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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.