A Place I Love

Trabzon, on the Black Sea coast of Türkiye, is where I grew up. Green mountains that fall straight into the sea, clouds that sit in the valleys, and a football club the whole city lives for. A few of my favorite views:

Sümela Monastery built into a sheer cliff face above a forested valley — Sümela Monastery (4th century), carved into a cliff 300 m above the Altındere valley.

Uzungöl: a lake in a green valley with a mosque and wooden houses along the shore — Uzungöl, a lake tucked into the Kaçkar foothills.

A highland village of small wooden houses on a grassy plateau above the clouds — A *yayla*: one of the highland pastures above the cloud line where families spend the summer.

The night the whole city came out

In May 2022, Trabzonspor won the Süper Lig after a long, long wait. I was one of the tens of thousands of people who filled the streets that night.