Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Malatya Day 3

I decided that I needed to start venturing out. Lonely Planet told me that the only real destination in all of Malatya was an archeology museum with artifacts on display from an excavation nearby. Everyone had decided that we would wake up later that morning and catch the dolmus to the university. Since the dolmus otogar (bus station) was somewhat on my way, I tagged along to see which one I needed to take to get to the university. Once that was all figured out, I proceeded to meander my way towards the center of town through the edge of the bazaar. Needing to keep my bread supply stocked, I stopped in a bakery that had just pulled some brown bread out of the oven. After purchasing a loaf, they kindly sliced it for me. For the rest of the week, I lived on nothing but bread and kumpir (baked potatoes). In some ways, this made everything incredibly easy because I never really had to worry about where I was going to eat because I always had food with me. Continuing towards the museum, I stopped in a store that specialized in Muslim clothing for women, particularly head scarves. The patterns on the headscarves can be quite intricate and beautiful. I kept wandering down the street looking up the side streets that lead deeper into the bazaar.



The bazaar is laid out in a pretty simple fashion, with different regions specializing in different types of goods. Vendors selling food related items are located closer to the highway where the dolmus stations are locations, hence the bakery where I bought my bread. Heading towards the town center, the vendors become more related to apparel. Tailors are intermixed with ordinary clothing merchants, vying for your attention and money. The apparel that they are selling is consists mainly of cheap dress shirts and major European and American brand knock offs. Some of the merchants were selling t-shirt with various art and writing on them. What caught my attention was that many referenced San Francisco. Most of them didn't make an sense really. I remember one saying "Intrigue" with San Francisco, CA written underneath it.



While in the bazaar, it is really important to keep in mind that you have to haggle on every price they give you, especially if you don't speak Turkish. This will be important for day 5. There is a street here that is lined with gold merchants, displaying their ornate pieces in large windows that in turn glow when the sunlight hits them. I decided to meander through the clothing area for a little bit before reaching the mosque that sits at the center of town.



I crossed the main street of Malatya, which predictably is named Ataturk Caddesi (Blvd). Heading south, I walked along a side street lined with shops. I came upon two men sitting along the sidewalk who waved me over. One of them was an owner of one of the stores, and he wanted me to take a picture of him and his friend. After snapping a few photos, he wanted to make sure I knew his name and to remember where he met me. He gave me his card on which he added Malatya, Türkiye. The other man offered me cay which I graciously declined. Smiling from ear to ear at this super-friendly encounter, I continued on my way to the museum. I think what makes me so happy about things like this is because they were genuinely interested in talking to me and finding out my story. If this had happened in Istanbul, it would probably have been to get an angle with which to sell me something, but here and in Ankara, that hasn't been the case. It is just really pleasant finding other people that are as excited and interested to meet new people as I am.



Upon arriving at the museum, I paid the 3 YTL entrance fee and was pleasantly surprised by the air conditioned interior. The museum itself was rather small consisting of only 4 rooms, but it was laid out and documented rather well. As with every other museum I have visited, I photographed everything. The artifacts were all excavated from a site north of town at a location called Arslantepe from which some of the artifacts dated back a few thousand years before Christ. These artifacts mainly consisted of every day items such as arrow heads, swords, clay and stone pots, glass containers, coins, and various tools. One of the rooms was dedicated to illustrating how various activities in day to day life worked, such as milling grain, making arrow heads, and making clay pots. Outside the museum, there was a small garden which contained various stone carvings and head stones, particularly from the era of Roman occupation. After finishing at the museum, I headed back to the catch the dolmus along the route on which I came.



Right outside the museum is a small park that sits between a small canal and several man-made waterfalls. As with the university and other aspects of Malatya, this park was made possible by large amounts of funding from the government. I enjoyed the plumes of mist created by the churning water to rejuvenate myself before my walk back. The streets were more crowded as it was close to lunch time. I got back to the dolmus station in time to hop on the one that took me to the university. Not knowing exactly where to get off, the dolmus stopped at the university hospital, so I decided to hop off since the hospital is attached to the conference center. I walked into the hospital hoping to find directions, but I couldn't find any. I walked around the hospital complex. Just before giving up, I saw two women who were carrying the bags that they conference had given out. I ended up following them (while feeling slightly creepy) to see if they knew where they were going. They ended up striking out as well, but they were able to ask for directions. By this time, I had introduced myself and we were able to weave our way through the hospital to the conference center. The signs pointing the way to the conference center were all located in the back hallway, far from where anyone would see them entering from the main entrance. It is things like this that make me laugh and shake my head about Turkey.



I arrived just in time for lunch, or more precisely give my lunch to everyone else and eat bread. For the rest of the day at the conference, I basically just hung out and tried to get a little work done. I found out long ago that it is close to impossible for me to get work done in places that have lots of distractions. It's safe to say that I didn't get much done. At 4pm, the poster session started, and everyone but Damla, Mert, and Sertan had to present their posters. I walked around and snapped everyone's photo.



