I'm going to compress 2 days into one blog post again because I took hardly any pictures the first day when I spent many hours on a bus.
Breakfast was excellent as you would expect of an upmarket hotel. I wished I could have afforded a hot-air balloon ride to view the region; that would have been spectacular. Sigh.
The bus to Ankara was slow, partly because of the many stops, partly because of poor roads. It was a bit of an ordeal because two old passengers behind me nattered throughout the trip. What did they have so much to talk about? Finally we arrived at AŞTİ (the main bus terminal) at 1600, about 30 minutes late. I hopped onto the Ankaray, a light metro line, and headed for the central railway station, the Maltepe stop. My hosts, A, a German living in Turkey and his Turkish wife, P were patiently waiting for me at the station. I bought my sleeper ticket for the train back to Istanbul in a couple of days, and then went to dinner with them. Back at their apartment, they asked me many questions about migrating to Australia. (Note from the future: as far as I know they never left Turkey, P was pregnant and she seemed very attached to her parents in Ankara so I surmise that she was uncomfortable with starting afresh in a new country.)
The next day was Sunday so we did a tour of Ankara. First stop was Anıtkabir, the mausoleum of Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic. Through force of character he dragged a backward remnant of the Ottoman empire into the 20th century and established Turkey as a modern, secular state. However his legacy is not without controversy which is beyond the scope of this blog to delve into, so the hyperlinks are there for more information. By the way the two men and a child are not posing for me but another photographer. I have a couple of other photos, but they are of the boring structured space surrounding Anıtkabir.
This is probably Gençlik park, from the fountain.
I had volunteered to give a talk that evening to the local Linux group. Only 5 people turned up. One problems with open source software in Turkey was that people didn't think highly of something that was free. Piracy of proprietary software was rampant, as one might guess. I think the FOSS scene there has improved since then.
After the meeting we had supper with P's parents and siblings at their home. They were having a small outdoor barbeque in their yard. They were lovely people, lavished Turkish hospitality on me and were pleased that I could speak some Turkish. A joked that I put him to shame.
Breakfast was excellent as you would expect of an upmarket hotel. I wished I could have afforded a hot-air balloon ride to view the region; that would have been spectacular. Sigh.
The bus to Ankara was slow, partly because of the many stops, partly because of poor roads. It was a bit of an ordeal because two old passengers behind me nattered throughout the trip. What did they have so much to talk about? Finally we arrived at AŞTİ (the main bus terminal) at 1600, about 30 minutes late. I hopped onto the Ankaray, a light metro line, and headed for the central railway station, the Maltepe stop. My hosts, A, a German living in Turkey and his Turkish wife, P were patiently waiting for me at the station. I bought my sleeper ticket for the train back to Istanbul in a couple of days, and then went to dinner with them. Back at their apartment, they asked me many questions about migrating to Australia. (Note from the future: as far as I know they never left Turkey, P was pregnant and she seemed very attached to her parents in Ankara so I surmise that she was uncomfortable with starting afresh in a new country.)
I had volunteered to give a talk that evening to the local Linux group. Only 5 people turned up. One problems with open source software in Turkey was that people didn't think highly of something that was free. Piracy of proprietary software was rampant, as one might guess. I think the FOSS scene there has improved since then.
After the meeting we had supper with P's parents and siblings at their home. They were having a small outdoor barbeque in their yard. They were lovely people, lavished Turkish hospitality on me and were pleased that I could speak some Turkish. A joked that I put him to shame.
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