link across cultures and histories.

Patten's speech was excellent. Not only is he a very good speaker (witty, clear, good examples), but he was very respectful of the Turkish sensibilities (at least as far as Elyse could tell) and made it clear that despite what anyone else said (including him), Turkey was the one to decide if it was worth joining the EU. He noted several parallels between the British and Turkish history/culture that helped to put Turkey's current choice of whether to pursue EU membership into a broader historical context. He noted that both countries had had huge, powerful empires that had crumbled. In noting that the Queen of England is formally the head of the church and the state (and that he, a Catholic man of Irish origins, was a British minister), he pointed out that there are several different ways to mix religion and politics. He also reminded us that England had decided NOT to join the EU when it was first established and was then rejected when it first applied for membership. All of this made Elyse (and others, presumably) take a step back and look at Turkey's EU membership application (and the issues surrounding it) within a broader scope. He feels the EU is designed to unify people, not nations (people will still think of themselves as French, Italian, etc.). Patten also talked about the "more poisonous forms of nationalism" that had led to the world wars and to the "identity politics" (grouping by religion, race, etc.) that assume pure-blood groupings and are causing problems today. He feels that the EU-Turkey relationship is a definining moment for Europe. The clash of nations has subsided somewhat in Europe since WWII, but there is now the threat of a clash of civilizations / cultures. This decision can influence how we (as a world) deal with that. Turkey's young and vibrant population could revive an aging Europe (one of the speakers referred to Turkey as Europe's Viagra), while Europe would provide economic opportunities for growth. There weren't as many questions in the audience as Elyse had hoped (even though Patten promised, as a former politician, to avoid answering them), but it was an excellent program and she's glad she attended.

And what better way to end the day (and our visit to Ankara) than dinner out. Deniz and Bayram took us to a fantastic restaurant run by a young, wiz-chef who specializes in food from Southern Turkey where Deniz is from. It was a beautiful evening and a beautiful place; we were seated next to a fountain surrounded by flowering rose bushes and trees. But the spectacular setting paled in comparison to the food. No menu was used - they told the waiter a few of the things they wanted us to try, but also told him to choose whatever else he thought we should have. And so it began. A long pita arrived, but we knew not to fill up on it, so we resisted the temptation to eat the whole thing. Then came the mezes: salad with a pomegranate dressing, delicious stuffed eggplants (they dry the eggplant skins and then reconstitute them when cooking them stuffed with rice, herbs and/or meat; we saw strands of the dried skins hanging in the markets); tasty köfte (herbed meatballs) wrapped in bulghar; a salsa-like mixture of tomatoes, zucchini, and red and black pepper; and a soft mixture of meat and spices that a guy was mixing not far from the table (see left). And, if this was not amazing enough, the main course was even better. The waiter brought out a huge piece of lamb (the rib area) that was stuffed with herbed rice and sitting on plain rice. He proceeded to use only two forks (no knives at any point) to skin, de-bone (and de-grissle) the lamb and then to break the meat up into bite-sized pieces. Then he mixed the meat and rice together and served it to us. It was unbelievably tender and spectacularly tasty. Despite all of us eating a fair bit, there was still enough left for Bayram and Deniz to take home for another meal. We had saved some room for dessert based on Bayram's instructions and we were very glad that we did. Dessert was called "irmik helvasi", a combination of semolina, sugar syrup and roasted pine nuts that melted in your mouth. The requisite cup of tea helped us digest a bit, but we would need many hours more to let our bodies work through that meal.