Afterwards, we all boarded buses and were taken to a denim factory. For some reason, the conference organizers decided that this would be an exciting event. The factory was a little interesting bceause there wasn't a guide of any sort, so we had to figure out what everything did on our own. After the tour, we were loaded up into buses and taken to some random place with a garden for dinner. No one seemed to know where we were, but apparently the denim factory had paid for the dinner for us. With it getting late, we decided to just have the bus drop us off at the guesthouse on its way back to campus.


Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Malatya Day 2

I decided to stick with everyone the first day, so we all got up early to catch the free bus that the Inonu University had sent to pick up conference members not staying on campus. We first stopped by the guesthouses restaurant to eat breakfast, which was the typical Turksih fare: bread, cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, and cay. We took a taxi to the bus stop. Not knowing what the bus was supposed to look to look like, the rest of the group recognized that a few professors from our department were sitting on the front patio of the hotel that was directly behind us. They were taking the bus too, so we just followed them when they boarded a ordinary looking bus that didn't have any markings on it. Thankfully, it got us to the convention center, or the Kũltũr ve Kongre Merkezi.



İnönü University is named after Turkey's second president who was originally from Malatya. As the current president is also from Malatya, a lot of money has been put into the campus. This improvement money went towards a new state of the art hospital and conference center. The campus itself is very large, in fact it might rival the size of UC Davis even including our farm land. While everyone checked in, I scouted out the place. The ground floor (the zeroth floor in Turkey) contained 3 small small conference room and the lower entrance to the main conference hall. The conference started with an opening session where a tribute was made of a prominent chemical engineer that had died that year, the Turkish national anthem, and a Mozart performance by one of Inonu's students. I don't remember if I commented on the Turkish national anthem before in my post about METU's graduation but, I find it really interesting. When it is played, everyone is expected to sing. I think that they should made a custom in the United States. I have never been one for making senseless rules, but I think customs of this sort are always nice. I guess it also helps that I like to sing.



After the first session, I just hung out in the reception area on the second floor. Unlike a lot of American conference, coffee, tea, and snacks were offered throughout the day. I found out that wifi was available throughout the conference center, so I planned on bringing my laptop the next day. While I was sitting there, Damla rushed up to me and told me that the talk going on at the moment was in English, so I decided to check it out. It turns out that the presenter was a Turkish native that attended MIT. Apparently very arrogant, he presented in English even though the conference was officially in Turkish. With Global Warming as his topic, he was deginitely looking to push some buttons. I felt that his talk was a little lacking on exact details and more propaganda, but it was interesting to see what he had to say. Several times throughout the talk, he said that the main problem with curbing global warming emmision was that the United States had not yet signed the Kyoto Protocol. At the end, he mentioned fuel cell technology as being part of the solution. As this was his research area, I felt that it was a conflict of interest to only mention this possible solition and not other such as solar, tidal, ethanol/methol, and nuclear energy solutions. What I was waiting for was the Q&A period. As I guessed someone immediately asked in English if he wanted questions in Turkish and English. When the speaker said it didn't matter, the man asking the question said he would ask his question in Turkish so more than a few people in the audience could understand. Afterward, another man raised his hand to supposedly ask a question. He ended up going on a rant for 5 minutes. I asked Damla afterward what it was all about. She said his rant was based on that increased CO2 levels was great for plant life, hence global warming was a great thing that should not be worried about. I found this rather amusing as one of the causes of this increase in CO2 levels is the reduced number of plants to convert it back into oxygen.



Afterwards, there was another talk on Nuclear power, but since it was in Turkish, I decided to go back to the reception area. I hung out until lunch was served. Because Mert had the extra tickets, I tagged along mostly to see if it was something I could eat. Predictably it wasn't, but I was able to give my food to everyone else. This actually happened at every lunch for the rest of the week. Lunch was lamb that was roasted in a bag along with rice. I tasted a sliver of it, and it was quite good. After lunch, I ended up passing out on a couch for about an hour. At that point, I went to watch Damla's talk on synthesizing polymethylsilane for use as a flame retardent in polypropylene. Her talk went really well, and she only got one question. Afterwards, I went back to napping until about 6. Because there was a cocktail party at 8pm, we decided to go get dinner. Once again, I ordered Tuvuk Sis hoping that I could get plain chicken. Unfortunately, this is when the server told us that all restaurants around here marinade their chicken in oil and chilies to preserve it throughout the day. More unfortunately, this was after I had taken a few bites that I thought were chili free. Well, even thought my stomach hurt for about 24 hours, everything turned out fine, and I learned about how they prepare chicken in Malatya.



