Best Day So Far?

For my last week of vacation, I went to the Black Sea region of Turkey. This region has a distinct culture in Turkey that is fairly conservative, where community is strong and the people are very proud of their heritage, traditions, food, and music. I was very excited to visit my friend Lauren in Rize, a small city about an hour east of Trabzon, one of the largest cities on the Black Sea. A few days before I went our other friend Jessica told us about a soccer match in Trabzon with the national Turkish team playing Korea. I had not gone to a soccer match in Turkey yet, so we decided to go. Jess came out to Rize then and we had an adventure of a day.

We had a late start in Rize and took a dolmus (a van that serves as a shared taxi but follows a set route) down to the city center. We wanted to eat lunch before we took the hour long bus to Trabzon and we wanted to find this place that Lonely Planet highly recommended that served traditional Laz food (a small ethnic group that lives in the region). Jess and I hiked around Rize for almost 45 minutes looking for this restaurant and could not find it. Finally I took out our LP to check the address again. And a cop comes up to us and happily says in English, "Welcome to Rize." We smile and ask in Turkish if he knew where this restaurant was. He crosses his arms and says "finished." Oh, okay, thanks, we say, and begin to walk away. He catches up to us and says he'll take us somewhere else for lunch. Ah, here's the Turkish hospitality I've been waiting for. We walk across town then to a remodeled Ottoman home and he has this closed restaurant prepare a meal for us. It's about 2:30pm, not really lunch time, but they are happy to help. We are after all yabanci (foreigners). The meal was amazing (picture below). Small and vegetarian dishes- simply perfect. The best of the Laz cuisine is muhlama, which is very similar to cheese fondue. It all was great and cost about $7. We then decided to hit up the Rize tea museum, but unfortunately it was closed. Rize is the region in Turkey that is famous for Turkish tea, or chai. So, Jess and I decided to make our way to the otogar (bus station) to get to Trabzon.

We had wanted to have time in Trabzon to see the city, but by the time we got there it was already after 6 and the soccer game was at 8. We had assumed we'd be dropped off at the otogar and would have to figure out how to get to the city center but the bus dropped us off there! So nice. We found a small place for dinner (also recommended by LP) and we again had a small meal of small dishes. Perfect for two girls who are fairly sick of eating so much chicken. The restaurant owner spoke English so we asked how to get to the soccer stadium. He gave very clear directions and we got on our way.

We made our way to the dolmus stop and saw a line of men waiting. We safely made the assumption they were all going to the game so we joined them. And the dolmus took us straight to the stadium! (We seriously have not had such good luck with transportation in Turkey before.) We picked up our tickets and were glad to see that we were not the only ladies there, although definitely in the minority. We bought some red Turkish scarves to cheer our team on and entered the stadium just as it began to rain. Jess knows me so well- she had purchased "covered" tickets. Thank God. We soon learned that the covered section also means the more subdued one. Turkish soccer games are known to be crazy, especially for the city teams, but the national cheering was still really cool here. Got some cool videos although we could not figure out exactly what they were saying! We had great tickets sitting in the first row right at the side of one of the goals. After halftime the guys sitting next to us brought some tea back for us. Again, Turkish hospitality. We might not have been able to really understand each other, but we were all there watching the game. At one time I made a comment to Jess about someone being offsides and the gentlemen next to me insisted "No offsides, ok." It was hilarious. Turkey ended up tying Korea 0-0 but it was still a great game, if anything for the experience.

We got back on the dolmus to the city center and then had to search for another to take us back to the otogar. We got into one but somehow missed our stop. The kind driver took us back and dropped us off right where we needed to be. Went inside and got our ticket for Rize. We then got shuffled into a car (that smelled a bit like pot) with two other guys from the game (we are all wearing matching red scarves) and literally race out of Trabzon to catch up with a bus. We pull over and then are shuffled onto our Rize bus. Unfortunately we weren't dropped off at the university in Rize and ended up having to walk at least a mile at midnight back to Lauren's place. But it was simply a great day. We were taken care of the entire time, had amazing food, and experienced a Turkish football match. By far one of my best days in Turkey so far.