Life's short and then you die - but life goes on

That's the way I feel after all the ruins and things we've seen recently. People think they're building for eternity, but eventually the plants and the critters take over anyway.

We spent a couple of days last week in Pamukkale, Aphrodisias, and places like that around Denizli in southwestern Anatolia. Although we thought we'd be going to Denizli by train and getting around by bus, we ended up driving (I still find it hard getting up at a decent hour in the morning). That turned out to be a good thing because it allowed us to stop when we felt like it and explore back roads - always worth doing.

The first unscheduled stop was in the ancient city of Tire about an hour southeast of Izmir. To get there we drove through the market garden area of Izmir, even passing a couple of artichoke fields but missing our chance to get a picture of these oversized thistles. Tire goes back several thousand years, but most of its oldest buildings are "just" 5 or 6 hundred years old.The "new mosque" dates from the 18th century and is particularly lovely.

We had lunch in Tire outside a restaurant in a park above the city, then continued through the valley of the Küçük Menderes, takıng off cross-country at an appropriate point to get to the Büyük Menderes valley. The Menderes River was known as the Meander in antiquity and lives up to its name, wandering back and forth across its fertile flood plain. The mountains we went through are the same sort as we had in the Kootenays (mica schist with quartz intrusıons), and I kept looking at them and saying "There's gold in them-thar hills." Not surprisingly the main city of the area is Aydın, which means gold. We went through vıllages that surely haven't changed much in the past few centuries (except for the satellite dishes), and past men and women working near-vertical fields with oxen pulling ancient ploughs. That's surely the only way they could cultivate land like that.

The area between Aydın and Denizli is a major cotton-growing area, producing the world's best quality cotton because it's still picked by very skillful hands and not machines. But the industry is suffering from cheaper Chinese and Indian competition. One of the cotton spinning mills was bought by an Indian company recently and physically moved to India.

We got to Pamukkale by evening and settled into a pleasant pension - the Allgau - run by a woman who was born in Germany but moved to the area as a teenager when her parents went back to their home village. She's a lovely person, does everything at the place and speaks English fluently. She's the reason we'd be happy to stay there again.

Pamukkale (cotton castle) is an amazing sight. From a distance it looks like a white gash across the hillside. Close up you can see it's a huge travertime (a form of calcium carbonate) deposit laid down over millennia by thermal springs. In Hellenistic and Roman times there was a huge city - Hierapolis - above the springs where people came for rest and healing. Until recently there were modern hotels among the ruins and people came from all over, especially eastern Europe, to bathe in the mineral pools. They were damaging the site so badly that the government closed and removed the hotels and people can swim only in artificial pools at the bottom of the hill. There's some grumbling about that, but it was a good move because those deposits are a world treasure.

We prowled around Pamukkale and Hierapolis for most of a day, then explored the village Karahayıt to the north, where the thermal deposits are red and black. Next time that might be the place we stay, Lonely Planet to the contrary. It seems quiet and friendly and very pretty.

The next day on our way home we prowled through more ruins. Laodicea first, one of the churches mentioned in Revelation. That's where the futility of building for eternity began to hit home. Exploration and excavation are barely underway. A major commercial center of the Greco-Roman world is now a huge deserted hillside. And Colossae confirmed that in a really big way. All that's left is a barren mound. The people St. Paul wrote to are buried somewhere under there, as are many, many thousands of years of others. Life's short, and then you die...

Everyone said we shouldn't miss Aphrosisias, so we didn't. It is indeed a fine archaeological site, Greco-Roman again, the home of a sculpture school so full of magnificent carvings. But we're close to experiencing ruin burnout. One theatre is pretty much like another. Each one is amazing, but they're all so much the same. What we'd like is something like Barkerville or Williamsburg, where you can see and talk to people living as they did in ancient times. The ruin of an ancient theatre would come to life if you could see people rehearsing and setting up to stage a play there; the ruin of a tavern would come to life if you could try some wine made the ancient way... Maybe it would take too much time and money to do something like that, but it would be a huge attraction.

