Turkey: Sarpi, Hopa, Artvin, Kars, Ani, Ardahan and Posof

            Well to put it rather bluntly this last weekend my shoes scattered dust in numerous cities and I traveled quite a distance.  After an incredibly stressful week, haphazard planning and an ever changing roster of fellow travelers, Thursday evening I went from Urbnisi to Gori (20 minutes) and on the highway caught a mshtrutka to Batumi (6 hours) on the western coast of Georgia and arrived around 22,30.  As the morning light broke through our open hostel window (which could explain the severe temperature drop felt throughout the night) we left around 6,30 and headed to the Georgian version of Sarpi, another twenty minutes.  Crossing the Turkish border and entering the Turkish version of Sarpi, which took about an hour but if we had some idea as to how to cross a border on foot it could have been done in twenty minutes, and headed to Hopa (15 minutes).  From there we waited until 10,30 when our bus to Kars would depart.  Apparently we were over ambitious in this trek since it was around 8 when we were at the bus station (if memory serves me correctly).  That gave us about 2 ½ hours, that is until we looked at our watches and the clock on the wall which dangled above a non smoking sign and was promptly ignored.  Their clock said it was around 7.  It took about 3 minutes to realize that we were indeed in another time zone and that we had 3 ½ hours to wait.  We had some time to kill before our 6 hour bus ride.

The bus ride proved to be fantastic and extremely long.  6 hours would have been ideal compared to the actual 9 but the view was beyond breathtaking.  Overall we stopped where the bus driver thought that he might have friends.  First in Artvin, then 2 hours later in another city, then 1 1/2 hours later, then 1 hour later, then 30 minutes later and finally embraced the rest of the five hour journey straight through.  What should have taken 6-7 hours in reality took 9.     

We finally reached Kars, three hours late and got a room at the Otel Temel 2, which is about half the price of Otel Temel located directly across the street.  We checked the rooms before we agreed and downstairs we were greeted by an middle aged man in a tan jacket with a thick mustache.  “My name is Celil and I will be your guide to Ani.”  We just stared at him.  So far on this journey into Turkey the English language has proven to be more of a hobby to most than a language.  To hear it spoken, fluently, was enough to be taken aback as it was to be approached by the Turkish version of Harvey Kietel in Pulp Fiction.

            “I am in your guide book,” he said in a way that may have meant to be assuring.

            “Which guide book,” asked one of us.

            “All of the guide books,” he said with a slight hint of irritation.

            “We don’t have a guide book,” I threw out.  It didn’t take long, but Celil registered us at the hotel, set a time and negotiated a decent price to visit Ani and we set off to explore the cold night.  Kars is University town, literally, and when it was taken by the Russians it was completely redone and reorganized in a way that makes it seem that perhaps the Russians planned on staying here.  The sidewalks obviously follow some organized path (a rare thing) and the streets are mixture of cobblestone, asphalt and construction.  Students flock to cafes to share a platter of kebabs or a donner over a hot cup of tea.  Menus here don’t exist: everyone knows what everyone has and the proper price.  Cars fly down the road as the fortress and Armenian Church above the city peer down upon us.  There was just one thing missing, beer.  Not a single place sold beer.  Reluctantly, we gave up and just bought some cans of overpriced malty beverages and took them back to the concrete hotel.

            The next day we took the 1 hour drive to Ani and listened to Celil talk about, well, whatever he wanted.  He’s a stout fellow and his parents, being Lezgin, hailed from Dagestan, the same village that Shamil was from and somehow he ended up speaking perfect English and guiding foreigners to Ani.  He knew practically everything concerning Ani and even dabbled in explaining the Turkish version of geopolitics.  He was, though, very curious about Georgia and the prices of Cognac.

            Ani is the reason that we came to Kars, as is the reasons why, most likely, 96% of the foreigners that come to Kars do.  It is a completely vacant city that rests right on the closed and tense border of Armenia and Turkey.  The city is an ancient Armenian city but one wouldn’t know it reading the signs there.  The name Armenian, as well as Georgian (there is a Georgian church in the city as well) are not even mentioned.  Troubling, the city is slowly crumbling to the tests of time and is not even registered as a UNESCO Site.

This river serves as a natural border for Armenia and Turkey

            Supposedly, the city was destroyed by an invasion from Tamerlame, which is believable because he pretty much destroyed everything in the world.  There are still miniature pyramids made ofskulls being found around Iraq that he left behind.  Ani is part of what once was the Silk Road and you can walk the path down to a barb wire fence that stops you just short of the river.  Really, I can’t describe Ani, so instead I’ve posted a bunch of photos.

            We left that day for Ardahan on a 1 ½ hour bus.  Ardahan is small, very small and any foreigner attracts a great deal of attention.  Within moments we were befriended by a student who wanted to practice his English and led us from hotel to hotel, searching for a decently priced room for us.  There few hotels in Ardahan and 2/3rds of them are brothels and when you walk into the lobby its not hard to figure out which is which.  We settled at the Hotel Kura, named after the Kura/Mtkvari River that splits Georgia into two and runs through my village.  Naturally we checked out the room before agreeing to it and we were all stunned to find other peoples luggage in the room.  The employees moved the bags to a different room and we checked in.

            Our Turkish friend then showed us the city, the castle (which was closed), the park, the main street and led us to a cheap shop for donner.  Then we went for coffee and this I feel is important to note: throughout the entire time in Turkey I could only get instant Nescafe while in Georgia I can only get Turkish coffee.  This café actually served Turkish coffee.  Amazing.  He left us and before leaving told us that were bars in town but that they were hidden and that he could not show us such places.  We found them throughout the night and they were indeed hidden.  All two of them.  When we told the guy who sits behind the counter in our hotel about this, he just burst out laughing.  Hysterically. 

            The next day we went to the bus station about fifteen minutes before our bus would leave.  Naturally, the bus left an hour later and we were driven through the mountains just as the clouds were beginning to rise, engulfing us in a sheet of white that for a brief moment was picturesque before becoming totally mute.  The bus stopped for a bit in Posof and then we crossed the border again, by foot.  This border crossing was different, my Russian visa was given a quick once over then the second seemed to cause interest.  No problems arose and we went through the border and waited for our bus which never came.  What did came was a swarm of taxis and ambitious drivers who gladly accepted currency from our bus driver and drove us four, plus one more (making a total of six if you include the driver) to Akhalsikhe where there I took a 3 hour mshtrutka ride home.  Thankfully, I didn’t run into Giora, but I think that I would have if I had been there for a few more hours.    

            My host family, I’ve concluded, most likely still doesn’t know that I was in Turkey and I’m perfectly content with that.  Suspicions have arisen though since they are eating dried figs (anything dried here is hard to find) and looking over a bunch of strange photos.  As I write this, Heikki, Katja and myself are sitting in some lounge that’s connected to a hostel but more on that later…