Urfa

Took the first bus out of Diyarbakir. Nothing but rocky plains and the occasional herd of goats for 200 km. And rain. Very heavy rain, where there shouldn't be any. After some deliberation and attempts to communicate with the Arab bus staff, I bought a night bus ticket to Kayseri for the following night.

On the way into town, a Kurdish man in traditional head dress approached me. Asked me what I was doing in Urfa and was extremely happy when I told him that I was a terrorist. Shook my hand and said 'Me too! Very good Kurdish terrorist!'. He was actually the owner of a small Pansion. It cost a little more than I budgeted, but since I liked Aziz and his wife (she had facial tatts), I decided to stay with them.

By lunch time, the weather had cleared up and so I decided to have a stroll around town. Awesome place. There's an incredibly ancient castle looming over the old city from which Abraham was said to have been thrown. At the foot of the hill is the cave where Abraham is said to have been born and a huge complex of mosques, parks and a carp pond. The atmosphere is wonderful, as pilgrims wander leisurely through the compound, stopping occasionally to feed the doves or the carp.

At the bazar, I was approached by a young guy with the usual 'how are you?' chat. Hearing that I was from Poland, he came out with this:

'Moja zona to Polka. Ale kurwa ona byla!'

'Wife was Polish. Complete whore!'

Spent the next few hours wandering up the castle and around town, listening to Serdal's tales of marital woe and life in Poland. Things were going well until the economic situation of his inability to find employment caused the relationship to fray. While he liked Poland, he couldn't cope with one thing culturally - married couples where partners cheated on each other. This apparently rarely happens in Turkey.

At one of the mosques (converted Byzantine church), we stumbled into Laura - an American English professor travelling alone. She had wanted to find Aziz, but was unable to do so, and thus was happy to find out that I was living at his place.