Travel and Miletus

The first bus ride of the day was fairly short: we went to a carpet-making school. We saw the entire process in reverse - the girls working at the looms, how the yarn is dyed and what natural items are used for what colors, and the process by which they unwrap the cocoons. The man who dyes the yarn doesn’t speak any English, but he memorized a speech about his work, complete with jokes. He showed us the indigo vat, and lifted out some of the yarn. It was yellow when he removed it, but within a few seconds the whole thing had turned blue. I know it was just oxidization, but it still looked like magic. I also learned that silk is actually worm spit: their cocoons are made with saliva. The school owner provided drinks for all of us, and showed us several dozen rugs. There was a small silk one we really wanted to buy, and it would have been wonderful in our house, but we just couldn’t afford it - so we took a picture. Another member of our group ended up getting it for $1900. The next bus trip was a couple of hours. I tried reading on the way, but had to give it up after a while because I was getting carsick. I’ve determined that I don’t like bus travel. I do just fine on planes (which is good, or the transatlantic trip would have been even worse) and trains, but on a bus I tend to get sick. I’d like to find some Dramamine soon, because we still have a lot of bus time ahead of us. We finally reached Miletus to look at the ruins there, but the first thing my girlfriend and I saw was a mother dog who had come to greet the bus. We had been snacking on cookies, so we gave her a couple - she was very grateful. As our group climbed the stairs into the theater, someone heard squeaking and pointed out puppies off in a corner. When our guide finished the lecture in the theater, we went and took pictures of the puppies. At our next stop, Didyma, I got to carry a stray cat around the entire Temple of Apollo. He was absolutely filthy, in desperate need of an ear mite treatment, and he shed a lot of fur all over me - but he was so very sweet. He kept mushing my face and purring at me; a couple of times he climbed onto my shoulders and at one point I had my arm extended horizontally and he was clinging to it as if it were a narrow tree branch. The rest of the day was spent driving, and we didn’t get to Pamukkale until 7:30. We put on our bathing suits under our clothes and had a quick dinner before heading to the thermal pool. They keep it at 48°C (which is about 118°F), but because it’s indoors all the steam stays close to the water and it’s hard to breathe. So we didn’t stay there long, but it felt very good. It was hard to get to sleep because there was a party going on somewhere (and then they brought our laundry back at 11:30 when we weren’t expecting it until the next day).

From Kusadasi

I had seen Adaland on the way into town the previous night, but got a better view of it in the morning. It’s a water amusement park - we didn’t get to go, of course - but what’s remarkable is that it’s on the side of a mountain. There are numerous water slides, and it’s obvious they offer great views. Our first stop of the day was at Meryemana, the house where the alleged Virgin Mary allegedly spent her last days. I wasn’t terribly impressed - it’s almost completely a reconstruction. At Troy I could at least tell myself someone was there, but at Meryemana there are no ruins - just the reconstruction. I don’t believe most of the story about Mary anyway, so the site just didn’t interest me much. (To calm the shocked, I acknowledge that there could have been a person or persons who might have done some of what is attributed to the character “Virgin Mary,” but I don’t believe in any of the religious aspects. I believe there was probably a person who may have vaguely resembled Jesus in actions, but I believe he was a respected person and teacher - I do not believe in his divinity.) Our next stop was Ephesus, and we spent a considerable amount of time there. Before entering the site I made an impulse buy of an $8 shirt - fortunately it looked good on me when I got it back to the hotel to try on. Our guide led us carefully through most of Ephesus, but there were so many other voices that I found it hard to concentrate on his. I heard a number of different languages and kept listening to them, and even other English-speakers (guides and tourists) distracted me. But his lectures at Ephesus are a good example of how amazing his knowledge is. Everything - names, dates, purposes, explanations - is all in his head, and he can recite all of it in his second language. My main impression from Ephesus is that it’s big, crowded, and dirty in parts - I got dust all over myself because I tried to scratch an itch on my lower leg through my pants using my foot, and got the brown dirt from my shoes onto my black pants. I did enjoy the site, though, and as I was eager to find a good souvenir I went to the shops at the exit. The sellers there were really aggressive there, but their favorite phrase was “looking is free.” Unfortunately, they said it so many times that I wanted to say “okay, thanks, now shut up and let me look.” With just a few exceptions, they all have more or less the same merchandise; everything is probably priced the same anyway so I paid $1 for a pack of 12 postcards (that’s been standard throughout Turkey) and $8 for a book - probably more than that volume is worth, but the one I wanted is $18 and I knew I couldn’t afford that. I bought some earrings at the restaurant we visited for lunch, and then we moved on to our afternoon tour. We visited a small village called Sirince, which has become a tourist spot - their primary income is now from tourism. There’s a 19-year-old boy there (he’s to join the army next year for his compulsory service) named Selçuk who has taught himself fairly good English and likes to greet the tourists as they arrive. He invited all 30-some-odd of us into his home, a habit his mother must be annoyed with by now. The house is 300 years old, you have to go outside to get to the kitchen, and the stairs are alarmingly shaky; the accents in their main room are family pictures and a small Furby toy. At the hotel my girlfriend was pretty tired, but I had seen the room service menu the night before and we’d agreed I could get something because it was so inexpensive. The menu indicated they had a variety of ice cream flavors, but when I called they only had a few so I ordered caramel. They brought it fairly quickly, and we shared it before my girlfriend fell asleep.

