Turkey Vacation.:.online resource for travel guide and vacations in Turkey

It must be just by chance, but in the more comfortable rooms I tend to not sleep as well. This is one of the better rooms yet I woke at 5 and could not get back to sleep. It could be that I napped on the bus. I am at one of those felicitous points when I am caught up in the log. It does not stay that way for long.

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.

Not a good night’s sleep. There was a street fight beneath our window. Two local gangs of toughs clashed. The Rational Empiricists had a serious set-to with the Logical Positivists. All I really know is that there was a lot of barking as the two canine gangs had it out.

I have often wondered why dogs bark. In the wild, dogs never bark. It is only domesticated dogs that bark. I wonder if dogs are really imitating human language in about as well as they are able to coordinate. If wild dogs were domesticated by mutes, would they bark?

As I have noted before dogs are treated differently in Turkey than they are at home. I think they are put out at night and there are a lot more that are homeless and have to fend for themselves. People assume they are fierce, asocial creatures and so they become that way. The two or three dogs that I have shown some affection toward have turned immediately affectionate and responsive, though it could be the real toughs avoid people. The dog I encountered the first day apparently knew she (or he) was frightening the little girl, and was trying to avoid an incident. At least some of the dogs would be more domestic given a chance.

Well, that was something like 4:45. At 5am was the call to prayer. That is on a loudspeaker. You get that in any country with a large Islamic population, but in Egypt just about everything stops. This is a much more liberal country and I have seen no prayer times when lots of people unroll mats and pray.

After that Evelyn went into the bathroom and turned on the light but since the bathroom door has a glass window it sort of lit up the bed. It is now about 6:30. We are now about at the 3/7 point in the trip.

We have a fly in our room. I don’t know if this fly is representative of flies in Turkey in general but she is particularly aggressive. Shoo her away and she just returns or goes to bother Evelyn. Perhaps she is trying to tell us something. “Please come to my carpet store.” At home I have an insect net I would use to capture this beastie and put her outside. Here I have no such appliance.

I was a little surprised at how late I heard relatively young children playing yesterday. It must have been 10pm and they were still making noise and playing games. I am not sure what the school requirement is. You certainly see children out selling shoeshines on the street when their American counterparts are in school.

We are talking about what is Turkish to bring as gifts. Evelyn suggests Turkish Delight. French Fries are not really French, but Turkish Delight is really Turkish. In the late 18th century Ali Muhiddin wanted to make a candy that was easy to chew and swallow. The thing is that he had various sticky soft gums, but if you put two of them touching, they became hard to separate. He came up with the idea of using up all the stickiness holding powdered sugar. He coated the pieces and then it didn’t matter that they were sticky and gummy. The candy was popular in the Imperial Palace with the Sultan’s family. That was all it took to be popular throughout Turkey. Westerners discovered the candy in Turkey and dubbed it Turkish Delight.

The number of languages people seem to know here impresses me. I guess it is important if you are dealing with tourists, but the number is large even by European standards.

We had the same breakfast we have had pretty much every day. After breakfast I went down on the street for water and ran into the Sammons. I said goodbye to them once again. We seem to be forever wishing them a good trip. Evelyn stayed in the room.

Evelyn says this may be our cheapest foreign trip ever. At the current rate it is $3500 for everything including photography, room, plane, everything. That is 875,000,000TL.

Our goal today is three sites of ruins. Each was fairly important in history. Each for different reasons. A one-day trip will get them all.

We were waiting for the minibus pickup early, but it was there early also. We picked up Hari, our guide for the day and another Canadian couple, Peter and Shirley Faris. They are retired and do a lot of travel. He taught school and has an interest in the classics. He is interested in the Mycenian era. Peter said we made a real mistake seeing Turkey before Greece. Greece will be a lot more expensive and less rewarding. The people will not be as nice as the Turks. We suspected as much. Rounding out our group is Uki, a Japanese woman traveling on her own.

We drive through hilly country on the way to Priene. We go past a flood plain. I would not have known it was a flood plan but Peter Faris knows his stuff. We get to the site and it is a stiff climb to the site even after you leave the bus. Here we can see Greek structure because it was not later taken over by the Roman. Hence we are seeing the oldest ruins of the day. At 300 BC this was a meeting place of the League of Ionian Cities. In other words, it was a convention site. It has a theater for secular ceremonies and for plays.

We have sunny weather. The city was placed high on a hill with a rock ledge for support and serving as protection. The guide talked about the childish gods of the time saying it really was not much of a religion. I guess the gods represented little to respect besides power. The temples really became places of business, making loans and being places for merchants. The gold became a motive for the destruction of the temples. The Greek Gods really were a corruption of Babylonian gods and later were corrupted to become the Roman gods. The initial gods were female. To my mind this makes sense because the gods probably are recreations of parent figures we had as small children. Babies have parents who usually take care of them, and who are relatively powerful. That image is imprinted on us. When people grow up they recreate parent figures as gods. Anyway, that is what I think is for me a believable basis of religion.

The columns were fluted and I asked the guide how many ridges the Greeks used. He guessed it would be about 21. We counted and it was 24, the number I would have expected because of its divisors.

The valley below is the Menderes River Valley, but it was at one time the Meander River Valley, giving us a new word. I asked about not the foods in the diet-olives, grapes, and figs, some lamb-but how did they eat them. Given the ingredients of a cake would one necessarily figure out what a cake is like? Too often what we are told is the ingredients of a diet and not really the food that is eaten. He suggested there was little preparation. Simple grilling and frying. I am less than convinced. Otherwise he thinks of these as being highly creative people. Evelyn says that in the Iliad it says people throw meat on the fire and don’t even eat vegetables. But I think we know that is unlikely because that is a very bad diet. I think that is the Homeric poet buying into “Real men don’t eat quiche.” It makes them sound more primal to say they ate that way. These are people who had dairy products and meat. I think we have just lost to history what it was that the ancients really ate. They also had short lifespans, of course. Dying at 50 was living a long time. The guide tried to get us wondering about how the ancients built these buildings. Slaves were not good for labor because you spent too much effort taking care of the slaves. (Of course if you don’t care about your slaves dying on you it can be much more efficient to use slave labor, as the Germans discovered in the 1940s.) But the guide sort of hinted that there might have been mystical methods behind the construction. We saw the theater. We were told some of the basic aspects. This theater as not used for animal fights since the front seats were not raised enough to prevent animals from getting at the audience. You know how embarrassing that can be if the lion on the stage jumps out and starts tearing up the paying customers.

Leaving the site we have a stop for apple tea and to talk. I am not sure this is the best use of our time. We talk about languages and alphabets. Especially the trouble when Turkey changed to the Roman alphabet and the older works that can now be read only by experts. We talked about food. Shirley has a disease that is a problem with eating gluten. We talked about substitutes and eating rice.

Back when I was in the 7th grade I had to do a report on an assigned subject. I got Miletus. I was excited because I was hoping he was a classic scientist. I was always fascinated with the people who made advances in apparently primitive times. It turned out it was a city, but at least it had scientists. Our next stop was to see in the flesh the city I wrote about. Thales, philosopher and scientist from the beginning of the 6th century BC, lived here and made it a colony of philosophers known as the Milesians. He predicted the solar eclipse of 585 BC a year in advance of the event and it took place. Thales said that everything in the world is made of water. He also was a practical man, the first good businessman recorded in Greek history. He bought up olive presses when they were not in use, then when the olive crop was harvested he made himself rich.

Hippodamus of Miletus invented the grid system for city layout and Priene actually used it. A heating system for Roman baths was invented in Miletus. The Greeks who lived here grew tired of Persian dominance and revolted in 499 BC. Persia utterly destroyed the city five years later as well as the temple it controlled at Didyma.

Like Priene, Miletus was once a port city. These days it is a good distance from the water, something like nine miles, proving Mark Twain was wrong when he said they don’t make real estate any more. Miletus has a theater and baths. Our guide threw into the discussion that Islam has a natural form of birth control that one must wash oneself after sex from head to foot and that is difficult to do in places like Saudi Arabia where there is so little water. Also we saw the remains of Pompey’s house. It celebrated Pompey’s defeat of the sea pirates. Pompey however became something of a pirate himself. (I think that story was repeated often later. It seems to me that it was one of the great pirates who was initially sent by the English government to fight pirates and instead became one. People who saw the film Cleopatra may remember what happened to Pompey from the beginning of that film. When he became enough of a threat, Julius Caesar was sent to kill him. Pompey fled to Egypt and was given friendly sanctuary by the feuding Ptolemys-Cleopatra and her brother. When Julius Caesar arrived to try to capture him, Cleopatra’s brother wanted Caesar to side with him. He was presented Caesar with Pompey’s head in a jar of oil. Rather than winning Caesar’s favor he won only Caesar’s disgust and anger. No Roman citizen, no matter how bad could be treated this way by a non-Roman. Pompey was a Roman first and a criminal second to Caesar. In the conflicts between Cleopatra and her brother, Caesar immediately started favoring Cleopatra. And the rest is cinema. Actually the film Cleopatra is overblown and at times dull but the history is really quite accurate.

Our guide takes us to an onyx stand but Evelyn and I are not interested. Shirley buys an onyx bowl for $8. Back on the bus. It is nice to talk and look at the scenery. I am expecting another big site like Miletus. Instead our site is almost like the town square, but it is the magnificent remains of a temple. Then Peter looks at the columns and says “nice Doric columns.” I claim that the columns with the scrollwork at the top are Ionic. Peter, who seems to know what he is talking about insists they are Doric. A little while later I quietly ask the Hari what is the difference and why are these Doric? He says that Ionic columns taper. Since when? Peter, if you ever read this the tall columns had scrollwork like on page 333 of the Lonely Planet, not flat pads like on page 155. For those who are interested Corinthian are illustrated on page 498.

Before we see it, it is time for lunch and there is a buffet across the street. There is not much meat on the buffet, but this is a good way to try several different dishes. The best is the Haydari and the fried eggplant. I get a Cappy cherry nectar to drink. Over lunch we discuss travel and Turkish baths.

On to the temple at Didyma. This is a spectacular temple with an oracle who, like the oracle at Delphi, was expert at giving enigmatic and useless answers to questions. Once again the scale is spectacular. Five adults cannot reach around it. Hari again tells us that we have no idea how they could have built this temple. I comment to Evelyn that if we knew how they did it would spoil the trick. We see a holy well the drinking from which gave the oracle his power to answer questions or the chutzpah to sidestep them.

As we walked around Hari, our guide, told us that the people who built this temple may have had entirely different ways of thinking. He says that the goal of all religions is to make people Supermen. And it was the religion of the ancients that allowed them to build these temples. He said that they may have known about the vibrations in all matter and might have been able to use vibrations to control matter. The tight vibrations might actually make people invisible. They might be able to lift stone. Now what is interesting is that we had heard almost the same suggestion from our guide in Mexico. At Tula he told us that the ancient peoples had a horn and by striking a tuning fork and amplifying the sound with the horn, they could levitate solid stone. Yes, it sounded like this guide, like our Mexican guide, had been to the Tourist Guide School for Technical Hokum. Yes, these people attacked problems differently than we do. We don’t know their techniques. But where do people get all these mystical ideas about vibration? People have the darnedest ideas that all things vibrate at different frequencies. Individual molecules may have motion. But it is not cyclical in the way that a wave is cyclical. You can force some objects to vibrate, but you get nothing mystical out of them. Ancient peoples did some wonderful engineering marvels, yes with minds very different from ours. But there is no reason to think that the means they devised for doing work was anything we would not understand today. There is a big difference between unknown and incomprehensible. I don’t know how a Turkish woman makes fried bread. I cannot comprehend what goes on in her mind. But if I saw how she made breakfast, I would understand it. I don’t assume she has mystical powers.

Supposedly we were going to stop at a jeans factory. That is dropped from the tour and it may be as a mark of respect. Most places tour guides get a kickback for taking tourists to someplace they can be sold to. Hari may have realized from the questions he got that these tourists were above that. Just a guess.

As we drive I notice how many olive trees there are in this region. I learned today to recognize olive trees. They really are olive drab. They have leaves a sort of gray-green. They almost look like they are in a different light.

I am half-tempted to take a picture of a soldier with a machine gun, but I probably won’t. It would be fairly easy to snap a picture from the window of the bus. It is very unlikely they would notice me and even more that they would chase a bus for the image of one of their soldiers. You see these guys on the street all the time. But it would be breaking Turkish security. It isn’t a crime to wanna; only to actually do it.

By the end of the day my canteen is fairly empty. We can get water in .5 and 1.5 liter bottles. We use the big bottles as stock bottles and the .5 litter bottles as canteens. Water is a gourmet item here like wine. You have experts who can taste a brand and know what spring it came from. I don’t know the flavors, but really cold water is really good stuff. Between the meat meals and the exercise in the sun, cold water tastes really, really good to me these days. And it is healthy. The only problem is that it is heavy and filling. You don’t want to carry too much at once. If you drink too much you are really uncomfortable and even more so if your mouth goes dry.

Well we got back to Selcuk. We let off Yuki at her hotel but she was almost immediately rounded up as were the four of us were dragged into a tourist office for a sales pitch on upgrading our $6 bus trip to Pamukkale to a $50 guided tour. It was never clear what the advantages were. Eventually Shirley was asking questions in a civil but animated way and our salesman thought he’d try another tack. “Madam, don’t talk to me like that!” This was the last straw and Shirley responded “Don’t you talk to me like that!” We all stormed out. I don’t think this guy was a very good salesman.

We got back in our minibus and were taken back to our hotel. Evelyn wanted to call her mother so we went to the post office and with a little effort she figured how to phone. They did not have a phone booth but they had the phone behind the safety deposit boxes. I was a little surprised to see that the back door to the safety deposit boxes was locked with a bicycle lock. We decided to sit outside the post office and watch the passing parade. We talked to a couple from Colorado who were also making a phone call. Then we walked around the center of town, warding off restaurant hawkers.

We did do some talking to a carpet salesmen about Bill Gates and America. When it was clear we would not buy a carpet we became his evening’s entertainment. He gave us what he called plums, but they are more like apples. It seems to be a popular local fruit. We talked to another salesman on the way back. I suggested to him that with five carpet shops in a row there is too much competition. He really should go into another business. He said it was the culture, but I assume he really knows what he is doing. A carpet can cost $1800. You don’t have to sell many at that price in Turkey.

Back at the hotel we went up to the roof terrace, but found it mostly dark. So back to the room. There was a lot of noise in street, to me it sounded like a motorcycle rally. I preferred the dogs.

I woke up at 3am with digestive problems. Apparently something at the restaurant last night did not quite agree with me. No muscle aches or anything of the sort that usually accompanies this sort of thing.

We went up early to breakfast. Meals are served on the roof terrace. Then down to get our luggage. I guess it called “luggage” meaning “that which is lugged.” We went down to the desk to pay and there was nobody there. We rang the doorbell and still nobody came. I took off my pack and ran upstairs. I paid the owner. He asked where we were going next. I drew a blank. I could not think of the name of the next place. And he could tell I did not know it. “Konya,” I said. That wasn’t a lie. We will get to Konya eventually. “You have a ticket?” “Yes, we are all set.” Now he probably knew no bus was leaving for Konya, but he let it pass. I got halfway down the stairs and the name Pamukkale came back to me. I could turn around and tell him, but that would seem even more stupid. One of the great joys of living is the knowledge that most people in front of whom you have made a complete ass of yourself will never see you again and don’t even think about you. At least that was true until the Internet came along.

Well, I got downstairs got on my pack and we headed off for the bus station. We pass by a school. Instead of bells ringing they play Fur Elise when you go between classes. It sounds like a good idea gone bad. If they had different melodies that would be one thing. This way the kids will always associate Fur Elise with something painful.

There is a sculpture in front of the school showing a head split apart and held together by a blindfold over the eyes. It is about four feet from top to bottom. Evelyn’s interpretation is that it is a human rights message. Amazing how when we first see artwork that is abstract we assume it agrees with our own philosophy. To me what is keeping things together is restraints placed by others.

We got to the bus station early and sat and waited. The Farises showed up a little later, also going to Pamukkale. We talked to them. It turns out that we are taking a minibus. There are only a handful of people going to Pamukkale. I thin that Evelyn is not really happy about this. A minibus cannot offer either the comfort or the service of the big buses. I think we have grown used to the big buses, which are really the most popular means of travel in Turkey.

Maybe it is a sign of age but I am enjoying the travel days more than I used to. You actually do learn a fair amount looking from the window of a bus. They are not such strenuous days. The thought of climbing long distances uphill as we are doing so many days of this trip is just not appealing to me. Turkish buses are a really enticing way to spend a day. Travel days even give me a chance to get caught up on my log.

In the bus the discussion turns to what a theologian really does. (Peter was first a theologian, then a school administrator, and then a high school English teacher.) He studies history but also looks at systems of religious thought. We have a discussion with the guy sitting next to us in the minibus. He is on a four-month vacation. They went to places we had been on other trips. They had been to Kenya. They saw lions trying to take down an elephant, or so they claim. The elephants were in the brush. The lions were sitting and just waiting for the elephants to come out. One came out of the brush, sensed the lions and trumpeted. The elephants formed a circle facing out so the lions would have to attack right into those tusks. Ah, elephant is tough meat anyway.

After a while we stop for a beverage. I have a cherry nectar, my favorite drink in Turkey. Apple tea comes second. But neither is really Turkish. We talk with the Farises about opera. As we go the roads get a lot worse. We are getting into the interior, toward the real Turkey though we won’t see much of it firsthand on the tourist routes. We can see some of it from the bus windows. After a while we pull off the main road to a side road. We pass through some towns. I am a little surprised to see school children in jackets and ties in small villages, both because it is so formal and because it is so Western.

