Turkey

Some words about a month I spent in Turkey in '94.

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It's about an hour and a half from Tel Aviv to Antalya on the southern coast of Turkey, and I spent the entire flight worried about getting beaten, robbed, and left for dead once I arrived. I mean, Turkey.... Turkey is where the Turks live, you know? It seemed kinda scary to think of walking through the dark sinister streets, wary of men in cloaks carrying long, thin, curved knives. And then there's the whole “Midnight Express” image. All in all, I was interested in being able to say - “I've been to Turkey,” but a little nervous about actually going.

On the plane I met a few other backpackers. There were five of them, all studying in Israel and taking a couple of weeks in Turkey as a vacation. Right away they seemed to give me a lot of respect, even though I hadn't done anything they hadn't done. I'd been in Israel a while, so had they. I was going to Turkey, so were they. But because I was planning to go overland across Europe, they all figured I was some kind of a Marco Polo or something. They'd really look up when I said something. It was fun, but then tiring, because I had to make sure that I didn't say anything stupid. Getting respect is easier than keeping it.

We landed at night, and immediately the festivities began. I needed to get a cab into town, because the buses weren't running that late, but I couldn't get anyone to take me for a fair price. You see, meters are out of the question, and it's a matter of bargaining to arrange a price before you go anywhere. Sitting at the airport, I had only my guidebook to tell me how far town was, and how much it should cost. Of course, the cab drivers sat at the same airport and knew good and damn well that they could ask whatever they wanted. So I had my first choice to make.

Do I give in, and pay an exorbitant price, or keep shaking my head until the morning when the buses come? I shook my hard head.

The other five backpackers were all flying to Istanbul in the morning, and had no interest in Antalya at all. They were planning to spend the night in the airport, only to get on another plane in the morning. This was only a problem because they kept worrying about their bags. Who was going to watch their bags as they dreamt away the Turkish night? As it happened, it didn't look as if I was getting into town any time soon, and I wasn't sleepy, so I offered to sit up and play guard.

So that's how I spent my first night in Turkey. Sitting on a bench in the airport, suspicious of passersby, resentful of the cab drivers' opportunistic money-grabbing, and generally wondering what the hell I was doing there. It's like they say, you can make a hell out of heaven, or a heaven out of hell. I had psyched myself out of enjoying the place. What an idiot.

The next morning, the others left, and I went out to try my luck with the cabbies again.

As the morning brightened, those cab drivers tipped their hats to the bus schedule by lowering their rates dramatically. Mine took me into the old city to visit his favorite 'pensiones'. In Turkey (as well as Spain, Italy, and probably many other places) the cheapest hotels are called pensiones. Taxi drivers in Antalya (and again, probably many other places) do their best to bring their passengers to whichever pensiones give them the best kickbacks. I have no problem with that, as long as I pay the same rate, and the place he took me looked clean enough, was in the Old City, and fit nicely into my budget. So there I was.

It's a cheap place, Turkey is, and the pensione cost me less than ten bucks for my own room. All the rooms in the hall shared one bathroom, but the place was pretty empty, and I never had to wait. The old lady running the office seemed like a sweetie, the room was clean (enough), and I began to reassess the country as a whole. It's funny how a person's entire perception of a place can change depending on such small things as a smile from a stranger, or a warm meal. Maybe those things aren't so small after all.

I took a nap, then a walk. The Old city in Antalya is similar to old cities all over. It has great cobblestone streets winding around to nowhere, banked by stone and brick houses perched at all angles. I love that kind of place. Eventually I made it down to the harbor, and found the true beauty of the town.

People talk about postcard kind of scenes, and Antalya's harbor is exactly what they mean. On the far side of the bay stand snow-peaked mountains which border the sparkling Mediterranean. The gazer sweeps his eyes across the blue water toward the sheer cliffs and jutting boulders of the near side, above which hangs the Old City. The effect is mesmerizing, and I sat out there on a wall next to the bay for hours, writing postcards and congratulating myself for being the smartest person alive. Who had ever heard of Antalya? But there I was.

While wandering around on my own throughout the town on my third day, I bumped in to a couple of people who'd been traveling through Turkey for awhile. They had just come from Göreme, and both said that I had to go. “I've never seen anything like it,” the guy said. So that evening, I hopped on a bus to the center of Turkey, namely the Cappadocia region.