Travel and Pergamum

We woke up early again this morning and got back on the bus. I was more awake than the previous time we had to be up so early, but our guide didn’t say much early in the trip so it didn’t really matter. We had gotten some snacks at a grocery the night before, but I wasn’t as eager to tear into them as I’d expected to be. Instead I did some puzzles and tried reading a bit. I believe the trip from Çanakkale to Bergama was longer than the trip from Istanbul to Bursa, but I’m not sure. At a rest stop along the way, I found a book called “La Vie sexuelle des ottomans” and paid $15 for it. They didn’t have an English copy, but I figured with a dictionary I’d manage okay. Pergamum was easily visible as we approached Bergama, as it’s situated atop one of the higher hills in the area. I really enjoyed the Pergamum ruins. There were signs throughout the site explaining both the structures and the restoration process. The city is entirely on the hill, so the builders didn’t have much space to work with: the theater is much more steep than other Roman theaters because they didn’t want to cut into the rest of their space. I was a bit surprised to learn that some of the column sections are modern replacements, but apparently that’s common with sites this old - they just can’t find everything, and there wouldn’t be a good way to present what they have found if they didn’t fill in the gaps. Some of the sections are a dull gray (original) and others are bright white (modern), but I’d never have noticed if our guide hadn’t pointed it out. We didn’t spend nearly as much time in the ruins as I would have liked, but toward the end of the tour I realized I’d lost my earrings. I had been wearing a dress shirt over my t-shirt, and when I took off my earrings I put them in the breast pocket. It was warm and sunny at Pergamum, so I took off the shirt and carried it with me…and of course the earrings fell out. So somewhere on a hilltop near the Aegean, surrounded by ancient marble, are three pairs of small earrings. I looked for replacements at the vendors near the entrance, but the pairs I liked were all too expensive. I also came across a book called “The Sexual Life of the Ottomans” for $15. I really wanted it, and the guy agreed to sell it for $13 (fortunately his English was pretty good), but I declined and got back on the bus to wait for the others. After a few minutes, though, I changed my mind and ran back out to buy the book - so I now have two copies. We had lunch in Bergama, and I bought some yarn and a crochet hook from a shopkeeper who spoke no English. The ride from Bergama to Kusadasi was fairly short, and we rode through Izmir which I found interesting - it’s a rather modern city, as it was completely destroyed by fire in the not-too-distant past. Kusadasi seems exceptionally modernized - it’s a beach resort, and all the hotels are very fancy. They crowd the shoreline, of course, but in between the hotels are run-down little shacks. I liked our hotel a lot, though - we had a suite, there was a channel guide for the TV (I like to catch English news shows so I don’t lose touch with the world while on vacation), and both rooms had a balcony with a good sea view.

