while looking for birds

a little bit of istanbul

the many meats of turkey

One of the greatest things about travelling and living abroad is getting to experience the multitude of cuisines that this fine world has to offer. I will miss the many meats of Turkey. I will long for a spicy Adana kebab and its sumac-sprinkled onion slivers, and I will no doubt crave a pide or döner from time to time.



There are a seemingly infinite number of ways that Turks prepare meat, and though I have been lucky to have travelled pretty extensively within Turkey, the Tatar ciğ börek in Eskişehir had eluded me until our little recent road trip. Had I known these fluffy pillows of meat-filled dough existed, I would have gone to Eskişehir sooner.



Above all, I believe it will be Edirne's crispy and creamy tava ciğer that will keep me salivating for years to come.



Yes. Salivation achieved!

the colours of eskişehir, and the power of smell

After soaking in the naturally fizzy thermal pool of Pamukkale's ancient Hierapolis (and not wanting to leave), we drove over wide snowy highlands to Eskişehir, one of western Anatolia's oldest settlements, now a sprawling college town and industrial centre. At first, we were unimpressed— the greying block-style apartment and factory buildings left a lot to be desired, but once we discovered the old Ottoman-style houses in the historical part of town, our thoughts changed.



Among also discovering that people in Eskişehir were very friendly, we learned that the city is famous for its nearby meerschaum mines, and there are loads of workshops offering beautifully carved brooches and pipes for sale. My grandad had such a pipe once— the cream-coloured bowl was a magnificently bearded man with a turban and fierce eyes, though I never saw him smoke from it. Clenched between his teeth instead was a dark wood one, and it filled the house with a sweet, vanilla-like smoke. When he died, I wrapped the pipe in a paper towel and slid it carefully into my backpack with one of his threadbare plaid shirts. Upon unzipping the bag in Turkey, it was as if he was sitting beside me— I could feel the roughness of his chin, I could hear him swearing, and I could see the green in his eyes.

His shirt and his pipe are two of the things that I chose to bring with me instead of sending them to traverse the sea with the rest of our belongings. Though his shirt smells more like me now, his pipe... oh his pipe...

the palest blues

surreal

Heavy clouds loomed above us as we removed our shoes and socks to climb up the permitted side of the travertine. The wind and wetness sent a chill into our bones, and we soon found ourselves gleefully making our way as quickly as excited children towards any of the pools of hot spring water, where we would linger until we were ready for the next stretch of the climb.



Most of the dry travertine was rough, the smoother parts slippery when wet, but the floors of the hot pools were a marvelous consistency— something both chalky and clay-like, that I took great pleasure in squishing between my toes.



From the top of Pamukkale, I could see snow-capped mountains in the distance, every bit as white as the travertine stretched out before me.



Some of the thermal pools were the most delicate pale blue.

the cotton castle

It wasn't snow on the horizon, but the surreal travertine terraces of Pamukkale— the cotton castle. As the sun began to set, the blinding white formations burned orange, and purple shadows lengthened across their surfaces.

under a changing sky

it may not be indiana jones, but it's still awesome

There were so many things I wanted to be when I "grew up", and the memories of my life's adults trying to box up my imagination for practicality's sake are clear as day. I wanted to be an artist, a poet, a theatre actor, Sir Edmund Hillary, Jacques Cousteau, a trapezist, an historian, a microbiologist, an immunologist, a botanist, someone who worked in a cool café, a journalist, and Indiana Jones. Oh to be an archaeologist solving ancient mysteries, travelling around the world while fighting evil in a wide-brimmed fedora! Yes, this was the life I saw for myself until somewhere along the line I discovered that all I wanted to do was draw. Nevertheless, it's a thrill visiting working archaeological sites. I deeply admire the dusty, sunburnt scientists and students toiling away to put together pieces of our collective past, and I enjoy meeting the workmen with seemingly superhuman strength, who are often wells of knowledge on their site. I was lucky to have visited Göbeklitepe and Çatalhöyük last year, and to have met some lovely people working at both sites.

While I realise that the lives of archaeologists don't involve saving precious artifacts from Nazis, nor do they swing away from booby-trapped boulders on a whip, many do wear fedoras. Jens Notroff is one of the lucky archaeologists working on Göbeklitepe who wears such a hat, and has written a great post on his blog which describes an average day in the field. It's not Hollywood-glamorous, but it's still pretty awesome from my perspective.



When I visited the working site of the Roman terrace houses in Ephesus, there was plenty of evidence of how painstaking the work of reassembling ancient structures is— there were so many fragments of walls, columns, painted plaster, mosaics, and whatnot. The ultimate puzzle.



And look at what all their hard work gives us:



We can see that even the Romans knew that everything is better with a pigeon.

shades of white