Istanbul was once Constantinople

Once in Istanbul, I found my way to my friend’s place, got to see her for a few seconds as I was early enough to catch her on her way to school, and then crashed.  About noon, I woke up and decided to go sightseeing.  I was quite proud of myself for remembering so much of what Istanbul looked like and actually was able to get around fairly easily.  I strolled through the Spice Market, Grand Bazaar, through the Hippodrome, by the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, but quickly realized that I did not sightseeing alone nearly as much.  

Shots of the Spice Market/Egyptian Bazaar

 It was blazing hot, and I was sweating mercilessly, so I decided to add a new cultural twist to my adventure and check out the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art.  Sadly, the air in there was stifling, but I did see some beautiful art, including giant carpets, beautiful books, and some gorgeous furniture meant for holding Korans.  My favorite exhibit was the ethnographic area which recreated the inside of houses of various types from around Turkey.  It highlighted women’s work, like dying and weaving wool while also showing me how a yurt worked.  After that, I decided to take a real break and head to my favorite place for Turkish delight.  Yes, Turkish delight is real and is usually made of nuts (pistachios are the most common) covered in a flavored sugary gummy compound which can then be covered with powdered sugar or coconut.  It’s much better than that description makes it sound, and I have come to the conclusion it is soooo much better fresh than when bought in a sealed tourist box so I limit my enjoyment to when I can get it fresh.  I got a sample and some tea and enjoyed both as I watched a family struggle to make purchases.  They bought a lot, but the boys wanted everything, and the parents took forever to find a box they thought would survive an airplane ride.  I got there after them and still left first.

Tea and Turkish delight

Eventually I wound my way to Taksim to meet my friend.  When we met up, we strolled through the main street of shops, restaurants, and street performers and caught up.  Eventually we decided to find a place for dinner.  One lucky salesman found the magic words of “salad bar 6 lira”; beautiful words to two girls whose colons had suffered from a severe lack of vegetables for months.  We piled our plates high with delicious veggies and then shared a main dish.  We were two bednieri gogos (happy girls).  

SALAD BAR!!!!!!!

The next morning we set out to find an epic Turkish breakfast.  My friend is a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain so when I saw he had a Turkish breakfast recommendation near my friend’s place, we ventured over there.  It was not cheap for breakfast, but we stuffed ourselves with the various kinds of bread, cheese, pepper-covered vegetables, and honey butter while looking out over the water.   They also continually served you fresh Turkish tea, so I had seven.

Our amazing Turkish breakfast

Full of delicious food from the Kale Cafe

After we could eat no more, we walked along the waterfront, seeing all sorts of men fishing, swimming, and lounging.  We only saw one woman daring to go into the water, but we saw more of her than we wanted.  We passed by an old Roman fort and eventually made our way back to the touristy area.  One of my goals for Istanbul was to buy lots of scarves.  By myself in the Grand Bazaar, I easily got overwhelmed, but with a friend, it was easier.  It was still crazy hot, so we frequently tried to cool ourselves off with stops for fresh squeezed juice and even a trip to McDonald’s for the AC.  We met up with another TLG friend that night, went to a more local part of town, took a funicular up a hill, and paid too much for tea and a great view of the Golden Horn.  We wandered around that area a bit and then made our way down through some houses.  The only negative experience of the trip happened then, but it is much better described by my friend here.  I did feel special finally making it into her blog, since her blog was one of the more popular ones in TLG.  I also was unaware we had a certain reputation for misadventures, but, as this blog probably shows, we deserved it.

Getting over the incident, we found a place to eat.  We started talking and it turned into another fabulous Georgian night, where talking to expats whiled away the hours.  Unfortunately, once we stepped out of the restaurant, we were reminded we weren’t in Georgia anymore but in Turkey, where public transportation apparently stops about midnight and taxis are not as cheap or easy to come by.  We split a cab to a more central location, said goodbye to the one friend, and then, thanks to a family, made it on the last tram on the night to Taksim, where we again caught what was probably the last bus to my friend’s neck of the woods.  Once there, I showered and packed.  We did not get to sleep until past 2, but since it was my last night on my adventure, it was worth the short amount of sleep.

