Our rental van was delivered on time, but with a nearly flat tire. So after Brian argued with "the person on the cell phone" about getting it fixed for us, the driver took it away and brought it back 30 minutes later with more air in it, but the same tire, barely even cleaned off. Hmm. We loaded up and headed out to Gordion, only about an hour west of Ankara, for a day trip. As Brian put it, we pretended that they had done the right thing with the tire.
On our way out to the Gordion Museum and King Midas's Tomb, we turned a corner and were flagged down by an older man standing on the corner. Before we knew it, he was in the van with us and asking if we were going to Gordion. I guess we had our own little dolmus, except we had plenty of room, used our seatbelts, and the guy never did pass any money forward to pay for the trip!
After visiting the museum and the tomb (where the placard says it couldn't really have been King Midas's tomb because of the dates...hmm...why haven't the other mounds been excavated yet then?), we drove off into what felt like the middle of a wheat field and hiked up over the hill to see the ruins of the citadel that have been excavated. And found a turtle up there, too!
We found some lunch in Polatli at Ikbal's, where Rob had kumpir (baked potato piled high with condiments) and the rest of us had hot dogs and hamburgers. The owner posed for pictures and then asked Brian to email them to him...then a little bit later he came back with toys for the kids from the toy store nearby. I will miss this part of Turkey, for sure. The kindness of strangers exists in the US, but not like this.
When we had driven through this area on our trip to Izmir in January Brian had spotted a white monument of some kind on the hill, and then we saw it again on our approach this time. It wasn't in the guide books though, and appeared to be guarded by the military. I'm not one to approach the men with red arm bands and automatic weapons, but Brian hopped out of the car to see if we could go in. As we were going through the misunderstandings of not knowing each other's languages, I finally figured out what the monument was all about by piecing together my terrible Turkish and growing knowledge of Turkish history. It was a monument to memorialize the battle of Aksaray, the furthest point east where the Greeks were ultimately defeated and pushed back out of Turkey. The guard at the monument itself spoke slow, deep, calculated English, and told us the significance of the design features of the monument and explained the exhibits in the museum. It was a great stop...I'm glad we took the gamble on it!
After driving back to Ankara we crashed at the apartment and had a gourmet meal of macaroni and cheese and leftover pizza just in time to go to bed. We're off to Cappadocia tomorrow!
More pictures from today:
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| 2009-04-09Gordion |
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