navigate:
Saturday 2004-05-22 - Akdamar, Turkey
Church on an island
Van is a big city but (apart from a museum that’s said to be nice) not very interesting in itself. Instead, we go to the island Akdamar in the Lake of Van. We’ve decided not to take the (expensive) official tour but arrange our own. With our own bus we drive back along the east and south side of the lake, with again a spectacular view of the green-blue lake with snow-capped mountain ranges all around. Where the ferry boats leave for the island, our tour companion arranges with the boat owner that he will take us there, make a circle all around the island, then give us three hours to spend there. We’ve taken along food for a picnic lunch, bought before we left.
Our main goal is the old Holy Cross church built on the island, dating back to the 10th century. There are beautiful reliefs on all the walls; inside there are still some fresco fragments, mostly blues but hard to discern what the scenes are. Around the church is also a number of grave stones, most half-toppled, some also finely decorated with reliefs.
The island has two tops; I skip the high one to spare my painful knees the steep climb but go with Vera to the lower one on the south-east side. From there you can still overlook almost all the island, and I attempt to make a panorama photograph — a bit hard to do balancing on the rocks… no idea how this will come out. The island is covered with many types of flowers, different kinds of lillies and hyacinths, wild onions, beautiful euphorbias, many species I don’t recognize. I take a lot of pictures! After our picnic lunch we return to Van, where I decide to spend the remainder of the afternoon writing.
After our extensive lunch on the island we’re not terribly hungry so in the evening we head back to the ‘soup salon’ for a light meal, where we find most of the group also enjoying their delicious soup! After dinner it’s back to the Internet cafe in Van (there’s one conveniently right next to our hotel) to catch up with my travel blog!
Saturday 2004-05-22 - Van, Turkey
White cats? Yes, they’re real!
Next to the jetty from where the ferry boats left for Akdamar Island this morning, there was a little shop where we noted a whole collection of postcards featuring white cats. Seemingly these white cats are typical for this area; they’re completely white and all seem to have two differently-colored eyes! They’re also known for actually liking water and swimming.
Seeing these postcards, I suddenly remembered a statue we passed on our way into Van yesterday: big white cat, with a kitten, both with one yellow and one blue eye. Surely if a city puts up a statue like that - in the way many cities do, highlighting something special for the city or the area - these white cats must be important here. But actually all of us have a little trouble believing there really are cats like this here, with two different eyes - none of us have seen a real, live one here!
Update! By now I know why: these cats are so special that not only the University in Van has a special program for research (and breeding them), they’re also quite valuable. That’s why you’re unlikely to see them roam about in the streets in Van - or anywhere else for that matter.
Imagine my surprise when shortly after my return from this trip, just around the corner I practically stumbled over a white cat with two different eyes. Surely a “White Van”. I managed to make a picture with my camera phone, and found out his name is Johan (though he listens to the name “Fluffy”). But now, having met Johan here in Amsterdam, I really regret not having a picture of at least that nice statue in Van - we never stopped near it, and were far too busy for me to go back to take a picture. When I ever come back to Van, I’ll surely take some time to make one. Meanwhile, thanks to bpelvan and his friend Dr. Burhan Oral Güdü in Van whom he asked to take a picture of the statue, I can now at least point you to a splendid picture online of the Van White cat statue!
