This is actually being written a few days into the trip on the way in to Troy. My initial impression of the Turks was based on films like Yol, Lawrence of Arabia and Midnight Express. The author of the Lonely Planet book on Turkey believes that we see a lot of anti-Turkish propaganda. I almost believed that Turkish officials ran a sort of xenophobic police state. It went to the extent that I encrypted parts of this log where I talk about the Turks for fear that the authorities would read them as I came through customs.

After a few days I am sorry that I took that attitude and I gladly shed it. Turkey is the best country we have visited off the Pacific Rim and it is in large part because of the Turks. While the Turks are probably as capable as any people of negative actions when they have power are, I find them to be among the most likeable people I have visited. My trip is full of incidents of complete strangers going out of their way to be helpful in ways I cannot imagine Americans would do. We hear a lot of negative things about Moslems and I think more people should come to Turkey to see how positive and life-affirming the Turks are.

As an example, lots of people in other countries have forgiven their one-time wartime enemies. Americans get along with the Japanese now, for example. But who but the Turks would celebrate the courage of their wartime enemy the way they memorialize the Anzacs who came to attack them at Gallipoli? That is like Americans celebrating the courage of the Japanese at Midway.

I rather expect that someone will write me for politically incorrectly liking the Turks too much the way someone complained when I was too positive on the Sikhs of India. It is possible I am misled, but I am sincere. The Turks strikes me as a good, fun-loving people who have their own extremely original view of the world. Where one sees a lot of militancy coming from the Islamic world the Turks represent a melting pot nation which though mostly Islamic seems highly tolerant of many peoples with many beliefs. And Islamic women choose if they will cover their heads or not, there is nobody in government to tell them. They value that freedom.

I just wanted to get that said. Incidentally, our guidebook explodes the whole myth of Americans rotting in Turkish prisons. Even the convicted drug smuggler whose story was supposedly told in Midnight Express says that telling contains major lies and even he defends the Turkish government. The real story of what the Midnight Express is a jaw-dropper. I repeat the guidebook’s explanation inside.

Now on to the trip log…

It is said that the Roman Empire fell for longer than most civilizations survived. When did the Roman Empire finally end? Well, there were people who were born under what was called the Roman Empire who heard in their lifetimes about the discovery of the New World. The last piece of the Roman Empire died in 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks under Mehmet the Conqueror. 9500 years ago there was a tool-making culture in Turkey. Ancient Troy was in what we now call Turkey, the Roman Empire moved its capital from Rome to Turkey, and today Turkey is both a Middle Eastern country and a European country.

We are visiting Turkey at an interesting point in its history, certainly a time of change. Turkey for the last few years has been trying to appear to the world as an exotic European country. They were anxious to become part of the European Union. They would like to overcome the image in Europe as a source of cheap labor and a backward country. I remember in the last year or so seeing in my newsmagazine paid inserts showing how forward-looking Turkey is. But most of Europe has not given Turkey much respect for a lot of reasons. There are long-standing prejudices. There is the mammoth feud with Greece, one of the longest continuing feuds in World History. Turkey has a human rights record that is certainly non-stellar. And, of course, it does not help that Turkey is Islamic and not Christian. Turkey had its work cut out for it when it wanted to join the European Union. On December 17, 1997, the European Union rejected Turkey’s bid for admission. Now Turkey is probably going to turn to the United States for military alliances. Turkey currently is looking for better relations with the US.

Ironically, while Turkey is too Islamic for Europe, it is not enough Islamic for most of the Arab world, as it is willing to make alliances with Israel. Turkey was the first predominantly Islamic country to recognize Israel. That was 1949. And the two countries have remained friendly since. This has helped to make Turkey a pariah in the Arab world and among its own fundamentalists who want to take power. However, the Turkish Constitution requires a separation of religion and state. Constitutionally the state is secular. That is a rarity among Islamic counties and it must be a difficult balance to maintain. It keeps the country moving forward into the 21st Century while many of its Islamic neighbor countries are rejecting what we in the West consider to be modern ways. There is a war with the internal Kurds. They are fundamentalists, but also a separate ethnic group that wants to be their own nation. They have their own language and culture and would like to have a homeland of their own. In 1988 Iraq attacked its Kurdish minority with chemical weapons. The Kurds fled the country into Turkey increasing an already substantial population. Turkey tried to bring them into the mainstream culture, but they would not assimilate and still hold out the dream of being a separate country. This has led to a low-key civil war in the East. The PLO has allied themselves with the Kurds. That must put the Kurds in a peculiar position since they also allied themselves with Saddam Hussein in the war. But the Kurds must need an ally. The Turkish government, finding itself opposed by the PLO has even more reason to have military ties with Israel.

The methods being used by the mainstream are frequently undemocratic by Western standards. Political parties are abolished. Journalists are imprisoned. The Prime Minister promised to follow more democratic principles when he came to power. Journalists and editors have been released from prison, but to limited freedom and it they offend the government or criticize the military they will have to go back to prison to serve the rest of their terms. It may become necessary to destroy democracy in order to save it. It is a frightening dilemma. Consider that in Algeria the fundamentalists are in the minority but they still have the power to create the current bloodbath.

I suppose in the United States there are some Islamic Fundamentalists but they have not caused much chaos since we are a rich country, and we can afford Cadillac security. Where we have had terrorist acts like the bombing of the World Trade Center we could bring hundreds of millions of dollars to bear stopping one terrorist group. Terrorists are much less likely to attack in the United States because we can afford good security. This limits the number of terrorist groups and that means that even more can be spent tracking and stopping the ones that are in the country. Just from the point of view of economics it makes more sense to fundamentalist groups to chip away at poorer countries. Also in the poorer countries there is more discontent. For those who are poor and who have little hope fundamentalism offers an opportunity to be in the in-group. You may not have much comfort in this life and have little hope of getting it, but do things our way and you will have it terrific after you die.

Turkey is better off than many, but it has nowhere near the economic power of the US. This is not a defense of some of their tactics, but it is a fact of life. It is how the government will react. The poor will be drawn to fundamentalism. It also is very near Islamic states. Turkey is trying desperately to bring prosperity to their country because money is a trump card that keeps fundamentalists under control and allows them to be controlled in approved democratic ways. The prosperity will not come from a partnership with Europe. That was what Europe said last December. If the US rejects Turkey I wonder what they will do.

But as much as Turkey currently is hoping for the US friendship there also are tensions. There are alleged human rights violations in the war against the Kurds. Photographs allegedly showing soldiers holding the decapitated heads of Kurds have been shown on “Sixty Minutes.” Six leading members of the Welfare Party including a former Prime Minister have been banned from politics for six years. We try to pick countries to visit that do not have serious human right violations, though few major powers are free from accusations.

Well, our last day at work was a somewhat nervous one. You always wonder if things are going to work out or not. I did my usual trick of sleeping all of about a half-hour last night. A good store of fatigue, ironically, is extremely useful for transoceanic flights. It acts as a natural sedative for the nerves and makes sleep on the plane a lot easier. It is 3:17pm locally but 10:17pm in Turkey. The Garden State Parkway to Newark Airport is bumper to bumper. Oh, I am Mark Leeper and my traveling companion is my lovely wife Evelyn Leeper. Evelyn has done most of the planning for the trip. We are just going by ourselves. Nobody expects us.

I nodded off a little in the car. When I am sleep deprived I tend to have vivid dreams. I was picturing the driver with a long and narrow three-fingered hand. It was almost like something out of War of the Worlds. Often we talk to the driver. This time we drove in silence. I was either writing or dozing off. I have switched to Turkey time and I was trying to put the flights into my calendar entirely in Turkey time. Eventually I will have to change the flights back to New Jersey time. By the time I return that is what I will be using.

The line at Lufthansa is huge. Apparently the desk opened late and a lot of people had already arrived. The line snakes around the ropes in front of the counter then stretches more than half the length of the terminal. It blocks the path of people leaving the counters. People in different accents and ethnic backgrounds are coming up shocked saying “Lufthansa?” A German group starts a second queue at the inlet to the roped section. It is feeding in as if it were the official queue, though of course they just arrived. I think on our trip to Egypt we were cut in front of by people from every European NATO country. This trip they are starting early. The Germans try to let more cut in. I casually rest my hand on the rope, just incidentally blocking their path. One of the Germans who otherwise looks like an amiable man in his 60s gives me a dirty look as if I was the one being rude.

Now I thought it had been smart after I packed my photovest and decided what pocket everything would be in to take out every piece of metal and put it in a ziplock bag. I then put the ziplock in my briefcase. I was sure there was no metal on me when I went through the metal detector. At least I thought I did. Nope. Beeeeeeeeeep! “Take off the vest and chest pouch and sent them through.” I do and the human port lets me through without complaint. Must be the zippers. Well at least I know that there is no point in trying to put all the metal in my briefcase. I might as well resign myself to always taking the vest off. My last photovest fell apart on our Alaska trip. It was pretty tough finding more photovests for sale. I was all set to buy one over the Internet for something like $60. Literally I was going to order it after work when we were cooking dinner. With supreme timing as well as irony a catalog of hunter products was delivered in that day’s mail. They had a hunting vest with even more pockets for sale for $29.95. It has something like 22 pockets. The only problem is that it is a hunting vest. It is the kind of catalog that sells t-shirts that say, “This is your woodchuck.” [Picture of woodchuck]. “This is your woodchuck on hollow points.” [Picture of a little piece of woodchuck and body parts splattered all over]. “Any questions?” Really funny stuff like that. Jokes for the ten-year-old in all of them. When I ordered the vest they asked me “Survey question… Do you hunt?” “Uh, no.” How could I tell them I am a confirmed Bambiist? Good vest though. I call it “my vest of many pockets.” I just wish it didn’t look like a hunting vest.

Well, we are sitting in the waiting area and we are told our first flight has been delayed. But for now it is only 15 minutes delayed.

I have been pronouncing Frankfort “Vronkvort.” It is very cosmopolitan, very jet set. Take it from me.

History lesson: This is a history of the lands we call Turkey

Okay, you may need a thumbnail history of Turkey for what follows. Don’t try writing this on your thumbnail. The last person who did was caught and got zero for the exam. (This section has been revised as I have learned new history or thought of better jokes.)

There were inhabitants of Turkey as far back as 7500 BC. So like an iceberg that is 80% below sea, at least 80% of Turkey must be before C. About 1900 BC the Hittites were warring with Ancient Egypt, starting a long history of people in these lands warring with people who would be more dramatically represented in the movies. Hence they are almost always represented as the bad guys. 1250 BC the Trojans are fighting with the Greeks on their own home turf at Troy. The Greeks are, however, masters of PR and it is their side of the story that is remembered and once again the people of these lands, not really Turks yet, but of these lands, are labeled the bad guys. This in spite of the Greeks pulling that lousy stunt with the wooden horse.

1200-600 BC: more invasions and the Greeks are determining civilization in this area. 550 BC Cyrus of Persia invades to get a piece of the action. 334 BC it is Alexander the Great. It is painful, but nobody can stand up to the little brat. At least he has the courtesy to die young. By this point these guys have a reputation as easy marks and even the Celts invade them, believe it or not. 250 BC is the rise of the Kingdom of Pergamum. It has great warriors and great art but they fail to capture the public’s imagination and no films are made about them.

129 BC: Rome establishes Asia Minor as a province. There is little chance to beat Rome and no movies to be made so they sit it out.

330 AD: We see what sitting it out gets you. Constantine decides the Roman gods are false, switches to Christianity, but just in case moves Rome away from the Roman gods to what will be called Istanbul, but he decides first it will be called Constantinople. Istanbul will have to wait.

527-565 AD: The Emperor Justinian builds the greatest and most grotesque church in the world, Sancta Sophia, an undying tribute to Christianity. Undying, perhaps. Christianity, perhaps not. For nearly 1000 years the Holy Roman Empire rules but fails to achieve being holy, Roman, or an empire. None out of three ain’t so hot. Still they call it the Holy Roman Empire because it sounds good. For the first time it is commonly accepted that ketchup is a vegetable because that too sounds good. The rulers find the Turks to be good protectors. They live side by side with good friends the Seljuk Turks. The Seljuks raise armies and occasionally take Byzantine Emperors prisoner. But the Seljuks eventually fall. Well, it proves that Turks are no match for Europeans.

In the early 1200s Crusaders arrive to liberate the Holy Land from Islam. They plan to plunder Constantinople. “But we are Christian,” protests Constantinople. “You’re Christian??? That’s funny. You don’t look Christian.” said the crusaders. “No prisoners.” And the Christians won a much-needed victory against the hated Christian.

1453 AD: Mehmet the Conqueror, an Ottoman Turk, overruns Constantinople and turns the St. Sophia into a mosque, an undying tribute to Islam. He immediately foregoes Roman, settling for “Holy” and “Empire.” He begins almost 400 years of Ottoman rule under Sultans. With the Turks powerful under the Sultans and considered a threat to Europe, Turkey was once again the bad guys and the Greeks told the world, “I told ya so.”

For years the Ottoman Turks ruled well but corruption set in. Suleyman I brought the empire to its high point beautifying Constantinople (now Istanbul, but Europe refused to call it that) and rebuilding Jerusalem. But too many of the Sultans were clods, however, and the empire declined. Some would rebuild without democratizing; some were just weak. Subject countries with better press were kicking Istanbul’s butt.

Then pretty much on schedule came the 20th Century. The Young Turks were a group of, well, young Turks who wanted Western-style reform from the Sultans. They forced a constitution to be again instituted. They were young, bright, clever, politically powerful, and they picked Germany to win World War I. When the war ended things were as bad as ever with the Sultan, now the pawn of victorious Western powers. The Ottoman Empire was chopped up.

Greece, recognizing that its old enemy Turkey was now down, decided to let bygones be bygones, but also decided the time was right to start kicking it anew. The forces under Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Ataturk-when you like what a boy does you say “attaboy”, people liked what this Turk did.) kicked back and harder. This made WWI commander Kemal again a hero. He went on to usher a new age into Turkey. Henceforth people would be loyal to Turkey first. No international organizations like the Communist Party or the Boy Scouts in Turkey. Religion is great like champagne. Politics is great like mayonnaise. Champagne and mayonnaise don’t go together and neither do religion and politics. Turkey would have a secular state.

Well, that is just a view of Turkish History from a very high level. About 20,000 feet unless I miss my guess. People who find the foregoing offensive, well, it was not meant to be taken seriously.

The problem seems to be that they had automatic ticket-taking machines like the ones that work well in Japan. These don’t work quite so well since they required a human to show people how to feed the ticket in and then remind the user to pick up the stub.

Our plane that was supposed to take off at 1am was still loading at that time. About 1:15 we had a Lufthansa innovation, the safety talk was done with computer animation to make it look like a puppet show. That way it is not surprising that the figure is smiling when he puts on an oxygen mask. A puppet cannot do anything else. It always looked unrealistic when a human put on one of those masks. It always looked unrealistic to have a happy smiling human slip on an oxygen mask to narrowly avoid death. Of course I am joking. We all know nothing can go wrong on one of these planes. But I would have felt better if they had not lost the picture on their safety tape.

The tape concluded we are now ready to take off. But 30 minutes later the plane still had not. I slept. I did feel the takeoff, but my eyes were closed. The plane was taking off about 45 minutes late. I slept another half hour but woke up when they started handing out beverages and “a snack” if you can call a half ounce of mini-pretzels a snack. I had an orange juice, no ice.