Buses in Turkey are a favorite topic of conversation among travelers. The conditions on the bus are...imperfect. First of all, it's tight. Maybe on the luxury buses there's a little more room, but on your general cattle car type of bus, people are packed in fairly well. The windows are shut, and might as well be glued for all the chance you have of getting one open. It's not that they're stuck, but if you do open one, suddenly every one of your fellow passengers will start shivering and complaining of the cold, even when it's 85 degrees outside. So they stay shut.

Shut windows on a hot day isn't torture, it's just uncomfortable. The torture comes when the cigarettes come out. All men in Turkey smoke. Ok, does that seem too sweeping a statement to make in such a self-proclaimed open minded narrative? How about, every adult male that I ever spent more than ten minutes with, smoked? Is that more fair? Right, glad that's taken care of.

The point is, here we are an a twelve hour journey, in a bus with no AC and closed windows, and all the men were smoking. I believe that if I muster all the forces of my imagination, intellect, and knowledge, and put some time and effort into it, I could eventually come up with a more enjoyable way to pass a day. But then, no one asked me.

Mind you, the Turks seemed completely content. They not only weren't bothered by the smoke, but most of them kept their coats and ties on throughout the entire trip. Never lost their dapper derring-do. I noticed the same thing throughout Turkey, and on numerous bus trips. On the hottest days, walking around a park or killing a chicken, even standing knee-deep in the water with fishing rods, were blazers and ties (not the professional fisherman, but the guys out there for sport). Never mind the heat, never mind the occasion, they were dressed for success. So, of course, anyone walking around with shorts on was an obvious tourist. That's me!

Göreme

The guy was right about Göreme. It's an incredible spot. Really it's not just the town of Gšreme, but the entire Cappadocia region. The landscape is desert, which is nice enough, but it's the rock formations which really make the place what it is. There are these large fingers of rock sticking up out of nowhere all over the place. What should be flat desert becomes an unearthly terrain of spires, with caves within the spires. These spires are made of what looks like squishy mud, but are actually pretty solid. Solid enough to build caves into, in which people have lived for a thousand years or more.

In many of these caves, frescoes still survive which were painted sometime before the last turn of the millenium (the one probably known as the Y1K). There's very little light in those caves, and no water to erode the paintings away, so they're very well preserved. You can just walk into the desert as you want, and explore these old human habitations at your will. There are some particularly well preserved frescoes that are very near each other which the Government has made into a sort of park which you pay to enter. But you can just wander around, really, and you don't have to go there to see the mounds or the frescoes. Inside each spire are carved rooms, and each room leads to other rooms and other levels. So you climb around in there from hole to hole, and play in someone's old house. The little rooms weren't exactly luxurious, but I guess they served the purpose, and there usually weren't any rooms next to each other, because the spires are tall but narrow. So from one room you had to either go up, down, or out. No ropes to keep you from climbing around, no guards, no restrictions. It was great.

Just looking at the landscape reminded me of how far from home I really was. I imagine the moon's surface to be as alien, but not more so, than Göreme. I want to go back someday (I wouldn't mind a quick visit to the moon someday as well).

While I was in the area, I stayed at a cheap hostel, where I met a couple of guys traveling together. One Irish guy named Mick, and one English guy named Dave. We hung around awhile together, just doing nothing but keeping each other company. I really enjoyed being out in the desert with nothing pressing to do. We just sat around being witty, and generally amusing ourselves with our stories and lies. We spent some time trying to set each other up with our sisters, Mick giving the best account of his. “Oh she's a real heartbreaker boys. Red hair, with bright blue eyes...” etc. I did do a lot of exploring in the area, but that was by myself, or with some Americans I met out in the landscape. With Mick and Dave, I relaxed.

Mick always reminds me of the time we were sitting around talking to a Turkish guy about the women at the hostel. I said something about not being good-looking enough to get my pick, and the Turk looked at me and said, “You? Hey, you have a face better than ten faces!” This was meant to be a compliment, of course, but I kept thinking of how many faces there actually are in the world, and the fact that I may only be better-looking than ten of them.

I did have the opportunity to call Mick on that claim about his sister when I arrived in Ireland a few months later. Well, I have nothing against his sister, but she wasn't quite what I had imagined. “Oh yeah,” he said, “well, I lied about that.”

At one point a few of us took a tour of the region. We paid about eight bucks, which is a lot in Turkey, and the van drove us around to a few places. One of the places we went surprised me by how interesting I found it. Apparently the people in the middle ages, or whenever, built underground cities in this region in order to hide from bad guys when invaded. So at the first sign of danger, the whole village would head underground, and wait it out down there until things seemed ok topside. I don't know if they actually used the expression “topside,” but it seems to fit the situation.

Anyway, the cities went down something like six levels! So you'd scramble around one level, and then just keep going further and further down, until you hit the bottom. Being Turkey, no one bothered to tell you that you couldn't do certain things, so wherever one feels like scrambling, one scrambles.

The coolest thing about the first city was the anti-bad guy device that they had installed near the entrance. See, the good guys would run into the tunnel screaming “God save us!!!” or something similar in Old Turkish, while the Bad Guys were hot on their heels, probably yelling, “resistance is useless!!” But as soon as the last little good guy was safely panting on the “in” side of the tunnel, they'd let this huge round rock roll into place to block the entrance. The rock could then be braced from the inside, and only the people on the inside could unbrace it. It was very Indiana Jones, and seeing it helped to bring the time of the builders into my imagination.

Another bit of planning supposedly had to do with the size of the tunnels. We had a sort-of-guide-guy, who told us that the tunnels were made small so that the invaders couldn't draw their swords. The tunnels were low on the right side (heading down), but high on the left. That would allow the defenders to use their right arms to fight with, while restricting the invaders to fight with their left arms. Lefties (like me) are few and far between, so that strategy would generally work. Clever, huh?.

I think about the kind of life that those people lived. Imagine that you live in a desert (if you actually live in a desert, you can move on to the next step). You probably have a good deal of land to yourself, but you know that a few miles to every side are marauders and looters who would rip you apart for a piece of gold. It's a little like LA, but it was like this everywhere back then, wasn't it? As a woman once said to me, “there was a king on every hill, who hated all the kings on all the other hills.” Your life was filled with well-founded suspicion and fear of strangers. Anyone could be a spy, and the surrounds could be alive with invaders at any moment.

Then again, the average villagers probably didn't spend that much time worrying about that stuff, but someone was worrying about it, that's for sure.

I spent several days in the heat and spectacular scenery of Cappadocia, half the time doing something productive (meaning playing around in the “fairy chimneys,” as the rock formations are called), and half sitting around joking with Mick and Dave. Those guys decided to head down to the southern coast, but since I had just come from there, I figured I'd head north. Istanbul or bust, and it was another 12 or so hour bus trip to get me there.

On the bus, I met up with a group of six backpackers who were my companions for my time in Turkey's largest and most dynamic city. We made our way to a Youth Hostel not far from the main sights, and settled in for a while.

Istanbul

Kate, Steph, Tracy, Todd, Catherine, and Anya. They were traveling originally in three groups of two, but had met up at various times along the way, and stuck together. When I met them, they'd been traveling together six weeks already. Kate and Steph were a couple of girls from Australia; Tracy and Todd were a little older than the girls, and also from Australia (now they're raising a family, and live just outside Perth); and Catherine and Anya were Canadian. They were an interesting mix of people, with Todd and Tracy being the responsible adult types (of a sort), and the rest (Catherine especially) out to have as much fun as possible before going home.

We were all in Cappadocia together, but although I had seen them around, I hadn't made friends with them at all. I was bumming around with Mike and Dave the whole time, and they all had each other. But it was a long bus ride to Istanbul, and we got to know one another along the way.

Once in the city, we stuck together and found a place to stay. It was a very nice youth hostel, and more than I would normally spend, but you pay for company sometimes. Eventually, they left, and I stayed, and I moved into a place for half the price. Literally. With them I paid about $5 a night, but when I moved it was $2.50.

Now, $2.50 a night is cheap, even for Istanbul, so it wasn't exactly ideal. For one thing, I had to go down a spectacularly narrow winding staircase, and then through the room where the staff was sleeping (or not sleeping) only to get to the only toilet in the place, which was behind an unlockable swinging door.

But my first five days were in comparative luxury, with my new buddies.

It's often a little awkward when you meet someone on a train or bus, and you get off at the same stop. Are you obligated to stay together? When the touts come running up to hassle you into staying at their place, do you disengage yourself from your new pal, and say, “we're not together” ?

