... the big excitement in life is a new garbage can.
Yesterday the Konak Belediyesi - the administration for this part of Izmir - replaced the garbage bins on the street. We have big bins in front of every few apartment buildings, emptied every morning into an ordinary-looking garbage truck by men who physically lift the things and dump them. Until yesterday they were great heavy metal battered stinky blue things, and the emptying was accomplished with a lot of clattering and banging and shouting and smells. Yesterday a truck came along and put out a bunch of nice shiny new green plastic bins, and took away the old ones. Today I didn't even notice garbage collection. It's soooo exciting!
Thursday, September 29, 2005
The joys of Greek; or, Pictures I should have taken
I have never studied Greek - one of the effects of getting my M.Div. from Trinity College, Toronto and not Wycliffe. However I do have a B.Sc in chemistry in my history and a passing interest in physics. Net result: I know my Greek letters. So I was able to decode most of the signs in Chios, given enough time (not that I needed to; most were in English too). And since English has borrowed a lot of words from Greek, I could figure out what a lot of them meant.
But one of them gave me a start. Here was this big transport truck bearing down on me, and on its front was painted something like Χιοσ Μεταφοροσ: Chios Metaphoros. I'd never thought of a truck being a metaphor before.
But one of them gave me a start. Here was this big transport truck bearing down on me, and on its front was painted something like Χιοσ Μεταφοροσ: Chios Metaphoros. I'd never thought of a truck being a metaphor before.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Chios
We were in Chios last Friday and Saturday. (Here's a map of the area so you can get an idea of where we went). Turkish tourist visas are good for 90 days; then you have to leave the country and pay again to get a new stamp on your passport. Our visas expired on the 27th (today!), so it was fairly urgent that we get out of the country and start again.
The boat to Chios that we were booked on leaves in the morning, so the night before we went to Çeşme, the tourist town closest to this particular Greek island. It was really strange being a tourist again! It was the first time in three months that we'd been surrounded by languages other than Turkish. There weren't a lot of English speakers there, but an awful lot of Dutch and Scandinavians. It seems like there are package tours to the Greek Islands from northern Europe that give people a day in Turkey as an extra bonus feature.
I kept wanting to say, when touts leaped out at us from store doorways, "No, I'm not a tourist. I live here!" We did that a couple of times, which opened long conversations with the nuisances still aimed at getting us to buy something. That's a part of Turkey I don't like. But we had a nice chat with the restaurant busboy who used to live a block or two from our apartment. He really wanted to talk with us to work on his English, but his boss kept sending him back to work. Pity.
So in the morning we got up earlier than I wanted to, finally found the boat departure place and staggered on board, having our exit duly noted by Turkish authorities. Half an hour later we were in Greece.
It's awfully tempting to make comparisons between Greece and Turkey - or between Chios and Izmir - that don't flatter Turkey all that much. I'll try not to do that. Basically, it struck us that Greece seems to be looking outward, northward and westward, and is eager to be a part of Europe in every possible way. It shows most in the prevalence of English. Even in tourist spots in Turkey you won't find many people who speak English. Tour operators seldom have English-speaking staff. The customs and immigration officials we've met don't speak English. And if you don't have English-speakers there, where are you going to find them?
The problem is, Turkey didn't place much importance on teaching foreign languages until a few years ago. And we suspect that their teaching methods don't equip students to think independently and face new situations with confidence. So if you're going to Turkey you have to learn at least a little bit of Turkish, and make Turkish friends really fast because you're going to need them.
Anyway, we liked Chios. It was pretty, it was clean, it was fairly quiet and people could talk with us. Friday we walked around town a bit, eating lunch (our first meal of the day), checking out things like the Orthodox cathedral and a few stores (but Chios believes in the siesta principle - businesses shut down between 2 and 5 or so), and getting our bearings. In the evening we found a store that sells toasters - wonder of wonders - and got ourselves one (in Turkey "tost" is a grilled cheese sandwich, and a tost makinesi is a sandwich grill. I hadn't been able to find anyone who even understood the concept of a toaster before we left). We also found a little supermarket that supplied the other essentials we'd been missing: peanut butter, Parmesan cheese, and Scotch. No Cheez Wiz though.
