1 May 2023
Before leaving Cappadocia, we visited a pottery workshop that had been in the same family for 7 generations. Firstly, we were given a demonstration of a sophisticated wine jug being made. It has four parts – the base, the pouring neck, the handle and a round body with a hole in the middle. With us watching, the master potter was able to make this jug in about 10 minutes, and then he destroyed it by slicing it down the middle so we could see what the inside looks like. Apparently it takes much longer to create a ‘good copy’ one, but I still felt a bit sad that it was destroyed as soon as he made it. We then were given a tour of the ceramics painting before ending up in a showroom (surprise!). The finished works were exquisite and had such vibrant colours.
We then boarded the bus for the approximately 3 hour drive to Ankara, the capital of Turkey and our last stop before we return to Istanbul. My first impressions of this city of about 5+ million people, is that it seems to be a mixture of modern and traditional, and it has lots of green spaces and trees (unlike what we saw in Istanbul). We visited Ataturk’s mausoleum, and we were in time to see the changing of the guard – a similar concept to at Buckingham Palace. The soldiers all looked so young and smart in their uniforms, and it was interesting to see the different rhythms of the marching during the change over. Security was high, and there were lots of men in suits with earpieces working hard to keep the crowds away from the soldiers during the change over. Turkey is having an election in a couple of weeks’ time, so security has apparently been ramped up in the cities.
In the late afternoon we were able to squeeze in a visit to The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. It’s a pity that we are feeling so tired from our 10 days of touring, because this museum had very old and interesting artifacts but we were just unable to do it justice. As you enter the museum, there are two large carved pieces of rock that originated from a temple that was 17 thousand years old at Göbekli Tepe is a Neolithic archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey, which dates back to presumably 15 century BC. The age of these artifacts was astonishing. There was a room dedicated to stone carvings and I was surprised that so many of them reminded me of Egyptian carvings. There were also lots of roman artifacts including gold laurel wreaths – they didn’t look real. Many of the sculptures in Turkey are displayed without heads. This is because when they were found by foreign archaeologists, they removed the heads and took them to their own countries to sell. The heads are the most valuable part of the statue and are lighter to carry than the whole thing. It’s so sad to see so many headless sculptures.
Tomorrow we have a six hour drive back to Istanbul with a plan to see the Grand Bazaar and the spice markets in the afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment