More on Trabzon and area

I guess I've been assuming you know something about Trabzon. I shouldn't - we didn't know anything about it before we decided to go there.

First, here's a link to a map of the area we covered.

Trabzon used to be called Trebizond in the English-speaking world. There's a novel, The Towers of Trebizond by Rose McCaulay that I've heard of but never read (its opening sentence sounds fantastic: '"Take my camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass..."' ). It was an important centre on the Silk Road, the ancient trade route between Europe and China. The Greeks called it Trapezius. Hadrian, the Roman emperor around 120-130 a.d., rebuilt its walls. It was the last capital of the Roman empire: after Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks around 1450 the last emperor moved there and reigned for a few years. So it's full of history.

But today it looks like an ordinary Turkish small city. Lots of ugly cement apartments and office buildings. Chaotic traffic. A quiet garden-like central square. A market that's a warren of twisty streets. Pleasant tea gardens beside the waterfront. An ancient castle on the hilltop. A museum to the time Atatürk (the founder of modern Turkey) spent there. All very normal.

There are a few signs that we're not far from central Asia. There's the Russian market, for one, a block-long tunnel of interconnected tents that houses merchants with the most incredible junk for sale, all from Russia or Georgia or Azarbaijan or places further east. Most of it is awful junk, but there's always something. I found a nice Indian-made dress for 20 YTL. All the women on the bus advised on the colour, so it's bound to be right. It feels nice to wear, anyway. I'm kicking myself that I didn't get the 30 YTL binoculars.

The countryside around Trabzon is full of hazelnut trees - fıstıc they're called here. This is the time of year they're picked and spread out to dry on any available surface. Because the construction of the new road seems to be going on in fits and starts there are lots of paved but unused portions available, and that seems to be the drying place of choice. When the nuts are dry enough a sort of vacuum cleaner comes along and removes the husks, and then they're dried some more and sold. It's a major industry.

They also grow a lot of tea from Trabzon east to the border. Turks don't like it - they prefer the stuff from Sri Lanka - but they sell a lot to Russia.

This tour was a fantastic way to see a part of the world where "tourists never go". It was cheap because the company makes some of its income from commissions the hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops give it. But they took us to decent hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops, places we would never have seen on our own even (or maybe especially) with Lonely Planet. It was a congenial bunch of people, even without speaking much of their language - and we sure know a lot more now than we did at the start of the tour!

For now we're back in Büyükada resting up for the move to İzmir. Ron may very well have a teaching job there: he taught a demo lesson while we were there the week before last and impressed the daylights out of the school. But I hope it's only a part-time one, a few days a week, because we've got a lot more of this country to see once it gets a little cooler. We hope to do Konya and Cappadocia in the fall, and we'll probably take a tour like we did this time.

Thanks for the notes and comments from those who have sent them. The rest of you - keep in touch!