Home at last

I'm writing this curled up in my comfy chair in Canmore, home at last. A lot has happened since the last post - sorry! I'll summarize our travels quickly now, and probably over the next few weeks tell random stories as i remember them.

I left off as we were sailing out of Stockholm harbour. From there we went to Warnemünde, Germany, the port for Rostock. Several hundred of the passengers went on a day-long tour to Berlin, but we stayed behind and enjoyed exploring this beautiful resort town. It has a long, lovely sandy beach, a scenic lighthouse, and a private museum unlike any I've ever seen before - a collection of souvenirs picked up by an adventurer who has been around the world 42 times. Eclectic and eccentric are two words that occurred to us.

Then off to Århus, Denmark, another lovely smaller place. We took a bus trip to a recreated Viking village, then walked around the city - another place worth spending more than a few hours visiting.

Across the Kattegatt to Oslo, Norway. We could have used a week or two there, but managed to get to the Kon Tiki museum and do a bit of exploring downtown. We cruised back out to the open sea through spectacular Howe Sound (BC)-like scenery, then spent a day crossing the North Sea to Harwich, England. It was odd seeing the occasional oil rig loom out of the mist and rain seeimingly in the middle of nowhere.

We got to Heathrow in plenty of time to catch our plane to Toronto, and didn't even hate the experience of going through security there too much. The evening trip wasn't too bad, and we landed before midnight. I think that's the best timing to minimize jet lag - we got up the next morning at a reasonable hour and were even able to function more or less normally.

A few days spent wandering around southern Ontario visiting dear friends, and then it was time to meet Begüm on her way back to school. We explored Niagara Falls and Toronto with her - it was great having an excuse to be tourists there.

Took the train to Ottawa (sharing a car with the lovely and friendly Luba Goy) and settled into our B&B in preparation for Evan and Anna's wedding. Rachel, Evan and his best man Steve stayed there, too - felt just like home.

The day of the wedding dawned bright and cool, and everything got done in time (except for unlocking the church doors, which was not our problem). And the most lovely wedding in the world happened without a hitch but with lots of joyous tears. Great reception, too. So the kids are truly and properly married, and are now touring South Africa.

The next day we flew to Nanaimo with Begüm and spent a couple of days helping her and Mallory get settled in their apartment. Two days driving across BC, and we were finally home.

We don't have any great plans or aspirations for further travels just now. We need a few months or more to get settled and a figure out where home is. So far the best things about Canmore have been the temperatures below 30C and the mountains - the best ones we've seen so far. Oh joy! What a place to call home!

A moment of high drama

The MS Amsterdam is at the moment on the way from Stockholm to Warnemunde, Germany, so many of its passengers can take an all-day tour to Berlin. But for a while last night it didn't look like we would be leaving.

We'd spent a pleasant day in Stockholm on various tours or shopping - great city; Ron and I had an hour at the Vasa museum built around a 17th-century ship retrieved from the bottom of the harbour.

The Rotterdam had to leave by 4:30 because it takes a long time to get through the network of islands off Stockholm and it has to be done in daylight. So all the tour buses got back in time, everyone was shepherded into the ship and the gangplank went up. And then we heard the announcement: "Would Emily Smith from cabin 1833 please contact the office?" Waited a few minutes; the announcement came again: "Would Emily Smith or anyone in her party please contact the office!" And still we waited. Quarter to five and the captain's pacing in the wheelhouse (I could see him from my perch on the top deck). And then in the distance we see a little taxi racing down the road to the dock. It nearly drags the security guard at the gate along with it. It screeches up to the ship and out jumps a woman with a Swedish accent: "Someone please help us! Please let Mrs. Smith on board! Please help!" Meanwhile the missing Mrs Smith emerges from the taxi and looks rather dazedly about her.

I have no idea what really happened, but from what I was able to piece together I think the Swedish lady found this somewhat elderly and scattered foreigner wandering around lost. Being a good and kind person, as most Swedes I've met are, she found out that the lady was looking for her bus back to the ship and had to be back by 4:30. At this point it was something like 3:45 and the last bus had left. No problem - call a taxi and everything would be all right. But the taxi took 20 minutes to come and there were traffic jams all over Stockholm (built on 16 islands with 53 bridges, some of them closed for repairs). So the dear helper was in a proper panic seeing the gangplank up and the ship nearly untied.

A small gangplank came down and the lost passenger was helped on board, to the cheers of the passengers. And some of us even remembered to shout "Thank you" to the helpful Swedish lady, who was left standing on the dock waving as we sailed away.

We got to Stockholm via Copenhagen, where we caught the ship last Friday, and Tallinn, St. Petersburg and Helsinki. I have never been this far north before, and the short nights and cool air are really wonderful. We enjoyed Tallinn, a life-filled town with a good balance of old and new, history and creativity. St. Petersburg appealed somewhat less - it still feels closed and unfriendly. The eighteenth-century buildings are marvelous, though, and we enjoyed a great Russian song-and-dance show. We spent most of a day at the Hermitage and I was quite disappointed. Our guide just showed us Western European art, and we saw nothing that was up to the standards of what we'd seen at the Louvre or Prado or Vatican. What I'd have liked to see was Russian stuff - artifacts from prehistory or uniquely Russian works. But we saw the Hermitage - one more tick-mark.

Helsinki was as pleasant as Tallinn. We didn't do a ship-organized tour but took a city tram around the town centre. Our best discovery was a Lutheran church built into the rock. What a wonderful feeling it had! A real church. And at Stockmann's department store I finally found the right dress (bright red - I hope that doesn't violate wedding etiquette) for Evan and Anna's wedding - I like Helsinki.

A week from today we'll be back in Canada. Seems hard to believe, but our gypsy life is coming to an end. We're already trying to decide what we'll do next year, but it will be kind of nice to settle down in one place for the winter.

North to south and north again

So here I am lounging in a comfy chair on board the MS Amsterdam - one of the Holland America line's lovely boats - somewhere between St. Petersburg and Helsinki, while Ron uses another hotspot somewhere on the boat. What on earth are we doing here?

We left Izmir for good (or not - who knows?) towards the middle of July. First stop was Warsaw, to catch the last two shows in the Warsaw Chamber Opera's annual Mozart festival: Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni. As far as I'm concerned there's no such thing as too many Magic Flutes, and this one was another completely different and wonderful experience. We sat in the second row of the 150-seat hall and felt like we were right in the middle of it all. DG the next night was less wonderful but still very good.

