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I almost slept through the 4:40 call to prayer. Almost. If there is such a thing as aural chaos, it is having three mosques next to each other.

Well we were awake at 7 and the bus leaves at 9. If there are problems getting to the bus terminal, which I doubt, best to get them out of the way early. We put on full packs and head down to the desk. Nobody was at the desk. We knocked on the desk, but nobody came. I left 8,000,000TL on the desk with the key.

A mini-bus comes a way down the street and we run for it and ask “Otogar?” The driver shakes his head yes. Evelyn sits down in back. The driver gestures to me to take off my bags then to sit next to him in the front seat. This is sort of a place of honor. Drivers will frequently have a friend in this seat to talk to. Often the person in this seat will make change. He ask the usual questions. What language I speak. Where I am from. That sort of thing. Mostly we just drive and I see the streets and we listen to Turkish music. He has the money he has collected on a tray next to me. He moves it to the dashboard. Friendship is one thing, responsibility is another. When we get to the Otogar I thank him using the longer form. “Chok teshekul ederim.” I get a big friendly handshake. These are the most friendly people in a country we have visited since China.

We got our ticket and sat down to wait. Our next challenge was getting breakfast. There were three stands in the bus station. All had almost exactly the same selection of baked goods. I went to the one near where Evelyn was sitting. I asked for a corn muffin and a pizza, 100,000TL and 200,000TL respectively. The boy behind the counter was surprised I wanted pizza at this hour. I nodded. Crazy American, I guess. I was told to pay the cashier first. You pay first and bring a receipt. I did. They grilled the pizza. Actually it was like a roll a foot long topped with meat, cheese and onion, though not much of the latter. Hot? Yes. So he folded it in half and grilled it on something like a waffle iron. It was pretty good. I wrote for a little while.

We get on the bus. There is a lot of arguing about something as the bus starts to leave. I suspect they have oversold the bus. They sell seats, not rides. A family of four can ride for the price of two if they keep the kids on the parents’ laps.

We pass by a field where the army is training. The drill instructor sees the bus and waves at it.

Apparently if you total your car in an accident the state gets it and then leaves it at the side of the road as a ghoulish reminder to drive carefully. Usually you see this along rural roads but Konya had one in the center of town with a mannequin impaled on the broken windshield and basted with plenty of fake blood.

The radio playing on the bus has a time tone but time tones vary by as much as two seconds here depending on where you hear them,

The countryside is not really very interesting. These are the Steppes of Turkey. It is pretty flat. You see herds of sheep tended by shepherds.

There was a dead sheep by the road. I figure the shepherd leaves it there as a ghoulish warning to the other sheep to stay out of the road.

We stop at an otogar and the man ahead of me tells me that we will be here for ten minutes. I pass the word back to the English-speaking couple behind me. I bought a “bagel” at the stop and we talked to the people from behind us on the bus, a New Zealand couple who had not been to Anzac Day. They are also going to Goreme. We discussed the food and other pleasantries. They had been to LA, New York, and Israel. We discussed how friendly the Turks were compared to the Israelis. I wrote and napped a little.

At about 12:25 I saw an interesting rock formation in the distance and thought it would be good to get a picture. It looked like a big termite mound. The road took us closer and closer until we were in amongst what looked like a whole colony of termite mounds. The bus steward tapped me on the shoulder saying this was where I get off. Sure enough this was Goreme. By the time we were off the bus our luggage was on the ground. The strange squalling sound I had been hearing turned out to be a chicken who did not want to go into a small box in the luggage section. Frankly I am on the chicken’s side. It would have to be a contortionist to fit in the box and certainly would not want to travel that way. I was rooting for the chicken.

Now I wanted to see where the heck I was. Goreme is a bunch of homes and hotels dug into strange Utah-like rock formations. Yup, this is where we are staying for the next few days. There is a tour and accomodation center. We heard about a place to stay, the Melek. Okay, we set out for it with full pack. It is a climb up a hill to get to it.

There is a local place called the Flintstones Hotel. Except that the rock formations are more pointed and conical and that the place is more hilly than Bedrock that is a pretty good description. You are either living in a cave or a rock building built into a hill.

We climb, having some problem finding the Melek in part because an arrow fell off one of their direction signs. Evelyn finds a souvenir along the way, the part of jawbone of a sheep complete with three or four molars.

We ask to see the room and find it a big climb up, even from the lobby. There is a common area like a porch for four rooms that looks like a piece of a grape orchard. The shade is provided by vines hanging over crossbars.

The rooms are the tiniest yet but the look and feel is amazing. If I wanted to put myself someplace exotic, this is it. Descrbing this place is just not sufficient. This is the kind of place I never expected to get any closer to than pictures. Evelyn says that this is our cheapest international trip yet. If you don’t count airfare India was cheaper, but this was the cheapest all inclusive trip on a per-day basis. And as I look from our patio I cannot believe what it bought us.

Goreme is part of the region of Cappadocia. The Cappadocian Fathers who were the followers of St. Basil came to this region and here carved churches into what were really volcanic chimneys. There are hundreds of volcanic chimneys that are easy to hollow out to create buildings. These days the area has been discovered and there are efforts underway to protect the beauty. Part of the reason we chose the Melek is the owner is supposedly a leader in that preservation.

We probably should have run out right away to get some pictures but Evelyn wanted to wash her hair and I really wanted to get my log entirely up to date. I also want to take it all in. I feel like I have fallen into an issue of the National Geographic.

So we are sitting on our porch looking across at a cliff-dwelling family who seem to raise chickens. Every once in a while one of the chickens or people comes out of the home for one thing or another.

Well we had to make arrangements so we climbed down the hill and walked into town. That takes all of about 10 minutes. Evelyn stopped and talked to a New Zealand couple. They recommended Flintstone Travel to book a tour of the area so we did. That seems to be the most common nationality here. Actually the travel agencies all seem to off the same three tours and seem to designate them exactly the same way. There is the red tour, the yellow, and the blue. I bet they all charge the same for them. So it makes comparison between travel agancies very easy. And pointless.

The woman at Flintstone Travel was also from New Zealand. She was on her first day and we got into about an hour conversation about travel, local food, politics, and a number of other topics. I asked what was happening to New Zealand’s currency. It seems it has been very unstable and headed very much downward.

After that it appeared to be ready to rain hard so we figured that we ought to get out of it. 5pm was early for dinner but we’d had little real food. We went to a restaurant called the Sedef. I had Ayran and a dish that turned out to be chicken, cheese, and tomatoes in a clay pot. Evelyn had chicken and couscous and Raki, an anise flavored liquor. While we ate the sky opened up for our benefit with lightning and thunder, though not enough of either to be exciting. For desert I had Fresh Fruit with Honey and Yogurt. That was fairly good.

After we eat we go to a grocery and get a package of Turkish Delight just to try it.

From there it was back to the room. We were sitting inside our small room when we heard people on the patio talking English with a North American accent. “Ah, someone to talk to,” I think. I take a look outsiede the window and see someone who looks familiar. “Hey! I know him!” “Who is it?” asks Evelyn. I have to think for a moment. “Sammon. Pat Sammon.” Yup, the people we met going from Istanbul to Canakkale, in Canakkale, in Sardis and again in Selcuk. They had gone their own way and had ended up at the same hotel in Goreme. I just caught a flash of him receding around a corner. I go to the manager’s office. There is Pat registering. We are in room 20, he in 21.

We get caught up with them on what had happened since. They had gone to some more restful sites. I think Pat and I have both had digestive problems. They are not sure which tour to take. We suggest they join our tour. They agree it is a possibility and ask how to find our tour office. I suggest we walk them. So we head back into town and take them to Flintstone Travel. The woman is surprised to see us again. Not as surprised as we are to be here. One of the chimneys supposedly contains a pre-Christian church. We go to see it and it is in a restaurant. We look at the doorway in and it looks like a storage room for cleaning materials. The owner of the restaurant says that we should walk in. So we do only to discover he is decorating the inside like one would a van. It will be a music club. At least until the loud music damages the chimney.

After that the plan is to try to find a high place that we can see over the entire town. We do some climbing but do not manage to find any place easy to go. We are at 1000 meters or about 3300 feet. That makes breathing something of an effort. Though it is one effort we are anxious to make, at least considering the alternatives.

We find a relatively high place that gives a view. As we are admiring it a woman comes out of a house just to be friendly and talk to the foreign strangers who have come up her road.

We do a little more exploring and then go back to the hotel. We sit in the lounge, drink apple tea, and talk to the small, soft-spoken Nico Leyssen, the owner. He is Dutch with a close-cropped moustache and beard. He always seems have sunglasses and to wear jeans, a cream-colored turtleneck and a black vest. He is trying very hard to save this region from developers who would do things like put music clubs in the chimneys and who want to put of concrete buildings all over. He has political enemies and has been thrown out of Turkey twice and has had to sneak back in. Part of the reason he can get back in is that the “y” in his last name is a “j” in his own country and there is no “j” in Turkish. That causes confusion when he is looked up in the database. He has to leave but we continue to talk. I say the the big developers really should be stopped, but there are local people who are just trying to make a living here and they will be a problem. You really hate to tell them they have to lose their jobs to protect the feel of the area.

The conversation drifted and then settled on the Y2K problem. We told the Sammons some reasonable precautions to take.

Back at the room we opened a package of Turkish Delight and I had my first sample.

There is a classical radio station that we can just barely get. I listen to that until they switch over to jazz. Why do classical station have this tendency to play jazz, even here? Jazz stations don’t feel compelled to play classical music. A lot of jazz seems to me formless and unmelodic. I wake up at 11pm and realize I had fallen asleep writing. I turn off the light and go to sleep in earnest. This involves going over to the door since that is the only switch that controls the light over the bed. That gets dust on my feet since like desert areas the dust seems to just blow in and cover things. By the time I am in bed I am fully awakened and it takes a good half hour to fall asleep. But I don’t wan to turn the light back on and awake Evelyn.

It is really dark here at night. Evelyn says it is because we are in a cave. Not so. We have opaque walls at home; we just have clocks and VCRs that have displays that glow in the dark. There is light that comes in the window from the street. Here it is almost total darkness at night. It is a little disconcerting.

The door latch is really two large wooden bolts, either or both of which can be drawn from the inside. One of them has a rod sticking through a slit in the door so it can be manipulated from either side of the door. On the outside if you lock the door using this rod it will be far enough to one side that you can drop a vertical retaining bar through two screw eyes, holding the bolt in the locked position. The retaining bar is widened at the top so it does not fall all the way through the screw eyes. It also has a hole through it near the bottom on which you then put a padlock. Et voila, your door is locked from the outside. It has all the standard capabilities of a door lock but it is implemented in an entirely different way. Sort of low-tech.

The toilet has a problem. Toilets are the highest technology objects that come in any room you rent and are almost always the first thing to break. In this case when you pull the chain it has a tendency to flush but then go into an unstable state. It ends up squirting water for four or five seconds, then stopping for two or three, then starting again, repeatedly. It drives you crazy. The other problem is true all over Turkey. Toilet paper falls apart in use. I won’t go into detail, but it is a real pain.

Breakfast is standard except the olives are incredibly salty. Then we have a walk to the travel agent with the Sammons. There were six people signed up for the tour. It was the Sammons, a nice New Zealand couple, and us. That should keep it nice and small. Right. The mini-bus takes the six of us to a pickup point. I ask the New Zealand couple what they do. When they finish traveling they will go to England and will work. Their field is Maths and Statistics. Oops. Wrong thing to tell me. Shall I let them enjoy their day or should I tell them about the function I discovered and other math I like to play with? I tell them that Evelyn and I were trained in math but I show them some mercy and do not show them my work.

We get on a larger bus and go to more stops. There are more and more people who will be on this trip. The majority are hung-over New Zealanders who are late for the bus. They are 20-somethings who it turns out want to shop. This day is not going well. Then the capper. I know that on this trip I sound like I have one ailment after another. But this really is the capper, I hope. Back in 1981 I had a kidney stone. In fact, the cancelled vacation that year was why we were able to do China in 1982. Once since that time I had a pulled muscle and it was right over the kidney. And it felt almost the same. Well, I got that self-same pain a third time. Turkey is not a place I want to get a kidney stone. Medicine is supposedly good in Turkey if you go to a hospital, but can you guess how I feel about that prospect? The odds are against something serious happening to you medically when you travel to very different countries, but there always is the risk and you can be a big loser. If this was serious having it happen while I travel made it doubly serious. I found myself sweating all over my body.