There's a fine line between being friendly and being clingy, especially when you're by yourself. It's different when you're traveling with someone else, and you both meet up with some new people, because you know that this new group knows that you're happy without them. But when I was all alone, I was always conscious of the possibility that someone might not really want me around, but was too polite to say “go away.” I usually waited to be invited to do stuff, and probably missed out on some things because of my possibly groundless insecurity.

But with this crew it seemed clear that we were all supposed to go to the same place. When we did, they didn't have enough beds in the same room, so I had to go into my own room anyway. It was sad; I was part of the group, but it was still obvious who would have to move out when necessary. Then, two minutes later, they came in and told me they'd found a big enough room and we could all be together. Yeah!

Istanbul was a blast. It's got a great mix of history, because the Romans had their time there, as well as all the Ottoman rulers. So you can explore the huge mosques and palaces, but also the Hippodrome and other Roman relics. For a guy like me, though, the Roman stuff doesn't even hold a candle to the mosques. That's right, not even a Roman Candle.

The Blue Mosque, which isn't blue (of course?) is very impressive. It is HUGE, first of all. Considering it was built to blow away the competition, which was already huge (namely the Aya Sophia, standing directly in front of the Blue Mosque), one shouldn't expect it to be anything less than impressive. One is not disappointed.

Of course, you have to take off your shoes before you go inside any mosque, and the Blue Mosque is no exception. You pass all the hawkers and rip-off artists and thieves as you go forward to the entrance, then are expected to just leave your shoes sitting in some open cubby hole for the time you're inside. Just another time I was glad not be a wealthy tourist with expensive shoes. Ok, it didn't really happen that often that I was specifically glad not to have expensive shoes, but you get the point.

So you leave them there, and you hope for the best as you walk inside this place of worship. It is very big. The whole time we were there, though, we kept wondering what we were supposed to do. I mean, I may have mentioned that the place was big and all, but there were no statues to look at like in Christian cathedrals, or paintings to pretend to appreciate, or anything. Why not? Religious stuff.

Remember in the bible, when God mentioned something about not worshipping engraved images? So the Muslims (and the Jews) took this stuff pretty seriously. No stained glass images of the prophets, or religiously inspired portraits of God doing his thing. Just a really big building, with pretty architecture (a half sphere on top, surrounded by minarets), and little designs carved into everything. Oh, it's pretty, but it's hard to sink your teeth into.

Actually, mentioning the minarets reminds me of a story about the building of the mosque in the first place. The guy who built it (i.e. PAID for the thing to be built) had six minarets put around the perimeter, instead of the more typical four. Well, there was an uproar about this at the time, because Mecca, the holiest earthly spot in all of Muslimdom (or whatever) also had six minarets. Was this guy trying to make something that competed with Mecca?!?!?

So he pooled a bit of money together (I get the distinct impression that this was not a poverty-stricken man), and added an extra minaret to Mecca. Interesting way to go about it, I thought. Lateral thinking and all that.

Just across from the Blue Mosque sits the squatter, less talked about, much older, Aya Sophia, also known as the Hagia Sophia. Once you've collected your shoes from the cubby hole at the Blue Mosque, you can walk across the street, saying, “no thanks. No thanks. No. No. NO!!!!” to all the people selling pipes for smoking, pipes for music making (sort of), bowls, carpets, hats, little sort of handmade things for bringing home and saying, “look what I bought in Istanbul,” and other assorted gems and garbage that they thrust in your face. I suppose you could say, “sure. Yup, HELL yeah!” if you wanted to, but I went with the traditional negative stuff.

I said that the Hagia Sophia is older than the Blue Mosque, it's arch rival, but I also liked it a lot more. It was not as airy, but it was more impressive in its absolute mass. I mean, the Blue Mosque might be a winning tennis lob in its soaring elegance, but the Aya Sophia is a bruising, bashing, goal line stand. Ain't nothin' getting through. It's THICK. The stone just seems to weigh more than the same size stones in its younger cousin. I loved it. (To have a look at a picture I took of the Aya Sophia, click here.)

The story of these two buildings is good history. Seriously. There is such a thing as good history, you know.

When the Byzantines were in Istanbul (except they called it Constantinople, and while we're at it, they probably called themselves Romans), and running the show, they built the Aya Sophia. It was a church then, or a cathedral (the distinction eludes me), not a mosque at all. The righteous and noble Europeans prayed to the Heavenly Father there for many years, while butchering or raping anyone who wouldn't swear that Christians were the most loving and kind creatures to ever walk the earth. Something like that. I might be making this up.

Eventually, they were thrown out by the Ottomans, I believe, who took that church/cathedral creation and rather than tear it down, made it a mosque.

The Aya Sophia has the distinctive half-sphere roof that is now considered so classically mosque-ish, but remember, it was a church first, and only became a mosque later. So it's interesting that so many other mosques borrowed that architecture from this big one, and we now forget that there's nothing in Muslim literature demanding a round roof for a mosque. Mecca, for instance, has no sphere atop its holy self. Oh, by the way, no one prays in the Aya Sophia any more. It's just for show now.

Eventually, like a thousand years later, another Exceedingly Rich Guy (now known as Ahmed I, but probably just called Ahmed back then) came along, decided that the Ottomans (or Turks) could do better than any silly old Europeans, and poured his millions into building the Blue Mosque. And hey, he did a good job! Still, though, I like the old one better.

Another cool place we checked out in Istanbul is called Topkapi Palace. It used to be a palace, but is now a museum. It’s actually several buildings on a campus-like area, and each building has it’s own special exhibits. There were two main things I remember about this place, neither one having much to do with the original palace. But that’s memory for you, only rarely sticking to the point.

First of all, there were these two cats outside on the grass, and they were doing the strangest things. Oh, you know, these weren’t exhibits, these were just random cats who happen to have wandered in. I’m explaining this, because I don’t want you to rush out and buy a ticket to Istanbul just to see these cats. They’re almost definitely not still hanging out at the Palace.

But they were making the wildest sounds, and just staring at each other. Neither would move for the longest time, then they’d just sort of walk around each other for a while. And all the time these loud, definitely scary noises.

Now don’t sit there and tell me they were courting, because they weren’t. I have no idea what they were doing, but courting it wasn’t. And the tourists (like me) gathered around and watched them, a couple of people even breaking out their video cameras. Eventually, I regained my senses and thought I should look around the place a bit.

Oh, I just remembered something else. They had a big map of the world up against the wall, and it completely ignored the entire idea of Israel. Jordan and Syria go straight to the sea. Well, maybe it was a map of the world at the time of the Palace’s heyday, but I was surprised, having just come from Israel, to find it not existing and all.

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The second thing that stands out about the place was that they actually had on display what was supposedly a hair from Mohammed’s beard! They had saved it in what seemed like amber or some clear plastic. I couldn’t help laughing, even though I can see how annoying that must have been to the Muslims around me. I mean, I didn’t laugh when we looked at Mohammed’s footprint which they had supposedly saved in some kind of plaster, but this just seemed really funny to me for some reason. A beard hair. And we’re supposed to believe it really came from a man who died over thirteen hundred years ago. Right.

That night we had a bit of a scare. Some of us were hanging around in the room when Todd and Steph burst in. They’d just come back from the hospital, but no one was hurt. Apparently they’d come into the hostel a couple of hours before, and found this backpacker lying around in the lobby. They’d seen him around before, knew he was a Kiwi (New Zealander), and thought he needed some help.

They tried talking to him, but he just kept babbling incoherently, unintentionally blowing bubbles with his spit. I suppose if he’d babbled coherently they would have left him alone, but as it was they asked the guy at the desk to call an ambulance. Clearly, this drugged out backpacker needed some medical attention. The hostel would not make the call. This is Turkey, he pointed out, and drugs are not a good thing to have attached to your name, or the name of your hostel, and he wasn’t about to explain to the police how Kiwi’s ended up overdosing on his lobby floor.

So Katharine and Todd walked outside, hailed a cab, and took the guy to the nearest hospital. Once inside, things began to get weird. The doctors immediately called the police, but did nothing for our Kiwi. They drew some blood, and – get this – bent the needle, and tossed it to Todd – telling him to bring it to the lab down the street! Todd walked it to the lab, where they wanted to charge him for doing the work. Todd is not a man of frilly language, so they got their answer to that request pretty quickly. When he got back to the hospital, the cops wanted to talk to him.

Seems there exists in Turkey a charming little law of Guilty by Association. The police kept using the words “your friend” every time they mentioned drug-boy, and they made it clear that Todd and Katharine shouldn’t plan to leave Istanbul any time real soon. Their friend had drugs, it can only be assumed that they do too. And they got our hostel’s address and sent our friends home to us. And boy were they sweating.