As we get to Pamukkale we see what looks like icy cliffs incongruously in the hot sun. It is actually a calcium precipitate. They are the big attraction in this area. As we pull in it is almost like being in Agra, India, again. Touts trying to get you to go to their hotel swarm the minibus. We and the Farises go to the Ozturk. They had it recommended by the owners of the last place. We have a bunch of people carry our luggage, unrequested. Shirley and I check out the rooms. It is pleasant enough and fairly Western in style. I tell Evelyn it is along the lines of a Ramadan Inn. She does not get it. It is going to be a long trip.

The staff of pension seem to be all on family. We get a very homey family feel. They have us choosing our dinner before we have even decided on a room. We pick fresh trout, Mother’s special kabap, yogurt, and tomato salad. We don’t even have a room number yet so they dub us the dark-hairs and the Farises as the gray-hairs.

We drop our stuff and get ready to go explore. Back on the street it feels like a dead New Mexico town. The sun is beating down, there is nobody on the streets but flies. We walk to the bus station. There is somebody resting out front. We go into the office. “Hello?” No response. We wait about 15 minutes and nobody shows up. Now what? We talk to the young man outside bus station, pulling Turkish phrases from the book. He looks at us but does not react. We ask next door at the little market (these little markets are not like 7-Elevens, they have about 16 square feet of floor space for the customer. They have just about enough space to get to the cooler. They tell us we can get bus reservations at the Koray. That is next door to our pension. As we are walking back we run into the Farises so go as a group. We go to the Koray to make arrangements. It is a little fancier than our pension. The man behind the desk makes arrangements. He also tells us that the Ozturk owners are lazy and do not run their pension very well. He gives them a list of hotels in other cities that are good, but he says do not show the list to the owners of the Ozturk. The capper was when he pulled out a half-inch thick stack of Koray business cards and asks the Farises to give them to their next hotel. I guess hotels are a cutthroat business.

We continue our exploration walking toward the white cliffs. It is a little problem figuring how to get in, but I suggest we go the way the tour buses are letting people off. We pay to get in. There is a long path up the cliff right through the white area. We climb part of the way up and have to get our shoes wet crossing one white pool. The water washes over the side of the cliff leaving calcium residue. A man with a whistle tells us we have to take our shoes off and climb the path barefoot. Peter is well-used to walking barefoot. He did it as a child jumping from rocks to rocks and running through fields. Evelyn had done some barefoot walking delivering mail. Shirley and I are complete tenderfeet. I have it worse than she does because I weigh more than she does by a fair amount and both she and I have dainty little feet. We step on something sharp and it hurts. A lot. And the way up has smooth patches moderately painful to walk on and gravelly parts which hurt like the dickens. It was about a 45-minute climb and it was painful. Great, I am spending my vacation ripping up the bottoms of my feet to climb a slime cliff. Evelyn tells me it is not a slime cliff. Sure enough the Lonely Planet corrects me. The water is scummy, not slimey. The European visitors must do more barefoot walking than I do. I was really happy to reach the top. Shoes are such a convenience. The pools are an interesting shape. They have walls around them from evaporation from the outer edge.

It was a real pleasure stopping for a drink of Coke. The topic of discussion was Shakespeare interpretations. Also movies. We continued on to the Hieropolis, and some very well preserved ruins. These had been Roman baths and a cure center. There is a Byzantine church, there is another latrina. There was some good photography here.

The time came to go down and we were not sure we could find the other route. Also we could not find how far it was. Eventually we decided on a cab. I sat in front with the driver while the others piled in the back. The driver gave us freshening cologne like on the buses. The driver put rock music on the radio. I asked for Turkish. First he put on a radio station, then he popped in a cassette. It had a really good beat. He snapped the fingers on one hand to the beat. I started snapping my fingers to the same beat. I did it with both hands. On the straightaway he took his hands off the wheel and either snapped with both fingers or clapped. I did a sort of modified Zorba the Greek dance only sitting down. The two of us were having a high old time. Evelyn asked how he was steering. I told her I would give her a hint.

When he clapped, that was not the sound of one hand clapping.

The driver left us off in town. He was still snapping his fingers as he drove away. Back at the Ozturk a shower felt very good.

Evelyn came out from the shower dressed for swimming. She thought it would feel good. Usually I am the one lobbying for us to swim. I was honor-bound to join her. Down at the pool it was another matter. The local water is full of calcium and is cloudy. There was no way to tell how deep he water was. I would have gone in up to my waist, but I did not want to dive in where I did not know how deep it was. And that went double for Evelyn. We t by the side of the pool and talked. The Farises went out to try to get money at the bank, but failed. We talked to them for a while and then went in to get dressed for dinner.

During and after dinner we had a discussion a long discussion with the Farises. We were there from 7 until 10. We talked about religion and books and deconstructionism.

I showed Peter my way of diagramming the plot of a story. It seems I went to see Richard II in London, April 1989, and had no idea what the story was. I tend to get confused about who is who in a Shakespeare play. The program had the plot, but on first reading I said I would never keep it straight. On the spot I invented plot diagramming. Each character is represented by a bubble in a diagram. The character’s name is written in a bubble. Actions and relations are represented as arrows between bubbles also with labels. By thus making the plot visible on paper every character somehow was clearly delineated in my mind. I find this technique extremely useful reading novels, watching films, keeping straight the plot of stories I am about to see, etc. (I would love to hear from readers who try this technique and find it useful and/or have comments on it.) I thought this method seemed mathematical so I asked Peter what he thought our training was because we were discussing Shakespeare and literature so much I assumed we might have fooled him into thinking that was our field. Without hesitation he said, “You’re mathematicians.” “Had I told you already?” “No, but mathematics is very visual.” I thought that was extremely insightful.

Peter had wanted to find books to complete his collection of G. A. Henty books. We told him about bibliofind on the web. We discussed science fiction and fantasy and Toyotas and the Y2K computer problem.

After a while Evelyn said it was time to pack it in. We headed up to our room. Evelyn went to bed fairly quickly; I worked on my log and went to sleep at 10:30 or so.

Now we are well into the second half of the trip. I still have not finished my log from May 5. Luckily we have a seven-hour bus ride. Peter was commenting on one of the advantages of my palmtop while we were riding on very bumpy roads yesterday. It would be impossible to hand-write a log under those conditions. It is a bit more difficult to type a log, but it is still very possible. Another advantage is that I can write the log out of chronological order. I always did do that to a small extent, even when I wrote by hand my logs, but there it is a complex affair cross references to pages that were hard to find. It made the log hard to type in. The computer completely removes that problem. You cannot tell from the finished product that I am writing about May 7 before some of our activity on May 5. I have a different file for each day. The May 5th one is currently m05.txt. And I have a string of equal signs in the file indicating that it is complete up to that point. When the equals are pushed to the bottom of the file I delete them and I rename the file, deleting the suffix. I know the file m04 is pretty much complete but not necessarily unchanging. If I think of something I want to add to a previous description I can search for a keyword in the whole log. If it turns up in m04 I might still be changing that file.

I woke up about 6 but breakfast was 7:30. When we go down the Farises are already eating. The owner brings out special fried bread. Homemade, of course. The owner brings out gifts including a bracelet and charm. Also there is a pack of postcards. Then we have to pay for the rooms, etc. The Farises used the services more than we did. They were not happy with the bill. While they were discussing it the owners said that they may have charged high and start cutting some of the prices. After breakfast we bid farewell to the Farises, certainly two of the more interesting travel companions we have had. We pay our bill. Maybe a bit high by Turkish standards, but still fairly reasonable.

It is still a bit early for the bus so we wait in the room. At the appointed time we leave and the owners of the Ozturk wish us goodbye. They give us business cards for us to give other travelers. We go to the Koray to get our ride to the bus. It is almost ridiculous. They take us to what would be a ten-minute walk away. We could have walked it easily. It is a small drink stand with a table. There we wait for the next bus. That will take us to the big bus terminal. The man running it asks us “Would you like something to drink?” Basically it he lets people sit at his table waiting for buses in the hopes of selling something. The town has three or four layers of bus terminals and bus sub-terminals.

We have to be careful with our money. It is not because things are expensive. The money machines just don’t want to give very much. Getting money is really difficult here. We don’t want to use up our money. We are sort of artificially poor.

We have taken a pay bus to Denezli and are waiting in the terminal for the bus. Next to us a family is sitting on the tiled floor and eating the lunch they seem to have brought. They have a loaf of bread and a metal dish with vegetables. I am trying to find something unique about this bus terminal but aside from the language and the Islamic head coverings of the women this looks a lot like a standard bus terminal. It is a little more open air and it is lined with a lot more stalls serving drinks. I pass a large vertical turning spit of lamb, what we call gyros. Our bus pulls in and we start to board. Someone stops us and asks to see our ticket. He pulls us into the bus terminal to the bus company desk. They rewrite our ticket. Probably because it was a hotel who wrote the ticket it has to be re-written. Earlier we were assigned seats 15 and 16, now it is 5 and 6. There are layers of middlemen. We get on the bus and a few minutes after the appointed 11am it pulls out.

The woman ahead of me is reading a newspaper called Asabi. The front page features a wordless news story. It just has the picture. Apparently it is important news when an attractive blond wearing only the bottom half of a bikini looks over her shoulder to smile at a news camera. No other major newspaper seems to be covering the story. The reader has her head covered in the conservative Turkish way, in accordance with the laws of Islam. Turkey is a land of contradiction. What land isn’t?

The buses are really the popular mode of travel in Turkey. What the trains are to India, the buses are to Turkey. And they make every effort to make bus travel pleasant. I don’t know why they pour cologne in your hands on the buses. I suppose the people are poor and some may not smell good. This way the buses always smell fresh. Next they come around with water. Perhaps this is a Middle Eastern welcome. It seems like it could be. Then they come around with Coca-Cola.

We drive past a large stratified stone mountain. Little scrubby trees growing out of it. You could film a Western here. Not as many nice rock formations as Utah, but we could be in the Western US.

At about 12:15 we stop for a rest stop, possibly lunch. It is sort of a gas station and a large covered outdoor restaurant. A shop sells touristy items. There are bead-covered bags, calendars, scarves, and instant “Turkish” apple tea. A “market” has candy, racks of the ever-present Doritos. They seem to have more varieties of Doritos than we have at home. Also Ruffles. It would be interesting to know how much of this is bought by Turks and how much by tourists. I am not sure which would be the bigger pity. Here comes another splash of cologne.

I make faces at the little boy in the seat ahead of me. He must be about three. I thought I was helping to entertain him but eventually he is swinging his arms and crawling on his parents. I figure he needs some benign neglect. We are now going through some gently hilly farmland. Another three ounces of Coca-Cola.

More driving, more writing. We stop in a town for ten minutes as we go into a somewhat deserted otogar. We do find a stand open to get some snacks. The man counts up the cost of our snacks, tells us the value and short changes us by 100,000TL. Evelyn caught it. He could have told us the sum of the good was more and we would not have known. But if the price was alti-yuz-something and you expect to get at least 300,000TL back. Two 100,000 bills and a coin won’t do it. Evelyn had to write the figures down and the man finally accepted that we could do Turkish arithmetic.

We got some cookies, some rod-like sesame crackers (really more breadsticks), and a bag of something mysterious. They were the size of peas, were brown with burn spots, and had very little flavor. Bite into them and they become a fine powder. Slightly peanut in taste. They turned out to be roasted chickpeas.

The steward comes around with the making of hot tea. I am not a big hot beverage person and on a bumpy bus even less so. The driver’s tray is full and a teabag (in cellophane) falls to the floor. He goes down to pick it up and his stack of cups falls over and more falls off his tray. I pick things up for him and he thanks me. He asks me if I want tea or coffee. No to both, but when he offers cola I say yes. He is not serving cola now but because I was helpful to him, he brings cups for Evelyn and me. A small thanks for a small favor, but it reminds me how nice most of the Turks really are.

Well we got into Konya and tried a recommendation we went to the Otel Petek. It is a tiny room though it does have both a double and a single bed for $16 a night. The place is something of a dump and second only to Salihli as the worst room we have stayed in. But that seems to be how things are in Konya, which seems like an older city. In fact local legend would have it that this the oldest city. When the great flood receded the first place that the waters left was Konya. Actually it is a city about 7000 years old, so it may well be the oldest city I ever visit.

This is the first city we have been in that does not have a lot of Western tourists and you really can feel a difference. There are no carpet salesmen haranguing you. In fact there are still some touts, but not very many. In general you get left alone. Carpets are not the big thing here and I would never have guessed what it is. Believe it or not the really big sales item is cigarette lighters. That is the item you see being hawked on the streets the most. Not only that, there are a bunch of stands set up to refill empty lighters. What kind of economy has that as the main consumer item?

We did find some stands selling the worry beads also. You see a lot of people carrying them. Evelyn very cleverly suggested that they would make a good chachka item.

Well we went out to try to dinner, but first find a bank machine for money. Finding a bank machine has not been the problem. But this one would actually give us a decent amount of money. We are no longer poor. We are once again solvent. Our first thing to do is to find dinner. It was easy to find all sorts of shops including a few sweet shops but when you are looking for a place to eat dinner, that is not so easy. We found a kabap shop finally and tried to communicate. The place was dark and smoky. We ordered one thing off the menu and they were out. Two others they had out of maybe ten. Well, we picked the right thing. We translated some of the other things on menu and found they were things like trotters. We got a regular and a spicy meatball sandwich with coucous, grill tomato and pepper, and lettuce and onion salad. That a Pepsi and a tea came to $4.40 and they had to send out to get the beverages to two different places. But the meal was pretty good.

After that we went walking. We got some ideas for restaurants. This seems to be a very religious town. The vast majority of women cover their hair. Supposedly alcohol is very hard to find.

There seems to be a sort of Central Park. This is the Alaettin Tepesi. (A Tepe is a hill. This is the hill with the Alaettin Mosque.) We walked once around it looking at the shops across the street. Some seemed a little more upscale. Not like Manhattan, but not small and falling apart either.

I suggested we go find the other hotel that was recommended to us. It is a little further out. It takes us a while to find it but it is a pleasant clear night. We find it and while we are thinking of going in the owner practically pulls us in and insists we look at a room. I do and the room is just okay. It is nothing special. It is also three flights up (like our room) and costs $24 a night. We will probably stay where we are. We come down stairs and the owner has already made tea for us and is ready to give us a high pressure talk. Of course he is at a real disadvantage. He speaks only Turkish and French. And French is definitely not the Lingua Franca. We pull away and are out the door making a clean getaway.

Back at the room Evelyn starts a wash. We both drink water like fiends. We really need a lot of water in this climate. We have to buy a 1.5 liter bottle a day. The problem I run into is my throat and mouth are dry telling me I am thirsty, but my stomach is full. Maybe I should not eat such spicy food.

We went into the lounge. There were two men and a boy watching Turkish TV. The program almost seems like the old American idiot favorite “Queen for a Day.” It seems to be some sort of panel program where a woman in tears tells some sort of story to dramatic music playing in the background and the panel discuss what she is saying. I think there has been more than one woman on, all completely in tears. They say nothing without crying. I have not figured out what the program can possibly be about.

This is the first real Turkish TV I have seen. What do they have on? “Wheel of Fortune.” The Turkish edition, but easily recognizable. Another program comes on in Turkish but it is clearly Steve Gutenberg. I wonder if he knew he spoke Turkish. Another program is music video. Then they put on the news. That is quickly replaced by a situation comedy whose bad acting transcends the language barrier.

Back in the room I listened to Radio Moscow, now called Voice of Moscow. I hadn’t realized they changed the name. The toilet, once flushed, makes noise for 20 minutes if it doesn’t get stuck. If more than 20 minutes pass and it still sounds like a waterfall, then you go in and jiggle it. This room is somewhat overpriced for Turkey. Especially considering that this is one of the few places where breakfast is not included. The window is cracked. The bedclothes have stuff stuck to them like they have not been washed in the 1990s. In Goreme we will choose more carefully.

In The Grapes of Wrath Ma Joad asks her son about his days in prison “Did it make ya mean, son?” I was up past midnight writing in my log. At 4:36 I found out we were right next to a mosque that uses electric amplification to wake people up in a call to prayer. I wonder if I have found the reason there is so much anger in the Middle East.

Most religions have their mystics. In Judaism there is the Baal-Shem-Tov who founded Hassidism. In Islam it is Rumi, poet and founder of the whirling dervishes. The history of Konya is entwined with that of the mystic Rumi, known to his followers as Mevlana. Rumi was among other things a poet who wound his idea into poetry. He was the founder of the whirling dervishes. He was the son of an Islamic scholar and mystic and himself became an even greater Islamic scholar and mystic with extremely loyal followers. Their very loyalty would cause serious problems.

He became the very close and intimate friend of another scholar and mystic, Shams of Tabriz. Rumi was loved but Shams was so devout that nobody could stand him. One day he asked Allah who could stand his company. A mystic voice asked, what will you give in return? Shams offered his head. The voice told him of Rumi. Shams and Rumi met and began an uninteruptable mystic conversation. It is said to have gone on for months without need for sleep or food or any human necessities. The followers of Rumi became jealous. Shams saw what was happening and disappeared without a trace. Rumi’s response was to return to his students but also to bury himself in his art but also to listen to music and sing spin for hours until his dizziness brought mystical visions.

