Behind me right now is #SYRIA and I'm in this
historic Turkish city called Mardin overlooking Mesopotamia.
where all of
civilization first started and in this video i'm going to give you guys a
tour of this incredible and ancient city. So I just arrived at Mardin international
airport behind me. I gotta figure out how to flag down a local bus and
then get to the city of Mardin so this city is supposed to be a
hidden gem. Not so hidden if you know geography but it's right next to
the Syrian border and it's pretty fascinating and pretty historic.
I hear the people over here don't speak any
English at all from my friends who've been here before but I've also
heard they're like some of the most friendly people so i'm pretty
excited to see what Mardin has in store. I mean Hawaii and nature and
hikes is fun and all but this kind of travel is what I live for and this
is actually my third day here starting my second full day and i
couldn't really film yesterday because it was really cold and really
rainy the sidewalks here are,
so freaking narrow sometimes like you just
gotta get on the streets. There's really just one street going
through the entire old city and the kids here are following me and
seeing what i'm doing because i'm sure they don't get a lot of youtubers
or vloggers this is located on a very strategic hill close to the
Tigris river. The Tigris river essentially is one of the two main rivers
in the region of Mesopotamia which led to Mesopotamia being the cradle
of civilization as it is called.
The whole city is designated as a UNESCO
heritage site because of how much history is in the building. if you
look around you you'll notice that pretty much every building around me is
made from the same beige colored limestone material.. oops
Almost got run over but the guy smiled at me, I
always think what's the most interesting about Turkish tea is that. it
doesn't come with the cup handle. You just have to hold it like this as
you can see. We have our very first views of the Mesopotamian valley.
This city by itself has been host to so many groups of people and has been
part of more than a dozen kingdoms from what i can remember and that's
why very different kinds of people still live here to this day. This
region is predominantly.
Kurdish people right now but there's also a
lot of Arabs and the city of Mardin itself is like 50 50 split
between Arabs and Kurds. There's also a lot of Turks because obviously
this is still inside Turkey. Also a few people left who belong to
the group of people we know as Syriacs who traced their roots all the way
back to more than four thousand years ago and are pretty famous for
having the same language that is very directly related to what Jesus
Christ used to speak.
So this place is turning out to be the
craziest experience ever. the guy who I paid for my tea was was
trying to tell me something in Turkish and was asking me where I'm
from and then was super excited and then
pulled out google translate and he was offering me to stay at his
place with him for free which is ridiculous. Which basically never
happens anywhere and then you know as I'm walking down the sidewalk
everyone I meet is just like super happy.
so excited that someone's visiting. You don't
really get to see that every day Seems to be a very popular spot for
selfies around town, I'm at the Zincirye Medresi. I met Mehmet. Is that your
name? yes (and) another friend and everyone is so friendly. Just gave me
borek ,not just this borek.. a whole whole bag of borek!
and it's in my bag now
I found that outside of Istanbul not a lot of
people speak English unless you go to university. This place has the
most beautiful view of Mardin. I didn't even come up here yesterday
because I didn't know how to get to the top of this building because the language barrier
is very real if you're not speaking to people who are in university.
Mehmet: I can speak English but little little bit
Man this is such an incredible place. The
hospitality of the people that I'm meeting here left and right is
ridiculous i have never seen anything like it except for maybe in
some very remote places in the Balkans like Albania where strangers who
don't even speak the language want to come up and just give you food
and hang out with you and spend time with you and they're just really
thankful to have people around and it feels great to visit places like
this not necessarily as fancy (or) doesn't have the tourist
infrastructure as like many of the more popular.
places but I think everything else that you
get from here makes it better than those touristy spots, at least
for me. So behind me right there is Mardin kalesi or the Mardin castle
which is the most imposing structure in this whole town and it's on
top of this hill. Unfortunately you can't get to it right now because it's
a military complex as you might have figured out from all the barbed
wire around that castle and there's also
a NATO tower there so they take this security for this castle
pretty seriously, so don't try crossing those barbed wires unless you
want to die.
How are you? Pretty good. How are you doing? youtube?
yes
that kid just almost hit me in the face
This is the grand mosque of Mardin which is an
incredible structure insider and out. It's definitely hundreds and hundreds of
years older than the mosques that I grew up to going. I actually
went inside to take a look. Obviously wasn't vlogging there just to
be respectful of the people that are praying around me. That is
definitely something you want to do. You probably can't even film in most
mosques but people for the most part seem to be cool in turkey as
long as you're not interrupting any way. If you do go inside obviously
take off your shoes before,
you go inside and clean yourself properly.
There's washing stations outside of each mosque because this
is a place of worship and last thing you want to do is piss people off
when they're trying to worship and it's just not a nice thing to do
you know.
how are you?
Pretty good,
how are you?
Where are you from? Bangladesh Bangladesh? Yes
Just walking through a market again and people
are just so friendly
One thing I'll never get tired of in turkey is
all the cute dogs and cats
everywhere. These dogs are fighting. Let me
find a quieter spot for this conversation
so basically right now I'm at the Kasmiye
madrasa behind me which is the other famous madrasa of
Mardin. Unlike everything else that is famous
in Mardin, this one's a little bit away from
the city and there's also another incredible
view of the valley towards Syria over here Not as nice I'd say as it
was from the other one but it's still a pretty damn good view. so I'm
gonna go inside check it out and see what this is like. This dog is going
crazy. So the view might have been better from the top of the last one
but I'd say the interior architecture is definitely just as cool in
this one if not better, the green water is also a lot cleaner than the
other one
so it's almost 5 p.m again and i'm back again
to this , first madrasa where we started off the day five hours ago
or something like that. I had to see this view with a little bit of
better lighting as you can see over here and this is such an incredible
view. I could come here every day. Not a bad decision coming back here.
Okay so I'm back to the same place that I was
this morning and I'm having a bigger cup of tea. so I guess they do give you a
cup with a handle if you order a cup that's big enough . I'm pretty
much done in Mardin probably gonna check out the town museum in the morning
because i haven't had a chance to do that and after that i'm heading to
most probably.this other historic town. this place is incredible but i
think the most incredible thing here is the hospitality of the people. the
guy who offered to host me earlier in the morning got so excited.
when he saw me coming back in his name is
gabriel like uh or gibrael the way you would say in Arabic. Anyways I'm
gonna end this blog here so if you like this channel and want to
see more post by me feel free to subscribe to the channel and if you
want to see all these places from a very different angle a few
months . I'll catch you guys in the next one from Urfa.
Okay guys I
am in ,Urfa. I'm with my friend Ali who I met in the bus.and Ali offered
to host me at his house for the next few
days…
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