At about 10am we got to the Pigeon Valley. The most remarkable thing about it was that it had no pigeons (for the moment) and it wasn’t a valley. It was really a crevice with holes dug into it for the express purpose of attracting pigeons. That makes it a sort of local cheap fertilizer factory. In this chicken shit existence the local farmers put pigeon shit on their crops. Our guide, whom you could never tell if what he was saying was serious or not, was telling us in his more serious moments that Cappadocia means “place of beautiful horses.” He then let us loose to take pictures pretty much as long as we would like. Most of the people on our tour went into buying frenzy at the stands. All was not well. Our next stop was at Derinkuyu a sort of underground city dug into the stone. It goes down eight layers or something like 55 meters. He asked us several times if we were claustrophobic. And with good reason. This is a real tough place to get out of in a hurry. It is whole caverns dug into the stonework. They were sort of hiding places dug for living two or three days at a lime when enemies were near back in the time of the Byzantine. If you are coming for a visit, I suggest a bringing a hardhat. I hit my head on the ceilings many time, often in rapid succession. I discovered the secret was to keep my hands on my kneecaps. This was not comfortable, but it cut by 90% the number of head-bangs I got. My mind was still mostly on other pain and my possible kidney stone. When we got out it was raining to make matters worse. It took a while to leave as two of the Kiwi women had gone off shopping.

We stopped to take pictures of a nice volcano view. The volcanoes were the reason for the interesting geology. There were a couple of nice volcanic cones. They looked almost like Mt. Fuji. By this point the rain had stopped at least and it was only cloudy.

About 12:45 we get to Ihlara Village over what looks like a great canyon. There is a seemingly endless stairway down the side of the canyon that passes a Byzantine church with mostly worn-away frescoes. From here we were told it is a simple walk of about an hour along the valley floor. Now it is sunny again.

Parts of this so-called “simple walk” were through small holes in rocks, climbing over big rocks. I cracked my knee on a rock. Great. I needed this on top of the pain in my back? My back? What happened to the pain in my back? My back felt just fine. It either got a lot better or endorphins were just masking that pain. But suddenly this walk sounded like a much better idea.

I didn’t think that this walk was very well managed. The group kept getting strung out going through the obstacles. Eventually they pulled us all together in a sort of clearing with rocks to sit on. It was beautiful. I was sort of grooving on the fact that my back had stopped hurting. Eventually we got to our bus and headed out.

The next place we stopped was to shoot at a distance some Star-Wars-looking scenery. One reason this place looked like something out of Star Wars is that it was. Scenes like when R2D2 is captured by Jawas were filmed against the sandy backgrounds of this area. Surprisingly the film did not use some of the more unearthly topography. After what the tour guide called a Japanese break. That was for taking pictures.

By this time it was about 2:30 and we stopped for lunch at a local restaurant. We are all sitting at a long table. I am sitting next to the woman mathematician. I ask her if she does her own mathematics. I show her some of what I had done with the function I discovered and some of homeomorphic equivalents of means. Well, at least it took only a few minutes. For my beverage I ordered Cappy Cherry. The waiter was not sure if it was available. But Evelyn looked at his list of beverages and found it. Unfortunately it came in a tiny bottle. Pat Sammon saw me drinking it and asked for a bottle for himself. He also discovered he liked it a lot.

The guide gave descriptions of the dishes. The problem was the descriptions did not jive with what waiters called dishes. And there were confused requests for drinks. Actually I was not very hungry and ate only about half my meal, in spite of the fact they had some excellent fried fish. After dinner the staff brings out musical instruments. A few of the New Zealanders dance. The rest of us sit embarrassed or bored.

This first stop after lunch is the Ag`ziarahan Caravansary. This was a stop on the Silk Road. Traders from the East brought silks and spices in caravans to these stops and traded with local merchants and traders. The guide’s description is superficial.

Next we go to Avanos for a pottery demonstration. A fellow on the potters’ wheel makes a vase and top forming and reforming the clay. We are each given unpleasant tea. Mine is apple, but it is just sour. After the vase is complete one of the Kiwis is given a chance to form something on the wheel. Then our host announces, now is the time to shop. I tag along as Evelyn looks a little bit, but we both are unwilling to pay their prices and we go outside to talk to the New Zealand mathematicians. Pat did not go in the first place because he refuses what is obviously a sales pitch.

Our last stop is the Valley of the Fairy Chimneys or at least one such valley as there are several. It is a valley punctuated with many volcanic chimneys, though few have been unspoiled by being turned into churches or by having the churches defaced by Moslems who believe that the Christian decorations have been destroyed by Moslem zealots. You can climb up into homes dug in the chimneys and see church function rooms. I wanted our guide to tell us how the chimneys were formed, but he was in the back of the bus on the way back talking to the Kiwis. The music the bus driver put on can best be described as “Turkish Salsa.” As we got off the bus the guide asked us if we had forgotten something on the bus, like our memories. I think he was actually suggesting we had forgotten to tip him. Actually the day was okay but usually worked better the less the guide was involved.

Well, this was Mother’s Day. I rather think that my mother had never received a phone call from Central Turkey. The Sammons also wanted to call their family so we went over to the PTT office to call home. This was now past 7:30 and the office was closed. There were, however, several phones outside, and we tried to make a call from them. We tried several different ways with home calling cards and with local calling cards. Eventually we decided that it was not to be.

We made a stop at the grocery. I picked up a new canteen sized bottle of water, half a liter; a stock bottle, one and a half liters; and two cans of Cappy Cherry for the room. Pat got the same except the half liter bottle. But he liked the cherry drink and got two cans for himself.

Then it was the long, hard climb up to our room. This was something we had not taken into account when we got the room. It is a real pain just climbing up from the center of town to get to the hotel and to get from the lobby level to our room is no picnic either. We got to the room to find out that this is the kind of place where you rent the room and then only get clean towels. Nothing was done for the bed. Well we can live with that. Actually what is a pain is that the only switch for the only light for the main part of the room is over by the door. That means that you have to get up and walk over to the front door when you want to go to sleep. By the time you get back, who knows if you are still sleepy.

The BBC short-wave band was running a documentary on the founding of Israel and its side of the story since this is the 50th anniversary of the founding of Israel and the Brits are being made the villain in a lot of retellings. The BBC is only slightly more favorable to the British. Everybody agrees that they made conflicting promises to the Arabs and to the Jews as to who would own Palestine. They asked for compromise and the Jews were willing to compromise on the offer. Better half of Palestine than none at all. The Arabs wanted it all. Both had lived in the area reasonably peacefully together for many centuries but the Arabs did not want to be told that part was not theirs. The Jews were anxious for what they could get and were willing to concentrate their people in half of the territory. In the end Britain found that it could not appease both sides. They could not win or break even. All they could do was get out of the game. They announced that they were going to pull out of the area and let the newly formed United Nations make the same decision they had been asked to make. The UN voted for partition. Israel claims that it tried to get the Arabs to stay; the Arabs claim they were forced out. (As I understand it the evidence seems to be that both are telling the truth on this one. In the chaos of fighting a war in the first hours of its existence Israel could not implement a completely uniform policy. In some areas Arabs were asked to stay but did not want to live in a Jewish state. In others Arabs who would have stayed were told to leave.)

The short-wave reception has been extremely fringey and I had to hold my hand on the short-wave to hear the half-hour BBC broadcast. It was now 8:30. I did not make it until 9. At 11 Evelyn started going to bed. I woke up. I suggested because I was now awake we might sleep one night with the light on so if I woke up and could not get back to sleep I would not wake her up. She readily agreed. I was up in the night and got a little more writing done.

The backache was gone. I had had later twinges, but another night’s sleep and things were good. The bed here is one of the less comfortable ones and I must have slept crookedly on my back the first night.

I must sound a little like a hypochondriac, what with colds that go away (real) and kidney stones that disappear (speculative). But I was concerned. Really I suppose the mileage is starting to show on this Indiana Jones.

We were up at about 6:30 and showered, and dressed until about 8. We had breakfast with the Sammons, this time for what I assume was the last time. There is little chance of seeing them in Istanbul. Pat noted that Mary Lynne tried the Cappy Cherry he bought last night and agreed that it was great. She drank a can and a half of it. This stuff is bottled by Coca-Cola but not available in the US. What a pity. They do have some fruit drinks in the Coca-Cola line in the US, but they are all under the apparent separate brand Minute Maid. I doubt Minute Maid has anything this good.

The back wall of the lounge where we have breakfast is a Camel cigarette ad that I find very funny. It is maybe four feet high and eight feet wide. It purports to be a film ad for a film called The Wild and the Brave though I sort of assume that no such film ever existed. On the right there is a picture of a man and a woman, both in their mid-30s, both in sort of African hunting gear. He is in the foreground with a big Camel cigarette between his fingers. She is standing behind him looking statuesque. To the left is the picture of them fleeing an angry bull elephant. He is standing on the landing strut of a flying helicopter. She is hanging over the side holding on only by his hand. The ad says, “Taste the Adventure.” Wow! Now that is excitement. We didn’t do that when we were in Africa.

We did not have a real itinerary planned for the day except that we wanted to go to the Open Air Museum. I think the idea was to take it easy. Pat asked us directions on how to get to the bus stop where he would be picked up at 9:15. I suggested we could walk them down and show them. Yet again we wished them well. This time I really think it was the last time. Then we climbed back up the hill to our room. Whoa, what a climb. One does not take it easy living up a hill like this, there are just varying degrees of strenuous activity. We decided to sit on our porch and write until we got our strength back.

We intended to head out something like 11 am after getting caught up in our logs. The day was clear. So we sat and wrote. An Australian family came through and we talked to them about what Anzac Day had been like and our plans to go to Australia. They left and some other guests came by. I noticed the woman was reading The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence. Basically the film Lawrence of Arabia is based on this book and on a reworking of the same material, Revolt in the Desert. We talked about that Syria where they had visited. We talked about cinema. These are Clark and Ria Olson who live a little north of New York. She is Belgian-born and a translator. She looks a little like Vanessa Redgrave. Clark looks a bit like Richard Dreyfus with a neatly trimmed white moustache and beard. He does woodworking. Before we knew it was 1pm. I told the Olsons that we were going to the open-air museum and suggested that they join us but they had arrangement to make including setting up a tour for the next day.

We headed out for the open museum. Different countries have different things they call open-air museums. This museum was at one time all one huge church carved and hollowed out of the volcanic cones in this area. In a way I have not seen in any other region of the world volcanic force has pushed up cones of what looks to be a soft stone. A cone may be 30 feet to 100 feet high and maybe half of that in diameter. The rock is soft and crumbly. It is easily shaped. Here in this valley many small buildings were carved to make one church. There are crude geometric under paintings and in the 11th and 12th century there were still crude but more advanced frescoes painted on top.

We decided to walk from town to the open-air museum. It seemed to be just on the outside of town. It turned out to be about a 45-minute walk in the hot sun, mostly uphill. The scenery is otherworldly so that probably makes it worthwhile. It is sort of a cross between the American Southwest and Mars. But I realize as we are getting to the museum how much the walk has taken out of us. We each get a coke. The man gives us each a can and a yellow straw. The straw is leaky and what we are drinking is Coca-Cola foam. I give up and drink from the can.

The official name of this museum is the Goreme Acik Hava Muzesi. You walk in a big circle going into buildings. Even this time of year it is crowded with tourists. Since the only light for many of the rooms is through the doorway, people blocking the doorway is a problem. One climbs up rough steps to go through little doorways to get into claustrophobic rooms.

The cones have names like The Nun’s Monastery, the Apple Church, and the Snake Church. The latter is so called because it shows St. George slaying a snake. We take some pictures for some tour groups. Joke with some Japanese. We spend maybe a couple of hours there. On our way out we see the Olsons coming in and make arrangements to get together for dinner. We head back out for town. Funny this road seems to be mostly uphill in both directions.

I want to belatedly wish my mother a happy Mother’s Day. So at 5pm we want to call her. That will be 7am in California. It is now about 4 so we stop for a snack. I get a big kabap sandwich (to share with Evelyn) and a fresh-squeezed orange juice. There is nothing sweet about the orange juice, which tasted like lemon juice. Of course, I like it sour. More tourists go by carrying the Lonely Planet. Evelyn says next trip like this she want to put a different cover on the Lonely Planet just so we don’t look like everyone else. I suggest we put on the cover of the Lonely Planet India book. That would really confuse people.

At about 4:30 we go to the PTT office and ask how we call home. We are told we have to call from this phone inside. We verify the access number with him. He wants us to dial it now, but I say that I want to wait until 5pm. So we wait and other tourists from our tour yesterday come along. We talk. At 5 we call. Wouldn’t you know it, my mother was called from the shower. I should have called earlier. “Where are you calling from?” “Goreme. You know, in the Capadocia Region of Central Turkey.” (Sure he knows. Right. Well, he can look I up in the atlas.) But it makes something of a hit to call home from someplace really exotic. We talk a little about Turkey and politics. Well, it will give them something to tell their friends, that they talked to Turkey.

Little did I know that I would have to fight to save my love on the way back to the hotel. We were climbing the hill (ugh!) and there in a little grassy patch were two turkeys. Yes, there are turkeys in Turkey. (I think I have heard they give them a different name.) I took a picture of the male. Good stuff for the photo album. As we were walking the male turkey stepped in front of us to take a closer look. Evelyn asked if they peck hard. I don’t see how they could. They have that wattle in the way. I tried to step around and the turkey jumped at me kicking out with his claws. A minivan came along and suggested we wave a turkey steak at it. Big help. But as the van distracted it I walked by. The turkey went after Evelyn. The turkey actually jumped at her a couple of times as she tried to pass. Evelyn asked if I could find a way to ward it off. All I could find was a piece of wood bark on the ground. It would break if I tried to do much with it. But I whipped it at the turkey’s head. The bird was not anxious to have its head whipped with bark and walked off. The threat was enough. I should have used my umbrella. That grows fast from a bird’s point of view.

Back at the room we had some time before dinner so I put on the radio. It was playing American Country-Western music. I should have gotten some Coke and some Doritos and had them while I was listening. The storeowner would have been tickled pink to have me pay in American money. I would find it a lot tougher to go Turkish back at home.

Meanwhile the weather was changing and I went out to enjoy it. The sky goes like gray cotton. There is a constant rumble of thunder. Evelyn and I go out to watch the lightning on the sandy mountainside. The birds are reeling as if to get their last bout of flying in before the rains come. Perhaps they are looking for what they will use for shelter. Lightning scratches streaks in the sky. Across the way on the caved mountain women in veils to cover their heads rush around pulling in wash. The storm changes from sprinkling little drops to dropping heavy, pendulous bursts of water. Still there are parts of the sky that are blue. And some are white. But overhead it is a heavy gray. I am getting wet. I jump inside the door and clout myself on the head. This is the feel of Goreme, the feel of a clout on the head. I felt it again and again in the underground city. Again and again as I clambered under rocks I felt the concussion. Again and again as I climbed into low cave entrances in volcanic chimneys. And the low door of my room partakes of the tradition. This is the feel of Goreme.

At 7:30 we meet the Olsons and head down the hill for dinner. They had somewhat dressed up, but I knew it was still a long muddy walk to the restaurant. The Planet recommended the restaurant in the Hotel Ufuk II. We go there and it is a walk up a sort of muddy sandbank. We get to the restaurant and it turns out the kitchen is being renovated. The owner recommends another restaurant, Tardelli’s. We decide to try it. Evelyn and I have lamb kabap. We get a salad and a Haydari for the table. Evelyn shares a bottle of wine with the Olsons. We talk about the usual: travel, food, movies, books. We compare stories of when the Olsons were in China with when we were there. They thought the Western breakfasts were great in the early 90s. In 1982 they were pretty bad and we were always better off if we could get Chinese food instead of Western. Clark is also a Russell Hoban fan, like Evelyn. We discussed the effect Ted Turner has had on film. I am less critical of Turner than most serious film fans. Yes, he colorized some films, but he also restored them to do that. If you say you lose the subtlety of lighting that the director of the black and white film intended, so what else is new? Even on film that changes with time and certainly the adjustment of the TV set affects it. And Turner has made a lot of nearly unavailable films become widely available. The damage he did by colorization is minimal compared to the good he has done for cinema fans. And Turner is giving a billion dollars to the UN. Bill Gates spends his money on himself. I think Turner’s TV news is not very good, but overall I think very highly of Turner. I don’t have much good to say about Bill Gates. Gates is just a selfish, immature little boy who cornered a highly profitable market. Compatibility has value to business so whoever made the operating system that American business standardized on would be very rich. That was Gates.

As we climb back up to our rooms the sky is partly cloudy. There is a full moon and it silvers the edges of the clouds. To stand at the base of one of the cones with the light glinting golden off of it and look up at it and the sky is a beautiful picture, but one I cannot capture with my camera, unfortunately.

We get back to the room.

Toilets in Turkey work about as well as turkeys do in toilets.

Evelyn looked out the window and said it did not look like rain. I told her that it would cloud up and rain a little late morning. Then it would clear only to cloud again and rain in the early evening. How do I know? Experience. That is what it has been doing all along in Goreme.

Breakfast was not ready when we arrived so we talked a little bit to Nico. First about the Camel ad. It apparently was used in a German film. The discussion turned to his battles with the Turkish government to preserve this area. He seems to have a set of abstract complaints and desires and I have not gotten a good idea of exactly what he does want. First he is saying that they want to buy the cone he restored and they should have been asking him six years earlier. Then he is complaining that they may not want to buy it. He wants the bus station and the stalls outside the open-air museum torn down because they were not designed by an architect. He complains they are “Door. Window. Door. Window. Door. Window.” He wants the government to come in and spend a lot on the town. I don’t know what exactly he wants things to be like.

We were worried the Olsons would miss their tour. They came into breakfast at 9, which seemed a bit late.

After breakfast we went back to the room to rest up from going back to the room. Evelyn asked me what I wanted to do today. Well, like yesterday it was already kind of a lazy day. I looked in the Lonely Planet and they had maybe two places worth going to. I dozed off a little, I guess and woke at 10am. Evelyn said the places I picked were really a bit far to go today. Okay, so now what? I suggested what if we were to check out and head for the less lazy area of Ankara. We would be going a day earlier than planned, but there would be more to do there. Evelyn said there was probably no convenient bus. Then she looked and discovered there was one about 12:30. So that was decided upon. The hotel never asked us how long we were staying. At least in this season things are a little loose. So we are off to Ankara. It took us about 15 minutes to me out the door. I cracked my head on the top of the door one last time on my way out. We had just flushed the toilet and we could not get it to stop so we just told one of the employees. Nico saw us and asked us a couple of times, “You’re leaving?” He was also sort of mumbling to himself.

We got to the bottom of the hill at 10:35 and it turns out one of the bus companies had a 10:45 bus to Ankara. The bus pulled up early and at 10:38 we on both the bus and our way to Ankara. It is hard to imagine timing getting better than that. We seem to be on the bus with a somber group. It is just a small bus, larger than a mini-bus but maybe two-thirds or less than a full-size.

The bus takes us to Nevsehir. Here we will wait for a half-hour for the Ankara bus. The time comes and we board. This is video-bus, our first. It was built by Mercedes-Benz. They start a film and I tell Evelyn it is safety instructions (like on a plane). The joke turns out to be quite true.

But then they do have a movie. The movie is Gunah. The plot must be more complex than this, but since it is in Turkish I may be missing some of the subtlety. An inter-city bus driver is a good guy whom everybody likes. A mysterious woman running away from her village rides his bus, and she fascinates him. He keeps seeing her in the city at the other end of his route. He finds out that she has become a sexy belly dancer. He wants to save her from this life. Eventually he kidnaps her at gunpoint, drags her onto his bus and takes her to the ocean where he washes the makeup off of her. She melts into his arms. She tells him what she was fleeing in her village but it is lost in the Turkish. Presumably they are very repressive. They hug again. Flash forward: they are engaged and deliriously happy. Even the groom’s mother agrees. They have a wedding ceremony. Everybody is happy. Then at the height of the ceremony the bride is shot dead by her family. In agony the bus driver grabs the dying body of the woman he loved.

Some of the things I learn from this film:

Some Turks eat like Indians, using the bread to pick up the food.

The life of a bus driver may be considered to be romantic in this culture like being an airline pilot in the US or being an engineer on the trains in Canada or India.

It is not unusual to see men holding hands and kissing each other on cheek. I have also seen this on the street.

Almost like Indian films ,they may often have songs for no reason in the middle of some Turkish films.

The approval of the groom’s mother is very important in deciding if a wedding can take place.

Brides in Turkey wear very Western-looking gowns.

Pretty much a whole village will celebrate a marriage. The men may have a dancing ceremony that has a mock fight with sticks.

There is still a great deal of tension between the fundamentalists and the more Westernized Turks.

I think you learn the fastest about a country the first couple hours you are on the street and when you watch your first movie from that culture.

We stopped for lunch break. I did not know how long we had. I went to the steward and pointed at my watch asking “On? Yirmi?” (“Ten? Twenty?”) He said, “Okay. Okay.” Well that was not much help. We bought a couple of chocolate bars and talked to an Australian couple about travel, etc.

At this writing we are approaching Ankara. This is a city known for taking that which is tangled and making it straight and that which is straight and making it tangled. In the first case it is the hair from Angora goats. The city was once called Angora, in fact and is the center of the Angora wool trade. And making the straight tangled is obviously the chief function of government and Ankara is center of Turkish government.

The town was a center of trade going back to the Hittites at 1200 BC. It changed hands to the Phrygians, Alexander, the Seleucids, the Galatians, and in 25 BC the Romans. The Byzantine held the town, but it was captured by the Seljuk Turks. Tamerlane captured it and its Sultan. But when his state collapsed it became a sleepy goat-raising town again.

Ataturk made it his government in 1920. After his War for Independence it became the capital of his new Turkey.

Well, we arrived in Ankara and the first thing we needed to do was find the bus to Ulus. Evelyn tried to ask in broken Turkish how to find bus 198 to Ulus. I told her to never underestimate the power of the written word. I wrote on a piece of paper “Otobus 198 -> Ulus”. I showed that to people and got conflicting answers but at least they understood the question. One man could not tell us where to go so walked us to the place to buy tickets for the bus and waited there with us until the ticket-seller arrived. We told him he could go, but he insisted on waiting with us. The Turks are a very hospitable people. We really should have taken a taxi, probably. We are saving ourselves a few small dollars, but people here are willing to humor us.

The bus comes and it is a double bus. It is really two cars with a sort of turntable arrangement between so people inside don’t risk the floor turning under them and gaps forming.

We get off at Ulus. This is really a business street with banks, more up-scale stores, and crossing Cankiri Caddesi anywhere but at the light is taking your life in your hands. When you cross at the light it seems that all of Ankara is crossing one way or the other and perhaps both. We fight our way across. On the other side one street over we look for the hotel, the Yildez. Behind the counter there is a rather strange looking clerk with a falsetto laugh. Something has pushed his eye teeth forward of his other teeth giving him the appearance of an underfed and slightly swishy vampire. We ask to see the room, first he wants to see our passports. This does not sound good to me, but I insist on seeing the room before paying. The bellboy takes our stuff up to the room. Well, if he insists. The room does not look too bad. I test the toilet and it works. It is a reasonable room; it even has a TV. Okay, we pay for three nights on the room. I go back upstairs and start to settle in.

I tried flushing the toilet again. This time nothing happened. Terrific, we have now paid for the room and the toilet is broken. There was water in the tank the first time, but the tank did not fill. I memorized Turkish for “the toilet is broken.” Down to the desk.

“Tuvalet yanmiyor.” The desk clerk smiled at me. “Yes.” That’s it? Yes? “Tuvalet yanmiyor.” “Yes.” But this time he was searching for the right words in English. “Seven.” “It will work at 7:00?” “Yes.” He bent his arm and made a muscle as if to say, “Be strong.”

We go looking for dinner and go to the Lahmacun Office, a pizza joint. It is decorated with a poster of Georgia O’Keefe and other flower pictures. We each get a different kind of pizza. I order Lahmacun, called Turkish Pizza. This is on a cracker-like piece of crisp bread, a circle about eight inches in diameter. On it is a think layer of ground lamb and tomato sauce. Then it is baked. Much more like pizza at home is Kiymali Pide. This starts with a crust a little thicker. It is covered with tomato sauce, cheese, and ground lamb. A rim is folded on the pizza from the top and bottom so it is no longer a circle but an eye shape. It is baked and then cut with parallel cuts the short way across. You get strips of pizza with rolled crust at each end. At this restaurant with each you get a little parsley salad, no utensils, but a salad. A slice of lemon is there as the dressing.

After dinner we walk around the shopping area. There are lots of more prosperous-seeming stores. Perhaps they are just more the style we see in the US and less like open and less formal mom and pop stores. You do have people selling battery-driven toys on the street. There is the car that drives to a wall, tries to climb it, falls on its back, and then rights itself. And runs in the opposite direction. There is also an electric dog that barks. There are sweet shops with open fronts.

We walk out into the square and there is a very large statue of Ataturk on a horse. Ankara, of course, idolizes Ataturk, at least officially. Here it is a punishable crime to show disrespect for Kemal Ataturk.

At the base of the statue there are kids playing soccer or hockey with an aerosol can cap.

We look in a bookstore window. I was surprised to see a Turkish edition of George Polya’s mathematics classic How To Solve It? There were novels by Dean R. Koontz, Stephen King, and especially Wilbur Smith. But we saw no science fiction. That was something of a surprise. There seems to be no market that I can see for science fiction in Turkey.

This is really the least touristy section of Turkey we have seen. We haven’t even seen a tourist since the Otogar. I also have not seen one carpet shop. There are no touts chasing tourists either. The closest you see is beggars who pick out foreigners.

Well, enough walking. We get back and the same clerk is behind the desk. I point out it is 7pm. I say “Yedi.” He responds only by giggling. We get upstairs and there is still to toilet. We can use the toilet only by filling the tank from the showerhead.

There is not much on the television of interest. I work on my log. I think I will treat myself to my last on-hand can of Cappy Cherry.

I have to be a little negative on Turkey for more than just the tout problem. Just about wherever we go the level of service is a bit dishonest. Now the hotel knows they the toilets don’t work and they basically lie about it rather than fix the problem. The desk clerk knew darn well there was no fix to the toilet coming. He just did not care.

I must have hit the sack about 10pm. I really don’t remember for sure. What I remember is that I got caught up in the log and decided to play one hand of solitaire. I have Klondyke on my palmtop. It worked out for me and I decided nothing better could happen to me today. From the next room I hear the monotonous of a computer video game. They have it turned up too loud. But it does indicate these things are available here.

At an extremely efficient five feet six inches, I still like to think of myself as being fairly tall. But I have to admit that there actually are thousands of Americans (well, at least hundreds) who are actually taller (and Luck of Leeper says I usually get one sitting in front of me at a movie theater). One advantage of having hundreds of Americans taller than me is that I usually do not find beds to be too short for me. This is one of the rare places where my feet stick out over the end. I wonder what some of the few hundred whom I have met would do sleeping here. I guess they would just hang their feet.

After breakfast we had a bellboy come up and show us how to flush the toilet. There it a plunger that should come up on its own, but it does work if you pull it up by hand. There was a different desk clerk today and he was more serious. So why was the clerk telling us 7:00 and be strong?

We are back to cloudy, rainy days.

Our first chore of the morning is to get train tickets to Istanbul. (Now why does that still sound dramatic?) We went to a bus stop and could not find the bus we wanted. Evelyn asked a ticket seller and it sounded like Bus 200. There was no bus 200. I pulled out a pad of paper and asked the directions again. He wrote down “200 metre, ilerde ASTI bas.” Seeing it written made all the difference. We walked a little way down the street, beyond the current grouping of bus signs and by itself. And there was a bus sign labeled “ilerde ASTI bas.” And that was that. I now never travel to any non-English-speaking place without a writing pad. It is better than a phrase book for communicating. (In Japan when I went to restaurants I tried ordering orally only the first day. Once I figured out I could copy the names of dishes from the window displays it took about 95% of the hassle out of ordering.)

We took the bus to the Gar, the rail station. We got sleeper car tickets for the Friday night train to Istanbul. This saves a night of hotel, saves a day of travel, and costs little more than standard train tickets. In this case tickets for two cost 8,500,000TL. That is $17 a person.

The station has a Railway Museum. It is just a small museum of four rooms or so. There is not much English. Basically it is mementos of the railway trade. There are things like ticket stamping machines. There are models of whole trains or of individual cars. There are models of whole railway stations. To one side there is even the private railway coach given by Hitler to Ataturk. Hitler always hoped that Turkey would enter the war on the same side as Germany. Turkey did not make the same mistake twice. Some of the exhibits are hard to understand.

I went out and took a snapshot of the train in the station. I was at some distance but the engineer in the front car stood up, probably posing for my picture.

There is another museum at the railway, a sort of small art museum. We went in, but the guard seemed convinced we were in the wrong place and we wanted the railway history museum.

Next we wanted to go to Ataturk’s Mausoleum. We hired a cab. It cost us a dollar or so and saved us a lot of walking. We rarely use cabs and it is foolish.

There were military guards standing at attention on the road leading us to the site. This seems excessively formal to us. On arriving there were a bunch of people in jackets and ties milling around. That explains the formality. Something is happening. Sure enough there were a bunch of tourists in the buildings waiting to see some arriving dignitary. I got my camera to the ready with the telephoto lens. One of what I think were plain-clothes men was eyeing my camera to make sure it did not mask a gun. I saw the man arrive and he was a little white-haired old man with a bent spine and an almost beatific look on his face. A ceremonial guard came out and presented him with a wreath that I later saw he carelessly left when he visited Ataturk’s tomb.

When he had passed I asked the plain-clothes-man “Kim? Who?” “Bernard Lewis.” I don’t know who that is. He looks American. The wreath said “Prof. Dr. Bernard Lewis” in letters stapled on. There is no W in Turkish and they crudely stapled together two Vs. [Bernard Lewis is a historian and expert about the Middle East in general and Arabs in particular.]

Everywhere in Turkey a great deal is made of Ataturk, and nowhere like Ankara, and in Ankara so much is made no place but here. There is a long marble walkway flanked by stone lions. It leads to a big courtyard with the mausoleum at one end. All around the outside of the courtyard is a wall with buildings at the corners that constitute a museum of the life of Ataturk. Even before the walkway there are two small buildings whose subject is just the memorial showing alternate designs including an interesting and somewhat kitsch pyramid design. Inside the courtyard the walls are decorated with symbolic reliefs. When wet the reliefs are harder to see because they lose their contrast with the background. In the museums you can see Ataturk’s library, the clothing he wore, documents he signed, gifts that were given him, walking sticks he used, and cufflinks he wore. There is even a case of photographs taken in Turkey in which cloud patterns look like his face or just his eyes watching over Turkey. I would say it is a little ostentatious, but it is a punishable crime to not show sufficient respect for Ataturk in Ankara. This was very much a gray sky day, but as we were walking between buildings I noticed peculiar billows of blackness rising up from the city. Something in Ankara was burning pretty fiercely. We will probably never know what.

The exhibit concludes with cars used by Ataturk and the caisson that carried his body to his funeral. Then there is a souvenir shop. Evelyn bought postcards, but I got a really unique souvenir, a little geometry book written by Mustapha Kemal. I should point out that Mustapha was his name at birth. One of his mathematics teachers renamed him Mustapha Kemal for his excellence in mathematics. Kemal means perfection. Later when he was named Ataturk, father of Turks, he kept the Kemal and dropped the Mustapha.

On the way back we discussed why our own leaders do not have nearly the personality cult of an Ataturk. Evelyn later pointed out that our only real personality cult is Elvis Presley. Perhaps if you are going to have personality cults, it is better it be of a singer than of a politician. But maybe not. I mean, what does that say about Americans?

For lunch we stopped in a chicken restaurant called Mudurnu. I had a Chicken Schnitzel, and Evelyn had Chicken Shish. I thought mine was pretty good. Schnitzel is fried a different way than things are fried in the US. I put some lemon juice on it and it was very nice in spite of being a fast food restaurant. Very different than the repetitive food we are having.

It is a fair walk from the mausoleum to the ethnographic museum but at least there is a Locomotive Open Air Museum along the way. This is where they have engines from the glory days of Ataturk building the railroads of Turkey. Unfortunately the locomotives are pretty much all from the same years, the 20s and 30s, and look a lot alike.

Walking from the open-air museum to the ethnographic museum turned into more than I had bargained for. We had a minor revolt in which I suggested that we really would enjoy the trip more if we took more taxis. I guess the long walk uphill to the open-air museum in Goreme convinced me that I was arriving at sites I wanted to see already exhausted. We should be more selective.

We got to the ethnographic museum and discovered it to be full of Japanese ceramics. We were in the wrong museum. Actually we had found the Fine Arts Museum. The Japanese ceramics were fine, but not what we were expecting.

