From Erzurum we hitchhiked to Agri. Two young man took us there and in a while we realized they were members of The Kurdistan Worker's Party also know as PKK. According to Wikipedia PKK is separatist organization which fights an army struggle against the Turkish state for the creation of an Independent Kurdistan. European Union put them on list of terroristic organizations. They told us a lot about PKK, their ideas and goals.
Accidentally in the middle of talks with them in their car, going to Agri, I got a call. Some unknown angry Turkish guy called me just to say words like bitch, fuck and some others. All the time repeating this is Turkey not Kurdistan. It was hard to understand him, because we were in car, but later he sent us around 10 texts only with swears. All of them addressed to me. Imagine messages like "I will kill you, when i"ll meet you" ending with "Good luck on trip!". We got some idea who is it and later when we saw another message in mailbox which proved it. It was one couchsurfer who got request from me.
The request was something like "we are traveling around Turkey, passing through Kurdistan, going to Agri, can you host us?".. I didn't want to offend anyone and I didn't know that Kurdistan is tabu word in this part of Turkey. People were and they are still dying for this word. Apparently it's not just word.
I have to focus more on cultural than geographical facts for next time. There is not enough preparation for journey and this political correctness is killing free discussion.
In a while we were dropped in Agri and we started to explore the city. When we asked a policeman if he knows about any accommodation for us. He was surprised, asked what we were doing there but he told us about teacher's house (Teachers in Turkey have to spend some time teaching kids in east parts of Turkey and after that they can get well paid job in good schools in the west as ppl told us.
After arriving into teacher's house we managed (read Tony in Turkish with our moral support) to persuade guy working on reception to give us some place for night for free. Looking for hotel or other kind of accommodation would be loss of time. We could use one office next to reception. It was still to early for sleeping so we just left our stuff there and went explore the city. I don't know why but i didn't feel safe there for first time in my life. No tourists, no other foreigners, just locals who were staring at us. We went around, bought some food and after sun went down, we ate in the park and listened to some music from phone and from buildings around. I was suspicious and always looking around but nothing happened. So we went back to Teacher's house and made our office comfortable.
We woke up early bin the morning when someone was knocking at our door. We were locked because we didn't feel safe in this town. It was guy from yesterday, he told us that we have to leave bcs. his boss is coming and he can't found us there. It was ok, we didn't want to stay there longer anyway.
Walking through city till main road took us some time, we saw nice couch which would be great to have at home but too heavy to carry it with ourselves :) so at least we took a picture on it. That's the CS spirit!
There was another surprise when we almost reached main road. Look for yourself...
Accidentally in the middle of talks with them in their car, going to Agri, I got a call. Some unknown angry Turkish guy called me just to say words like bitch, fuck and some others. All the time repeating this is Turkey not Kurdistan. It was hard to understand him, because we were in car, but later he sent us around 10 texts only with swears. All of them addressed to me. Imagine messages like "I will kill you, when i"ll meet you" ending with "Good luck on trip!". We got some idea who is it and later when we saw another message in mailbox which proved it. It was one couchsurfer who got request from me.
The request was something like "we are traveling around Turkey, passing through Kurdistan, going to Agri, can you host us?".. I didn't want to offend anyone and I didn't know that Kurdistan is tabu word in this part of Turkey. People were and they are still dying for this word. Apparently it's not just word.
I have to focus more on cultural than geographical facts for next time. There is not enough preparation for journey and this political correctness is killing free discussion.
In a while we were dropped in Agri and we started to explore the city. When we asked a policeman if he knows about any accommodation for us. He was surprised, asked what we were doing there but he told us about teacher's house (Teachers in Turkey have to spend some time teaching kids in east parts of Turkey and after that they can get well paid job in good schools in the west as ppl told us.
After arriving into teacher's house we managed (read Tony in Turkish with our moral support) to persuade guy working on reception to give us some place for night for free. Looking for hotel or other kind of accommodation would be loss of time. We could use one office next to reception. It was still to early for sleeping so we just left our stuff there and went explore the city. I don't know why but i didn't feel safe there for first time in my life. No tourists, no other foreigners, just locals who were staring at us. We went around, bought some food and after sun went down, we ate in the park and listened to some music from phone and from buildings around. I was suspicious and always looking around but nothing happened. So we went back to Teacher's house and made our office comfortable.
We woke up early bin the morning when someone was knocking at our door. We were locked because we didn't feel safe in this town. It was guy from yesterday, he told us that we have to leave bcs. his boss is coming and he can't found us there. It was ok, we didn't want to stay there longer anyway.
Walking through city till main road took us some time, we saw nice couch which would be great to have at home but too heavy to carry it with ourselves :) so at least we took a picture on it. That's the CS spirit!
There was another surprise when we almost reached main road. Look for yourself...
