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

I awoke about 6:30 and wrote for a while. After all I did not have last evening to write and I don’t have this evening. But the proximity of the opera house is really nice. Ataturk liked the opera. There is a statue of him outside. I guess it was part of his attempts to Europeanize Turkey.

I think that most places where we have been having cheese for breakfast it has been kind of bland. I just realized that what we are getting here is Feta Cheese. It looks the same and probably is related but it a lot tangier and saltier. That is a good touch. Turkish breakfasts have very little variation. So do the other meals. We have been avoiding the steam-table sort of restaurant where the food is hours old and does not look very good. Oh, one other difference with this breakfast at the hotel. Here they have rose jam. Usually it is strawberry and cherry.

I wonder how many pedestrians are killed in Ankara each year. The drivers are not very careful and the walker is constantly in danger.

The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations is claimed to be the one world-class museum in Ankara. I can well believe it. I had always wanted to go to the countries where they worshipped the Babylonian sort of gods. Now the place you would go for that is Iraq. I am not going to go to Iraq. But the same gods were worshipped in what we now call Turkey. Most of the best have been removed from the original sites and taken to Ankara. It is here and it is beautiful. There are really two parts to this museum. There is a central hall and there is an outer hall surrounding it on three sides. The outer hall is a decent archeological museum. By itself it is worth the trip from the hotel. The central hall has what Howard Carter would call “wonderful things.” It is worth the trip to Ankara. This has great stone wall decorations. It is a wonderland of lion-headed humans and human-headed lions. There are gods portrayed like men and men portrayed like gods. There are strange animals and battling gods. There are big stones with hieroglyphics. There are bulls bucking and demons with bird heads. There are lions and bulls and long horned sheep. There are boars being hunted with bow and arrow and deer. There are griffins and who know what the creatures are. There are warriors and kings. If it ain’t wonderful it didn’t make the cut. It is like a wonderland of ancient history.

There seem to be a lot of school groups. Children love to show off that they know “hello.” As you enter the hall you are greeted by an eight-foot statue of a forgotten king. Soon you are looking at winged gods. You see eagle-men with bodies like men and heads like birds.

The outer hall shows a chronological collection of artifacts from many civilizations. It seems like every case for a stretch shows the evolution of deer figures. There is a lot, though it could be shown to better effect to play off the wonderful central chamber.

I bought two “fake antiquities” to use the term in the Egyptian guidebook. One was a tile of a chimera. It is a winged lion with two heads, one lion one human. It is an imitation of one from the Herald’s Wall at Carchemish from 950 to 850 BC. The other is the storm god from a relief 750 to 700 BC.

After going through the museum we looked at the central room again and worked on our logs in fine company.

Walking around citadel was our next order of business. This is a fortress that overlooks Ankara built in its present form in the 9th Century AD. There is not a lot to see but some tall walls and gates. There are several groups of school children on field trips.

We keep running into groups of ten-year-olds who want to try their English making simple conversation. Sometimes they want me to take their pictures. Occasionally they ask for pens. (I wish I had brought some extras.) Usually they just want to be friendly. I photograph a couple of groups.

The heights of the citadel give a commanding view of city. For lunch we go to the Zinger Pasha Museum and restaurant. It really is just an old house with a restaurant on the top floor. It is a pleasant place to eat nice view.

They brought out a different sort of bread. It is like an English muffin only softer and fresher tasting. It is the same thickness but about 6 inches in diameter. For appetizers Evelyn ordered melon pickle salad and I ordered mushroom yogurt. The latter is just what it sounds like. It is yogurt and mushroom to be eaten with the good bread. Incidentally the one word that Turkey contributed to the languages of the world and it is always mispronounced. The “g” in “yogurt” has a little smile over it. That makes the “g” silent. The word is pronounced “yo-urt.” Now, imagine a slice of dill pickle four inches in diameter and three quarters of an inch thick. There are no cucumbers you could take a slice like that out of, but there are melons you can. We got two pickled melon slices. The center was stuffed with peppers and diced tomatoes. That’s Melon Pickle Salad. Next came the main courses.

I had Filet Mignon in a cream mushroom sauce. It came with peas, rice, parsley, a tomato wedge, bread, about ten perfect French fries, and a fiery green pepper. Was it the best meal of this trip? It was the best meal of this year. Evelyn had lamb chops. I had a Pepsi. This was a fancier restaurant and it shoed up in the bill. 5,150,000TL or about $21. The Turks tend to write the dollar sign after the number, by the way. They would say it was 21$.

Following lunch we walked through the bazaar outside. Little shops with spices, scarves, hardware, toys, bread, one after another, elbowing each other out. I got a piece of weaving for my office. Evelyn got two scarves for herself. Now my best shoes for work had also the best walking tread so I brought them. The problem is that they are suede, and the sidewalks of Turkey have pretty much done them in. I think I may risk having them cleaned toward the end of the trip in the hope that someone can find something that can be done with them. But in the meantime I am out a pair of shoes for work. Things are cheaper in Turkey. It was Turkey that grotted up the last shoes. Why not let Turkey save me money on the next? I passed a shoe store and saw a pair of suede shoes that suited me. How much? 4,000,000TL. $16. They seemed to feel pretty good. How am I going to turn down a pair of suede shoes I need for $16? The dance show tonight is $2.40. How can you beat these prices?