Troy and Çanakkale

Breakfast was the same as it had been daily in Istanbul. Tomatoes, cucumber, olives, and sliced cheese are always available. There is a selection of buns, all of them fairly small, with butter to put on them. Corn flakes are the only cereal available, but there is milk for them. The yogurt is plain, but they give you a variety of ways to sweeten it: sugar, honey, or a couple of types of jelly (cherry being common). They provide tea, of course, and coffee (instant, the word for which is Nescafe) for the addicted. There’s also something resembling orange juice, but it’s very watered down. Our excursion for the day was to Troy. The ruins there were interesting, but hard to understand: there were actually nine versions of Troy, all built on the same site. Looking at it now, though, after excavation, everything is side-by-side. It’s all labeled, of course, but it’s hard to remember that when moving from place to place on the site. I’m not sure about the veracity of the stories about Troy - Achilles and his vulnerable heel, etc. - but it is obvious there was somebody here long ago, and that’s enough to make it interesting. We decided to skip the trip to Gallipoli and have a quiet afternoon in Çanakkale. We visited a pastry shop for lunch, and then set off on a walk. Our first stop was the PTT to buy additional stamps - the rate had gone up in the past couple of days. We waited in line for a while as people used the international telephone. Someone overheard us wondering what was going on, and explained in pretty good English that we could just push through and ask for stamps. We bought some, and headed up what appeared to be Çanakkale’s main drag. There was a TurkCell shop, so we stopped to ask if they had any banana slug items for sale - it’s apparently their spokescreature. We tried combining English and pointing to indicate what we wanted, and the girls behind the counter chattered to each other in Turkish for a while, and finally came up with “I don’t know.” My girlfriend asked “you don’t know, or you don’t understand?” and the girl repeated “I don’t know” - which we took to mean she didn’t understand. I had brought the phrasebook, so I pulled it out, pointed to “I want to buy…” and pointed to one of the toy banana slugs. She looked at the book and read “…satin almak istiyorum” to herself - we’d never have figured it out ourselves. She read it again, realized we were pointing to the toy, and laughed. So we spent 10 minutes determining they didn’t have them for sale after all. I stopped in a computer shop, and the girl behind the counter spoke no English but was very eager to try helping us anyway. I ended up purchasing a computer game and a PSX game for 2 million lira each - about $4. After we left the store, I noticed the CD key printed on the case of the computer game - I hadn’t realized the games were burned, and I was surprised there was an entire store of them. We went back to the hotel then and rested - I did some puzzles and wrote a bunch of postcards, and my girlfriend wrote in her travel journal. Dinner was the same food as the night before, minus the rice pudding so I couldn’t have dessert. We had to get up early the next morning, so we watched some Turkish TV - actually we watched Deutsche Welle until they switched to German, so we switched to BBC World - and went to bed.

Travel and Bursa

We were up early the next morning, and on the road by 7:30am. I found the Turkish countryside suprisingly lovely - I’m not usually a fan of scenic vistas, but the mountains and farmland were beautiful. Turkish sheep are still watched over by shepherds, a practice that as far as I know is over in the United States. We tried to sleep, but our guide talked most of the morning and we only managed catnaps. The bus arrived in Bursa before noon, and we took quick tours of the Yesil Türbe (Green Tomb) and the Yesil Cami (Green Mosque). There may be more to see in Bursa, but we didn’t stick around to find out. Lunch was quite good - my girlfriend had iskender kebap, which was some kind of meat over a pita, topped with tomato sauce. I had a pizza, which was similar to American pizza but made on a pita with less tomato sauce, and topped with mushrooms and hot peppers (all of which I picked off). Our drink was very good, an apparently local specialty made from grapes. It had a sharp taste that reminded me of wine, but the restaurant was right across from the Yesil Cami and alcohol can’t be served near mosques. We had some free time to shop, and almost picked up a few items but didn’t have time to decide on anything before it was time to return to the bus. The ride was uneventful, but I did try to take a picture or two from the bus. We reached Çanakkale several hours later, had dinner at the hotel, and went to bed rather early.

