To Aydar and Beyond

We piled into a van of teenagers. Girls in front, boys in back. One girl turned toward Ori and me and said, "Shalom, Ma shlomach" in a very accurate pronunciation. AS she spoke to us her token words of Hebrew her friends giggled and told us she worked in an Internet cafe in Aydar.

The kids in the van laughed and hugged each other as the car bounced slowly down the dirt road. After 10 minutes or so, we stopped beside a cluster of homes. They told us we would be there for a half hour or more. We never quite figured out why we were stopping... but eventually everyone piled back into the cars and we went on. Everyone kept jumping in and out of the car, opening the sliding door of the van and jumping aboard the bed of the pickup truck. One of the boys - Burak - spoke English so we chatted with him. At one point, we passed a few mothers who were clearly looking for their children. A few of the girls hid under a blanket as the mothers screamed at them for undetermined offenses.

A few more kilometers down the road, everyone again jumped out of the car and gathered a few meters ahead of us. Shortly before, a large SUV had slipped off the road and into the steep cliff of trees beside the road. By an incredible act of "allah" the car had been magically caught and stopped by the combined efforts of few small trees. Like a cradle, the trees (well-bruised in return for their kindness) had caught the car and stopped its fall. No one was injured.

A truck cleared out the fallen vehicle and we were back on our way, although people seemed pretty shook up by the site of the accident. Once in Kars, we picked up our bags at our old hotel and found out that most of the hotels had no vacancy.

Our hotel patron found us a room and we walked down the hill to meet two girls who worked at our new inn. We were completely exhausted, wet, cold, extremely hungry and dirty. The new hotel, it turned out, was a wet and dark walk up a twisted path behind the village. We arrived in the middle of nowhere to a quaint new hotel. The room was small but clean and everything was built from fresh wood. BUT! There was no hot water. At this point it was 8:40 and the women kindly informed us that dinner was included, but had ended 10 minutes earlier. What a ridiculous statement - since we were the only guests. At first they offered to serve us some breakfast, but then that too got a price. We huddled in our room, too dirty to sit anywhere and too cold to go anywhere. Finally, frustrated by our remote location and inability to get warm and clean... we headed out down the path and found a new hotel. It was fantastic, and not more expensive. I showered twice.

Then, we went to a tavern of sorts to eat warm food to the sound of some very loud folk music. There was no wine, so we settled for water. We tried the typical mountain dish - a cheesy, buttery fondue that was disappointing in taste but not in calories. Suddenly, a man with a bag-pipe like instrument came out and a huge circle of dancers filled the restaurant. Everyone joined in the traditional folk dance. Children, elderly, parents and teenagers danced endlessly to the rhythmic instrument, calling out "huh!" from time to time and keeping in time far better than any Jews attempting the hora.

The dance is from the Hemsin culture, a dwindling group of Turkish citizens that lives along the western Black Sea. They wear colorful clothing and bright head scarves, but take Islam pretty lightly. Men and women danced together and unabashed merriment filled the room.

We spent the next day finding a way to clean our clothes and mostly relaxing. We went to the local hammam and melted lazily in the 45 degree (celcius) waters. We tasted some fresh roasted corn on the cob and had a yummy fish dinner in celebration of Ori - he won a photo contest at work!

Now, we are in the town of Kars, made famous from the book Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. We are about 30 miles from the Armenian border in a town rich with history and mingling cultures. There are Armenians, Turks, Kurds and a strong Russian influence. We wandered the streets sampling from one or two of the dozens of cheese and honey shops. I think there is about 10 kilos of cheese per capita here. We bought a fresh honey comb and today climbed up to the Kars Castle. It's a huge stone fortress in great condition, originally built around 1100. It was rebuilt in the 16th century. We enjoyed the views of the city and the surrounding fields.

In other news, I am so sick of the smell of kebab. In Kars, and Turkey in general, every other storefront is a kebab shop. We saw a group of sheep today and, knowing their fate, I swore off kebab for a long time. However, this didn't stop me from enjoying the sticky goat's milk ice cream that they make here!

Now...we are off to Mt. Ararat to look for remnants of the ark.