A Little Diversion

The last time that I wrote I was on a bus headed to Afyon. I just love that the long distance buses here have free WiFi. Afyon proved to be an interesting enough place though I didn't have very high hopes. Like I said last time, I want to go to Olympos to live in a tree house for a week or so. The problem with that plan is that there are no ATMs in those tree houses so I have to kill a few days before I get there so that I can finish moving some money around and get it before I get there. Thus, a detour in Afyon and a couple other places seems like a good diversion.

In downtown Afyon I found a few cheap hotels... one of them was just $6, the cheapest that I've seen in Turkey, but it was soooooo dirty and didn't even have a shower so I splurged on a $10 dirty hotel and paid for 2 nights. I didn't have too much in mind to do that afternoon. I dropped off my laundry after searching for an hour for a place to drop it off, had some Iskender (sliced meat and bread smothered in tomato gravy and sour cream), took a few pictures of some mosques, and read my guide book in the park.

Afyon has some particularly beautiful mosques that blend Seljuk and Ottoman styles. For a little background, the Seljuks were a group of Turk nomads, moving ever westward out of central Asia and took control of present Turkey from the Byzantines in the 11th century. They had encountered Arabs on their migration and had converted to Islam bringing the art of mosque making to turkey and leaving behind many beautiful buildings that are still around today. Their two signature pieces are the spiral fluted minarets on some mosques and a kind of arch with geometric patterns that's found over the entrance to some buildings. In the mid 12th century the Mongols swept through turkey and shattered the Seljuk territories which fought for a century before only the Ottoman clan remained. The Ottoman empire lasted almost 700 years and at times controlled Greece, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and everything in between. As for the Ottoman style that I mentioned earlier, they're known for their tile work.

So the mosque that blends the two styles is the Imaret Camii, with a spiral fluted minaret accented with blue times. The mosque is right across the street from my hotel so I get to hear the call to prayer quite clearly. I think this is why my room was so cheap; also because it has no windows which helps with the noise a bit. Later in the afternoon I went to the park around the mosque to read because my room was too depressing.

While at the park, a man came to introduce himself to me. His name is Mustafa and he said that his son is learning English and that he'd love to introduce us. I talked with Mustafa for a good long time and eventually we went to a Baklava shop that his wife works at and they gave me 4 pieces of pistacio paklava (my favorite) a-la-mode while we waited for the son to show up. Eventually he did show up and we walked back to their house for tea.

The son, Barush, is a pretty talented guitarist though he's only been playing a couple years and he played me some songs (or parts of them) by Metallica, Nirvana, and some others. He doesn't sing them yet, but I knew most of the words so I took over that duty gladly. We played and talked pretty late into the night and they invited me to go to a hot spring the next night which I of course accepted.

The next morning I woke up late, called Sam in Skype, and sent off a horde of post cards. I wrote a bunch of them when I was in Jordan (over a month ago) but I never got around to mailing them and I had a few from Erika to post as well. Then I set off for the kale.

It's always a hot hike up to any kale, so I made a stop into a barber shop that I spotted along the way and got a shave finally. This was the thickest beard that I've donned yet and I wanted to keep a little bit of it for the memories so I decided to go with a soul patch. I know they're considered a little tacky by some but when else can I try it out? Maybe in a couple months I'll try my hand at a mustache to go with it!

This particular kale is one of the most memorable ones that I've seen in a long time. It's built on top of a 226 meter spike of volcanic stone jutting incongruity from the otherwise flat plains. 700 steps lead to the top, one of the most brutal vertical climbs I've done in a good long time. It's far too steep to take horses so I can't imagine why anyone would make a castle up there, but I guess that we'd have to blame the Hittites who first built a fort up there in 1000 BC. The local volcanic stone is dark so the place is called the Black Castle, though modern renovations were done in cheaper white stone.

I took a lot of pictures up top and was followed around the whole by some kid who must have been 10. He didn't want any apples or water that I offered him, he just wanted to watch me I guess. I called him Shortround, like that kid in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It reminds me of another kid who followed me around at Petra in Jordan who would parrot me and the other guys I was with. Before he left I made him shout, 'No time for love Dr. Jones!'. Well, this kid didn't talk but he did show me a couple rocks to climb.

Shortround followed me to the bottom and I got him an ice cream for the good company and I set off once more to find a cheap lunch. I also picked up my laundry and got out my ukulele to play in the park. I played a song and then the prayer call started. Well, it wasn't the call but rather a quite spoken sermon that they do around 5pm. I didn't even hear it because I was a little wrapped up but a girl who spoke english came and told me that that it's impropper to play music while that's all going on, and it goes on for like an hour so I retired and took a nap instead.

At 6:45 Barush called me to say that he would be at my hotel in a few minutes so I grabbed by swimgear and uke and headed out the door. We walked back to his place, had a little dinner, and took the bus to this big resort outside of town which has a very cheap indoor hammam next door. I don't think that I've talked about hammams on here before, but the deal is that they're basically the same as the old roman bath houses with a cold, tepid, and hot hoom and people go there to relax, bathe, get a massage, and to socialize. Most hammams give you all that, including a vigorous scrubbing to remove dead skin, for about $10 but this onbe was a pretty small operation and we had to scrub each other. Also, it's fed by a natural hot spring so they kept trying to get me to drink the water too but I thought it tasted nasty. No cameras allowed so no pics, which is probably for the best.

Later that night we went back to Mustafa and Barush's house to play music (I had my uke this time) and I taught Barush to play Over the Rainbow on the uke. He wants to get one now and I think that he's probably going to put some pics of us on facebook but hopefully not the video. He also showed me an amazing video of this 3 year old Asian kid playing I'm Yours on a ukulele. I need to find the link to that.

Anyways, I'm traveling to the town of Isparta now. It's got some greek ruins nearby and also it's famous for it's rose harvest that's going on now. They use the roses to make an oil called 'attar of roses' that's a base to many different perfumes. I might be able to get a tour of the fields... what a smell that would be! I hope the town proves interesting as well.