It is a large metropolitan centrally located within the country. The landscape mostly consists of brown, dry, rolling hills and it has the driest climate in the region. The population is over 4 million people making it the second largest city in Turkey after İstanbul. For the cat lovers out there - Ankara is known for the breed of cat known as the Angora Cat. Goat lovers know that Ankara is the home of the Angora goat and rabbit lovers will know that the Angora rabbit originated here. Notice a trend yet?? Ankara is mostly known for the unique type of wool which comes from the goat and rabbit and is called Mohair.
While Ankara is one of the most important historical places in Turkey (due to its' strategic location along the trade routes) there are very little actual historical places here. The history of the city goes back to 1000BC and the Phyrgians. Then Lydians, Persians, Greeks, Celts, Romans and Ottomans all had a hand in its expansion and history. Finally in 1924 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk declared that this "small town of no importance" would once again become an important centre of commerce and politics and decreed that Ankara would replace İstanbul as the capital of the country. After this event, Ankara experienced a tremendous period of growth. Today it is the home of the Turkish government and a massive monument dedicated to Atatürk called Anitkabir. There are also remnants of Ankara Castle on top of the central hill in Ulus. Here, you can walk along the tops of the castle walls and look down 100ft to the new pavement below and wonder why no one thought to build a safety wall!! (Actually I found out from a student later on that there are no safety barriers because there is a law forbidding the agumentation of any historical structures even for something as trifling as tourist safety...
So if the city is located in the middle of a desert in the driest part of the Anatolian region and there's not much of historical significance to see, why are there 4+ million people here? Well, for the shopping of course!! Ankara is home to literally hundreds of shopping centres. You can find any brand in the world here! And let me tell you, Turkish people loooove shopping!! When I ask my students about their hobbies, inevitably they all say "shopping"! There are more things to do here as well, don't get me wrong! There are thousands of outdoor cafés that are open year round. There are bars, clubs, lakes, parks, theatres, picnic areas, museums, fantastic restaurants, fortune tellers, festivals, and bazaars. Every day there is something different to do!
For instance, tonight the weather here was mild and spring like! It was lovely. After work, I rode the metro (yes - we have a subway system here!! It's small...but the cars were buılt in Thunder Bay, Ontario!!!) to the city centre, Kızılay, and met with my room mate K and another fellow teacher to grab a latté at Starbucks. Lattés in hand we waited for my boyfriend to pick us up and take us home. Rather than wasting the beautiful weather by going home and going to bed, we ended up walking along Tunali, the high street in Ankara and quite convienently in our neighborhood. We stopped off at Lo and Loud for an ice cream cone - I opted for Amerikali Sakiz (or as we like to say Bubblegum) while everyone else went with portakal and çikolata (orange and chocolate). We continued our walk along the high street, pausing to window shop at Benetton, Nine West, Marks and Spencers, Mango and Paşabahçe (an amazing glass store). We could smell roasting chestnuts and coffee mingling with the scent of the local street meat called kokoreç (I won't even begin to tell you what its made of - come and try it for yourself!!!). We could hear restauranteurs calling us in to their establishments and the ever present sound of honking car horns. As we walked, ice creams in hand, I thought about how lucky I was to call this place home...
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