After we had looked around inside Erzerum Castle, we walked around the structure to get views of the surrounding area. This post is mostly just photos.
As some background history about Erzurum. The city has served as a pivotal crossroads of civilisations for millennia, owing to its strategic and optimal position on the high Anatolian plateau. Originally known as Theodosiopolis during the fifth century Byzantine era, the city functioned as a vital frontier fortress against eastern incursions.
Following the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, it became the capital of the Saltukid Principality. The city subsequently transitioned through the control of the Seljuks, Mongols and Safavids before being integrated into the Ottoman Empire in 1514 under Selim I. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Erzurum gained further prominence as a site of significant resistance during the Russo-Turkish Wars and played a foundational role in the Turkish War of Independence, most notably hosting the Erzurum Congress on 23 July 1919.
Fortunately, we could walk around the other way as I didn’t fancy trying to navigate these danger steps (or that’s what I considered them to be).
Erzurum Castle stands as a formidable testament to the strategic military architecture of Eastern Anatolia, perched on a central reasonably sized hill that has dominated the landscape for nearly 1,600 years. Originally established by the Byzantine Empire under Emperor Theodosius II in the fifth century, the fortress served as a vital bulwark against eastern invasions and transitioned through the hands of various powers, including the Seljuks and Ottomans.
There was a charge of €3 for foreign visitors, it was less for locals, but that was a reasonable cost. I paid with a note that I had, receiving the change back in Turkish lira.
The entrance gate.
Inside the castle complex.
This is the masjid, or mosque, which the sign notes dates from the twelfth century and has been repaired on numerous occasions. I’m not an expert in Turkish architectural history, but it looks rather new to me.
Inside the mosque.
The clock tower which was constructed between 1124 and 1132. It was commissioned by Emir Saltuk, the ruler of the Saltukid Principality, to serve the dual purpose of a minaret for the Castle Masjid and a military watchtower for the inner citadel. The transition from a religious and military tower to a clock tower occurred in the mid-19th century. During the reign of Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid, the top of the minaret was damaged, and a wooden, Baroque-style room was added to house a clock mechanism. This clock was reportedly a gift from Queen Victoria to the people of Erzurum which was a lovely gesture from the British, so they must have wanted something.
The entrance to the clock tower.
The steps up, all very manageable for me.
I’m scared of heights, so I wasn’t doing icy sloped steps up, especially when I saw someone else struggling. Jonathan went up and told me about the view, which I decided wasn’t much different from the one I could see from outside.
I could cope with these steps to get back down and I decided that I was brave enough and didn’t need to push matters….
Another view of the interior although it was a little hard to make out what was happening architecturally given the amount of snow. It was an interesting way to spend around forty minutes as there’s not a huge amount to see here, but it’s a very important part of the city’s heritage.
I mentioned in my last post about just how pleased I was with the Atlas Hotel having a 24 hour reception, it made our lives much easier. This is the rather nice entrance area to the hotel, which looked clean and inviting. The room price was towards the lower end of the scale and so I hadn’t expected very much here, but I was pleased with the whole arrangement.
The room was cosy, warm and quiet. I like cold air circulating so I opened the window and I slept well. It wasn’t clear to me whether we had breakfast included, but I decided that I’d rather sleep, although Jonathan went to get something.
I was too distracted to take an exterior photo when we arrived at night, so here’s one from the morning when we left the hotel. We were both disappointed that we couldn’t stay another night, but the hotel was booked up. However, I have very fond memories of this hotel who did everything that they could to ensure we were comfortable.
After a very long train journey (more of this here), we arrived into Erzurum in 04:30 and we were ready to walk to the hotel. It wasn’t as cold as we had expected and we did consider getting a taxi, but there weren’t any.
We decided that Jonathan would lead the taxi search and if that failed, which it did, then I’d navigate us to the hotel.
Apologies that it’s blurry, but I was a little distracted with navigation and wondering if I should contact someone about not having had access to the Internet for 36 hours.
I have an inability to walk on ice, so I lingered behind faffing about whilst calling out the directions to Jonathan, the intrepid explorer.
We approached the hotel and it looked dark inside, which wasn’t surprising given that it was 04:45. Jonathan and I were very pleased to discover that the main door was open and after just thirty seconds, a chirpy and helpful staff member came down to check us in. We did have a back-up hotel option, but it was a considerable relief that we could check into our rooms and try and get some sleep. And I quickly spent an hour on the Internet to calm my nerves.
