Time Machine to Mesopotamia
Going back in time to see the oldest known temple in the world, artifacts from Mesopotamia, and visiting Turkey’s food capital
Stepping off of our Time Machine, we’ve arrived in Eastern Turkey. The first stop in our time traveling journey: Gaziantep, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. We immediately felt this is a city where traditions and artifacts have been preserved for thousands of years. The ring of people hammering copper carried throughout the streets. It was a place where machines had yet to replace skilled human labor, a place where traditions were cherished and woven into every part of the city. In every restaurant we sat, we were served food in heavy copper dishware, drank coffee from machines adorned with hand-engraved copper, and noticed decorative copper pieces in nearly every home.
We walked through the coppersmith bazaar, an iconic 500 year old outdoor market that dates back to the Ottoman Empire. Hundreds of small shops line the streets, each with their own history of knowledge passed from one generation to the next.
We knew we had to take advantage of being in a city prized for its copper craftsmanship; our mission: find our favorite pieces for our non-existent (yet) future home. After a couple days spent evaluating different options in tens of shops, we landed on our favorites. Heavy, handmade, beautifully designed pots and serving trays.
Visions of curries in the serving dishes and jams being made in the pots danced through our minds. We were sold. Figuring out how we were going to transport these back to the US would come later, “if there’s a will there’s a way” is all we could muster for now.
After buying our copper goods, we shared a cup of tea and a conversation provided by Google Translate in the shop with the owner and his friends. One of the men called his son, who spoke some English, and handed us the phone. Within minutes we had local recommendations and a phone number to call if we needed anything during our stay.
They were incredulous to learn how we were traveling for the next year. They couldn’t wrap their heads around it, but gave us very approving thumbs ups. When their other friend came back into the shop with tea, they immediately went to tell him about our travels, almost with the tone of “would you get a load of this!”
We popped in and out of other shops, some selling spices and nuts, others carved wooden objects, and a lot of leather producers (especially shoes). Let me backtrack, simply including “nuts” in this list is drastically understating their importance here in Antep. Gaziantep is the food capital of Turkey, and it’s especially renowned for its pistachio desserts, often considered to have the best baklava in the world. The pistachios are known as green gold here, and for good reason. Our first taste of these pistachios without exaggeration made our jaws drop open.
We had one goal going into Gaziantep: never feel hunger. We wanted to take advantage of being in one of the best gastronomic cities by eating so much at all times. We made a list of all the famous dishes in this region that are must-try foods, and we are happy to report we worked our way through every single one. Let us never forget some of our favorite bites:
Our guesthouse owner told us that tourism in Gaziantep has been on a major incline these last few years, thanks to the traction in food tourism since UNESCO named it a distinguished gastronomy city. As amazing as the food here is, the city has a lot more to offer. One of our favorite experiences was visiting the largest museum of mosaics in the world. On the Euphrates river in current day Gaziantep lived an ancient civilization called Zeugma. The city flourished during the Roman period, where lavish bath-houses, streets, and fountains were constructed. As we walked through the museum, we felt transported back to an ancient Roman city. This ancient city Zeugma was underwater and only recently excavated. In what felt like 1 hour, 3 hours had passed of us walking through all of the beautiful mosaics and getting inspiration for our future home - how hard could it be to make a few mosaics like this in our backyard?!
Our memories of the food, history, and copper will be deeply cherished, but nothing will be remembered more than the people here. One interaction includes a sweet boy named Ahmed, who nervously came up to practice his English with us. He seemed like he was following us for a little bit and working up the courage. We talked about video games, our time in Turkey, and by the end of the conversation we were all left with smiles. The chef at our breakfast shop wanted to start a store in India with Jovan. Two sisters at a baklava shop were nervous to speak in English with us, and giggled to each other during our whole visit. The warmth of the city was everywhere, and no place warmer than our hotel.
Our hotel owner, Mustafa, approached us as we sat talking at a common area table at the end of an evening. Pulling out his phone, he translated “can I buy you a beer?” Not in the mood to drink, we declined. Quickly regretting our refusal, and finding it best to stay open, we found him and told him we’d have one. That’s where our evening with Mustafa began.
Sat around the table for a couple hours, we were guided by broken translations. Mustafa got up, and pots started clattering in the kitchen, suddenly the sound and smell of food sizzling. It’s midnight, surely he can’t be making us food. The thought itself was disastrous for us considering we had stuffed ourselves to the brim just a few hours before. A few minutes later, Mustafa emerged carrying two plates of food for me and Jovan.
Through another round of broken translations, we somehow ended up making plans for breakfast the next morning. Mustafa wanted us to try a Gaziantep special. Will we be eating with his family? Where will we have this breakfast? We weren’t entirely sure what the plan was. What was clear, however, was that Mustafa was an incredibly hospitable person who showed his warmth and generosity through kind acts.
Our last stop before heading out of the city was this aforementioned breakfast plan. Mustafa met us in the courtyard, gestured for us to come with him, and walked us over to a nearby restaurant. What struck us about Mustafa was how subtle his generosity always was. He bought us a beer without expecting us to stay and socialize. He cooked for us late at night without eating himself. And now, he bought us both a durum, ayran, and fried artichoke bhaji. He needed to go return to the hotel while we ate and enjoyed - treating us to a meal, paying, and not even indulging himself.
