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| Suleymaniye townhouses |
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| Suleymaniye Etnography Museum |
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| Public Restrooms covered in marble |
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| Coffee House |
When we woke up feeling the pain from previous day’s walk
inflicted on our bodies made up of nothing but muscle, the continuing rain
presented us with the perfect excuse: it was madness to walk under such heavy
rain, and we had passed the age for such childish behaviour, ohh yes sir, we
definitely had to wait until the rain stopped. So the decision was made, sleep
session was extended, and laziness spreading from our bodies difused to every
little corner of the room. But we could only be lazy for so long, we had to go
out and explore the village at least. The village was surprisingly clean and well
kept, it resembled more of a Swiss village in the Alps rather than in Anatolia.
Only thing missing was people. Stopping by the tea house again we found out
something that was going to be the case in every single village we would visit:
everyone had moved to Istanbul or Antalya for work, and there wasn’t anyone but
about 60-80 old people living in the village. The tea house was busier than the
previous evening and was hosting about 25% of the whole population of the
village, totaling to about 15-20 men. Of course we were the very center of all
the attention, and every new comer to the tea house was informed about what
brought us there. When we told them about the caravan route we were following,
cries of protest rose in the place, especially coming from the tea-man, letting
us know that the route that was marked had nothing to do with the actual route,
and that it really should have passed from their town and not that other town
we were supposed to be going the day before.
Apparently there was a rivalry between the two towns. As the minutes
passed we were warming up to each other with the villager (despite noticing the
jar of coffee we were refused the day before by the tea-man sitting on the
shelf). The floor was all covered with wood that had turned black due to a
special mixture of oils and resins tea-man was polishing them with. Wood
flooring was 40-50 years old and was still in superb condition thanks to that
special wax. Since we had been sitting around all day long we had put a good
dent on our food reserve. There wasn’t any shop existing in that village so we
asked the reeve to take Asena and I to the closest town with a store. Even
though the closest village was Degirmenlik, probably because of a feud between
the villages he took us to another one called Bademli. After looting all the
snacks and coffee from the store we returned to our village and listened from
the rest of the gang about the incredible public restrooms the village had. All
paid for by the donations of the villagers, the restrooms were covered from
bottom up with marble, and were very clean. We decided to take advantage of
such a blessing later on and headed to the ethnography museum of the village.
It seemed strange for a village without the smallest one of a grocery store to
have an ethnography museum, but later we were informed that it was donated by one
of the mayors of Istanbul, who originated from this town, as a token of
gratitude. The reeve was enthusiastic about explaning every little item
belonging to village life to us ignorant city kids. According to the reeve most
of the village’s population resides in Kasımpasa and Kucukyalı neighborhoods in
Istanbul, and their main occupation is confectionary baking. It was interesting
that all these people had specilazed on something that they hadn’t even seen
until they left their town. There still didn’t exsist any cakes or
confectionary in the village but we were spending our whole time munching on
snacks and candies. Only other time I had eaten so much unhealthy snacks in my
life was during required 12 hour watch service in the army. With the nightfall
we crowded back in our little room and started researching online about our
next destination, Susuzsahap. Messages left on the village’s facebook site were
hilarious. A member named Ozkaynak Muzaffer’s request of a nightclub opening in
the village was responded thoughtfully by another member: “let’s aim for a
grocery store first, then we look into having a nightclub”. We also left our
own message to the site: “we will be arriving tomorrow, no need for a band
greeting, lamb roast is fine”.
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