Thankfully I made it to the airport just fine the next day. For some reason, there were about 7 layers of security for American flights, but I passed them all.  After an extremely long day with no sleep, I eventually ended up in Springfield.  It took my bags another 3 days to get home, but neither will be leaving America anytime soon. TSA searched my bags but did not touch the chacha.  They did however trade my beautiful red leather belt for a red HTC battery, which I'm not so happy about.

Right now I’m just trying not to turn into a pumpkin at 10pm and trying to make decisions about my life here, so processing has taken a bit of a back seat.  This may be the last blog post, or I might have more reflections or extra stories I never told.  Either way, thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed the ride almost as much as I did.  It’s been an incredible year.

Turkey Round 2: Part 7: My Idea of Heaven

In case it wasn't obvious what the focus in Rize was on...

 Even though I spent only a few hours in Rize, it has by far been my favorite place, probably because it is a city built on tea.  Caykur, the big Turkish tea company, is based in Rize, or at the very least is a huge presence in the city.  The soccer team is named after the company, the buses have the logo plastered on them, and there are tea plantations all around.  

Before we could go to tea heaven, however, we wanted to step into an interworld between Turkey and Georgia: Land of the Laz.  The Laz people speak a Caucasian language (Georgian’s language family) and have a distinct culture.  Turkish Laz and Georgian Laz have developed their own cultures, even though both are now only small minorities in their respective countries.  Off the main square in Rize is a Turkish Laz restaurant we knew we had to try.  It might be the coolest restaurant I’ve ever been to, since it was also a mini-ethnographic museum of Laz culture. We ate in the garden and felt as though we truly had stepped away from the city of Rize that buzzed by outside our oasis.  Thankfully they had a picture menu so we decided to split three things.  One was a cheesy fondue version of mchadi, a Georgian cornmeal treat.  Another was a mix of veggies and meat that tasted like a sausage pizza.  The third was cabbage leaves wrapped around meat and rice.  All three were delicious so we ordered two more dishes, one like a liquid omelet and the other like a gritty mchadi omelet crushed into pieces.  I know half of this makes no sense.  Just understand it was all delicious, and we had all enjoyed our Final Feast very much. 

Round 1 of lunch

The amazing Laz Restaurant, Evvel Zeman

We took a taxi up the hill to the Botanical Tea Garden, our second sight in Rize.  It would have been an energetic climb had we not been weighed down with our bags.  Regardless, at the top was not only a place dedicated to tea, but several beautiful flowering trees and spectacular views of Rize.   

Terraced tea plants and other pretty scenery from our tea spot

 We started off with a glass of tea each and then saw people next to us ordering a pot.  The really cool thing is that you get a pot of essence of tea on top of a pot of hot water so you can have several cups adjusted to your desired strength.  If there had been a beach within walking distance, I would have been in heaven and might have refused to ever leave.  Instead, I drank several cups of tea, admired the gorgeous views, and spent most of my remaining money on tea for me and others.

Making myself tea

The 4 of us in our tea oasis, with the tea pot as it came

With a brief stop to enjoy Turkish treats and buy some baklava for gifts (if it lasts past today), we found a bus to the border and eventually started our last bus ride in Turkey, a very bittersweet feeling.

Turkey Round 2: Part 6: An Uneventful Easter

It took little time once back in Trabzon to get back to the center and check into the same hotel we had stayed in before, which was even cheaper than we had expected.  On the ride from the airport, I had a delightful conversation with a Turkish woman who was clearly trying her hardest to use her limited English.  Both because she was doing better than she thought and because she was clearly trying so hard, I was so pleased and sincerely wished my students were like that.

We grabbed some tea on the square before returning to the hotel to meet up with two other friends.  We then walked around a bit and enjoyed another delicious dinner along the waterfront.  We stopped and got a selection of pastries to enjoy back at the hotel, where we met a fascinating American from Seattle.  He sat, ate, and drank with us for several hours, sharing stories of his travels on ships and planes around the world, and swapping Turkey stories.

The next morning we made our friends try their first and only real Turkish breakfast before taking a 10am bus to Sumela, an orthodox monastery about an hour away, set along the side of the hill.  Our new friend joined us for the journey as well, and at the monastery we ran into another group of TLGers on their way out of the monastery.  The small-world syndrome of Georgia had been transported to Turkey with the vast swathes of TLGers overrunning the border for our Easter break.

