Going to Göreme This Afternoon

I'm in Sivas now, waiting to get a bus this afternoon to Göreme, in Cappadocia, the land of weird rock formations and caves.

Sivas was just a convenient stopover on the way from Samsun to Cappadocia, because there is a train (a very slow one) from Samsun that goes to Sivas, and there is another train from Sivas to Kayseri, which is near Cappadocia.  But, the Sivas - Kayseri train runs at inconvenient times (like, in the middle of the night) so I am going to just take the bus.  Buses work really well in Turkey.

The nearly empty train from Samsun to Sivas.  

Sivas has some nice Seljuk architecture and some nice places to sit outside and look at the architecture.  But, that's about it.  For some reason it's full of places to get really nice sweets and pastries, but very few places to get a decent meal.  I guess everybody must just eat at home.  It is also very conservative and religious.

To Trabzon and Sümela

The overnight train from Tbilisi to Batumi was crowded.  Even though I was in first class, I had to share the compartment.  It was stuffy as well, so I didn't sleep all that well.  I think it was not quite dawn when the train arrived at Makhinjauri station, which is actually about 5km north of Batumi.  First I had to get to the center of Batumi, and I found the marshrutka to get me there.  In a few minutes I found another marshrutka that was going Sarpi, the Georgian border town about 15km further south.  I was sure that I was on the right one, because several of the passengers were busily concealing cigarettes    (I believe that, like booze, they are much more heavily taxed in Turkey).

By this time, I reached the border the sun was up, but after crossing the border it was two hours earlier.  The border checkpoint is right on the Black Sea coast.  You can hear the waves crashing onto the beach while walking into the Georgian checkpoint.

Once on the Turkish side I started looking for some sort of way to get to Hopa, the first town in Turkey of any size.   The idea was to get to the bus station in Hopa and get a bus the rest of the way to Trabzon.  There was a lone taxi trying to get my business.  I looked around for a dolmuş headed to Hopa and did not find one.  They all pointed me back to the taxi.  The taxi driver said that if others also wanted to go to Hopa, we could split the fare he wanted to charge (40TL, about US$18).  I waited around maybe half an hour to find someone willing to share.  There was some guy who also wanted to go to Hopa but he didn't have any money.  I even offered to subsidize him so that I would pay 30TL and he would pay 10TL, just to reduce my costs a little.  I last saw him trying to hitch a ride on a truck.  So I got a taxi to the bus station in Hopa.

I got there about 10 minutes before a bus was leaving and bought a ticket.  For about the first half of the trip, I think the bus stopped in every little town along the coast.  I was afraid it was going to take all day.  But, we made it to Trabzon in about three and a half hours.  We traveled along a really beautiful coastal highway the whole way, except when we got off the highway to go into towns and pick up / drop off passengers.

As the bus was heading into the city center, I saw a hotel that didn't look too bad (from the outside).  I decided I was going to stay there if they had a room and it was halfway reasonably priced, because I was desperate to brush my teeth and take a shower, and I was really tired.  I managed to negotiate their price down to something more or less reasonable.  I slept much of the afternoon.

Black Sea coast at Trabzon

Ships out in the Black Sea

People hanging out on the jetty

The docks at Trabzon

The city center

All the political parties are out campaigning ahead of the local elections at the end of the month.

This morning I went to Sümela Monastery, which is supposed to be one of the must-see things on the Black Sea coast.  During the summer season, you can take a bus directly from Trabzon to Sümela.  At other times there is a dolmuş that goes there from Trabzon.   The Lonely Planet guide told me where to go to find it, but the place it sent me did not look like a dolmuş stop.  I eventually found a dolmuş to Maçka, the nearest town to Sümela.  From there I was able to find another one to take me to Sümela and also back to Trabzon.

Sümela is way up in the mountains.  The roads going up there have sheer drop-offs on the sides and either nonexistent or flimsy wooden railing.  The driver was driving fast and half the time was on the phone as well, both going and coming.

I spent about an hour and a half at Sümela.  It's too bad that I wasn't able to get a shot of it from across the valley.  It's also too bad that there has been so much vandalism of the frescos, a lot of it more than 100 years old.  There was a guard watching it like a hawk to make sure there wasn't any more vandalism.

The mountains seen from Sümela.

The library.

 Tomorrow I am heading along the coast to Samsun.

Back To Tbilisi, Back In Turkey Tomorrow

I checked this morning, and it seems that the last marshrutka from Yerevan to Tbilisi leaves at noon - so I didn't have as much time left in Yerevan as I would have liked.  So I got a taxi to the bus station and found the marshrutka that was leaving at noon-ish (the times are not very precise - if they get a full van they might leave early).  There were six of us total - one an Iranian, and the others Armenian or Georgian - I really couldn't tell.

The bus station in Yerevan

Buses at the station in Yerevan

This morning there was a lot of wind in Yerevan and it was causing either a dust storm or a pollen storm.  I couldn't tell whether it was dust or pollen but something was blowing around.  The power even went out in the hotel for a while, presumably because of the wind.