The dinner seemed slow in coming, but it was certainly better than what is usually considered airplane food. There was a salad with a nice piece of smoked salmon; the bread had sweet butter; then there was chicken on macaroni in tomato sauce, but it was longer spirals of macaroni. For desert there was a piece of cherry cake and some cheese and crackers. Everything was made fairly well.

Well, after dinner I got maybe a couple of hours of sleep. I woke up in time to see the last ten minutes of the in flight movie, The Rainmaker. I had seen it once already, but it has a fairly rousing conclusion from the moment that Roy Scheider is on the stand. The one problem with the story is that is awfully similar to Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict. It basically is the same defense of lawyers. I don’t necessarily like a lot of what goes on in the legal profession, but there are some good films that defend lawyers, starting with Inherit the Wind.

We are now over Cork in Southern Ireland according to the map they put up. Another hour and we land in Frankfurt. I am looking forward to Istanbul with a mixture of three parts excitement to one part dread. It will be a challenge. We have to do things like find a hotel in a country where we do not know the language. I take that back. It will become three parts excitement to one part dread. Right now it is three parts dread to one part excitement. But that will change. Most people don’t travel because there is too much dread and not enough excitement. But as I tell Evelyn, any place you don’s see by the time you die, you never get another chance. I have some idea of the variation of thought patterns that Americans are capable of, but not that humans are capable of.

Evelyn is sleeping on my shoulder and I try to type in the half-light without disturbing her.

They come around with breakfast. It is choice of a Danish or what sounds like a cappicola sandwich. More for health than for cowardice I take the Danish. We have passed over London and are now crossing from Dover to Calais.

I am also wondering if we are going to be able to travel like this in two years. I usually do not believe in Doomsday prophecies. I am betting that the Year 2000 computer problem will be bigger than most people think. There is only a relatively small part of the population guessing how serious it will be. I am just not hearing experts looking at the situation and coming away skeptical. There are lots of technical people concerned, there are a few trying to tell the general public, and the public is ignoring the threat. Well people were frightened of atomic war and it has not happened. People feel safe. The difference is that we did not have an atomic war scheduled for a specific date and time.

We landed in Frankfurt at 8:39. Evelyn and I both found we were nodding off toward the end of the flight. It is actually a fairly short walk to our outgoing gate with no security checks. Another nice touch is a selection of international newspapers you enter each plane. I got a copy of the Herald Tribune. It seems to be a collection of the international news from the New York Times and the Washington Post. I look at the price. For the US Military in Europe it casts $1.20. It cost 300,000 Turkish Lira. Yup, that confirms what I had heard. A quarter million Turkish Lira to the dollar. Turks get used to large numbers early in life, I think.

Well, there is the call for our plane. We are to go downstairs and board a bus. I wonder where the plane is. I didn’t choose airfare to ride a bus, of course. Had I wanted to ride a bus, I would have taken the bus from Newark to Istanbul. The German voices are so pleasant, even in German. I wonder why they are played so nasty in those old war films. “Ladies and gentlemen, please proceed around to the front of the machine guns.” I wonder what it must be like that in all the good adventure films, like The Guns of Navarone, your countrymen are the bad guys.

On the plane we met a nice couple who were going to Turkey on an Elderhostel tour. We talked to them about places they were going this trip and places we had been.

It is funny. I can remember when I was in elementary school I knew I was going in for science and especially math. The teacher would show us slides of her trip to France and I would be bored. I wasn’t the traveler type. There was more fascination in what life was like in a drop of water than in France. I little suspected I would grow up with this hobby of travel and telling others about what I saw. I would probably go to far more countries than my teacher would. But not France so far. When we are old and tired we will go the easy places like France. First it has to be places like the Amazon and Turkey and India. Travel writing came as a complete shock to me. What happened there was when I worked for Burroughs and got a job offer from Bell Labs, Burroughs sent me to see if there was work I would have liked to do in Pennsylvania where Burroughs had some labs. My supervisor wanted me to report certain things from the meetings. Evelyn wanted to know other things. In order not to have to explain three different accounts of my trip, I wrote just one comprehensive account for myself and gave copies to other people telling them to pull out what was relevant to them. It struck me that account was a nice souvenir of the trip so I did it for other trips. But it was mostly for me. A friend was going to Britain, where I had been, and wanted to know what I had enjoyed seeing there. I gave her this illegible trip log and told her it would not all be of interest, but if she skimmed it she would find the parts that answered her question. She read it cover to cover and gave it to her husband to read cover to cover. It never had occurred to me that for anyone who had not traveled with me there would be much interest at all. But I started circulating my logs to friends and family. Big steps forward were the addition of an HP 200LX that allowed me to type the log as I went and Usenet and the Internet to make the logs available. The 200LX do a lot more for me than that. It keeps track of the sites we will be seeing; it tracks time past. I have programs for the phase of the moon and when sunset is. It is an amazingly useful tool.

Evelyn is sleeping and I just took the first picture of the trip, the ground from the plane.

I am a little afraid of what I put in this log since the Turkish government strikes me as being sensitive to criticism. And I am a guest in their country.

Lunch, which was at about 10:50am was a salad of ham slices, cottage cheese, and a cherry tomato; an omelet with mushrooms and a little potato pancake, German yogurt with an American flag decoration. It said “Fruit guaranteed to be from the US;” and something called “raspberry extra jam” on a croissant. Not quite as high a quality as dinner last night. The yogurt was some unidentified fruit and seemed to have nuts.

I slept more after lunch and we landed about 12:35. Now I had been expecting that anything to do with the Turkish government would be officious and very suspicious of strangers. I had considered not bringing my vitamin C because I could end in a drug hassle if I could not prove it was just vitamins. I went to the trouble of encrypting files in my palmtop about Turkish politics so that if they were examined nobody would see that I was carrying opinions against the Turks. So here it came. First there was buying a visa. The piece had gone up to $45, but otherwise no hassle. The man in line stamped my passport. Then to the area where we pick up luggage, except of course we carry all of our luggage. Here it comes, the inspection. A few people had to open suitcases but nobody bothered with us. Perhaps we have honest faces, but I would have thought the backpacks would have made us look suspicious. For whatever reason, Turkish security was hassle-free. We got out and changed some money and got a taxi for the hotel. We asked to be taken to the Berk Guesthouse. The driver said that he knew where it was but called it the Berak Guesthouse. The driver tried to tell us that if we did not have a reservation we were not going to find a room unless we let him find a place. “Every place you go. Full! Full! Full!” We were unconvinced, and it turned out rightly so. There is a season like that in summer, but not the spring. My mother didn’t raise no children who were foolish enough to believe taxi drivers.

Driving we passed a lot of remnants of old Hippodrome wall preserved, with a fence around them to protect them. The Hippodrome was an old Roman racetrack and if you saw Ben Hur you know those old Romans took horse racing seriously. Turkey is a place aware of its past. You see also minarets all over, but they all look pretty much the same. Minarets have a uniform design in Istanbul. They look like pencils with balconies that all look much alike.

Evelyn mentioned to me that I should not call this an Islamic country. Yet as we drove it is clear that there must be something along those lines that should be said. There are two kinds of country you can visit. There are religious countries where the government is brought to you by the same fine folks who bring you the religion. There are secular counties where the government has nothing whatever to do with religion. Of the religious countries there are two types. The religious leaders can be the same as the government leaders, but so what? England is that way. Supposedly the queen is the head of the Church of England. Iran is the other type: “Our political leaders are all of our religion and by the way, Mr. Visitor, you are really supposed to be that religion also.” Secular countries also have two types. One says something like he US says: “We are all kinds of different religions and none control the government, even if we do shut down on December 25.” Then there is the one that says “We are all pretty much the same religion, but we try not to let that affect our government.” That last is Turkey. The vast majority of the country is Islamic. In that sense it is an Islamic country. But the government does not check the Koran to find out how to govern. The Turkish police do not enforce the Koran. Catch me if I say this is an Islamic country. I mean that by majority demographics.

The taxi driver played on his radio American rock. I don’t know if he liked it or if he thought we would. Most of the music you here on the radio here has an Arabic sound.

We got to the Berak Guesthouse and discovered it was almost the same name, but definitely the wrong place. We had to hassle and show him the name on paper. He had never heard of it. But we discovered it was just about a block or two away. We had pronounced it like burr with a “k” at the end. He pronounced it like bear with a “k” at the end. The reason for the coincidence that they were so close is that if you stay near the major tourist attractions you stay in a relatively small area called Sultanamaht after the Sultan who built the Blue Mosque.

So after the little confusion about the name we got to the Berk. I went up to see the room. I never really know what to look for in a room, particularly in a new country. It is never easy for the traveler to know if his hotel room is a good deal or not. In Tokyo we got a really good deal on a room that was about $90 a night and was about big enough that we could spread two pads on the floor for us to sleep on and no private plumbing. On our Southeast trip $55 was really overpriced for a room with two beds and cable TV with remote, a radio, and really good plumbing with free shampoo. By US standards the room here is pretty Spartan for $50 a night. One bed, a chair, a sink, a private bathroom, but with plumbing so primitive that you throw out rather than flush toilet paper. (I knew some places had the toilet paper deal, but this is the first I visited and it is hard to get used to.) I think travel is definitely worth the expense and with the exception of airfare can be done cheaply even to places like Japan. But it also reminds me again and again that in the late 20th century life in America for most people is incredibly comfortable. Our slums are incredibly luxurious compared to how most people in the world lived 100 years ago. I guess it is a matter of what you get used to.

We left our luggage in the room and went out to scout the area. One reason the hotels are so expensive and all together in one group is we are right near the Blue Mosque and Saint Sophia. We stopped at a corner shop for a cool drink. There is easily available Coke and Doritos. We got a local drink at 150,000TL (sixty cents). It turned out to be cherry drink. The brand name is Cappy (but it is really Coca-Cola) and it tastes really good, like liquid cherry pie filling. Prices, incidentally, are quoted in thousands. The woman in the shop said the price was “150″ and that was what the can was what was written under the can in the cooler.

Near the mosques there are a lot of touts hanging around, who are medium aggressive. They come up to you and try to get you to come to their shop or try to sell you postcards, but they do take no for an answer. There are not as many as there were in India and they are mostly just near the really touristy areas. Also if you appear to be lost locals passing will without being asked stop and try to help you.

A lot of things you see are in a blue and green color scheme. Those were the colors of two political parties and they are sort of the unofficial colors of the country, though the flag is red and white.

What can I say about the city? This is the city of the “once-beautiful.” Buildings are of nice design but are not well maintained. Buildings that in many different eras were new and nice-looking are giving way to the ravages of time. Houses are much the same. We walked around and could have gone in the mosques, but I preferred to get caught up on my log before we did too much. So we headed back to the room, stopping at the corner store to get bottled water for the room. We got a big 1.5 liter bottle and a half liter bottle. It cost 200,000TL, (I will use “TL” as “Turkish Lira”) well under a dollar. Evelyn had just had her small bills present but had stuffed them in a pocket and could not find them. The woman behind the counter suggested we just pay her tomorrow. We almost took her up on her credit offer, but we found the small change. The woman probably figures that if American came this far, they are honest. She also generated good will. I will probably pick that store first for buying snacks.

I told myself I wanted to read up first. I did not actually do that, though I did make up some flashcards to get some of the language down.

Evelyn fell asleep and I worked on my log. I wrote a program on my palmtop to act like flashcards, but it was not as good as the real thing. I also scouted the bands on my short-wave but found little of interest though I did find the BBC.

About 7:15 we went out and found a restaurant. For about 2 million we each had a dish and a yogurt drink call Ayran. My dish was kiremit shish. It was called claypot chicken and cheese. It really was chicken pizza without the crust. Evelyn had yogurtlu kebap. That is lamb over yogurt drenched bread.

There are really three parts to Istanbul: Stamboul, Bayoglu, and Uskudar. Take a postcard sized piece of paper and draw in the two diagonals. You have four triangles coming together at the center. The lowest triangle is the Sea of Marmara. Continuing clockwise you have Stamboul, Bayoglu, and Uskudar. Separating Stamboul from Bayoglu is the Golden Horn, a long narrow bay and a port. Between Bayoglu and Uskudar is the Bosphorus. The palace and the great mosques are in Sultanahmet, the region toward the point of Stamboul. It is there we are staying and that is really the tourist section of Istanbul.

Going back to the room we crashed. Slept through most of the evening. At midnight I woke up and worked on my log, but then went to sleep officially. This is a noisy neighborhood.

Rain today. I expect it will rain most of our days in Istanbul. We cannot let that stop us. Our first stop is the Archeological Museum. As it suggests, it is art from the various civilizations that have lived in what is now Turkey. Now most of us would expect to find the name of Heinrich Schliemann around the museum. Nope. Not even a reference that I could see. That actually makes sense for multiple reasons. First of all, in the eyes of the Turks, Schliemann is a thief. He found archeological treasures and smuggled them out of Turkey. Further what did he find? The remains of Troy. (Actually he found the remains of an older civilization, going right past Troy. But why is Troy important? It was made famous in a poem by a Greek. The Greeks are a nasty vicious people, as any Turk knows. Troy? Who cares about Troy?

As you enter you see the chunky god Bes seated on a horse at the door. Because it is all done in sort of a cubist style, it is hard to actually find the horse. Bes’s hair seems very curly. There is a sarcophagus with men and horses in a boar hunt, on the ends there are some nice sphinxes on one side and dragons on the other. Very nice. A sarcophagus on the other side features some very realistic battle scenes. Evelyn points out that while the painting was primitive 500 BC, the sculpture was very advanced and realistic. Much of the art is what we would think of as Greek.

It was strange to see statues of women wearing hoods, but the hoods were empty. It was as if we were seeing statues of the invisible woman. Apparently sculptors would do heads separately and then put them into the statue. That way a sculptor could change a statue of one woman into one of another fairly quickly. Another piece was a bust of a head with snap in noses.

The museum uses Turkish and English equally. Wherever something is written in Turkish it is also in English. Most places we have been are not so accommodating. Japan was not. Sweden was not. I think the Turks assume that few visitors will come knowing Turkish.

There was on allusion to the Trojan War. There was a children’s room with a nice Trojan Horse that children could climb up into. Of course Homer does not talk about the horse. I believe that story came from Vergil who was Roman, not Greek. The route you follow takes you past artifacts following the history through the 15th Century. Perhaps there would have been more, but much of the museum was closed off. Particularly of interest was the exhibit on the St. Sophia, when it was built, repaired, etc. We would be seeing the mosque just a little later today. There is a nice painting of the harbor in the 15th Century including the chain that blocked the harbor. A length of the original chain is there also. I cannot tell if so much of the museum is always closed or if it is just early on a Sunday morning, though Sunday would not be a special day.

There had been a nice piece on the building of the Saint Sophia Mosque. From the museum we went to the actual St. Sophia. Shortly before coming we re-watched Topkapi, but the night before coming we watched From Russia with Love which has an extended segment in the St. Sophia Mosque also called the Hagia Sophia. Luck of Leeper says that we would see the Hagia Sophia on a rainy day. I would imagine it would look entirely differently with the sun streaming in. Instead it is a dark man-made cavern built in 548. It was fairly crowded now and this is not yet the tourist season. Luck of Leeper also says that there would be scaffolding under much of the great dome. The scaffolding itself is something of a marvel. It goes right up to the great dome covering the center and a little more than a quarter of the circle. You see gold-leafed mosaics, but through most of the cathedral they have been painted over. Human figures are blasphemous.

The site had been the location of Byzantium’s Acropolis. The Emperor Constantine wanted it to rival the architecture of Rome. An earlier Sancta Sophia had been built on the same site but destroyed in 532 by riots. This one was completed in 548 and was the greatest church in Christendom until the conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

The mosque has much decoration in Christian style, most of which is covered up with Islamic decoration. Islamic art is generally non-representational and there are geometric designs and quotes from the Koran on what looks like shields that are stories high.

To get to the upper balcony, which in the Christian days was where the women went, there is a ramp corkscrews up. It is worth the climb to get a closer view of ceiling. There are a lot of groups there now and it is quite crowded climbing, it will be worse in the tourist season, which this is not.

It is nice having all this just a few blocks from the room. After the mosque we went back to room to get water and to write in the logs. From there we went to lunch.

There is a street with restaurants called Divan Yolu. We picked a restaurant, Meshhur Halk Koftecisi Selim Usta that looked good. Something about the restaurant reminded me of a White Tower hamburger restaurant. We ordered Shish Kabap ($2.40) and Kofte ($1.80), we shared a bean salad, and I got a Coke. The portions were small, but sufficient. We put the salad in the middle of the table and both tried to eat it. I don’t know exactly what was wrong with the salad or the fork or perhaps the land had a subsidence, but the salad kept falling off the fork before it got to our mouths. It was quite embarrassing. Here we came to Turkey as ambassadors of good will and instead we were just being messy eaters. At least we did not vomit on anyone. Honest.

From here we went to the Blue Mosque. It is much nicer looking than the other mosque. Outside it is about the same but the interior is far nicer. Sultan Ahmet built it in the early 1600s to rival the St. Sophia. It is not actually blue but has blue stained glass windows.

After the Blue Mosque we continued down the street looking at some other sights culminating in an outdoor market. We walked through looking at goods. We were beyond the areas where the tourists usually go. From there we decided to walk back by a different route and managed only to get ourselves gloriously lost. We wandered around looking at shops and walking. Among the things that are not built to last very well are the sidewalks. In some cases they just put hard tiles on top of dirt banks. Many places the sidewalks are all broken up and pretty messy to walk on. We spent what must have been a couple hours wandering the streets. We began to get clues that we were back in the tourist area. We were pestered by touts trying to get our patronage. Our Odyssey was worth the effort, but our shoes were muddy and we were tired. Finally we found the way to the Hippodrome and from there back to the room.

I worked on my log some more and took another go at my flashcards in the hopes that more would stick. I think that as I get older my memory is not as good. I know the words for an hour or so than they just go away… Well, some of them. More stick each time but then they just fade. It is like writing them on a steamy mirror. It just steams up again.

For dinner we went back to the area near the mosques and Divan Yolu. We picked a restaurant and liked it. The waiter was a Kurd and wanted to know if we had ever heard of Kurds. We said some superficial things about how they lived in the East and had a hard time. I was not sure how touchy a subject it was. I did not go into detail about having second thoughts about coming to Turkey because of the treatment of the Kurds. In any case we had a reasonable dinner, again for about $4 apiece. We are getting much the same sort of things each meal, grilled meat.

We headed back to the room after dinner. Well, there may be more to do in Istanbul, but we haven’t really found it. There was a woman behind the desk at the guesthouse. “Yirmi-iki,” I requested. She handed me the key for 22. “It worked!” I said to Evelyn. The woman grinned. “T’shekurlar” I said to the woman. “You’re welcome.” I am getting a little Turkish. It does not take much. I guess there is the belief that the Turks are and aggressive and unfriendly people. They have a reputation as troublemakers. Well, much of our culture came from Greece. The Turks might actually be among the nicest people in the Middle East. Frankly, if they wanted that title there would be very little competition. Even the Israelis whom I agree with politically I all too often find are pushy and rude.

We tried listening to the short wave. I got a program I really did not understand. It sounded like a strange language lesson. It sounded like a woman was trying to seduce a man with provocative language and then the same thing was said in a foreign language. Was this some strange ploy to make language lessons more interesting? I did not recognize the foreign language, but were they trying to teach people how to make love to a woman in their language? Fascinated I listened on. The announcer came back on, talking in the foreign language. Finally the mystery was cleared up. He said something about Def Lepard. Then played a song with the exact lyrics of the phrases I had heard. They were explaining what the song lyric meant for their listeners who did not know English.

Well, it is almost 11:30 and I am caught up on my log. Tomorrow begins another day. Evelyn has pulled out an article about Jews in Turkey. There are about 20,000 Jews living in Istanbul and who have lived here since they were thrown out of Spain in 1492. Turkey has one of the longest histories of tolerance for Jews. Of course Turkey is all tied up in one of the strangest stories of Jewish history.

It occurred in the 1660s when a demagogue arose from the Turkish Jewish community and had perhaps half of the Jews in the world at that time believing he was the Messiah. The man was Shabbatai Tzevi, a rabbi from Smyrna, what is today Izmir. He was born in 1626 of a wealthy merchant family and early on showed a fascination in religion and particularly mysticism. A bright student, he studied to be a rabbi and became one as a young man, but he also suffered from violent mood swings. Today we would probably call him a manic-depressive, but at the time he thought he was possessed by demons. His behavior became erratic and increasingly strange. He performed a marriage ceremony on himself marrying the Torah. And he claimed he could levitate. He ate non-Kosher food, and he feasted on fast days. Tzevi declared that he was the Messiah but, not surprisingly, could summon few followers. Finally his behavior became an embarrassment and the Jewish community asked him to leave. He wandered the Middle East, being expelled from Salonika and Constantinople.

Traveling to Jerusalem, he heard of another young holy man, Nathan of Gaza, whom Tzevi thought could exorcise the demons that he still at times believed possessed him. Tzevi sought out Nathan and asked to be helped in 1665. Nathan, however, interpreted Tzevi’s presence in a different way. It had been prophesied that the Messiah would come out of a period of great tribulation to the Jews. In fact this was such a period, as just fifteen years before had been one of the great pre-20th-Century holocausts for Jews. The Chmielnitzki Massacre was a furious holocaust in which Cossack troops in Russia and Poland had murdered over 100,000 Jews (out of a world population of about 1,500,000) in the most brutal and painful ways imaginable. Nathan had been expecting a Messiah to arise at this time, and Tzevi seemed to fit the prophesied description. He responded that not only was Tzevi not possessed by demons, but that Tzevi’s occasional beliefs in his own divinity was, in fact, accurate. The two began traveling together proclaiming that Shabbatai Tzevi was the Messiah at last arrived. And where they could not travel, Nathan’s writings proclaiming the Messiah could go. Tzevi’s weird interpretations of Jewish law became what many people took to be commandments from God. Tzevi declared that he would throw the Turks out of Palestine and that the Jews would return there. Tens of thousands of Jews were electrified by his message, particularly after the recent massacres. Jewish communities were split into Shabbateans and non-Shabbateans who violently disagreed with each other. Generally the Shabbateans were the less educated who mistrusted the more intellectual Jews of the community. Rabbis who opposed the new movement might find their houses burned to the ground by mobs of Shabbatean zealots.

In 1666 Tzevi, with many of his followers, sailed for Constantinople to demand from the Sultan the return of Palestine to the Jews. If the Sultan refused Tzevi claimed he would have the Sultan deposed. En route he was arrested and imprisoned at Gallipoli. Through bribery he was allowed visitors in the thousands of loyal followers. Meanwhile Nathan continued to travel and write spreading the word of this new supposed Messiah in imprisonment. Eventually the Sultan decided that even in imprisonment Tzevi was still dangerous and presented an ultimatum. Tzevi could be tortured to death or he could embrace Islam. Tzevi chose conversion and took the name Aziz Mehmed Effendi. The ever-loyal Nathan declared to the world that Tzevi had already given his message to the Jews and had converted in order to spread his message through Islam. This too, he claimed, could be foreseen in the prophecy.

Tens of thousands of Jews were bitterly disappointed in their hoped-for Messiah. To have this hope destroyed so soon after the Polish and Russian massacres was a bitter pill to swallow. Some Shabbateans converted to Islam themselves, others insisted that they should remain Jewish and that only their leader should be Moslem. Tzevi lived another ten years, dying at 50. Nathan of Gaza continued to proselytize for the man he believed to be a Messiah and survived Tzevi by four years. What was essentially a new religion survived into this century. Nazis exterminated a community of Greek Shabbateans in 1943. There is still a Shabbatean community in Mashhad, Iran.

Evelyn has asked me to point out that back when I was in the 6th grade my parents complained I was not studious enough. I would like to think that they have changed their minds, but I don’t know for sure.

Today we go to the Topkapi Palace. I guess now I really am talking Turkey. This is the best known site in the country. Of course it was helped a great deal by the film TOPKAPI about the theft of an emerald-encrusted dagger. It is not clear to me why anybody would make an emerald encrusted dagger. The point of a dagger is to protect you. If you have an emerald encrusted dagger you need to protect yourself. And you need to do it with something a good deal more protective than a dagger. This is like making a fly swatter, encrusting it with sugar and dipping it in honey. Who thinks of these things?

The bathroom in our room is full of instruction. “Please put all paper & sanitary waste into the box ONLY.” “ATTENTION! Shower drain is slow. Please TURN OFF the taps when you do not ACTUALLY use the water. Otherwise room may get FLOODED.” Well, I guess it is part of the price of travel. I have seen some strange plumbing but this is the first toilet I have had to use that could not handle paper. Somehow I think a person’s used toilet paper should be a matter for privacy. This is one of the bathrooms of the style that the whole floor is a drain. Usually this means that there is a thick barrier to protect the outer room from getting wet. Not so here. You just have to take a short shower. And afterwards you don’t want to come in with stocking feet.

We went down to breakfast. There are three circular tables, each about a yard in diameter. Each had at least one person and one had a couple. We had to ask to sit at a table already partially occupied. Not really a problem, I suppose. Not compared to the toilet paper situation. CNN was running a piece on finger pumps. These are apparently things you put on the backs of your fingers in order to give your fingers more exercise. I was a little sorry to see this on CNN’s International News. I mean we Americans know how bad the thing that passes for news is, but I hate to see it advertised abroad. I wish we could get BBC news in the US. Few countries have such fatuous stuff as their news. Of course the younger generation is becoming insular. If they watch CNN day and night they would still not know much of what was going on in other countries. Finger pumps are not the most edifying stuff.

After breakfast we headed off to our one and only site of the day, the Topkapi (TOAP-kap-ah) Palace. This was the combination White House and Capitol for almost 300 years. Sultans ruled Turkey from this exquisite palace among palaces. In 1453 Mehmet the Conqueror took Constantinople and made it his capitol. He built this place and lived there until his death. For about 386 years it remained where the Turkish were ruled. The first Sultan was Mehmet II and the last was Mahmut II.

Once again we were saved from the ravages of coming in season. There was just a huge mob coming to the palace, but not as bad as it would be in the summer. In the summer there would be hordes or legions. They have you go through a security check just to get in. I was a veritable pile of metallic objects, and as I expected the alarm went off as I went through the metal detector. I waited to be told to stop or to be asked my name or something. Nobody cared. I guess they just like to know if people are entering with metal on their person like a camera or a stray hand grenade.

There is a separate admission for harem. It costs a million to get into the palace and an extra half million to see the harem. I guess sex sells.

There are lots of cats wandering the palace and a few dogs. The cats are considered a very nice animal in Islamic countries and they are well treated. A dog is thought of as being just a sort of large friendly rat by many. When we were out walking yesterday we saw a girl scream at something she saw. It was a dog walking toward her. To avoid her the dog turned toward a sidewalk only to see us standing there and did not want to come near us so brushed past the girl and ran up the street. The poor dog was only trying to be inoffensive and get out of the situation without coming near to anyone. Humans clearly had not treated her very well in the past. If the girl had panicked it would have been considered the dog’s fault.

Outside the palace the entry point is the Court of the Janissaries. It was there that they would eat. Janissaries are professional soldiers stolen/drafted at age ten. They were rounded up from Christian families and became the personal property of the Sultan in a private army. Most soldiers were soldiers only in the summer months, but Janissaries spent the whole year training and/or fighting. The boys would learn Turkish and Islam. These were the real muscle of the Sultan. They were a force 12,000 strong under Mehmet II, and they grew to about 20,000. Eventually celibacy was no longer required and this led to nepotism and corruption. If they turned against the Sultan they would overturn the cauldrons of their food. When the Sultan saw this happen he knew he had just hours to live. Mehmut II finally ended the system of Janissaries by first fielding a European style army, then provoked a revolt among the Janissaries reorganizing them without their permission. They revolted and he then had the army come in and destroy the Janissaries.

Inside the entrance is a broad tree-decorated grounds. The trees look Mediterranean to me, but I am no expert on trees. We had tickets for the first tour of the harem and waited for it to open.

Now you cannot walk through at your own pace. You can get in only with a guided tour in Turkish or in English. There are signs telling you what everything is, but the guides whisk you past them preferring to explain to you what everything is in their Turkish accented English. This means there is no good way to tell what anything is. I suspect the guides are hired for their knowledge of English and nobody tests their diction.

The West has romanticized the institution of harems. I think that in our imagination the appeal is really a return of a sort of infancy. When one is an infant one is cared for, fed, and pampered with little responsibility except to perform natural bodily functions. One has no freedom, but then it is not needed since the baby can get most of what it really needs. As one becomes an adult a new bodily function is added, that of sexuality. But it is not unwelcome. The harem girl returns to a sort of simplistic infancy. The harem girl gets all she needs in return for doing what is natural to her. So was Picasso. But then so is a cow.

I can’t say I learned a lot about the harem since when our guide said what sounded like “Italian court,” it was really “imperial hall.” The harem quarters did not look very comfortable though one did have some curiosity as to what they were like. One really could have a contest like the one in the joke where first prize was a night in the harem quarters and second prize was two nights in the harem quarters.

But lest you think the harem quarters were too uncomfortable I will add that they were not at the time. After the harem we saw the carriages of the Sultan and Evelyn said they did not look comfortable. In fact they had the supreme comfort feature of that time or any time. They had windows the passenger could look out and see people less comfortable. That has always made people feel comfortable. There are certainly a lot of people who are living lives of luxury by previous centuries’ standards yet who think they are uncomfortable. The reason is that they are not seeing anyone less comfortable.

As we were walking we passed a white rabbit. Honest. I told Evelyn that I didn’t want her following the rabbit. She promised she would not follow it down a rabbit hole. I told her I didn’t want to see her become the Alice of the Palace. (It is a film allusion.)

We continued on to the third court in the palace. Now we were getting to some of the serious stuff. In one pavilion we see the Sultan’s throne. It seems to be made with a smidge more room in the seat for the Sultan who never gets out of the palace and has had a few too many sweets.

Another room has kaftans worn by the Sultan and some of his major ministers. Many are of rich color, either bright or deep like purple. Then we move on to jewels. Objects functional and objects abstract. Many have the symbols of different countries that they would have had at home. There would be Russian Tsarist stars with double-headed eagles, from England they have a cross in red, the jewels from the US spell out “Mazel Tov, Sydney and Bernice” in diamonds. (I was kidding about that last part. Sidney and Bernice would never let their stuff be given to a Sultan.)

Finally we got to the main event. Here it comes movie fans and jewel thieves, the emerald encrusted dagger of Mahmud I. It was a gift from him to someone else, Nadir Shah. Nadir gave Mahmud I a gold throne. So it was a happy exchange except that somehow Nadir Shah ended up dead and Mahmud ended up with both the throne and the dagger. Surprise! Okay, for those who have seen the movie and want to try getting the dagger, here is your update. It is no longer on the Sultan dummy. It is behind glass in the wall. But it is not all bad news. The good news it that it is in an outside wall. And there is something else that I noticed that I am not mentioning here. I will exchange what I noticed for just one of the large emeralds. Take it from me it is a bargain. But I need positive assurances that I will get the emerald or I will say nothing. Look, if I had experience with this sort of thing I wouldn’t need you. One crummy inch-long emerald is not a lot to ask.

We stopped for lunch, which we had at the little restaurant in the palace. It was about what you would expect from a museum restaurant. The lines were long; the food was expensive, at least by local standards. It was cold by the time we could get through line. Still it did not taste too bad and we got a table with a nice view of the Golden Horn, the harbor. We shared a chicken sandwich, a donner kabap, I had a tamarind drink (very nice), Evelyn had apple tea, and we shared rice pudding. One of the rooms that follow has relics of John the Baptist, including hairs from his beard. Right. In this room there is a booth in the corner with a man constantly reading from the Koran.

Then there is the room with relics of Muhammad the Prophet. They have hair from his beard, a letter he wrote, a tooth in a box, casket for his mantle, his bow, and his sword. I am convinced this is an expensive and extensive set of relics. How many of them are really authentic I am less than sure.

Continuing on there is an arms exhibit. Well, every history museum has one, I think. There were arrows, and armor, and swords. Particularly notable was the armor, which was much more practical than European armor. Instead of a whole metal breast that was inflexible they linked overlapping plates like the tail of a lobster. Their helmets came to a point on top and had sides protected by chain mail. I am not sure if the point had a functional purpose or not. Maybe it just made them easier to identify on the battlefield. They had an executioner’s sword in a hinged case. There was a two-handed European sword that looked to be about six feet long. It is hard to imagine that being a very effective weapon. It just seemed too darn big to wield. It was not a big exhibit, but it was certainly of interest. There is something about arms that defines the times a lot better than furniture or clothing or just about anything else. I guess weapons change faster and somehow you can understand the purpose better.

Another building has more relics of Muhammed the Prophet. There are actual footprints edged in stone where the Prophet Muhammed stood. One was from his left foot, one from his right. The faithful are not supposed to notice that his two feet were of very different sizes. I have to say I am not sure why they put both in the same case since it is just inviting skepticism.

Of course Islam is not alone in discouraging a skeptical analysis of religious materials. People all over the world claim to have seen the Virgin Mary. It would take just the barest modicum of curiosity to get these witnesses together with police sketch artists, one at a time to confirm that they really are seeing the same miraculous woman appear to all of them. It certainly would go a long way proving that they actually are all seeing the Virgin Mary. The only reason they are not is probably a lack of faith on the part of the investigating Church officials. They see all these sightings as an aid to faith but they suspect that these sightings are all useful hallucinations.

We pass the Baghdad Kiosk intended to commemorate a military victory. There are some nice domed rooms that overlook the city. There is the home of the Sultan’s Physician. It was a position re-appointed when one physician retired. The sources I have seen contradict each other on whether non-Jews ever held the position. It is either rarely or never. Apparently the Sultans just did not trust a doctor who was not Jewish. The Sultan in 1492, Bayezit II I guess it would have been, celebrated the throwing of the Jews out of Spain. “You call this a wise king who impoverishes his kingdom and enriches mine?” The Jews in Turkey have been persecuted at times in Turkey. They have been heavily taxed, they have been forced to wear strange clothing to set them apart, they have been discriminated against in hiring, but they have never been thrown out. National policy is that they do not have equality with Moslems, but they are a welcome and valued minority. That has been the policy for 500 years and more. By American standards they are persecuted, but they are also accepted and after a fashion valued.

It was now about 3pm and we decided to take a load off our feet. We sit in a tulip garden and write and talk. We were there about 45 minutes before heading home. We passed through the courts with Mediterranean evergreens, then outside. There are groups with guides in French, German, Japanese, Hebrew, and who knows how many other languages.

We stop to get postcards. We buy stamps but two are required and they are more than a square inch. We comment and the postal clerk takes the stamps, tears two off and overlaps them so that only the price of the lower stamp shows. Okay, that works. We smile at each other.

Back to the rooms, a little early perhaps, I put on the radio to 88.2fm. My gosh there really is a local classical music station. I had asked the manager where he was getting the classical music that he plays. More working on the logs.

At 7:00 we went back to the same street for dinner and took one small turn at the end. There was a restaurant called the Altin Kupa. There was a tour group eating there which generally indicates the service will be slow (because there will be a lot of people there) but the food will be likely good (though they may just be giving a free meal to the tour leader). We found we liked what we go. We should say something about how to eat Turkish style. You get a big basket of decent bread. The bread comes in very standard loafs. If you say that a sandwich comes in a quarter loaf of bread, everybody knows how big that is. You have bread with every means and that is a big part of the meal. You use it to sop sauces and it becomes a major starch with the meal. For an appetizer I ordered Haydari. That was a very carefully chosen appetizer. Every other appetizer I knew what it was. This one I had no idea. Sounds good to me. Evelyn got soup and found it to be a sort of chicken rice soup. Mine was yogurt, mashed cheese, and herbs. You sop it up with bread, not unlike what you would do with humus. Yeah. I can live with that. My main course was little chunks of meat in sauce, as you might expect from something called gulashe. Evelyn had stuffed grape leaves. Neither came with starch or vegetable, but there was the bread. For desert we shared a baklava. It was enough to eat. And the restaurant had a nice warm environment with a tablecloth and an oil lamp on the table. With tip I paid 3,050,000TL. That is $12.20. And that was our last dinner in Istanbul, at least for now.

Maybe it was having a pleasant dinner under my belt, but I am starting to get a warm feeling about Turkey. I guess I had sort of formed my opinions based on films like Lawrence of Arabia, Yol, and Midnight Express. Also there was the belief they are considered troublemakers in this part of the world. The people seem a good deal friendlier than I would have expected.

Until now I have not had even a bit of jetlag. I am not this lucky even when I fly to California. I have taken some catnaps in the evening but I guess that I would call jetlag wanting to sleep and being unable, not vice versa. This morning I woke at 5am and was not able to get back to sleep. I am not sure it is fair to call that jetlag since it would have been as likely to happen at home. I have been sleeping to normal times more consistently in Turkey than I did at home. I would be curious to hear what Henry Kissinger did about jetlag, since he seems to have been known for having it not bother him. I don’t really mind getting up early if I can have enough light to see my palmtop. I am going through my first pair of batteries very quickly, but then the palmtop is in constant use. I cannot imagine keeping my log on a Palm Pilot. That seems to be the most popular portable device these days. Even the current versions of the palmtop are not so hot since they have widened the keyboard to the point where you cannot easily thumb-type. But HP can get as many unsolicited testimonials as they would like from me on the HP 200LX. These days when I come back from a trip my log is almost entirely written and typed in. It would make for a very long and for you boring description if I explained everything the palmtop does for me on a trip.

The room is fairly cold. It is something like 67 degrees Fahrenheit. That was the one complaint that we had heard about the Berk, that it is chilly. Also half of the lightbulbs are burned out. Maybe that contributes to the cold. We were all packed up and ready to go by breakfast time. Breakfast was much the same. Good tomatoes. The cheese looks like Feta, but is rather tasteless. After breakfast we tried to book a room for May 16, when we return to Istanbul but the Berk was booked. We asked where else we might try and the owner suggested the Alp around the corner. We tried one other hotel first, but the Alp it was.

From there we lugged our stuff to the travel agent. We let him talk us into a tour of Gallipoli at Canakkale. We were planning on going, of course, but it might be for the best to book a day tour.

We got a shuttle bus to take us to the big bus terminal. On the way I was looking at people and noting the variety of different types that Turks are. More so than most countries that we have visited, Turkey seems to be a melting pot of different racial types. Some Turks could be Scandinavian; some are dark enough to be from South India. We see lots who are just swarthy. Big moustaches are popular, but there are relatively few beards. Particularly in Sultanahmet it is hard to tell who is really Turkish and who is tourist. That is a problem we have in the US, but I had not expected here. (Well, not really a problem, I can get in trouble for saying that. It is just hard to tell.) One more comment on their looks, nobody wears moustaches like the Turks. No stingy little pencil-line moustaches for the Turks. When you are Turkish you don’t wear a moustache unless you are serious about it.

This is really our first trip outside the Sultanahmet area since the first day. Streets could be like Hartford, maybe a little run down, but seasoned with the tall pointed spires of minarets. As you look around, however, there are a lot of once-beautiful places. Some building complexes have broken windows and falling masonry. In the middle of the city are building gutted by fire and just left. There are also a lot of buildings that are in the process of being built, but it is a process that takes many years. That is one form of investment. When you have some money you put it into a building. Same day you will have a valuable building. Until then you may have nothing. Many of these buildings may never be finished.

The Turks seem very fond of small, traveling amusement parks. We see a bunch of them on the roads. At least most of the ones I saw seem to load on trucks and travel. Where we live the amusement parks are mostly more stable, except for the occasional carnival. But it is odd to drive through a metropolitan city and see all the spires for mosques and the occasional carnival.

Our shuttle bus takes us to the Otogar, the International Istanbul Bus Terminal. This is one of the largest bus stations in world and while we are on the outskirts where there is not much happening in the station, you can see the terminal just goes on and on. We climb on the bus and listen to the people behind us. These are Australians and they are real travelers, not like us. They are swapping stories about driving around the Zambezi and Kenya. Apparently they had planned to hike up Kilamanjaro but were too drunk. Pity. I would have wanted to know if there really is the carcass of a leopard near the top.

While we listen someone comes through and takes our ticket. They are telling a story about trying to cross some border on top of a truck. My best travel stories pale by comparison-or would if I tried to enter in the conversation.

The bus pulls out of the station among an entire herd of buses hitting the road. For a while it is bumper to bumper. There is little progress.

The steward-if that is the word-comes around second time asking for the ticket. We had a hard time explaining we had given it already. He did not understand our English. The woman behind said in a thick Australian accent “I gave it to you already.” That he understood. We said us too and he was satisfied.

The steward comes around with same sort of lemon-scented aftershave like stuff so we could freshen up. After that he comes around with packaged cookies and with orange soda. This is apparently a music bus with refreshments.

We are traveling west along the north coast of the Marmara Sea. This takes us through Thrace, the home of Spartacus and the dragon from Dragonslayer.

At 1:50 we stopped for a rest top at a roadside stand. We bought some cookies and crackers for the bus. There was somebody selling grilled kofte sandwiches. Kofte is a lamb meatball in a finger shape. They took a quarter loaf of bread, sliced it open, painted the two halves with a hot peppery sauce, filled it with kofte straight off the grill, added minced onion and lettuce. That was 500,000TL or $2. One of the group labeled it a rip-off and said it should have been only $1. He went back for a second one though. I had only one and Evelyn gave me part of hers because the sauce was too spicy (!!!). If I had eaten any more it would have been unhealthy. But when I am hungry again, I know what I am going to be hungry for. These Turks know how to eat! Actually the Greeks get credit in the US for this cuisine. I am told they adopted it from their enemies the Turks.

Today was the first day we got any sunshine. Unfortunately we were on a bus most of the day. At one point in the afternoon I was actually caught up, but it is tough to stay caught up. I was writing a bit on the history of Turkey to include in the early parts of this log. Coming to Canakkale the last piece is a ferry across the Dardenelles. It gave us a chance to get some sunlight. We talked to an Australian woman of all of 21 who was spending a year just travelling on her own. Greece, Turkey, all over Europe, Thailand, Korea, on and on. She was traveling on the cheap, but really seeing a lot of the world. Australians supposedly seem to go in for these yearlong tours. If they are paying to get out of Australia, they are going to stay out. Interestingly her reasons for wanting to travel paralleled things I had said on my log. She is looking for culture shock and to understand how different people think. I think her year of travel will be more valuable to her than any year I will ever spend will be to me. I kind of wish I had done what she is doing when I was young enough to do it.

We got to Canakkale and booked a room in the Hotel Bakir, the oldest hotel that was recommended in the Lonely Planet. (Lonely Planet is the publisher a series of travel guides. They are indispensable in Asia. With the possible exception of the Rough Guide it is the best. It is by far the most popular.) I think Evelyn likes older hotels if they have some sort of a feel for a previous age. This one sort of does. Our room has a very nice view onto the water. The whole town has a very different feel from that of Istanbul. It is a sunny seaside feel I guess. You just want to sit and watch the rusty boats come in.

There is a restaurant just below our window. A boat is anchored in the water maybe 100 yards away. The room is not well maintained. The bottom of the bathroom door is curling and it is difficult to open. I am pleased to see that there is no little wastebasket next to the toilet for paper disposal. You never know if something like that is standard across a country or just in the first place you see. What is standard the same about this toilet is a metal tube under the seat but over the bowl. I think it is used to clean the toilet or it might be a bidet. This one sticks up a little high and sort of gooses the user. At the last place it was not set so high.

We were told to book a tour for Gallipoli at the Anzac House. We were not told where it was. Next chore was to go out looking for it. It took us some searching around but we found it. Then it turned out that the Lonely Planet cautioned against it, so we went instead to Troy-Anzac where they tried bait and switch to have us book a more expensive tour. No go.

Back at the room we were writing and reading a booklet. Our lobby had some free booklets explaining what Gallipoli was all about. I don’t know if they have them all the time. Last Saturday was Anzac Day. Every year on April 25 the Turks celebrate the coming of the Anzacs. They came to defeat the Turks but instead learned to like them. The Turks show their love of the Anzacs each year and since the Australians and New Zealanders have fought no battles on their own soil; they come to celebrate in Canakkale every April 25. The place fills up with Aussies and Kiwis.

That was last Saturday. There were three booklets. One was from the Australian War Memorial and was okay. The other two turned out to be different editions of a guide published by the Turkish government. I had researched the battle before coming and written an account for this log. I had used the some of the best books I have including Dupuy and Dupuy’s Encyclopedia of Military History. Ironically the best account of the battle I found was this booklet given away free in the hotel. It explains the fighting in more detail than the reader can take in one reading. You don’t generally expect to find good writing in little stacks in your hotel, but these booklets are worth studying.

I also tried to find good radio stations. If there is a classical music radio station, I cannot find it.

Dinner was at a cafeteria style restaurant. It was just okay. I had meatballs in sauce, which I sopped up with bread. Then the toothpick broke in my mouth with the tip stuck between my teeth. I had a heck of a time getting it out. When I did I found it was a piece of wood maybe 3/16 of an inch in length. From now on I will wait and floss.

More reading in the room and then to bed at 10:30. One of the tours offers seeing the film Gallipoli with Mel Gibson the night before. It would have been nice but it really has little historical detail about the battle, if I remember correctly.

I just have film too much in my blood. I tend to go into film withdrawal if I don’t see a movie at least once a week. I rather expect there will be a lot of film references in this log before it is finished.

In World War I, Turkey sided with Germany and Austria. The Russians wanted a warm water port and had designs on Turkey. Turkey would have sided with the British, French, and Russians if they had gotten assurances that France and Britain would stop Russia from using the alliance to grab Turkey and a port. Britain and France would make no such assurance so Turkey felt it could not enter the war on the side of the very people threatening it. The other side promised to protect Turkey from Russia and so Turkey entered the war on their side.

The Russians, the British and the French saw Turkey as the Achilles heel of the enemy alliance. Austria and Germany and being Western and Christian they seemed more formidable than Ottoman Turks did. That was particularly true since the forces of Turkey were exhausted after the campaign against Serbia. The plan to take advantage of the situation came from Winston Churchill. Capture Constantinople and the ring around Russia would be broken. Constantinople was on the Marmara Sea, a sea almost entirely enclosed by land except for the narrow passage of straits through the Dardenelles. An Allied fleet was sent to the Dardanelles, to the neck of the bottle that was the Marmara Sea. Because of its strategic value the Turks had forts commanding the straits, but the allied forces thought of them as being held by a second class power that could be swept away.

On February 19 the fleet arrived and began the pounding of the forts. In Constantinople there was panic. By March the Allies had made significant progress and it looked like success was not far away. The German High Command saw the allied attack as a possible deathblow to their side and the Turks were demoralized. The forts that could defend the narrows were nearly destroyed. The largest armada ever assembled to that point was forcing its way up the narrow passage. A Turkish boat laid mines behind the fleet unknown to the invaders.

Then a mine destroyed a French battleship and within just a few minutes three British battleships were also destroyed by Turkish artillery on the land. It was decided that a navy action alone would not work. The attack was postponed with the commanders never realizing that the Turks were hanging on by only a thread. Most of the Turks had already run out ammunition and were fleeing. With victory in his grasp British Admiral De Robeck retreated. The Gallipoli peninsula west of the strait had to be invaded and the defending Turks routed. The British would lead this attack, but it was decided that the Australian and New Zealand ANZAC forces would do much of the fighting.

The attack was postponed for about a month when the Australian and New Zealand troops could be brought in.

There were several serious mistakes in the invasion when it came, but the gallantry of the Anzacs established a beachhead. Faced with overwhelming force the coastal troops began to scatter. But Col. Mustafa Kemal stopped them. “I am not ordering an attack. I am ordering you to die to save your honor.” Seeing the attackers making for the heights of Chunuk Bair, which commanded the entire area, he grabbed the heights first. He rallied the troops. “There is the enemy and you are soldiers. You cannot run. Dig in.” Well, to make a long story short, they dug in and the allied forces dug in. They fought for nine months. In August there was a major British offensive, but it also failed. Kemal was hit in the heart by shrapnel at this time… Or would have been but for a pocket watch that shattered but saved his life. It seemed like an omen.

Then the allied forces decided there was nothing to be gained. This was the beginning of the fame of Mustafa Kemal, known as Ataturk. Command by Kemal was decisive and quick. The command by the British was slow and telegraphed itself. Then men were just thrown at the enemy. There were large losses on each side but it was a great victory for Turkey. Battles of the Turks against the Anzacs were failing not accomplishing anything. After nine months there were 252,000 casualties on the allied side, 218,000 on the Turkish side.

The site of this fighting is our goal for today.

One of the peculiar things about this particular battle is the mutual respect with the two sides treat each other. We saw the same thing at the civil war sites in the US, but there you expect that because it was Americans on both sides. I guess this was a time when the Germans were using weapons like mustard gas. The British apparently half-expected the Turks to do the same. The only Turkish secret weapon was courage. Kichener in his dispatches takes the unusual step of praising the enemy.

Actually, I keep hearing good things about the Turks from unexpected sources. The author of the tour book assumes that most of the negatives you hear about the Turks are pure propaganda. The guy who was imprisoned in a Turkish prison says that the account was exaggerated. In actual fact it would appear to be a toss-up who is more enthusiastic about having Americans in Turkish prisons, the imprisoned American or the Turkish government. The difference is (or at least was) the Turkish government would actually do something about it.

The title Midnight Express refers to a train. The Turkish government did not want the expense and hassle of keeping Americans in their prisons. They made sure that Americans heard that they could sneak aboard this midnight train for Greece. They would end up in Turkey without passports, be arrested and would have to apply to the US Consulate for new passports. The next thing they would see would probably be the Statue of Liberty. It was a clever trick on the part of the Turkish government. It was an escape route for Americans and was absolutely pointless for a Turk to use. A Turkish prison escapee in Greece without a passport… well, there just would not be such a thing.

In this way the Turkish government could look like it was trying to punish the Americans, PLEASING THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT, but did not have to be strict. The book and movie Midnight Express was really mostly propaganda in America’s drug war. At least that is what the author of the Lonely Planet book thinks. People will believe just about anything bad about the Turks. They have their faults, but I am finding them a friendly and accommodating people, miles better than their reputation.

I can almost believe that most of the negative things we have heard are wrong. It has been my belief that Israel gets much the same treatment. I hear stories that make opening up a door at the end of a tunnel that everybody knew was there is the cause for riots and Israel is found to be totally at fault. These are stories that even on the face of them sound absurd and I am not sure how our commentators can deliver them with a straight face. Right now people are blaming Israel for not making new concessions beyond the peace accords when the other side has yet to renounce its goal of the destruction of Israel. That was the Palestinian’s most basic concession, it could be done with three sentences, and by now it is YEARS past due. Nobody in the press seems to have noticed. I can well see why Israel and Turkey might be making friends. They seem to be in the same position.

By the way I am not saying that Turkish prisons are actually pleasure domes. I have no doubt that Turkish prisons are bad. Whether they are as bad as Mexican prisons, which I have heard are very bad, I don’t know. Any poor country is not going to have very good prisons. The question is who gets put there.

We did not know if breakfast was included with the room, but it turns out that it is. It is a fairly standard Turkish breakfast. Tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese, olives, juice, and of course bread. Then we headed out. Wow, sunshine. Our first sunny day. Well, we had some sun yesterday afternoon, but this is the first of the real sunshine that doesn’t go away when you start to enjoy it.

We stopped at the tourist aid to find out how often were the mini-buses to Troy. The man did not speak English (in tourist aid???) but showed Evelyn where to get the bus. Evelyn asked him “schedule?” No response. “When?” Same response (or lack thereof). She started digging through the phrasebook. I tapped my watch. He made a sign that said they run all the time. Sign language helps.

Following that we went to the Military Museum which is just down the street from our hotel. Everything of interest to tourists in Canakkale seems to be within a few blocks on the water. Admission to the museum is 100,000TL and there is a small two-story museum. It has just the sort of thing you would expect: uniforms, flags, grenades, and pistols. It also has magazine pictures from the campaign that sort of recreate the feel. They finish up with a display of books about the Dardanelles campaign and about Ataturk. Curiously, the famous painting of him shows his eyes to be very blue, an unusual trait for a Turk. However, the same painting also shows him with a narrow nose. Photographs show him to have a wide flatish nose. I suppose it is possible that his nose was broken in one of the military campaigns. The second floor is mostly pencil sketches of the area and landscapes by M. Ai Laga. It is a tiny military museum, but probably worth the 40 cents it cost to see it.

After the museum there is a mockup of a mine-laying cruiser. It is odd to see such a mockup and I am not sure if it was built for training or for an exhibit.

There is also a “castle” on the grounds. I think it would be more accurate to call it a fort. It is complete with its own museum. At this point Evelyn commented “Your 40 cents goes a long way.” Naturally enough I was forced to agree.

In the museum are arms from various points of history. And there are sketches of Ataturk doing various historic things. Not a great military museum, but it delivers more than you would think.

Following that we went to cash some travelers’ checks since the ATM machines seem to be of little help. I was surprised to see women working in the bank without headcover. They are dressed in business suits. I don’t know what happens when one insists on traditional dress. We each came in wearing our vests with lots of pockets. They look vaguely military. I think people thought we were terrorists. They sort of stared at us. I think they were relieved when we left. I think we ought to try to look a little more normal.

I stopped by the neighborhood store across the street. Two Pepsis, a large and small water for $1.70.

At about 11:30 we went to the tourist agency for our tour. We were there a little early and were talking to the boy who works there. He is studying English and working in the agency during the day. He invites us to come around for tea after the tour. Someone shows up with some box lunches and takes us to the dock where I ask a few questions, but he seems not to know English. I hope he is not our guide. Nope, he is just bringing us to the dock. We meet our guide, Ali. He has us board a ferry and I ask some questions about Gallipoli. I notice a lot of places have the suffix “tepe.” He tells me that means “hill.” We cross to the other side of the strait where there is a bus of other people who had just come from Istanbul. They seem to all be Australian or New Zealander except for a Scottish family and us. Cheapskate that I am I ask Ali questions to get the most from the tour. I tell Ali that the British generals were impressed by the Turks and I show him the quote from Kitchener. He tells me I seem to be the most interested in Gallipoli.

Actually just about everything at Gallipoli can be summarized in two points that are made again and again. 1) In the fighting the Turks surprised even themselves by being able to defend their homeland against the strongest military force in the world at that time. 2) Part of that force, the Anzacs, actually became good friends with the Turks whom they had been sent to destroy and maintained, or nearly maintained, a separate peace. The tone of the park seems to be one I saw at Civil War sites in our last trip. It speaks of the courage and nobility on both sides, even when they were trying to kill each other. The enemy was the British commanders. I showed Ali the quote from Kitchener praising the Turks for being more honorable fighters than the Germans. The truth is probably that British were not as inflexibly bad and the Anzacs not as totally sympathetic as the modern myth would claim. Like the Anzacs, the British were given a job to do. Unlike the Anzacs they were given responsibility to see that the campaign worked if possible.

Our first stop at the site of the battle is a military museum. In front there is a statue of two dead soldiers, one holding the flag, one with a gun and a vine growing up the gun. From there we want to some maps just outside the museum where Ali told us about the battle. The point that Ali makes over and over is how much the Turks and the Anzacs respected each other. The British had made stupid mistakes, the Anzacs and the Turks showed great heroism and in the end learned to respect each other and had pretty much set up a separate peace on the battlefield, refusing to fight with each other. The Australians and the Turks had trenches just feet apart. The Australians stopped lobbing hand grenades when it was found the Turks were catching them and throwing them back.

More small facts that are not in the history books:

In one of the British landings they faces some unexpected resistance. They disturbed hives of bees who also heroically defended their homeland.

The Turks considered a great secret that was only revealed recently that the Turks who fought the invaders were from the area they were defending and hence had a very personal stake in countering the invasion.

Once dug in trenches at times only 7 meters apart, the Turks’ and Anzacs’ deadly fighting seemed to kill birds and bees flying around but seemed to leave humans surprisingly unharmed. The two sides entertained each other by singing to each other and exchanging gifts. The Turks had their first taste of chocolate when candy bars came lobbing into their trenches. They returned fire with fresh fruit and vegetables. One day a note got lobbed into the Anzac trench: “I you tobacco. You me paper. Every day. Every day.”

Since Gallipoli was a defensive action, the Turks cannot be said to have gained much. What they gained was the friendship of the Anzacs, the pride of a military victory, and Ataturk.

The Anzacs and Turks are all considered “sons of the new Turkey”

New Zealanders sent their own architect to build their memorial at Gallipoli. The Australians were willing to let the Turks design their memorial. It could be the New Zealanders felt it was not right to let their nominal enemy build a tribute to them when they themselves would not.

The museum is still being built but the sort of thing in it in labeled boxes was letters from soldiers to their parents and other artifacts found on the beaches including shoes, horseshoes, dentures, a skull with bullet, and uniforms.

We stopped at various historic points in the site of the fighting. Most of what there is to see is the lay of the land, graveyards, and memorials.

We had a boxed lunch as part of the tour package. It consisted of a cup of water, a cheese sandwich, and an apple. Ali picked up some cigarette butts while we were sitting there. I figured we were going to throw out the wrappings of the box lunch anyway, so I picked up some trash, there wasn’t really much there to pick up, but it might have had some bearing on a later incident.

Another comment that I made that did not quite sit well with Ali was that the commanders must have sort have agreed to the friendship between the Anzacs and Turks. This creating a separate peace is at least insubordination and is probably a court-martial offense. Essentially it is fraternizing with the enemy.

We went to various memorials. At the one for the Turks, Ali asked Evelyn to place one flower of her choice on a statue. Evelyn pointed out that it said not to pick the flowers. Ali said “just one.” Ali then gave Evelyn a souvenir. It was a keychain with an Anzac bullet, It also had separately a Turkish bullet and a piece of shrapnel.

Our last stop is a monument to Ataturk next to a monument to the New Zealanders.

Driving home past the strait I saw dolphins in the water. I went to Alaska to see whales and did not get nearly so good a look at them. Eventually we got back to the dock and the ferry back to our hotel.

Our nice clear sky turned gray and windy and cold.

I tried to give a 10% tip to Ali. He asked what it was. I told him it was a tip. He seemed to be undecided about taking it, then did and thanked me. I guess that tips are not the custom for tour guides. I had told the boy at the travel agency that I would drop over for tea after the trip. I did with Evelyn and we talked about travel, my flash cards, his school, movies, music, and eventually politics. He thinks that last summer the Greeks set fire to Turkish forests. The fires started 35 different places at once. The fires had to have been set and by the Greeks. He started to drift toward saying that under the Ottoman Turks the country was well run and that he would want to return to those days. I suspect that he was driving at wanting an Islamic State. Of course that reasoning is wrong for multiple reasons. It is not true that everyone was happy under the Ottoman Turks. And there certainly enough countries that are under Islamic rule that are finding it no bargain, at least those who protest are. We were interrupted before he went that far, but I suspect that was where he was going. It is hard enough to do a decent job of running a government when running the government is your first priority.

Well, it was back to the room after that and then to the restaurant next door for dinner. I had eggplant and yogurt and fried calamari. Evelyn had yogurt and peppers and lamb chop for dinner.

Then it was back to the room to work on the logs and listen to music in Turkish. The evenings are not so hot, but then it gives me time to write.

I have a friend who is Romanian and who insisted when I first met her that Dracula was a purely fictional character and no such person ever existed. She left the country before the days of tourism. Nowadays I suspect Dracula is better known to Romanian school children learning history. Basically it was someone outside of the country who made Dracula the most famous Romanian in history.

Nobody is really sure which Pharaoh is mentioned in the Bible. If you look at the history of the Peoples of the Book: Jews, Christians, and Moslems, you find the captivity in Egypt to be a major formative event. But the Egyptians never even noted that the event happened. In Egyptian history it was a minor event and not really worth noting. Now, of course, it is a big deal.

In the region we now call Turkey, a ten-year war with part of Greece is really just another war with Greece. Sure, it may have happened there someplace in history. No big deal. Of course, to world literature it is another matter. And Turkey knows a good thing when it sees it.

Speaking of a good thing, I am getting used to Turkish breakfast. I had bread with sweet butter and honey, a hardboiled egg, some tomato, and juice. We sit overlooking the dock at the boats going back and forth. Every few moment a horse-drawn wagon goes by.

We see some of the people from our tour yesterday go by. They wave to us and we wave back.

We walk to the bus stop about a mile from the hotel. There does not seem to be any schedule. After standing around a while a taxi driver tells us that it will be another 45 minutes or an hour before the next bus. He offers to take us and wait for 5 million. It is probably silly, but we decide to wait for the bus. The problem is not the $20, but we don’t know how long we want to stay. If we want to stay five hours we are not sure.

There are a lot of gruff-looking Turks hanging around, but you know I feel perfectly safe. Across the street from us two men start arguing about something. It looks like they are getting ready to have a fight. To separate them a bunch of other people run in like white blood cells to an injury. One seems a lot angrier than the other and continues to snarl insult or argue his side in Turkish. This goes on for about five minutes but they cannot get close to each other to fight so he gives up and goes away. These are really earthy people.

We sit writing. Across the street a fight nearly breaks out between two men. A bunch of people go in and separate the two men, and the fight is reduced to yelling. I think Turks must just look mean. They are so often swarthy and chunky with big moustaches.

No buses seem to be coming along for Truva or Troy. Lots are coming for Kapez. Two out of three buses that pass are for Kapez. This must be some place, Kapez, judging by the number of people who want to go there.

