Entries about konya

We awoke, but not totally afresh as the walls are paper thin and there were people afoot last night in the hotel. It seems there are only businessmen staying here, if the attendance at breakfast was any indication. The girls and I were the only females in sight, either amongst the staff or the clientele. Turkish hotels and pensions often provide breakfast and even though it wasn’t officially included in our room rate, I felt for the price we were paying, I would swallow my pride and ask if we could have it included. The manager agreed, or at least I think he did – we’ll find out when it comes time to pay the bill upon checkout. We never know what we’ll get with a meal in Turkey, even if we order something we think we’re familiar with. While Abby was hoping for pancakes, I assured her it would be ‘anything but’ and would likely include a number of olives. It turned out to be a buffet, with several types of olives, some cheeses, buns, halva, boiled eggs, pink sausage, cucumbers, tomatoes, rolled Taquito-type things, jams and tahini paste. And the darkest tea you’ve ever seen – Ben thought it was coffee before he tried it. When I went back to help Abby select some more halva (a crumbly nut butter sweetened with sugar), I noticed something off to the side, warming in a dish: it turned out to be yayla corbası, a warm soup made of yoghurt, eggs and rice, seasoned with mint and paprika. I felt I had to try it. The 100 ml I took back sufficed to feed the entire family – again, like the cold yoghurt drink called ‘aryan’ that the Turkish love, it seems to be an acquired taste. Upon filling our plates and sitting down, we noticed we had already made a gaffe. You are to use a communal basket to hold your buns rather than placing them directly on your plate. And, taking community one step further, we saw four businessmen sharing a single heaping plate of all the foodstuffs rather than each having their own. In that way, it’s a more intimate culture.

But enough about food (our go-to subject)...we piled out the door determined to learn something about Konya and its famous citizen, Rumi, a thirteenth century Persian poet, jurist and Sufi mystic. While he is ‘big’ in Iran, Turkey and neighbouring areas, his importance transcends national and ethnic borders (according to Wikipedia). His poems have been translated into many languages and he was even described as ‘the most popular poet in America’ a few years ago. He died in Konya and was buried there. His shrine has become a place of pilgrimage, even to this day. Following his death, his followers founded the Mevlevi Order, also known as the Order of the Whirling Dervishes; they are most famous for their dance known as the Sema ceremony, where they twirl themselves into a trance during worship. The building where he’s buried is now known as the Mevlana Museum and encompasses several tombs, a mosque, a dance hall, and former dervish living quarters and school. When we arrived at the museum, we quickly determined we would learn nothing without the audio guides so rented two (tripling the entrance price). We could then understand some details of Rumi’s life and the dervishes’ existence. When we heard he is known for five poetic works, Hannah voiced the opinion that that did not appear to be very many for such an important guy. We then learned that one of his great works, the Masnavi, has 26,000 couplets alone and took him ten years to compose. Some others are even longer! OK, so it seems he was more prolific than we first thought. One of the quotes we saw on tourist literature attributed to him was “Either seem as you are or be as you seem” which seems to be a bit more cryptic version of “Walk the walk and talk the talk.”

Rumi is actually ensconced under the Green Tomb, a large green pencil-shaped appendage shooting out of the roof. We needed to cover our shoes and don head scarves (not Ben) before entering. When inside, we could see several pilgrims praying among the Turkish and foreign tourists. It truly seemed to be an important site for them. It was interesting to see samples of the Koran with beautiful calligraphy and gilded work, reminding us of the Bibles monks had illustrated several centuries ago. Mosques are generally large, open spaces and the building housing the tombs of Rumi and various other Mevlevi leaders appears similar. They were all together, next to each other, with Rumi given more distinction and room than the others. The walls and ceilings had painted designs in many colours and there were various items from the dervishes’ life displayed. However, it was all simpler and plainer than we expected. Other buildings showed how the dervishes occupied small quarters, known as cells, where they studied and meditated. While we would have liked to observe a dervish ceremony, they are only held on Saturdays in Konya; we may have more success in Cappadocia, our next stay.

The afternoon held two museums for us, one we stumbled upon when we went closer to see an intriguing building. It housed a large diorama of miniatures depicting life in Konya between 1914 and 1930, a time which included WW I and the Turkish war of independence. It didn’t seem to get many visitors and we only became aware of it when the guide invited us to come to the ‘free museum.’ It was indeed free (you never know) and worthwhile. The second, the Karatay Medresesi, was promoted to me by the tourism centre as a place to learn about the history of tiles in Konya. Well, who could resist that? Truth be told, while we initially liked the large partially tiled dome inside, we were a bit underwhelmed by the few items on display. Abby said afterwards, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, “I’m sure glad we didn’t miss THAT, Mom, good call!’ The afternoon was finished up with the three of us girls going window shopping – the many sweets are hard to resist, especially when the vendors give you samples to try. I succumbed to these tubular wafer cookies ingested with a creamy coconut filling – they surpass Turkish delight in my books.

