OK, so Turkey. Hmmm, had a fantastic time, but I have to say somewhat muted by the fact that it rained, hailed and yes, even snowed. Still, one can’t control these things and it sure made for a more interesting and challenging trip… i.e. when you can’t sightsee you have to drink copious amounts of alcohol!!
So, Air France, London-Paris-Istanbul. Monique, Brent and me. We get to Paris with about half an hour to connect and all seems well until we appear to have the wrong gate number and it’s five minutes till the flight is scheduled to leave and we have to get to another gate ten gates down. So we’re making a run for it when these security people draw a barrier across our path and start moving everybody back because someone left a bag unattended and so it was a security risk. At this point we’re really stressing, but in retrospect a bit worrying that we were more concerned about missing our flight than about the fact that there might be a bomb 20 meters away!! So they get someone to have a look at it and eventually after about 15 minutes a whistle goes off and we’re thinking ‘yay, all clear!’ – and then suddenly there’s this HUGE explosion. They BLEW UP THE BAG!!! So can someone please explain to me why if there was a bomb in the bag they would blow it up!?! Surely it would detonate the bomb if there was one, and if not, what do you say to some stupid tourist when they call up and say they forgot a bag “oh, sorry, it’s in pieces – we blew it up”!?! Oh my gosh!!! So if anyone knows why, please let me know (Ant?). Strange… So, with that behind us, we got to the correct departure gate and it turned out that our flight had been delayed anyway and we still had to wait another hour and a half for it!
Moving on, we arrived in Istanbul with no further incidents and had a very speedy taxi ride into Sultanahmet, which is in the old city, and where the Orient YH is. Great hostel and definitely recommended for any of you wishing to travel to Turkey. It had a rooftop dining room with a view over the ocean and a fantastic bar complete with shish pipes and cheap beer and vodka. We had a bit of a walk around – the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya are an awesome sight, absolutely beautiful. We made friends with Tom and Mira, found an awesome restaurant and were waited on in grand style by the ever friendly Mustafa. Had a fantastic mixed platter, complete with flaming cup and loads of great bread, presented with quite a flourish – as only our dear friend Mustafa is capable of!! And then a “gift” of apple tea all round, and the start of a mild obsession with the stuff – it really is great, and you rarely have to pay – just walk into a shop and get it free…! J
Spent almost a whole day at the Grand Bizarre, doing some tourist shopping and bargaining with the locals. The constant harassment can get a bit tiring, but it’s much easier to bare because the Turks truly are friendly and are quite happy to help you out and talk to you, even when they know that you’re not going to buy anything. We wondered out of the Bizarre to get some lunch and landed up in a very different and decidedly less touristy side of the area. We found an incredibly dodgy local restaurant and had a very tepid stew – thank goodness none of us got sick! We spent a good night in the bar, and the belly dancer was shown up terribly by Mira, who turned out to be excellent!
On the third day we did a bit of sightseeing and explored the Topkapi Palace, which is beautiful. It was the home of the sultans during the Ottoman Empire (before the capital got moved to Ankara), and is thus quite lavish. It covers the hugest area, has fantastic views over the Bosphorus and has really beautiful tiles and many collections – most notably anything containing a hair of some kind of the Prophet Mohammed. What’s interesting is that even though Turkey is predominantly Muslim, it’s a secular country (largely due to Atatűrk – of whom there is a picture in every shop, restaurant, most homes and on all the bank notes!). After that we checked in at the hotel and met up with the tour. HOTELS!! And I thought that at the price we paid we would definitely be in hostels! Mon, Andrea, Brent and I then decided it was time for a Turkish bath and so went off to find a Hamam – and was this ever a culture shock! We were already nervous to start off with, but got instructed to remove all our clothes (fortunately boys and girls have separate rooms) and put this tiny piece of cloth around ourselves. We then walked though into the hot steam room and what a sight! The entire room was filled with naked women – no shyness here, I can tell you that much!! The funny thing is despite the shock we didn’t have much choice and so pretty soon we were all naked and washed and joined the others lounging on the naval stone, which is marble and incredibly hot! After a while, when you feel that you’ve had enough steam and are sick of staring at the beautiful domed ceiling, you sit up and soon one of the female masseurs (who thankfully had on a bit more clothing, however scanty it may have been) calls you over and gives you a good rubbing down with a rough cloth and then bubbles, washes and massages you. Quite an experience I tell you!! Funnily enough, when we were eventually finished we met Brent in the waiting area outside (and got some apple tea) and he said that the men are very modest and don’t remove their clothing at all, it’s quite socially unacceptable. Makes for a change! And I bet they would have given anything to be in our room!!! Got back to the hotel just in time for a big dinner and belly dancing show and I got dragged up onto the floor several times (and I can say that I must have been one of the most useless belly-dancers EVER, but all in good fun!!) Then we went out and danced for hours – I think we landed a pretty great group and we all got on right from the first day.
