After successfully entering Turkey as two Australians and
two Brits our plan was to stop somewhere, get some money out, have lunch, buy
groceries for dinner and find a campsite somewhere along the Black Sea coast.
We realised in the small town we stopped in to use an ATM that parking was
going to be a challenge in this country. I triple parked and waited with the
car while the others went to take care of business. A car drove up behind me
but couldn’t pass so I had to move up a little, blocking another entrance, only
to move straight back to let a woman get her car out. I watched as a vehicle
shuffle took place up ahead resulting in a free spot (not just a space that was
able to be double/triple parked in but a real one with markings on the ground),
but nobody took it because then to get back out again you need to negotiate
with half a dozen other drivers.
Our first impressions of Turkish people were fairly positive.
The man in the kebab shop where we ate lunch was very helpful and appropriately
concerned about the quantity and quality of mayonnaise on our table. At the
supermarket next door we were greeted by the friendliest and most enthusiastic
supermarket manager in the world. Never wiping the grin off his face he
excitedly pointed out all the items he thought we might be interested in – huge
tubs of chocolate spread, Turka cola, Turkish delight and many more. When we
started approaching the exit he quickly ran out the front of the shop and along
the street to meet us at the other side of the check-out, plastic bags in hand
and ready to go.
The roads in Turkey are truly fantastic – newly built, well
maintained, wide and clearly marked. In the style adopted by many European
countries though, the road and the railway run right along the waterfront,
making it a very pleasant drive, but detracting dramatically from the integrity
of the coastline. The entire coast is also entirely built up. There are
continuous apartment blocks – not sky-scrapers, not 2-storey houses, but mainly
6 - 10-storey complexes, none of them really flashy and modern, but not ancient
and dilapidated either. And unbelievably continuous.
We knew finding a camping spot along this road would be a
challenge, and sure enough it was. We took a punt at a road that led towards
the mountains, hoping we might be able to get away from the sprawling
metropolis of small coastal towns. The road led us through some suburbs, then
an industrial zone and into a valley filled with villages and orchards. It took
a couple of hours, but eventually we found a spot at the edge of an olive grove
and set up there for the night. We expected that this would be the case for
most of Turkey, probably easing up a little in the centre of the country, but
still a camper’s nightmare. After this first night though we easily found some
really fantastic camping spots – so it really is only along the Black Sea coast
that is particularly challenging.
Aware that Turkey is a Muslim country, but fairly liberal
within that, we were quite surprised at the density of mosques, the regular and
prolific calls to prayer and the proportion of women in head scarves. In Iran
women must cover up by law and most hate it, but here many choose to. Mosques
were certainly present in Iran, but it just isn’t to the same extent. On the
Black Sea coast we would be able to see at least half a dozen mosques at any
one time, sometimes more than a dozen. Central Turkey is more sparsely
populated and the West coast is more liberal so it’s not the same story
throughout the whole country, but even in these other areas Islam in many ways
feels more present in the people than it did in Iran. Maybe it’s because of the
density of mosques, but the call to prayer is just so much more noticeable in
Turkey. We barely heard it in Iran, whereas now we hear it five times a day no
matter where we are or what we’re upto.
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