I said, “look, call your consulates and tell them what’s going on. They may be able to help.” The Canadian consulate couldn’t do enough for poor Katharine. I believe their exact words were, “if you’ve not been arrested, then what do you want from us?” Todd’s performed better, contacting the local authorities, and getting a promise that no arrests would be made without informing the consulate first. We waited, wondering what the hell we’d do if the cops banged on that door; but in the end nothing happened. By the time we left Istanbul, no one even considered telling the Turkish police that we were going. Maybe they’re still looking for us.

Istanbul sits on the Bosphorus, which is a bit of water that divides Europe and Asia. You can look across the water and say, “hey, I’m looking at another continent.” Which is pretty cool to say. So, you know, I said it.

A bunch of us got together at the youth hostel, and decided it’d be fun to hire a guy to take us in his boat down the Bosphorus to a particular castle.
I love that about traveling. I mean, you’re sitting around watching TV, or whatever, and you join a conversation about something with people you’ve never met before. And eventually, you’re all pals, and you’re planning your next move together. How often does this happen when you’re at home? Like you’re riding along on the subway, and end up having lunch with the guy sitting next to you. Um, never?

So we all tagged along, and went down to the shore to scare up a boat. Well, that is, we went down to the shore to be attacked by the mob of guys who run boats up and down the Bosphorus. We picked one in particular, basing our decision, no doubt, on his stout character, and full set of bottom teeth. He spoke a little English, and after a bit of fumbling, we finally got some conversation going.

So, after working out that he definitely did know the castle we wanted to see, and that he knew the way there as well (not an automatic, believe me), we bargained, settled, and set out.

It was a nice ride, and we all got to see the Asian side of Istanbul from the boat, though we boarded on the European side. Almost all of Turkey is on the Asian side of the joint, but it seems that the place to stay and see things for tourists in Istanbul is on the European side. Across the water we could see the beautiful houses and lawns of an Istanbul that we hadn’t seen before. I was particularly struck by the water driveways that many of the houses had for their boats. I can’t describe it better than that. Picture a house on the water, with a little driveway filled with water for the boats. You got it.

And eventually we pulled to the side of the river (or whatever the Bosphorus is officially called. A strait?) and the captain pointed up to where we should go to see the castle. So off we tramped.

It was closed. I don’t remember what day it was, but the castle was closed that day. Now, I told you this wasn’t a travel guide, so don’t get mad that I can’t tell you which days are good for castle-viewing in Istanbul. Best I can do is say, “ask before you go,” and then you’ll say something like, “well…duh!” Or whatever your version of that is, depending on your background and age. Still, we hadn’t asked, so I guess we could have used some sage advice like I’m giving you on these pages.

So…we couldn’t get inside, and ended up scrambling back down to the boat to tell the captain the bad news.

“Yes,” he said, “closed on Mondays,” (or whatever day it was. Let’s not start that again). He was still smiling, and didn’t seem to feel that anything was wrong, that maybe he could have pointed out this fact three hours before that very moment. Well, all part of the adventure…. So we piled back in the boat, and made a couple of stops along the way home. Specifically to the other side, so we could all take pictures of the signs that say (in English, no less) “welcome to Asia.”

Mostly Istanbul was a bunch of tourist fun with my tourist friends. There’s a little restaurant there called “The Pudding Shop,” which is supposed to be the beginning point for all the hippies going on their hippie trails. It’s also in the aforementioned “Midnight Express” which lends it a little glamour and appeal. In real life it’s a medium sort of place, with medium sort of over-cooked non-Turkish food, and a medium clientele of over-cooked non-Turks. The Hippies were still there, having, I guess, missed their trails back in the 60’s. We ate there almost every day.

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And now, when I look back on it, I’m very disappointed in myself for not trying to break out of that routine. Surely there are plenty of restaurants with authentic Turkish food in Istanbul, but I didn’t find them. Well, it’s a trade-off, of course…I met a lot of fun people in the Pudding Shop whom I never would have met down in the real heart of Istanbul. It often seems to be like that. Hanging out with other travelers can be more fun and less interesting than hanging out with people of a completely different culture and language. In Istanbul, I did the fun thing.