After a significant delay, we were off again….. This is the railway station at Bostankaya, which is only a small village but has a nice transportation arrangement. Regardless of whether it was on the timetable, we tended to stop at every station en route before a staff member gave us the go ahead to continue.
The views were beautiful along this stretch of the route, although I was working out that an arrival time of midnight was now too optimistic, it was looking more like 01:30 and that felt sub-optimal. Especially as the initial arrival time was 16:00.
It was something of a surprise that there was actually any rail service in operation, the snow was over two feet deep here.
At 17:10, we rolled into New Kangal railway station which opened in 2012.
And at 17:35, the train arrived into Çetinkaya railway station, the last one of the journey that we would see in daylight.
As it was getting dark and there was nothing to look at out of the window, Jonathan and I went to the buffet car.
This is Bağıştaş railway station and at some time in the future, it would be nice to visit these locations to explore them. It was now 21:00 and it was evident that we wouldn’t be in before 02:00, but Jonathan and I thought that was reasonable and just hoped for no more delay. In retrospect, that was aspirational.
Another delay.
Excuse the poor quality photo, but at 22:07 we arrive at Kemah, the site of atrocities where thousands of Armenians were murdered during the First World War.
Arriving into Tanyari railway station at midnight, so we had now been on the train for 30 hours. Without Internet.
A cross between a dog and a polar bear.
Into Aşkale railway station for 02:30 and the train decided it would stop here for thirty minutes. This didn’t surprise and delight me.
Ilica railway station at 03:55, but we were getting there….
At 04:25, we arrived, over 12 hours later. We were safely in Erzurum and now just had to hope that we could get into our hotel.
It was a delight to be in Erzurum, as my loyal readers won’t be surprised to hear after these three blog posts….. I did enjoy the railway journey, but would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had worked out data on my phone in advance or got an e-sim. Either way, it had been a proper adventure. Videos and the like will follow…
So, here we are at 07:00 in the morning arriving safely into Sivas and all was on track (I use that pun too many times) with our journey. There was a lot of snow and we were just a little behind schedule, but we still expected to arrive at not much later than 16:00 on a journey that was scheduled to take just over 22 hours.
08:11 and I wondered what was happening….. We had remained in some stations for a while, so this didn’t feel entirely abnormal.
10:19 and I thought I’d get off the train and not much seemed to be happening.
If Jonathan and I had known that we’d be here for hours, we’d have likely gone and explored the town a little. To be fair, I’m not sure that anyone knew what was happening and we just had to assume that the track was snowed up ahead. There weren’t any announcements on board and no track display information boards, so we couldn’t really work out what was happening.
We’d now been here for three hours and I was starting to wonder what time we’d be arriving into Erzurum.
At 11:02 they provided us with a free snack and drink. I’m easily bribed by food and so this made me feel more positive towards the rail network.
Then, there was lots and lots of nothing. I hardly complained about the lack of Internet and I just sat there wondering how much therapy I’d need after this 36 hours without online access. At 14:26 there was some excitement, the train horn sounded and the train went back about two metres. Then, that was that.
Then at 14:53 the train horn was sounded again and staff started blowing whistles, it looked like we were ready to go. And, six minutes later, the train started moving after eight hours sitting on the train at the platform.
Shortly after, the crew arrived with free kebabs and drinks that they had secured at the station. This pleased me.
The snowy weather that the train encountered for most of the journey, but particularly the second half.
Free food and drink secured.
The doner kebab was delicious.
Anyway, we were now set and I worked out that we’d be arriving at around midnight into Erzerum and our hotel. Whether or not they had a 24 hour reception we weren’t entirely sure, but I thought that midnight would be OK. Obviously though the arrangement wasn’t that easy, but more in the next post….
The title of this post is something of a hint about just how long this rail journey took. As a spoiler, it was meant to take 22 hours and it actually took nearly 36 hours. Without Internet. I’m still recovering.
Jonathan was excited about the trip ahead…. As some background, this train from Ankara to Kars (we were getting off in Ezrurum, which isn’t far short of Kars) can be done on a tourist train or a local train. The former has frivolity and fun, the latter doesn’t. Guess which one I wanted.
