TURKEY December 22, 2009: Americans in Turkey – Day 6. Harran Beehive Houses

Hi All –

Wow!
Woke up in Urfa (as the Turks call Sanliurfa) and decided that although the Beyzade Konak Hotel was wanting in many ways and certainly remained in the no-star zone, it did have a little charm when the sun was shining… and that with a major facelift it could be quite nice, albeit a bit rough around the edges. We had breakfast at the hotel (included in our grand $30 price)… and then got our car from the “otopark” across the street — 24 hour service for $1… and we set off for the day – main destination: Harran.

Driving to Harran was fairly straight forward.. flat, good road, great weather. We got to the town and visited the beehive shaped mud houses (some still operational) built about 200 years ago. We also strolled through unbelievable ruins  — actually the whole country is filled with ruins that are just strewn about everywhere.. many are now part of the new infrastructure… Harran housed a major university around 300 BC, and a palace both of which were visible in parts amid piles of history laying about. Wherever you walk you got the sense you are walking in history — literally crunching it as you step on fragments everywhere.

The town (if you can call it that) is pretty sparse… As I was walking (somehow lost Mike for a while, but we later re-connected with the help of our cellphones) among sheep on the hill above the ruins of the university, I stumbled upon a middle school class of boys with their teacher on a field trip. The teacher was anxious to practice his English, so we chatted a bit and then lots of photos back and forth with the boys (who are studying English but were mostly too shy to speak to me)…

Harran is famous for its traditional ‘beehive’ adobe houses, constructed entirely without wood. The design which supposedly has been unchanged for thousand of years keeps the structure dry and makes them cool in summer and hot in winter. The “new town is actually about 2 kilometers away..

The people are ethnic Arabs… with 10-15 children in each family.. a group of which followed me around as I photographed.

From Harran we decided to drive to the Syrian border.. ok, ok, I know that everyone warned us not to stray… but it was so close (20 miles).  Pretty uneventful.. typical border.

Then driving back toward Urfa (enroute to Gazantiep where we would catch a late flight back to Istanbul for our evening of luxury) I stopped to photograph a two story building whose operations focused on drying out the skin of sheep on the rooftop (hudreds of sheep skins)… women laying them out — walking on the rooftop.) Sitting outside the building on a rug in the sun were three men and a few kids.. The men were clearly resting while the women did all the work. Men smoking and having tea.. Women working hard!

Anyway, they invited us to join them for some “chai”.. and we accepted.. So we all sat having a totally non-comprehensible conversation — them talking Turkish and we talking English… but all acting as if we understood each other… getting quite good at that… The women came down from the roof to join us, but sat on another rug just behind the men… But everyone was jovial.. there were several kids. Not sure who was with whom, and on the whole the men looked way too old to have such young children and way older than the women. By the way, the women were all rolling cigarettes and smoking too.

One thing we did understand in the conversation was that they like Obama… thumbs up… and then thumbs down for Bush. This has happened several times when people find out we are from the US (an identification we don’t use in any shops, because despite the fact that the dollar is useless, I guess we will always be considered “rich”, so prices inflate immediately — in the shops we pretend to be Finnish… since no one can speak that language, they leave us alone and all the hawkers disappear).. In one shop in Istanbul selling trinkets and Turksih candies, they had a photo of Obama from his visit to Turkey — with handwriting on the “sign” saying that this was Obama’s favorite shop..

We left our new friends after about 20 minutes of warm “conversation”… and decided to stop for a late lunch/ early dinner back in Urfa to give the place a second look… It was still dusty and grimy and noisy and more like towns in lower level developing nations of Latin America.. but it was lively and bustling. As we meandered through the town we stumbled on a decent hotel which – had we found earlier might have encouraged us to stay the additional night in Urfa.  Anyway, we ate and then headed to Gazantiep to catch the last flight back to Istanbul (and to our luxury room at the Four Seasons)… The drive was a bit intense, especially since the sun had already set; it was dark; and the pollution makes the air really thick, decreasing visibility.

But the roads are good and we got to the airport in time for the flight. Chatted with an Iraqi business man at the airport while in line, who was frustrated that airport personnel in Turkey do not speak English!

Arrived safe and sound into the lap of luxury at the Four Seasons. The hotel is built on the grounds of an old prison in the Sultanameht district of the city. It’s a bit over the top. Bathroom is probably about 200 sq feet… A bit of a jump from the Beyzadie in Urfa. A few comparisons — At Beyzadie they had slippers in the bedroom, but they had been worn by others (old leather slippers); here you get brand new terry slippers; there we had a bathroom that was about 25 sq ft, with everything taking place in that space – here we have a huge bathroom with many different “compartments;” there we had some shades on the windows, here we have electric openers for drapes and shades… but I’ll let the pictures talk for themselves when we are back.

It’s about 1 am now, I’m headed to bed. Looking forward to good weather tomorrow here in Istanbul… it’s really warming up — so much so that I’m concerned I don’t have appropriate clothing, as evrything I brought is for winter (boots, wool pants, heavy sweaters, etc.)