The monastery is impressive mostly for its position, perched on the edge of a dubious cliff.  It was built around the 1300s by Greek Orthodox Christians living in the area and was active for centuries.  After WWI, when the Greeks in the area were sent back to Greece, the monastery lay empty, and only a few years ago were services allowed to resume.  There are several beautiful frescoes both inside and outside the chapel, although many of the faces have been destroyed by sling shots or other means.  Still, the craftsmanship is impressive, especially as the painting adjusts to the natural curvature of the rock in some places.

We had a glass of tea (notice a theme yet?) and a snack before heading back to Trabzon.  As it was our last night in Turkey, we wanted to truly feast, but having skipped lunch, gave in to food at about 4:30 after finding the market mostly closed.  We found a place where we could point to what we wanted and then wandered over to a dessert stand, where I got a baked rice pudding I had previously tried and really enjoyed.  They also threw in our tea for free because Turks are simply wonderful. 

Then two of my friends went back to make use of the internet and another friend and I kept wandering, hoping to finish our shopping.  We found a lot closed or not what we wanted, but at a home goods store, I managed to find both a set of Turkish tea glasses for me and a present for my host family.  We also happened upon the caravanserai, a beautiful stone building that was the basis for the market, where caravans could sell their wares.  Then we headed back to the hotel, chatted with our friends and new American friend for a while longer, and decided to find more food since we now had more room for deliciousness in our stomachs. 

We were trying to find a place with atmosphere, real food, and desserts but had trouble finding all three in a place still open and not stifling.  Eventually, after spotting two fights we assumed were related to the Trabzonites fanatical love of their soccer team and loss that night, found a place on the square that would let us sit out on the square.  We all tried to order soup and tea, with one order of meatballs and a salad, but again, the Turks knew better than we did.  They also brought out some bulgar pilaf, a red sauce that tasted like Mexican food, that I, of course, adored, and another salad.  They also threw in some baklava.  We were bracing for a large bill, but found the bill very reasonable, since several items had been thrown in gratis.

Stuffed and delighted with Turkey, we headed back to our hotel, very sad to leave.  The next morning we said goodbye to Thomas, grabbed a quick breakfast at the market next door, and headed to the bus station, with a bit of difficulty.  It took us no time at all to find a bus heading to Rize, our last stop on our tour of Turkey.

Turkey Round 2: Part 5: Another Day, Another Wonder of the Ancient World

It was another early night to continue to another early morning to catch a 7:30 bus to Bodrum.  It was supposed to be the nice, non-stop bus, but the bus stopped frequently along the way, including once when we entered the Bodrum peninsula where we had to surrender our passports at some unexplained security check.  When we got to Bodrum, we were immediately assaulted with British English, as my friend had warned me the area was popular with British tourists.  It took us a bit to find a place where we were willing to fork over a bit more than we had planned, but we found a cute place with a nice little courtyard that would keep out much of the noise of the bustling night life and the wind, which was even worse than it had been on the way to Samos.

With only an afternoon to explore Bodrum, we headed first to the Tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus, also known as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the third of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World I’ve seen in my life.  Unlike the Temple of Artemis, there was actually an entrance fee, but there was far more substance to the site as well, even though Crusaders and then the British Museum had carted most of the ancient tomb away.  There was a short video explaining the history.  Mausolus was a Persian satrap in the 300s BC who moved his capital to Halicarnassus and began a series of building projects.  After his death (or during his life, depending upon which site you visit), his sister/wife Artemisia commissioned the tomb to honor his greatness.  The four best sculptures from the time period worked on the four different sides of the tomb, which looked a lot like a temple with its columns and statues.  Even after she also died, they continued work on the tomb, since its greatness would also be a monument to their skill as well.

The museum also had a three page excerpt from a Crusader explaining how the Crusaders had discovered the tomb and carted most of the stones away to help build the castle in Bodrum.  The letter even details how they found a sarcophagus at the end of a day of work.  When they returned the next day, the sarcophagus was empty, having been looted by pirates that night…or so they say.  The site also does its best to explain what archeologists and historians know about how the tomb looked and various artistic renderings.  Then we got to wander around in the ruins with more British tourists.

From there we headed to the Castle of St. Peter, the Crusader fort that sits right on the water in Bodrum.  It now holds the Museum of Underwater Archeology…aka sweet shipwreck finds.  The site is doubly awesome for allowing you to explore a Crusader fort and showing you shipwrecks from the 14^th century BC to the 11^th century AD.  Apparently Texas A&M has an awesome underwater archeology program that was responsible for finding many of these shipwrecks and preserving the artifacts found on them.  They even built a life-size replica of a Byzantine ship, which fills the chapel of the castle.  Either because so many shipwrecks contained hundreds of amphora, or because the locals still have a thing for them after several thousand years, the museum has hundreds of amphorae on display, including several from different time periods and origins arranged in a circle as if they were taking part in a classical Greek symposium.  There are also plenty of ingots, glass from as far back as the 14^th century BC (my favorite find), coins, tools for cooking and ship repair, jewelry, and other remnants of civilizations gone by.

Having achieved our goal of seeing the two sites in Bodrum we were after and finding the city far too windy to allow for an enjoyable swim, we enjoyed some more tea and set off for the ancient city gates.  They have been reconstructed, with donations from Turkcell and Erickson, which seems like a clash of total modernity and antiquity, but it gave me a good idea of what the gates looked like.  I would have stood on the edge, except the wind was so brutal, I was afraid it might carry me over the edge.

We sat at the marina, hoping to watch the sun set over the sea.  Unfortunately, clouds marred our view, but we figured out our tea spot was run by the Mariner’s Association and put all funds back into the community, which we both thought was very cool.  We also found a great dessert spot and indulged in some Turkish goodies.  Dinner was another Lonely Planet recommendation-the fish market.  There are restaurants mixed in with fish stalls, so you can pick out your fish and have a restaurant prepare it fresh for you.  Not a big lover of fish, I just had some soup, saving room for more dessert.  We capped off the night with dessert and Misha wine in the courtyard of our pansiyon.

Breakfast at the pansiyon was another delicious incarnation of the Turkish breakfast and then we headed off to catch a bus to the airport.  The day before a man at the bus station had simply told us to show up two hours before our flight at the bus station.  We were a bit dubious of these instructions, since the airport was a fair distance away and an expensive taxi was our only other option.  Breakfast took longer than we expected, but we still got to the bus at least half an hour before we needed to.  Thankfully, since we were flying the budget arm of Turkish airlines, we could take this bus (another 18 lira for the privilege) to the airport, which is still undergoing major construction and seems to process about one flight at a time.  The airport had free wi-fi, though, which was a bonus.  We had a short layover in Ankara, and even though we were flying a budget airline, got a cheese sandwich and tea on each leg of our journey. 

Turkey Round 2: Part 3: Ephesus at last

We got back from Sardis just in time for one of my friends to head to the airport but too late to meet up with another friend.  My other friend and I got some dinner, wandered around the bazaar, and headed back to the otogar to take a bus to Selcuk.  Thankfully, unlike Georgian transportation, most buses left within five minutes of us getting on them, and this one was no different.  We arrived at Selcuk, grabbed some tea and dessert at an ice cream place, and then found our pansiyon before crashing after a long day.   

We got up early to another delicious Turkish breakfast with unlimited tea and then, taking the advice of our hostess, walked to Ephesus.  We entered through the gate most people exit, so the ancient theater was practically empty upon our arrival.  We started to see crowds as we wandered toward the library but did not see swarms of tourists until we looked toward the main street, which was filled.  Somehow, we managed to cross most of the tourists and had a relatively easy time seeing the rest of the site.  It’s pretty extraordinary how much they were able to recover, as well as how much classical debris they just have lying about.  So many columns and architectural finishes that pleased me to no end but made me wish I remembered more about them!  In addition to the center of town, the harbor road is somewhat restored.  Along that road is the Church of St. Mary, which was the main church in Ephesus until the Basilica of St. John was built.  Mary’s house is another tourist site near Ephesus, but it is about 10km away and the links between the house and Mary (as in the Virgin Mary) seemed too dubious to make the trek.

After a few hours, we walked back to town, stopping at the remains of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.  There’s one column and a lot of debris left where the magnificent temple once stood.  Still, it checked #2 of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World off my list and gave me the chance to climb on the one remaining column, so I considered it a success.  After another tea break, we headed into the mosque in town, which still functions but when we walked in only served as a tourist trap.  We then headed to St. John’s basilica, in the shadow of the fortress.  The basilica is now in ruins, but if it were still standing, it would be the 7^th largest church in the world.  It also holds the tomb of St. John, as in the writer of the Gospel of John, which people believe he wrote on the hill in Ephesus (now in Selcuk), where the fortress now stands.  It was pretty cool to see his tomb and where he wrote my favorite gospel at one time, especially on a beautiful day with flowers blooming around the ruins of the basilica.  While both churches in Ephesus/Selcuk were built far after Paul and John lived here, it was still a lot to think about that a town known for its pagan temple also sheltered two of Christianity’s greatest men, had a long history of Christianity, but now exists in a 99% Muslim country.

