A day doing bugger all in a city with bugger all to do.
We are up at the crack of noon and ready to rock. By way of confirmation that the call to prayer is a bit on the loud side, they do it again, although it is not ‘on the hour’ or anything so doesn’t appear to be a set time. I Google it and it turns out they are specific times, but it depends on the position of the sun. It’s literally a different time every day and they have calenders to tell them when.
The prayer times for obligatory and Sunnah prayers performed with the call to prayer in all mosques in Kayseri, Türkiye, are listed in the Yeni Şafak prayer times table. In addition to the five daily prayer times, there are also times for non-obligatory prayers such as Ishraq, Duha, Awwabin, and Tarawih.
Friday 15 November 2024 , the prayer times in Kayseri are as follows: Fajr (Imsak) at 05.48, sunrise at 07.13, Dhuhr at 12.28, Asr at 15.08, Maghrib at 17.32, Isha at 18.52.
https://www.yenisafak.com/en/prayer-times/kayseri
I had assumed that it was coming from the big mosque opposite the hotel but I’m not sure. There are more mosques here than there are converted chapels in the valleys. It is a very religiously conservative city, with very few bars, other than in hotels.
We slowly get ready and head out to the Holiday Inn to collect our tickets for tomorrow’s game. Despite complaints that the loyalty scheme for Wales Away is a closed shop in terms of tickets, this game hasn’t actually sold out, so if people want to get on the ladder, it is possible.
And with it being a hotel, there is a bar. Which, unsurprisingly, is full of Wales fans. So we have a beer and, well, we have another one.
If you Google ‘things to do in Kayseri’, you will get a list of day trips to go on or ski resorts in the mountains. Yes skiing in Turkey, who knew? One of those trips will be Cappadocia. We are headed there on Sunday, but a few of the Red Wall have been out there today. Including Posh. Yes, regular readers might have noticed Posh and Becks have missed a few of the recent trips. They are back though. Unfortunately Becks is poorly today so Posh has left him doing his own personal ‘call to prayer’ on the ‘great white telephone’ in the room, and fucked off to Cappadocia without him.
Normally people don’t bother drinking in hotels on these trips because they are so expensive, but they are just about the only place to drink.
We have food in the Holiday Inn. Nothing special, but nothing wrong with it. And they had a short but basic vegan menu. Vegan burgers and schnitzel and such.
We go for a wander later and get looks as if we are alien when asking at various restaurants if they do vegetarian food. I bite the bullet and fire up the data so I can check the Happy Cow App for veggie friendly restaurants. There are only three listed and the reviews quite angrily suggest they aren’t actually vegetarian.
We try one restaurant, Maide, where the waiter, who speaks no English and can only communicate via a translation app, tells us there is nothing vegetarian on the menu, but they will make something for us. Over the course of the next hour a feast of side dishes and ‘cheese pitta’ is served up, along with Turkish Tea. There are two bowls of peppers. The first one I try is like uranium and leaves my lips numb on contact. Initially I think the second pepper is milder, but it waits till it reaches my tonsils before dissolving them. Fortunately, the effect does not last long and it turns out to be an incredibly simple but very tasty Turkish meal. It’s filling and when we get the bill it comes in at less than eight quid. The waiter is a legend so we ensure his tip reflected that. Tips are a thing here and many workers rely on them.
We are close to the Holiday Inn so pop in just to see if any of the gang are about. The hotel, just like ours, has a presence of local gendarmerie outside. Clearly they think trouble follows all football fans. Not Wales. I sat next to a couple from Swindon on the plane who have been following Wales for twenty five years. No real connections with Wales but they love football and love travelling, but didn’t really fancy following England, what with all the baggage that can occasionally go with that. Wales fans tend to make friends everywhere they go.
The coppers are pretty laid back about their posting for the night. Some of them are quite scruffy with long hair and jeans. Some of them are even in the pub having a drink.
We find that almost all of our mates are in here. The Bowens from Bargoed haven’t even moved from the seats they were in ten hours earlier. If they stay any longer they will have to register for Council Tax.
Some of the ‘Wonky Massive’ are trying to split their bill and are busy with pen and paper calculating to the shekel how much everyone owes, then everyone pays their own bill by card, rounding up for a tip. After a bizare conversation in pigeon English, we eventually learn that if you include a tip with your card payment, the money goes to the pub not the waitress. So basically the waitress has lost out on a huge tip and is wondering if there might be a cash tip forthcoming. The moral of the story, if they take cards (not everywhere does), pay your tip in cash.
The Holiday Inn pub is spacious, subtly lit and full of Wales fans. Everyone is chilled and relaxed. Drinking loads and just chatting with mates. There is music, but it’s background music.
Eventually, when we realise it’s now actually the same day as the game, we head back to our hotel. There’s also a bar here, ‘The Jolly Joker’. It’s completely different.
It’s dark, it’s loud and there’s a DJ. Basically, a night club vibe. The sort of night club I disliked when I was young, and certainly not into now. But hey, horses for courses. There’s quite a few in there that are loving it.
We give it a swerve and head for bed, setting the mosque for an early morning alarm call. It’s football day.