A Little R&R in Beypazar

Did you catch that my title rhymed? Just checking to make sure you're paying attention:) Tim and I (especially Tim) were defintely in need of some r&r. We were in need of some time away from school stuff and in need of time together. There hasn't been a whole lot of it lately. School has been all-encompassing and Tim has been working until 8 most nights and working weekends. So we made a decision to go somewhere for Labor Day weekend and Beypazar is where we landed.
I didn't know much about Beypazar, a village about an hour from Ankara, other than it was on the historic silk road and it was famous for silver and carrots. Sounded like my kind of town. We left after church on Sunday. As we headed out of Ankara, I was reminded once again of this stark part of Turkey we live in-the Anatolian Plain. When I'm in the city surrounded by tall buildings and lots of trees and other greenery, I forget what lies outside the city limits. While there are flat parts, there are lots of ridges-not hills, exactly, not mountains. But pretty tall peaks that are gray or brown, occasionally dotted with sparse trees. Tim finds it beautiful in its own way, I find it somewhat frightening (I don't know why-I think it's that you can see for miles and miles without seeing much of anything and there's not much green) and wonder why in the world Ataturk would have picked this part of Turkey to put his new capital in. My mom read this book about Pioneer women once-those brave souls who ventured west in covered wagons with their husbands. They often stopped in some incredibly flat state and set up a home. There was nothing for miles and miles. No people, no towns, just land. A lot of these women eventually went crazy just looking at the vast endless space. For some reason I always think about that as we get out of Ankara. Now, I'm not going to go crazy as we travel in this part of the country, I'm just saying that I have that same feeling-almost overwhelmed by the vastness of nothing. I'm more of a green, rolling hills kind of VA girl. I think there's something promising about a green hill-something lush and life-giving. I'm learning, though, that there is beauty in this landscape, too. It is life-giving too, yielding beautiful fruits and vegetables, hay, animals-all providing for the people who live here.
Interspersed between the browns and grays, though, there were beautiful patchwork fields. Patches of parsley-beautiful, mossy green carpets. There were fields of tomatoes, beautiful Ayas tomatoes, named for this region and known for the sweetness and deliciousness. There were beautiful eggplant, oblong purple gems, and huge glowing orange carrots that would make Peter Rabbit jealous. All of this beautiful produce, after it was picked, was housed in little huts made of corn husks and straw, manned by cheerful, rotund peasant women in flowery headscarfs and little spritely, business-savy children who looked as if they had been in the sun all summer.
There were also golden fields of hay or straw. We couldn't figure out if they were growing it or had covered the fields in this. You know you hear those songs about "golden fields against an azure sky" or "fields of gold," that's excactly what these fields looked like. After the grays and browns and stark peaks, the golden fields were a welcome sight, catching the light and playing against the blue of the sky.
Sometimes we would be coming up upon a hill that looked like it was covered in big, white rocks, only to find they were sheep or goats that were lying very still, just sunning themselves. There were enough to cover a whole hill, from the top, all the way to the bottom, near the road.
Now, let me say that as I was more of the observer during this whole trip since Tim was driving. He couldn't look very carefully at anything but the road. The roads can be really terrible here-tons of huge potholes, road work, and every changing road patterns. Several people have told us that there is money to fix the roads temporarily, but never enough money to fix them for the long-term. The result is that there is always road work. We had to be careful to follow the signs, to make sure we were in the correct lane, since those were always shifting. I'm always glad Tim is the one driving. Strangely enough, he enjoys the driving here. I'm very content to sit in the passenger seat, be the pot-hole lookout, take in the scenery, and contemplate what my next blog entry will be about.
Well, looks like the Bepazar trip will have to be divided into 2 entries as I have gotten carried away with talking about the landscape. I guess I fancy myself the next Willa Cather. So...stay tuned for more on Beypazar-where 2 yabangi (foreigners) get into danger and trouble in a small Turkish town. Ok....not really, but I want you to keep reading:)