Next day up for a great breakfast of fruit (tasty and juicy – which is impossible to find in London!), bread, cheeses, honey and olives. Yummy!! We then met Burco, our tour guide, who turned out to be really awesome, but more about that later. We walked along to the Hippodrome, which is what used to be a really huge stadium for chariot races, but is now just a park outside the Blue Mosque with one column left. We then went into the Blue Mosque – after having removed our shoes and covered our shoulders, that is. It’s so beautiful inside, with exquisite blue tiling and paintings and a carpet woven specially so that it has hundreds of rectangles each the right size for someone to pray on. We then walked past Aya Sofya and down along some of the Golden Horn, and then our group split up according to what we wanted to do and a whole bunch of us hopped in a couple of taxis and went over the Atatűrk Bridge to a market in the New City. All thankfully made it to the end and managed to meet up and we had these really cool square pancake-type thingies filled with all sorts of yummy toppings. Managed to get some cool junk jewellery and a really great silver ring and the whole area felt much more ‘local’ than the touristy Old City. We then hopped in a taxi to go back over to the other side, but got caught in some serious soccer traffic on the way. Soccer is HUGE in Turkey and Galatasaray, which is their most popular Turkish team, was playing…!
When we eventually got back we had a walk though the Sunken Cistern (filmed a scene in ‘From Russia with Love’ here) which is an underground cistern with masses of pillars each one different to the next, and you can walk along the walkways with classical music playing overhead and it’s rather a lovely experience. And now for one of the truly worst hygiene experiences in Turkey: Mon made friends with some carpet salesman and he said that we could use the toilet in his shop – oh my gosh… disgusting, I tell you (and to think that they probably use it on a regular basis!) I think he may have known how bad it was, though, because he offered us all free apple tea and didn’t even try to sell us a carpet! After that we walked along, tried (and bought!) some great Turkish delights and wandered down toward the coast and the Sea of Marmara, where we found a really cool fish market, and such a view! Made it back to the hostel, met the group and went to this restaurant called Doy-Doy, which means “Full Full” apparently – and we were! After that much more drinking and dancing and another late night (well, early morning - depending on how you look at it!).
Bright and early we were off to Gallipoli, which has no real significance if you’re not Turkish, Australian or Kiwi, and so I’ll just mention that this is where thousands of soldiers died in WWII when they landed short of Anzac Cove. I’m going to leave it at that, because I’d much rather use some extra space to put in a bit more in the Troy section. We crossed over the Dardannelles to the Asian side and spent the night in Çanakkale, and some of us wandered out and found some food and then ventured into a local bar, which turned out to be one of the coolest experiences of the trip. There was a live gig in session, and the lead singer had a really fantastic voice. They seemed to be singing covers, because all the locals knew the words (or they were hard-core fans!), but it seemed to be some kind of alternative Turkish music, and was really fun (Another one of the girls and I even tried to dance to it – no doubt making idiots of ourselves, but – hey!!).
Next morning we discovered that the breakfast room was right on the ocean – what a view!! So much of Turkey is at sea level, so you feel like you’re almost in the ocean… And then we were off on our drive to Selçuk, driving along the ancient Troad toward Troy. Our tour guide, Burco, was incredibly knowledgeable, and every day she would pick a topic and discuss it in depth. I have to say that this saved some of the road-trips, and I learnt an incredible amount about Turkish religion (obviously predominantly Muslim), village traditions, marriage, geography, schooling and University and so much more!! – Thanks Burco!
