Travel Journal

2002-10-25

Ankara

We arrived in Ankara a little after 8am, got on the bus, and got to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations shortly before it opened at 8:30. The museum was terrific, and here Lale gave us an orientation tour for about 40 minutes before giving us a fair amount of time to explore the museum on our own (about an hour). The museum featured artifacts going as far back as the sixth millenium BC, such as mother-goddess figurines. One of the most impressive exhibits was a reconstruction of "King Midas' Tomb". Apparently, excavations were done relatively recently (starting in the 1950's?) of some large burial mounds of the Phrygians, and for a while people believed that this particular tomb had been the tomb of the legendary King Midas (although there was no gold in the tomb). However, more recent research indicates that it's not possible for it to have been the tomb of Midas. In any case, the way the burial mounds were formed was by building a doorless wooden chamber around the body of the dead king and the grave goods, building another doorless wooden chamber around that, filling the space between the walls with rubble, building a very solid stone chamber around all of that (also with rubble between the stone wall and the outer wooden wall), and finally piling a very large quantity of dirt over the whole thing, so that the burial mound resembles a hill. Because there were no doors into these structures, they were never robbed, and when excavated, were in a remarkable state of preservation. Personally, I can't believe that the whole thing didn't eventually cave in, given how many thousands of years all that dirt was pressing down on the stone and wood structure inside!

After we finished at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, we headed to Atatürk's Mausoleum, a very impressive monument up on a hill. Inside, in addition to the mausoleum itself, there is a fascinating museum about Atatürk's contribution to the modern turkish state. It is truly astonishing to think that one man could not only lead a rebellion which forced the WWI victors out of Turkey through 3 years of difficult fighting, but also established a democratic secular government, a new alphabet (switching from arabic to roman letters), conversion to the metric system, equal rights for women, a modern educational system, etc. It is easy to see why he is held in such reverence by the Turks!

After lunch at a restaurant in the neighborhood where Lale grew up, we got on the bus for the 5-hour ride to Cappadocia (interrupted by 2 breaks at highway rest stops that differed little from rest stops everywhere). When we arrived, the group split into two pensiones, one called "Greek House" and the other called "Lamia's House". Greek House is much larger, and John and I are staying there.

The village we are staying in is called Mustafa Pasha, and is one of the towns that was predominantly Greek in population before the exchange of people between Turkey and Greece after the war of independence. The pensione belonged to the mayor of the town back when it was a greek town, and is quite spacious; there are even frescoes on some of the walls! Apparently, the grandfather of Süleyman (our host) bought the place for 10 liras back when he was a schoolteacher here.

We had dinner sitting on the floor at Greek House, eating food prepared by Süleyman's wife -- lucky us!"

Ankara

The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations

Mustafa Pasha