Then on to Kiev to catch the MS Dniepr Princess for a cruise down the Dniepr to the Black Sea and on to Romania. We'd booked this through the UBC alumni association and found it most pleasant to be among a bunch of alumni from various universities getting a somewhat deeper view of the life and history of the people we were sailing past. The boat was built in East Germany in the communist era and had some eccentricities (whole-bathroom shower, for example) but was seaworthy. The staff was definitely not Holland-America trained; you had to pysically grab a restaurant server to get some coffee in the morning, and the notion that one might want a second cup was not one that had occurred to any of them, but those were not significant problems. It was most interesting seeing Kiev and the site of its Orange Revolution, where the people hoped to have won their democracy back from the oligarchs - whether they have or not remains to be seen. The Ukraine makes Turkey look affluent, but they're trying as hard as they can to get on their feet again. Still, there's been a lot of psychic damage done by war and communism, and it may take another generation or two before people learn again how to really work and create. I wandered through a department store where everything was protected behind glass counters and the clerks didn't seem interested in getting things out for you to buy. (Tried on a sun hat that was too small. Told the clerk it was too small and she said, "Yes, it's too small." End of transaction. Why would she want to find a bigger one for me?) So it's a very different place from Turkey, and it's got a lot further to go to join the developed world I fear.

We cruised down the Dniepr through vast reservoirs behind huge dams, great wetlands for flocks and flocks of waterfowl. Once Kiev's wastes had been diluted the algae blooms disappeared and the water seemed clean and full of fish for most of the distance, except around Dniepropetrovsk. We passed that area in the late evening, sailing through clouds of coal smoke lit by the glow of steel mills and other factories - "dark satanic mills". The next day we visited a Stalin-era industrial town that also celebrated the Cossack heritage with a museum and a show of riding and dancing. The contrast nearly made my brain crack with the shock. The Dniepr delta was another peaceful green place where we visited dachas for traditional meals and admired handicrafts - another contrast with the dirty port city our ship was moored in.

Then across the Black Sea to Sevastopol, a place full of history where the guns of the Crimean war are still warm. We saw the valley of Balaclava ("into the valley of death rode the 500") on our way to the palace of the khan of the Crimean Tatars, where we felt for a moment that we were back home in Turkey. As we were leaving we heard someone saying "Hoş geldiniz" - "Welcome" in Turkish. We instinctively replied "Hoş bulduk" and ended up buying some local baklava in Turkish - the Tatar language is so close to Turkish we had no problem communicating with the lovely old woman selling the stuff. She was quite tickled to be dealing with a couple of Canadians in her own language.

From Sevastopol we also toured Yalta and the summer palace of the Romanovs, where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met towards the end of WW II. The building reeked with history - you could almost believe Nicholas and Alexandra and their kids had just left the upstairs room, and the rooms downstairs still seemed to smell of Churchill's cigars. Beautiful views of the sea, too, both from that place and from the road all along the coast.

Back across the black sea after that to the mouth of the Danube in Romania. If the Ukraine made Turkey look modern and developed, Romania makes it look as rich as Las Vegas. Another country with a long, long way to go - I can't believe the EU could accept Romania ahead of Turkey. There's still a feeling about the place that makes me want to check for bugs and spies and watch what I say in public. I guess there are still a few ghosts around. We had a boat trip through part of the Danube delta, another bird-filled place if you didn't mind the piles of garbage. And then off to Bucharest, which still feels a little like Paris east even after Ceauşescu demolished a large area of elegant old buildings for his horrendously huge People's Palace (the second-biggest building in the world after the Pentagon). We had a look at the place and left feeling the Romanians would go bankrupt trying to heat the place, let alone maintaining it.

Anyway, it was a worthwhile trip and I'm glad we took it. We'll probably try another alumni tour sometime.

Ooops - out of battery. More tommorow, with any luck

Alive and well in Sebastopol

We have 10 minutes at the post office internet facility in Sebastopol - just long enough to say we still exist and we're having a great time on a cruise down the Dniepr River from Kiev to the Black Sea. Last night was a little bumpy - we were crossing a chunk of the Black Sea just as a major weather front seemed to be going through with lots of flashing and banging. Only complaint with the cruise so far: no contact with the outside world. I have no idea what's going on out there or even if there is a world outside. I assume since the internet still seems to be functioning there is someone alive in North America. I'm going to use the remaining few minutes to try to catch up on the news. More later.

It's not the humidity, it's the heat

I missed a wonderful photo-op yesterday. Both of us went to bed with socks on - wet socks, with a fan blowing over them. The idea, from an Australian, was that the socks would cool our feet and thus the rest of us as the water evaporated, and the evaporating water would also cool the air blowing over us.

It seemed to work for Ron. He slept much longer than usual, even after his socks dried. But I couldn't help feeling that my feet were soaking in clammy socks and I'd get dishpan toes.

Extreme measures have become necessary. In the last few days - and for the next week at least - forecast high temperatures have been at least 40C. According to my portable indoor-outdoor max/min thermometer/humidity gauge 39.9 has been the maximum, but that's hot enough. And during the night it's stayed around 30.

But the humidity has been less than we experience in midwinter in Canmore, where everything dries out including my skin. The readings on my little instrument here range from 25% to "LO" - below 20%. That's dry. It's also very nice when there's a bit of wind; sweating works. But when there's no wind it's just plain hot here.

The weather in Turkey has been just as crazy this year as it has been everywhere else in the world. Last winter, the rainy season, there was almost no rain, causing a lot of worries about the water supply. There's been a very little rain since we arrived - again surprising the locals, who assume there will be none after the end of March - but not enough to do any good. The trees and garden plants look very droopy indeed, and there's a watering ban. Even so, the water goes off in our apartment from time to time, quite unpredictably. We're back to keeping full bottles of water around so we can flush the toilet if necessary.

It's interesting living in Turkey, that's for sure. And I for one am a firm believer in climate change.

Another day, another language

That's the way it felt as our Central European jaunt wound up. We moved on from Poland to the High Tatras mountains in Slovakia the day after my last post - by bus and taxi! We arrived at the town on the Polish side of the Tatras just 15 minutes after the last bus to the Slovakian side. There was no train, so we had two choices: walk or taxi. It was only 20 km, the taxi fare was quite reasonable, so that's what we did.

Interesting trip, really. I don't know if the driver deliberately chose back roads or if there really are no main roads from Poland into Slovakia. But it felt like he was giving us a tour of some truly scenic countryside. He spoke no English and our Polish was limited to hello, yes, no, and thank you, but when I asked him if he spoke Russian (in Russian) he gave us to understand that thanks to Ronald Reagan, Gorbachev, and Pope John Paul II he didn't have to speak that @#%#@$% language any more and he wasn't going to, so there. And then he carried on a cheerful and friendly-sounding description of what we were seeing - in Polish.

When we got to our Slovakian town he asked for directions to our hotel in what I'm sure was Polish. But later when we tried out our extensive Polish vocabulary on the locals they either laughed or tried to teach us the proper Slovakian words. What a difference 20 km can make.

A couple of days later when we took the train from Slovakia to Eger in Hungary (home of Egri Bikaver and other fine wines) we had the same sort of experience. Cross the border and suddenly all the other people on the train are speaking Hungarian. And yet around the border they must be able to make themselves understood to their neighbours.

In Slovakia we didn't meet many people who spoke useful amounts of English. My smattering of German was quite essential at times - most tourists seem to come from Germany. We thought the scenery was lovely, but the area really wasn't ready for large-scale tourism yet.

Hungary is quite a different story. Even in Eger, which is quite a small town, many people spoke good English. The restaurants were excellent - and cheap: $Can 30 for a fine dinner for the two of us complete with wine. Clothing and shoes seemed to cost about half Canadian prices, two-thirds Turkish prices. Great scenery, lots of history - I think Hungary is my favourite place on this trip.

Budapest was more expensive but no less interesting and worth visiting. It's quite exciting watching the restoration work going on in the historic centre of the city. The country, like the rest of the former Communist-bloc countries, is still recovering from the dark years between 1945 and 1989. Hungary seems to have more to recover from; the memory of the 1956 revolution is still fresh in people's minds, just like the bullet holes in the walls across the street from the parliament buildings. In the areas that are being restored it feels like decades of pain and corruption are being washed from the walls along with the grime. And the result: Budapest is probably the most beautiful city we've seen in Europe so far. Well worth a visit.

And now we're home in Izmir. We arrived just as they started tearing up the street again to run natural gas lines into the buildings (just over a month ago they laid the pipes in the street). On of the good things about our area is that the bedrock is right below the surface so the buildings aren't bothered much by earthquakes. But that means that any excavation work involves jackhammers. And with the weather so hot just now (high 30's) they like to start as early as possible. A jackhammer under your bedroom window sure beats an alarm clock when it comes to getting your attention. And now the beautifully rebuilt steps into our courtyard from the street that seemed to get done last winter while we were away have turned into pieces of rubble again.

I guess life in Izmir has been like this for at least the last 4000 years. I wonder what sort of public works got done in Homer's time?

Ten days or so until we have to get packed and out of here. Some things I won't miss.

Polished Poland

We've been in Poland since last Saturday night, 5 days now, and it's growing on us. We came by train from affluent and burgeoning Berlin, where the architectural mistakes of the communist years are rapidly being replaced by adventurous and eye-popping creations, and we knew almost as soon as we crossed the border that we'd left the land where money grows on trees. The smooth whirrrr of the German rails was replaced by rattle-te-bump-te-bump-te-BUMP and my attempts at knitting grew futile. The farmhouses we saw in passing looked like they were standing up more out of habit than anything. Even Warsaw looked grubby in places.

But there are compensations in Poland. Sunday we explored Warsaw's historic centre, beautifully reconstructed from the mass of rubble left by the Nazis (Hitler wanted Warsaw eradicated after the 1944 Warsaw Uprising). We strolled through a lovely tree-filled park looking for an afternoon Chopin piano concert, and when we found it had a great time listening to the whole soundscape - thrushes, happy kids, passing traffic, and occasionally some tinkling from a piano. As musical art it was disappointing, but as an experience it was totally wonderful.

Sunday evening we happened upon Warsaw's greatest treasure, in our humble opinion: the Warsaw Chamber Opera and its Mozart festival. Over six weeks in June and July they present all of Mozart's stage works, every single one of them. Their theatre seats about 160 people, so it's like having the performers in your living room. And such performers. We saw The Abduction from the Seraglio, which turns out to be sort of a rough sketch for the Magic Flute - not a great work, but fun, and sung and performed beautifully and with great enthusiasm. We decided that the WCO deserves at least a Michelin two star rating: worth making a detour for if you're in the neighbourhood; when we're heading to Kiev for our Dniepr river cruse in July we'll go via Warsaw and catch the last two performances, Magic Flute and Don Giovanni.

We've been in Krakow since Monday. It's Poland's ancient capital and very lovely, having escaped destruction in the 20th century's wars. It's full of music; we've gone to a concert every night this week, of uneven quality - but wow! you can go to a concert every day! There are incredibly lovely old churches, and a castle, and burial mounds - all good stuff. We had a different sort of city tour yesterday: the Crazy Guide's Real Krakow Tour. Worth doing if you're ever here. We were taken around the city in an ancient Trabant, a product of communist East Germany with a two-stroke engine and 23 hp. This one was made in the 80s, although the design was from the 50s. Most of the time it needed to be pushed to get it started, although strategic hill parking could make that unnecessary. Our guide showed us things like a 19th-century burial mound from which we could view the whole city, the old Jewish area (there are now maybe 100 Jews in Krakow, but around 5 functioning synagogues), and Nowa Huta, a steel mill and associated town given by Stalin to this bourgeois city to try to bring some proletariat and support for the communist party into the area. Our guide was a young man studying sociology in the excellent university here, so we heard some thoughtful and knowledgeable meditations on Poland, communism, and this lovely city.

The day before we took a more normal tour of a salt mine that has been operating for at least 600 years - very interesting. And today we had the same type of tour to Auschwitz, just an hour away. It was a hard place to visit, but I thought I owed it to the people I've met in the past who had numbers tatooed on their arms. I can't begin to imagine what makes an ordinary person dream up such horrors, or cooperate with those who dream them up. Imagine gassing and cremating a few thousand people at work every day and then going home and kissing the wife and playing with the kids. And yet I know, given the right circumstances, that we could all do it. But why? And how did it make sense to do such things to other ordinary people, people who could have been next-door neighbours if the times had been different. I don't understand.