One driver offered to take us to Troy and wait for us, then drive us back for $20. Evelyn did not like that idea. For one thing we didn’t know how long we wanted to spend at Troy.

I am just afraid we will discover Kapez will mean “bus.” Or perhaps it is another name for Troy. About 10:20 a man came up and asked where we were going. We said Truya. He walked us to a bus. Sure enough it was the bus to Troy. We got on and it was about a 30-minute ride. It is kind of a nice drive with views of the water and the occasional stop for sheep in the road.

This lets us see a little of the countryside. The houses seem small and boxy Mediterranean style. Many seem to need repair. Still it seems pleasant and comfortable. At least it looks that way from the window of a bus. On a nice, sunny day.

We got off the bus at Troy along with a French couple. The price for the ride was just 200,000TL. They seemed nice. The husband picked a wild rose and gave it to Evelyn. As you get toward Troy, there is a large wooden horse with a ladder that visitors can climb. We didn’t. Then there is a one-room museum with a tiny exhibit telling importance of Troy and how it was rediscovered.

Of course there is not just one Troy, there are nine of them on almost the same site. Troy 1 is the oldest dating back to the Bronze Age. Troy 9 is from the Roman era. I still don’t completely understand how a whole city is buried and another built on top in just about the same place. Can there be 20 feet of fill so that one city is totally covered? Are there pieces of the old city sticking up? Suffice it to say that one city is built on top of another. The theater was built in the Roman times.

You walk through the ruins and do not stray from the path. Hard to believe you are really there. Even the Homeric Poets had not seen the real Troy. There does not seem to be a whole lot of Troy 6 left. I think most of what you see is a ramp. The most complete piece is a small theater complete with embanked stage. This is from Troy 9, the Roman period. They also had some columns from the same period.

While we were walking the guy behind us caught up with us. He had graduated from USC about a year before and had read the Iliad in school. He was all excited about being at the actual place where it all happened. We took several pictures of him, he took a couple of us, and we talked. We discussed the ruins, history, Turkish history, film, and dogs. By then we were pretty well done with the ruins and walked out to the road. We arrived at a little before 1pm.

Then began the wait for the bus. We waited and waited and waited some more. Here we were on a corner in the middle of no place. Most of the vehicles that passed on the road were farm implements. If you saw Bad Day at Black Rock, well, this was worse. There was a dead restaurant behind me. I went to ask when a bus might be along. “Any time.” I was told. But you know I had no doubts about my safety. My intelligence I questioned but not my safety. I told Evelyn that we were here in the middle of nowhere. “It’s not the middle of nowhere,” she protested. “That’s Troy.” Great. When is the next chariot?

The experience of going to Troy is not all I might have expected. Basically you walk around a ruin of which there is not much left and look at some walls. The text does not add a whole lot to the experience doing little more then identifying which Troy you are looking at and what the object is. I suppose that is not surprising. What distinguishes Troy is not that great ruins were found there, it is that these ruins were heard of from another source. Apparently the government realizing that just seeing some old walls would be a letdown built a large fanciful Trojan horse (not on wheels, by the way) to help capture some imagination. But for the most part the ruins work by imagination. The visitor can tell himself that he was there where this great story came from. One has the feeling that actually being at the war would be even less impressive. Basically is a bunch of grown men acting in very childish ways. Everything in the poem is undoubtedly exaggerated. Earlier in the day we saw a fight almost break out while we were waiting for a bus. Your feeling is just a little embarrassed to be there when it is happening. That must be what it was like to be at the Trojan War. A Homeric poet could have probably made even that near street fight seem epic. Such is the power of words.

Finally at 2:15 after 75 minutes of embarrassed waiting we asked for information. A man told us that the bus is very irregular. He could arrange a ride for $20. We gave him 5,000,000TL, about the same. I think he would have preferred the dollars but accepted the Turkish equivalent. We went got into a Toyota and another man took us back to Canakkale. To please his American passengers he put on a cassette of Christmas carols.

We asked to be taken to the Archeology Museum. I think that made more sense than to be waiting the whole afternoon in the hot sun. The museum currently costs 250,000TL. Not so much for hotel rooms, but just about everything else is really pretty cheap here. Most of what is in the museum is what was found in Troy. They start with a nice diagram of the layers of Troy.

The holdings include-Grave stele in marble-Pots and vases from Troy-Not much from the famous Troy-Roman statue from Troy 9-Pins and mirrors-Statues-Headbands that look like roaring 20s

There was a bust of a Roman Emperor. It was recognizable. This led me to wonder. It is not every stonecutter who can make such a good bust. How many stonecutters have even seen the emperor? And copies of copies already start to look very different. How would they make so many busts of the Emperor? How did they get them all to look alike? The standard explanation just does not seem to hack it, unless there is something I don’t know.

After the museum we walked back toward our hotel (here called an “otel”). Along the way I took pictures. I got lucky and passed a backyard wrestling match with oiled wrestlers, a la the film Topkapi. I continued snapping pictures of shops, horse carts, food in windows, etc. We stopped for a late lunch: soup, the local version of pizza (lahmacun), and Pepsi. Good stuff. From there we got a bus ticket for Izmir. We dropped things off in the room, and went to sit on dock and write.

As we were sitting and writing a cat came along. I tried to be friendly, but she preferred the unwilling Evelyn. She climbed up on Evelyn’s lap and would not leave. All these women who have their heads covered and seemed so serious, even when I try to be friendly, come over to smile to see the cat sitting in Evelyn’s lap. Cats have a special appeal here, I guess.

While we are sitting the boy from the travel agency sees us and comes out to invite us in to talk later. Frankly we are not anxious. Though I think I probably should go and argue against having an Islamic state in Turkey. I realize I am a bit out of my depth. What arguments would I give? I guess that I barely trust a government to make roads, I certainly do not want them interpreting what they think is God’s Law and trying to enforce it. The countries that do follow that path seem to have followed it to a dead end. And they fall into that path in part because their attitude is getting people ready for the next life not improving this life. Religious states seem to be bred of despair. We cannot care for our people in this life so we will do all the spiritual stuff just perfectly. We will be one of the world leaders in getting the spiritual stuff right. Far better than apparently wealthy nations. Basically they are choosing to re-define the goals of the game so that they CAN win. And if you assume their religion is correct, I suppose they are winning, but really it is only a power play. Most counties have some fundamentalists who want to see the government enforcing the laws of their religion. They say what I see as the proper rules the government should apply to everybody. Then it becomes “what I see as the proper belief should be what everybody believes.” That is not what government is for. And the governments that try to enforce spirituality fall into disease and poverty and misery. Yet every country seems to have some zealots who want to go that way. They think that is what will make God happy. I doubt it. I think that Kemal Ataturk agreed. He has strong separations between the religion and the state here. It goes beyond the separation in the US. For example, only secular marriages are legal. I hope this remains a secular state. Well, it is more than that. There are other states in the Middle East that are secular, but the religion still drives much of the policy. Not so here. That seems to make a difference.

Well, we got some snacks for the room and some postcards for our families and for work then went back to the room. The room did not appear to want the snacks so we ate some of them ourselves. At about 8 we went out to sample the baked sweets that are so popular here. We got some baklava and brought it up to the room to eat. Of course we had no utensils. I had to figure how to cut a block of baklava without a knife. I could have used my pocket knife, but it would probably never have been the same. I had to find a disposable knife. And a loop of dental floss worked very nicely.

Well, it livened up one evening. I did not bring my Walkman and cassettes this trip. With no classical station we can listen to the faint signal of the BBC or listen to local FM radio. The music is not great and listening to Turkish ads is the pits. I wonder what Paul Theroux for kicks.

Well, this is a special night. April 30 is the real Halloween, Walpurgis Nacht. This is when the witches’ sabbat really is. And would you believe it, nobody invited me.

Your diploma was written on sheepskin because Alexander the Great died so young. Some history. Alexander the Great captured the known world but had little preparation for what would happen after his death, particularly because he died so young in 323 AD. One of his generals Lysimachus got a great deal of the spoils. He secured the spoils in Pergamum, posting Philatarus, a eunuch, to watch the treasure. He then went off with hopes to win the rest of Asia Minor by defeating Seleucus. Philatarus faithfully awaited his master guarding the treasure. Eventually word came that Lysimachus had been defeated. This no doubt came as a terrible shock to Philatarus. Here he was guarding all this treasure and, darn it, there was nobody left to guard it for. Philatarus his lost his whole purpose in life. So he decided to go into politics, setting himself up as governor of Pergamum. The city stayed in the family down to Eumenes II who really built the place up including the medical center and the library. The most controversial move was to greatly extend the library. It had more than 200,000 books and was drawing scholars from Alexandria, which had 700,000 books. Egypt got worried and said that no more papyrus would go to Pergamum. This caused a problem in Pergamum. Some substitute for papyrus had to be found. Animal skin was used. Parchment was invented, or in Latin “pergamen.” Eventually however Pergamum became a province of Rome and when the library at Alexandria burned, Marc Anthony basically stole the library of Pergamum to restock Alexandria.

At 10:30 we decided it was getting late and we had to check out and get to the travel agent. At 10:36 we decided we had plenty of time and went instead to sit on the dock and take pictures. Things get done very fast here and most tourist-related things are very close to each other. Finally we are getting the sort of weather that makes you want to sit outside. Sitting on the dock and watching the rusty boats. This is a pleasant place to be if you are a rich tourist. Still this does seem to be a prosperous country. It has an active economy.

We go to the tour office and I work on the log. A young boy is scraping at the window to remove one of the destinations. When he is dome he comes over to see the little computer. I try to think what he would find interesting to see. Spreadsheets probably would not transcend the language barrier very well. I bring up the world map that shows what is dark and what is light right now. I show him where Istanbul is on the map. Now the clerk is also looking. The boy tells me to show him the map. I point out Istanbul. The clerk points out Canakkale on the East Coast of Africa. “Aegean” he says pointing to the Atlantic Ocean. I tell him no. Not quite.

Bus trips are a good opportunity to see how a wide range of people lives. There are people selling what I call bagels, but really are not like we think of bagels. They are about one inch in diameter and formed into larger rings maybe five inches in diameter. They are coated in toasted sesame. You see people selling things on sticks in the streets. They also are sold from glass-sided carts on the street. They seem very popular.

Maybe a third of the women wear head covering, even in hot weather. Only the husband may see his wife’s hair. It is how we feel about breasts. Even more unfortunate is that women cannot appear to be happy or friendly. Any smiling seems to have a sexual connotation. Being pleasant to people is a character flaw, to have low morals. It is making life unpleasant to no good purpose. Do they think that the women without head covering are constantly being raped? I doubt it.

After we travel I start to see camels. I have never seen camels like we see here. They are shaggy here. They have coats like sheep or even more like bison. Their features seem really exaggerated. They have really big lips. The first one I saw I was not sure was a camel, but I have seen two now. I have to watch for more. This area is mostly farmland with the occasional fields of sheep. We also see chickens. The chickens in Turkey are all free-range chickens. I don’t think it would even occur to them to raise a chicken in a box. That takes American genius.

At about 12:55 we stopped for lunch. Not as good as the Kofte Sandwich of our last bus trip, but still just fine. Evelyn has liver and rice;

I had fried eggplant and yogurt. For desert we shared a clay-pot rice pudding. A good meal for under $4 American. Evelyn took just about all the liver and left me just about all the eggplant. We were going to share, but at least at home I am not a big fan of liver. I was perfectly willing to eat half the liver, but she assumed I would hate it and took it herself. Actually liver is a nice surprise to me. It is something unhealthy that I am not fond of. There are so many foods that I like but are unhealthy or that are healthy but I don’t like them. It is a nice thing to find that a food I don’t like is unhealthy also.

At home I am not tremendously fond of eggplant, but here it is terrific. Put it in yogurt, add some red pepper, and sop it up with bread. Wow! I think when I go home I will eat more bread and yogurt. Eggplant made well will be a little harder to find.

I tried to tell Evelyn about the camels I saw. She didn’t see them and does not believe me. I let it go. We will probably see more. Let her think I am kidding for now. Where there are two camels there are bound to be more. I hope. The road follows the water and is quite beautiful some places.

I don’t quite follow what just happened. These buses have coolers with foil covered cups of water. People go to the back and pull out cups as they want them. I tried and the steward pulled my arm out and handed me one instead. He was keeping a Coke bottle in there and was probably afraid I would take that.

Tea is very big in Turkey. Pretty much wherever you go you see people drinking from little demitasse tea glasses. They are about three inches high, half that in circumference, and with a rounded waist. People have them delivered on trays to offices. You see a lot of delivery boys with tea trays carried with a tripod handle arrangement. There will be little tea glasses or Turkish coffee cups on trays. And yes, there is some Turkish coffee served but not nearly so much as the tea.

We each get a little cup of Fanta orange soda at 3:20. It is almost like airplane service.

Well, now. That was strange. That was very strange. About an hour ago I asked when would we get to Bergama. “Twenty minutes.” Nope. About forty minutes later the steward comes to me and says “Bergama. Let’s go.” I pick up my briefcase. The bus stops in the middle of nowhere by the side of the road. Before we know it out luggage is out and on the ground. Somebody whistled for a taxi. A driver pulls up and starts talking to us in German. When he finds out we are American he talks in a combination of German and English.

He organizes us, saying that he has a cheap place to stay-the Boblingen Pension. I might have said no thanks, but Evelyn points out it is recommended in the guidebook. This is not just a fast shuffle. The price is 3 million a night. $12. We had been paying 12,500,000TL. Even the guidebook that recommends this place says it is more expensive than that. The owner lived for many years in Germany, it says in the book. Could this be him? (P.S. Actually no, it isn’t. We never found out the relationship of the cab driver to the Boblingen Pension.) He talks about “Clinton sex scandal.” I can make out only about two sentences in three. We get to the place and it is spotlessly clean, surprisingly cheap, the most comfortable-looking room so far. Okay, let’s let him organize us. We don’t even check in, he just takes our bags to the room. He arranges to pick us up the next day. I think I trust him. Evelyn has other information from the Internet about this place. People who have stayed here liked it. Okay, so we stay.

We went up to his terrace above the building. I read the guest book. I am now convinced that the owner runs pretty much the best guesthouse in Turkey and kidnaps people to it so that everybody knows it. To look at his guest book everybody really does LOVE this place. The guest book is full of praise and the last entries were three different glowing reviews from yesterday. The guy must like what he is doing. He busts a gut and then charges a pittance compared to the hotels.

After sitting up in the terrace for a while we decide to go back to the room and then head out to get bus tickets for the next day. What we discover is that the Lonely Planet’s maps are not really to be trusted, but you can ask Turks if you are going in the right direction and they are happy to be helpful. The ticket-seller apparently knows English and has some good fun with our attempts to use Turkish to buy the tickets.

Next comes dinner. Well there are a variety of restaurants to choose from. As we are walking we run into a Canadian couple, the Sammons, who were on our bus to Canakkale, We also ran into them two or three times at the last site. He is a retired school teacher come to see Troy and other places he had taught about. Anyway, we run into them on the street. They are also staying at the same pension we are. We invite them to dinner but they just ate. We asked if they recommend the place and they did with some reservations. We decide to eat there. We share a cucumber tomato salad and some toasted cheese sticks. Then we have the mixed grill. They bring us chicken kabaps. We have some wait before they bring us what we ordered. It is good though.