At 8pm, we loaded onto buses for the short trip to the University's pool. Large tables has been setup in the grass area around their relatively new, olympic sized pool. Each table has several bottles of water, coke, and other sodas on it. There was a glass with sticks of carrot and cucumber in lime juice. There was a buffet table that had cheeses, sausages, veggies, yogurt dips, and bread. After finding out that there was a large amount of bread in a bin, I made a bee-line for it and stocked up for the night. I figured I might has well get my free ticket's worth of bread considering I couldn't drink any of the wine. Although, I think everyone drank enough wine to make up for the fact I wasn't drinking. Everyone has a great time. There was a 5 piece band that played more traditional sounding Turkish music. The bands members were from the University's music department. The vocalist also played the Ney. Apparently this is one of the hardest instruments to learn, necessitating around 10 years to become a competent player. It sounded like a very airy flute. We all ended up dancing to the music and having a blast. Damla got quite drunk which only made her want me to dane even more. We eventually loaded up into the buses and were driven back to the dorms. At that point, we asked the driver if he could take us back to our guesthouse, and he agreed. We arrived back at the guesthouse exhausted but happy. We ended up going for a walk to get me bread for the next day, as well as water for everyone. I ended up just collapsing on my bed and passing out. It was a long but fun day.

Malatya Day 1

Because the price of bus tickets were the same price as plane tickets, my labmates decided to fly to the chemical engineering conference here in Malatya. Not wanting to go through another 10 hour bus ride if I could fly for 30 YTL more than a bus ticket, I decided to join them. We flew aboard an Anadolu Jet Boeing 373, which is the value branch of Turkish Airlines. The flight took about 55 minutes, and we flew into Malatya's only airport. On approach, I looked out the window and noticed that I couldn't see the ground because there seemed to be something that resembled fog like smog. Well, Damla told me later that a dust storm had blown in from Egypt. In some parts of the region, the dust storm caused rain to turn into mud. Yes, it actually was raining mud. Thankfully, we didn't encounter any of it. Because the region is rather rural, a Turkish air force base allows commercial jets to fly in and out of a small airport. There is only one flight per day from Ankara, so the plane ended up being filled with chemical engineers. I ended up sitting next to one of the conference organizers, and he informed me that the conference had arranged for a professor from a university in Edinburgh to speak. As this was going to be the only talk in English, he strongly recommended that I attend.



Upon landing, we boarded a Havas bus to take us into town. Havas runs a fleet of buses with the specific purpose of shuttling people to and from Turkish airports. I took one of the their buses from the airport to a station in Ankara the day I arrived. The bus dropped us off a few blocks from out guesthouse. The guesthouse is run by the government specifically for teachers who are new to the area and need a place to stay while looking for more permanent lodging. We are able to stay because open rooms are available for professors, graduate students, and other government servants. The number of beds per room differs, but we were able to get one with three beds, one for me, Sertan, and Mert. The rooms aren't great but they all have TVs. I would have gladly traded the TV in for internet or air conditioning, but I'm not really going to complain for 25 YTL a night. We settled in and rejoined the Canans for dinner. Damla stayed with her mother on campus, since she didn't have to pay for her room.



We walked down main street trying to find a restaurant. There weren't any restarunts near the guesthouse so we walked about 10 blocks to find one. It was a very small place located in the basement of one of the shops along the main street. Because I had started eating chicken again, I thought that Tavuk Şiş (chicken on a stick) wouldn't be a problem. Everyone else got regional dishes like Iskender or dishes made in ceramic pots and placed in a wood oven. When the food arrived, I realized that my chicken was coated in chilies. Because my stomach had been uneasy, I decided that I needed to eat something, so I decided to wipe off the chicken with a napkin. Was that a bad idea! For the next two days, my stomach hurt pretty bad. I ended up sticking to bread after that.



After dinner, we walked along the main street for about 45 minutes looking for a place to drink beer. Mert was pretty determined to find a place, so we searched for 10 blocks until we finally found one. Like I said earlier, Malatya is afar more conservative city than Ankara, so it makes sense that drinking places would be few and far between. In fact, the bars are actually hidden and segregated. Most of the bars are for men only, but a few have a second room where families are allowed to drink together. We ended up finding one of these by asking around. There are not any signs for these places, so locations are shared by word of mouth. They ordered beer, and I ordered a bottle of water. Along with our drinks, they brought us two plates. The first was covered in parsely and cilantro, and it was rimmed with slices of cucumber. The second plate contained cherries, grapes, and slices of water melon and honeydew melon. I sneaked a few tastes because I figured that if my stomach was already uneasy from the chicken it couldn't hurt too much to eat some fruit. It has always striked me as interesting that the level of hospitality in this country is so high. I have always heard that Turks were very warm and giving, but it is just such a change from American restaurants that even after two months here, I am still slightly surprised every time something like this happens.



Around 11, we started to walk back. We stopped along the way to get me a loaf of bread. We finally trudged our way back to the guesthouse and called it a night.