Sadly, the fortress is closed to visitors, as I would have loved to check it out as well.  It’s from the Byzantine era, and all the signs said that maybe it was built to honor John, since it sits upon the hill he wrote his gospel on.  With all this to soak in, we headed to a cute little café, clearly owned by Westerners, for tea/coffee and hummus.  Thus restored, we set off for the Ephesus museum, which housed remnants of the town that Western powers had not managed to cart away to their museums but were too small or important to be housed at the site.  Among other fragments of statues and columns were the head and fist of Domitian, a Roman emperor who granted Ephesus the right to have an emperor cult, and thus they built him a giant statue 3x the size of the actual man.  The museum also had a mini ethnographic museum showing Turkish life from around the 1800s, but after all the ancient glory, it seemed far less interesting than it normally would have.  We stopped for tea and then decided to investigate whether it was possible to go to Rhodes after all.  We wandered into the nearest travel agent and found out we could have gone to Rhodes had we not made plans to fly home on Saturday, but we could change our bus tickets for the next day and go to the Greek island of Samos the very next day.  Thus, we went from staying in Selcuk one night to three nights.   

We walked around the cute touristy town for a while and then headed back to our pansiyon, exhausted.  We really liked Selcuk, since it is easy to get around in, has lots of restaurants and tourist shops, but in April was not overflowing with tourists or pushy salespeople.  I also have to admit that I had heard more English, especially American English, than I had heard in a very long time, and I liked it.  Perhaps that means I’ve been away too long as American accents now seem comforting.

Turkey Round 2: Part 2: Helpful Turks, Lesson 2 and Ancient Ruins, Lesson 1

Written on the bus from Izmir to Selcuk last night

I realized today that I had left out a few details about our first day of the trip and details on Turkey.  Our hotel happened to be right next to a mosque, so about 4am, I got woken up by the call to prayer.  Definitely don’t get that at home.

In Georgia, I sometimes encounter Turkish toilets, so they can be disappointing but I’m used to them.  And they are called Turkish toilets.  Still, from the moment we got to Turkey until we hit our apartment in Izmir, all I saw were Turkish toilets, including our hotel in Trabzon and the airport there.  Beautiful bathrooms with Turkish toilets.  Sigh.

On the plane, I asked one of my friends where in the city we were staying.  He replied he did not know, but it could not be that big of a city.  My other friend and I laughed and told him it was Turkey’s 3^rd largest city, and I whipped out my Lonely Planet to astonish us all with the fact that there are 2.7 million people in Izmir.  We knew that our adventure had just grown a bit more.

When we arrived in Izmir, we tried to find a café with wifi.  Although knowing they have to exist, we had difficulty and were so hungry that we finally sat down at a place with cool chairs (this tends to be the way we pick our fast food joints out of the many that Turkey offers).  Of course, we happened upon a place that served only a few items of food, so we got tea and toast, which was what they offered.  There were two old men sitting next to us, smoking their water pipes, thumbing their worry beads, perhaps the perfect picture of what I assume Turkish old men to be like.  That plus energy from food and tea set us off again, resigned to find an internet café in hopes our couchsurfing host had sent us directions.  She had not, so we told her we would meet her at 8 and set off for more food and again hopes of wifi so I could use Skype to try to call our host.  We wandered into the bazaar and were approached after a while of looking confused by helpful Turk #2 (these are only the ones I’m pointing out, but the majority of people we’ve met have been so helpful and friendly, like in Georgia).  He had lived in Norfolk, which pleased me greatly.  He tried to help us find an internet café (having not understood we wanted wifi, probably because of the age difference more than the language barrier).  He took us through the maze of the bazaar and eventually handed us off to a friend, who plunged us deeper into the maze.  Once he took us to a café that had computers, we explained we really needed to call a friend, so he whipped out his phone for us to use.  Our host confirmed she would meet us at 8pm, we thanked helpful Turk #3, and then decided it was time for more tea.

