A Few Views of Turkey

ANKARA FROM THE BUS

HILLSIDE IN WINTER



SHIP IN THE AEGEAN




MOSQUE BY NIGHT


Here are several photos Anne has shared via her facebook account that I am posting here for those who do not do facebook, so you can see something of what she has been seeing in the past day. Her luggage did not make it to Ankara from Munich in time for a bus ride to Istanbul that was to leave Ankara at midnight, so they left at five in the morning instead.

I would make several observations beyond the fact that I am enjoying the photos very much. The first one is that the view of the houses and hills in Ankara remind me of Pittsburgh, or Western Pennsylvania. I would think that anyone who was from either city would feel very much at home in the other. Dear friends from my childhood days were from Turkey and came to Pittsburgh (he worked with my dad both there an in California), and I can see why they might have found Pittsburgh a comfortable first place to live in the States.

The second observation is that the view of the hillside in snow could have been taken somewhere between Greensburg and Breezewood on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and if you had sent it to me saying that was where it had been made, not only would I have had no reason to doubt you, I would have told you just about where I thought it had been made. I have driven that stretch of road, in just those same weather conditions, more times that I could count.

Even in the grey weather, the view of the ship on the Aegean is romantic and to my eyes conjures up centuries, nay, millennia of ships that have plied those same waters. And the mosque at night not only reminds me that Istanbul is the crossroads of the world but also that faith is best when it serves as a beacon in the darkness.



All photos on this post are: Copyright © 2012, Anne E. Dalles.