Saturday we rented a car and drove around the southern half of the island. Wow! Such scenery! And interesting stuff going on, too. The main industry of the island is the production of mastic, a gum that is collected from a bush that grows all over the islands, and on the Aegean coast of Turkey too. It seems that only the bushes on Chios produce this resin. It's been a big business for them for 500 years or more - maybe for millennia. The smell of the stuff permeates the island (it's a very nice smell).
We visited some towns that were established by merchants from Genoa and fortified to protect the mastic and the people who harvested it. They're still medieval-looking, and very quiet now because most of the younger people have left. There isn't as much demand for mastic as there was in Ottoman days, when the ladies of the harem were addicted to chewing the stuff. Petroleum has taken over in most of the industrial applications, but there's still a big market in the Arabic countries apparently. There's a good web site here that tells a lot about the towns and the island.
Anyway, we got some pictures that don't even begin to catch the beauty of the place (mine are in the Yahoo photo album). Then we caught the evening ferry home, and were back in our little apartment in Izmir by bedtime. Good trip. Good to be home.
The boat to Chios that we were booked on leaves in the morning, so the night before we went to Çeşme, the tourist town closest to this particular Greek island. It was really strange being a tourist again! It was the first time in three months that we'd been surrounded by languages other than Turkish. There weren't a lot of English speakers there, but an awful lot of Dutch and Scandinavians. It seems like there are package tours to the Greek Islands from northern Europe that give people a day in Turkey as an extra bonus feature.
I kept wanting to say, when touts leaped out at us from store doorways, "No, I'm not a tourist. I live here!" We did that a couple of times, which opened long conversations with the nuisances still aimed at getting us to buy something. That's a part of Turkey I don't like. But we had a nice chat with the restaurant busboy who used to live a block or two from our apartment. He really wanted to talk with us to work on his English, but his boss kept sending him back to work. Pity.
So in the morning we got up earlier than I wanted to, finally found the boat departure place and staggered on board, having our exit duly noted by Turkish authorities. Half an hour later we were in Greece.
It's awfully tempting to make comparisons between Greece and Turkey - or between Chios and Izmir - that don't flatter Turkey all that much. I'll try not to do that. Basically, it struck us that Greece seems to be looking outward, northward and westward, and is eager to be a part of Europe in every possible way. It shows most in the prevalence of English. Even in tourist spots in Turkey you won't find many people who speak English. Tour operators seldom have English-speaking staff. The customs and immigration officials we've met don't speak English. And if you don't have English-speakers there, where are you going to find them?
The problem is, Turkey didn't place much importance on teaching foreign languages until a few years ago. And we suspect that their teaching methods don't equip students to think independently and face new situations with confidence. So if you're going to Turkey you have to learn at least a little bit of Turkish, and make Turkish friends really fast because you're going to need them.
Anyway, we liked Chios. It was pretty, it was clean, it was fairly quiet and people could talk with us. Friday we walked around town a bit, eating lunch (our first meal of the day), checking out things like the Orthodox cathedral and a few stores (but Chios believes in the siesta principle - businesses shut down between 2 and 5 or so), and getting our bearings. In the evening we found a store that sells toasters - wonder of wonders - and got ourselves one (in Turkey "tost" is a grilled cheese sandwich, and a tost makinesi is a sandwich grill. I hadn't been able to find anyone who even understood the concept of a toaster before we left). We also found a little supermarket that supplied the other essentials we'd been missing: peanut butter, Parmesan cheese, and Scotch. No Cheez Wiz though.
Saturday we rented a car and drove around the southern half of the island. Wow! Such scenery! And interesting stuff going on, too. The main industry of the island is the production of mastic, a gum that is collected from a bush that grows all over the islands, and on the Aegean coast of Turkey too. It seems that only the bushes on Chios produce this resin. It's been a big business for them for 500 years or more - maybe for millennia. The smell of the stuff permeates the island (it's a very nice smell).
