Journey through Turkey - second part

For the first part of the itinerary see "journey through Turkey-part one" and "journey through Kurdistan and Mesopotamia". Crossing the bridge over the Euphrates one leaves Mesopotamia, a sure part of the undefined territory of Kurdistan, and continues towards Gaziantep where we will be able to get back on the motorway. The usual very hot motorway, whose asphalt surface boils under our car with its fan spinning at full speed, like the air conditioning of the Fiat Punto with which we came from Italy. The previous night we did not sleep well, the transfer is long and tiredness makes itself felt, so the friend accompanying me and I decide to have lunch and sleep at a service area, in the car. We are back on the Anatolian peninsula and the following morning we continue west; at Tarsus we turn north but after a short while the motorway ends.

Before continuing on the main road we refresh ourselves in a truckers' place, then off towards Cappadocia, which we reach around midday. The city of Nevsehir announces that we have arrived in this region, which nature's whims have made truly fantastic. From whatever side you look at them, Goreme, Urgup, Avanos are spectacular with their limestone pinnacles and the so-called fairy chimneys. If nature was not enough to shape these stones soaring towards the sky, the Christian monks also lent a hand, finding refuge here and building churches in their crevices. Cappadocia alone would be enough to justify all these kilometres to come all the way here. In the late afternoon we continue north because Turkey still has much to offer us. We cross desolate, semi-desert countryside and, bypassing Yozgat, reach Bogazkale in the evening, where we spend the night in an elegant and clean hotel.

The following morning we visit the excavations of Hattusa, capital of the very ancient Hittite civilisation. The remains are scattered over a very wide hill and in most cases one needs plenty of imagination to understand their meaning; moreover we must constantly "escape" from a young man on a scooter who insists on being our guide. Fortunately the archaeological site is visited by car along a road circuit and at the exit we head straight, passing again through Bogazkale, to the appendix of Yazilikaya, where the finest memory of the Hittite civilisation is found. Here indeed one leaves the car in a car park where we are set upon by sellers of trinkets, and with a short walk on foot inside a rock sanctuary among tall rocks we observe the carvings on the stone: beautiful, very beautiful, seen so many times in school textbooks.

The carvings and the sanctuary satisfy us, justifying our detour all the way here. We continue west, bypass Ankara and Istanbul, and crossing the bridge over the Bosphorus we return to Europe, stopping to sleep in the insignificant town of Catalca, which will be only our base for leaving the car and taking the train to Istanbul. The next day we take a local train from a station hard to find and which nobody can point out to us; indeed it is well away from Catalca, in the countryside. The train takes us to Istanbul anyway, which lets us visit this great city divided between two continents in complete tranquillity.

Indeed I had already been to Istanbul a long time before, as a stop on a long train itinerary that had taken me to Switzerland, West Germany, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and European Turkey!! In practice, though, I had seen very little, even if I had spent the night here in a rather dirty hotel in the centre. Precisely for this reason Istanbul was all to be discovered for me, and so I did not miss anything: the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, the great underground cistern with the Medusa figure, Topkapi (only from the outside because it was a closing day), the bazaar, the alleys, the Suleymaniye Mosque and also a tour on a double-decker tourist bus that took us as far as the Galata district dominated by the Genoese tower.

In the evening I return by train to Catalca, where we took the car again, continuing towards the Dardanelles and stopping to sleep in a hotel in a town along the way. The following morning we drove the interesting coastal road of the narrow, long Dardanelles peninsula, which the strait of the same name separates from Anatolia. At the Dardanelles we drive the car onto a ferry that takes us back to Asia in a short time, at Canakkale. From here we reach the mythical city of Troy — nothing beautiful except the myth, recalled also by the wooden reconstruction of the famous horse. We wander among the excavations, hard to decipher, then head south. The road to Pergamon opens glimpses of the sea and of the very nearby Greek islands that almost graze the Turkish coast.

It is evening when we visit part of the excavations of Pergamon, but after all the most important find of this ancient Hellenic city I saw at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin!! We did anyway take a peek at some remains and at the ruin of an ancient basilica that seems to have an important role in the Book of Revelation. In the evening, bypassing Izmir, we reach Cesme where we sleep in the car because the next morning we have to board. The day after we drive the car onto the Turkish ship that will take us back to Ancona.