With warm hearts and full bellies, it was time for us to leave Gaziantep and make our way to Şanlıurfa. Stepping into Urfa felt like entering a different world from the Turkey we had come to know. As we passed through all the beige stone and rock buildings, we felt the true middle eastern build of a city. Strolling through the streets excited us and made us feel like we were experiencing a new culture with the Syrian influence here.
We were also feeling the deep religious and spiritual ties. Known as the city of prophets, it’s mentioned in the Book of Genesis as where Abraham and his family lived. We were seeing more conservatism and Kurdish influence than we had before, and our eyes became open to how different eastern Turkey is from the West.
One of our favorite stops was a food museum! We had tried so many new foods and spent two months immersed in Turkish culture, and now we were seeing aspects of it presented in a museum.. We learned about the kitchen tools, different regional foods and the traditions behind them, and the seating and cultural aspects of sharing a meal. It was incredible. Going room to room, we translated all the Turkish signs and then went aaahhh when we connected the dots of the culture we’ve experienced through our travels.
The biggest reason for us visiting Urfa? Göbekli Tepe. Historic is a gross underselling of what the place is and what it represents. The US was founded 250 years ago. The ancient Roman Empire founded 2,750 years ago. The very first stones in Stonehenge were placed 5,000 years ago in 3000 BC. Agriculture, the literal concept that defines how we understand food today, 10,000 years ago. Gobekli teppe does laps around all of them, dating back 11,500 years. And there standing before us was a small glimpse into this mysterious city - a place that revolutionized how archeologists understand civilizations. Fearful of damaging the oldest uncovering of human history, only 5% of the area has been excavated. It’s no wonder. Imagine how delicate you have to be as you uncover the oldest human recordings known to… well humans. This was not one of those staring at a rock and pretending to “feel” the history - it was a fully consuming moment, being on the banks of the Tigres and Euphrates rivers, overlooking a site that defines what human history means.
Our bus ride to Mardin was largely spent going back and forth contemplating the next few weeks of our travels. Do we want to spend more time in Turkey, traveling further north? No, we both realized we knew what we wanted next: it’s time to go to Georgia. In what truly felt like a needle in a haystack, we found somebody on a carpool app to take us the 8 hour drive up north to the border. But first, we had 2 days to explore the beautiful city of Mardin.
Our time throughout Mardin was breathtaking. We looked out onto the Mesopotamia terrain, appreciating the dusty sunsets and the rich architecture of the buildings.
We visited museums where we got to see some of the earliest relics of human civilization. Being there felt like the truest form of stepping back in time. Each night, the city came alive with beautiful traditional Turkish live music flowing from the many terraces. We laid on a bench together as we listened to live singers, watched people dance, and saw sparklers being lit - the city was alive and happy. And that made both of us incredibly happy too. I had a pinch me moment after an incredible dinner, where we got to sample a mezze spread of new dishes that filled our whole table. I realized how special it is that our life feels like one big quality time date, getting to essentially go on dinner dates every day together. I couldn’t be any more grateful!
With a lot of new knowledge in our brains, it was time to head out of Turkey. Our carpool driver from the BlaBla app arrived right on time, our first green flag that trusting a random driver to take us 8 hours wasn’t a bad idea. He didn’t speak any English, but the first hour of the ride transpired cordially as we chatted through translate. We learned he is a librarian, lives up North with his wife and 2 young daughters, and was in Mardin on a work trip. We felt at ease with him. Another green flag? He was one of the few people in Turkey that didn’t smoke cigarettes! We were thinking this could not be any better.
We’re paying $10 each to drive 8 hours with a kind person, avoiding the dreaded alternative: an 18 hour, $65 per person bus ride. It felt as though we hit the jackpot. But that was only the beginning of it. What felt like a serendipitous circumstance, hitching a ride with a stranger that was going coincidentally close to where we needed to be - turned into a guardian angel who practically carried us to the border of Turkey.
He only made one meaningful break throughout the whole drive, allowing us all to stretch our legs. But, it also gave him the opportunity to surprise us with a watermelon. With the biggest smiles on all our faces, on the side of a mountain, we all shared in a moment of light laughter and sweet summer fruit. But that’s not all. Not only did he haul ass to ensure we would make the last bus departing for the Turkish border, he got his friend to arrange the last seats on the bus for us. He ensured all three of our connecting buses to the border knew where we were going and where to direct us. He might as well have held our hands and walked us straight to the border. It felt like our only job was to keep smiling as we hoped from one mode of transport to another, making what seemed to be an impossibly complicated passage such a heartfelt moment to think back on.
What could’ve been a 13 hour boring travel day was made special from the consideration from everyone along the route. At one of our bus stops, we stopped into the attached bus terminal restaurant for a bite to eat. Two teenage girls were working at the restaurant, and they were clearly shocked to have English speakers there. They nervously practiced their English (their first sentence to us: “we hate Trump”) 🤝 and generously offered us some free juices. Quite honestly, while it was a very sweet interaction, it was limited by time and we didn’t talk much. So to find the below messages the next day in my Instagram inbox truly warmed by heart, and closed off our time in Turkey in the sweetest way possible.
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