We had gone almost at random in the market and had now pretty well lost ourselves. However, Evelyn sighted the tall Ziraat Bank Building and with a little walking we were back at our hotel. Around the corner we stopped in a bakery and grocery. We needed water and were all out of Cappy Cherry. I asked Evelyn to pay. I took a picture of the different kinds of bread. With a grin the owner wanted me to shoot the back of his store and then the counter where he posed for me. Then he gave me the business card for his store wanting us to show it with the pictures. The Turks are a fun people.

Back at the room we wrote in our logs. I saw a little of Turkish TV. It is surprising how much Jewish music you hear in locally produced ads. They just ran an ad with “Eli Melech” as the background music. We saw the end of a “Cadfael” dubbed into Turkish. Now there is a Japanese Samurai film dubbed into Turkish but still subtitled in English. I wonder what it is. Well, it might as well be in Turkish as Japanese. Got it. The film is about Takezo but he will change his name. This is the first of three films that tell the saga of Musashi Miyamoto who is turned from evil to good and eventually fights Kojiro in a famous duel on an island whose name I have forgotten. Eiji Yoshikawa told the story in an epic novel called Musashi. The same filmmaker made a fourth film, Kojiro, told from Kojiro’s point of view. This film was the first third of the story.

They also ran some old Max Fleischer Superman cartoons.

I went to use the bathroom to get ready to go out and discovered that there was no water. There remains constant water on the floor around the toilet. That is always there. I guess three stars does not buy what it used to in a hotel. Somehow there has always managed to be water at the base of the toilet. I suspect by the color it leaks sewage though I have not noticed a smell.

We were not hungry enough for a full dinner so went to a sweet shop. Evelyn had Tabuk Gogsu and a beverage Boza. The former is pounded chicken breast with cream sugar and cinnamon. The drink is fermented millet. I had a chocolate pudding, hearing that they were particularly good and having little idea how good chocolate pudding can be. It is cooked chocolate pudding with a small cream puff at the center and chocolate shavings over the top. It was a wower. Very nice. Cost for the three items is less than $3.

There is sort of a headwaiter. First a busboy walks to a corner of the restaurant behind me where nothing is happening but he can look over my shoulder. Then the headwaiter does the same. Both seem very concerned about what I am typing. They have not seen a lot of people come into their restaurant typing things before. He is behaving as if he thinks I am checking up on him.

Today has been a fairly good day. Now we are off to the theater to see what I am guessing is three ballets. They are Symphonic Dances. The music seems to be from Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, Ravel’s “Bolero,” and Shubert’s “Bitmemis” Symphony. I am not sure which Schubert it is, but I am guessing it is the Unfinished Symphony. In any case we will have a fighting chance to know what is going on tonight. I doubt they will be dancing in Turkish. Music and dance transcend the language barrier.

Last night the program book was 40 cents; tonight it is $2. I guess you need a lot more text to cover dance. We got to the theater at 7:05 and people are slowly arriving. People dress to varying degrees. There are kids of 12 who come dressed like… well, like kids of 12 insist on dressing. Sloppy pants, running shoes. He looks like he could be an American. Some people are dressed very formally in jacket and tie and some in tee shirts. I am dressed as well as I can be after travelling for two and a half weeks in Turkey. That is to say I am just a bit on the shabby side. The only thing really out of place is the fact my shoes need a cleaning (desperately). The crowd looks a lot like the crowd one might get for this event a Lincoln Center. Take a photograph of this crowd and you would never guess that it was taken in Turkey.

They use no ushers to take people to their seats. It is assumed to be a service that is unnecessary. Otherwise I saw nothing the slightest threadbare about the performance last night, in spite of the very low cost. The tickets are all printed in one book. As they are sold they are ripped out of the book. Crude but effective.

Every seat in the theater has a unique number. The row letter is useful information, but it is redundant. We have much better seats tonight. The fire curtain looks like a Turkish painting of musicians and a woman dancing.

A woman pushes past me on the row and says two or three sentences to me in Turkish. They sounded friendly enough. The couple next to me is dressed very formally, but the woman’s suit smells of camphor.

The nice thing about dance is even if the dance conveys little to you still have the music. In this case it was indeed Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony.

Now there are many people for whom their most meaningful experience with classical music was Fantasia. That is not the case with me. I did not even see Fantasia until I was in college. The film that fulfills the same function for me is The Black Cat (1933) with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. I cannot hear any of the vast array of classical music used in that film without being plunged into that wonderful sepulchral battle of mortal enemies. That is my idea of a great movie. Of course, hearing the first movement of the “Unfinished” and I was back on the battlements of Fort Marmaros in spite of whatever was happening on the stage.

Part of the problem was the man sitting in front of me was somewhat tall and had a short haircut which made his hair stand out like a brush. I think the dance had something to do with the nature of art. There were music stands as props and women in tights and men in frock coats a la Chopin, but without shirts. Well, even if one ignores the dance this can be considered a concert.

I admit I don’t know a lot about modern dance. Years ago when we visited a place that no longer exists by the name of Leningrad we went to see a dance show. They were folk dances and at the height of the dance they brought a bear onto the stage. We really enjoyed the night. Since then my acid test for a dance piece is would it be improved by bringing a bear onto the stage. Few pieces of modern dance can stand up to the bear test. The next piece was done to Ravel’s “Bolero.” It had women in what looked like swimsuits and men in tight black dance outfits. The movement seemed abstract. Again, I cannot tell you what they were trying to say and at least for me, the performance sadly needed a bear on stage. A Bolero is a dance. If you are going to create a dance to go with the music, it had better use the music better than the original dance did. This did not. It had movements in time to the music, but it takes more than that to make a dance for the music.

At the intermission people step past me to get out of the seats or back in. The two people next to Evelyn first excuse themselves in Turkish. The second time out (there were two intermission) the woman said something in Turkish and the man said “sorry.” Coming back in the woman said nothing and the man again said “sorry.” He probably told her not to speak Turkish because we would not understand.

The climax of the evening was Beethoven’s Seventh. This starts out more lighthearted and lively than the previous music. There were more dancers on the stage and they did a better job of representing the music, at least to me. When there was repetitive sound in the music there were enough dancers that there was a pair for each repetition. I thought they did a really good interpretation. In this case no bear was required. There was a problem. The audience seemed unfamiliar with the music. Twice in the third movement the choreographer brought lines of dancers to the front of the stage and the audience thought it was a curtain call. They started applauding and drowned out the music. The dancers stood at the front of the stage and waited for the applause to die down before continuing, but it must have thrown them off. Now admittedly much of the fault was that of the choreographer. But I think someone was assuming that everybody knew that the music of any (but the “Unfinished”) symphony is not over until four movements have passed. At the beginning of the second movement Evelyn gave me a look. It was more great music from The Black Cat. It also was music that was used in Zardoz. I tell you every great dark piece of classical music from Romantic era shows up somewhere in The Black Cat.

Following the performance Evelyn and I walked home in a light rain. The water was back on when we got to the room. We had bought candy bars to eat at the intermission, but I had been busy writing about the performance. So we ate them in the room.

Well, our trip is rapidly coming to an end. My spreadsheet that tracks such things says we are now 7/8 the way into the trip, or will be in about 8 minutes, which is close enough for me. This program gives me a nice pie chart showing what percent of the trip is gone. It also tells me where I should be on my film. In the early parts of the trip I was using up film too fast, but now I am even just a bit behind. I may end up with a roll to spare.

More fighting with the plumbing, but in an hour or so it is someone else’s problem. We went down to what might well be our final Turkish style breakfast. Frankly it is pretty much the same thing day after day and while I did warm up to it eventually, I won’t be sorry to get some variety. The knife at breakfast was cheaply made. The handle was only a little sharper than the blade.

We go out looking for some of the local artifacts of ancient Rome. The first stop is the Column of Julian. It was erected for the Emperor Julian. It is not all that impressive any more. A stork has built a nest on the top.

We got ourselves a bit lost looking for the Haci Bayram Cami, the most beloved mosque. How impressive is a glass shop with a cracked picture window? We found the mosque and the small ruins of the Temple of Augustus. A man was feeding pigeons and had roughly an acre of them swarming around. I wonder how many of the pigeons six yards away really thought they were going to get anything at all considering how much competition there was. I guess you take your chances and hope to be lucky sometime. You take your chances going with the flock. Not a lot of pigeons are creative thinkers.

A little girl and what I assume was her younger brother were selling what I would call charms or Islamic Mezuzahs. It was something in a sealed leather pouch. She was so persistent and it was only 20 cents, so Evelyn and I each bought one. She kissed us each on both cheeks, but there was too much language barrier for us to understand even what we bought.

We took some pictures of the mosque, but did not go inside. We walked around. There is a sort of religious bazaar with most shops selling religious goods. We bought a book, the first apparent piece of science fiction we found in Turkey, but found out it was really a tract about Islam and Doomsday. We talked to a soft-spoken gentleman who asked us to see his bookshop and have some tea. We politely declined. He gave us a sort or religious talk assuming us to be Christians. He told us about how powerful God was, identifying God with Nature. He said that God was the greatest computer maker since He had invented the human mind. He said that a fly is far more complex than a fighter-jet. The sun is a much more powerful atom bomb than anything man has made is. If he were a Jehovah’s Witness on my doorstep I might have pointed out the flaws in his argument. He believed things were going to come to a battle between believers and atheists. I really should have pinned him down as to why he thought that people with differing viewpoints have to battle. I respect both believers and atheists, though deep down I think both use flawed arguments for their viewpoints. The universe just does not provide the evidence for us to decide if there is a God. Deciding to be one or another is an emotional decision, not a logical one. But I really now wish I had tried to persuade him that atheists are not his enemies. At least they are not just by being atheists.

We walked from the bazaar through the streets until we saw the Ataturk Monument and that told us where we were. On to the War of Salvation Museum.

The War of Salvation Museum is in the building that housed the National Assembly and from which Mustafa Kemal commanded during the war of Independence. Essentially, as I understand it, you had a three-sided war. You had Greeks invading Turkey. You had the forces of the Sultan, and you had Mustafa Kemal. On May 19, 1919, Kemal took command of the Ninth Army ostensibly to fight the Greeks but instead taking on two enemies. Kemal was forced to resign but resistance to the Sultan was now official and a national issue. The resistance continued and gained support and by January of 1920 Kemal claimed his Nationalists were now the rightful government of Turkey. In March of 1920 Kemal set up this building as the National Assembly of Turkey. The National Assembly was slow to act but in August they counterattacked the Greeks and routed them, burning Smyrna.

If you know a little of the history the museum has more meaning. There is not really a lot to see. It is just a bunch of rooms where the assembly met and where Mustafa Kemal had his office. Perhaps because this was the Friday before May 19 there were hordes of school children whose classes had come to visit the museum. Many of them found us more interesting than the exhibits. We tried to discourage them, but we got lots of hellos and kids trying out their English on real live tourists. There were long lines of them waiting to get in and we could not even walk down the street without being treated like celebrities.

The Republic Museum is just down the street from the last museum. When the Grand National Assembly got too big for the first building they moved to this second building. However, when we got there it was closed to the public. A film crew was setting up to film a shot there and was preparing several cars out front to look like antiques. We watched for a while, then decided to go back to the hotel, just a few blocks away. There was a man on the sidewalk selling washcloths. At least I think that is what they were. I shook my head no, but he gave me a big smile anyway. The Turks are great people.

Back we go to the room. One last use of the ludicrous plumbing facilities. Then we pack our luggage on our backs and we are off. As we leave the hotel I tell Evelyn to take a last look. There is actually a fairly good chance she will never see it again. We catch a bus. I suspect that with this amount of luggage we should have taken a taxi.

A bus station is an otogar; a train station is simply a gar. We leave our luggage at left luggage. The man tells us they close at 11pm. No problem. The Ankara Express leaves for Istanbul at 10:30pm. If our luggage is still there at 11pm we are in serious trouble. From there we get a bus to downtown. This is the modern downtown from the new part of town. Ulus is really the old part of the city. Evelyn sat next to a woman studying to be a mathematics teacher. I had to grab a different seat.

Getting off the bus Evelyn got a Coca-Cola and I got a Cappy Cherry and we went to sit in a nearby park. Two shoeshine boys came by walking with a third boy. The third boy stopped to look at us with an over-exaggerated pained and pitiful look. When we would not give him money he pulled a smoking cigarette from behind his back and nonchalantly walked away. I commented to Evelyn that he needed a better pitiful look and the cigarette definitely did not help the act. A few seconds later he had picked a fight with one of the shoeshine boys.

The downtown section is called Kizilay for a square in the area. What I had called up-scale shops before should be taken down a peg. This is really a fancier downtown than most American cities have.

You see a lot of clothing and toys that use Mickey Mouse or Tweety-Pie. The two are very popular characters. I never see a copyright symbol. I suspect that the use is illegal.

We look in a bookstore window as we walk. One of the books for sale is The Diary of Anne Frank. Now how many mostly Moslem countries would you see that in?

There is an area opened only to a very minimum of car traffic. We walk around going to stores, mostly bookstores. I get some pictures of fish stalls. The fish are all laid out in parallel even rows. Each one has a bright red wound the size of a nickel at the base of the neck. It may be some sort of freshness proof, but I am not sure how it works. Maybe it changes color when the fish is not fresh. There are also some beautiful fruit stalls.

As yet we had seen several bookstores without ever seeing a science fiction section. You do see horror and some fantasy, but science fiction seems not to have made much of a mark in Turkey. In one bookstore I find some books that get about as close as I have seen. There is a Turkish edition of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. I get a much abridged version of The Phantom of the Opera also, just as a souvenir. We like to collect foreign language editions of science fiction books.

We went to another bookstore and they did have a science fiction section, but with only about 20 titles. Featured is what we have to figure out is Children of Dune by Frank Herbert.

It was getting toward lunchtime and later, about 2:30. We decided to look for a place to eat. There is no shortage of places to eat in Kizilay, but most look good and we took pretty much the first we found, a fried fish sandwich place. For 300,000TL or 350,000TL you get fish fried while you wait on a half loaf of bread, with lettuce and onions and a wedge of lemon. We ordered Bass and Halibut. I would swear one of us did not get what we ordered because both are fair-sized fish and Evelyn’s was made of some small fish. Still it was good enough. I thought hers was a little bitter tasting, but she didn’t think so. So we sat there watching the passing parade, eating fish sandwiches, and drinking Cokes.

We walk around the downtown area after lunch. We consider making some purchases, but don’t. We go to a movie theater and you have your choice of four American films: Titanic, Great Expectations, and Seven Years in Tibet. We find some used book stalls and get some cheap editions of a couple other science fiction novels: Arthur C. Clarke’s Fall of Moondust and Isaac Asimov’s Pebble in the Sky.

We walked around and then sat in the public area and wrote and watched the passing parade. We sat in front of a restaurant with a huge spit of lamb meat. It must have started out three feet in diameter. As we sat there he sliced meat one sandwich at a time. It must have been down to two feet by the time we left. That is a lot of meat sold.

We probably could have gone to Istanbul a day earlier. The little bits that we are doing today do not add up to a whole lot. It would have meant missing last evening’s performance and that would have been a shame. Still there is something to be said for just sitting in a park (we are now back in the park where we had the drinks early this afternoon) and noting cultural differences.

There are a lot of military men in uniform on the streets. It must be a bigger percent of the Turkish population than of our population.

Cigarette smoking is different. Almost everybody adult seems to smoke. Well, a very big percentage anyway. In Turkey people are much more likely to sit near you, light up a cigarette, and blow smoke your way. I guess we in the US have had our consciousness raised about smoking. However most Turks prefer Turkish cigarettes to American ones. In Bergama the son of the hotel owner explained why. He had a Turkish cigarette and the Japanese gardener had one. He bent the cigarette and the paper tore. He told the gardener to bend his cigarette. On the American cigarette the paper did not tear. They put plastic in the paper so the cigarettes are more durable. American smokers are inhaling burning plastic. I don’t suppose it adds a whole lot to the dangers of smoking, but it does give one pause. I have been told that the Turks who do smoke admire people who don’t. I think they figure they have had the strength to give up smoking.

Everywhere there are people selling flags to celebrate May 19, the Turkish equivalent of Independence Day. This was when Ataturk started leading the people in his revolt against the Sultan. You are nobody unless you are waving a big flag when the day comes, I think.

The time came when it was getting hard to read and we got a bus to the train station. It really picked up a lot of people. It was not as packed as the subway trains in Tokyo at rush hour, but it was packed by US standards. It was all I could do to hold onto the bar and stand. One of the banks has a big sign that shows moving pictures like Times Square.

We recognize when we are getting to the train station because of the amusement park across the street. Their parachute drop is a tall tower, sort of a landmark. We had to fight our way off the bus. We both had to use the toilets. The cost here is 30,000 for tuvalet. Well, I guess 12 cents isn’t much.

We go into the waiting room. We still have a couple of hours until our train is ready. The train platform is one of the cleanest and most beautiful I have ever seen. The marble tile floors add a lot. We decide to get a little food. There is a restaurant and a pasta place in the station. Here pasta means pastry. They have a big menu on the wall. I order Pepsi and pizza, Evelyn orders cake and Turkish coffee. The waiter goes off and brings Evelyn her cake and me Pepsi. We wait.

Eventually I ask the waiter if pizza is coming. He seems confused.

His boss comes out carrying a second open Pepsi and a piece of cake. “Heyir. Pizza.” I write down “pizza” on my pad. “No pizza.” Okay, I take the cake.

We get our luggage and go out on the platform. There is a dog in the train station. I clearly was too harsh on the local populace. Just about everyone who passes the dog pets him or makes kissing sounds. One woman petted him. Made a one-minute gesture with her hand and went running off. A couple minutes later she returned with some wrapped cake that she gave the dog. “I know him,” she explained. He chose to sleep on the marble floor near us until we had to leave him and board the train. Also it was a he. I don’t know why but the vast majority of dogs I have seen have been female. Maybe it is my imagination. Having ridden sleepers in Southeast Asia and India I am prepared for the worst. I just hope we get put in with someone decent.

I get on the train and tell the steward our seats are “besh ve alta” (“5 and 6″}. No, we didn’t get put in with someone decent. We have a private two-person compartment. Well, I would say the accommodations are comparable to what we had on the one time we had a sleeper in Scotland. Okay, get this Southeast Asia traveling companions. Our compartment has a full complement of electric lights, and an outlet. There is a thermostat. It gets better. There is a sink and a big mirror. There are two bottles of water and glasses. There is a wall with hangers and hooks. Come to think of it, Scotland did not have a sink. Hey, it isn’t as nice as in Murder on the Orient Express or From Russia with Love, but, hey, it is way ahead of anything we have had in a sleeper car before. I just wish we could have traveled like this earlier in the trip. And it saves us a travel day. And it saves us an hotel night. But we have to pay $35 for a double. What luxury. You know, I like Turkey.

To enjoy the trip more I have myself some roast chickpeas from earlier and one of my two cans of Cappy Cherry. I didn’t initially like roast chickpeas but I am getting used to them. I think they need salt. The other problem is they get a little charred in the roasting process, which comes off on your fingers in a brown powder.

The conductor earlier offered to open the beds, but we wanted to stay up a little longer. We opened everything ourselves. No problem. I expect the rocking of the car to help put me to sleep.

I woke up at 4am and realized I had forgotten something very important about comfort. To a Turk, a comfortable room temperature is maybe 80 degrees. One discomfort about the opera house is that it was warm and stuffy. This car had its own radiator, and it was pumping away. Evelyn woke up too, perhaps because of my reading light reflected by the mirror, and suggested we open up a window. Yup. I will have to remember that the next time I am on the Orient Express or another train of its ilk.

Once I opened the window it got nicely chilly. The night averaged out to a comfortable temperature. Well, it is easier to sleep when it is too cold than too hot.

At 6am or so someone walks the corridor ringing a bell as a wakeup call. Outside we see the Sea of Marmara. There is a low mist on the sea the same color as the sky giving the impression that the hills in the distance are floating on air. We pass a modern rural area, one looking very Mediterranean, and every once in a while you see a pair of minarets towering over it like a pair of candlesticks. I wonder why Americans are not here in larger numbers. This is a terrific place to visit.

The sink has a little metal label that shows a faucet over a full water glass and an “X” over the water glass. Wash with water but don’t drink it. Breakfast was the cookies we had since the trip to Konya and mineral water. The toilet on the train is sit, not squat.

We are once again dogged by cloudy weather. Some of these views would be a lot nicer in the sunshine. Still I guess there is nothing to be done for it but live with the bad weather. Well, this is the last day.

We pull into Istanbul station at about 8am. Istanbul station is a marvelous old building with stained glass windows. It has a feel of classic Middle Eastern architecture even if it is not a mosque. There is just a feeling of romance about the building.

We buy our ticket for the ferry, a cost of 125,000TL. We get on the boat. I have been told from my reading that this ferry across the Bosphorus is supposed to be something magical. I am looking forward to it.

Most people are unexcited by the trip across the Bosphorus. A few of us stand in the open area. We pass docks with boats loading and exotic buildings in the distance. Once again here and there you see minarets. A student sees that I am a tourist and wants to know about me. Another man joins in the conversation. We are making a short stop to let some passengers off and others on.

Now we are out on the water. Looking at Istanbul is indeed beautiful with its giant mosques. In the early morning there are sleepy fishing boats in the water and faster boats. This is certainly a nicer way to get into Istanbul than to come in by airplane on a gray and foggy day. Unfortunately the ferry ride lasts only a few minutes. We get out and they are selling fresh fish on the docks. The smaller fish glint in silver, and there are some very large fish heads.