We visited some towns that were established by merchants from Genoa and fortified to protect the mastic and the people who harvested it. They're still medieval-looking, and very quiet now because most of the younger people have left. There isn't as much demand for mastic as there was in Ottoman days, when the ladies of the harem were addicted to chewing the stuff. Petroleum has taken over in most of the industrial applications, but there's still a big market in the Arabic countries apparently. There's a good web site here that tells a lot about the towns and the island.
Anyway, we got some pictures that don't even begin to catch the beauty of the place (mine are in the Yahoo photo album). Then we caught the evening ferry home, and were back in our little apartment in Izmir by bedtime. Good trip. Good to be home.
Monday, September 19, 2005
More hospitality, and other Monday notes
Well, it had to happen. Saturday afternoon we decided to go out shopping together, but I didn't want to bring my purse because I had all sorts of things piled onto & in it to take to church on Sunday. So I grabbed my wallet and nothing else - especially not my keys. I went out the door and started down the stairs, and Ron followed - without his keys, as it happened. As the door clicked shut he said, "Do you have your keys." "No," I answered. "Do you have yours." "No!"
Fortunately he had his phone, so we called the blessed Semiha. Half an hour later she was at the house with the card a locksmith needed to make a new key.
Meanwhile the neighbour across the street had seen us waiting forelornly outside the apartment. First he insisted that we take a couple of chairs and sit on them, and then he convinced us to come inside for a glass of tea. And that's where Semiha found us, sitting in the middle of an extended family from Antakya (mother, older sister and neice of our neighbour visiting for a wedding) drinking tea listening with minimal understanding to a spirited discussion on Turkey and the EU. Of course Semiha had to have tea, too, so the whole exchange took another couple of hours of her time, but it was kinda fun.
Given our limited memories, we're going to have to find a place to keep the spare key. Maybe our neighbour across the street would look after it for us. Hmmm.
Church on Sunday - I preached for the first time since leaving Creston. The gospel was one of my favourites: the landowner who paid the workers who worked an hour the same as the ones who worked a whole day. It's a good one for that congregation, which seems to be about half Turkish, many of them born Muslim.
St. John's doesn't make a special effort to convert Muslims. Its priest and most of its English-speaking congregation have a healthy respect for Islam in its healthier forms. But Atatürk's vision of the new Turkey was a secular, modern society, not tied down by Islamic tradition. As a result many young Turks have been raised essentially without religion, or with only the outward forms and not the inner meaning. They're trying to find something to fill the hole in their lives, and some of them end up in the Anglican church.
The congregation is a warm and welcoming one, and Father Ron, our priest, has developed a service that both Turkish and English people find comfortable. His Turkish is excellent, so he's able to preach part of his sermon in Turkish. The Gospel and the prayers of the people are done in both Turkish and English, and there's a booklet giving the Turkish translation of the whole service. Last week, when I presided but didn't preach, I found it quite unsettling at first to hear the congregation's responses coming back in two languages - but how good it is! Many of the non-Turkish members speak good Turkish and help welcome the new young people. And the rest of us - Ron and I, at least - are working at learning more. I'm looking forward to being able to do more in Turkish, but not just yet - my accent is too atrocious.
Fortunately he had his phone, so we called the blessed Semiha. Half an hour later she was at the house with the card a locksmith needed to make a new key.
Meanwhile the neighbour across the street had seen us waiting forelornly outside the apartment. First he insisted that we take a couple of chairs and sit on them, and then he convinced us to come inside for a glass of tea. And that's where Semiha found us, sitting in the middle of an extended family from Antakya (mother, older sister and neice of our neighbour visiting for a wedding) drinking tea listening with minimal understanding to a spirited discussion on Turkey and the EU. Of course Semiha had to have tea, too, so the whole exchange took another couple of hours of her time, but it was kinda fun.