A note about the tea.  Although people probably think of Turkish coffee when they think of Turkish drinks, the Turks actually grow and consume quite a bit of tea, which more reason I adore this country.  Tea is frequently served in tiny tulip cups, so drinking several cups of tea at a time is just normal.  So far my record is 8 in a day, but that’s because I keep interrupting these tea sessions with traveling and sightseeing.  I’ll do better soon, I promise.

Once filled up with more tea, with more time to kill, we walked along the boardwalk in Izmir.  Now comes the note about Izmir.  Izmir is a big modern city on the Aegean Sea, built around a bay, with development all around.  It has a long and storied history, being the ancient city of Smyrna, home to one of the seven churches in Revelation.  It would be a much bigger player in modern Turkey (as in, a rival to Istanbul for culture) but much of the city was destroyed a little less than a century ago in a terrible fire.  The main draw of Izmir for me was the water, and it has a lovely boardwalk.

We walked along the boardwalk, grabbed our first real kebab and more tea (of course), before meeting our host.  She was a really interesting Turkish woman who spoke excellent English.  She had just come home a month before from studying abroad so had arranged for us to stay with her friends.  Her friends also owned a café, so she took us there where she fed us tea, chatted with us about Turkey and Georgia, and then invited us to play a game similar to mafia with the other patrons, many of whom were also friends.  These people were decidedly not your average Turks, but they were incredibly welcoming.  The long days of travel and chance to hear Turkish while trying to discern by body language who was good and who was bad, while still figuring out the rules to the game meant I did a horrible job playing the game but still had fun.  We then went to the apartment we were staying at and regaled them with more stories of Georgia before crashing much later than we had expected. 

We had a leisurely morning, found delicious pastries and tea for breakfast, and headed off to find the bus station to get to Cesme, a peninsula that had a castle and a beach.  Our host had told us that we could take a ferry to get downtown, where we could take a bus to said bus station, and all of us enjoyed getting to use a ferry as a form of transportation, especially as it was faster than taking the metro around the city.  We got off, took a while to find the bus stop we needed, and then realized the buses did not have all the stops written on them so we were going to have to ask for help.  A group of giggly school girls got off one bus and stood around waiting for another.  They were intrigued by us foreigners and clearly spoke at least a bit of English, so I asked them for which bus to take us to the necessary bus station.  Their English was limited but they not only got us on the right bus, but they got off with us at the bus station and found us the bus we needed (helpful Turk(s) #4.  Our bus left a few minutes later and drove through luscious countryside that would have made my jaw drop coming from Illinois.  Having survived a long winter, the green was a very welcome sight, but as one friend pointed out, the beauty of Georgia had made the beauty of Turkey a little less awe-inspiring. 

Once we got to Cesme, we oriented ourselves and headed for the beach.  I was expecting something with a bit more grandeur than what we found.  Next to the man-made sand beach, there were some beautiful rocks, so we decided to swim there.  Getting into the water was tricky with broken glass, slippery rocks, and cold water making getting in a challenge, but the reward was worth it.  After adjusting to the water, I relished the freedom of swimming.  I swam over to a small cove to investigate and then enjoyed the open, clear water, using my arm muscles more than I had in several months.  I marveled at the scenery around me.  Aside from the Caribbean, it is the most beautiful place I have ever gone swimming, and only my tired muscles and realization my friends were all swum out brought me back to shore.

We found more tea and I ate another kebab, since they’re cheap, tasty, and easy to order.  Then we went to climb on the Genoese castle but were disappointed to find out that it was closed, since the museum inside it was closed on Mondays.  We walked around it and then realized that it was starting to rain, so we headed to the bus station.  We had about half an hour to kill, so got more tea.  I decided to pop into the nearby grocery store for something sweet to go with our second cup of tea.  I quickly found baklava, had no problem ordering three pieces of three different types, and then had to wait for almost ten minutes while they struggled to weigh the pieces and price them accordingly.  I’m pretty sure they did it wrong, but I made it back in time to gulp down my tea, and we enjoyed the baklava on the bus.  At one of the stops, a man from the Air Force got on with his wife and two kids.  Having heard English, I started talking to him, and found out that he worked at the NATO base in Izmir.  It was interesting to get to hear another American’s perspective on the city, especially one with less of a reckless twenty-something’s Georgia-colored idea of the world.