From there we return to the pension. We met the real owner. He invited us up to the terrace for the nightly get-together. There is not much other entertainment so people get together to drink and talk each night. We figure if nothing is happening we can work on our logs. So up we go. We are the first to arrive and are happily working on our logs when the owner realizes we are up there alone. I think he thinks we really need someone up there or we will be disappointed. He does not know how far behind we are in our logs. So he joins us and tries to make conversation in Turkish, German, and just a bit of English. We have English and just a bit of German. That kept the conversation on the superficial level. He worked making air filters in Germany. I asked him how he was treated since I know that Turkish labor has a hard time in Germany. He did not understand the question and said he had been there 14 years.

Eventually the owner’s son showed up with a Japanese guest. The guest was a gardener and a martial arts expert. Eventually Craig, a New Zealander, joined us. Craig was fun to talk to. He had a sort of light-headed quality almost as if he were just barely drunk or stoned.

Craig went to Anzac Day because he thought it would be a hoot. But he talked to someone who was really into the battle and told him what it was all about. Now he thinks he might even want to read a book about Gallipoli.

I talked to the Japanese gardener. He was born in Brazil where his father was a farmer. The son was working in the tobacco fields at age 3. I passed along a question from a friend at work. Why are we seeing no more new Japanese samurai films? These are great films. Well, the samurai story is still being done for TV, but the Japanese film industry is going broke. They cannot compete with American films. I guess the thriving far-east film industry is Hong Kong’s.

We talked about sports, movies, camels (rare in Turkey, but there are some), vests, differences between British English and American English, and where water is safe.

As I was sitting there I fell prey to one of the real problems of travel for me. I felt a cold coming on. Vitamin C usually stops a cold dead for me when I am home. Not so when I travel. I don’t know the reason for the difference. Part of it may be that I can avoid chills better at home. Still the Vitamin C is worth a try. When I got back to the room I took a heavy dose.

It was nearly midnight when I went to bed.

We went to breakfast at 8:30 and it was the usual Turkish breakfast. There was bread butter, cream (processed) cheese, jelly, hard-boiled egg, tomato, cucumber, and tea. The Sammons joined us at our table out on the balcony. We talked about places we had visited.

After breakfast I signed the guestbook with: “What can we tell you that you don’t already know? You find poor travelers stranded on the road and whisk them to one of the best bargains in Turkey. Everything you do is the best it could be and at the same time it is the least expensive night we have spent. When you pick people up everything seems too good to be true, and then it proves to be both good and true. Thanks for a great time.”

After breakfast the taxi was waiting so we went off to our first site, the Acropolis. As I explained about Pergamum this was a city built on the treasure of one of Alexander’s generals after his death. It had ties eventually to the Roman Empire, not necessarily to the betterment of the city. There are all sorts of ruins all over the world, but when you picture someone visiting ruins; it is generally Greco-Romans with columns and capitols. We have seen ruins all over the world, but none have ever been Greco-Roman until now. This is the real thing, high on a hill overlooking Bergama. There are stone pillars; there is a hillside theater and a library (which I talk about elsewhere). There is a temple to worship the Emperor Trajan. At the base of the Acropolis there are arches that have grown old gracefully. Vines grow from the arches as if they were planned. It is a beautiful photograph. Now it is entirely the wrong period but as I walk around the ruins I hum Bernard Herrmann’s music for JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS. It is about the only film I know where ruins play an important part. Not the greatest film but a very good adventure that still captures my imagination. I wonder how far this is from Thessaly.

Evelyn goes to sit down since it is a difficult walk up, but I want to explore the ruins a little longer. They are partially reconstructed, but you do see the pillars and the capitol and get a feel. It gets a real polyglot of visitors. Our driver who is already hitting us for 5 million (which I understand is an incredible rip-off) has me pay the parking. Well, it is not much in American terms. Where it hurts is that it causes inflation, which hurts the common people.

On the way down the hill we stop at the Red Basilica. This is one of those buildings that have survived the Christian times and the Islamic times. I noticed that the lower brick looks newer so I suspect at some point the brick was propped up. Evelyn finds some old stones with Hebrew. When we translate the date, however, it is only from the 1870s. Everywhere there are bright red poppies growing. We think those flat plastic things that people give out for some charity are poppies, but the real thing has a bright, rich red, just slightly purple color.

Our driver told us take as long as we want, 30, 40 minutes. There just is not a lot to see at the Red Basilica and when we come out we find he has driven off somewhere on personal business. Well, we rest for a while. It is only a matter of five or ten minutes.

There is not a lot to see at the Asclepion, but it is choice. This was in Roman times a medical center founded by the greatest of the ancient physicians, Galen (131-210 AD). Having been cured and impressed by the Asclepion of Epidaurus in Greece, he set up shop here to do the same sort of wonders. He developed the science looking at the circulatory and nervous system and systematizing discoveries that had already been made. Pergamum became famous. But it was too good to last. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius heard of Galen’s greatness and ordered him to Rome where he became the Emperor’s personal physician, undoubtedly limiting Galen’s studies.

That far back doctors used the snake, a symbol of the medical profession. Why the snake? He sheds his skin and apparently is young again. So should the patient. Here again we see a theater. Again some picturesque shady arches. There is a stream of water said to cure what ails you. I took a sip in the hopes it would do something for my cold. Somehow I think chicken soup would do more. We got back in the cab and road back to the pension. We got our luggage and walked to bus terminal. We traded our 2:30 ticket for a 12:30 one. The man at the desk looked like Treat Williams with a big Turkish moustache.

We went to a stand and ordered two Pepsis. We made the mistake of not asking how much and paid for it to the tune of 400,000TL. They saw us coming. Always ask the price first.

The current plan seems to be the best. We do the visiting of sites in the morning when we are fresh. Then we are exhausted we board a bus and see Turkey through a window while we rest. The only thing better is to take a night train or bus. That saves you a night in a hotel and the travel effectively takes no time from touring. You don’t want to do too much of that however since you will die of exhaustion, particularly of you have trouble sleeping on trains or buses. I find we are taking this trip more leisurely than we used to. Perhaps it is age catching up with us.

The first leg of the trip takes us to Izmir, sort of a travel hub in Turkey. There is no stop for lunch along the way. It has gotten sunny. Izmir is a big bus station. We get directions for the bus to Salihli and find it in the dark terminal. We get on the bus to Salihli. It is dark in the terminal but I try to write a little. A family gets on with an older woman who has just had what appears to be breast surgery. Her family stretches her across the aisle. She is cold and they turn off her air conditioning and the woman next to me, her daughter I guess and is later confirmed, covers her with what appears to be a piece of cloth no thicker than a kerchief. I offer my jacket. The woman who is caring for her thanks me, but refuses. A little while later I draw a sketch of the seats of the bus showing the back seat is a bench seat her mother could lay across. She motions to me that her mother would get sick. But her mother is clearly uncomfortable on the seat. My briefcase is soft-sided. With my jacket inside it is reasonably soft on one side and would make a pillow. She gives this to her mother and her mother likes it. Well, at least I could do something to improve the situation.

The family seems to be somewhat happier. One of the men asks to lend him the Lonely Planet to see what is in it. I do. We try to talk but there is too much language barrier to get much across. They offer me a candy, which I take. The woman tells me the sick woman is her mother. Suffice it to say the family and I are friendly by the end of the trip. I think it is that they did not expect an American to take such an interest in their sick mother.

Our bus eventually pulled into the station and I waved goodbye to the family. There are two (2) hotels in town. One is the $75/night Hotel Berrik and one is the $10/night Hotel Yener. Guess which one we picked?

The condition of the room was surprisingly comparable to $10/night places from my own country. Okay, perhaps that is harsh. It was reasonable. Almost clean. The window is broken but none of the glass has fallen out. It just won’t swing open. There is just a sort of sharp edge. But it will keep out the cold, of which there is little in Salihli there is little cold. It will also keep us from opening the window to let a little cool air in. There is an old puzzle section of a newspaper left in the drawer which would be entertainment if I knew Turkish and it wasn’t mostly filled out. The bathroom door stays closed only if it is firmly locked; otherwise it swings open. Luckily it has a latch lock. Unfortunately, the lock is on the outside. You can lock it shut from the outside, but there is no way to close the door from the inside or to unlock it if it is locked. I guess there are different cultural assumptions as to why you would lock a door here. The Hotel Yener is one of the Top Ten listed in Historic Flophouses of the Middle East. I ask Evelyn how much $70 a night would really set us back. How about $80?

We dropped our stuff and went out to explore the streets. There was a sort of farmers’ market between where we were staying and the bus station. Pretty much any town of any size will have such a farmers’ market on the weekend.

Actually it is interesting that there is a concept of a weekend in Turkey. In Europe and the US the weekend is the Jewish and the Christian Sabbath. In a predominately Islamic country there is nothing particularly special about Saturday or Sunday. Having those days off was really part of the modernization mandated by Ataturk. He aligned the country with Europe, specifically ignoring religious considerations. That policy has helped the country economically but has antagonized religious fundamentalists. To me it seems like a good tradeoff, but it leaves unfinished business. It pits the government against what many Turks feel is the voice of God.

We walked around. I suggested we each buy an orange so we went to one of the many orange merchants who, before we could stop him had cut open an orange to give us samples. Now we said to each other we wanted six. I asked for six and he started weighing six kilos. No. Stop. Heyer! That stopped him. We finally settled on two kilos, 9 oranges. Well, our hotel does not serve breakfast, so oranges will be our breakfast. I also bought a towel for 400,000TL. Then it was back to the room.

We have one radio station with decent music. It also is the one station with a horrible hum, as if someone is jamming it. For most of the rest of the stations they seem to go in heavily for The Middle Eastern Beat. I wonder why.

I did some writing and dozed a little in the late afternoon and early evening. Then we went out to dinner. One of the clerks from the hotel looks like us as if he had caught us in a mistake. See you are going out, but you missed that there is a restaurant right in the hotel.

Probably offering food with the same high standards of the room. No, thank you. We find a restaurant a few blocks away. I order the special. The dinner is a few pieces of pizza (kiymali pide) plus a mixed grill with a different kind of bread, salad, and yogurt. [I discuss the two kinds of pizza in Turkey on May 12.]

We pick up a large (1.5 liter) water on the way back. Then we head back to room. We write and listen to the radio. From the street we hear jazz clubs. It is a real cacophony. You hear the kids in the street, the music from three sources blending together and street noises.

I was passing the time pointing out the wonders of our room and telling her that we really could afford better. In the middle of it all the power went out. “Oh, now that slices the bacon.” Sitting in the dark I asked Evelyn, “Would you like an orange?” That required no power. After about 10 minutes the lights come on and we continue working on our logs.

Someone is practicing football down below our window. Every time they hit a store front with the paneling down it sounds like a large firecracker has gone off. This is our Saturday night in Salihli. Even in Turkey you have people who have to rev their engines and make as much noise as possible after most people are asleep. I don’t understand the mentality that says I have the power use my engine to disturb people so I will.

I go to sleep trying to watch from memory the film Jason and the Argonauts.

For my next problem I have to figure out what to do about the bathroom door. I grab the puzzle section of the newspaper. Evelyn looks at me like I am weird. I repeatedly fold it in half. “What are you doing?” “I am folding a doorstop for the bathroom.” “Good idea!” Well, that is really a big part of what I do for a living. I look at the tools available and decide how to use them to make things better. Like the pillow I improvised from a briefcase yesterday. I am not saying it is a brilliant idea, but I am pleased I thought of it.

We have breakfast in the room. We share between us three oranges. One has very little juice and I suspect is a good deal older than the other two. After breakfast we finish packing and head for the bus terminal where we hop a bus for Sardis (a.k.a. Sart).

We get off the bus and walk to the ruins. We check our heavy backpacks at the ticket booth. Then we look at the complex. The first thing we get to is the Hall for the Imperial Cult. The next thing that we see is the Sammons, the retired school teacher and his wife. Once again our paths crossed. Actually they probably crossed several times, but frequently we would not see each other because we were at the point where they cross hours apart. We only really notice them when our paths cross and we are at the crossing point at the same time. That was what happened about now. Of course, if we consider time as if it were a fourth spatial dimension, then our paths would not really be crossing unless we were both there at the same time. So I guess the usual meaning for us seeing each other when our paths cross really makes a sophisticated assumption about space and time.

Anyway we said “hello” and compared travel notes. Then we continued on through the Hall for the Imperial Cult. It has swimming pool and imperial Ionic columns in front in two layers. Much of the decoration still has Greek text. Continuing on there is a Synagogue, but since its entrance is at the far end you must circle it around Jewish shops like Jacob’s Paintshop, Hardware, Shop of Jacob, the elder of the synagogue. Entering the synagogue you do not see any stars of David. Perhaps that is a symbol established in a later year. The decorations are in large part geometrical ones made from arcs of circles. At one end there are statues of double lions facing in opposite directions. A large workbench-like object is said to be for offerings. (Offerings? Were there still offerings at that time?) It has lion paws for its feet. At a kilometer or two distance is the Temple of Artemis, a large ruin with two large stone columns and a good deal more. You have to climb the hill behind it to see the whole layout. We will be seeing another Temple to Artemis that will be more impressive; in fact it is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

On the way back to the ticket stand we see more columns and rocks by the side of the road that we must have missed when we walked by the first time. This must have been the temple district.

We talked to the Sammons in both directions. They are Pat and Mary Lynne Sammon. Pat taught Latin, but there was not much demand for this talent so he taught mathematics and other subjects. Part of what we talked about is how much popular Turkish radio stations sound like our pop stations and how the world is homogenizing. We picked up our luggage and the bus to Izmir was right on time. We grabbed it and paid for our seats. I worked on my log. It occurred to me that we were all thirsty after our walk. The buses provide chilled water in foil covered cups. I grabbed four and passed them out to the two couples. I think they turn the air conditioning on for five minutes each hour but after being in the hot sun it was worth it. We see an awful lot of American brands here. We pass a building decorated with an eight-foot mock-up of a can of Pringles Potato Chips. How do they fit into Turkish culture? About the only thing that seems Turkish about them is the moustache on the man on the can.

We get to the Izmir bus terminal and find the bus to Selcuk (actually someone asked us where we were going and then led us there). We paid our tickets and boarded. Evelyn saw a bread stand outside our window and since it was 12:30 and we were unlikely to stop for lunch she went and got bread. It was cheap, but not all that good. For 160,000TL she got two toasted sesame bagels (described on May 1) and a sort of cheese thing in phylo dough. It would have been good fresh, but it was all stale and dry. It was filling, however. (Later when I got one of the sesame bagel things that was closer to fresh, it was a lot better.)

Somebody got on and tried to sell us a room at a hotel called Nazar in Selcuk. I had seen hotels that that swarm you as you arrive on the bus, but it is really unusual to start trying to sell you before you even get to the city. The hotel business must be really cutthroat in Turkey. The place really was recommended in Lonely Planet and he was offering it at 4 million a night. We agreed to look at the place. How wrong could we go for $16? The Lonely Planet recommended it at $25.

There was a cute little boy on bus with a rash on his face. He was walking up and back on the aisle and whenever I saw him I made a different face. It calmed him down and tested my creativity. I napped a bit and apparently the boy came around to offer Evelyn and me a taste of his lollypop while I was asleep. Evelyn woke me up as we entered the town. There is a hill with a very large citadel. You can see it from the road. It looks like some of the walled forts in India. You can see it from the outside, but it is not open to the public. Ayasoluk is the name of the hill so I suppose you could call it it the Ayasoluk Fort, but there is no name for it given in the Lonely Planet.