So we drove back down the Büyük Menderes valley to Selçuk next to Ephesus and found the Basilica of St. John, which we'd missed on our last visit. That was a place I liked very much. It was built in early Byzantine times where St. John is supposed to have written his gospel, on a hill overlooking Ephesus. His supposed grave is under where the high altar would have been. Pope Paul VI celebrated mass there in the 1960's, and it felt to me like a holy place. I'm glad we got there.

It was a beautiful trip. This is the time of year to travel in Turkey, while the weather is still cool and everything is green and flowering - and there are no tourists! If you don't have kids to hold you back and restrict your travels to July and August, why wouldn't you come now? The locals say the weather changes from rainy winter to sunny summer on April 15, and it certainly did this year. So if you've been thinking of coming to Turkey, don't wait for summer - do it now!

We're going to Bergama again in a few minutes to buy some rugs from the co-operative there (they say 90% of the money goes to the women who make the rugs, and I hope they're right). Then it's off to Ankara for our godson Timur's confirmation this Sunday and the rest of the week exploring the east (God and the PKK permitting). Back for a weekend, then we're going to the Phyrigian Valley to see some more ruins. Begüm comes back soon, and we hope to do Cappadocia and the south with her. And then we go home :-(

Stay tuned for further adventures.

I'm still around

Really I am. But that daughter of ours pointed me to a couple of web sites and I've been far too absorbed with them to do my blogging.

The dangerous sites are Clipmarks (www.clipmarks.com) and LibraryThing (www.librarything.com). My clipmarks are at http://clipmarks.com/clipper/MomLes. Play with these sites at your peril.

However, I've uploaded some new photos to Flickr, and maybe later today I'll finish adding comments to them.

Just a thought: If you've ever considered coming to Turkey, do it in late April. The weather is utterly perfect (the rains are over and past, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land). The trees are full of migrating birds, and the hills are covered with flowers. And there are no tourists! Come now if you ever come.

An afternoon at St. Mary's

Vandalism at St. Mary's
Originally uploaded by MomLes.

This Saturday evening we're going to hold the Easter Vigil at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Bornova, so Monday Bülent and I went there to clean up and see what we need. As usual, there was a little more vandalism to the church. It really isn't anything personal or anti-Christian; it's just that the poor building doesn't have anyone around most of the time and is vulnerable to the attentions of people who like to hear the sound of breaking glass.

It's kinda discouraging trying to keep this church going. It was built in the late 1850s by the Whitall family, one of the English families attached to the Levant Co. in Izmir. At that time the company had the monopoly on the opium trade and was thriving. When it became possible for more than just a few privileged European companies to trade out of Turkey, their fortunes declined, and it's just a memory here. There are still a few families descended from the Levantines - families with 300 years of history in Turkey, whose members are still citizens of England or France or Italy. This church is part of that history.

We try to hold services once a month here at 5 p.m. on the third Saturday of the month. Sometimes no one comes - it's hard to get the word out among the scattered members of the old community. If possible, the members of the other church of the chaplaincy, St. John's, will turn up, especially the Turkish members who want to support our work and preserve the history of the place. This Saturday there should be lots of people. The Vigil service is very special, and we have (as we should) several adults to be baptized.

Bülent, Shadi and I had a picnic lunch on the steps of the church. While we were eating some of the kids from the high school next door were staring at us. When Bülent went over to see what they wanted they asked him, "How did you get in?" He said, "I have the key." So they asked if they could come and see the place after school. And they did.

We had maybe a dozen teenagers - 16 or 17 years old, I think - looking around and asking questions. They were interested in it both as a church and as a historical site. I begged them to think of it as their own, and to keep an eye on it to try to stop the vandalism. I think they will, having seen the beautiful inside.

The women at the tomb

I'm very grateful the attacks have concentrated just on the plain glass (except for the stained glass crucifixion scene behind the altar, where Christ has a hole in a most unfortunate place). There is some wonderful stained glass there done by one of England's most famous artists.

