Konya is a city in central Turkey with a population of 800,000, famous for its Dervish dances. Which is some dance danced by Dervishes. Now, we didn't see this thing because it's only for a lot of money OR on Saturdays, and we didn't have money and left the city on Friday. Such is life.
But the great thing was that we met a lot of cool people! First, there was this guy, Osman:
Out short story with Osman perfectly demonstrates Turkish hospitality, and more: What happened was that coming back from Olympos Osman took us with his car, brought us to Antalya, then all the way through the city in the traffic jams and put us to the other side of the city at a perfect hitchhiking spot. We told them it's great, it'll be pretty easy for us now to go to Manavgat to see the waterfalls which are said to be very beautiful and they are just on our way to Konya, our destination for the day. (We still have our map here.) Got out of the car, had a minute rest and bought some water, then in 2 minutes the same car stopped again with Osman in it, telling us "Okay guys, as a matter of face I have time, I'll take you to Manavgat." (which is like 40 kilometers from Antalya) Or at least we'd have said something like that, but as he only spoke Turkish, we just figured he said that. We were shocked but said well okay, of course, thank you a lot man :) Got in the car again, and on the way he bought us some cooked corn and two silly cowboy hats as a gift. We don't seem to have any pictures of them but they were really cool. :) He took us to the waterfalls, paid for our entrance, came in with us, waited patiently while we took our photos and stuff and chill, then took us to the way to Konya to a gas station and finally apologised (!!) that now he'd really have to go back to Antalya, left us. So this is how Turkish hospitality is.
Anyway, back to Konya. We arrived pretty quickly, thanks to Osman and a truck driver who also didn't speak any English but took us directly there, even bought some teas for us on the way etc. We spent the first night in a dirty little hotel, where there was a quarrel and shouthing in the night, then car tyres squeeking and everything, and police came too. But we survived, apparently :), and the next day we met Burakkal and Gülşah, who are a marred couple and whom we met on CouchSurfing. They live in a cool flat in the center of Konya and we stayed with them for a night. Alas, not for more because the next day they left to Antalya for work and fun :) So this is how these guys are:
Gülşah cooked us some nice dinner (Judit helped her for which they were both very happy), then, as they both have a strict schedule for working out to maintain their shapes, we drove (!) to a park to have a half-hour walk :) Well, in the end it was only like 15 minutes and had a 30 minute tea-break, with lots of sugar of course :)
The next day they went to work, we got up later, geeked a bit as finally we had some Internet, and then we went to meet our old friend Osman professor who we met the previous afternoon while walking on the street. Note that this Osman is a different Osman from the guy who drove us to Manavgat: that was a salesman but this one is a Turkology professor. He promised the day before that if he has time to meet us the next day he'd bring his wife and drive us to some cool place. He was so nice to us because
- he's Turkish
- he visited Hungary recently and he had a very nice time there. He attended some Turkology conference, that's why he went. He's a cool guy, a little bit fond of Turks: he explained to us that every single nation (maybe even the monkeys) are derived from the Turks, and well, anyhow, the Turks are the coolest guys ever. He wasn't paying too much attention to us if we agreed with the ideas or not, when it comes to communication he's a bit of a write-only kind of person. But anyway, he's a great man and his wife it a great woman any they showed and told us lots of cool things about Turkey!
Osman tool us to the fruit market:
and showed us the puddle on one of the main squares of the city, which was built two years ago and noone understands what it tries to resemble/mean or in general, what sense does it make. It doesn't look good for sure. Maybe they just wanted to give the locals something to wonder about.
Then he and his wife took us a couple of kilometers out from the city to see a temple carved in limestone (and another one which was closed) and a nice lake. Here's Osman and his wife
We had an interesting dinner called "Ekmek" or something, a Konyan speciality, prepared using a strange method:
- We went to the supermarket for ingredients
- We gave the ingredients to a place with two cooks and a huge oven:
- We went to buy some dessert
- We returned to the strange place with the oven where the food was already prepared
- We took the food (resembling some pizza or something) and ate it:
We Skyped a little with the son of Osman who just finished his studies in England in the day before - of course our dear hosts tried to get him and Judit together - then we slept at their place and left in the morning. Thank you Osman and the whole family for taking such a good care of us! :)