Istanbul Day Three

All of the possible size-related superlatives apply to Istanbul. It’s huge, immense, colossal. The city is very dense, and there is a lot of it. Our guide tells us there are 11 million residents of Istanbul, 1.5 million of whom commute from the Asian half to the European half, because that’s where everything is. From the middle of the Bogaziçi (Bosphorus) is a good place to see this, as just about everywhere is thickly covered with buildings. I suspect most of them are homes, possibly office buildings or something like that; the most recognizable edifices are mosques and the several palaces located right on the waterfront. Istanbul looks much bigger than New York, and though I’ve never seen L.A. the feeling is that Istanbul is still larger. The Turkish children are very cute; we occasionally encounter a class and they swarm around us. The first question is usually “what’s your name,” quickly followed by “where are you from” - these are probably the first two things they learn in English class. They seem absolutely thrilled to have met real live Americans. We attended the Kapali Çarsi (Grand Bazaar) in the afternoon, and we were greatly hassled by the vendors. We looked at a lot of things, but the only thing I bought was a 4-ounce box of Turkish Delight for 2 million lira. I knew I was being ripped off, but I was in a rush so I bought it anyway. Of course he was taking advantage of my haste, the language barrier, and that I was a young girl alone, but I bought it and hurried off. When we got back to the hotel, my girlfriend took a nap and I made a run to the store downstairs, where I picked up a 17.5-ounce box of Turkish Delight for 2.5 million lira. Oh well. Later in the evening, we attended a meeting of the Whirling Dervishes. I was having a bad allergic reaction and didn’t feel like leaving our hotel room, but I knew it would be the only time in my life I’d get to see Whirling Dervishes, so I went. We were incredibly cramped in a tiny observers’ area, and couldn’t see very well, but we could hear the chanting just fine. The dancers were entertaining, but after about five or ten minutes we had seen pretty much what we came to see, and still had to sit there for another 35 minutes or so. On the way out it was indicated that we should leave a tip, so my girlfriend put a 10 million lira note in the box. At the door on the way out, an old woman in a big black chador tugged on my shirt, which made me kind of nervous. My girlfriend had given 5 million lira to an old woman our second night in town, but there were several women appealing to our supposed religious sentiment begging just outside the door. One had a small child in her arms, but we couldn’t afford all of them and so gave nothing.

Istanbul Day Two

We slept even later the next morning, and really had to rush. Our first stop was the Kariye Müzesi (Museum), originally the Chora Church, which has mosaics and frescoes depicting the life cycles of Mary and Jesus. I liked them from an artistic viewpoint, but our guide spent a really long time going through the Greek Orthodox details, so I got a bit bored. From there we got back on the bus and rode over to the Süleymaniye Mosque. We had to remove our shoes there, and cover our hair. We had lunch at Darüzziyafe, a restaurant inside what used to be the kitchens for the mosque - the Sultan had run a twice-daily soup kitchen there for the poor. On our way back to the bus, we spotted a little gray cat and called it over. It was very sweet as I was petting it, but when my girlfriend pulled some salami from her purse (we’d wished we could feed the strays we saw the day before, so she took a small piece of meat at breakfast) it turned into quite the hellcat! It nearly bit her finger in its eagerness to grab the meat, and it meowed loudly while waving an arm at us. We hurried back to the bus, and the cat returned to begging from patrons of a nearby sidewalk cafe. Our final stop of the touring day was Dolmabahçe Sarayi. It’s huge and revoltingly ostentatious; the goal was to stuff it with the most grand items possible, right down to gold leaf on the radiators when central heating was installed. The palace is supposed to be more Western-styled than Topkapi and other Istanbul palaces (others include Çiragan, Yildiz, Beylerbeyi, and Küçük Su, all built in the 19th century); it is that, but the sultan went bankrupt building it. Our tour guide through the palace was very enthusiastic and knew her subject well, but her accent was very thick and at times difficult to understand (but still better than my Turkish). We rested for a while back at the hotel, and went for a short swim. I wrote up some postcards for friends, and we had Chinese food for dinner before going to bed.