We decided to head back to Izmir’s main bus station, thinking it would be easier to find and easier to get back to the city from there.  It took forever to get there and had no metro, but we did find the bus we needed to get back.  However, half the bus kept staring at us and trying to talk to us for half our ride until they eventually told us to get out and the driver had to walk us to another bus of the same number, helpful Turk #5 (although the whole bus helped).  As the bus station only has one stop for local buses, you have to know which direction you need and which direction that number bus is going.  We had no idea, but the Turks knew what we needed better than we did and graciously got us in the right direction.  When we finally got downtown, we walked around a bit, ate, and headed back across the water to our host.

We actually did a good job finding our apartment, but we had no way to get it.  We spent over an hour trying to find the café from the previous night, thinking our friends might be there.  While we did a good job retracing our steps, especially considering that our host had gotten us a bit lost on the way to her friends’ café since her sense of direction is about as good as mine, we did not find the café.  Instead, we parked ourselves at a café between the main street and our apartment.  While we drank more tea, I finally realized my Lonely Planet had the phrase “Can I borrow your phone?”, so one of the boys asked our waiter, our waiter immediately obliged (helpful Turk #6), and we contacted our host.  I always thought such phrases in phrasebooks were unnecessary.  I stand corrected.  Our host came over a little while later, paid for our tea, and took us into the apartment.  He then said he was staying elsewhere, so we had several hours with the apartment to ourselves to shower, drink, and let Wikipedia decided several of the debates we had had about various subjects since our trip began.

Having stayed up late, we still got up fairly early to hit Sardis.  We searched out another traditional Turkish breakfast and then made our way back to the bus station, where we easily found a bus ready to leave for Sardis.  In addition to the smooth ride and free water, this bus also served us tea, which made me happy. 

A note about Sardis, or Sart, as the current village is called.  Sardis was the capital of the Lydian kingdom several centuries BC.  They, like the Georgians, used fleece to sift gold, and might have invented coinage.  The phrase ‘rich as Croesus’ comes from King Croesus of Lydia.  Sardis was also an important city under Alexander the Great and especially the Romans.  It is another church mentioned in Revelation.  There were some ruins we wanted to see and separate ruins of a Temple of Artemis.  It took us a while to find the right road and we passed the ruins at first, since the only part we could see looked far too new.  We headed down the road toward the Temple with a bit of assistance from helpful Turk #7, since we saw a sign for that, saw a few ruins, and started getting frustrated that we had not seen any ruins.  There were some crumbled walls from some sort of fortification perched precariously on one of the two high hills, so when there was a small sign and a footpath, we could not resist.  One of the boys loves to climb on anything, and we all agreed it was a good idea to head up.  We followed the sheep paths up the hill until eventually one of my friends started laughing.  When we got up to where he was, we saw that we had stopped probably three minutes before we would have hit a very impressive ruined temple and that we had actually past the other ruins.  Thus oriented, we continued up the hill until we reached the ruined fortification.  The height offered a spectacular view, and two of us decided to climb up onto the fortification, which was awesome, except I ripped a hole in my jeans in the process.  A small price to pay for the satisfaction of climbing and the rewarding panoramic view.

We needed to hurry so took the fastest way down, strolled into the ruined temple, and climbed around.  We knew we had to pay for entry into the temple, but the area was not entirely cordoned off, and we had entered through the exit.  Only 2 other men were there, and the guard seemed confused when I paid him as we left through the entrance.  We were pleased to find out that our entrance was also good for the other set of ruins.  Part of these ruins had been reconstructed, hence the fact we thought it was too new.  The reconstruction looked stupid in parts but also made it much easier to imagine the city in its glory days.  There were some Byzantine ruins, including a latrine and row of shops, but my favorite part was the classical synagogue.  The floor still retained several mosaic patterns, which made my classical heart smile.  The ruins were in decent shape, so I could actually understand the structure of the synagogue.  I realized I had never been in a synagogue before as I imagined that some of the very first Christians could have worshiped in that very place almost two thousand years ago.  As I continued to wander through the ruins, toward the part that had been rebuilt, I ran into an English-speaking tour group.  I mostly ignored them, found my friends, and we headed back to catch the bus.  We assumed we needed to be on the opposite side of the street from where we were dropped off, but were greatly helped by this old woman on that side of the street.  She assured us we needed to come and sit on a bench with her if we needed a bus to Izmir.  She then motioned about being cold, so we all put our jackets back on.  She made me laugh since she had about six layers on and must have thought me crazy for my t-shirt and light coat.  With more hand gestures than words, she also asked if I was married to either of my two friends and instructed us all to put on jackets. When the next bus came, she flagged it down for us, serving as helpful Turk #8.

