Tuesday 12 June 2012

In which there is more recent history (and pancakes)

After our adventures with ancient history, we decided to stay closer to home, both geographically and historically, the next day.
So we went to Kaya village (Kayaköy /Karmylassos ), which is just outside Fethiye. Kaya was a village inhabited mainly by Greek-speaking Christians, but it was abandoned in 1923, after the end of the Greco-Turkish War (or the war of Turkish Independence, depending on your political views) when, as part of the peace treaty, a population exchange was agreed, allowing Ethnic Greek Christians to move to Greece, and Muslims to move to Turkey.

However, as Kaya had been Greek, Turks did not wish to live there, so it became a ghost town, and is now preserved as a museum.

The village is mostly ruins, now. The majority of the buildings are roofless shells, the alters are gone from the churches, and the place is silent other than the chirping of crickets, and birds.


When we went into one of the churches we flushed out a small group of sheep, and there were swallows nesting in the roof.


There is one house which still has its wooden internal walls, shutters and balcony, although they are rather decrepit, and seem to have been burned at some time. Outside the window was an apricot tree, with all the apricots growing, frustratingly, just out of reach...

From the chapel on the top of the hill, there are magnificent views out over the sea, and there are flowers everywhere, and fig-trees growing up inside many of the ruined houses.

Now that the village is preserved as a museum, and is something of a tourist attraction, there are several little restaurants there. And a random pair of camels and a donkey, on which one can, I assume, have rides. We, however, were far more interested in the gozleme, which are chapati-like pancakes, made in a woodburning oven and stuffed with cheese and spinach.

It's possible that the afternoon may have involved rather a lot of sitting on a sunny balcony. And possibly a G'n'T or two. And maybe some pistachio ice cream.

The baklava, however, wasn't until later.

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