Istanbul Day One

We overslept a little bit the next day, so we could only grab a quick breakfast before rushing to meet our group. Our first stop was the Hippodrome, which didn’t really look like a stadium anymore. There’s a fountain from Kaiser Wilhelm II there, and an ancient snake tower. The top part is missing, though, and there’s just one head remaining in a museum. An obelisk from Egypt is a few meters away - the Obelisk of Theodosius, carved in Egypt around 1500BCE and brought to Constantinople in 390CE. This was our first encounter with the street vendors of Istanbul, who are very persistent. We wanted to buy something from one, but the police came and scared him off. Our guide explained the wandering vendors aren’t supposed to bug tourists, but that the guy would be back - and sure enough he was just moments later. He wanted 20.000.000TL for two flutes, and we absolutely refused to pay more than 10 million. He tried to get us to compromise on 15 million, but when we refused and started to walk away he relented and sold us two flutes for 10 million lira. Our next stop was the Sultan Ahmet Camii (commonly called the Blue Mosque), the first time we had to remove our shoes. While in line to enter we encountered our first stray cat, of which there are hundreds in Istanbul. The highlight of the Blue Mosque is its tiles, which are from Iznik and worth a lot of money. We walked from the Blue Mosque to Aya Sofya (Church of the Divine Wisdom, known in Latin as Sancta Sophia and as Hagia Sophia in Greek), which is much older - it was originally a Christian church, but at the conquest of Istanbul it became a mosque. Its dome is unbelievably high, but there is scaffolding up to half of it so it’s only partly visible. We had lunch at the Pudding Shop after Aya Sofya, and spent the afternoon at Topkapi Sarayi (Palace). I was pretty tired at that point, but we made it through and back to the hotel. The first thing we did, of course, was nap, and then my girlfriend indulged me and we went to Pizza Hut for dinner. It was basically the same as in the U.S., though our vegetarian pizza did have corn on it. We spent a little while walking down Istiklal Caddesi (Street), a sort of shopping district, and bought lokum (Turkish Delight) to snack on back at the hotel.

Schiphol

We arrived at an E-terminal gate at Schiphol, and expected to find our flight at nearby E10. No such luck, though, the gate had been changed to D48 - which of course was at the far end of another wing. We were already doubly delayed from two earlier problems, yet we managed to make it to our gate. I saw a lot of things I would have liked to have looked at closer, but we didn’t have time. When we reached the gate the boarding area was filled so we had to wait to even check in.



Amsterdam to Istanbul

We got settled on the plane, and then they announced there would be a 70-minute delay due to weather. They apologized for not telling us sooner, but they were already halfway through boarding when they learned of the delay. We were pretty cramped, but KLM has a good in-flight magazine that kept me entertained for most of the time sitting. They also handed out apple juice and a really good almond cookie - I even got a second one. At some point I fell asleep, and woke up to heavy turbulence and lunch on my tray table. The shaking ended after five or ten minutes, and I examined my lunch. The salad was smaller than the one on the overnight flight, and had thin beet strips on it. I had been given couscous with anise sauce, and my girlfriend had vegetarian lasagna. She said she wasn’t very hungry, so I ate her lasagna, and her salad too. I also got a good roll and put butter on it. We were given fairly tasty strawberry ice cream for dessert, and then I fell asleep. I didn’t wake up until my girlfriend told me we were about to land. We made it through customs easily, and the rest of the night was rather uneventful.

Beginning

I’m going to try keeping a journal; we’ll see how it goes.


The theme of our trip so far has been “Transit Woes.” A short piece of road near our house was closed due to flood conditions, so we had to go the long way around. Fortunately that route was passable, so we didn’t lose too much time. Check-in at Dulles was reasonably painless, and we were at our gate with time to spare. Even boarding was okay, and we were settled quickly.



Washington to Amsterdam
The plane left the gate, moved onto a taxiway…and sat there. It turned out to be an electrical problem, so we had to go back to the gate and shut off the engine so a mechanic could fix the problem and sign the necessary paperwork to certify the plane for takeoff. Of course once that was done, we had to wait while they topped off the gas tanks - I guess they’re not allowed to leave for transatlantic flights if the tank isn’t full, and we had burned up gas sitting for so long.



The flight itself was free of problems: no turbulence, and we got our vegetarian meals (cheese lasagna, a salad with no dressing, a hard rye-like cracker with some butter, a small bunch of grapes, and water). I didn’t feel well and a flight attendant was really helpful.



One guy in the row ahead of us kept trying to sneak a cigarette in the bathroom, and when he was ordered not to he became very agitated and started acting out, which scared the passengers around him. Several flight attendants spoke to him, one mentioning he would be arrested in Amsterdam and would not be permitted to fly Northwest Airlines again. At one point we watched him get up and try to physically persuade an attendant of something; she immediately took a big step back and made him sit down. The helpful flight attendant told us later that if he bothered us, to report it immediately: he had tried to ask one of the other female crew members for sex. Something other than a nicotine craving was wrong with this guy, and it couldn’t have helped that he had several beers over the course of the flight.



I didn’t sleep much, and I don’t think my girlfriend did either as a result. The weather was bad in Amsterdam so we had to circle once over the English Channel and again over the airport itself before we were cleared to land.