In late December 2014, i was successfully selected to be part of the New Generations Service Exchange team to head to Turkey on a quest to greater our knowledge of our professions and how they are performed in other countries. 4 months later, I am here. Our team is comprised of 2 engineers, 1 city planner and an architect- Me. Now in Australia i'd never dare call myself an architect yet because i have not completed the hefty 7 year process it takes to becoe one but seeing as i'm in Turkey, and here it only takes 4 years, technically I'm an Architect. And to save confusion we'll just go with that.
We will be visiting offices, construction sites, universities and workshops all relating to our appropriate professions. Me= Kid in a candy store.
Our adventures so far are as follows but first of all and before i delve into the recording of our days, a big big big big huge gigantic thank you to the organisers at Rotary Tasmania and Rotary Ankara for organising this who are completely volunteers and doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, purely to help us gain amazing life experience. You know who you are :) and thank you to my supporting club- The Rotary Club of Latrobe.
Day 1.
Jet lag, woke up at 4am, went back to sleep, slept till 9am, finalising things for our presentation we were to give that night and got out into the world at about 130pm.
I am staying with a lovely Rotarian named Yesim and she has a woman that 'helps' during the week that had laid out an amazing breakfast spread for me placed in front of the view of Ankaran suburbs. It is safe to say that i am not slumming it in hostels this time round, I am experiencing a different kind of seeing turkey, from the upper middle class viewpoint and i could certainly get use to it.
People always say, when travelling, take any chance you get for locals to show you their town and you will experience what the place is really like. What i am getting is this but with very obliging, generous, kind locals that are going out of their way to show us as much as possible and make sure we have a good time. I would recommend a Rotary Exchange any day.
Before lunch, we went to an exhibition of panoramic pictures taken all over Turkey and I realised two things. One, it snows a lot in some parts of Turkey, even in Istanbul (not just hot everywhere apparently) and two, Turkey is crazy beautiful and my lust to travel all of it only strengthened. We had lunch at the exhibition hall where we tried Turkish dumplings and Turkish pastry. Both were very nice.
This was the exhibition:
Nuri Bilge Ceylan Photography
We will be visiting offices, construction sites, universities and workshops all relating to our appropriate professions. Me= Kid in a candy store.
Our adventures so far are as follows but first of all and before i delve into the recording of our days, a big big big big huge gigantic thank you to the organisers at Rotary Tasmania and Rotary Ankara for organising this who are completely volunteers and doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, purely to help us gain amazing life experience. You know who you are :) and thank you to my supporting club- The Rotary Club of Latrobe.
Day 1.
Jet lag, woke up at 4am, went back to sleep, slept till 9am, finalising things for our presentation we were to give that night and got out into the world at about 130pm.
I am staying with a lovely Rotarian named Yesim and she has a woman that 'helps' during the week that had laid out an amazing breakfast spread for me placed in front of the view of Ankaran suburbs. It is safe to say that i am not slumming it in hostels this time round, I am experiencing a different kind of seeing turkey, from the upper middle class viewpoint and i could certainly get use to it.
People always say, when travelling, take any chance you get for locals to show you their town and you will experience what the place is really like. What i am getting is this but with very obliging, generous, kind locals that are going out of their way to show us as much as possible and make sure we have a good time. I would recommend a Rotary Exchange any day.
Before lunch, we went to an exhibition of panoramic pictures taken all over Turkey and I realised two things. One, it snows a lot in some parts of Turkey, even in Istanbul (not just hot everywhere apparently) and two, Turkey is crazy beautiful and my lust to travel all of it only strengthened. We had lunch at the exhibition hall where we tried Turkish dumplings and Turkish pastry. Both were very nice.
This was the exhibition:
Nuri Bilge Ceylan Photography
We visited Ankara Castle- Ankara Kelesi (*Secret Game of Thrones geek out*). They have no handrails because back in the bloody gory days, fighting enemies, they werent thinking of handrails so naturally i felt like i was in a giant jungle gym and climbed and jumped around on everything.
It felt good to free of Australia's over protection and stand on the edge of a ledge.
No one knows exactly how early or for whom, the construction of this fortified medieval castle dates back to but it was occupied by the Romans until captured by the Seljuq Turks in 1073.
Within the citadel, lies the entire old town of Ankara. This dates back so a vicious time when entire cities were encased in a fortified citadels for protection and everything was very cute and cosy. If you called a kings city cute, you probably would have had your head chopped off. I wonder what they would think about the size of Ankara now (6 million people).
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| "Master Emin's House" |
It is easy to be transported back in time to when they would have been defending their city from the tops of ledges and the battlements.
If you want to know about more of the features that make a medieval Castle not so easy to just walk into, this website does a pretty good job at breaking it down.
This is amazing! Keep posting so we can all live vicariously 😉
ReplyDeleteUnhappily, your Aunt Lis does not access FB and says she is not interested in joining. She will be in Oz in a few days. Hopefully, your Mother will allow your Aunt access to your Blogs on her FB. Enjoy, Uncle Jim
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