So when we got back I took a walk into the ordinary Krakovians' shopping area looking for a wool store. Found a couple, and also found that the excellent English we'd been treated to around here exists only in the tourist area. My Polish vocabulary is "thank you" and "hello" - very useful but limited. Nevertheless I found some nice sock wool and had my current project, a top-down summer cardigan, admired by the lady in the store. Knitting is fairly universal. It also keeps one sane when confronted with horrors like Auschwitz.

Tomorrow we head off to the mountains of Slovakia, buses and trains willing.

Rainy Monday in Dresden

We've been on the road for more than a week now and this is the first time we've had a chance to sit still and get an Internet fix. And I'm not sorry. It's been far too interesting to waste time in front of a computer.

We flew from Izmir to Istanbul and then Vienna a week ago yesterday. Ron had found us a nice little hotel a block or so outside the historic center of the city so we were able to walk to nearly everything of interest - if we'd had time. But the first evening we went to a concert in the Baroque summer palace at Schönbrunn (a nice little place where the Habsburg family could get away from things and relax with 2000 of their closest friends) - same room as Mozart and Salieri had their head-to-head competition (Salieri won, the movie Amadeus notwithstanding). The next day we had a bus tour around the old city and Schönbrunn, then scored some tickets to Verdi's opera Otello at the Staatsoper, which we toured in the afternoon. Most interesting to see the stage being set up for the show we watched that night. Our seats didn't have the best view - back of a box - but the music was magnificent and we could see well enough if we stood up. The opera house was destroyed in 1945 (by accident), and it says something about the Austrian people's set of priorities that it was one of the first things they restored.

Tuesday we had a most interesting bus tour into the countryside - a historic house, an old and beautiful (and growing!) monastery, and the second-largest underground lake in Europe. Loved it all. Beautiful cities full of historic buildings (which Vienna certainly is) are all very well, but the unique thing in any part of the world is the countryside.

Wednesday we headed off to Prague by train, which is really the only sensible way to travel in Europe, fast and comfortable and environmentally friendly. But it is slower than plane, so we had only a short time to walk around after settling into our apartment-like hotel suite. Again we were in the middle of everything. Prague made a great impression. It's less uniform in style than Vienna. Not being the capital of the empire means the city doesn't get remodelled every time fashions change, so Prague is a delightful mix of medieval, baroque, classical and modern styles (Frank Geary did a great building there that I hope I have a picture of - looks like a couple dancing). The language took some getting used to, and I never got used to feeling illiterate there, but many Czechs speak fine English.

We got a trip out into the country there, too, on Saturday - a bus tour to the brewery at Pilsen. That was nice, especially the old parts, but one factory is very much like another. The best part for me was the tour of a vast cave system in the limestone area near Pilsen. It had been used by coin forgers in the 15th century and then forgotton until the limestone diggings nearby hit it. It has some wonderful stone formations and was fun to visit. The beer in Pilsen was great, too, and helped us continue our eponymous degustation tour: Pilsner in Pilsen (and wieners and wiener schnitzel in Vienna).

So now we're in Dresden. We got here yesterday by train to a border town, paddlewheel steamer along the Elbe river to a town on the outskirts, and train into the city. What a spectacularly beautiful area the Elbe flows through! And we were the only English speakers on the boat - the tourist industry hasn't discovered this part of Germany yet. The Black Forest is nothing compared to the Elbe. Come before it's ruined by tourists.

We're staying right in the centre of Dresden, the part that was fire-bombed into oblivion. There wasn't much restoration done during the communist times. They just built cement monstrosities, which are gradually being knocked down and replaced by something closer to what the city used to have. And the only people who speak much English are the under-30s, although I'm sure the older ones are fluent in Russian. It's very different from other parts of Germany we've seen, but worth a visit - if only for the Saxony wines, unknown and underrated in the rest of the world.

Time's running out but that's it for the most part. We're still able to walk. My broken wrist is healing little by little. We're at a comfy, warm and dry Internet cafe. What more can we want? (Just a kezboard that has the z and y where I expect them instead of switched. grmp.)

Cheers, y'all.

Time out in Bodrum

Ron's been busy planning our next major excursion, to Eastern Europe and thereabouts, for some time, and we didn't think we needed much more travelling than that. But things have been getting a little noisy in Üçyol recently with the natural gas coming to this part of the city, and it has been unreasonably hot. We needed a break from the jackhammers and the sweat. So I went onto Trip Advisor and looked for an inexpensive, quiet hotel near Bodrum.
Bodrum had never been high on our to-see list. It's supposed to be a noisy tourist trap. But it's a part of Turkey many people see and we thought we should, too.

And it was a delightful surprise.

The summer season doesn't really start here for another week, and Bodrum was only maybe 1/4 full of visitors - many of them Turkish. And our hotel wasn't in the town but along the coast 20 km or so in a quiet little village. The Sunny Garden Nilufer is quite a large place, but there were only maybe a dozen guests there in this quiet part of the season. And what a pleasant group of people they were! All English except for us and two Irish girls (who immediately captured the heart of the barman). We enjoyed the company of all the other guests and ended up hanging around the breakfast or dinner table far later than we'd planned.

Usually I'm upset to see rampant tourist developments taking over an area, but the Bodrum peninsula is different. For whatever reason the land seems barren and desolate - recently volcanic, probably, and very dry and rocky. There's not much agriculture possible, and fishing isn't providing a very good living these days either. It looks like tourism is the best possible use of the land. And the sea is so warm and clear, and the people so warm and hospitable - it's a perfect place to holiday. We were surprised, too, to see how much real Turkish life still goes on around there. A tourist with eyes to see can learn quite a bit about Turkey hanging out here. It's not a bad place at all. And places like this give young Turks a reason to learn English - many of the people you meet there are able to make a good effort in at least a couple of European languages, which is not normal in Turkey. I suspect anyone who manages to learn a bit of English heads there to work for the summer. Maybe that's why you can't find English speakers in Izmir.

Anyway, it was worth doing and we'd recommend the Sunny Garden Nilufer to anyone. Now we're back among the jackhammers of Izmir looking forward to the peace and quiet of Vienna in a couple of days.

