Ünye: Jolly Little Town on the Black Sea

Unye? Where is that? Why Unye?

These are the questions I got from Turks when I told them I had been to this little seaside town on Turkey's Black Sea coast. Some of the Turks I spoke to do not even know where this place is, despite having lived in Turkey most of their life. And they are truly suprised that I was willing to endure more than 22 hours on long-distance buses just to go and see this town for one day. To be honest, I would have preferred to fly directly to Samsun and back to Istanbul, but the visit to Unye was a last-minute decision, all flights from Samsun to Istanbul were fully booked and I had no choice but to travel by bus all the way back to Istanbul. 

So, why Unye? It starts with a chance encounter in 2009. When travelling by bus from Samsun to Giresun, the bus passed by this jolly little town en route and stopped next to its busy seaside promenade for a few minutes to drop off passengers. I was kind of intrigued by the views I saw outside of the window. There is a strange kind of attractiveness about this town, it aroused my interest right away. The views of the beautiful sea, the pavilions, the Englishsque pier (which makes the place looks like Bournemouth), the seaside tea gardens, young couples walking together along the seaside pavements, and the crowd on the busy square in the town centre - all these images left a deep impression on me. I decided that given the chance, I would certainly return to visit this town and get to know it better. 

The chance came in the summer of 2011, when I had three days' time to spare before meeting up with two friends in Istanbul to explore the city together. As I was already in Hattusas, a Hittite archaeological site about 5-6 hours away by bus to Unye, I thought it might be OK to make a detour and visit Unye for a day before returning to Istanbul. So I bought the ticket to Unye, got on the bus, and got off the bus at the town centre, not far away from the busy Bournemouth look-alike pier. Upon closer inspection, this pier also reminds me a little bit of the classical open pier at Trieste's harbour.

Maybe it was because the weather during the proper visit to Unye was not as nice as it should have been - most of the time it was cloudy with light rain - I found the town not as attractive upon closer inspections as I had once thought it was. The town certainly looked so much better in those brief glimpses from the window of the bus. For a brief moment, I wondered if my memories had played a trick on me, and doubts arose as to why I had come all the way to see this place after all. But it was not the right time for sentimentalism. I had only one day's time to visit this town, and the first thing was to go along the seafront and take a closer look at the Black Sea.

Looking at the Black Sea at such close proximity turned out to be a bit of a shocker. If you like jelly fish, then the sea around Unye is the right place for you. For those who dream of crystal clear waters, the beach and the sea at Unye will be a huge disappointment. Standing on the pier, I was shocked to see countless jelly fish of moderate sizes enjoying themselves in the water, because it means the water in Unye is very polluted. No wonder I did not see anybody swimming in the sea despite a soaring temperature of more than 30 degrees Celsius and an absolute humidity of close to 100%. Because I bet the moment you step into the water, you will be engulfed by all these jelly fish and get big problems with skin irritations if one of them decides to sting you. Later I read in an article that since 2002, the population of jelly fish in the Black Sea has practically exploded. As jelly fish is not part of the traditional Black Sea cuisine, with the sharp decline of jelly fish's natural predators such as tuna, swordfish and sea turtles in Turkish waters, there is virtually no way to reduce their population. Perhaps the locals should change their strategy, get some inspirations from traditional Japanese and Chinese cuisines, and turn these annoying brainless and spineless creatures into tasty cold appetizers (jellyfish with sesame and soy sauce, anyone?) and spicy-flavoured snacks.
Before the Turks on the Black Sea coast seriously consider putting marinated jellyfish into their mainstream daily menu, however, I seriously advise anyone who is afraid of close encounter with jellyfish to avoid swimming in the waters around Unye altogether. Maybe it is just a Unye-specific problem, as I did not remember seeing jellyfish in such vast numbers in other parts of the Black Sea coast I had visited. Nevertheless, it is a real pity that such beautiful sea has been conquered by this annoying little creature.   

