Pamukkale

I guess not everywhere can exceed expectations. Pamukkale certainly didn't. It did not exceed expectations, it did not meet expectations, it did not even come close.

If you do a google images search for Pamukkale you see fantastic white terraces filled with turquoise water below a deep blue sky. Stunning. I gave myself a whole day to wander the park and just assumed I'd have at least one awesome photo to post on Facebook. No. Not one. Not even close. The travertine terraces were there of course, 100s of meters high, 1000s of meters long, looking from a distance like snow; they've been building for many thousands of years, formed by oversaturated mineral-rich warm water bubbling up and depositing travertine as it cools, similar to the way stalactites form. The hot springs and their associated natural hot tubs were the reason the Romans built a city there, using blocks of stone left behind by earlier civilizations, who had also built cities there for the same reason. But the day I was there all the water was being diverted into channels and all the terraces were dry. Sob. And, to add insult to injury, it was a cloudy day. So all I have are photos of dirty grey and white terraces below a dull grey and white sky. Sigh.

I got up early and spent the whole day in the park, I visited the ruins, I swam in the warm mineral-rich waters in a man-made pool, I walked the boardwalks from end to end, I visited the museum, and the spa, and, later, I had a great supper out. It was a lovely day. But I did not get the photo I'd hoped for. Not even close.

What the Internet says you'll see...

... what I saw. 

Good ruins though...

... and I particularly liked this section of wall showing clearly that, unlike the Inca's dry stone masonry, the Romans, who used mortar, incorporated blocks from older ruins when building.

Kusadasi

I have (unintentionally) picked up a temporary travelling companion. Bill, a young Australian, at least as autistic as I if not more so, with a degree in archaeology and no life plan, has attached himself to me like a little lost puppy and followed me mercilessly from town to town as I wander slowly south in Turkey.  He would not have been my first choice of partner but we are getting used to each other. I purposefully pre-booked into a women's only dorm at our most recent hostel to get a bit of space but when we arrived the dorms were all full and so the owner put us together in a twin room. I had to accept my fate.

Here in Kusadasi we have traipsed together round various ruins including Ephesus, which claims to be the best set of ruins anywhere, and the Temple of Artemis, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world (though there's so little left of it it's not that impressive anymore) (and I have to admit it's nice to have my own personal guide who knows all the history and mythology) we have been to a couple of water parks, one of which claims to be the best in Turkey and another which claims to be the best in Europe (which confuses me a bit since I thought we left Europe behind when we went east from Istanbul) (and I have to admit it's nice to have someone to push me into doing the scarier rides that I might otherwise skip) and we've been out for many meals together. My inner frugal tourist thinks I ought to be cooking my own supper when in hostels that have kitchen facilities but, for example, last night we had Turkish style chicken donairs at a tiny cafe complete with aryan (a youghut-like drink), side salads, and huge helpings of hot peppers and mixed pickles for $3 each!

Bill is very well read, a great conversationalist, and actually not a bad travel partner at all. He takes a picnic lunch and a book along and stops for an extended break somewhere shady in the middle of the day wherever we happen to be and I quite like the habit. Currently he's torn between following me to my next destination and going to Athens where his mother will be arriving to meet up with him... Hopefully he will make the right decision and I will go back to being constantly lonely rather than constantly smothered.

A somewhat anticlimactic first of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, only 1 of 127 pillars remains and poorly reconstructed at that. Bill for size.

Lovely temple ruins at Ephesus...

... and interesting regular houses too with mosaic floors and frescos on the walls.

Lunch break.

Canakkale

Canakkale in three parts: Travelling, Troy, and Travesty  

Part 1: Travelling

Before I went to Brazil I tried - well intended at any rate - to learn a bit of Portuguese. Before I went to Chile I picked up a wee Spanish phrase book. This time I didn't do either.  Romanian, Turkish, Greek, Croatian, Arabic... it seemed there were too many too diverse languages on my intended itinerary to even contemplate. And, though I don't always succeed at doing everything I plan to do, I'm pretty good at not doing things I've decided not to do, so, after almost two months in Turkey I still don't  have even a single word of Turkish. Seriously, I get by with merely my beguiling smile and a wee bit of mime. It's a good thing the Turks are so welcoming.

