Konya, Türkiye

Our colds seemed to have regressed, so we took it slow this morning. We didn’t have much planned in any case; just a visit to the Tile Museum, and then the Sema ceremony of the Whirling Dervishes at 7pm. (I’m writing this a couple days later, and we’re feeling much better today).

We finally got on our way just before noon. The walk to the Tile Museum took us through Bedesten Market, which is always interesting.

We then walked up and through Alaaddin Hill Park, and past the mosque on the top. We didn’t step inside as we’re getting a bit out-mosque’d, similar to how we got out-churched in Rome.

The location of the Tile Museum on Google Maps was a large construction site. There were recent photos of inside the museum posted by others, so we figured it was just pinned incorrectly. Sure enough, the museum was actually in the restored Karatay Medresesi (a madrasa is an Islamic school, we’ve seen museums housed in former madrasas in other countries such as Uzbekistan).

The Tile Museum is a small-ish museum but still interesting.

We walked back through Bedesten market and had a tea and pastry filled with tahin. Tahin is made from toasted sesame seeds (as opposed to tahini which is from raw seeds), which I found similar to peanut butter. It was a very busy çay (chai, aka tea) place.

After we wandered around the market a bit more and took lots of pics. We really liked the market here. Konya is generally not part of a Turkey vacation itinerary, so it’s just a working market, not focused on tourist items. In fact, outside of the streets surrounding the Mevlana Museum, we didn’t see any souvenir stores.

We got back to the hotel around 2pm and relaxed the rest of the afternoon.

Around 5:45pm we left to walk over to the Mevlana Cultural Centre. As soon as we stepped outside, it started to rain, so we went back and grabbed our umbrellas.

We arrived at the centre just after 6pm, just as the security person had suggested yesterday. On the approach, it didn’t seem very active at all, and I was wondering if there had been some mix up in communications. It turned out we were just super early. Maybe the security person has said doors open at 6pm? Not that we should arrive at 6pm?

We went through security, more like a self-serve security, as there was no-one watching the xray of our bags, nor the metal detector we walked through.

We still weren’t sure we were in the right place though, as we couldn’t see any area large enough to host the ceremony, just lots of craft stalls. We asked around, and were told to go upstairs. There we finally found a ticket booth! We paid our 300 TRY each (about 10 CAD), Turkish lira cash only, and entered.

The ceremony is held in a large bowl theatre, seating about 2,500. We were the first to arrive so had our choice of seats. We went back to the ticket people for their recommendation on seating. We then picked out our seats, between posts D and E, facing the musicians, and about half way up. I guess the choice depends on whether you’re there for religious reasons, or as a tourist. We wanted higher up to get pics of the cloaks whirling.

We waited about an hour, watching other tourists arrive and go through the same decision process as us. Mostly these were tourists who had also done their research, otherwise they would have ended up at the tourist performance promoted by the hotels. There were a couple of bus tours, which surprised me as you can’t get tickets in advance, and usually large packaged tours prefer the certainty of advance tickets.

Anyways it wasn’t crowded at all, maybe 300 attendees. There was no one in front of us in the next two rows, so we had a great view.

The ceremony started right at 7pm. There’s seven parts to the Sema ceremony, we had read up previously so knew what to expect.

It was very cool to see. Some parts did drag on, I had to remember that it was a religious ceremony and not a performance. (It would be like going to a Catholic mass and thinking the Nicene Creed could be shortened).

The whirling part is part five, and generally what you see if you attend a performance for tourists. The other parts, some dance-like movements, some poetry reading, some musical, were all really interesting to see and hear. My favourites were part five (the whirling) and also part four (a circular walk where the dervishes greet each other).

It took just over an hour to complete. We walked back home (it had stopped raining by now), and just ate at the hotel. Overall, attending the Sema ceremony was a really cool experience, I’m glad we were able to be here on a Saturday.