We headed up into the mountains and even ran into some snow, then we came back down below the snow line.  The driver was a maniac - playing chicken with oncoming vehicles, passing going around turns, etc.  I tried not to look.  The roads were horrible in Armenia.  I was trying to read, but it was too much effort with the van bouncing around on the roads.  Once out of Yerevan, Armenia looked really poor, more than Georgia.

We stopped at one point in Armenia - I imagine it was mainly for people to smoke.  Smoking seems to be a national pastime in both Georgia and Armenia.  In both countries they automatically put an ashtray on the table when you sit down in a restaurant or cafe, and in Georgia restaurants and bars have cigarettes on the menu.

Out in the middle of nowhere in Armenia

Out in the middle of nowhere in Armenia

Our marshrutka

I was glad to see during the daytime what I had missed on the overnight train from Tbilisi to Yerevan.  I think it was almost exactly the same route, since there was a railway line running parallel to the road almost the whole way.

At the border, we left the Iranian guy behind.  He was right behind me at the Armenian exit point, waiting to get his passport processed.  When I pointed out to the driver that he was not with it, he gave a dismissive shrug.  So I don't know if he was only supposed to go as far as the border or whether the driver really dumped him there.  If it was the latter I would hate to be him because there's nothing else there at the border.

One thing I noticed in Georgia: the roads are much, much better than in Armenia.

In Tbilisi I got a taxi to the train station and bought a ticket in the first class sleeping car to Batumi (actually Makhinjauri, just north of Batumi), also in Georgia, on the Black Sea coast, near the Turkish border.  Tomorrow morning when I get there bright and early I will have to find a way over the border, and then get a bus along the Black Sea coast to Trabzon, where I plan to stay tomorrow night.  I will find some place in Trabzon when I get there.

Yerevan - A Nice City

Last night I boarded the overnight train from Tbilisi to Yerevan.  I noticed in my compartment that every seam in the compartment had a seal on it from Georgian customs, so there must be a history of a lot of smuggling on that train.  The sleeping car, inherited from the Soviet Union, had a robust heater.  So, it was quite warm in my compartment, and the compartments on this train do not have windows that open.  The conductor, who also seemed to have been inherited from the Soviet Union, tossed a plastic bag containing sheets and a pillow case into my compartment.  The filthy pillows were on a shelf high up in the compartment.

The corridor of the sleeping car.

My compartment.

Less than two hours after leaving Tbilisi we arrived at the border.  After the Georgian border police came and collected everyone's passport, we sat there for almost two hours.  Once we got moving again, it was not long before we stopped at the Armenian border checkpoint.  That went relatively quickly.  By this time it was almost 1:00 AM.  Fortunately they had turned down the heat, and I managed to sleep fairly well, until the conductor rousted everyone out of bed about 45 minutes before arriving in Yerevan.

I think the taxi driver I used to get to my hotel must have been illegal, because my understanding is that taxis in Yerevan have meters, and his did not.  Still, I was able to get him down to a reasonable price (I asked my hotel beforehand what is reasonable) by telling him to stop the car and getting out of the car when I noticed he did not have a meter.

I like Yerevan a lot more than Tbilisi.  I do not like how Tbilisi is being Disneyfied while its back streets crumble.  Tbilisi's renovated areas are often sterile (like much of the old city) or ugly (like the hideous bridge that somebody called the Glass Slug).  Yerevan, on the other hand, has beautiful parks and wide avenues.  Yerevan has lots of cafes in and around the parks in the middle of the city.  There are lots of statues and sculptures on the streets and in the parks.

The Opera House in Yerevan.

One of the parks, with people selling their bad art.

A trolleybus.

Mother Armenia - replaced a Stalin statue in 1967.

A market near Republic Square.

Carpets in the market.

Samovars in the market.

Some buildings with the pink stone typical of Yerevan.

A rug shop.

In front of one of the many cafes.

In front of a row of cafes.

In Yerevan, the Soviet past is much more visible than in Tbilisi.  The police still wear Soviet-style uniforms, and I was scolded for taking a picture in the train station (although there are "no camera" signs in metro stations and such in Tbilisi, nobody seems to care).   There seems to be a cable or satellite TV station dedicated entirely to showing reruns of Soviet era programming, so I'm guessing that there must be some level of nostalgia for that era.    There are many old Ladas and Volgas still on the road - I guess probably because people cannot afford newer cars.  The Russian language is used a lot more.

The Stalinist wedding cake train station.

The ceiling in the train station - I got yelled at for taking this picture.

Old Ladas and Volgas still running.

Mount Ararat seen from near the train station.

The marshutka area behind the train station.

Getting around on Yerevan's metro system is a bit more challenging than in Tbilisi.  Both cities have the same type of Soviet built metro system, but in Yerevan the station announcements are made in Armenian only - and in both cities reading the station names from the train is next to impossible.  So on underground parts of the system, I have to count stations to know where I am.