Poppies in Bornova's field

The grounds are a little wild, not getting all that much attention. That's fine with me. There are some wonderful flowers growing wild in the grass and nettles: irises, freesia, poppies, and other things I can't identify. Later, when the rain stops and the heat comes, the grass and flowers will die and we'll have a big clean-up job, but now things should be allowed to run riot.

There's a war memorial at St. Mary's in memory of three of the sons of Bornova who died in the Great War. Two fought in the French army, and one was a British airman. Ironically Turkey was on the other side, but these men never fought against Turks, and their homeland (did they think of Turkey that way?) is generous in honouring anyone who acted with courage - witness its care for the Anzac graves in Gelibolu (Gallipoli).

A few days in Austria

Last week (Sunday to Friday morning) we were in Austria & Bavaria - another of our flying visits to get a feel for the world around us. It left us wondering if we'd been visiting another planet.

I was a little under the weather still from the bug I picked up in Cappadocia, so I didn't get around as much as Ron. We did our usual thing: find a couple of tours to get a look at the area, and wander on our own some of the time.

Monday morning we had a tour of Salzburg city that included a 24-hour city pass that gave us free admission to the tourist places and use of any city bus. Ron used it in the afternoon while I stayed in the hotel room wrestling with the wireless system and sleeping.

Our hotel, by the way, was one of the nicest we've encountered in our recent travels. It was the Best Western Zum Hirschen, just near the railway station. I particularly enjoyed the softest down pillows and the comfiest down duvets I've ever experienced.

View from the castle

Monday night we had dinner and a concert at the Archbishop's castle fortress overlooking the city of Salzburg. This is the view from the restaurant window as sunset approached.

Tuesday we raced into Vienna on the train to see Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Volksoper. We were back in Salzburg again by Wednesday afternoon after walking around Stefansplatz and taking a short bus tour of the downtown area. We liked Vienna, but I noticed the large number of unemployed young people hanging around in the Metro system with their pit bulls and other unfriendly beasts. I also noticed that the stores I visited had very few staff members. I wondered if both situations were the result of a very high minimum wage, which makes it impractical for businesses to hire many staff members. And yet how do you ensure that everyone gets fairly paid? Turkey has a high level of official unemployment, but you don't see a lot of people hanging around feeling sorry for themselves. I think most people keep busy, whether they're officially employed or not, maybe helping Uncle Mustafa at his little shop down the street in return for non-monetary considerations. Strong family and friendship ties here make up in part for the lack of a social safety net.

Back in Salzburg on Thursday we walked around a bit and took a bus tour of the German Alps. Very pretty countryside indeed. And to finish up we went to a dinner concert in a restaurant attached to a monastery (supposed to be the oldest restaurant in Europe, dating from the 9th century or so). We were seated at tables of 8, arranged so that English-speakers sat together, and so did French-speakers, and so on. Our table had a couple from Ireland, one from England, a couple of Americans and us. I was wearing the dress I'd worn to the opera on Tuesday, complete with the string scarf I bought in Cappadocia. We were talking about having gone to the opera, and the English couple said they'd been there, too. And she asked, "Were you sitting in the 4th row of the balcony, with a pillar between you?" We admitted that we had been, and she said, "We were at the end of that row. I thought I recognized that scarf." Once again my 1 YTL scarf got noticed. I really must pick up a bunch more when we're in Cappadocia again next month.

That's the end of our foreign travels for now. For the next couple of weeks we're going to stay close to Izmir, maybe renting a car now and then and going for trips around the area. The weather is almost perfect just now, everything is in bloom, the temperature is ideal for getting out and about, so we need to catch up with things around here. At the end of April we'll be going to Ankara for the confirmation of one of the men from our church - our godson. This will be my first chance to meet the bishop of the Anglican Diocese in Europe, who works out of London. After that we plan to see some of the eastern part of the country, trusting that the troubles between the Kurdish people and the government won't get worse. And finally, when our Turkish daughter Begüm comes back from school in Canada, we'll take her for a tour of Cappadocia and the southwestern part of Turkey. And then it's back to Canada. I wonder what that will be like?