More to come.

Turkey Round 2: Part 1: Trabzon and more marshrutkas than I should take in a day

Turkey round two feels quite a bit different than it did when I visited Istanbul with a friend after my Fulbright.  I’m three years older, traveling without the luxury of a generous Fulbright allowance (at least in comparison to my current situation), traveling with two boys (at the moment) instead of one girl, making my way through less touristy parts of the country, and have had eight months of Georgia to dictate how I think the world works.

Our trip did not start off so well.  We found a marshrutka in Tbilisi that the men said would take us to Sarpi, but we were pretty sure would only take us to Batumi, but we climbed in regardless.  It did only take us to Batumi, but the problem was more in that our shiny, clean Mercedes had a radiator problem or some other reason we had to stop frequently.  We stopped once before we even left Tbilisi, spent about 45 minutes idling by the side of the road in Gori, which is only about an hour away, and stopped every 20-30 minutes from there on out.  The stops got shorter, long enough to pour water somewhere under the hood, but it made me nervous as to whether we would even make it to Trabzon.  Thankfully, when we got to Batumi, we were able to hop into a marshrutka that immediately left for Sarpi.  Back in September, friends and I had spent a glorious day at the beach in Sarpi in the shadow of the strange structure that is the border.  This time, with backpacks on, we stood in the stuffy tunnel, trying not to get pushed out of the way by Turks and Georgians, waiting to go through passport control.  When we finally got to passport control, I had another lovely experience, since Georgian border guards are the friendliest I’ve ever met.

We had made it to no man’s land, which was like a series of tollbooths for trucks, buses, and cars, with pedestrians running around in between.  We were some of these pedestrians, bypassing the passport line to get into Turkey so we could go get our visas, thanks to some advice I had gotten from another TLGer.  Then we got back in line.  After getting our passports stamped, we walked back through all the activity toward the end.  A man did ask to see our passports to make sure we had gotten a visa, but the border had a lot more chaos than security.  We needed to get a taxi and so kept walking through what felt like a massive parking lot for taxi drivers to accost us like they do in Georgia.  That never happened, since apparently taxi drivers in Turkey are very subdued.  A marshrutka took us a few minutes up the road where we were told to get out and wait for a marshrukta (dolmus in Turkish) to take us to Hopa.  Once there, we got into another marshrutka to take us to Trabzon.  By Rize, we were the only ones left, so the man dropped us off there and told us a bus would be there in about 15 minutes.  The bus was glorious-quiet, high, comfortable seating, and they even gave other people free water.  It took us a while to know we were hearing Georgian, and we discovered we were on a bus full of Georgians.  A little before 11, about midnight Georgia time, we were dropped off in the “center”.  Someone had scrawled a recommendation for a hotel in the Lonely Planet I had borrowed, so we set off looking for it but realized we had no idea where we were in relation to the map in the book.  Thankfully, wonderful Turk #1 approached us and helped us find a dolmus to where we actually wanted to go.  Once in the center, it was easy to find the hotel.  I got a tiny single room and the boys had a bigger room next door.  Feeling a bit like zombies, we set out to find some dinner and then came back to crash.  The next morning allowed us to explore the city for a while and search for pastries.  I thought I saw a sign for tea and coffee so used my limited Turkish (by then I had relearned numbers 1-10 that I had learned in Istanbul) to try to order 1 tea, 2 coffees, and 3 pastries.  Instead, the man brought out three teas, one pastry, and two giant Turkish breakfasts.  Since I love empty carbs, I got the pastry, which turned out to be similar to achma, a kind of khachapuri, while the boys feasted on eggs, olives, tomatoes, cheese, and a honey butter combination that I stole some of because I love honey.  And, like Georgia, there was bread.  We were happy with this turn of events, even if we were a bit bewildered.  We headed back to get our stuff and take us to the airport.  It took us a bit of asking to find the dolmus to the airport, but our driver told us when to get off.  The Trabzon airport is right by the water, so it was a striking view.  It’s also pretty small, so it was easy to check-in and get on our flight.  Trabzon round 1 had been a relative success and a good start to our trip.