The day came when our little group went our separate ways. Steph and Kate were heading one way. The Canadian girls another. Todd and Tracy figured they’d head west to Greece. And there was me. I was gonna stick around Istanbul for a while, try to see it through my own eyes and not as part of a group.

It was a sad parting. These guys had traveled together for a long time, and now who knew when they’d see each other again. I was still slightly an outsider, and stood back to let them say their good-byes. Then all the girls but Tracy were gone. Todd and Tracy would leave a few hours later.

Strangely, I saw Steph and Kate a couple of hours later! I was back at our little hostel, before moving to the pit I had picked out for myself, and there they were collecting their stuff from the lobby. Apparently they had missed the first train, and had come back to leave their gear until the next one left. Now they were leaving again.

Seeing them again so soon after saying goodbye brought home the truth that I was ready to be on my own again. We were all sort of sheepish. “Oh, hey…what are you guys doing here?” Not the smallest hope that they were staying. I really liked these girls, but once you say goodbye, you don’t want to drag it out. I was prepared to have them leave, so let ‘em leave! I think they felt the same way. And, soon enough, I was all alone again, walking through the city without anyone waiting to hear what I had done that day. Relief.

The next few days were taken up by me wandering all around the city. I stayed about a week, but somehow really didn’t do anything new, and eventually picked up and headed down the west coast. I was on my way to Kusadasi, which to me was the gateway to Greece, and maybe a job. Kusadasi is very close to the Greek Island of Samos, so it seemed a logical place to head. First stop along the way was a teeny place called Selçuk.

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The Coast

Selçuk sits in amongst some rolling hills in the middle of nowhere. It’s small. The greatest thing about the place was that in my little building lived a little woman who would wash clothes for a little fee. She’d beat the living hell out of the fabric, and hang it to dry on the roof. Man, did it get clean. I remember going up there one time to see if my clothes were ready, and I looked to the roof of our neighbor. They were raising a goat up there on the roof. He had his food all laid out for him, and he seemed as happy as any goat I’d ever seen. Small disclaimer: I don’t claim to know a lot about what goats look like when they’re happy. But he didn’t seem to be in any kind of distress. Wasn’t bleating or bleeding. Anyway.

Celçuk attracts the occasional tourist due to it’s proximity to a fantastic place called Ephesus. Now, suddenly, anyone who has studied the Roman Empire (and I am decidedly NOT in that category) has just perked up his ears. Ephesus was a Greek city, but for a huge amount of time lived under Roman rule, and was the most important Roman city in Asia. John the Baptist lived and died here, and there’s some evidence that Mary herself died here as well. I came for the ruins, though, not the graves, and I was not disappointed.

But first, as I arrived in town, I met up with a few other backpackers, and we headed to a hippie bar nearby. Black lighting, stars and moons, and sparkly decorations on the walls, and the floor lined with cushions for leaning. We sat back and listened to the music, pretending we were stoned and about to get a lot of free-love. In the middle of Turkey, in the middle of the nineties.

The ruins in Ephesus are extensive and to a large extent still intact. The pension gave me a guidebook, and I needed it. There’s an entire marble street lined with columns, and two big theaters. You could walk through the streets and imagine what is was like for the Greeks and Romans to do the same. There was a gymnasium there, as well as more important public works, such as the bordello! Amazingly, the library still had niches cut into the rock where they would put the books. I guess whenever they had more books, they either had to cut more niches, or take the older ones away.

The guidebook explained what everything was, but there were a few things that didn’t need an explanation. The best example had to be the public toilets. Stone benches with holes cut in them. All the holes were side by side, and if there was ever a partition between the seated participants, no evidence remains. They were housed in their own little building, but personal privacy may have been a luxury of the rich.

Ephesus amazes, but only if you have the capacity to be amazed by ruins. You shouldn’t read the brochure (or whatever) and get excited about ancient cities and fantastic works of humanity unless you can get excited by a lot of really old buildings. If you see what I mean. It’s great, and I liked wandering around letting my imagination take me to Roman senate meetings and discussions of Gods and Goddesses long forgotten. It’s the age of the things that makes the place interesting, and not the beauty of what’s left. I spent the day there, and made my plans to head down to Kusadasi within the week.