Having deemed myself well enough that I could no longer justify lounging in my lovely little off the beaten path hostel I launched back into tourist mode and made the trek to Canakkale from whence to visit the sites of the battlefields of Gallipoli and the ruins of Troy. (I know, I know, I'm supposed to find a boat at some point and go crewing, and, if I'm not careful the sailing season will be over, but currently I'm still enthralled with Turkey and don't feel finished with it just yet.) I take a perverse amount of pleasure at using local public transit, which, coupled with my perverse refusal to learn the language is not always easy. This leg however was all roses. I hoofed it to the ferry station and crossed the Marmara Sea to Bandirma and I knew that from there I would need to get a bus to go to Canakkale. Lonely Planet had pre-warned me that the bus station was far from the ferry docks and that taxis cost $30. Getting off the ferry there was indeed a sea of yellow taxis waiting, but I used my eagle eyes to spot a few white minibuses, called dolmuses, and headed to them instead. All I had was the name of my final destination written on a piece of paper but, because I knew what he was going to say, I completely understood the driver when he explained I had to take his bus to the 'otogar' and then another bus from there. It was quite obvious you were supposed to have tokens for the dolmus but when I held out my hand with too many coins in it and a huge smile on my face the driver quite cheerfully took the right ones from my palm and slipped a token from his pocket into the slot. And, when I got to the bus station, I learnt that the next bus to Canakkale was leaving in 15 minutes. Transportation win. Who needs language?

Part 2: Troy

Ruins of Troy.

The site where the legendary city of Troy once stood, on a limestone ridge close to the Dardanelle - the narrow strait leading from the Aegean towards the Black Sea and separating Europe from Asia - has been occupied and abandoned repeatedly for at least 5000 years. There isn't much there today except rubble, there hasn't been for years, but its allure is real. Even during the height of the Roman Empire, when everyone literate had read the Iliad and tourists flocked to see the place where Paris had fought for Helen, tour guides had to tell stories to make up for the lack of real ruins. Its rediscovery by the infamous Schliemann, who dynamited his way through the site and found and stole a cache of gold jewelry, is a story in itself. Troy's popularity as a tourist destination has been helped throughout the ages by a variety of celebrities; Alexander the Great is said to have stopped by and raced nude up the hill in 334 on his way to conquer the East and Brad Pitt is considered a demigod by locals for renewing international interest in the idea of adding it to one's itinerary. There are various replica large wooden horses scattered around but the real one, from Brad's 2004 movie set, stands prominently displayed on the waterfront boardwalk in Canakkale.

The real wooden horse.

Part 3: Travesty AKA the Battlefields of Gallipoli

Just as it had been for thousands of years, the Dardanelle was considered strategic enough to fight for in 1915. The Allies likely would have succeeded in getting control of it too except for two things: firstly ocean currents pulled their boats further north than expected so that they landed in the predawn darkness below jagged hills rather than on the intended beaches and, secondly, Mustafa Kemal, then a minor officer, later to be known as Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, correctly guessed what was about to happen, disobeyed his orders, and held off the Allied troops long enough for Ottoman reinforcements to arrive. Both sides dug in. Nine months of bloodshed followed. Over 100 000 young men lost their lives. The number of casualties including dead and wounded topped 500 000. (Apologies if this summary seems blase, it is not intended as such.)

Graveyard 57 of 94.

At lone pine graveyard the names of those presumed dead but without a known burial site are engraved in a wall... a long wall.

Today the whole peninsula is a national historic park. There is a state of the art museum. There are also 94 graveyards and memorials. Too many to comprehend. Ataturk's famous words of reconsiliation resonate throughout, "To us there is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets... You, the mothers, who sent your sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom. After having lost their lives in this land, they have become our sons as well."

Part 4: Last thoughts

The bloodshed at Troy and again years later at Gallipoli, which are for all intensive purposes the same place, are obviously only two of the many times through the millennia that young men's blood has fertilized this soil. My father left home at 18, spent 5 years overseas during WW2, and returned home whole. But might not have. That I am able to faff about freely jumping on and off ferries, and moreover, that I was able to send my sons off to school when they were 18, as opposed sending  them off to fight for their country... I do not have the words for this. I only wish I knew what I could do in the years I have left to ensure that my grandsons, and theirs, will also be so lucky. 

One of far far too many tombstones marking the final resting place of teens.

Migrants and more...

HOME by Warsan Shire

no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

I decide to spend a few days in recovery mode, giving a term to doing nothing because I don't have a plan, so I find a small hostel off the beaten path in an authentic neighbourhood with small kids playing in the streets and shopkeepers who greet me by name - assuming Canada counts as my name - and the transition from frenetic tourist to total calm is lovely. There's a tiny cafeteria nearby that serves excellent Turkish food almost exclusively to locals. And a nice park with a huge fountain, many benches, and lots of trees. I even start going out and about without my camera. Best of all I have time to talk, and walk, and read, and think, though, to be fair, I'm better at the first three than the latter.

The term 'single serving friend' has been around since 1999 when coined in the movie Fight Club. Travelling on one's own one, staying in hostels, one makes many such short term connections, if connection is even an appropriate word.

For example, at breakfast today I sat with a 40ish Turkish man who had recently had a failed attempt to emigrate to Argentina and was back in Turkey regrouping before trying again. We spent a very congenial hour discussing human population movements through the ages; he told me all about the ancient Turkish migration from the edge of China to the edge of Europe,  about the populating of Argentina with Europeans, why he wants to emigrate...

For example, I am sharing a room with two girls who choose to share a bed. I noticed their eyebrows were identical and asked if they were sisters traveling  together. It turns out they are the same ages as Fred and Alex and when I showed them a pic of my boys traveling we became tight (for single serving friends that is!) and I even became facebook friends with one of them (though, really, only to be polite, as it is not my practice to add anyone I'm not likely to stay in contact with to my Facebook list) and now they talk to me all the time (all of us using Google translate on our phones to communicate). They are the 2 eldest of 10 kids; 9 girls, and, finally, a boy.

I have yet to decide what value beyond general interest there is to meeting so many diverse people. I feel if I were brighter I could distil the impressions they leave and write a fantastic essay about it all. (Of this I am sure however; new people can be fascinating, fun even, but they could never replace relationships with real friends and family. So... a huge thank you to all my non ssf's out there who drop me a line from time to time, there's nothing like meeting a lot of new people to make you value those you'll always know!)

My favourite new poet is Warsan Shire who I found by reading about Donald Trump which I did after talking to a young Mexican author who is worried about the 'real wall' between the US and Mexico. There are visible Syrian refugees here, usually sitting right on the pavement as if they somehow don't even merit the public benches, and the above poem seems very relevant. Two million Syrian refugees in Turkey the papers say. I research the walls being built throughout Europe and then go to look again at the one Constantine had built 1500 years ago. It stands 12 m high, withstood many battles and even the coming of gunpowder, and protected the city for almost a millennia. The Great Wall of China was started over a thousand years before that even and has a total length of 21 000 km including its branches. So wars and migrating peoples and walls built to keep out rebels or refugees are not new phenomena. I am fascinated by the fact that the rich Arabic countries are taking in zero refugees and I am wondering about the (likely future) clash of religions in Europe and I read about the 1923 Greek Turkish population exchange. Perhaps because I am female I feel the real answers to today's issues likely have more to do with economic policy than physical structures (though please, and sorry, I have no clue what exactly those might be).

Constantine's wall: Trump that Donald!

