Antakya: Being There

The bus station in Antakya looks more like a Dolmush station. It’s just a very big parking lot with a long, low, single-story building in the middle. It seems all the dolmush companies have a little office in that building. All sorts of people came up to us wanting to take us to a hotel, etc. We just told them we had a hotel and hot-footed it out of there. We actually had found two possible hotels in our guidebook and went looking for them.

We finally found the main street. Actually, it wasn’t too difficult. The Asi river (formerly Orontes river) runs through the center of Antayka. The older part of town is on the same side as the bus station, and that’s where the hotels were. Also mountains rise quite steeply behind that side of town. If you stay between the mountains and the river, you can navigate quite easily. It’s a bit like Albuquerque. If you can see the Sandias, you know where you are.

(The place with the slanting red roof, large cedar tree behind it, is where we ate künefe. The cedar tree is actually in the courtyard of the mosque)

The first of the hotels we were interested in wasn’t too far from the bus station. We checked it out, found it quite acceptable, dropped our belongings and left. We wanted to find the mosaic museum, which was on the other side of the river. Antakya claims to have the largest collection of Roman mosaics in the world – can’t confirm that, however. We hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, so we stopped in a Mado’s on the way to the museum. Mado’s is a chain restaurant that serves what they claim to be the best ice cream in Turkey. I wrote about it in an earlier blog (“second attempt”). Ice cream for lunch is good, right? Actually, on the menu was a slice of ice cream and three bite-sized pieces of baklava. What could be better! If you want to know more about the ice cream they serve in Mado’s, go to this link.
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-192329-keep-the-winter-chills-at-bay-with-a-warm-cup-of-sahlep.html

Frankly, the museum was a bit disappointing. They do indeed have a very large collection of mosaics. Most came from Roman villas at Harbiye, now a suburb or Antakya but a holiday resort in Roman times when it was called Daphne. I was there that the water nymph Daphne was turned into a laurel tree (or bay tree as we know it) to save her from the unwanted attentions of Apollo. Antakya is known for laurel products, particularly soap made from laurel berries and leaves. But back to the museum. The Gaziantep museum has far fewer mosaic but they are better displayed. And the signage is quite helpful. It is also possible to buy little books on the mosaics at the Gaziantep museum. In Antakya there is a small plaque next to each mosaic, giving the name of the figures depicted in the mosaic. That’s it. Not even a postcard. However, you do have to be impressed by the size of some of them and the fact that they have been around for 2,000 years.

What wasn’t disappointing was the feel of Antakya. It has an aura of openness. I can’t explain it exactly but somehow the atmosphere felt a bit lighter. And it has quite a venerable history. Founded in the 3rd century BC by one of Alexander the Great’s generals, the city quickly grew to a multi-ethnic metropolis of a half-million – it’s only slightly more than that today. Until the rise of Constantinople (Istanbul), it was the premier city in the Mediterranean region. It was also the terminus of or jumping off point – depending on whether you were coming or going – on the Silk Road. A series of earthquakes in the 6th century BC severely damaged the city. Then it was besieged by the Crusaders in 1098; they subsequently ruled for nearly 200 years until the Egyptian Mamluks sacked the city. From then on it was pretty much down hill. When the French took over after World War I, it wasn’t much more than a village. And it was the French who laid the groundwork for the modern city. You can still see French colonial-style buildings all over town. And it was one of those buildings we sought out after we left the museum.

The second hotel that had caught our eye when reading the guidebook was in a restored French colonial mansion. After some wandering we managed to locate it. Lovely place and not really too expensive. Next time, that’s where I’ll stay. There was a restaurant we wanted to try somewhere near the hotel. As we stood on the sidewalk trying to make sense out of the map in the guidebook, someone came up and asked us – in German – if he could help. It turns out he lived in Frankfurt for 39 years and his 3 sons are still there. He has an apartment in Ankara and was in Antakya. to get some major dental work done. He took usto the restaurant saying he would come back, which he actually did do but not until we were nearly finished with dinner. He chatted with us for a long time, offering to take us here and there. We declined and actually called it a night.

(View from the road up to St. Peter's Church.)

The next morning we got up and out early, after a good breakfast tomatoes, olives, cheese, bread, hummus and a local specialty, a spread make of ground walnuts, pepper paste and some form of bulgur – I think. It was delicious. There were few people and no cars on the streets. It was wonderful. We sought out two famous mosques, the Orthodox church (there was a Sunday service in progress) and a synagogue. The synagogue was locked, and all you really saw was a star of David over a door. We then hiked up to Saint Peter’s church. It is a church built into the side of a cliff above the city. The disciple Peter is said to have preached there. It is also said that it was in Antakya that the Christian community was first called “Christian.” Previously they had been known as Nazarenes. And one assumes that Paul also preached in the same church.



(This facade covers up the entrance to the cave church. It fell into disrepair but was restored a couple hundred years ago. Napoleon even contributed to the project.)

After all this walking, we were ready for lunch. We walked back through the old bazaar. Most of the stores were closed, as it was Sunday. The food vendors were open, and we saw one mysterious item in many stores. It looked like a skein of angel hair pasta. That didn’t seem very Turkish, but that’s all we could think of. Anyhow, we finally found a little hole-in-the-wall establishment that came highly recommended. They only had two items on the menu: hummus and a local specialty called bakla. We ordered the hummus, since we thought bakla was probably related to baklava and we didn’t want anything sweet. Serving the hummus wasn’t just a matter of spooning it onto a plate. The owner did spoon it onto a plate, but then put the back of a ladle in the middle of the hummus serving and turned the plate. This created a rim around the edge of the hummus. He then carefully poured in olive oil and I think some lemon juice. On top he sprinkled parsley and a little red pepper. He then cut up a tomato and served that on a separate plate. Then came a third plate with pickles and a serving of pickled cabbage. All this served with delicious flat bread. While eating we discovered what bakla is. It turns out to be a thick soup or stew made of fava beans. It’s ladled into a bowl and then mashed with a large pestle (as in mortar and pestle). After that the cook/proprietor stirred in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, parsley and other spices – probably hot pepper. Supposedly there’s tahnini in it too. It’s also served with flat bread. Next time I’ll have that.

We finished up our 26-hour stay in Antakya with dessert – what else. We wanted to try the local specialty künefe. We didn’t know exactly what it was, but there are künefe shops all over and we’d seen people eating it. We now know that it’s a dessert made from shredded wheat. A small layer is put in a pan. A layer of white cheese that gets stringy when heated is put on that, topped with another thicker layer of shredded wheat. It’s not certain whether sugar syrup is put in the pan first and everything else on top of it or whether the sugar syrup is added after baking. Whatever. It’s baked until the top layer is golden and the cheese soft. It’s delicious. They offer it to you with ice cream on top, but that seemed like overkill. You don’t really need it. And by the way, that angel hair pasta? That was the shredded wheat used for making künefe.

So that was our trip. We collected our belongings at the hotel, hiked back to the bus station and took a dolmush home. Great two days.