2nd - 4th September 2010
After getting off the bus we stopped at the first restaurant we saw, the tables outside were packed – a good sign. We didn't even have to order anything, we just got brought food and ate, wonderful idea, it was out first fast breaking meal and it was gorgeous. We had salads, soup, bread, a spicy solid paste made from chilli sauce thickened with grains, creamed aubergine (my new favourite food), lamb/beef and vegetables, potatoes, washed down with soured turnip yoghurt (better than it sounds) followed by a sweet mix of honey syrup thickened with the same grain used in the chilli paste and it was all heavenly. We met Ozzy, our young friendly couch-surfing host for the next couple of nights and went back to his flat – quite bare for someone already living there for 6 months, but we had more than a few beers and it became quite cosy.
The next day I was feeling more than worse for wear and so Djalma and I stayed in for the day until Ozzy finished work, came back and took us out with two of his work friends we had met the previous evening. They drove us to a riverside restaurant where Ozzy's boss knew the owner and had some of the most amazing barbecued lamb, along with plenty of other food. The restaurant was outdoors and amidst a string of similar restaurants all of them quiet except for the begging cats we fed soup soaked bread. Feeling enormous we drove back into town and to a baklava restaurant where Djalma and I intended to buy them all pudding to say thank-you for having being bought dinner but after having gobbled down half (a huge portion) of syrup soaked, pistachio filled noodle pastry topped with the stiff chewy pistachio ice-cream peculiar to Anatolia, we were beaten to the check yet again and so settled for filling up Ozzy's fridge with beer. We kicked back again and had a few more beers – I sensibly held back, a little at any rate and the next morning Djalma and I packed up our bags, said good-bye to Ozzy and got on a bus to Hasankeyf.
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