Disappearing history

My Google alert on Turkey picked up this article the other day, talking about the house in İzmir that might be the home of the 17th-century Jewish "false messiah" Shabbatai Tzvi. The address it mentions, "920 Agora Girisi", doesn't exist, but there's a 920 Sokak beside the ancient Greco-Roman Agora, so we went there to look. This picture shows what we found.

The ancient brick-and-stone house seems to have had a modern cement block wing added. The wall you can see at the right marks the edge of the Agora excavations. The whole block to the west of the Agora seems to be being cleared, maybe for expanded excavations, or maybe because the whole area is an eyesore begging to be torn down.

But it doesn't have to be that way. On our travels this year we've spent lots of good tourist dollars in restored medieval cities. It's all the rage to fix up your old neighbourhoods and offer tourists places to stay in atmospheric pensions. To some extent Antalya in the south of Turkey has done that, too. But not İzmir. Here the oldest, most history-filled part of town is collapsing about the ears of the Kurds and Gypsies who are the only ones desperate and brave enough to live there. And any tourist who may stray into the Agora is in danger of being attacked by hordes of pestering children and pickpockets. No wonder the tourist books say there's nothing to see in İzmir.

I wish there was some far-sighted generous benefactor here who would restore this incredibly beautiful and historically valuable part of town before it's all lost. Anyone have a spare couple of million lira lying around they'd like to invest in a city's past and future?

This just in (June 9)
This story tells us that Izmir plans to renovate the areas from the ancient castle of Kadifekale through the Agora to the Kemeraltı market. Good work, guys!

It isn't just Canada geese...

who fly in Vs. Tonight we were having dinner on the front terrace, watching the sunset and listening to the evening call to prayer, when we noticed a big scraggly V formation of huge birds flying our way out of the north. It wasn't until they were directly overhead that we were able to make out the black underwings and the long pink legs. They were flamingos They must have been heading to the mouth of the Menderes R. near Selçuk and Ephesus from their main nesting place in the salt pans west of Izmir. They sure looked like funny geese. Just as noisy, though.

The Sahara drops in

Last Saturday it rained in Izmir. Big deal, you might say, except there wasn't any rain last winter and western Anatolia is experiencing a drought. So the rain was very welcome, especially since we were just starting to recover from our exhausting travel and were happy to have an excuse to stay home and veg. But when Ron went out in the late afternoon to forage for some sustenance he noticed that everything was covered with mud, and the kids playing football in the street were actually playing something closer to ice hockey, slipping and sliding all over the place.

Nothing unusual, we thought. It's been so dry here that the air is full of dust and the rain is washing it out.

But the next morning when I went out to hang up the laundry I discovered the shoes I'd left on the terrace were full of mud, and everything was covered with reddish clay. So were the cars parked on the street. By the time we went to church the men were out scrubbing off their cars and the women were sloshing off their balconies with pails of water and brooms.

At church we learned that we'd experienced the south wind that blows in straight from the Sahara loaded with fine sand and silt. It happens regularly and is one reason Izmir's streets are so dusty. The only comparable experience we'd ever had was when we lived in Kincardine on Lake Huron's east shore, and the wind blew the topsoil from eastern Michigan onto us.

It's supposed to rain today, too, and if it does I'll be out with our super-sized squeegee trying to get the muck off the terraces. But I suspect that the sun has baked it on and we may have to learn to like the nice new reddish colour.

Another Turkish experience

So I got tired of my hand hurting and decided to go and get it looked at. I stuck my head into the nearest polyklinik, a walk-in clinic, but they were closed. So I headed off in the general direction of the nearest hospital. But it wasn't where I thought it was, and I had pretty much decided to phone one of our friends and ask him to go with me tomorrow. And then I saw in front of me a radiological polyclinic. I can take a hint. I went in and said something incoherent about a broken wrist (my Turkish has really suffered from the European expedition). The technician replied with a torrent of Turkish that meant, I decided, that the radiologist would see me in due course. I went and sat quietly, scanning my Turkish phrase book for anything that might come in handy, while the doctor dealt with the patients already waiting. Then the technician locked the door - I'd obviously stumbled in at the end of the day - and a lady turned up with a glass of tea. What a civilized place this is!

Eventually, after everyone had had their tea, the doctor showed up. I asked if he knew English and he said he could understand but couldn't speak it. So I described my fall and my pain in a mixture of languages that expanded to include French when he found out I was Canadian and admitted to knowing some French as well. They x-rayed my hand with some equipment that was not the newest I'd ever seen, and in a few minutes produced some pictures that showed a bit of a break. Nothing serious, and healing properly, but it means I should wear a bandage for a bit longer.

And then I asked about paying. They wouldn't let me. It was a gift to a visitor to their country, they said. "Geçmiş olsun" (get well soon), they said. And they sent me off with a couple of pictures of my bones.

How typically Turkish.

As you've noticed, we're home in Izmir now. I find it really hard to describe trips: "And then we went to... And then we saw...". That's no fun at all. So I'll just give you a couple of impressions.

Nice - not nice. Don't try driving in the city. We drove from Susan and Harry's place in the Périgord to Nice, and that was fine, but when we tried to find our downtown hotel we ended up trapped in a maze of one-way streets. We're all still friends, just. To top it all off, a pickpocket (an American woman) got my camera.

Monaco - I hate it. It feels like a black hole, sucking the energy out of me. I've found many holy places in our journeys, but this is the exact opposite, a city built out of greed.

Pisa - a highlight. We loved the moment when we turned a corner and Begüm saw the leaning tower. Her gasp made everyone around us smile. The baptistry and the cathedral beside the tower are quite lovely as well, and Pisa seems like a beautiful small city that would be worth spending a lot of time in.

Rome - surprisingly pleasant. I find the Vatican another black hole so didn't join the other two when they went to see it. Our hotel was very close to the Colosseum, and I enjoyed exploring that area on foot. We had many good meals there, including breakfasts at a charming café across the street from the hotel. And I found another camera in a little shop there for a price better than the big duty-free shops at the airport - got it with the help of an Italian Canadian who happened to be in the shop too (I eavesdropped and heard him talking about Canada with the owner, who spoke no English).

