Armenian Claims and Historical Facts – Questions and Answers

QUESTION 1: WAS EASTERN ANATOLIA THE ORIGINAL HOMELAND OF THE ARMENIANS?
Even Armenian historians disagree on this question. Let us examine some of their intradictory theories while looking into Anatolian history.
1. The Biblical Noah Theory. According to this idea, the Armenians descended from Hayk, great-great grandson of the Biblical patriarch Noah. Since Noah’s Arc is [...]

Cappadocia

Cappadocia
Cappadocia (pronounced /kæp??do???/; also Capadocia; Turkish Kapadokya, from Greek: ?????????? / Kappadokía) is a region in central Turkey, largely in Nev?ehir Province.
The name was traditionally used in Christian sources throughout history and is still widely used as an international tourism concept to define a region of exceptional natural wonders, in particular characterized by fairy chimneys [...]

Antalya

ANTALYA
Antalya is a city on the Mediterranean coast of southwestern Turkey, and the capital city of Antalya Province. Situated on coastal cliffs, Antalya is surrounded by mountains. Development and investment, began in the 1970s, have transformed the city into an international resort.
History: It is uncertain when the site of the current city was first inhabited. [...]

04/25/98: Arrival Istanbul, Sultanahmet

They are only pre-boarding but everybody is lining up. They want to be among the first to board. I am not sure the advantage unless it is to grab overhead compartment space. In any case the boarding procedure is snafued.
The problem seems to be that they had automatic ticket-taking machines like the ones that work [...]

04/27/98: Istanbul: The Topkapi Palace

We slept in until about 8:15, which is late for us when we travel. It is my tradition to give Evelyn breakfast in bed on the 27th of each month. When we travel it is often difficult, but usually there is a cookie or something of even a little substance. Today the choice was bottled [...]

04/29/98: Canakkale and Gallipoli

January 27th, 2009 Turkiye

Today we visit the beaches of Gallipoli on the Dardenelles. A little history:

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.

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04/30/98: Canakkale and Troy

January 27th, 2009 Turkiye

I have discovered that if you are washing your hands in the bathroom you open the door a crack. It is tough to turn the knob on the door enough to open it and with wet hands it is even worse.

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.

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05/01/98: Transit: Canakkale to Bergamo

January 27th, 2009 Turkiye

I don’t know if it is Turkish beds, the fact I am doing more in a day, or what. At home I am not a good sleeper. I wake up in the night and cannot get back to sleep. I wake up at 5am. Who knows what all. I had no jetlag coming to Turkey and every night I fall asleep within minutes of hitting the pillow. I may wake up, but not for more than a minute or so. Then I wake up at 7am. One morning I woke at 5, but every other morning it is 7am. This is unique for 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.

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05/02/98: Bergamo sites; Transit to Salihli

January 27th, 2009 Turkiye

This was the first night I had some problem sleeping. I woke up about 2:30 and started wondering is there more I could be doing to fight the cold. As I lay there Evelyn got up and started putting on clothing to warm up because the room really was cold. That seemed like a good idea so I turned on the light and got dressed except for my shoes, took an antihistamine and when back to bed. I fell asleep quickly after that and slept well the rest of the night. I woke up with the same tickle in my throat, however.

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.

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05/03/98: Salihli, Sardis, and Selcuk

January 27th, 2009 Turkiye

I slept fairly well. I may have been up for just a few minutes in the night. How is the cold? Hard to say, I am glad to say. Henceforth I take Vitamin C and an antihistamine. On the other hand it could be the waters from the Asclepion.

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.

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