We walked back to the hotel, noticing abandoned chai glasses on store fronts or on the steps in the main square – these are later picked up by the tea shops who service these areas with mobile tea ‘waiters.’ During our walk, I was struck by the many juxtapositions I saw between the modern and traditional cultures in Konya: old men holding prayer beads in one hand and a cell phone in the other; window displays showing full, ankle length skirts alongside faded skinny jeans; pairs of young men wearing Nikes and walking arm in arm; traditional wedding dresses displayed beside the white ones popular in North America. Beyond the museums and mosques, that is where the real interest lies, in observing the people of Turkey. In this country, it is very common to see groups of men gathering together. The spectrum traverses from boyhood till past retirement age. Thus it is that we see men sharing meals, playing backgammon, and holding conversations over chai. There are women too, but their groups seem not as plentiful. I do not want to give the wrong impression as we see families out as well; it just seems to be more of a man’s dominion. I’ve told Ben he should just join in but he feels an affinity for us (and for the English language, I expect).

We got a nutritious start to the day with a full Turkish breakfast. Today it consisted of sliced cucumbers, tomatoes and oranges, olives, a slice of very young cheese, another packaged slice of prepared cheese, a few different cookies, and a chocolate. This was accompanied by a loaf of sliced bread and a large omelette that we shared between us. Of course this whole assortment of eats was washed down with as much Nescafe or tea as we liked. If you can believe it this was a slightly smaller breakfast than we were served yesterday. We sure didn’t need to stop for an early lunch.
We drove for an hour paralleling the coast (but not in sight of it) and found this section to be very densely populated with all sundry in terms of vehicles. As we made our turn northwards towards Turkey’s interior the population density and traffic became quite sparse. The mountains and hills of Turkey seem like a pretty tough place to eke out a living. From what we witnessed, goat herding is a common occupation in this area along with some logging of pine and some quarrying of stone and marble. As we left the coast we ran a short gauntlet of roadside fruit sellers about half way up the first set of mountains. We were surprised to see so many bananas for sale along with the many oranges. With so little traffic and so many competitors it did not seem a profitable occupation. We stopped to pick up a few oranges but were disappointed that they fell far short of the sweet ones we had come to enjoy in Kas.

As we neared the highest summit in our drive to Konya (1800 meters) we encountered a blanket of snow on the mountains and some even along the road. We were certainly leaving the Mediterranean behind us. Yet, even though the mountains were white, one still couldn’t shake the mental image of an arid, grey and pine-dotted landscape landscape beneath it. You could just tell that in a few short months the heat would be insufferable here. Whenever we saw a small town or settlement we were mystified as to how such a rocky landscape could support people.

About 75 kilometers before Konya, the landscape gave way to stony rolling hills which slowly lost their amplitude, yielding to some slightly more fertile but lightly cultivated land. The pine trees gave way to patches of deciduous trees. After 40 kilometers of unvarying terrain Konya just suddenly appeared before us with nothing really indicating why it should be located here rather than somewhere else in the flat expanse.
The outlying area seems fairly new and consists of some fairly large single and multifamily dwellings –some of them upscale. This quickly changed to a uniform landscape of 4 to 6 story apartment buildings with the vast majority in excellent repair. As with the newer parts of Antalya, the city of Konya seems geared for a lot of car traffic. The road ways are incredibly wide and traffic flows pretty freely. In some ways the town reminded us of Edmonton.

Our hotel is located near the historic quarter of town where the traffic is more chaotic so some of the buildings are older and bit dilapidated although our hotel is quite well-kept, modern and expensive by Turkish standards. Unfortunately, we could not find any deals on the Internet when we looked for a place to stay. So we are paying something approaching prices in Europe (about 100 hundred dollars) which is an adjustment for us. Tonight we are paying for a single hotel room the same amount we paid to have a four bedroom, three bathroom villa with a pool right on the ocean.

The hotel staff speaks little to no English but the front desk manager is pretty resourceful. Muriel went down to ask about how to get some heat in our hotel room. He invited Muriel behind the desk and asked her to type her questions into Google translate. Muriel also got some information about having breakfast in the morning. To explain the times that breakfast was served he used his desk calculator to show the times. Technology really breaks down barriers. By the way, the heat is centralized boiler heat, so they don’t turn it on until the evening. We have just gone from slightly cool to very hot in a matter of minutes (Muriel and Abby are happy while Hannah and I are fanning ourselves in our shorts). We think we should take our showers this evening as it seems we may only have hot water when the heat is on.

We have not explored much of Konya yet. We are close to an incredible historic square where the poet Rumi is interred but I will leave details about this area until tomorrow. In our wanderings we have noticed that the population here is far more conservative than the coast. The number of women wearing head scarves outnumbers those not wearing scarves by at least 10 to 1. Many more women here are wearing coats and dresses that come down to their ankles unlike the wide variety of western fashion we found on the coast.

The Konyans seem to love their sugar as our neighbourhood abounds with sweet shops. They sell candy that looks like very large peppermint balls but the white ones are flavoured with bergamot instead of mint. They come in a wide variety of flavours and colours and the shops are ready to sell them by the bushel. From what we have experienced thus far some prices are a bit lower than the coast. We had a large and late lunch since we did not get into Konya until 2 pm. So for dinner we were looking for just a small snack. We ate at a very popular doner restaurant. Hannah wasn’t hungry so just the three of us went. We each had a hot doner submarine sandwich and a bottle of water. The price was a mere four dollars Canadian (not each but for ALL of our meals).

We are winding it up early tonight and look forward to seeing some historic sites tomorrow.