Leaving buses can be a sudden affair here. We entered Selcuk and were sort of tapped on the shoulder. Moments later we were off the bus. I made one last face at the boy as I was leaving. We were met by the owner of our hotel and were led there where we inspected the rooms, found them to be reasonable, and were invited up to the terrace for tea. This was my first taste of the apple tea supposedly so popular here. It is quite good. It tastes a lot about hot apple cider. Some people claim that it really only a tourist-related item. Others say it really has caught on with the locals. It tastes better than any tea that I remember having at home.

A brother of the owner talked to us about conditions in Turkey and anything else that the four of us had questions about. We explained that were not really travelling with the Sammons, we just repeatedly ran into them.

Back at the room I took a shower. There are two taps. If you turn on the one on the left the water is always cold, if you turn on the one on the right the water is room temperature. Perhaps the water is not hot all day.

We went out to walk to get the lay of the land and found ourselves in a touristy section. This is one of two parallel streets that have a lot of restaurants and things set up to cater to the tourist trade. The other one street over has the remains of a Roman aqueduct. Between them they seem to be preparing for some sort of celebration. There is also a big outdoor film screen being put up. As we were trying some other street, I commented to Evelyn that what we had seen was probably part of the aqueduct. Like with the camels she did not believe me that we had passed ruins. She missed them entirely. I said yes we had passed some ruins. Hadn’t she seen the stork on top of one? She hadn’t but she knew that one of the attractions to the area was to see the storks nesting on top of the aqueduct. I hadn’t read that, I just saw a stork on an aqueduct. Now she wanted to see so we went back. Indeed several of the aqueduct supports had stork nests. Most of the aqueduct is gone but the supports are still there. I got some pictures.

Evelyn wanted to find the tourist agency and only had a vague idea how to do that. We went searching and found it. Evelyn asked some questions and got a map. I got a sort of chachka, a woven map pattern. I will decorate my workstation at work. Now what. I suggested sitting in a park we passed. It is near a playground where some children are playing football (what you call soccer, Yank). As we write a couple little girls of 13 come around to watch us write in our logs and to ask about us. They want to see the Lonely Planet. Eventually conversation runs out and they just sort of stare at us. How can we be entertaining? I pull out my pad and rip off a square of paper and fold a flapping bird. I take it origami is new in their lives. There are four children and I fold each a figure. They go off, one at a time, and bring us rosebuds from the bushes. I am not sure they are supposed to be doing this, but they want to give us something to show their thanks. I fold four figures and we are given three rosebuds. I just wish it were larger paper. The figures are imperfect because they are too tiny and rushed. A couple of men see the tail end and say I should teach the kids how to fold the figures. I tell him I would like to. They ask how I learned and I say I have been folding since I was a small boy. Origami is perfect for a poor country like Turkey. There is a lot of paper available and otherwise children probably have a hard time getting toys. If they learned origami they could make their own toys. I should fold children more origami.

It is now about 5:20 and we just had some bread for lunch. We find a cafe with outdoor dining. I order a spicy salad and get served Haydari instead. Fine. Evelyn ordered and got mushroom salad. For main course she got lamb on bamboo skewers. I got mixed grill. For once it was a substantial portion. The wind blew up while we were sitting they and blew over flower vases, napkin racks, menus, etc. The cafe was a total mess. I had apple tea for desert; Evelyn had Turkish coffee. When the bill came they had charged me for the salad I ordered and not the tea or coffee. So the bill came to 2.3 million and should have come to 2.4 million. I could have tried to explain but decided it was not worth it. I left 2.5 million and had the waiter keep the change. We stopped on the way back to the room to get water. 150,000TL is a little high. I asked how much it was and the woman behind the counter showed me by pulling out a 100,000TL and a 50,000TL note. I gave her 250,000TL and she gave me back the 100,000TL note.

I think by this point I can declare victory over my cold. I am 48 hours into the cold and cannot detect symptoms. That is a real relief. The cold I got on our Southeast US trip lasted me four months! This one lasted me a day and a half.

We were sitting writing when there was a sort of ruckus in the street. It was sort of a rudimentary parade. There were a couple of people with a banner and a truck carrying children. Mothers were bringing children and putting them on the back of the truck. I think it was some sort of political campaigning.  Evelyn thinks it is an ad for beer. Most likely it is a circumcision day celebration.

I wrote for a while longer, finally getting caught up about 9:45pm. I celebrated with the rest of the hazelnut cookies I bought in Canakkale and a can of Cappy Cherry.

Bringing the short-wave instead of a Walkman, speakers, and a few cassettes has been something of a bust. I can get only three English language short-wave stations: 15.575 for BBC, 15.640 for Israel, and 11.850 for Voice of Russia. Only the last comes in really at listenable strength.

Let’s see, if this is Monday this must be Selcuk. Salihli was not really a tourist town. They had one site several miles away. So the accommodations were not very good. There were one low-end place and two middle to high-end hotels. Selcuk seems to have a lot of hotels and much more competition and as a result it is a lot easier to get a comfortable room.

The one thing that seems to be a universal problem is that the covers do not really cover the bed. A little tossing in the night and your legs or arms are uncovered. The other problem in many places is that you cannot sit straight on the toilet. It is too close to the wall or the sink or the cutoff for the bidet so you have to sit at an angle. These are all minor inconveniences.

Selcuk is set in a hilly region. Mary Lynne asked someone yesterday the name of these mountains. Turkey has mountains and they are name. This is just a hilly region and there is no name for the hills, they are too insignificant. It is interesting, but none of the people want to be in the European Union. The people I have talked to are all relatively pleased that the country was rejected. They think that the country has resources that have not been tapped yet and the do not want to give them up to the Europeans. They think that the country can become rich if it stays on its own.

The film Prince of Darkness was about alternate interpretations of Christianity and it talked about a mystical “Brotherhood of Sleep” who knew the true purpose of Christianity to fight an evil force. I wonder if the inspiration came from the local Grotto of the Seven Sleepers. The legend says that agents of the Emperor Decius, trying to suppress Christianity pursued seven Christian boys. The boys hid in a cave where they could not be retrieved. The pursuers could not get the boys so the cave was sealed so the boys could not dig their way out. Two centuries passed. One day there was an earthquake and the wall blocking the cave crumbled. The seven youths arose from a sleep and walked to town to find their friends and food. Instead they found the town was now Christian, but all their friends were long dead. They lived out the rest of their lives with these strangers and when they died they were buried in the cave. This could also be the inspiration for Rip Van Winkle.

We hear the people just outside the door going to breakfast. They sound Australian. It is funny how few Americans we see here. I guess it makes sense that we would see a lot of Australians and New Zealanders, but I would have expected to see a slightly higher proportion of Americans. We ran into one set of Canadians (whom I consider to be “Americans” coming as they do from North America, though they don’t use that term to apply to themselves) but I don’t think we have run into many other travelers from the US. At least none long enough to talk to for long.

We have to ask at the desk if there is a bus to the ruins at Ephesus.

We go up to breakfast. Everywhere Turkish breakfast seems much the same. It is bread, hardboiled egg, tomato, jelly, honey, butter, cheese, and in this case cheese. I am eating it leisurely and the owner comes to our table. You have less than five minutes before your ride leaves. Okay. I have a ride? Well they did say something quickly about a shuttle to the ruins. I had thought it was an option. Suddenly I have a ride leaving in minutes. Evelyn says to send them on, she cannot possibly be ready in five minutes. “Well, maybe we give you a little more time.” I have a ride? Well, I am ready to go in the five minutes and it takes Evelyn a little longer but we are the in the lobby and there is a woman who will take us to the ruins. “We must hurry because there will be crowds at the ruins.” It is just us and the Sammons. So we pile into the van and in a few minutes we are at Ephesus.

“We pick you up in two hours and take you to my carpet shop. I am married to cousin of owner of your hotel. You don’t have to buy. You buy, we smile. You don’t buy. We smile.” So that’s it. As far as I have been able to tell, since Turkey was rejected from the European Union, the government would like better economic relations with the United State. The individual Turk has his own desires. He would like that Mark and Evelyn Leeper would come and visit his carpet shop. Right now the economic plans are on hold and the country is working full time to get Mark and Evelyn Leeper into carpet shops. Turkey has more carpet salesmen than the US has lawyers but otherwise the two professions have the same standard of ethics. In the US lawyers actually have to chase ambulances while in Turkey carpet salesmen just lay in wait under the nearest rock for a tourist to come by.

Pat and Mary Lynne take over this delicate negotiation. “But we don’t know how long we want to be at Ephesus.” “That is Okay, two hours is plenty.” “We want to go at our own pace.” “Then we cannot know when to pick you up.” “We don’t want to be picked up, and we don’t want to go to a carpet shop.” “Will you take my card if you change your mind?” I take the card.

A street boy is selling books and maps of Ephesus. He wants a million for a map, I offer 500,000TL. I get the map. On the way in we see at the admission box the same map is selling for 750,000TL.

What is Ephesus? It is the best-preserved Roman Empire city in the world. If you want to know what life was like in the time of the Roman Empire, this is the place. It recovered from an attack by Cimmerians in the 7th century BC to become prosperous in the 6th Century. It was ruled by the Lydians and the Persians. Alexander captured the city with no resistance but when he died the city went to Lysimachos. He brought the city to new artistic heights. Rome later ruled Ephesus but it was attacked and destroyed by the Goths in 262 AD.

Our first stop is at the theater. It was built in the third century BC. It held 24,000. It was built in the shape of a huge parabolic reflector. The structure is good for the view and better for the acoustics. It was used for plays and for more violent entertainment like gladiatorial fights and wild animal fighting. We first sit up in the peanut gallery but also stand on the stage. Voices really carry to the audience and back. After a while we move on. We were wondering however how they convince a slave to die on stage. They used to really kill a slave for realism.

The next biggee was the Library of Celsus, built 117-120 AD. It is a big two-story affair with a facade with two layers of pillars. Across the street from the library was a building identified in all sources as a bordello. On it are signs saying it was falsely identified as a bordello, but was really just a fancy house with a lot of rooms. You can believe whom you wish. Being right across the street from the library may have led to interesting dilemmas as to which way to for knowledge.

The alleged bordello was where excavators found a small statue of Priapos, a little man with an enormous phallus. A little further on there was the Latrina. There are no dividers between the seats and commoners and Emperors used it alike, though presumably the Emperor on the go could go to the head of the line for immediate seating.

The academic baths feature rooms to heat up and cool off after baths: a tepiariam, a calidarium, and a frigidariam. Most of the third floor has disappeared, but the lower floors could be identified. By this point the other tour groups were beginning to be a pain.

We walked further ending up going through a field where we saw a particularly well-armored thistle. Mary Lynne looked at it and dubbed it a triffid. Evelyn and I looked at each other. “She knows about triffids.” A triffid is a particularly nasty carnivorous plant from a novel by John Wyndham. One of my supervisors at one point asked me what the novel I was reading The Day of the Triffids was about. I stupidly said it was about man-eating plants and she sort of gave me a sour look. But actually that is not really what it is about. It is about societies and what makes them work and fail. A huge disaster leaves everybody but a handful of people on earth blind. Civilization immediately falls apart and small societies have to reform from start. Round 1 is whether your society falls apart of its own weight. Some do, some don’t. Societies that are entirely unselfish and altruistic fail, for example. Round 2 is whether your society can survive conflicts with other societies. Then if you have survived the first two rounds the question becomes can you survive really nasty disasters out there, worse than people. That is really where triffids come in. It is a really good novel that was the basis for a very mediocre film version and a very good BBC television version.

The thing to do if you have to push past a group is you say “Pardon,” in French with a French accent. If the group is French they know you are not, but they will like you because you are at least speaking their language. If they are German they do not forgive you, but at least they blame the French.

Toward the end of the visit is another theater, this one was at one time covered and had a capacity of about 1500 people. This one was used for concerts and for meetings. We were sitting in the theater when it started to rain. Evelyn and I whipped umbrellas out of our photovests. Mary Lynne was impressed. “Where did you hide those umbrellas?” I didn’t tell her my canteen was in the same pocket. My vest carries a water bottle, an umbrella, field glasses, a camera, a walkie-talkie, spare batteries for my camera and palmtop, earplugs, notepads, a palmtop and the Lonely Planet guide, and I can stash my jacket in the back pocket. I may be missing something. But it all comfortably fits on me. I feel like Batman.

Well, from there we start walking back to town hoping to see the Cave of the Seven Sleepers and the Temple of Artemis along the way. It is a long walk in what becomes the hot sun. If that were not parching enough, I am still on antihistamine. Very quickly my mouth goes dry. When I take a drink of water it feels like pudding. Mary Lynne is shorter than we are but Pat is over six feet with longer legs. He sets the pace. Often he is a fair distance in front of the rest of us. He says he can’t walk any slower.

We find the cave of the Seven Sleepers eventually. We cannot get inside as there is a grate blocking the way. We climbed up above the cave and looked down at it. People had written prayers on cloth and tied them around the grating above. On the way down we got some cold water. It was a bit overpriced at 250,000TL/1.5 Liter but it was good cold.

It was an even longer walk to the Temple of Artemis. The temple did not look its best today. In fact it had not looked very good since it was burnt down in 356 BC by headline-hound Herostratos. He wanted to be famous and he was like the guy who killed John Lennon. This was once one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It is lost to us in large part because it was disassembled by Christians who were building the local St. John Basillica. There appears to be a belief that of you are stealing for your religion it is really okay. A lot of our history has been lost by plunderers trying to please their gods.

A tout selling flutes asked me what country I was from. It is always a mistake to tell since they have a spiel in your language, whatever it might be. I looked at him strangely when he asked in different languages. I finally decided to tell him. “Magyar Repooblic. Hongary.” Mary Lynne said smiling “Buda-Pesh.” There was a little too much grinning and he knew we were lying. Well, lying is a strong word. My mother’s mother was born in Buda-Pesh. Her father was born in Baja. That is Baja, Hungary. But the flute salesman knew no Hungarian.

We continued our walk to town. It was not a lot further beyond the temple. We wanted to go to the museum, but lunch came first. I had Haydari and Octopus Salad. I mean, where else can you get octopus salad? Evelyn had Kofte. We continued on to the Museum of Ephesus. This is a museum to display the are found at Ephesus, as excavations are continuing. The exhibits include statues found at the site. Among the ones more familiar was Eros on a Dolphin. This motif could be familiar to the reader for the Alan Ladd, Sophia Loren film Boy on a Dolphin. Well, they couldn’t call the film Eros on a Dolphin, now could they? There is also the Priapos with the large phallus. There are various carved heads. There is an Ethnographic Section with exhibits of life in the country. There are farm implements, there is a barbershop, that sort of thing. There is the head and arm from an emperor statue seven meters high. It is truly of impressive scale.

We got some small gifts for people at the museum. Outside we sat around waiting for one person or another. A shoeshine boy came up to me. The material of my shoes is leather, but not with the usual finish and I would not trust a shoeshine on the street. The boy asked me where I was from, again I was from the Magyar Republic. He wanted to give me a free sample of what he could do for my shoes on the top of one shoe. Of course once I let him do that the shoes would never look right unless he did this to the whole of both shoes, perhaps not even then if he did not know what he was doing. This struck me as a particularly bad idea. I got up walked away from him. After all there is little point in getting these shoes polished if tomorrow they would just look dusty again.

The rest of the day does not bear a lot of description. It was farbling over what we would do the next day, what Pat and Mary Lynne would do, etc. We had different ways to do various sites to choose from. From about 6pm on we were in our room writing.

I finished writing about 10pm and read some article I had brought and saved on my palmtop.