{"id":598,"date":"2010-08-16T23:15:46","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T03:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/?p=598"},"modified":"2015-02-14T13:47:10","modified_gmt":"2015-02-14T18:47:10","slug":"turkish-coffee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/?p=598","title":{"rendered":"Turkish Coffee"},"content":{"rendered":"

We left Sivas in the heat of the morning and Selcuk drove the van onto the highway going farther east.\u00a0 The Turkish government seems to be improving their highways so wherever we’ve been, there is a lot of road construction, making the journey longer.\u00a0 Generally, the highways have been surprisingly good, but the farther east we travel, the worse the roads are getting.<\/span><\/p>\n

We were on our way to Erzincan and we drove past exotic-sounding place names such as the Munzur Mountains (3000 meters high), and the village of Kemah which is near the headwaters of the Euphrates River.\u00a0 The famous ‘Bust of Anahid’ was found in a village nearby and is currently on display at the British Museum.<\/span><\/p>\n

We took a side trip off the highway and onto a rough bumpy rural road to go to the Kemah Gorge.\u00a0 10,000 Armenians were thrown off the high steep cliffs and into the river below by the Turks during the genocide. The entire Armenian population of the city was killed in this way.\u00a0 As the story is told, “the river ran red with the blood of the Armenians.”<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a long ride to Erzincan.\u00a0 The vista is wide with vast wheat fields and shepherds watching small flocks of sheep.\u00a0 Occasionally we saw farmers on tractors working the land and gathering hay and wheat. The terrain is brown and treeless and mostly flat with hills in the distance.\u00a0 This area is known as the ‘high plains’ because the entire area is high above sea level and the altitude of the mountains is the highest in Turkey.<\/span><\/p>\n

We arrived in Erzincan before dark and were surprised to see a modern city.\u00a0 There had been an earthquake in the early 1990s and almost the entire city has been rebuilt.\u00a0 The hotel was modern and very clean.\u00a0 When I arrived at my large room, I explored and found a copy of a Koran and a folded prayer rug in the closet. We had been told that the farther East we travel, the people will be more religious and perhaps more intolerant of outsiders, especially Armenians.\u00a0 We were advised not to mention that we were Armenian when we traveled to eastern Anatolia.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

When we arrived at the hotel, the restaurant near the lobby was full of local people, but we noticed that no one was eating. Someone said that they were waiting for the official notification of sunset, frequently a cannon blast or loud gun shot, to break their day’s fast.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an hour, the Muslims were finished eating and had left the restaurant, so when we arrived, the room was virtually empty.\u00a0 We ate a good Middle Eastern dinner of lamb, yogurt, fresh tomatoes, and vegetables.\u00a0 There is a delicious long skinny light-green seasonal pepper which we have been eating in all the restaurants.\u00a0 For dessert we had different kinds of baklava and, finally, Turkish coffee.<\/span><\/p>\n

My cousins and I had expected to drink good Turkish coffee on this trip, but we have been disappointed because the modern Turks drink ‘chai’ (tea).\u00a0 For some reason the entire population of Turkey stopped drinking coffee about 20 years ago and switched to black tea which is ‘chai’ in Turkish (also in Armenian).\u00a0 Very few restaurants make Turkish coffee now.<\/span><\/p>\n

My cousin Roseanne has discovered a hidden talent for “reading” the grinds of Turkish coffee.\u00a0\u00a0 This is an old Armenian tradition.\u00a0 After a person almost finishes drinking their coffee, they carefully turn the cup upside-down onto the saucer. They wait for a few minutes, rotate the cup three times for good luck, and finally look at the pattern of the fine grinds left on the inside of the cup. Then the cup is passed to the person who is gifted or clairvoyant to be the “reader”.
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There is usually a person, almost always a woman, who is able to ‘tell your fortune’ by “reading” and interpreting the pattern of the leftover grinds.\u00a0 I remember my grandmother gathering with her female friends, over cups of Turkish coffee and Armenian pastries.\u00a0 There was always one woman who was an expert reader.\u00a0 A good reader carefully studies the grinds, points out what she sees and expresses her interpretations in a mystical and dramatic manner.\u00a0 This is always great fun!\u00a0 Roseanne carried on the time-honored tradition with wonderful insights!\u00a0 :-)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We left Sivas in the heat of the morning and Selcuk drove the van onto the highway going farther east.\u00a0 The Turkish government seems to be improving their highways so wherever we’ve been, there is a lot of road construction, making the journey longer.\u00a0 Generally, the highways have been surprisingly good, but the farther east […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7,5,3,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anatolia","category-armenian","category-family","category-travel","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=598"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":607,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions\/607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}