Midas City

After breakfast in Afryon, we headed to the outlet mall for a quick shopping spree.  Nabil nabbed several shirts. (I doubt you will see him wearing any of them when viewing our pictures as he prefers shirtless photos!) I, on the other hand, was not so lucky. The weather is turning cool and I only packed summer gear, so am in need of winter wear. I went from store to store in search of boots or closed toe shoes. Apparently very few Turkish women have big feet.  The largest shoe size I found was an 8, far too small for my 9.5 size feet. In fact, most clothes here are geared for women with a more petite frame, and women of all ages and sizes love to wear tight fitting clothes and high heels.  I am struggling to find retailers that cater to my bohemian style and that can accommodate my Germanic frame.

After a Starbucks coffee, we prepared for the last leg of our sightseeing tour, fired up the Tom-Tom and turned north in search of Midas City.  Again, within a few miles, we found ourselves on a desolate country road, traveling past vast expanses of recently mowed fields. Occasionally we would bump into a village, with mud brick homes and chickens wandering on the rutted narrow streets.  Peasants dressed in long skirts and shawls would turn away and scurry into back alleys to avoid eye contact with us.  We couldn't help but stare. After a few hundred yards, we would emerge onto a another stretch of country road, hoping against hope that we could trust the GPS guidance.

The flat lands gave way to rocky promontories and hill country, covered in scrubby shrubbery and pines. Tiny dirt roads marked by weathered signs announced our arrival at small villages and we cheered each time we could match the name to those highlighted on our marked up map.  Eventually we pulled into Yazikilay, where the remains of Midas City stand guard over a cluster of mud huts, crumbling stone walls and bleating cows.  We pulled into a grass enclosure marked as the OTOPARK.  I opened the car door and stepped out barely missing a freshly laid clump of cow manure.

The town mayor came out of the city hall, which did double duty as the tourist office to enthusiastically welcome us.  Despite several missing teeth. His smile was warm and he spoke surprisingly good English as well as fluent German.  He gave us an overview of the  history of the area as well as the layout of the site and sent us off and up the mountain to discover it on our own. Midas City was the spiritual center of the Phrygian Empire, and is most well known for a huge rock face wall carving that stands thirty meters high and overlooks the village of Yazikilay. The monument which was undergoing repairs, was hidden behind a huge scaffold.

We were disappointed but grateful for the opportunity to stretch our legs, so headed up the hill behind the monument for an extended view of the area. The hike was challenging but not too strenuous and the weather ideal.  We saw a few carved rock faces, and lots and lots of circular indentations that looked like they were meant to hold some kind of smudge pots.   Eventually we came across a few placards which pointed us to the rock tombs and cisterns.  Only then did we really begin to appreciate Midas City, with its  eerie tombs carved deep into the bedrock of the mountain, and a clever system of carved stone gullies and cisterns that must have shuttled water to its residents.  We sat on the stairs hammered out of stone looking down into these man made caves, marveling at the ingenuity and persistence of the human race.  There was a potent charge in the air, as if all the thousands of years that had passed since Midas City had been built had collapsed and for a minute it felt as if we could almost touch and see the
past.  After a long pause, we traced our way back to the rock wall monument, bumping into an elderly German couple debating the merits of struggling up the hill.  We encouraged them to persist and them returned to our car, stopping first to eat a handful of ripe cherries growing in the trees surrounding the OTOPARK.  We thanked the mayor, made a small contribution to the city building fund  and headed north in a plume of dust.

The ride home was uneventful. We made good time, stopping once for Turkish coffee, and again in Polatli to pick up some of the yogurt we had liked so much. We had driven 18 hours in three days, and visited six locations.  There were no arguments and only one short-lived anxiety attack. Maybe we haven't mastered Turkey, but we are certainly miles ahead of of where we started a few months ago!