DAY 53 - LOOSE ENDS
SYNOPSIS: A few loose ends on Trabzon since there is nothing to report while waiting for hours at the airport to get from Trabzon to Istanbul to the next destination: Denizli, hub for Pamukkale.
The day was only half gone by the time I returned from Sumela to Trabzon and there was one site left to see: The Trabzon Museum. The most impressive part of it is the building itself, a mansion from the late 19th century, clearly inspired by European, perhaps French models. A lot of original furniture is still preserved since the original builder, a Greek banker went bankrupt – it seems to happen to the best of us! :-)
From a museum perspective, this was another disaster. Labels were limited to the painfully obvious, like: Dining Room, Swords, Costumes, Silver Objects, Roman Lamps, etc. Brother, I can see that! What about some historical background, a date perhaps, a context? I went as slowly as I could, and looked as carefully as possible at all the dusty objects without a context, but after 30 minutes, I had exhausted it and myself. But, as I said: The building is worth a look.
The day was still not over and I had traipsed through the main parts of Trabzon for three days already, so I ventured into some back alleys to look for surprises, and I found a few: An old food market, a boarded up old church (without a historical marker), and a store full of musical instruments. I went in. Four young people were hanging out there and we had some fun with an i-phone translator getting me some information on traditional Turkish instruments. I even got some demonstrations. I bought one, of course: A fiddle. This is the kind of souvenir I like. And then I had to hunt down a few CDs to go with it. It gave me a task and it filled the rest of the day.
After the notorious yet delicious kabab meal, I went back one last time to my dreadful hotel room and dared to turn on the TV again. Lo and behold: The Hustler channel was properly filtered – it now would take 5 minutes before kicking in; there were two foreign channels, unfortunately in Russian; and there was an American movie I recognized and decided to watch while working on my photos: Funny, the actors were all speaking Turkish…
And this is how my three day visit of Trabzon ended.
Good night.