Hmmm! This really is not going well. Maybe it is the fish heads. It really was a very exciting scene, but fish heads just aren’t going to convince any one. You are probably reacting the way I would reading about how exciting it is to see a bin full of liver. Well, take it from me. It is a “ya have to have been there.” From there we got a taxi to what was basically the same area where we had been three weeks before.

Drivers are really casual here. As we were driving one motions to our driver to pull up beside and the two start a conversation. He probably wanted directions. I already commented on how close they will drive to people. If a driver in the United States has to drive within two inches of where a person is standing he will stop and wait for the person to move or honk. Here the attitude is, “What’s the problem?”

We leave our luggage at the Alp and take a cab out of the city to the dock were we hope to get a ferry up the Golden Horn, the port of the city. Naturally our cab nearly hits someone getting there. We get to the dock and looking for how to get a ferry we are pretty nearly flooded with touts trying to sell us rides up the horn in their boat. What we find out, which seems to be true, is that the water is low and there are no ferries up the horn. We still have to fight these guys off with sticks, but make our getaway across a busy road. That frightens them off, but nearly does the same to me.

We get bus tickets and while we are waiting for the bus I buy from a vendor a roll of egg bread. The cost is 20 cents and it is fresh and quite good. The Turks do like bread. I am eating the last as we find our bus.

Our first site is the Eyup Sultan Mosque. Eyup Ensari was a friend to Muhammed and one of the founders of Islam who died fighting for the new faith. His tomb was revered by the Byzantine as a mark of respect. When Mehmet the Conqueror took the city for Islam, he was obliged to treat the tomb with more respect than the Christians had. This mosque is considered a very holy day. We see at least two families with little boys dressed in white satin suits with red sashes, cylindrical hats, and capes. They look like they are ready to lead a circus parade. In fact this is one of the special days in their lives. Jewish boys are only a few days old when they are circumcised and at 13 they have the bar mitzvah for which there is a lot of study and commotion. Then on the day there is lot of cheek-pinching by sadistic aunts under the guise of affection. Moslem boys don’t have to study for the event, but they are circumcised between eight and ten. And they do lead a parade of friends and family. I am not sure which is worse. Maybe it is better to get it over all at once the way they do here. The boys I saw did not seem to be very happy, but both had older sisters who were enjoying it immensely.

The tomb has not a lot to see. A tomb that you can see a little of behind an iron grating. There was an ornate chandelier and the room was decorated in blue tile. Women are expected to cover their heads and wear long skirts. Evelyn did not, but had the respect not to enter. I did enter, and I gave her a description. We walked around the area and there are other tombs and other graveyards. Some of the gravestones are pillars with Koranic verses.

Well, once again we were accosted by a group of schoolgirls wanting to test their English. It was all the usual stuff. “What is your name?” “Where are you from?” “What work do you do?” We asked about them. They asked about us. One of them made what I assume was a rude comment in Turkish and the others giggled and hit her.

Our next stop was to be the Kariye Church. Evelyn found it on the map and judged it to be one kilometer, certainly less than a mile. We set off to find it. This was one of those cases where we just walked and walked through non-tourist areas. Really non-tourist. After better than 45 minutes with no sense of getting any nearer, I insisted we hire a taxi. We did and the guy seemed to drive and drive and drive. Eventually we got there and the cost was about $2.

Kariye Museum (Church of St. Savior in Chora) known in the Lonely Planet as the Chora Church was originally called the Church of the Holy Savior Outside the Walls. When first built in 413 it was an outside place, outside the walls of the city. It was garishly over-decorated with mosaics. As the city grew it was surrounded by the city. Under the Ottomans it was defaced for the greater glory of Allah. What the Ottomans did not get to is still more than enough for a church several times as big. I will let Evelyn cover the actual art.

The next order of business was to find lunch. After our little disagreement over the whether walking or taking a cab was a better idea Evelyn suggested I take the lead in finding a restaurant. We walked a couple blocks to find a busy street. We walked a little further and found a nice-looking kabap restaurant. For me lunch was doner kabap and Pepsi. Evelyn had the Iskander Kebap. That is the same meat in a spicy tomato sauce with yogurt on the side.

After lunch we find the bus that would take us to the next site but as we go to get on the bus we see everybody else has a ticket. So we buy a ticket and wait for the next bus of the same type. We get on and they say it is the wrong kind of ticket. They sell us another one. Well, that’s about half a dollar wasted.

I had heard that in Islamic countries that a woman would not sit on a bus next to an unrelated man. The bus filled with so many people I could not see Evelyn across the aisle. I later suggested that we should have used our walkie-talkies. I did get occasional views of Evelyn’s hand, which reassured me that she was still there. Then the bus got so full I could not see that.

We had planned to tour the Dolmabahce Palace. This was the palace of the Sultan, but only late in history when it was no longer really time to have Sultans. This was the time that Turkey was called “the sick man of Europe.” While the state of Turkey was going into a bucket, the Sultan was having this ornate palace built for him to impress the monarchs of Europe. The entrance cost was something like $14 per person. We decided to give it a miss. We could see much of the exterior from the gate and got the idea that it would be of the ornate French “lather on a little more gold” school of decoration.

In front of the gates are guards who are supposed to stand at attention and not react, no matter what. They stand like mannequins. To me it is not clear what this has to do with winning wars. We continued up the street to the Maritime Museum.

At one time Ottoman Turkey was the supreme sea power through the Eastern Mediterranean. Under Suleyman the Magnificent from 1520 to 1566, Turkey commanded the waves. The Christians could not allow that power to continue and destroyed the fleet in 1571 at the battle of Lepanto. The Sultan built another fleet, though never as successfully. Turkey failed to keep its fleet up to date and eventually lost its place as a sea power.

What we at first thought was the Maritime Museum was a small exhibition of art, all on themes dealing with the ocean. One piece seems to have a sailboat on cloth so that a background seems to move in Moire patterns. Pieces were done in a style of 1950s science fiction art. Some were done in bright cartoon colors. One nice piece was an abstract shark.

There was supposed to be a second building of the museum, but it turned out we hadn’t been to either building. The first real building was mostly taken up with historical boats of the Sultans and their harems. From there you went through a garden that featured bronze busts of maritime governors and admirals of the fleet. It has cannons and mines from more recent history. The second building had more recent objects including Ataturk naval mementos, a captured Ottoman standard from the Battle of Lepanto. They had a collection of boat models, medals, coins with maritime pictures, figureheads, water lights, diving suits and pumps, etc. It was a much nicer museum than it first appeared.

We thought it might be a good idea to take cheap ferry twice across the Golden Horn. I would have liked Evelyn to see a view like I had seen that morning, but the ferries were not running. So from there we wanted to get back to the room. Since our room was in walking distance of the Topkapi Palace and the bus claimed to go to Topkapi, we figured we were all set. We asked how to get the bus. A man sold us a ticket and told us we had to cross the street. It was a busy street and we had to cross a “flyover” to do it. It was about a fifteen-minute wait for the bus, and when it arrived the ticket-taker claimed we had the wrong kind of ticket. Evelyn was getting frustrated and started to complain. Another passenger took our two tickets and left the price. It was a small thing, but typically Turkish.

We took the bus to Topkapi only to find ourselves at a bazaar that was nowhere near the Topkapi Palace. We had to take a taxi anyway. The driver was a disagreeable sort who kept making obscene hand gestures at other cars. He also shortchanged us and drove off before we could stop him.

We went back to the room a little tired and a little down. Actually we had not seen the room at the Alp yet. We rested and realized we had to change money for dinner. None of the cash machines would accept our card. We passed one cash machine that had rejected it before. Someone inside the booth waved at us. It was one of the Kiwis we met on the Goreme tour. We went to see if she was having any luck. She said the machine had just been repaired. It still rejected one of our cards. We tried the other and Voila. Magic. We could have a decent dinner our last night instead of pizza.

We tried the Altin Kupa for dinner. The service was just awful. First they served a group that came in after us first, then apparently were taking dishes to the restaurant next door before serving us. After about 40 minutes we finally got our food. I had mixed grill; Evelyn had lamb cutlets. I was irritated and had planned to get dessert, but did not.

Over dinner we discussed what were the highpoints of the trip for each of us. For me it was the collection of artifacts of ancient religions at Ankara. This may be one of the great collections in the world of religions whose country I always wanted to visit, but assumed it was impossible to get to it behind a political curtain as impenetrable as the Iron Curtain. It was a real discovery that there was a country that still had the originals.

Evelyn’s choice was Goreme and there is something to be said for that. Certainly it is the most visually spectacular place we visited. There were two problems for me there. One is that I still have wounds on my head from cracking it so many times. A few times is funny and I should have learned to be more careful. But in the end I began to grow weary of the traps for the unwary. But I have another and deeper problem with Goreme. What happened geologically at Goreme is unique, wonderful, and beautiful. And I can even accept that some historic people might have hollowed out some of the volcanic chimneys for homes. But then the Christians had to deface it for what I consider selfish reasons. And then the Moslems had to come in and deface the Christian art, scratching out eyes of the images, putting theirs in its place. How would you feel looking at Yosemite if it had been totally defaced in a South Bronx style gang war and there was graffiti over everything? At heart I suspect a lot of what is done in the name of religion is trying to curry favor with what people consider to be the powers that be. People willfully confuse the concept of “done in the name of religion” with “good.” That is at the heart of perhaps most of the evil in the world. I see evil done for this motive, evil done for greed (e.g. theft), and evil done for racial intolerance. They are basically a) greed for the next world, b) greed in this world, and c) instinct to preserve ones own genes (a la Dawkins’s Selfish Gene). a and b are the same if you assume life after death. b and c are the same if you take a more biological viewpoint.

As we are leaving the restaurant a carpet salesman sees us and rushes to try to get us to his shop. The Sammons absolutely hated talking to carpet salesmen. The Farises convinced us that it was enjoyable and often did not involve buying a carpet at all. They just want to talk and find out about the world. This one wanted to know what we do. I said that I work with computers. He said this was like Bill Gates. Yes, computers but not Bill Gates. Gates is now the richest man in the world. He is the second carpet salesman we have met who is fascinated with Gates’s wealth, at least after we said we were in computers. Both knew, however, that Gates was in trouble with the government.

Our salesman wanted to know what we made a month in salary. I told him. He was astounded. He said he could live very, very comfortably on that much money. I told him that was meaningless. You cannot earn like in the United States and live in Turkey. Really all he is seeing is that there is a high exchange rate. We do not live all that much more comfortably than he does. It is more comfortable, but our prices are a lot higher. He knew that was true saying that bread is very cheap in Turkey and very expensive in the US. He wanted to know if we each had a car. Yes, but that has been true only for a short time. Over the last three or four months for the first time we have had two cars. Before that we had one car 15 years old. And we own our house? Well, yes, but have a mortgage. He did not know about or understand mortgages.

