Sefer

Today was a much longer trip for the exchange students (it being a Saturday, the study abroad office decided to take all day). So, I will start from the beginning.


Right in the middle of the city are the remains of an Ancient Roman bath. Even though it is surrounded by modern buildings you can find ancient tombs, the remains of the bath heating mechanisms as well as the decorative accents of the exterior.


We looked at the Column of Julian, which had a large bird's nest on its top, and then walked across the street to the Temple of Augustus and Rome. To the right of the Temple, you can see Mosque of Haci Bayram. Back to the Temple- it was eventually converted to a church, and then was used as a Muslim storage room as evdenced by the Arabic Gravestone below:
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We hopped back into the ODTU buses, and stopped at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. Our crazy guide says it was originally an indoor bazaar. When it was destroyed by an earthquake, Ataturk decided to have it rebuilt and used as a museum. The Anatolian peninsula has some of the first signs of human life, and so it has a great deal of history to cover.




The outer edges of the museum (top) houses the earliest remains. The center of the museum has a 6-domed roof, which makes for very nice acoustics, as well as the home of the Hittite collection (bottom). In the basement there are Eastern Roman artifacts.


It was time for lunch, so we all had pide at the Citadel Restaurant. This building was once a home within the castle walls and now it's a touristy restaurant within the walls. On our way to our table, we passed a stone oven being used by two village women to cook bread. The top floor, where we ate, had amazing views of the city:


After lunch, we went on to the castle. We had to step aside as a small (but noisy) circumsion car procession passed by. When young Turkish boys get circumsized, they wear a special white outfit, and travel in a honking car procession that I could hear still, even from the castle.


The Castle is located in a section of Ankara where the women and children still live traditional village lives. We could see peppers drying on wires, and children approached us, trying to sell us hand made bracelets.

The gece kondu (gej-EH KON-du), built by the families themselves. You see them deteriorating all over the city.


A scenic view from atop the castle


The White Mosque in the Center of the building is the Kisilay section where the students frequent


On our way back to the buses, we had to stop. An overloaded truck was stuck in the narrow road.


A rug shop within the Citadel

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A view from inside the bus

Instead of going back to campus, some of us decided to go to METU's lake. METU has a very large campus and its lake, which is connected to the campus, is 25 km away from the center of campus. It is hard to get transportation there, but our bus driver volunteered.
We walked around some, and took some photos.


As you can see, it was very nice- except for whole place smelling faintly of rotting fish. Once we got used to it, the smell didn't bother us, and we were able to eat some ice cream. They have unflavored ice cream which tastes kind of like frozen milk...