May 12th: Before talking about our ride today of nearly 700 km we would still like to reflect on Malatya and on the hotel in which we stayed there.
Malatya is more or less in the middle of Anatolia … If you read about the city before you would expect a city full of historical buildings, a nice old town and and and…Malatya has a long history…. named different over the centuries that past us…. owned or occupied by the Greeks, Romans , Utaraes or others …. However the pitty is there is not much left of that as the city had been completely re build for 5times. That means that today the main „highlight“ is the new soccer stadium of Malatyaspor (playing first league if I am not wrong). That says a lot.
What you see is a city build out of concrete which is not giving the city a heartbeat. However let me come back to the Ramada hotel in which we stayed. To summarize it in a way that is balanced I try it in the following way: the rooms are ok, underground parking is available and the coffee shop is good…. the people hardly speak any English, they come across very unfriendly, the service is far below average and if you can avoid the restaurant there please do … your Body will say thank you. That together with the description of Malatya brought us to the following conclusion: if you can skip Malatya do it, if not please select the right Hotel.
Our trip to Ankara started at 7h30am … as usual an early drive. Rain was forecasted… but we were lucky … sun was shining entire day. We planned to reach Ankara within 7h if there are not police controls on our way😂😂…. surprise surprise not one we had . Our advise: drive on a Sunday 😉.
After filling up the car we went off to Ankara…. let’s face reality you drive onto a highway in east Anatolia and drive to Ankara… so what do expect? The truth of today was you see landscape, landscape and maybe landscape. We drove on a mountain plateau approximately 1600m high for hours and hours and apart from landscape you might see some sheep’s , some cows and if you are lucky some other cars. Nothing happens there … it seems time stands still… amazing. However what was really wondering us was the infrastructure…. what a Highway … no traffic but 3 lanes each direction brand new… wow. Why was it built there? We can only guess …. 😌.
The day passed by and we were still on the road and the next stop at a petrol station was due. Now most probably the most exciting part of the day started… I think I was not laughing out like this for a while…. it took us 7 attempts at 7 different petrol stations to be able to fill up the car…. they had no petrol only gas or diesel. At the first stop when Martin was back O thought by myself ok can happen…. but than it got an unbeatable running gag… we had tears in our eyes and took bets before each stop if we would get petrol or not😂…. unbelievable.
After we were successful in filling up the car at stop No 7 we calmed ourselves down in buying a Magnum Cherry Ice Cream… that helped. So when ever you plan a long drive in Turkey… avoid Sundays…😂.
Eventually we reached Ankara… what a beautiful Capitol of Turkey that is. Build into hills with a lot of green it gives you an immediate feeling of being welcomed… not hectic at all… simply nice. We checked into the Cinnah Hotel , dropped our luggage and went direct to the Atatürk-mausoleum…. what a magnificent place. No entree fee …. what a surprise. It is the symbol of the Turkish nation . You can not miss out on that. Let’s see what the rest of the day will bring. In any case tomorrow we are leaving Asia and hopefully reach Europe… 1000km ahead of us.
