About Mardin

Tony moved on to Gaziantep. I started off the day with a cream and honey breakfast at Zahter, a restaurant that serves breakfast only.

I took a minibus from the main bus stop to Harran. The driver was Arab. I realized for the first time that there is a significant Arabic speaking group in Turkey.This is perhaps because they keep quite and stay away from the headlines...

Kurds seem to love pink, purple and their shades. I have seen an unusual amount of men wearing violet pusis to cover their heads.

At Harran, the locals no longer use the behive houses. They are used as storage space or for touristic purposes. One of these 150-year-old structures was actually replaced by a concrete building Deyrulzafaran Monestary
Deyrulzafaran Monestary
. When I asked my local guide Cemal what the government's take was on the replacement of the historical houses his response was succinct: "It's election season..."

Stupidly enough, I hadn't told my hotel manager how long I would be staying. So I missed the check out deadline and they ripped me off by making me pay for an extra night. I got mad both at them and at myself.

I arrived in Mardin with the Yeni Midyat bus company, in 3 hours. It cost 20 YTL. The bus dropped me off at a Ford Auto-gallery owned my a family friend. When I entered the owner's office he was conversing with his Syrian brother-in-law in Arabic. He could not understand why I wanted to backpack the world. Unfortunately, many people can't...

As the manager of the Auto-gallery was showing me around, two guys either from the National Intelligence Service (MIT) or from the Police showed up and complained about how much terrorism-related work they had these days.

The Manager: early 30s; used to be involved in the textiles industry in Istanbul; then went bankrupt and returned to his home town of Midyat with increasing pressure from his family; happy with the local AKP government just because they are not the Kurdish party (DTP); of Arab descent; sometimes get bored of the conservative culture and the mundane lifestyle here Harran
Harran
.

Had stuffed ribs and stuffed intestine at Selim Amca, for dinner. The best I have ever had. Apparently, they have chains in Istanbul.

I'm staying at a renovated traditional Mardin house called Erdoba Konaklari. It's a boutique hotel with stylish yet dusty rooms. My hosts would not let me pay for it.

Mardin is a unique city in terms of planning. It is established on a hill with a single road sloaping towards the Mardin Castle. The view from the terrace of the hotel is terrific. Looks like the Bosphorous at night, because there are lights on both sides and pitch black in between.

As I was watching around on the way to Mardin, I noticed that the environment had changed completely. Up until this point, I had not seen purely rock and earth on a hill. There had always been fields or houses on the land. Looks like a war-zone.

There is no industry in Mardin. Before the War in Iraq, every household used to have a truck with which they smuggled goods like crude oil, from Iraq. That has died out along with many others.