Given our limited memories, we're going to have to find a place to keep the spare key. Maybe our neighbour across the street would look after it for us. Hmmm.
Church on Sunday - I preached for the first time since leaving Creston. The gospel was one of my favourites: the landowner who paid the workers who worked an hour the same as the ones who worked a whole day. It's a good one for that congregation, which seems to be about half Turkish, many of them born Muslim.
St. John's doesn't make a special effort to convert Muslims. Its priest and most of its English-speaking congregation have a healthy respect for Islam in its healthier forms. But Atatürk's vision of the new Turkey was a secular, modern society, not tied down by Islamic tradition. As a result many young Turks have been raised essentially without religion, or with only the outward forms and not the inner meaning. They're trying to find something to fill the hole in their lives, and some of them end up in the Anglican church.
The congregation is a warm and welcoming one, and Father Ron, our priest, has developed a service that both Turkish and English people find comfortable. His Turkish is excellent, so he's able to preach part of his sermon in Turkish. The Gospel and the prayers of the people are done in both Turkish and English, and there's a booklet giving the Turkish translation of the whole service. Last week, when I presided but didn't preach, I found it quite unsettling at first to hear the congregation's responses coming back in two languages - but how good it is! Many of the non-Turkish members speak good Turkish and help welcome the new young people. And the rest of us - Ron and I, at least - are working at learning more. I'm looking forward to being able to do more in Turkish, but not just yet - my accent is too atrocious.
Friday, September 16, 2005
Hospitality
One thing we knew about Turkey before we came: the Turks are unbelievably hospitable. They equal or maybe even surpass the Kiwis in that area. Nothing we've experienced since the beginning of July has changed our opinion.
Monday night we were invited to our landlords' apartment for dinner. What a feast! We continue to thank God and our good luck that we happened to end up with the Akgüls for landlords. Semiha is an incredibly good cook, and Celal is equally good at barbecuing. Every time we get together I learn something more about cooking from Semiha, and on Monday we learned how to barbecue from Celal. Combine that with their two good-looking and interesting sons, and we found ourselves enjoying the evening immensely.
Semiha has also been dedicating her life to getting us connected to Türk Telekom's ADSL service. Yesterday she succeeded. I think she'd spend a lot of time reminding the company that was to connect us that they'd better get the job done. Yesterday they told her they'd do it at 4 p.m., so she arrived at 4 to make sure I didn't have any problems. Of course the technician didn't come until 6, so she gave me all that time from her busy life. I enjoyed drinking tea with her and getting to know her better, but I didn't want her to sacrifice so much for us. And when I thanked her she said as usual "Bir şe değil" - "It's nothing."
And then there's the way they do business here. I haven't experienced this much, but Tuesday I decided to visit a wool store I'd seen from the bus. I dropped in and selected a crochet hook and some knitting needles and picked up some balls of wool from their discount bin (50 cents for 100 gram balls!). Of course the two young guys looking after the store guessed I was a foreigner (maybe it was showing them the piece of paper I'd written the word for crochet hook on and asking them how to pronounce it) and they asked where I came from. One thing led to another and we got chatting. They pulled out a chair and told me to sit down - and then a man walked in with a nifty little tea carrier and I suddenly had a glass of tea in front of me. Soon the father of one of them arrived - he speaks English well - and our conversation got easier. We talked about the cost of living and gas prices and climate (everyone here thinks Canada is covered with ice and snow 8 months of the year) and had a great visit - as though they had nothing better to do with their time. Of course it was not only great hospitality - it was also a very good way of ensuring that I'll come back, which I will.
Knitting yarn is incredibly cheap here - probably the cheapest thing I've found so far. Even the full-price stuff is only a couple of liras. And it's big name brand, the stuff you see in European knitting magazines and would die to get hold of: Pinguin (sp?) etc. It's made in Turkey, it turns out - their textile and fibre industry is really big. I should have brought my knitting needles.
