Turkey, my old friend...

Afternoon all,

After I got back from Indonesia I had only a few days at home to annoy the missus and then it was off again. This time I had to go back to a site where I had been before. I had to go to Elazig Cimento in Turkey.

I have been to Turkey many times before and I love it. The people are really friendly and the food and beer is stunning.

Elazig is in Eastern Turkey, about 300km from the Iraq border. It is inland and has a beautiful climate, cold winters and stunning summers. I travelled (again) with sodding KLM. Crap flite as per usual, rubbish staff and shite food and no entertainment system on any of their planes.

I got to Istanbul at 02:00 am and my flite from there to Elazig left at 05:00 am. So I had to kip on the airport floor for a few hours. The flite with Turkish Airlines was good as per usual, nice staff, nice clean plane, good food and on time. Got to Elazig at 07:00 am. The company driver was there to pick me up and he drove me straight to the cement plant. After a company breakfast of olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh honey with honeycomb, bread and cheese it was time for work.

The rest of the day was spent sorting out their scanner problems. When it got to 17:00 I was starting to get tired. I had been up for 36 hours and was ready for bed. Then the site people came up to me and told me that they had organised a trip up the mountain for me so I could see something of Elazig and surroundings. I didn't have the heart to tell them that I was knackered so I joined in. We went up the mountain to a place called Harput.

You can probably find it online somewhere, it is on the tourist trail. In Harput we had a stunning meal of grilled kebab of different varieties, ayran ( a sort of sour milk), several dips and fresh flatbreads. If you are wondering why no beer, Eastern Turkey is quite religious so there isn't that many places where you can score a beer, which is a pity as Turkey's main beer is Efez which is ace.
http://www.efesbev.com/our_group/turkey_beer_operations.aspx
The plant people then took me around the village to see some sites.

This is a tomb where some old turkish kings have been buried.

This is the Leaning Tower of Pisa, eh, sorry Harput.

This is the view from the top of Harput looking down towards Elazig.

This is the cement plant in Elazig.

The next day they took me out again this time to some volanic lake 20 miles from Elazig. We had a stunning meal there, this time with booze as the two guys that came with me were partial to a drop of booze as well. We polished of two bottles of raki (a sort of turkish ouzo...), loadsa beers and we talked the evening away. One of the things we discussed is that there is a lot of Turkish literature but not many people outside of Turkey have heard of these writers.

For the uninitiated Orhan Pamuk is the most famous. If you are interested read 'My name is Red' or 'Snow'. Two excellent books by the foremost writer of Turkey. Other ones to try are Yashar Kemal's 'Memed my hawk.', or his 'Wind from the plain'. Another good writer is Ayse Kulin, try her book 'The Bridge', it's good. Another one worth a shot is Ahmet Altan, his book 'Love in the days of rebellion' is good.

As this was only a short trip I was back in the UK by friday late after another crap flite by my worst enemy KLM.

When I got back to the office on monday I found out that I am going to Jordan on the 25th. So it seems that we are on a roll here, trip after trip after trip.

More importantly first I'm going to Ibiza with my wife for a week of laying on the beach doing nowt, just rest and relaxation, it's time for it. We are going on friday... We haven't had any holls since we went to Thailand in december last year. Bring it on!

Cheerio,

Alex.