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Thursday 2004-05-20 - Diyarbakır, Turkey
More history
After we take our leave from the carpet seller at the mosque nearby we try to finally find the Christian church we were looking for — which we succeed in doing only with the help of another crowd of children and some friendly older people. The church, another Orthodox Syrian church, is obviously for a small community only. Three families live in the buildings surrounding the church proper within the church grounds. The priest speaks some English, another man some German, and together they lead us around their small church with many beautiful and very old paintings badly in need of restoration. We leave a donation for the church.
Our next goal is the old city wall: an enormous wall built of black basalt stone, still surrounding the whole old city and 6 km long; the top of it provides a good view of the city of Diyarbakır and its surroundings. At several places there are stairs where you can get up the wall; we climb up via stairs inside one of the gates and immediately attract another crowd of children. These are friendly and try to play guide (though we’d rather walk without them). Of course we don’t give them the money they obviously hope for when we leave the wall after a nice walk. But these somewhat older children don’t seem to mind too much: they had a good time with us, apparently.
