Where are all the women? And other Eastern Turkey horrors.

Greetings from Tatvan on Turkey's Republic Day!

Tatvan is a city of 100, 000 people on the West coast of Turkey's biggest lake, Van Golu. There isn't too much international tourism in this city. We have been here for two days and I think we are celebrities of sorts. Plenty of people (mostly children) have been running up to us to practice their English, which consists or "Hello", "where are you from?", "my name is....." Each statement is then repeated with little or no pause for us to answer. We woke up this morning to the sound of a marching band, having a last minute practice before their big Republic Day Parade. The parade was essentially all school children wearing their respective school uniforms. A few teachers looked annoyed that their students were more interested in posing for the city's two tourists (us) than practising their songs and maintaining their formation.

Eastern Turkey has been a stark contrast to Western Turkey: Minimal tourism. Maximum misogyny. It has become pretty commonplace for men to just ignore me and look directly to Zack for a conversation or information. Also, where are all the women? The streets of Eastern cities are pretty bustling, with lots of outdoor cafe space to drink cay and socialize, but you can't help but wonder, where are all the women? It's like a an episode of the Twilight Zone where women are kept in jars or something. There are groups of men everywhere, of all ages - young boys playing soccer, teenage boys up to "no good", and endless clusters of older men chain smoking and drinking tea, but very few women. I like to hope they are having a blast chatting with one another in their homes, doing really fulfilling work that brings them joy and challenges them. I have my doubts. 

I've developed a highly scientific strategy for assessing a region's level of women's liberation. Knitting stores. 

A city with none or minimal knitting stores = liberal. City with a knitting store on every corner = oppression, minimal rights, child brides. See how this works?  

Women's oppression and religiousity aside, Eastern Turkey has been pretty wonderful. Van Golu, Mount Ararat, Mount Nemrud (really a volcano) are each enough to take your breath away. In Van Golu there is an Island that has a 1200 year old Armenian church on it. We headed out (on a boat full of men) to the Island. Imagine our giddy excitement when we found out that the church is called Zacharias and is covered in etchings and paintings of wildlife. I'm not one to get excited about churches, but this was a beauty. 

A palace dining room. 

Sunset at Van castle, some hooligans showed us a hole in the fence so we didn't have to pay to get in.  

Ferry ride Akdamar Island. 

Zachary in front of Zacharias church

The view from the church. Lake Van is gorgeous and one of it's claims to fame is  a special cat breed that has different coloured eyes and loves swimming. Also in Van lake you can do you laundry without soap because of high chemical content. 

Wildlife pictures on the church. 

Another interesting thing about our time in Eastern Turkey is that it happened to fall on Bayram, the four-day holiday surrounding Eid. On the first day of Bayram, families slaughter either a sheep or a cow. We knew this was the practice but were not at all prepared to see what we saw that morning in Erzurum (a very religious city.) We woke up on the morning of day one and wanted to go shopping to buy me some new pants (I lost the only pair I had on the trip.) Not only were all the stores closed (rookie mistake) but the city was a complete ghost town. Nobody was out on the usually busy streets and instead, there were cow and sheep parts everywhere! Every dumpster was full of innards and dogs were munching on legs and ears. The streets were literally running with blood (see photo.) We even came across a group of men (obviously) hosing down a severed cow head. 

Burger King was giving out flags to children to celebrate Bayram. Irony not lost on us. 

I'll spare you the picture of intestines and severed heads.