Rumor came that Shams was in Damascus and Rumi sent for him. When they met again it is said that each threw himself at the other’s feet (which is a little hard to picture) and began worshiping the other. Again with the long conversations. Again the student jealousies. One day a conversation was interrupted with a message that Shams was wanted at the back door. Shams went to the back door and was never heard from or seen again. That was Saturday, December 5, 1248. Rumi was inconsolable, but life goes on. Rumi named the next book of his poems The Works of Shams of Tabriz but people knew better. Rumi continued to write poetry, mysticize, and teach until his death on Sunday, December 17, 1273. It was called his marriage day because he was united with Allah.

Rumi’s students picked up the spinning mania and are called the whirling dervishes. They wear distinctive robes with long skirts and fezes and spin as they meditate. These days they may just spin as a performance. The dervishes were to Islam much what the flagellants were to Christianity. They were an order with curious, colorful customs that wielded power. They were monarchist, archconservative, and xenophobic. Ataturk saw the dervishes as a force dangerous to progress and abolished them, having the monasteries turned into museums, as well as the shrine to Rumi/Mevlana.

The Dervishes have since become almost an act. I seem to remember seeing them on Ed Sullivan, though I could be wrong. They wear fezes, white jackets and long flowing robes. As they spin the robes fly out making them look almost bell-like. Most who see them do not realize the hat is really a symbol of a tombstone, the jacket a symbol of the coffin and the robes a symbol of the death shroud. They seem very much alive as they spin, however. It is interesting that while alive they have special headgear symbolic of death and Rumi’s tomb has a large turban on top, the headgear of the living.

Breakfast is extra in a hotel already a bit dirty and overpriced. We snacked a little on cookies in the room and I drank some cherry nectar. I found something nasty-looking sticking to the blanket from some previous tenant leading me to believe they let things go from the days that prompted the Lonely Planet to say the place was clean.

Our first stop was the Mevlana Museum, a combination tomb, shrine, and museum. Here we have the sarcophagus of Rumi and his son and the Sultan a the time. As you come in there are the turbaned sarcophagi of some of Rumi’s followers. The tops of each tomb are in the form of turbans. It is thought that April rains bring healing. April rains are collected and the ends of the turban on Rumi’s tomb is dipped in the water then daubed onto the ill.

You pass by the sarcophagi and see a tiny museum of Islamic artifacts including more of the beard of the prophet. There are antique copies of the Koran. Visitors should not miss the ceilings. There is a painting with dervishes. There are two giant rosaries, each with 99 beads each about an inch in diameter. As I was looking at the rosaries a visitor clapped me on the back and said “Salaam aleichum” which is Arabic for either “Welcome, friend.” Or, “move over I want to see also,” at least in this context.

Part of the same museum is a shop that is part museum with classic carpets, some amateur paintings of whirling dervishes, etc. We went to a separate kiosk and got some souvenirs including another woven rug sample. Some music on cassette.

I got as our chachka a set of worry beads. This fits all the rules, it is small, cheap, closely associated with the place visited, and something a local might be likely to buy for himself. We had already bought a small piece of cloth woven in a carpet pattern. This was one more item for the chachka shelf.

An old man seemed excited by our vests, but I was not sure if it was positive or negative. He would point at the vests and then on one hand bring his fingers together as if trying to pinch something using all five fingers. He would say what sounded like “good.” I had no idea what it was all about. It could be because they look vaguely military he thought they should not be in the mosque, but we were walking away from the mosque. Eventually it looked like we would not be able to communicate and we both gave up.

From there we walk the 3/4km walk to the Koyunoglu Museum. This whole museum is a private collection, in fact a large set of collections. None of the collection seems really large assuming we are seeing the whole collection, but there is a large amount on display. The admission is 100,000TL for locals and 250,000TL for tourists. It would be a little fairer if there was some in other languages, but the labeling is almost all Turkish. There is a collection of Neolithic tools, pottery, coins, fossils, rocks, stuffed birds, coins and bills. There is Islamic calligraphy including some long diagrams that could almost be kabalistic. There are historic photographs of Konya in the early parts of this century. There are collections of brass, a large one of carpets. After that there is a visit to a house from the late 19th century in Turkey. If the implication is that this was a typical house, one can only assume that the standard of living has dropped over the last century. I don’t know if it is typical, but the guard follows you through the entire museum making sure you do nothing wrong.

As we left and walked back to the main street we passed a boy of ten or so and unusual frankness said, “Hello, money money.”

As we were looking for a restaurant there was a sound like banging garbage cans and we could immediately see there was a collision of two cars. Both drivers immediately jump out and start arguing and gesticulating wildly. Like white blood cells people seem to come from nowhere to clog the damage site. We don’t stick around but continue on to find a restaurant for lunch. We did not see the accident and certainly don’t want to be witnesses.

We find a restaurant that sells a local specialty, firin kabap. It is basically mutton on bread. We also order half a roast chicken. While the food has been enjoyable for the time we have been here there is a certain monotony. We have had a lot of roast meat. We may not be getting the real Turkish cuisine. As in Scotland it may be difficult to find real local cuisine in restaurants.

When we are walking when people say hello to us it usually is a come-on for a sales pitch. We say “Merhaba” back, but not are really friendly. That is in part a mistake and we know it. When we stand in one place lots of people give us smiles and say hello and continue on their way. They are obviously just trying to be friendly. The Turks are a very friendly and fun-loving people. They are also aggressive sales people. And this creates a dilemma for the tourist who would like to be friendly with everyone and at the same time does not want to be pulled into a sales pitch. It is the identical problem we had in India, but there the percentages were a lot worse. Far fewer people tried to be friendly with no strings attached and I would guess there were four times as many aggressive tout contact per hour on the street. I think had we not been to India we would not appreciate Turkey and the Turks as much.

We went to the Great Karatay Seminary to see their collection of tiles but they were closed for lunch. We sat on a bench writing. A group of older schoolgirls in Islamic scarves sits down at the other bench and talk among themselves. I go off and get more water. We write a little longer. The school girls pick up and leave. One turns to us with a smile and says “good-bye.” We smile back. “Good-bye. Gule Gule.”

