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.