Crochet hooks are odd here. I'm used to having a flat area on the shaft that makes it easier to grip and get leverage. Not here. I've had to wrap a band-aid around the shaft of the one I use to make it possible to use. I asked Semiha about it and she showed me her grip: completely different from mine. She knits differently, too, which I expected - the European style has less waving of arms around and is faster once you get the hang of it, but I'd never seen the European crochet hook grip before.
So as you can tell, life is pretty settled now. It's nice having wireless high-speed Internet in the apartment. We can even sit out on the terrace and communicate with you now, or could if the sun weren't so bright that we can't see the screen. Life's tough!
Monday night we were invited to our landlords' apartment for dinner. What a feast! We continue to thank God and our good luck that we happened to end up with the Akgüls for landlords. Semiha is an incredibly good cook, and Celal is equally good at barbecuing. Every time we get together I learn something more about cooking from Semiha, and on Monday we learned how to barbecue from Celal. Combine that with their two good-looking and interesting sons, and we found ourselves enjoying the evening immensely.
Semiha has also been dedicating her life to getting us connected to Türk Telekom's ADSL service. Yesterday she succeeded. I think she'd spend a lot of time reminding the company that was to connect us that they'd better get the job done. Yesterday they told her they'd do it at 4 p.m., so she arrived at 4 to make sure I didn't have any problems. Of course the technician didn't come until 6, so she gave me all that time from her busy life. I enjoyed drinking tea with her and getting to know her better, but I didn't want her to sacrifice so much for us. And when I thanked her she said as usual "Bir şe değil" - "It's nothing."
And then there's the way they do business here. I haven't experienced this much, but Tuesday I decided to visit a wool store I'd seen from the bus. I dropped in and selected a crochet hook and some knitting needles and picked up some balls of wool from their discount bin (50 cents for 100 gram balls!). Of course the two young guys looking after the store guessed I was a foreigner (maybe it was showing them the piece of paper I'd written the word for crochet hook on and asking them how to pronounce it) and they asked where I came from. One thing led to another and we got chatting. They pulled out a chair and told me to sit down - and then a man walked in with a nifty little tea carrier and I suddenly had a glass of tea in front of me. Soon the father of one of them arrived - he speaks English well - and our conversation got easier. We talked about the cost of living and gas prices and climate (everyone here thinks Canada is covered with ice and snow 8 months of the year) and had a great visit - as though they had nothing better to do with their time. Of course it was not only great hospitality - it was also a very good way of ensuring that I'll come back, which I will.
Knitting yarn is incredibly cheap here - probably the cheapest thing I've found so far. Even the full-price stuff is only a couple of liras. And it's big name brand, the stuff you see in European knitting magazines and would die to get hold of: Pinguin (sp?) etc. It's made in Turkey, it turns out - their textile and fibre industry is really big. I should have brought my knitting needles.
Crochet hooks are odd here. I'm used to having a flat area on the shaft that makes it easier to grip and get leverage. Not here. I've had to wrap a band-aid around the shaft of the one I use to make it possible to use. I asked Semiha about it and she showed me her grip: completely different from mine. She knits differently, too, which I expected - the European style has less waving of arms around and is faster once you get the hang of it, but I'd never seen the European crochet hook grip before.
So as you can tell, life is pretty settled now. It's nice having wireless high-speed Internet in the apartment. We can even sit out on the terrace and communicate with you now, or could if the sun weren't so bright that we can't see the screen. Life's tough!
Friday, September 09, 2005
Travels about town
Well, we did get out and visit Kadefikale the other day. There are some pictures in our September photo album, including this one, a view out over the city from the ramparts, looking north across the inner harbour to the hills.
It was a lovely sunny day, not too hot and perfect for a bit of exploring. We knew we needed the #33 bus but we weren't sure where it came closest to our home (nearly passes by it, actually) so we went down to Konak, one of the main squares of town, and found it there. Half an hour's tour through the city got us to the top of the highest hill within the town, in the middle of a really, really old area - old enough that the houses are real brick and stucco, not cement block.