The Great Karatay Seminary was founded in 1251-1252. These days there is no seminary left, it is a museum of tilework. The first thing you should look at is the front door decorated with Koranic verses carved into the stonework. Very majestic. The museum is small, but it has a very impressive dome of geometrical designs. The first chapter of the Koran is written around the top. The museum has examples of all sorts of tile. It is interesting to see the sort of tessellation they use and how they hide it. (A tessellation is a covering of a flat plane always using one figure.) There are really only three kinds of tessellation. There is triangle, square, and hexagonal. You can recognize them by whether six, four, or three tiles come together at a corner. They have a tessellation alternating crosses and eight-pointed stars. That is really a variation on the square tessellation. Start with a checkerboard of red and black squares. Now for each red square, for each edge, add a little isosceles right triangle, its long side toward the edge. Do this all the way around and you have an 8-pointed star. But to do that you have had to cut a notch out of the neighboring black square. Each of the red squares neighboring the black square did that, so the black square becomes a cross. So you can perfectly tessellate with 8-pointed stars and crosses by deforming the checkerboard.

Got that?

I would say these museums we were seeing were tiny, but there are things to see. The Seminary of the Slim Minaret was built in 1264 to be more impressive than the other seminary. The doorway is as impressive, but the dome is not so ornate. The slim minaret is not so impressive or so slim looking since lightning in 1901 knocked off the top two-thirds. The door is impressive, and inside is examples of decorative stonework. In Islam it is forbidden to show creatures with souls, but mythical creatures presumably do not have souls, or at least that seems to be what was assumed here. There are a lot of designs, Koranic quotes and a few stone images of fanciful creatures. Some of the Koran carvings look almost Celtic.

We spent about forty minutes looking for the Archeology Museum but concluded only that you cannot really trust maps in the Lonely Planet. This is not as useful a Lonely Planet Guide as the one for India. Tired, we walked back to the Alaettin park. There is a fancy tea garden and Evelyn suggested we stop for a drink. Somehow I always think these places are for other sorts of people. I had a Pepsi for 150,000TL and Evelyn had coffee 100,000TL. We sat for a while. The park is on a hill overlooking the street so it was a pleasant place to watch the passing parade. Eventually it was time to move on. We were continuing around the hill when three girl students stopped us to talk so they could practice their English. We talked to them about five minutes telling them that we liked Turkey and telling them what we did (and did not like). We continued on to the Alaettin Mosque on the hill. It was first finished 1221. It is in the process of being renovated. They are putting metal braces on the columns and the roofing. Inside it has lost a lot of the feel of the old mosques. You cannot really see the dome from the inside because a lowered ceiling has been put in. Now it just looks modern inside.

After that we headed back to our room. On the way we made a purchase. We decided to give the beads we bought this morning as a gift to a friend who requested we bring him back something from Turkey. We passed by a man selling Islamic beads and I after some discussion bought some beads that the seller claimed. I got his best beads and paid 600,000TL, about $2.40. He claimed they were carnelian, but I thought that carnelian was opaque and these are translucent. In any case they looked like they were decent quality.

The mystery of the man this morning is a little deeper. It made no sense that he was saying “good” talking about my vest. I had more or less ruled that out. But walking back to the room I passed a man selling the same hot pepper we see as a table spice in restaurants. Basically it is pepper flakes. I point it out to Evelyn and the man selling it says “good” and makes the same hand gesture putting all five fingers together as if trying to use all five fingers to hold a single poppy seed. So the old man was excitedly saying something about our vests and saying something about good.

We got back to the room to find the room had been made up, but there were no towels. It may well be that they think that there is no point in us getting towels since there is no water either so there is nothing to dry off. I start down the two flights to the desk to complain that we have no water and no towels. The unsold rooms have their doors open. I look into one and of course it has towels. Oops, no, my mistake. It is my room that has towels and this unsold room that doesn’t.

At about 5:15 they turn on the cold water.

I started the short-wave listening to local stations on FM until the English language broadcasts came on. The BBC had a science program that talked about the recent detection observation of the largest space explosion ever detected. It was as if all the bright objects in the universe were compacted into a single location in space. I want to know more.

That ended at 7pm and we went out looking for a place to eat dinner. We found a place that specialized in chicken and had chicken on a spit like doner kabap. There is some sort of sports team eating there also. The waiter asks on of the girls to ask us whether we want the chicken as a sandwich or on a plate. She is wearing a Walkman. It is the same model Aiwa I have at home. Of mostly Islamic countries this one is one of the most liberal, and the standard of living, at least for some, is just about the highest. In most countries the military is the force of conservatism. Here it is the force keeping the country liberal and forward-looking. The non-poor do not want to see this become another Iran. The religious are free to be as religious as they want. The government does not want to let them force it on the unwilling. At least that is how I interpret things.

We each had a doner chicken submarine sandwich, effectively. Not a lot of chicken, but probably healthier.

Our hotel is just on the edge of a bazaar. Basically it is a lot of small shops in a small area. It is more convenient than what we would have since all the shoe shops are right together making it easier to compare. Elsewhere all the cloth shops are together.

It is now 8:55 and all the mosques seem to be competing with each other to chant. I am surprised anyone can make out the chanting from their own mosque.

Apparently a Swiss bank is being forced to turn over to Cambodia government funds deposited with the Swiss bank before the Marxist takeover, but the records of which have been lost. After the international grousing about Holocaust gold apparently Switzerland is getting very irritated at having to return deposits to both Jews and Cambodians and will ask the World Court for a clearer criteria. Just whose funds deposited in Swiss banks can the bank consider their own?

Voice of America is interviewing Basil Polidouris. The interviewer is just gushing over him as a great film composer. I probably agree, but Basil, what have you done for us lately? Independently of the quality of the film, if I had to choose the best single film score I ever heard I would have to choose Conan the Barbarian. For my taste it has the greatest spectrum of orchestral color. I can think of no score since Prokofiev that stands so well on its own. But you have not shown that degree of creativity in a good long time.