And this is where I’m going to deviate a bit and discuss some of the history, because I found it all really interesting…
Most people will have heard of Homer’s famous poetry “Illiad” and until the excavations by Heinrich Schillmann in 1871, it was always assumed to be based on fiction. So it turns out that Troy is actually nine towns built on top of each other as time progressed and wars and earthquakes destroyed them, so it was incredibly interesting to see all the layers that were excavated, although honestly the only thing that distinguishes one town from the next is the signs that tell you this is “Troy II or Troy V”or whatever. Now Back to Homer… In Illiad, Troy is the town Illium, and it tells the story of the Trojan War that took place in the 13th century BC, during the time of King Priam of Troy VI. Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus (Ulysses), Patroclus, Nestor and Achean were on the Greek side, and King Priam and his sons Hector and Paris on the Trojan side. As a cause for the war, Homer claimed a romantic cause rather than a commercial one, saying that Paris kidnapped the beautiful Helen of Troy from her husband, the King of Sparta, who had received her as a gift from Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Sound complicated? It gets worse – during the war, Hector killed Patroclus and Achilles killed Hector. Turns out Achilles’ mother had dipped him in the river Styx when he was a kid to make him invincible. Problem was she held him by his heel to do this and so that was the one part of his body that remained unprotected. So good old Paris somehow knew this and shot him in his heel (and thus the phrase “Achilles Heel”!) Then Odysseus came up with the idea of the wooden horse packed with soldiers and put his plan into action. Funny thing is that there was this woman, Cassandra, who warned the king against this exact plot – problem was that although she had the gift of prophesy, she also had the curse that no one would believe her!! So that’s the story of Troy… well at least the most famous part of it.
So fully refreshed by the constant rain and a couple of cups of apple tea, we were back on our way to Selçuk, with a quick stop off at Pergamum to see the ruins, where there is an awesome amphitheatre – so steep that you have to wonder how the people at the back heard anything – but what an awesome view!! We spent the night in Selçuk, and then saw what is claimed to be the house where the Virgin Mary spent her last days and died. There’s much debate and no proof that this is in fact true, and the claim is based largely on the descriptions of visions experienced by a German paralytic (she had never left Germany) nun, who was known to have stigmata. St Paul was born in Anatolia, and so there are claims that he brought her there along with St. John. The real problem is that she would have been very old by then, and for a time when the average lifespan was about 60 years, the road from Israel to Ephesus is very long and so many people doubt whether it is in fact possible.
Next came Ephesus itself – spectacular! It’s meant to be the best preserved classical Roman city – and the ruins are so well preserved that you can really get a good feeling for what it must have looked like and how it worked. There are many shops [some still selling ice-cream ;) ], public bathrooms, a library and a huge amphitheatre for concerts and plays. One of the most interesting features of the city was the running water into the buildings delivered by an underground plumbing system. It is also the first known location of public toilets which had seating for up to thirty people (and at this point it’s a pity I can’t attach a picture of me squatting over one!!). Kinda handy that the bathroom planners installed a system of running water underneath the seats to carry away the waste. (Another aside is that the men used to get their slaves to go on ahead and warm up the cold marble seats for them – typical!!) The library is also very impressive, a two story building with rooms designed to control humidity and preserve the quality of the paper – and once again another handy tool for the men – an underground passage to reach the brothel across the road, so that the wives thought they were in the library! And speaking of prostitutes, just down the road is one of the oldest road signs of all time. Carved into the pavement on the road from the port into town is a sketch showing a beautiful woman (prostitute) with an arrow pointing the direction, and a foot, indicating the minimum size of the man required! A very advanced city, indeed.
We then got back on our horses and were speedily on our way to Pumakkale, which is the one place we could have missed, although I guess that effectively we did… One of the very familiar images of Turkey is the gleaming white calcium formations (travertine pools) which formed as calcium rich mineral water flowed over the terraces. So popular were these pools with ancient tourists, that the Romans built a large spa city called Hierapolis, of which there now only remains masses of stone tombs and an amphitheatre. Apparently the pools are quite a sight to see. I wouldn’t know, however – I couldn’t see more than a meter and a half through the thick mist. So we have some great photos of groups of us smiling wryly bundled up in our rain-gear!!! Oh, well, off again, this time to Cappadocia, and one of the longest bus rides ever. I learnt many card games from our Aussie friends (which and who I have to admit saved the day) with great names like “arsehole” and “shithead” – you gotta love them! We had a stop-off at a leather factory and it was really fun – talk about sales pitch! We all got ushered into a room, seated and supplied with apple tea, and then had a great fashion show with music blaring and lights flashing – most entertaining!!!
Cappadocia is absolutely fantastic and definitely a highlight of the trip. It’s so hard to describe what it’s like that I’m going to give a bit of history to explain some of it. Millions of years ago three volcanoes erupted and the ash settled and hardened into a kinda soft, porous stone called tuff. Over the years the elements have worn away at it and left many conical mounds (which some might say look quite phallic), which humans discovered to be really habitable as they could just dig caves into the rock wall and live there – they could even cook inside because the rock is porous and so absorbed the smoke. There were also a whole lot of boulders that got trapped in the ash before it hardened, and so when it wore away they were left balancing on the top of the cones – and these are called Fairy Chimneys. The area has been populated in this way for thousands of years and has the highest density of churches anywhere in the world (don’t quote me, though). I think Burco said that they have 365 – one for each day of the year. Some of them have the most fantastic frescos, although it’s a pity that they’ve generally not been very well preserved.