Twilight at 2 p.m.

Twilight at 2 p.m.
Originally uploaded by MomLes.

We did get to Cappadocia to see the solar eclipse. We left Sunday afternoon, the 26th, and got back on the afternoon of the 30th just in time to meet Shadi's partner Jason - here from Rhode Island for a week or so - and do the laundry before taking off for a Sunday-to-Thursday in Austria.

Cappadocia is quite another part of Turkey. Izmir has always been a point of contact with the West. It isn't really very Turkish; Smyrna was a city in the Greek region of Ionia for ever and ever. When the Ottoman Empire assumed control Izmir was opened to Europeans from Britain, Germany, France and Italy. There's been a significant Turkish presence here only since 1922.

Cappadocia is quite another country. It is mainland Anatolia. Its history dates from the Hittites. And its history has been shaped by its geology. Up until about 10,000 years ago the area was being covered with ash from its three volcanoes. Over time the ash has been carved into fantastic shapes - many of them sort of like Alberta's hoodooes. Quite early in human history people found that these structures were soft and easy to dig into, so they hollowed out shelters that evolved into whole cities of homes and even churches. There are also cities dug down into the rock, some as many as 9 stories deep.

We took hundreds of pictures, a few of which are on my Flickr site, and picked up a couple of nice souvenirs that will end up decorating our friends' and families' places if we can bear to part with them.

In Cappadocia many of the people selling things at tourist sites are women who have made what they sell. The first day of touring I walked into a little shelter belonging to a woman who proudly showed me a scarf with a tatted edging. We talked a bit - or she did, and I nodded - about how much harder tatting was than crocheting, which edged most of her other scarves. So what could I do but buy one of the two she'd tatted? And then she showed me how to wear it. The women of that area have quite a distinctive way of wearing their scarves, and when I emerged wearing my scarf properly arranged I got a lot of good-natured kidding from the guides and drivers. But one of the other women in our little tour group got the other tatted one and we felt quite comfortable together.

The next day I found a woman selling the simplest imaginable scarf: pieces of thread arranged into a mesh pattern and joined with dabs of a glue gun. It cost all of 1 YTL - maybe 75 cents. Now I wish I'd picked up a dozen, because a couple of stops later, while I was wearing it carelessly tied around my neck, a French woman came up to me and said "Madame! Comme c'est belle! Ou avez-vous trouvez cette belle echarpe?" Well... I've never been complimented by a French woman on my clothing before! Talk about a moment to treasure.

Anyway, the whole point of the trip was to see the solar eclipse, and we did. And I really don't know what to say about it. It was all I'd hoped and more. A couple of the people in our group had seen one off Madagascar and had come back for more - I can see why. Their help in pointing out what to watch for added a lot to the experience. I didn't know about ground waves - ripples running over surfaces near you as the sun shrinks to a point source and the wave nature of light becomes more obvious. They also showed us how to make a pinhole camera with our hands - as the sun gets really tiny even the circle of your thumb and forefinger is small enough to show its true image on the ground. But they remarked on how different this experience was from their last one, where the darkness seemed to come rushing up at them like a storm. This time the air was hazy enough that it was more like a gradual sunset and long twilight. A long, eerie twilight with no shadows and with sunset colours all around.

A cold twilight, too. None of us expected how cold we'd be. My goodness it was cold! And it took so long to warm up!

That's why, some of my Turkish friends would say, I caught a cold that day. It couldn't have had anything to do with the unfamiliar North American flu germs shared with us by the other members of our tour group. It must have been the cold. So I got back to Izmir on Thursday afternoon with a blocked ear, plugged sinuses, a sore throat, a wheezing chest, and feeling like death warmed over only slightly. But it was worth it.

Earth Observatory has an image of the area taken from the International Space Station at about the time we were at totality. Kinda neat seeing it from above.