Thursday, October 28th, 2004

Today was a very nice day. Started out the morning at BIM. The afternoon we had off, in preparation for the anniversary of the Turkish Republic tomorrow. It will be 81 years old! Yee haw.

In the afternoon I met up with my friend Feramuz. We set out on foot for the Ankara Citadel. This thing is a Byzantine castle whose walls surround the oldest part of the city. And seemingly one of the poorest. Houses were ramshackle, cobbled together affairs and poverty was evident everywhere. Yummy rotting garbage and poop smells mingled with cheap restaurant odors; grubby children were everywhere, with some offering cheap trinkets in exchange for a few lira. Well, 500,000 is not a few, but it is cheap!

The castle was an interesting thing, nothing great. But the view of the city was a different story. It was really neat to see Ankara in all of its smoggy splendor. There is such a haze over this city that any magnificence was quite diminished in my mind. Combine this with all the ciggys people smoke here and it’s pretty understandable why so many people die early. Any climbed up to the highest wall, sat on the edge and shared a deliciously juicy pomegranate. It was really nice.

Feramuz is a great guy. He’s a humanist, non-Muslim medical student and all around lover of life. We have a lot of great conversations about all sorts of things. He’s the guy who is really interested in Cuba, and we talked about that along with a lot more. Feramuz even invited me to come visit his city Adana, someplace in the south along the coast, during winter break. I think I’ll take him up on it!

After the citadel we went and visited some of his friends for dinner, which was followed by a few bottles of Turkish wine! I must say, it was wonderful to drink a bit of wine. This stuff was decent, a light red, and only 3,000,000 TL for a bottle ($2). It was great to relax with some liberal Turkish and Kurdish people, talk and laugh and just enjoy life. I really liked spending time with them and hope to do so more in the future. But I can’t talk any more now, its 3 am and I’m knackered!