Erzincan looks like a very typical small American town, if there ever was a small American town with muslim population.
Chariots and horse carts are not allowed on the main street!
Somewhere along the road I came across cars that looked like lottery prizes. Turned out they were actually wedding cars.
See the boys in front of the car? Those are the “çocuklar”! They have nothing to do with the wedding, they are just there — street kids — to ruin the party.
How do you ruin a wedding party as a çocuk? Easy! You jump on the hood of the cars!
One of guests of the wedding finally lost his temper
The çocuk army was dispersed in a blink of an eye!
Just as the cars started moving, however, the çocuks resumed their attack, catching up after the cars in traffic and… jumping on their hoods on the fly, right there on the 3rd lane!
The way the surrounding people reacted to that made me realize that this was a standard çocuk procedure, or perhaps a scheduled squad training.
Time to eat something! Oh wait, not really… Time to eat something is at about 7:30pm.
The thing about relegious fasting is, in my understanding, that people should exercise humility and disregard hunger. They should behave and feel in a way that they don’t care about food, and take some pride in that. That is my understanding, and it might be subjective (as all religious affairs for that matter). But that is not the way things actually stand here!
Starting from about 6:30, almost all tables at all restaurants are occupied — not even reserved! Folks sit around tables and do nothing, anticipating food.
There is nothing on these guys’ table except for water, which they don’t touch. The time on my camera when I took the photo was 7:06pm. Guess what they are looking at — kebabs being rolled to be ready just in time to break the fast!
Erzincan is a pretty active and loud oriental town. But you should see, or rather hear it, the second people are allowed eat something. A noisy town a minute ago, suddenly not even the dogs bark! Everyone starts eating!
And so do I.
Yum!