Turkey has this religious sect known as the Mevlevi Order, or Whirling Dervishes, who trace their origins to the 13th century Ottoman Empire. They are Sufis, a spiritual offshoot of Islam. They’re really bizarre because their ceremonial dance involves spinning round and round and round – so that they’re in a kind of trance – a form of meditation. They enter wearing black cloaks which are meant to symbolise the tomb and when the music starts they remove the cloaks and have long white cloaks underneath, which are meant to represent the shroud. They extend their arms with the right palm facing up and the left palm facing down – energy thus enters the right hand and passes through the left into the earth. The Sheikh represents the sun and the Dervishes represent the planets turning around him in the solar system of Mevlana. When the music stops they bow low and exit the pavilion to celebrate the occasion of their retreat into the hills. So this is significant because our one VERY big night in Cappadocia was a Turkish Night out. This took place in a cave and had performances of the Whirling Dervishes, some local folk dancing and belly dancing – and get this… all alcohol included (for about £10!!) So needless to say we had fun, and were close to comatose by the end of the evening (I have some mild memory loss!)
Then at 5:45 next morning had a wakeup call (ugh – I know!!) ‘cos a couple of us had organised Hot Air Ballooning. What an experience, though! Truly one of the most beautiful places to do it (and so expensive that I thought I’d better do it while I still have pounds!!) We were up in the air for about 1.5 hours and had some incredible views, floated in and out of the valleys, went really high – and also much lower than I would have thought possible, almost scraping the ground. And some of the photos are really spectacular. I’m smiling as I type this – can you tell? When we landed we had champaign to celebrate, and then went back to the hotel to meet back up with the tour – scary thing is that we still made it to breakfast before anyone else!!! First (tour) stop of the day was for a tour of the underground city. It goes like TEN floors down!!! It would seem that it was mainly used in times of war or retreat (and once again the porous rock comes in handy because there’s no smoke to give the location away!!) The tunnels and rooms are so narrow and low that it makes it really hard to walk (and subsequently much easier to defend – kinda the same concept as the Zulu huts at home) It was really funny to see Denis, who’s 6”6 (I think?) crawling through those!
….and then came the inevitable stop off at a carpet place. Once again, entertaining and learnt a lot about carpets (I can now tell whether a carpet has been single-knotted, double-knotted or factory made) and so many beautiful designs and materials. Don’t think they made much business out of our group though, but worth it for us because of the apple tea and sheer entertainment value.
We spent the rest of the day driving about northern Cappadocia, although by about 10am the beautiful weather from the morning had been replaced by a constant rain. This part is not quite as spectacular as the southern parts, but it’s still pretty and there’s a scene from Star Wars that was filmed here (once again a pity that I can’t attach a picture!) We had lunch in a lovely local roadside place that I have to admit seems like it doesn’t receive all that many tourists – and is the better for it. I had a fantastic beef and chilli dish. Mmmmmm!
The last day was spent on the bus… yes, I know, very exciting. Cappadocia to Istanbul is a long, long way. Plenty of time to chat to people and hone my card skills. Oh, my gosh – I just realised that I’ve failed to mention Hackysack!!! (If I even spelt that right) Hackysack became an event of it’s own on this trip. Every time we got off the bus for a stop, or were waiting to get back on the bus there was always a round of Hacky… to the point that eventually some of the boys weren’t even interested in the sights – they were far more worried about letting the side down!! A stop off at the Atatűrk Mausoleum and there’s only one funny thing to mention about this, and that’s these photo’s in the museum that are meant to be clouds formed in the image of Atatűrk. Now this seems to be a bit dubious to me – and says something about the sheer strangeness of the Turkish obsession with the man… Oh well, I reckon the stop was worth it just for that! :-) Got back to Istanbul and going past the soccer stadium (again) made enough noise on the bus that the spectators on the stands actually heard us and turned around and waved!!! How funny! After a quick bite we were back out and dancing and drinking, playing pool and just generally finishing off a great trip. A couple more purchases on the last day (incl. two beautiful leather handbags – couldn’t help myself!) we found ourselves back on the plane on our way home. |