Athens - we were all exhausted by the time we got there, but there was still enough energy to wander the streets in the old section, have a great meal while watching the Acropolis light up, and climb up to the Acropolis in the morning. It was good introducing Begüm to her Greek neighbours. A lot of them turn out to be Turkish, or at least have grandparents who were born there and left in the 1923 clearances.

But Olympic Airlines (now on my least-favourite list of air carriers) was having another of its work-to-rule labour actions so we were an hour late leaving for İstanbul. We had just a few seconds to say hello to the Şamlı family as they collected their daughter, and then we grabbed the flight to İzmir. Fortunately Turkish Airlines was its usual prompt, clean, efficient, friendly self. We knew we were home at last. Whew!


So we're home for a few weeks. Early in June we'll visit the Şamlıs in İstanbul and head north to explore parts of eastern Europe. I haven't forgotten the Englishman of African origin we met in Whitby last year who said he was going to retire in Prague because it was the most beautiful city in the world. We need to see for ourselves. But for now it's time to heal and rest.

Update from Rome

Sorry for the long break. We're still alive, but it hasn't always been easy to find the time and the Internet connections to stay in touch. Today we're taking a bit of time off, and if we open the shutters and hold the computer out the hotel room window there's a bit of a wireless signal available, so maybe this update will work.

So I have to do another quick summary of three very full weeks. When will I learn to write things down each day and upload them when I can? Maybe tomorrow.

After the boat trip we spent a couple of days in Luxembourg - one more tick mark for our country list. Turns out it's a good tick mark to get. We had some great food, and were delighted to find that for 5€ we could get a day bus ticket that would take us anywhere in the country. We went to Echternach in the east, where there's a lovely basilica, and then explored the area around, called "Little Switzerland" because it's so rocky and mountainous. Lovely, and so easy to get around! Don't miss Luxembourg.

Off to Brussels for the weekend, to be met by our favourite son. We'd planned to move on to champagne country in Reims on Monday, but he had Tuesday off (May 1) so we stayed, walked around Brussels a bit more, and spent the holiday with him in Ghent. We'd seen Bruges on a tour from the boat, but I liked Ghent better. Perhaps it's because, as Evan says, it's a real town where real people live; perhaps it's because Evan was showing us around one of the places he likes. I kept thinking that this is surely payback time: the kid was collicky and screamed for his first few months, but now he's a delight to spend time with; a few months of misery are totally insignificant compared to the years of joy we've had with him (and his sister, of course).

So Wednesday morning we set off for Paris to meet up with our Turkish "daughter" Begüm, who arrived from Canada that afternoon. There was a panicky time at first when I couldn't find the tickets I'd been guarding in my purse - they didn't show up until that weekend when Evan was packing to go home. So we bought some new ones, trained to Paris, dropped the bags off at the hotel, got out to the airport by train and were there in plenty of time. No problem really.

Our hotel, the Albe, was in a perfect location right at the St. Michel-Notre Dame metro stop - Ron has found some great places through Trip Advisor. Poor Begüm has had to share some rooms with us, but she's been a good sport about it. Thursday we did Notre Dame, took a tour bus, and went up the Eiffel Tower. Friday was Versailles. Saturday we met Ophélie, the other Rotary exchange kid in Creston when Begüm was there, and did the Louvre. Unfortunately that day I also "did" my wrist by tripping over a cement traffic-stopper and landing on my hand. Moral: never walk and gawk at the same time. I think it's just sprained, although there have been times when I truly believed it was broken. That night Ron's camera got left at a restaurant and hasn't been seen since, unfortunately. That was not a good day. Sunday was better, though: a performance of the opera Simon Boccanegra at the Bastille theatre - great! - and a dinner boat tour along the Seine. Elegante.

Monday we headed off to the Périgord district in the southwest of France to visit our friends Susan and Harry. They have an amazing centuries-old farmhouse with attached guest apartment in the ancient town of Carlux. We enjoyed luxurious accommodations, the best food (mostly cooked by Susan, but the restaurants we sampled managed to look not too bad in spite of the stiff competition she gave them), great wines - Harry knows wine - and friends who are still good to be with after 15 years or so of absence. Those days felt like a real holiday.

Speaking of which, the rest of the gang seems to think we should get back to the hard work of touristing again. More later, inşallah.

If this is Tuesday it must be Belgium...

and it is. We've spent the last 12 days cruising down the Rhine on the Viking Sun, a comfortable but not luxurious river cruise ship that shuttles between Basel and Antwerp for 10 months of the year. It's turned out to be a good thing to do. The only problem: they charge outrageous amounts for Internet connect time, so I haven't been able to be as conscientious as I'd like about staying in touch. And now it's much too late to give you a blow-by-blow. I'll try to cover some highlights.

The boat holds about 200 passengers and 40 crew. On a typical day we'll wake in or near a historic place and, after a suitable breakfast, board a bus for a guided tour of the sights. We stagger back in time for lunch about 1, and spend the afternoon recovering while we cruise to a new place. The days have often not been exactly like that, but that's the general idea anyway.

So, highlights? A bunch of beautiful and historic towns like Strasbourg or Heidelberg or Rüdesheim. Climbing up to the top of the Marksburg castle - a special treat considering when we left Canada my knee was so bad I couldn't walk a block. The string of 30 or so castles along the Rhine gorge, homes of the original robber barons. The marvellous city of Cologne and its amazing cathedral (home of the bones of the Three Kings, they say), and the way the rest of the city has recovered from being bombed to dust 60 years ago. The green parklands along the shores of most of the Rhine, loud with birdsong and happy campers. Keukenhof park outside of Amsterdam, full of the most unbelievable tulips at this time of year - and the tulip fields we saw on our way there. The 19 ancient windmills of Kinderdijk, and the modern wind farms in windy parts of the Netherlands. The hordes of bicycles everywhere, especially in Amsterdam. The ancient and lovely Belgian city of Bruges, which we visited today. It really is a beautiful and interesting part of the world, and I'm glad we've seen it. When I get a little more reasonably priced Internet connection I'll put some pictures on Flickr and you'll see what I mean.