Total aside: I like that the moats are now vegetable gardens.

Above all I am grateful that I was lucky enough to be born with a Canadian passport. 

Cappadocia

Whether you believe the Bible literally and think Noah's ark landed on Mt Ararat after sailing for forty days and forty nights or you are more of the ilk that Ayla might indeed have been adopted by a group of Neanderthals who called themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear there can be no dispute that Turkey has been inhabited for millennia.

Cappadocia, a small region in the center, has three things that make it outstanding; first is has a magical fairy tale landscape created from eroded volcanic tuff, second this same soft stone has resulted in a plethora of archeological sites of all ages many well-preserved enough to make the UNESCO list, and third it has used the hook of this interesting geography to very successfully build an extremely lucrative niche market, hot air ballooning, making it attractive to rich tourists and bringing general prosperity to the region.

My first day I got up to watch the hot air balloons take off at dawn. A back of the envelope calculation (actually done on a cell phone) revealed well over $500,000 tourist dollars merrily floating away in the air. And this is an activity that takes place 365 days a year. And all these tourists have to eat and sleep and buy stuff too. And, apparently, it is a slow season as the situation in Syria has negatively affected tourism throughout Turkey.

Exactly 100 ballons go up each morning before sunrise ... and the teams are practised enough that they land the balloons right back on the trailers!

After breakfast I walked to the Goreme Outdoor Museum where a slew of  churches and temples, some the size of small gyms, were hollowed out of solid rock. They often have only one tiny access door and every inch of the walls and ceilings are elaborately painted with vibrantly coloured biblical scenes.

No photography allowed in the painted churches, this detail from the cover of a book...

... though it's allowed in the 100's of others that scatter the many valleys and canyons in the area.

Note: The above was a hidden church, no direct sunlight got in, to get to it you had to go through a tiny 10m long tunnel with a flashlight!

Next I went on a four hour self-guided hike through the Red and Rose Valleys  past incredibly breathtaking landscapes and countless more troglodytic sites of various ages. (Notes: valleys, like mountains have lots of up and down, and, also, the heat is the afternoon is not perhaps the best time for such an activity.)

On my list for day 2 is to catch a local bus to go to visit a 7 story underground city that was once home to 10,000... 

Map of one of the 100's of underground cities recently rediscovered.

You'll note the sign says that this was a winery... might as well live right if you're going to live underground.

And, it being Turkey, everything is cheap by Western standards. In Goreme I get to stay in a real cave (not an ancient cave but a real cave) in a lovely establishment with a garden and a . pool and full breakfast and they charge me the almost embarrassing price of $15/night.

My nook in a (modern) cave room.

PS Apologies, especially to fellow teachers, for formatting inconsistencies.

No e-ticket

Expensive Disaster #2  AKA  I hope it's merely an old wives' tale that bad things come in 3's

Well. Shoot. That was, for lack of a better word, a fuckup. (Sorry SD)

Spooked by being sick, I decided to retreat to Ontario to regroup. I went back to Istanbul, arriving sometime after midnight, and looked for a cheap ticket home. (Cheap being a relative word here and home an odd choice of one given that I don't actually live anywhere.) I found a great (another relative word) set of flights leaving at 5:50 am and going through Frankfurt and Montreal that would have gotten me to Ben’s in time for supper Monday. The price was acceptable and so I hit the buy button, it was about 3 am at this point, copied down my confirmation number and flight locator code, and blithely went to check my bag.

No.

It turned out I also needed an electronic ticket. The poor girl at the check in counter had to call her supervisor and she referred me to another counter. There they could see my reservation on their computer, but without an electronic ticket they wouldn't let me board.

An added inconvenience was that the only free WiFi in the (huge) airport was at the opposite end to the counter where the experts were. I went back, messaged Ben,  had him call customer support only to have them first claim I had no need of an electronic ticket and then hang up on him. I went back to the other counter to talk to the experts again and then back to the wifi zone to try and find another resolution. The people at the airport said check in closed at 5 am sharp and that without my e-ticket by then I was screwed. I stood at their desk as the last minutes slipped by and then went to look for a bench to nap on.

