Dogubeyazit

Is where I am now. Directly underneath Mt. Ararat. Things:

1) Right by the Iranian border, which means most of the downtown is stores selling all sorts of things brought in from Iran (where things are less expensive than Turkey) -- many of them (called "Passaja" (sp?)) are long hallways filled with all sorts of totally random things. These then make their way further west in Turkey.

2) Right by Mt. Ararat, which means central for adventure tourism, which means all the little boys running around the downtown know a bunch of English on top of being bilingual Kurdish - Turkish. And all the little boys are trying to sell things or get work as guides. It's quite overwhelming sometimes.

3) Fruit is unbelievably cheap here. And tea has gone down to 0.25 a glass from 1.50 - 2.00 in Istanbul.

4) It is very hard to get children to stop playing with you once they start. And one very small one, in particular, doesn't want to stop taking pictures. And they're phenomenally cute.

5) flat, dry, dusty, at the base of the mountain... some little houses behind mud-brick or concrete walls, the kids play in the alleyways and the mommas (at least sometimes) sit inside the walls... lots of taller buildings, which look like they could easily be expanded up once there's money to.

6) lots of squares with fountains (not decorative, just functional - where you can get water from for all the things you need it for). Julia fell in love with this place immediately, it was quite fun watching her be so happy about it. A place where space for living seems to override a lot of the republican "educative" design features (this area WILL BE A PEDESTRIAN WALKWAY, there's even patches of golf-green grass to prove it).

7) Pretty stunning landscape on the drive down. Going from green to brown; steppe (plateau plains) butting up against hills & the few peaks.

8) things are possibly beginning to change for the Kurds; the AKP recently introduced legislation allowing the Kurds to use their language more openly, and instituted a Kurdish-language state television channel... so far, though, all signage seems to be in Turkish only. Made me think about Quebec, obviously... And there's a long way to go, since the war is still going on. (The other major development in Turkish politics was the revelation that several terrorist attacks in Istanbul - which I remember hearing about, 80 dead in one blast, etc - were orchestrated by figures in the military and then blamed on the PKK... this one makes me think about Algeria-- no one high up has been implicated, but some people think this might lead to some change in popular support for the military -- this is all really quite uninformed since I haven't had a chance to research, but that's the outline)

9) not about Dogubeyazit : there is a totally modernist sculpture overlooking Kars that I am really awfully fond of but haven't found out what it is. It's two figures facing each other; I suspect it'll turn out to be a monument to the incapacity of races to coexist or something like that, but for now I think it's swell.