We got there around 5, just in time for the evening call to prayer. There was a mosque very close at which it started, but soon a wave of sound seemed to envelop the city. For maybe 5 minutes the sound rose and fell, and so did the hair on the back of our necks. What a sound! There must have been hundreds of mosques calling the faithful to worship, every one of them starting at a different time and many of them using different chants. The words are the same, but there are many different musical modes in which they can be sung. (More about the modes here and the call to prayer here). I enjoy the call to prayer when we hear it at our apartment from the 7 or so mosques nearby, but it's overwhelming when you hear it rising from a city of 3 million souls.
That finished, we explored a bit. There are women in the grounds from a part of southern Turkey that used to belong to Syria (still does, according to Syria), demonstrating the use of their ancient looms and selling their weaving. Some of their work is really nice, and I might pick up some to bring back to Canada.
The castle has a huge (formerly) underground cistern to keep it supplied with water for a good long time, and it looks like there were two aqueducts bringing water from the surrounding mountains. We wanted to investigate what looked like their ruins, but we got swarmed by a pack of little boys saying "Hello! Money!" Bunch of brats and impossible to get rid of (I tried asking them for money and nearly got 5 korush out of the deal, but he changed his mind). We'd never encountered anything like that in Turkey before and we didn't like it. It felt like something the kids may have imported from their homes near Syria - it's certainly nothing a proud Turkish kid would do. They can be pests and brats but they'd never hound you for money.
So we left soon after, not buying anything from the weavers (unfortunately), and made our way back home via bus and Metro. Neat place and I'm glad we went there, but we won't go again soon or often.
Yesterday Ron was out pounding the pavement downtown looking for an English school that needs his talents (possibly finding one, too), so I took off on my own and visited our local weekly bazaar a few blocks away. Our landlady said it's an excellent place to find clothes and has good fruit and vegetables too.
Wow! I've never been in the middle of such crowds. The stalls occupy both sides of an ordinary residential street, and peddlars also spread their wares on patches in the middle. Shoppers squeeze their way past three blocks of this - clothing of all sorts, some of it quite nice, none of it costing more than 5 YTL. The shoppers aren't all little old ladies looking for bargains, too - you can see they're normal to well-dressed. The merchants (all men) stand on top of their tables shouting "Bir milyon" (one million old liras, 1 YTL, about $1 Canadian), "Abla bekliorun" (big sister, come and look) and waving some item of clothing. One guy advertised his wares by wearing them - he looked charming in a flowered dress.
The veggies filled an open space of some sort - a park? couldn't tell for the crowds - about another 3 square blocks. They were beautiful and so cheap: tomatoes for 50 cents/kilo, peaches to die for for the same, nothing more than 1 YTL a kilo. If it had been safe to stop and take a picture I would have, they were so photogenic. You never see such perfectly ripe produce in Canada - picked that morning, still screaming.
I should say something about Turkish currency reform and the confusion it's caused. When we were here two years ago the exchange rate was roughly 1 million lira to the dollar. Everything was priced in millions and it sometimes got confusing counting the zeroes. People took to dropping the last three zeroes and quoting low prices in hundreds, meaning hundred thousands - so a kilo of tomatoes would be "beş yüz" - 500, meaning 500,000 lira. But then the government got smart and revalued the currency so that 1,000,000 old lira = 1 YTL (Yeni Türk Lira - new Turkish lira). Simple, you'd think. But people are still used to prices in hundreds, so a kilo of tomatoes is still "beş yüz". It startled us at first - $500 a kilo for tomatoes? No, it's really 50 cents. The Turks are trying to get used to the idea of two figures after the decimal point after so long thinking in thousands, and you often see prices like 1.250 YTL = 1,250,000 old lira. Actually they use the comma for a decimal point, so it really looks like 1,250 YTL, which startles us even more.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Settling down
We've been in our Izmir apartment almost two weeks now and it feels like home. We have a telephone (0232 262 08 14) and a dial-up Internet connection (ADSL coming "any day now"). We know where to shop and how to get around town by subway, bus and dolmuş. We get drinking water delivered within half an hour of a phone call (no talking necessary - they recognize the phone number), and we've learned the hard way always to have lots of tap water on hand: the water goes off most days, and last week it was off for 36 hours straight. That was no fun. We had 8 litres on hand and it takes 6 to flush the toilet. This was during our bout with gastrointestinal distress. 'Nuff said. Now we've got 20 litres tucked away, increasing every time we get another spare bottle.