Behind the Fine Arts Museum we found the Ethnography Museum. It is a nice collection of the expected sorts of things: wedding dresses, napkins, and ethnic clothing. There are guns, woodwork with inlaid mother of pearl, bookstands, the inevitable carpets, and brassware.

There were some historic photos. Turkish uniforms of the 30s look like French from WWI uniforms. They look like trenchcoats and hardhats with rounded work helmets. Officers looked like Nazis with broad flat-topped hats. Other helmets look like Nazi metal helmets with the rim that comes down to protect the ears and the back of the neck.

Continuing on there are decorated swords and guns. It is not clear to me why you would want these things highly decorated, but I guess they were for a different age and different values. I remember how beautiful was the carved work on the Wasa in Sweden. It was really very ornate. The fish must have been really impressed since it was top-heavy and had an active career measured in minutes. When it comes to weaponry I will take functionality over glitz every time.

They had a calligraphy exhibit with pictures in Koranic calligraphy, including sailboats, birds, human faces, etc. They also had a sepulcher decorated in woodwork calligraphy. Nobody venerates calligraphy like Muslims, not even the Japanese. And there is a sort of lounge. The Turks go in for horizontal living.

As we were headed back we saw there was the main branch of the Fine Arts Museum right there so we visited it. It has mostly European style art. There was a nice piece about a sword-seller in a marketplace with a very Arabian Nights sort of feel. They have a fair amount of modern art. Some of the art is very attractive.

After that we continued on to see if there was anything playing at the opera house. Sure enough tonight was a performance of “Cingene Baron” by Johann Strauss. We bought tickets and found them to be at the double-take price of 400,000TL. Yes, if you want a night at the opera they sock you $1.60 for a seat. For the price of one opera in New York you could see 25 or more here.

We got back to the room and found the toilet again broken. I figured out that the way to get it to work was to take the top off the tank and push the float down by hand when its own weight does not push it down.

We are watching a little bit of Turkish cable TV. The most popular station seems to be SHOW. This is a station that seems to show soap operas and Italian melodramas both dubbed into Turkish.

Kind of a risque ad for Turkish TV but funny. A man and a woman are kissing passionately on a beach. She lends him a coin and he goes running to buy a condom. He is ready to put his coin in the machine when he sees next to it another vending machine labeled “Magnum.” He spends his coin on a Magnum Ice Cream Bar instead. I don’t think we would have an ad that risque on American TV.

Interesting to see a lottery ad built around the song “If I Were a Rich Man.” How many mostly Islamic countries would know the song from a play about Ukrainian Jews?

We had dinner at a restaurant called Kebabistan where I had chicken kabaps and for desert shredded wheat with honey and nuts, something I had had in Greek restaurants at home.

It took about 15 minutes to walk to the opera house. I mentioned before that people start buildings that they cannot finish just to show the commitment. I think the same thing goes for sidewalk repair. The sidewalks are in dismal shape but at many of the places where the sidewalks are falling apart are some of the materials for repairs. Most likely they are cement tiles. Now they may be eighteen-inch sand pits in the sidewalk waiting to catch the unwary, but there will be a pile of sidewalk tiles there showing the intent of the city to make this a whole and healthy sidewalk some day. There is always the hope for the future. Your children or perhaps your grandchildren will live to see this sidewalk repaired. The reason the sidewalks are always torn up is in part that cars are allowed to park on sidewalks. Heavy vehicles tend to really rip up pavement. Next time you see some big trailer truck saying this vehicle pays some exorbitant amount for road taxes each year remember he is on the road a lot more hours a year than you are. And for each of those hours he does a lot more road damage than you do with one of your hours. His road taxes probably do not cover the wear he causes and your cover yours and some of his. But remember also that he may be bringing food to your grocery store and part of what you pay is so that you can eat.

Anyway, so we walk to the Ankara Opera House. It is a nice little unassuming little opera house. We buy tickets for tomorrow’s dance performance. Up we go to the balcony where our seats are third row from the back. This is a hot country and you should never assume that air conditioning someone else controls will be to your standard. It must be at least 80 degrees.

The opera begins with a stirring overture followed by the Entrance of the Late Arrivals. Once they are in their seats the story starts in a gypsy camp near a town. Don’t let that fool you. This is an operetta by Johann Strauss. He could have Act One about peasants living in a Paris sewer, eating garbage, and being bitten by rats. By Act 3 it will be about Austrian aristocrats waltzing.

The operetta was performed in Turkish. At the first intermission I commented to Evelyn that under the circumstances it was surprisingly easy to follow considering I had never heard the story. Not that I had every plot point. When pressed I could tell her lots about the story. At one point someone thanks someone else. I happen to know the Turkish word for “thanks.” Another point some colorfully dressed women bring out some baked goods to the crowd.

There was of course somebody selling cans of soda at the intermission. I got one more out of curiosity about the price than because I was really thirsty. It was 150,000TL, probably what you would pay at a kiosk on the street. The chime to call people back to their seats is the first 15 notes of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony. Those are probably the 15 most gentle notes in music outside of a lullaby. There were two intermissions and each took a serious toll in attendance.

The third act, though short, was the spectacular finale. Gypsies and townspeople were back from the war in their grand uniforms and were waltzing around the stage. So much glitter was dropped it looked like the scene was taking place in champagne. Now I didn’t think all that much of the film Top Secret when I saw it, but the humor has stuck with me and I still think I it is funny. One of its legacies is that I cannot see a ballroom scene of everybody waltzing without it looking just a little ridiculous. And that really is the function of satire.

One other thing did come to mind. In The Paths of Glory when Dax visits General Mureau on last time to try to avert the execution, Mureau is giving a ball in which they are dancing Strauss waltzes. It never occurred to me but that is the music of the enemy. France was fighting Austro-Hungary in the First World War. That is a very clever touch. If you don’t know what I am talking about, I envy you but hurry before it is too late. Get your hands on Stanley Kubrick’s best film, The Paths of Glory. Other than a couple of crime films it is his first film and he never made nearly so good a film again. That film is much better than this operetta, of course.

There are all degrees of skin tone one sees in Turkey but there were no dark Turks on the stage and few in the audience. I could be wrong but I think there are no women in headscarves either. What is interesting is that many Germans and Austrians look down on the Turks as cultural and racial inferiors. They are considered just cheap labor for the auto plants. But the Turks care enough about Austrian culture to want to put on Strauss operettas. It is sort of the relation between Korea and Japan. I have never seen a Korean restaurant that did not have a sushi bar and at serve a fair amount of Japanese food. The Japanese think of the Koreans as racial inferiors. Ah, such is unrequited love.

After the opera we walked back to the hotel and wrote a while.