Corum - chickpea central! (Çorum, Turkey)

Member Name: fizzywizzy

Product:	Çorum, Turkey
Date:	20/12/08 (212 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Chickpeas, nice people, good restaurant

Disadvantages: Nuts (for me), not much to do

Have you ever given much thought to the humble chickpea? I don't suppose you have; even if you really like chickpeas you have probably never stopped to consider them more deeply (unlike the hapless Jade Goody who once asked if they contained chicken).

I love chickpeas though I freely admit they're not something I dwell on regularly. Actually that's only partly true: when I found out that the Turkish town of Corum is the global chickpea capital (that's my designation not the United Nations'), I had to ensure it was incorporated into my Black Sea trip in 2006.

Corum is a good day's coach ride (including an extended motorway services stop to have the coach washed, eat kebabs and drink Turkish tea) from the capital, Ankara. It's not really a tourist destination but it tends to make the guidebooks because it is the nearest town to several historic sites dating back to the Hittite era and because its wealth is based primarily on the chickpea.

Having been to Corum I'm not going to suggest it's one of Turkey's great undiscovered secrets. Frankly there's nothing there to make you linger more than a day. However, if you're touring the northern part of Turkey it would make an excellent place to spend a night, not least because it is home to one of Turkey's most recommended restaurants.

We arrived in Corum mid-afternoon and departed the following morning but that was enough time to meet some chickpea merchants, see some wonderful wooden houses from the Ottoman period and enjoy a walking tour of the town as well as eat a memorable dinner in that restaurant.

There is no Tourist Information Office so we had no map of the town. It's easy to get around however and we met lots of people who spoke English should we ever have gotten ourselves really lost.

When you come out of the bus station, take a short cut across the bustling market and this will bring you out on the main road that cuts through the town. In front of you are a couple of hotels; we chose the cheaper looking of the two but we could easily have afforded the other which, in spite of its relative glitziness, was still cheap by UK standards. However this was near the beginning of our trip and we were cash conscious. The truth is that Corum has one vaguely luxury hotel, the rest only varying in degrees of basic. If you stay in a hotel in Corum it's inevitable that you'll be finding your own breakfast, which is not difficult.

If you were to go left this will take you into the very centre of the town, where a very British-looking clock-tower stands at a road junction. On one side of the roundabout are lots of park benches and a childrens' playground. People come to sit here on warm summer evenings. Just behind this are narrow lanes of shops - glorified market stalls really. When you visit places like this in Turkey you wonder how all these traders can make a living; ten hardware shops in a row, then ten cobblers, then ten haberdashers, all offering the same service or selling the same goods as the other nine.

Lining the main street, the chickpea merchants sell much more than just chickpeas (in Turkish "leblebi"). They all sell different types of nuts, some with the shells on, some without, varieties roasted to different degrees and some flavoured and coloured. They are displayed in clear containers which fill the shop windows and make an impressive display. As I have a serious nut allergy I couldn't go into the shop (even breathing in the dust sets me off) so himself was sent into one of the shops to have a look and to buy himself some nuts (which he was to allowed to eat outside, then go back to the hotel to disinfect himself). Inside the tiny store were six men, it was impossible to say who was staff and who were just hanging out (Turkish men love to just hang out, chewing the fat and watching other people work); nevertheless each man had his own idea of what to recommend and it took ten minutes for himself to emerge with a paper wrap of nuts which he pronounced delicious.

Corum has a museum but we didn't visit it. It displays mainly the items found at the Hittite sites in the area. It's not a period that especially interests me so I concluded that, since I was not interested in visiting the sites, there was little point in visiting the museum. If you are interested in visiting the Hittite sites you need a car or you need to be prepared for a journey that involves several buses and some walking; in spite of the historical significance of the sites, they've obviously not yet been deemed worthy of public transport.

Hattusa is the main site of interest and was the capital of the Hittite empire (between 1375 and 1200 BC approximately); the Hittites commanded a large empire covering much of the Middle East and even challenged the Pharaohs. The Hittites worshipped hundreds of deities and excavations of the site discovered many monuments that demonstrated this. There were also discovered tablets that laid out the laws of the city and showed that for the time, the Hittite one was an extremely well-ordered society. Today this site and another at nearby Bogazkale are UNESCO designated World Heritage sites.

With little to do in town we pottered mainly, working up an appetite for dinner. On the way to the restaurant we stopped to look at the Ulu mosque, built in the thirteenth century by the Seljuks. Compared to ones we had seen so far in Ankara and Istanbul it was very modest but certainly worth seeing for the contrast in style.

The restaurant is just behind the town centre and among some fine wooden Ottoman houses. Although it has a lovely outdoor dining area it was raining when we visited so we ate indoors. Katipler Konagi is housed in a restored Ottoman house and has a choice of differently painted dining rooms. As it was not busy that evening we had our pick; I chose the pink room of course. Although we were given a very old sheet with some English translations of the dishes, it wasn't very useful and so we tried to use the Lonely Planet food section to work out what was on the menu. The restaurant serves the usual kebabs you get everywhere in Turkey but also gave us a chance to try some local traditional dishes such as manti which are like little pieces of pasta served in a delicious beef broth. We also sampled a lentil and barley soup which was very filling. As alcohol is not served, we tried another local speciality deep purple mulberry juice which was not as good as it sounds. It was incredibly thick and not as tangy as I had expected; still trying new things is the main thing, and I can say I tried it.
Corum is not I place I would spend much time at. There isn't much to do and certainly not much to distinguish it from other towns of a similar size. It was really the chickpea connection that interested us and as we did not want to travel much further that day, Corum provided an opportune overnight stop. The town of Amasya (which I have reviewed for this website) has much more to see and do and the examples of Ottoman houses are much better. It is also more geared up for tourists with better restaurants and a good range of hotels.

We met some friendly and helpful people in Corum though on the whole we were something of a novelty. However we were made very welcome and lots of people wanted to practice their English on us. A visit to a ladies clothes shop for me to buy a warm pullover was fun and the female shop assistants were very happy to serve me.

Not even the chickpeas would entice me here again, however. It's an ordinary town that is a perfectly pleasant stopover but it doesn't have enough to really catch your attention.

Please note, due to formatting I can't type the town's name as it should appear. The name is pronounced Shorum as the mark under the C denotes. Dooyoo have included this mark in the category heading. Similarly other places names have been slightly misppelled to allow for this problem.

Summary: A reasonable town in northern Turkey for an overnight stop