When I woke up my e-ticket was in my inbox of course, timed 5:26, and after installing Skype on my phone so I could talk to customer support myself (I travel without a sim card) I was told that I would have to pay the full fare even though I missed my flight. Missed? Missed! What!

So I am not happy. I'm still sick, I'm way overtired, and, apparently, incapable of making coherent decisions. Also I'm going to have to decide how much effort I'm going to put into the - likely fruitless - job of trying to get my money back. AARGH.

Needless to say it has not been a good day.

And - just incase the fates are listening - I really could live without a third disaster tomorrow! 

Sick

It is not fun being sick when you are travelling on your own. Granted, it is seldom fun being sick, but I hold to the premise that it is particularly un-fun being sick when travelling on your own.

I have picked up some sort of traveler's diarrhea. (I hope - I went to the Wikipedia page on traveler's diarrhea and it said that this is sometimes confused with, for example, cholera, and dehydration from that can cause death within 24 hours of onset. I decided to stop reading.)

I keep a wee calendar in which I track my daily activities. For the past 5 days it reads: sick, diarrhea, sick, severe diarrhea, and very sick. I have decided to do nothing for the next 48 hours except lie in bed, feel sorry for myself, and eat small bites of bananas and stale bread accompanied by many sips of Gatorade. My only goals will be to avoid adding vomiting to my list of symptoms, to keep hydrated, and of course to have it all blow over.

***

I am very sick. I need to see a doctor. I have had severe diarrhea for seven days.

Çok hastayım. Ben bir doktoru görmek gerekir . Ben yedi gün şiddetli ishal oldu.

Feeling too weak to travel home safely - I don't even know if I can make it to the hostel lobby without fainting and falling over - I type the above message on my phone, get Google translate to put it into Turkish for me, wait for it to be light out, make it to the lobby, and then hand my phone to the receptionist.

I'd been planning to wait and get medical help on Monday, if needed, but Saturday night - by which I mean about 2 am Sunday morning - I know that I am so badly off that were I in Deep I'd call a friend, wake them up, and ask them to take me to emerg. I've been doing everything by the book; eating bananas and bland rice and probiotic yoghurt and drinking endlessly but it's not working. My urine is a mere dribble of almost fluorescent orange and my poop, for lack of a better word, less viscous than my urine, is an equally startlingly fluorescent green and comes in very frequent and copious quantities. It seems that for each cup of water I drink I produce a liter of green spew. (Only a Canadian, I'm sure, could have such a poor imbalance of imperial input and metric output.)

The receptionist asks if I want a taxi. Yes. A taxi arrives immediately but the driver then repeatedly demands to know which hospital I want to go to. I haven't researched this and don't have a clue.

He takes me to a private clinic. I like it. I feel safe. And 7 am on a Sunday morning is the ideal time to be there as the place is deserted. I'm whisked straight in to see a doctor with two nurses and a translator at my side. They take blood, hook me up to an IV, claim they want me to stay for 6 hours, and explain that it will cost several hundred Euros. 'No problem,' I say, feeling #privileged, 'Do you take Visa?'. (Normally they bill insurance companies direct, but not, apparently, on Sundays.) They also want a stool sample but my body, having done little else for the last week other than produce endless quantities of just that, is now apparently totally empty. 

Finally at 4 pm I suggest I ought to go, both my blood and (eventually produced) stool are fine, but they insist on giving me one more bag of IV fluid, and, to be honest, I don't mind in the least prolonging my stay by another hour. 

(And, as an aside, I report with extreme reluctance, I now know that even when my system is completely empty I'm not skinny.)

