Kars Castle.© Sharon Lundahl

After another midnight bus trip–this time from black sea port Trabzon through the mountains of northern Turkey, we arrived through desolate, tree-less high plateau steppes to Kars, a frontier town near Armenia which has harsh winters with  up to 40-feet of snow.

Ancient Cathedral in Ani near Kars. © s@mbo@flickr

The word “kars” means “snow” in Turkish.  Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s nobel-prize novelist, based his best-seller “Snow” in Kars.  The people in Kars are descended from the Karsaks, a Turkic tribe that came from the Caucasus in the the 2nd century B.C.

Kars has saved many of its pastel-colored stone buildings built during the Russian occupation from 1877 to 1921, and often reminded us visually of our time in the former Soviet Union.  The older Russian-era town with its picket fences and square grid streets contrasted with the newer, more modern Turkish parts of town.

Kars Castle, overlooking the whole town

At a Music School in Kars. © Sharon Lundahl

from its mountain top, was actually built by Armenians before the Moslem conquest.  An exquisitely restored 12th century Armenian-built stone “Church of the 12 Apostles”  is now an active mosque.  The Russians gained this northeast part of Turkey by conquest during the Crimean War, and the Czar even built his family a ski lodge here.  Russia’s new Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky, however,–in a “singularly stupid moment” — gave Kars and the province back to Ataturk in 1921, in an effort to win his friendship.

Woman in Kars, Turkey

Although all the people we met were helpful and friendly, only one local spoke English; he was the young owner of a music and book store.  He explained that he had been a tour guide, and tourism had pretty much closed down after the beginning of the “Kurdish troubles”.  There is plenty to see in Kars, including produce markets with the famous two-foot-in-diameter Kars cabbages, but we found very little in the way of handicrafts that are so plentiful in other parts of Turkey.

The real reason for visiting

Turkish Man. © Sharon Lundahl

Kars is to travel 28 miles to the Armenian border in the shadow of Mount Ararat to see the ruins of Ani, one of the most impressive sights in Turkey.

At the height of its golden age in the 10th century, Ani had 100,000 people and rivaled Constantinople in glory and power.  The Armenians and Byzantines, each supporting a different brand of Christianity,  bickered and fought between themselves, enabling the Moslems to conquer first one and then the other.

Sharon at Ani. © Fred Lundahl

A huge earthquake in 1310 destroyed the city, including its monumental churches and mosques, a few of which were rebuilt only to suffer near destruction in later disasters.   Spending a day in its strangely quiet, abandoned ruins (seeing only a few other tourists) made us think about how civilizations come and go.

The name Ani came from Anahit, an ancient Persian goddess identified with Aphrodite, one of the chief deities of the pre-Christian Armenians. Among the dozen or so structures remaining inside the mile square massive walls, in addition to churches and mosques, were both a synagogue and a zoroastrian fire temple–testament to the diversity that once thrived here.

The Only English Speaker We Met in Kars! © Sharon Lundahl

On the somber drive back to Kars, we were reminded of a more recent conflict in this cradle of civilization: the Armenian-Turkish conflict of the early 20th century.  While we usually hear about the genocide of Turks killing Armenians in Turkish-majority areas, out here in what was once an Armenian-majority area, we came across a small monument on the highway commemorating the massacre of  the entire population of Turks in a small town by their Armenian neighbors.    In our travels, we are constantly being reminded by sights such as this that our “understanding” of historical events is often too simplistic.

Ruins at Ani. © Sharon Lundahl

Trabzon on the Black Sea Coast. © David Farrer_flickr

Is Trabzon on the Black Sea Coast a seedy Turkish-Russian port town or is it Turkey’s “most cosmopolitan, ever-changing city” as its tourist brochure states?   It is probably both.  At night,  it seems to earn its reputation as the Turkish center of the “Natasha trade”, where women from nearby former-Soviet countries work  on an “ad hoc” basis.  Trabzon is the Black Sea’s busiest port, and business is booming… both in the port itself, filled with ships from Russia and the Ukraine, and in the dozens of cheap hotels that line the Port area.

Turk in Trabzon.© Sharon Lundahl

In daylight, Trabzon  is at its best in the modern, busy main square jammed with people, sidewalk cafes, modern shops and surrounded by noisy traffic.  You can see both women in conservative  headscarves and girls in short dresses.   Everyone in Trabzon is VERY proud of its local football (soccer) team;  it is one of two teams outside Istanbul to ever have won the Turkish national league.

Pretty Turkish Girl. © Sharon Lundahl

Trabzon was founded (as Trebizond) in the eighth century BC.

When the ancient Greeks first arrived, they reported shocking stories of the Mosynoecians, “practitioners of open-air fornication who resided in wooden castles.”  We didn’t see any of these folks.  For centuries after the founding of Trabzon, it formed the easternmost limit of the Western World.  During the Byzantine period, silk road caravans found their way here.

Conservative ladies. © Sharon Lundahl

Trabzon’s best days followed the crusaders sacking Constantinople in 1204, when the fleeing Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus I made it the seat of his new empire with his great riches.