I've noticed in particular the care the Swiss, Germans, Dutch and Belgians seem to take of their environment. All along the Rhine they're particularly aware of what happens when the water gets a little high, and in the Netherlands they feel particularly vulnerable to global warming. They also know what happens when you really foul your nest - I don't think the Rhine has always been as clean as we saw it, but people swim in it now and there are lots of fish, based on the number of fishermen who seem to think it isn't a waste of time to get a line wet. Gas prices are high here, maybe $2.50 a litre, and yet there are still a lot of cars on the roads - small, fuel-efficient ones. There are also lots of buses and trams. Every city seems to be building or extending its subway system. Public transport is a priority. It's not too expensive and very convenient and reliable. North America has a lot to learn from Europe.

I've also had a lot of fun playing around with different languages. I did German in high school and university but this was the first chance I've had to try to speak it. I felt really dumb when Turkish came out instead of German, but at least our time in Turkey has given me the courage to make a fool of myself in another language. It's nice that most of the people we've met here have spoken passable English, but I like being able to struggle with their language, too, and sometimes it helps when they can't find the word they need in English. I spoke French in Strasbourg, too, and it came surprisingly easily. Dutch is hard to pronounce and harder to understand when it's spoken, but Flemish is really quite nice and comprehensible. After spending a day here I feel qualified to say that Belgium seems like the nicest country of the lot.

Tomorrow morning we leave the ship and move on to Luxembourg on our own. Another country to tick off on our life list!

A Happy Easter

I must say yesterday was one of the best Easters I've ever enjoyed. And it was a uniquely İzmir experience.

It began about 9 a.m. with choir practice at St John's. Mick McCann, a retired clergyman who has been helping out for several years at St. John's, has been working for some time with an assorted group of singers to prepare music for Holy Week and Easter. We joined the choir when we got here and have enjoyed practising and singing music for Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and ultimately Easter. The choir did itself proud yesterday. We did lots of service music and a great anthem, impressing the church full of visitors and long-lost regulars. It felt good.

But Mick didn't stop there. Janet Crisler, who was the regular organist when we were here last year, has moved to Selçuk (the modern town near the ruins of Ephesus) to live in a research library she has set up in memory of her late husband. Janet and he worked for years as archaeologists in Ephesus specializing in ancient texts, and that's the focus of this library. She wanted to show us her library and a DVD that's just been released telling the story of one ancient text. So Mick, whose wife is a licensed tour guide, organized a bus to take a group of us to visit her.

We were an assorted group - three of the Turkish regulars and one who is not part of that group of close friends, about a dozen English-speaking regulars (including us), and an American tourist who happened to be in church and thought it might be interesting to come along.

First we went to the ancient Greek town of Sirince. It was just another Ionian Greek village until 1923, when the Anatolian Greeks were "returned" to Greece (most of them came from families that had lived in Anatolia since the Stone Age). Turkish villagers moved in and seem to be enjoying life in this most beautiful hill town. It's a lovely place, and İzmirlis love to go there on hot summer days for a pleasant meal and a walk through the ancient streets. It's clean and friendly and the food - we had lunch there - is delicious. We enjoyed browsing through the handicraft stalls, too. I was fascinated by the way the knitters hold their yarn: around the neck and wrapped around the left thumb, using the left index finger to throw the yarn over the right needle. I think it allows them to walk and knit, and even to carry something in their left hand while knitting. I bought a pair of traditional socks so I could copy the design, which has been around for hundreds if not thousands of years. We also explored the ancient Greek church of St John, which is being restored under the direction of the Turkish culture ministry. Lovely place.

Then back onto the bus and off to Janet's place in Selçuk for a showing of the DVD. It's about the Abgar letters, which were supposed to be a letter from Abgar, king of Edessa, to Jesus and Jesus' response. It was a very moving show. I'm still sceptical about the letters, but I was most impressed with the way the DVD set them in context and made sense of them.

Finally we walked up the hill to the Basilica of St. John. This is where my favourite gospel (John) was written, and I loved the place. We stayed outside this time, not having the time for a really long stay, and I went to sit on a rock beside a bit of waste land. I heard a slithering in the grass, and there was a snake! A Turkish gentleman nearby denied that there were any snakes at all anywhere nearby and insisted I must have seen a tortoise. Very conveniently there happened to be a tortoise just behind me, but I saw what I saw and it was most certainly a vipera lebetina. What kind of stupid tourist did he take me to be?! I picked up the tortoise and turned it over to determine its gender (female) and it emitted a copious stream of pee. Missed me, though. I've never had a tortoise do that before.

There were other neat things to watch outside the Basilica, too: our friend Cathy playing drums with a severely handicapped guy who earned his living that way, and a very healthy stork's nest with one parent tending the eggs and the other keeping watch and looking for prey. And our little group provided some diversion for the locals, too, because it's quite unusual for a mixed group of Turks and foreigners to hang out together. Our Turkish friends got lots of questions.

All in all a most pleasantly diverting day and a great way to spend Easter.

People aren't the only ones who remember

Went back to my old yarn store yesterday.


Half of it has become a real estate agency, but there's still a yarn part of it. When he saw me the owner came rushing out (of the real estate part) to greet me. I found a heap of yarn for 19 YTL (about $Can 16) that would cost me closer to $80 at home.




On the way back I met my old favourite street cat, MomKat. I chirped at her and she meowed back. She followed me home and waited while I went upstairs and got the catfood Elisabetta had on hand. Today I bought some more catfood. I didn't mean to start feeding the cats again, but when one actually acknowledges your presence it's an unusual honour and must be celebrated. I didn't know cats' memories were 9 months long.

Home in Izmir

Well, we made it. We're back in our comfy apartment in Izmir - have been for three days, actually. It really does feel like home. We'd gotten things quite nicely set up before we left, and "the girls" - our former roommate Shadi, and her new roommate Elisabetta - made some improvements after we left. So the only things we miss here that we had back in Canmore are a microwave and English-language television - and our family, of course, but I wouldn't call them things!

I'm surprised, too, at how much Turkish we remember. We'll never be able to read the complete works of Orhan Pamuk, the great Nobel Prize-winning author, but we've still got the basics. It's nice to know our old memory cells work sometimes.

Izmir is looking much the same, or maybe a little better. Some of the half-finished cement hulks have been completed and look rather spiffy. The Konak overpass is done and seems effective. There are a couple of flashy new buildings downtown. Some of the steps outside our apartment building have been fixed, and there's a new coat of whitewash on the lower walls. Generally things look a little cleaner, a bit more prosperous. That fits with what we saw in Portugal and Spain, too - clean streets, and construction everywhere.

