A Tale of Two Cities: From Florence to Erzurum

Korey Silverman-Roati

Introduction

Two years, almost to the day, after my first day in Florence, I landed in the eastern Turkish city of Erzurum. Three other young Americans and I were there on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship, expected to spend the next nine months teaching English speaking courses at Ataturk University. We landed at the Erzurum Airport with only a loose idea of how we would get to our new apartments. After waiting around at the airport for thirty long minutes a young man in a sharp suit, who spoke very little English, ushered us into his ‘80s Mercedes. He drove fast down a highway through a valley below treeless mountains, past shepherds and their sheep, up to a city at the base of the Palandoken Mountain…

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