He also wanted to know about violence in the United States. Five-year-old children had guns, he had heard. I told him it was very rare. Did we have a gun? No, but I know several people who do. Guns are very hard to find in Turkey. I told him it was a good thing. He agreed. I had hoped to buy some candy for my group at the corner store that had offered us credit the first day.

The carpet salesman said we could get I right there, but the woman had been nice to us and I wanted to be nice back. Now it was after 9pm and I was probably too late. Eventually we pulled away. The corner store was on he way. We passed it at 9:20 and it was open. The woman remembered us and treated us like friends. We bought candy for home and some peach candy for me (which turned out to be really good). We had about a million lira left. It occurred to me to make her a gift of what was left. Evelyn thought we might need it at the airport. We didn’t. But we did say good-bye.

We returned to the room to pack. Evelyn went to sleep. I tried not to sleep, but did sleep maybe an hour.

(I will keep today’s log entry short since there is no a lot of insight about Turkey left to make.)

Today is my birthday. I was up for an hour or so before we had to go. We got a wake-up call. He woman who ran the hotel had gotten up to wake us up. Since we were leaving early and could not stay for breakfast she had made us each a cheese sandwich on a half loaf of bread. She gave us those and two juice boxes of cherry nectar in a plastic bag. This was 4am she was up. Maybe she wanted our last impression of Turkey to be a good one. I cannot believe we in the US treat visitors as nicely. There are all kinds of Turks, but the country seems richly endowed with nice people.

Istanbul gives us a rainy farewell as we get in the dolmus to the airport. We get to the airport and find out the plane is leaving early to Munich. It will just give us more time in Munich.

There is a mob in front of the ticket desk. We have all sorts of strategies for getting through the lines quickly. As a result we are the last through. Well, we are really early for our flight so we have the time. Security is a little worse than arriving by having us go through two different magnetic checks. But it is little more than looking at the passport as far as asking questions.

We sit in the lounge and I doze a little. I am trying to convince myself it is around midnight even though the sun is rising, or would be if it weren’t a gray and ugly day.

We talked to a woman from Denver about bookstores. I hit the plane, getting the news that Frank Sinatra was dead on the way in from a day-old newspaper. I was already dozing by the time we took off. Was half-awake for the takeoff. Then went back to sleep. I did not even notice if it was on time at 12:30am home time. I fell asleep again and woke up around 1:25 when they dropped in my lap a Turkish salad with a little corned beef, an omelet Florentine, some mixed fruit and a couple rolls. Also as much orange juice as I can manage.

It is nice weather when we approach Munich. The clouds are in tall billowy piles. The plane seems to take a path around them and we have a little fun turbulence. We land and have to take a trolley to the terminal. This is our first time in Munich. The decoration has a sort of Erector Set feel with you able to see how things are put together and a lot of open air.

We go to the gate and Evelyn goes off to explore. They bring two older people in wheelchairs into the waiting room. They are not having a good time. It seems he is blind and she is confused. Together they make a whole person. I listen in. They are worried about the next flight. They did not get seats together. It is a long flight and they are worried about being separated for so long. I did not want to act without at least telling Evelyn, but I knew darn well that when Evelyn came back we would exchange seats with them. There wasn’t a chance Evelyn would say no. They were very appreciative. Heck, I just had 24 days almost constantly with Evelyn. And at work we share an office. With so nearly perfect a wife, who needs separation time? But this flight will give us each time to work on our logs.

Once again Lufthansa provides newspapers. I have been out of touch. Okay, there is rioting going on in Indonesia. The rioters are trying to get rid of Suharto. Until now I have been on their side. Not any more. Now I don’t particularly care what happens. It seems they have picked out the ethnic Chinese as being particularly responsible for Suharto being in office. They have drawn this conclusion based on two important pieces of evidence. First, the Chinese are different from Indonesians. Second, some Chinese are wealthier than some Indonesians are. So the Indonesians are burning Chinese alive. Not all the Indonesians, but they are not stopping the ones who are.

Once again Lufthansa is boarding by zone. Zones 1 to 4 are boarding. There are some Zone-6ers a little concerned. I tell them they are going to Chicago.

As soon as you get on the plane, even before take-off they came around with boxes of orange juice. Again I was half-awake by the time we took off. I must have slept for half an hour. That was intentional since I could not work on my log during take-off. When I was awake they served a snack of a drink (orange juice for me) and a pack of kangaroo-shaped crackers called Jumpys made mostly from mashed potato powder.

On the TV they ran a short film about the making of Amistad. They said that filming it required historical accuracy while showing John Quincy Adams standing in front of the Capitol Building complete with the dome it would not get until the Civil War. Nice accuracy.

Lunch was a smoked salmon salad, tortellini a roll, fruit compote, and some nice cheese.

The movie is The Jackal. It isn’t a bad film but with so good a film as The Day of the Jackal being based on the same novel there is no need for this stupid version. The first film is pure chess game. No gunfights, no chases, very little violence. It was just a search for a needle in a haystack and the clever way the needle hides. This is almost a parody of that film.

After, the film juice. And everybody gets a 35-gram bar of Toblerone Chocolate. After the film is a turkey, tomato, and cucumber sandwich. They are constantly either bringing food or picking it up. But I like it as an airline.

Landing was pretty much on time. Well, that’s it. That’s Turkey.

I am very fond of East Asia. But I think Turkey has been the best and certainly the most surprising country not on the Pacific Rim. I like the people, and much of the country is spectacular. It is not always an easy trip but it was one very worth making if for no other reason than to give me evidence against Turkophobe myths.

1998 Mark R. Leeper

Source: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/6960/turkey.htm