Tag it:

turkish delight on a moonlit night

Tuesday, December 11, 2001 1:05 PM
We found our ferry from Rhodes quite quickly in the harbour though we had some doubts as to whether or not it really was our ferry when we saw how small it was and how it reared up like a wild stallion as the waves rolled into it. A Saskatchewan Canadian next to us on the upper deck informed us cheerfully that he had thrown up on the ride to Rhodes earlier that morning. We decided to wait with eating until we arrived. At the border, upon docking, I gave my passport up temporarily, withdrew a cool $200 million, bought two little stickers for our passport books for $160 (not even scratch and sniff though) and kept the other $40 million as pocket change. While walking back from the ATM a group of men surrounded me.

We hitched a ride with the Canadian and his American sidekick to octogar (bus station), bought a ticket to Selcuk and went out to sample some Turkish cuisine. Soon after we were sitting on a comfortable bus and on our way. Two attendants worked the isle as if it were a plane. They brought around a jug of vegetable oil-like liquid that we noticed the locals took with cupped hands and then rubbed it over their hands and faces. Some kind of faint smelling disinfectant I guess but I think it gave me some itchy spots on my hands. They followed soon after with water, put in some turkish dubs of American movies and then brought around tea. Very nice.

One of the ever-present pension owners greeted us when we arrived, this time replete with a brochure and a short, but well-recited english sales pitch. We could see the place from the bus stop so we decided to take a look. As we were leaving a backpacker, boarding another bus, shouted out "don't do it! ANZ hostel is really nice." and then disappeared into the bus. Our guide, in a brief moment of irritation quickly responded "don't mess with my business" to which a group of locals staring on quickly retorted "its not your business".

But we went to the room anyways and they really worked for their money and it was cheap so we aren't complaining. We woke early to the muezzin's call to prayer from the minerat and drum beats warning muslims not miss their morning meal before sunrise (its ramadan). Our hotel owner arranged a ride to Ephesus with a guidebook and left us to the ruins. We were quickly set upon by a tour guide offering his services but we declined. He returned now and again to see if we changed our minds, at one point calling out from 10 feet behind us, "brothers, i am here. i look forward to your decision." the ruins were quite impressive and not too describable in a short amount of time but we 're-enacted' Paul and travelling companions versus Demetrius in the theatre. We moved along the southern coast of Turkey all the way to Alanya, an old pirate town that is mostly concrete resort hotels now. We found a cheap pension and hiked up the hill on the small jut of land sticking out into the Mediterranean that has the remains of a large castle complex.

We took our first dip in the Mediterranean at dusk and got bashed and dragged in the sand. The following day we sat on the beach all day and jumped in the water now and then because we could not because it was hot, beach weather. Cappadocia, in the middle of Turkey had some neat rock formations so we headed there next. Very impressive. The open air museum in Goerome can be thought of like this. Imagine a series of drip castles on a beach. The sand has fallen in clumps down the sides making irregular shapped hills with a very vague resemblance to a cone. You pour a small amount of water down the sides, smoothing and rounding everything but leaving the same basic shape. Now harden the sand castles as though it was baked in the sun and turn the sandy colour into gradients of rose, salmon and gray. Poke little rounded doors and windows in the side with your fingers. Then shrink yourself down to around a fifth or a sixth of the size of one of the sand castles. Whole cities lived in the rocks and there are numerous remains of churches, chapels, kitchens, dining rooms, bedrooms all with rough hewn walls and little oddly shaped and placed notches in the walls and floor to store different materials.

Nearby, in the rose valley the rocks change shape again and alot of them look like upturned spade shovels or upside down hearts or incisor teeth or even candy corn. Then there are the 'fairy rocks' in which the middle portion of tiny cliffs have eroded away leaving a large boulder perched on the top and the underground cities. We visited one which was only partially open and partially excavated. It went down 6 floors or about 50-60ft through stone! There are 24 underground cities that could hold around 200,000 people. There are stables and kitchens, storage rooms, bedrooms, meeting halls, grape presses, a classroom, a church, etc. Some of the passageways are short, rounded tubes that you have to duck and waddle through, others are more spacious stairways. Alot of the stairs have large stone wheels that could be rolled in front to block the stairways from invaders. It rained in Istanbul the entire time we were there and started snowing on the last day.

We saw the enormous blue mosque with tiled interior and huge elephant foot pillars, the aya sofya mosque which was originally a church built by Justinian in the 6th century and whose massive dome is still just as massive. The inside is a mix of Islamic paintings and such painted over most of the Christian murals and frescoes though a few still appear here and there. We also stopped by one of many underground cisterns also dating from Constantine to Justinian's time. The 'underground palace' as it is called, has rows and rows of 15ft pillars all beneath street level that were filled with water piped from 18km away.

Then there was the Topkapi palace, home of the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire and numerous monuments scattered around the city and so broken and worn they are no longer monuments but curious interruptions in the sidewalk or plaza (ie. Constantine's dedication pillar to mark Constaninople as the centre of the Empire, a 60ft top third of an Egyptian obelisk, and a marker from which all distances in the empire we're calculated). We also walked through the covered bazaar in the middle of Istanbul, comparing prices, introducing ourselves to every merchant trying to sell us something, haggling of prices and eventually purchasing a few things. We were asked at various times in the bazaar if we were cops or Greenpeace or fisherman or Muslim! Most Turks usually started talking to us in German assuming we looked German as well. But while we didn't do Istanbul justice, the weather was too rotten to do much exploring so we moved on. Patrick and Laryn