Turkey- Ankara

You know what, it seems that the governments when they start to work find a piece of huge land, subdevide it, decide where the government offices are going to be and then every thing else is planned accordingly.  Take Bonn for example, from all the nice places in Germany, why did the German goverment decided on Bonn? Thank good that the cold war ended and they were able to return to Berlin! At least it had a character.  Okay, I agree the city will be more beautiful when it is planned rather than growing organically, to me though I would rather have a capital city that was there from time memorial and had all the stuff in them; it is really like having a place where only engineers live? Or only teachers, I can go on forever but you will only be able to follow what I am saying when you actually visit Ankara.  The buildings and the trees are planted, in rows and columns, he must be an architect that plays chess very well.  So this place is not for the usual type of tourists, it's for business and work.  But nothing wrong with being in an organised place with roads and avenues like New York and Abu Dhabi, provided you have a central park, maybe man made but it should resemble a natural habitat with lakes and birds and what have you. 

You will think then why would I go to study in Ankara? Well, you must think twice, it has some of the best universities in the world, Metu for example occupies 46000 donums (cannot convert them for you in hectare, as I am not good with that, but to make you visualise it, the bus tour took a good half hour, and it has it's own high school, it's own museum and its own aeronautics museum too. It has 18 halls of residences, and over 300 exchange agreements with top universities in the world, it's own cafes and supermarkets and the ratio of students to teacher is 1:10, And the cost? I will leave it to you to figure out, but your mum and dad will be more than happy, as the formula fits with their aspirations. And as the iraqi people say, it's hot, crispy and cheap. 

Shops and malls are in abundance, Bazzars are also there and some pretty mosques. So the mums will be happy to visit you.  A last word, two students who joined Metu and were really poor and lived in hardship, had discovered how to cut diamond with marble, so they donated enough money to build three halls of residences and called them in their mum, dad and auntie's names. 

It is growing on me and will visit again, as I didn't have enough time to hit the shops and do some serious shopping, but we went to some really great restaurants, and ate good food. We also visited some more universities which were on the top 200 in the world.