This is the marketing on the platform for the tourist train, the one that we didn’t take. I like peace and quiet on a train, not dancing.
I don’t want to overwhelm my two loyal blog readers with excitement, but I’ve made quite a few videos of this trip and I’ll get around to uploading them at some point. I did record our train arriving onto the platform, but here it is. Yes, it doesn’t look entirely modern…..
We found our carriage and were excited about the trip ahead.
And off we go. I have better photos of the carriage (I had enough time, without having any Internet, to take them) but more of that later. I was pleased that there was power on the train, but very annoyed about the lack of Internet.
I accept there’s hardly much to look at in the photograph, so readers will have to use their imagination. This is Kırıkkale, which means ‘broken castle’ in Turkish, and which has a population of 190,000.
The seating was comfortable, it’s 2+1, so that was spacious enough and there was plenty of leg room. Although Jonathan and I had seats next to each other, the train was rarely that full that we couldn’t spread out elsewhere in the carriage.
Jonathan’s decadent slippers.
This is the small town of Şefaatli, with a population of just under 10,000.
I have quite a lot of photos like this….. This was still on the same day we boarded the train, just before midnight, so we’d been on for fewer than six hours at this point.
This passenger had a lovely time, but I was taking a photo as we had arrived in the large city of Kayseri at 02:00.
At this point we decided to have a walk about the train. There are four carriages and a buffet car on the service, with the carriages being somewhat of a mish-mash of different designs, temperatures and lighting arrangements. The carriage we were in seemed a reasonable compromise between them all, primarily it wasn’t too hot.
On this first visit, I resisted the temptation, although I can’t say that I managed that throughout the entire journey. I do have some snack reviews of food that I took on board, but there’s plenty of time to write about those…
The buffet car menu.
Jonathan got a tea and I enjoyed watching the country go by in the dark in different surroundings for a while…
And at 07:00 we arrived into Sivas. I’m going to leave this post here as I have a lot to say about this, as we were still at Sivas nearly eight hours later…..
That enormous building at the back is Ankara railway station, which certainly surprised Jonathan as this wasn’t there last time he visited the city. Jonathan is more sceptical of buildings like this than I am, I’m all for shiny new shopping malls, craft beer bars and restaurants, but he’s perhaps more traditional. The building was opened in 2016 and it’s where the high speed rail services depart and arrive from.
As with most large public buildings in Turkey, there’s a security process before entering. Indeed, part of the sad history of this city is the bombing that took place here in 2015 which killed 109 people.
They even have a Popeyes…. It was a delight of a building internally, part shopping centre and part railway station, it’s certainly a modern arrangement. It also had a convenience store where we purchased snacks for our long train journey that lay ahead.
This new building is on the left and the original railway station, which is still in use, is on the right hand side.
The main concourse of the older station.
The board was most useful than this, it’s just that the photo has given the text a rather less useful feel.
There’s us, the 18:00 service.
The frontage of the older station which was opened in 1937 in the art deco style, replacing the previous 1892 railway station.
Back in the fancy new building, there’s a viewing terrace that has extensive views.
This post is mainly photos, but it’s what I felt was a proper clothing market that we walked by in Ankara. It had all the hustle and bustle of a truly vibrant traditional market, with traders usually standing in the centre of their displays haggling with customers around them. I wonder whether markets like this can survive the perhaps inevitability of something like Primark…..
Before we boarded what was to become our epic rail journey, we opted for a Turkish meal in Ankara.
It all looked rather agreeable and we were given a table by the window, with the team members seeming friendly and helpful. Note the jar of biber turşusu, or pickled peppers. More UK restaurants should perhaps do this….
The drink of Gods….
Other than the salad which I ordered and paid for, all of this was provided free of charge. More UK restaurants should do this as well….
I ordered a chicken kebab and this absolutely surprised and delighted me. The chicken was tender and had a depth of flavour, the salad element was fresh and the bread mopped up the juices nicely. A very agreeable little arrangement.
We were made to feel very welcome and the atmosphere was inviting and relaxed. The food was all well presented, it had taste and flavour to it, with the pricing being relatively low. This was a decent meal to have before what we thought would be a 22 hour rail journey, but that’s for another post.