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Kusadasi

Arrived in the dismal, dirty, crowded port town of Kusadasi to the sounds of touts screaming for my business at their hotels. I have no idea how I weeded one out from the rest, but after hearing that his place was not too far away, and not too expensive, I followed him on foot. Man, that was a long walk. The heat, combined with the weight of my backpack and the lack of sleep on the bus ride, made me slightly surly to begin with, I admit. Then, the “5 minute walk” turned into 15 minutes, and I began toying with the idea of abandoning the guy I was following, and veering off into one of the millions and millions of pensions and hotels we seemed to be passing without a glance. He had offered to carry my day bag for me, but I refused. My camera was in there, and I knew I’d never be able to catch him if he bolted. I had no doubt that he knew his way around the twisting alleys and side streets. Even carrying my pack, he could lose me. So I was weighed down, and the walk dragged on.

After meandering around with this guy for what felt like the better part of the day, he finally turned sharply left, and we were there. I stepped inside, dropped my pack, and stood there facing Mick, my Irish friend from Cappadochia, who sat reading the paper. “Oh. Hey, “ he said, “what’re you doin’ here?” I just exhaled… “looking for you.”

Mick and I hung around Kusadasi for a week, seeing the place, and waiting for a boat to Samos. I was still unable to drink alcohol due to my bout with Hepatitis, but that didn’t hold Mick back one whit. We’d go out to some little place, and he’d have six quick ones while we watched MTV on the bar TV. As the evenings wore on, the talk would turn to movies. Mick is a true film buff, and he never tired of rolling his eyes at my lack of knowledge.

“How can you not of heard of that one?!?” He’d say with exasperation after I’d looked blankly at him when he mentioned some esoteric cult film. “Come on, it had Richard Carlton and Barbara Thelton in it. They were traveling to Minneapolis on a train, and she was wearing some flowery dress the whole time. Come ON Rob!” And I’d just look at him.

I mean, if I don’t know it, I don’t know it. It’s pretty unlikely that I’m gonna suddenly say, “OH!! The flowery dress, of course! I thought you meant she was wearing plaid!”

And then he’d come up with the final attack. He knew that when all else failed, he could always say, “but, it’s American!” I guess I could be forgiven for not knowing every movie ever filmed worldwide, but there was no way I was going to get away with not knowing an American movie.

And I’d try to see the TV. These were my nights in Kusadasi. Sitting there watching Beavis and Butthead on Turkish TV, while Mick drilled me on 1950’s American film as he slowly got drunk.

Eventually, Mick got bored with just drinking, and as we walked home he decided to liven up the evening a bit. “What,” he wondered, “is under all those manholes?” Now, by the time I was ten years old I knew that under manholes are long tunnels, and crawlspaces where workers go to…well, work and stuff. I had no desire to find out if Turkish manhole covers covered the same thing as American manhole covers.

And if I did have that desire, I would stifle it under the crushing weight of my fear of getting arrested in Turkey for Manhole Cover Uncovering. There’s no doubt at all that I don’t want to get arrested anywhere for anything, but I particularly didn’t want to get arrested in Turkey. I felt almost sure that cable TV did not get pumped in to the dining and relaxing areas of the average Turkish prison, and I felt strongly that I should not give up watching MTV before my 27th birthday. This, plus the fact that I didn’t think knowing how to say “lights out” in Turkish would help my job prospects, made me uneasy about Mick’s need to explore the country’s infrastructure.

Do they, in Turkey, you may ask yourself, actually arrest people for Manhole Cover Uncovering? I’m extremely happy to say that I have no idea. I put on my most stern voice with Michael O’Casey, and when he ignored me (or, rather, made fun of me), I walked home by myself.

It took me four and a half hours to get home that night, because I somehow had no idea where I was. Mick was drunk and alone, and apparently found our room and his bed in 15 minutes. I wandered around, watching the bats dine happily on the moths and other insect swarming around the occasional streetlight, until dawn, when I began to recognize my surroundings. I crept into the room, and slept a few hours, before Mick woke me, and with a hurt tone in his voice, said “you could have just waited a second.” I never told him that I had been lost. To this day he believes that I didn’t come back to the room that night because I was pissed off at him. Good.
We decided to head to Greece together. I was feeling kind of desperate about getting a job, and Mick wanted to go somewhere he could have a party. Samos was just across the water, so we boarded a small boat and took off. The water was very clear, and dolphins played and jumped in front of our bow. It felt nice to be heading to a new place.

That's Turkey! You can click here to head to Greece (and the rest of Europe).

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