Ballooning

There are 25 hot air balloon companies in Goreme. Each is allowed to send up 4 balloons at first light. They all charge, least on paper, 175 Euros/person for an hour long flight. Butterfly Balloons is rated highest by both TripAdvisor and Lonely Planet so I thought I'd go with them. Being ranked #1 means a) they can always charge full rate and b) they are booked solid weeks in advance. So much for that plan. Instead I bought a last minute sell-off from a somewhat questionable sales person standing on a street corner for 100 Euros. My flight was perfect in all respects.

With the basket on it's side, the air in the balloon is heated up...

... ready for pre-sunrise takeoff.

Me, basket, and our green balloon.

All the balloons skimmed low over vinyards and orchards ...

... and dipped into canyons coming within feet of rock formations.

Then flew up to 600 m to look down over the countryside ...

... and see other balloons below.

Just like this one, our pilot landed us perfectly on the trailer...

... then popped the top to deflate the balloon.

It might have been a relaxing and tranquil flight if we'd not all been so excited (and continually taking a gazillion photos!)

Low Bar

September 15  AKA  Setting the bar low

Within days of Alexander heading off to university I went off on my first 5 month adventure. It was perhaps a bit of an over-reaction to an empty nest - but having been careless enough to lose my husband and my job at about the same time my nest was very empty. I started blogging with the intention of forming a "life plan". Yeah, well, that didn't work out.

Next time I went off on a 5 month vacation I thought I'd use the time to improve my writing skills. I even borrowed books on essays and essay writing. Hmmm, another goal missed.

This year I merely intend to enjoy myself and report on some of my escapades. I hope that by setting the bar low enough I might, third time lucky, manage success!

$5's

Credit Card Woes  AKA  A First World Problem

I lost a wee bit of money twice today with  credit card / exchange rate woes which would tick me off a bit more if I wasn't quite so aware of just how much of a first world problem it is.

You can get 'international' credit cards that let you take out money anywhere overseas without charging extra fees. I do know this but I still just have an everyday Visa card. I can get money, at a very fair exchange rate, from practically any ATM, anywhere in the world, but I'm charged $5 a hit by my bank each time. Same with my debit card.

My solution to this is to take out quite large chunks of money at a time (I'm obviously not worried about being mugged) and to pay for everything with cash, so that at least I don't have to pay so many $5's - which is a fix that occasionally backfires.

The last time I needed money in Romania I took out a large chunk, just by force of habit, without stopping to calculate how much more I'd actually need before I left the country... and so today, back in Turkey, I found myself with a fistful of Romanian Lei, and, of course, switching it to Turkish Lira cost more than $5.  

Then, on the same day, I chose the wrong bank machine, and after asking it for another huge wad of Turkish money it informed me that it was going to charge me 3.5% (presumably on top of the $5 my bank charges me) and asked if this was OK. No, I said, no, no, no and I hit the cancel button twice, or maybe ten times, but it spat out the bills out anyways. I don't want to know what 3.5% of a lot is but I'm pretty sure it's more than $5.

On the upside everything here is so cheap that my new pile of bills ought to last a long time. I booked a flight to my next destination for $50 including tax and it allows one 15kg bag of luggage so I should be good to go. I also booked 6 nights in my next hostel at $15/night, which includes full Turkish breakfast, ie brunch (and this one even has a pool!). To celebrate I went out for a fish dinner under the Galata Bridge. The bill for my dinner - ice cold water and a basket full of fresh bread with awesome spiced oil to dip it in to start, a full perfectly grilled sea bass and a large portion of both fries and salad as the main course, and apple tea to finish with - came to $10 (I always quote prices in CAD unless otherwise stated) and I was so very happy with the service I tried to leave a $5 tip, twice, but had it adamantly refused, twice.

I'd much rather give my extra $5's to extremely charming waiters who work under bridges than to impersonal financial institutions that seem to keep grabbing them when I'm not paying enough attention, but, as my kids would say, and I totally agree with them on this, the fact that I can't get upset over losing $5, even through my own carelessness, proves without a doubt that I have a first world mentality. Maybe I should get one of those international credit cards.