Ankara Away - January 12th - 15th, 2024
Erzurum had been a decent first stop for our winter tour, but Susan and I were both excited to go see the higher, colder, and hopefully snowier mountains of central Asia. But since we're Americans, and any land route from Erzurum to that part of the world has to pass through Russia or Iran, it was back west to Ankara first, before catching a long flight east, to Almaty in Kazakhstan. Besides, that gave us time to do a little sightseeing that we'd passed up during our previous stopover there.
We cheaped out for the journey to Ankara, though, and rode a bus for about 13 hours under grey, drizzly clouds that seemed to stretch the entire length of Türkiye. Since these clouds obscured the views of all the nice mountains, that left me to focus on how fast the bus driver took the winding turns through mountain passes where the rain turned to a frozen mix. But we arrived at the bus station safe and sound, although very perplexed by the party that seemed to be happening at the platform for the bus next door, where a group of Turkish men sang and carried someone around on their shoulders. I guess they had more fun on that bus.
It was kind of nice to show up somewhere we'd actually been before, since that meant we didn't have to wander around trying to find the exit and the taxis. Easy enough to get to the hostel as well; to our amusement, the next morning in the daylight we realized it had the nicest, weatherproof outdoor foozball table either of us had ever seen. If you can't play soccer, play foozball, I guess.
One of Ankara's (the capital of Türkiye) biggest draws is Anıtkabir, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's mausoleum, and you can tell the Turks learned a thing or two from living in a country dotted with monumental architecture and tombs. After a stop for one last Turkish breakfast, we spent the rest of the day walking to and wandering around the Anıtkabir, and they certainly did Ataturk up right. First there's a ring of park space, and accompanying heavily-armed guards, along with a long lion-lined promenade leading to the next monumental layer. There a many-columned pavilion forms another ring around an expansive interior plaza, the walls decked with reddish-tan marble, the plaza itself done with decorative motifs in white and grey marble, all still shining and polished and unworn by the sands of time. Of course the monument is up on a hill, so the columns framed nice views of the glass skyscrapers clustered in different sectors of the city. Susan and I debated back-and-forth about whether the ceremonial guards stuck in glass boxes around the perimeter were real or just very good wax sculptures; when the guard changed and they marched out, stiff from either discipline or from being trapped in a meter-square display case for hours, it settled the question.
Epic reliefs done in the same tan stone adorn either side of the actual mausoleum building, depicting scenes from ancient Türkiye and their struggle for independence. That building itself is equally impressive, massive and adorned with sparkling gold, crimson, turquoise, and grey ceiling mosaics in woven geometric designs that would fit in with the finest mosques of Istanbul. Ataturk's massive marble display sarcophagus (because like any good mythologized country-founder he has a nice "show" sarcophagus separate from his real one) stood solemnly on the far side from the entrance, bedecked with wreaths from various groups that I imagine do a good deal of squabbling for favor in the dead man's eyes. We wavered between amazement and finding the whole thing overblown, but it was honestly really impressive, and I imagine that if that building manages to last to the year 2500 it will take a deserved place among Türkiye's old, monumental, must-see architecture.
Contained within the mausoleum are some museums detailing Ataturk's military service during WWI, how he led the founding of the modern Turkish state, and the numerous reforms he enacted as the first president. Of course, they only talked about the battles he won and conveniently left out how the Ottomans lost WWI, as well as his questionable involvement with numerous ethnic cleansing (and/or genocidal) events that led to modern Türkiye (what did ever happen to all those Christians, Greeks, Georgians, and Armenians?). It was a good glimpse into their national consciousness, though, and genuinely interesting reading about the reforms. One day, it's "Oh, man, we really need to get women involved in 'productive' society. Let them get educated and have jobs," the next, "Stop wearing those goofy Ottoman outfits and dress in suits and ties so the Europeans take us seriously," and the next, "Hey, what if we just changed the entire alphabet to Latin letters, right now, on the spot?".
Our second day in Ankara was a weird one - we had an overnight flight that didn't leave til 11:55 PM, but thankfully the hostel let us leave 4 peoples' worth of baggage with them while we killed time in the city. Susan got quality time with one last cat, and we spent a while wandering the Museum of Anatolian History. This was a bit unique in that it went really in depth about the Hittite civilization, which occupied most of central Anatolia during Antiquity, until the Turkic groups moved in. More really old pottery, bronze-work, and stone monuments from thousands of years ago. I thought it was cool how much this resembled the Assyrian artifacts we'd seen in the British Museum back in London, and also really appreciated the ancient cuneiform tablet-letters talking about boring stuff like who owed taxes or what a judge said about who owned certain livestock.
After that it was time for an art museum (of course), and Ankara's had some really unique pieces from mainly Turkish artists. Some paintings were by artists who had also been featured in the modern art museum in Istanbul, so we enjoyed spotting those that looked familiar.
After one last kebab dinner we couldn't delay any more, so we went back to the hostel, grabbed all our bags, and survived our last Turkish taxi to get to the Ankara airport one more time. Still far too early, we had to hang out past first security but before second security for a good hour and a half before they'd take our bags and let us in towards the terminals and gates. Timezone wise, we left Ankara just after midnight and landed in Almaty at about 8 AM. Turkish Airlines provided us a nice dinner and breakfast (2 meals on a 5 hour flight??) but I can't say we got more than a couple hours' fitful sleep.
Thankfully it wasn't too hard to stumble through Kazakh immigration; we mumbled something about tourism, they waved us on through, and all our checked bags made it, too. A few taxi drivers were far too eager to give us a ride, although maybe they just saw me grunting and wincing under the weight of our duffel bag and wanted to offer some relief. We had some Turkish Lira left to exchange that gave us just enough Kazakh Tenge to pay for a Beeline SIM card and a cab into central Almaty; after getting ripped off by other train station and airport ATMs, I was pretty grateful to only pay the airport penalty for the money change. The taxi driver liked to chit-chat with us through Google Translate, and we got a little concerned to hear him talk about how the winter had been warm and there should be snow on the streets and sidewalks of Almaty, but the flakes were starting to fall as we drove through the city, so Susan and I hoped that winter had followed us into Asia.
The Kazakhs mostly prefer to work in cash (or through the app Kaspi, which apparently has a somewhat frightening level of integration in their economy for a private company), so when we arrived to check into our apartment the host asked us to pay in Tenge. It was a little less than 600 dollars for two weeks at the apartment, a totally reasonable amount, until we did the math and realized we'd need to withdraw nearly 300,000 Tenge. Commence scurrying around to several different ATMs, taking several wrong turns along the way, staying just under each machine's withdrawal limit and scraping together the total amount, hoping US Bank didn't shut down our cards. But also he let us check in at like 10:00 in the morning, so we couldn't complain
Finally cleared to stay in our new home for the rest of January, deprived of sleep, and growing exhausted of sounding-out the cyrillic words on all the signs, Susan and I tossed the luggage on the floor, tossed ourselves in the bed, and took a nap.
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