catching up. anitkabir

i cant decide whether or not to play catch up from a weeks worth of awesome adventures or just start with the latest adventure since its freshest in my mind. sigh

and my shoulder hurts when i type a lot so here goes nothing i guess.

friday november 6 - my first day venturing out alone. starting with picture # 32 ~ AnitKabir.

a few highlights: 'mastering' the subway system all by myself. using turkish words to purchase a ticket, ask for directions and generally being polite. getting to and from where i needed to be successfully without getting lost. and within the general time frame of when i expected to.

so i went to the mausoleum of the great turkish leader, Ataturk. oh youve never heard of him, why am i not surprised, i never had till i came here. he really was an incredibly remarkable man. he completely revamped turkey, the language, the economy, the education system, monetary system, politics - created a democracy, etc the list is very long of what he accomplished in just a lifetime. he is basically worshiped and highly revered over here. the mausoleum is small proof of that. it is a beautiful place, tons of marble granite turquoise gold, etc. its huge too. i took tons of pics of the rock and marble designs and side walks and all that, prolly boring for most but i was having fun playing Japanese tourist. i watched a cheesy 15 min video about Ataturk, i kid you not, they specifically mention his deep blue eyes at least 7 times, and in all his pics and wax statues the blue eyes are def the focus. there was a lot of relics of his in the museum, including a pair of pajamas, and in the memorial towers were his cars, boat, the canon that carried his coffin, cool to see but i blew past most of it, im not a big museum plaque reader. the library was cool though, Ataturk was a very smart guy and very much valued literacy, he read a lot of books about as many topics as he could get his hands on.

there was something special going on there that day, lots of military troops in uniform, and some important looking people. there was some sort of ceremony taking place and the entire place came to a dead halt when the taps-but-not-really-taps song played with all the dignitaries inside the mausoleum, the song was haunting, echoing out over the landscape, beautiful. i have it on video but of course i cant get it to post.

its a miracle that i didnt break an ankle walking down the lion pathway, you are supposed to approach from this path so that you have time to reflect on Ataturk and the semblance of rounding the corner at the end and seeing the mausoleum. they purposefully paved it so that you trip every other step and have to look down while walking, making you 'walk in reverence', slow, deliberate, and head down. pretty genius.

so three big things that stuck with me about Ataturk - he did and changed a lot but three of his top priorities were 1. literacy for everyone, he created the modern day turkish language. 2. an education for everyone 3. empowering women and giving them rights, no more hiding behind a veil. its amazing to look at what has come about from these three changes for this country, in one mans adult lifetime.
4. he adopted his children :-)

it struck me as odd when i was sitting my three local men and they asked me who my favorite US leader was, and before i answered they said, did you learn about Ataturk when you were in school? and i said no. and they said we learned about all of your leaders, and i said i know you did. why dont we teach our children about great leaders like Ataturk? huh.

i enjoyed watching the changing of the guards, every hour on the hour, watching the lil school children, and watching the sunset from the mausoleum steps. and i really did enjoy learning about Ataturk. and of course i was in heaven with so much to take pics of, it was a happy day for me!

i grabbed some food to go in the tune-allee cant spell it correctly without the turkish keyboard shopping and eating district on the way home (some dish with meatballs) and enjoyed a pleasant evening feeling very proud of myself for getting around ankara all by my lonesome! if i did anything else that night i cant remember! lol