The weather turned bearable last Thursday night when the wind seemed to change and the air became cool. Now the daytime temperatures get up to the low 30s but at night it's in the teens - really nice for sleeping. We don't have to stay inside beside the klima in the afternoons and we can get out an explore a bit.
Not that we are doing all that much yet. This retirement business is rather pleasant; I enjoy being able to sleep 10 hours at night & then have an afternoon nap. Maybe someday I'll recover from my sleep deficit, but I'm in no hurry.
Last week we did a little exploring in the neighbourhood. Our house is in the upper part of the south end of town, a couple of blocks from an impressive cliff. The old Jewish community grew up here and at the base of the cliff - the rich folk lived down below near the sea, and the working-class types gathered up here. A hundred years or so ago a community philanthropist built an elevator to carry the frail and weak from the bottom to the top of the cliff. The city runs it now, but it's quite hard to find. According to the map we have it should be next door, but we couldn't see it anywhere. So on Saturday we set off in search of it with noteable success.
There's a very nice-looking restaurant around the top of the Asensőr. Someday we must try it out. The view is really pleasing, too:
Izmir looks pretty good on a sunny day. At the top of the hill on the right there's a place called Kadefikale. We hope to go there today or tomorrow. It is the remains of an ancient fortress first occupied about 3000 years ago. This is an old part of the world.
We had dinner last night with a group of teachers from the International School, including a couple of former residents of Creston and a woman from church. One of them mentioned that they'd felt an earthquake a few days ago. I checked the Turkish earthquake observatory site and discovered that the Aegean area has magnitude 3 quakes daily and Izmir every week or so. Fortunately that's not strong enough to be felt, but it does remind one that this is a seismically active part of the world. That's a reason for living in an old apartment building, I suppose: it's survived a few earthquakes already, so it must be built right.
The weather turned bearable last Thursday night when the wind seemed to change and the air became cool. Now the daytime temperatures get up to the low 30s but at night it's in the teens - really nice for sleeping. We don't have to stay inside beside the klima in the afternoons and we can get out an explore a bit.
Not that we are doing all that much yet. This retirement business is rather pleasant; I enjoy being able to sleep 10 hours at night & then have an afternoon nap. Maybe someday I'll recover from my sleep deficit, but I'm in no hurry.
Last week we did a little exploring in the neighbourhood. Our house is in the upper part of the south end of town, a couple of blocks from an impressive cliff. The old Jewish community grew up here and at the base of the cliff - the rich folk lived down below near the sea, and the working-class types gathered up here. A hundred years or so ago a community philanthropist built an elevator to carry the frail and weak from the bottom to the top of the cliff. The city runs it now, but it's quite hard to find. According to the map we have it should be next door, but we couldn't see it anywhere. So on Saturday we set off in search of it with noteable success.
There's a very nice-looking restaurant around the top of the Asensőr. Someday we must try it out. The view is really pleasing, too:
Izmir looks pretty good on a sunny day. At the top of the hill on the right there's a place called Kadefikale. We hope to go there today or tomorrow. It is the remains of an ancient fortress first occupied about 3000 years ago. This is an old part of the world.
We had dinner last night with a group of teachers from the International School, including a couple of former residents of Creston and a woman from church. One of them mentioned that they'd felt an earthquake a few days ago. I checked the Turkish earthquake observatory site and discovered that the Aegean area has magnitude 3 quakes daily and Izmir every week or so. Fortunately that's not strong enough to be felt, but it does remind one that this is a seismically active part of the world. That's a reason for living in an old apartment building, I suppose: it's survived a few earthquakes already, so it must be built right.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)