After a busy couple weeks and a long weekend in Istanbul, I have a number of these posts to catch up on. The schedule this year keeps us busy for nearly the whole day, six to seven days a week, leaving little time for outside pursuits like writing blog posts, catching up on e-mails (sorry mom!), or doing the really important things like forming lasting relationships with my local bartenders. The plus side is that my Turkish is really improving and I feel for the first time like I could learn the language well enough to spend a good amount of time here without feeling too much like an outsider. As for now, I need to take advantage of a day without too much homework to catch up on some of these stories before I head to Safronbolu on Saturday for my next independent weekend excursion! As a result, I will try to keep many of these short and focus on including more pictures to tell the story.
The next weekday event after the weekend of Ottoman houses and Selcuk mosques was rather ambiguously billed in our schedule as "Participation in the Municipality of Kalecik's Activities." While initial requests from the administrators for more information (or really any information) were met with assurances that we would be told later, word through the student rumor mill was that the trip would involve either attendance at a local wine festival or participation in a harvest at a local village. Since I was pretty sure the wardrobe requirements for each of these activities would be different I was happy to receive some (unofficial) confirmation prior to our departure that we would be attending the wine festival and was able to dress accordingly. However, given what then transpired over the next six hours I would hesitate to say that we were really informed of our activities for the day.
For some background on the structure of the program, twice weekly we have cultural events that take place between 2:00 and 4:00 after our four hours of classroom instruction (the other three days a week we have "conversation club" at the same times). Attendance at all program events is mandatory, making for quite a long day of activitiy, especially once you take into account the one hour commute between campus and my host family's house and the amount of time I need to spend with them everyday before starting my homework so that I am not completely rude as a houseguest. Given this rather full schedule, we tend to value advance information on what we will be doing each day and we hope the events will loosely conform to the schedule that we have been given. When, on this occasion, we have still not reached our destination by 3:30, I began to suspect that our 4:00 return time would have to be pushed back. This was the first of many surprises for the day.
When we arrived in Kalecik, there wasn't really a wine festival in the sense that I have come to know them, but apparently what this signified was a period of time that visitors were encouraged to come to the town to sample the local wine production. On this particular day, we appeared to be the only outsiders in attendance and were quite the spectacle driving through town in our giant tour bus. When we finally stopped, we were ushered into an office with a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains and fields that turned out to be the office of the Başkan (like the mayor) of the municipality, who later joined us to describe the regions agricultural and wine production. He and his staff were very hospitable and it was a great opportunity to hear about one of the more rural areas outside our little metropolis, but I can't help but feel we would have appreciated it more had we had even some advance warning as to what we would be doing. As it was I didn't even know which office we were in until he came in and was introduced to the group. After hearing about the great local wine production we were chomping at the bit to sample some, and were a bit surprised to find ourselves headed back out to the bus before having more than a coupe sips of a very nice red! As luck would have it, we were headed to one of the local vineyards for a proper tasting (though once again, finding this out before our arrival might have been nice!).
The vineyard is named Vinkara (with the French pronunciation of vin it makes a nice little pun on its larger neighbor) and is located in a spot that would make plenty of their colleagues in Napa Valley jealous. Seeing the rolling hills of green grapevines situated against a backdrop of greenish-brown mountains only reinforced my opinion that most of Central and Western Anatolia could be dropped into Northern California without drawing too much attention (depending on how literally you interpret that sentence). We were met by the viticulture and production managers of the vineyard who were generous enough to show us around the production centers and up to the roof for some great views of the valley before ushering us into the tasting room for some long overdue samples. We tasted three of their wines, ranging from the more conventional (though delicious) chardonnay to more unique fare made with local grape varietals. Each of them was wonderful (especially in comparison to other locally famous wines like those Amanda and I had in Şirince last summer!) and I would have been happy to stick around and help them polish off the reserves we had been shown earlier. However, we were told that we would be headed back to the bus soon, so I had to settle for buying a couple bottles to enjoy later (one of the chardonnay and another red made with the Boğazkere grape native to Diyarbakir) and had the assurance of the Viticulture Manager that if I was ever back in the area I was welcome to give him a call and enjoy plenty of the local product. I will keep the card in my wallet!
Had this been the end of the trip we might have gone out on a high note and only been somewhere between two and four hours late in our arrival. After all, whatever frustration I might have been feeling earlier had recently been soaked in several glasses of very enjoyable wine, which, as it turns out, is the perfect recipe for mellowing me out a bit. However, this being the twilight zone daytrip that it was, we next found ourselves dropped off next to a muddy creek for a little over an hour to sample some of the local gözleme (which I can only describe as somewhat like a Turkish cheese quesadilla, though that really doesn't do it justice!). The nourishment was long overdue and I was happy to wash it down with my new Turkish obsession ayran, which is a popular drink that can only be described as a glass of thin, salty yogurt drunk through a straw. It has taken me a while to get on board with it but now I'm along for the ride! However, since the food took only a few minutes to eat, the extended stopover soon turned into a chance for the eighteen of us to wander in different directions around the creek and muddy hills and fields that surrounded our little picnic spot, the whole time wondering how exactly this little excursion was planned and why we weren't let in on any of its secrets! After a while, we did finally find ourselves back on the bus to begin the long trek home. All in all, we arrived back at around 10:15 that night and began our long commutes back to our individual houses. Given that we were six hours late in our arrival, the amount of time that we went past our scheduled return was three times longer than the event was originally supposed to have lasted in the first place! Oh the wonders of having someone else in charge of your schedule! At the very least, I had the opportunity to enjoy some great wine and buy a couple keepsakes for Amanda and I to enjoy upon my return! While I haven't visited the site yet, the card that I was given provides a website address for the vineyard if anyone is interested in seeing more at www.vinkara.com.
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