The town's social life centres on the huge square in the middle of the old town, the numerous seaside tea gardens and family restaurants to the left of the pier, as well as the narrow streets inside the old quarters of Unye where budget family-style restaurants, local corner shops and a few 'fastfood outlets' serving quick dishes the likes of fried fish, spagehetti with tomato sauce, fried chicken and chips etc. can be found. For a more scenic and romantic touch, you need a car to drive all the way up to the tea garden restaurant on top of a hill overlooking Unye, where one gets a really good view of Unye's town centre, the Black Sea and the coastline eastwards of the town. The views are especially impressive in the evenings, when the entire town is lighted up, and other smaller villages that lined the stretch of the Black Sea coast beyond the adminstrative boundary of Unye also sparkle like little crystals under the silky night sky. 

Needless to say, like countless other villages, towns and cities in Turkey, Unye also has a Pontus, Roman-Byzantine, and Greek past. This town has a very long history, which dated all the way back to the Hittite period (1500 BC), before being conquered by different kingdoms and tribes over the next millenium. The Unye Castle, whose ruins perched above a hill with a commanding view of the Black Sea and about 30 minutes by car outside of Unye, traced its origin all the way to the Pontic times. On a more contemporary note, Unye was still a town with many characteristic Black Sea Greek-style stone architecture and buildings as late as the early 20th century, but most of them were demolished to make way for ugly modern concrete blocks during the 1960s and 70s, and those that remained were largely left to rot in the humid salty air. Nowadays there are very few buildings left to remind anyone of Unye's Greek past, except the ruins of a Greek Orthodox Church, tucked away in a small street in Unye's old town, and a few dilapidated old Greek  stone houses with red tiled roof, colourful wooden doors and traditional European-style wooden window shutters at the far end of the seafront promenade overlooking the Black Sea. In spite of its worn-and-torn appearance, many of these old stone houses are still inhabited; some are even converted into cafes and snack bars offering good views of the Black Sea and the shorelines of Unye. Oh yes, not to forget the very friendly Sofra Restaurant, which is housed in a charming Greek-style stone building located on the busy seaside road, where tasty local cuisines with a Black Sea twist are being served in very congenial surroundings.
     

In addition to those lost Greek style Black Sea architectures, some beautiful Ottoman style buildings also remain in Unye, but it takes some time and efforts to locate them. Present-day town centre of Unye is by and large a modern-looking place. Unless one has the opportunity to take a look at some of the old black-and-white photographs taken during the early parts of the 20th century, it is not easy for one to envisage how beautiful this town on the Black Sea once used to be. 

 

Being on the only road connecting Samsun to Giresun and Trabzon (the so-called Black Sea Highway), the traffics on the main seaside road that runs through Unye's town centre, which is also the town's main throughfare, are full of long-distance buses, trucks transporting goods from eastern Black Sea or beyond to the western parts of Turkey and vice versa (I saw some trucks heading towards Georgia across the border from Hopa), and all kinds of other vehicles. As a result of huge volumes of traffics, several pedestrian crossings and traffic lights at this part of town, but only one lane open to all, traffic jams are a frequent occurrence in this part of Unye. To make things more complicated, there is no proper bus station in Unye, which means passengers boarding the bus at Unye have to wait at the designated pick-up point at the roadside shortly before the scheduled departure time; as soon as the bus arrives, long queues of cars and trucks will form behind the bus while alighting passengers collect their baggage from the compartments underneath the bus at the same time when departing passengers board the bus. At times, the traffics on the seafront road are so slow and congested, everything comes to a complete stop, and pedestrians crossing over from the town's main square to the seafront tea gardens and promenade on the other side of the Black Sea Highway can choose to cross the road anywhere they like, without worrying about the trucks or the buses. 

So, although the Unye I experienced is not as idyllic as the Unye I saw from the bus windows, I was still pleased that I had made the decision to go all the way and get to know this jolly little town better. The reason I use the term  'jolly' to describe this place is because, very often I get the impression that the locals don't care much about anything, as if they were living in their own, small, Don Quixotesque world. As most people who know something about Turkish jokes and ethnic stereotypes inside Turkey will know, many Turks believe there is something very unique, even to the extent of being absurd, about the way residents along Turkey's Black Sea coast think and behave. This 'oddity of manner and mentality' is a characteristic Turks from other parts of Turkey have commented about, and something which I can slowly begin to decipher. But somehow I just cannot help to think that to a certain extent, it is this 'oddity' that gives Black Sea towns such as Unye its unusual jolly 'who cares' and colourful character. 

Copyrights@2012. All text and photos by YC Cheng. All Rights Reserved.