I was awoken by the rattling noises and the sunlight seeping through the window. It took me a few seconds to realize that the rattling noises were from the train and that I’m on it. I looked at my watch and felt the train slow down. I jumped because I thought that we were already in Ankara and I would have to leave the train right now. But I’m still in my pajamas!
Since Amanda (my roommate) was still in bed, I felt a little relief. The rest of the morning was quite uneventful. We all got dressed, ate a small breakfast and got really to leave. We arrived at Ankara at 8:00am. We got onto a big tour bus and drove towards Konya. After an hour, we stopped for breakfast on the way.
The breakfast was not too bad. They even had chocolate and cornflakes cereal and I think most of group had some of those. I’m not a vegetarian but I’ve been missing vegetable dishes a lot lately. Turkish food doesn’t have that much vegetables. Vegetarian dishes usually come with lots of carbs, maybe a little bit of beans and a small portion of greens. I wish there were more vegetables options apart from salads. Anyway, I’ll stop complaining now.
After breakfast, we continued to drive to Konya. We arrived at our hotel at 12:30pm to check in. Then we went out for lunch close by. It was pretty good. They served sweet rice with a side. After lunch, we visited three places. We first visited the Mevlana Museum. Mevlana was an important philosopher. Most of the artifacts did not have English captions so it was hard to tell why some of the things were important. I found the different Qurans from different time periods very interesting. The oldest one there was from the 11th century. They usually contain a small space for text and a lot of decorations and designs around the text. After this, we went to the Inceminare Museums. We saw Ottoman tiles, domes, and beautiful Arabic calligraphy. I especially like calligraphies because they are so intricate and beautiful. We also got to visit Alaattin Mosque. The unique thing about this Mosque is that it is very long width-wise and it is full of rows and rows of pillars. So people call it a forest.
It was then 5pm so we stopped for a drink and then we had free-time. Ivan, Hayden, Brandon, and I started to head back to the hotel by going through the Bazaar. But we were really tired after a while so we decided to back to the hotel. I planned to catch up on my journal-writing but Brandon used the computer for a whole 2 hours while I watched Czech MTV at our hotel. By dinner time, I had a headache. We ate a buffet dinner at the hotel and had our little vespers in the meeting room of the hotel. It was very interesting because we talked about the connections between Turkey and the Bible. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to follow because of the increasing headache.
Note that the idea of the Mevlana as "an important philosopher" is Tosun's secularized version of the story. The Mevlana is generally known in the Western world as Rumi, a Sufi mystic. It's primarily the secular Turks who call him a "philosopher."
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