The city lasted as a Byzantine outpost for a century after the Ottomans took Constantinople but then inevitably declined.  The Russians fought over the city in both the Crimean War and WW One and damaged the city when they captured it in 1916.

After visiting the lovely Aya Sofya Museum (originally another Hagia Sophia church), we found the most beautiful sight near Trabzon was the Sumela Monastery.  About 34 miles south of Trabzon, it is a

Shop Ladies in Trabzon. © Sharon Lundahl

wonderful site at 3700 feet (1,000 feet above a river) in a forest on the side of a cliff.  The monastery was built by Emperor Anastasius in the 5th century AD, and some of it has been restored. It was too remote to be made into a mosque and actually had Greek monks in residence until 1923.  The bus leaves you off for a ten-minute climb up the cliff, and after you walk for 45 minutes straight down from the monastery on the stairs and paths.

Overall, in Trabzon we saw a bustling and peaceful port.  People were very friendly, but no one spoke English.  Luckily our room cleaner was an Azeri woman from Baku, and we were able to communicate with her in Russian.  We saw no other foreign tourists, other than at the monastery.

Sumela Monastery. rward2008_flickr

Amasra on the Black Sea Coast. © Sharon Lundahl

Amasra is called the prettiest port on the Black Sea coast of Turkey.  Even though this is a touristic center for Turks in summer months, foreign visitors are uncommon.  During our October visit it was quiet, peaceful and beautiful…and tourist-less.

Girl in Amasra. © Sharon Lundahl

We got the idea to visit Amasra from a customer visiting our shop who had loved the place.

Our small hotel, “Kusna Pension”, cost all of $ 45.00 a night and was located right on the water, high overlooking the rocky shore and fishing boats. Our room was simple and clean, and the view was incredibly beautiful.

The name of the city in ancient times was ‘Seamos’, which means sesame.

The first rulers of the city were said to be the legendary Amazon women warriors.

Flower Pots in Shoes. © Sharon Lundahl

The town has a unique combination of natural harbors for ships overlooked by rocky outcrops perfect for protective fortresses.

The Byzantine Emperors actually rented the whole place out to the Italians from Genoa for a century or two when Genoa was the Mediterranean super-power.  The Ottomans, as they conquered the Byzantine Empire piece by piece in the 1400′s actually took Amasra from its Genoa renters without a fight.

Market in Amasra. © Sharon Lundahl

Ever the tradesmen, the Genoese figured out that it didn’t really matter to whom they paid rent  and quickly switched from  sending their rent checks to the Byzantines to sending the checks to the Ottomans, who were happy enough to let the Christian Italians continue to manage the trade of the town as long as they didn’t mind the Ottomans turning all the existing Byzantine churches into mosques.

We visited the museum, which contained Hellenistic, roman, Byzantine, Genoese and Ottoman artifacts found in the area.

The very old Fatih Mosque near our B&B was once a Byzantine 9th century church.  It was turned into a mosque by Fatih Sultan Mehmet when he conquered Amasra in 1460.

Turkish School Children. © Sharon Lundahl

Old Town of Safranbolu. © Sharon Lundahl

A customer visiting our shop, Music for the Eyes, hearing we were going to Turkey again, said that their favorite place outside of Istanbul was the little restored Ottoman village of Safranbolu, near the Black Sea coast.

Fred and Turkish Metalworker. © Sharon Lundahl

Always looking for new places to visit in Turkey, we took the midnight bus to Safranbolu .   Already tired at 12 PM, we got on the wrong bus twice.  Luckily the Turks are great, so that even though no one spoke English, they carried our suitcases and directed us to the right seats on the right bus.  The trip was quite nice, but Sharon didn’t much like the Eastern-style bathrooms at the rest stops, which were your basic hole-in-the-floor models.

Display in Safranbolu Museum.© Sharon Lundahl

The bus arrived at the town square 45 minutes early, and it was not yet dawn.  We woke up the surprisingly pleasant B & B owners, and were shown to our wonderful room with a wooden carved ceiling.

Safranbolu takes its name from the saffron flower and top-quality saffron produced there.  The usable part of saffron is the seeds of the flowers;  80 thousand

Safranbolu Museum. © Sharon Lundahl

flowers produce only 1/2 kilo of saffron.

The town of Safranbolu dates back to 3000 BC .  The Gasgas, Hittites, Sumerians, Lydians, Persians, Greek, Romans, Seljuks and the Ottomans have all ruled in Safranbolu.

Its old city is famous for its half-timbered buildings with their tile roofs and overhanging second storeys.  These traditional wooden houses are beautifully preserved, and Safranbolu has been declared an UNESCO world heritage site.

Shopping in Safranbolu.© Sharon Lundahl

It is also built on an interesting geological structure which joins three separate canyons…and contributes to the beauty of the city.  We spent our days wandering around and exploring; the city was so well preserved that it felt like an open-air museum.  The only tourists we saw during our visit were young Chinese, traveling in groups on a Chinese holiday.

One of the most interesting shops on the metal-workers’ street was that of a friendly Turk who was proud of the fact that he had exhibited his work in at the University of Maine in the Hudson Museum in an exhibit of Turkish metalworkers.

Turkish Metalworker's Shop. © Sharon Lundahl