We dropped in to our local pide salonu Saturday night and were recognized immediately. Handshakes all round, and the woman who brought us our food called me ablacım - dear older sister. That felt good. Our neighbours and the local merchants have been welcoming, too. Veggie seller: "We haven't seen you for a long time. Where have you been?" Pharmacist, leaving his customers and coming out of his shop to shake our hands: "When did you get back?" Neighbour across the street, leaning over his balcony: "Welcome! It's good to see you again!" And big hugs from Emine hanım and her daughter Güller downstairs. It feels good to belong.

We went to church on Sunday and were pleased to see most of the old familiar friends and some new ones. There's a magnificent new organist, and a young American soprano who's studyıng opera at the local conservatory (the best in Europe, she says). The place seems full of life, and Father Ron looks contented.

We're rediscovering the things we missed: fresh real yogurt, salça (sun-dried tomato paste), drying laundry in the hot sun and having the whites look white again, taking an inexpensive cruise on the harbour ferries, the beautiful faces of the other subway passengers showing traces of the scattered origins of their ancestors, the young men greeting each other with kisses.

It's good to be home.

Out of Portugal

I loved Portugal. I hate to have to leave it. But we've been in Spain for four days now and it's time to get up to date.

We zipped back to Lisbon by train and flew to Madrid for some ridiculously low fare. Of course the fact that there was no boarding lounge for the flight and it turned up 20 minutes or so late (some comments being made about siesta by jaded English-speakers among the waiting throng) had nothing to do with the low price. It arrived safely and more or less on time - and we didn't care anyway.

Ron had found a hotel for us right in the center of everything, nicely placed between two metro stations. Our first night we had supper at a very nice tapas bar (Canmore's Tapas has nothing to be ashamed of, though). Then we tried to sleep through the nightlife of the Madrileños carried on right outside our hotel window. They're extraverted night people, these Spaniards.

The next day, Sunday, we did the Prado museum - Spanish art from the beginning to the 19th century. On Sunday's it's free, and the lineups were impressive. So were the buskers - really competent musicians who made the waiting tolerable. The art varied from the mildly amusing (Elijah being fed in the wilderness by the birds - when I suggested that it was special delivery from Tim Horton's a couple of young Americans near us lost it completely) to really mind-blowing (El Greco for me, and Velazquez' portrait of the young princess with her courtiers). I'm glad we saw it. One more tick mark for our life list.

Then we caught the hop-on-hop-off bus to Plaza Colón, the monument to Christopher Columbus' voyage. I haven't been able to join in with the glorification of Columbus, partly because since reading 1421 I realize that the Chinese and the Portuguese did it first, and partly because I remember how it turned out for the native North Americans. Nevertheless, I liked the monument listing the members of Columbus' crew. They were the ones who really did it, after all.

Then we went to a bull fight. Ron expected, and so did I, that I'd be disgusted by the blood and suffering. If you look at it in the moment without the context of human history and mythology, it is disgusting. But I kept remembering the place we'd seen where bulls were sacrificed as part of the rites of Serapis, and realizing that Madrid's patron goddess is Kybele, the ancient earth goddess, whose worship included the sacrifice of bulls, and I looked at the men as they got ready for their encounter with the untamed wild (Ron had found us some superb seats right in the first row behind where the toreadors got ready). And I realized that there was an ancient and deeply symbolic ritual being enacted there, and somehow that made it all right. I don't know yet what it meant, and if I could put it in words I wouldn't be doing it justice. There's something older than civilization happening in the bull fight. It says something about death, which we all face - and the bulls are given a chance to face it heroically - and masculinity, which I can't understand. It's a profound experience and carried out with the respect it deserves. I've seen Christian masses carried out less respectfully and profoundly (I've celebrated my share of them). I don't know what the rest of the spectators got out of it, but I found it a deeply significant experience.

And then we went back to our hotel and had dinner at the little restaurant beside it. A neighborhood bar sort of place that felt very comfortable and homey. Our waiter was a cheerful Costa Rican; his colleagues were from all over the Spanish-speaking world, and so was everyone who came in. The food was good, too.

Monday we did the laundry - always an experience when you're a tourist. We were helped to figure out the machines by a young Spanish man, and we taught a German-Spanish couple what we'd learned. Then we went to the Queen Sophia museum of modern art to see Picasso's Guernica (moved me to tears) and some other stuff. Finally we went to the railway station to get our tickets for Granada, and discovered the wonderful gardens in the remodelled 19th-century structure. We had lunch there and I had a moment of truth when I decided I wouldn't settle for the crappy glass of wine I'd been given. Called the waitress over: "No es vinho (Portuguese - oops!)." I said, "es agua" (This isn't wine, it's water!) I said. And she went away and brought me a glass that was maybe half wine - big improvement. Don't eat in the Madrid railway station.

Finally we finished the hop-on-hop-off tour. It was becoming really cold and windy, and by the end we were huddling downstairs in the covered area. I guess it's only March still.

Tuesday we went by train to Granada. We left early and we both slept a lot, but we travelled 1st class and were blown away by the service - breakfast served in our seats, etc. We got settled in at our hotel (Posada Pilar del Toro, a very nice place), walked around a bit, and caught the hop-on-hop-off bus for a tour around the larger town. This being off-season, our tickets are good for two days, not just the 24 hours they promise.

Today we got another tick mark on our life list by visiting the Alhambra. What a beautiful place! Those words are totally inadequate. I think the Moorish kings tried to make it a vision of heaven on earth, and they came awefully close. It is one of the most beautiful human creations I have ever seen. If you go to Spain you must go there, and you must buy the tickets well in advance if you're coming in tourist season. As we saw at the Prado, the Spanish are very sensible about allowing a reasonable number of people in at a time. You can't enjoy humanity's most profound creations in a crowd, especially a Spanish crowd. So book ahead. And go. This is one place that you must see.

Tonight we had dinner at a little restaurant - Café au Lait - just behind the cathedral, not far from here. We went because they advertised a flamenco show in our hop-on-hop-off bus map. We lucked out again. Our hotel wanted us to go on an expensive tour to a cave somewhere where we would see a jaded tourist-oriented show. We weren't feeling up to that, so we walked the 10 minutes to the café and enjoyed a good-enough meal with some excellent dancing by a young woman who reminded us of both Evan's Anna and our Rachel. I told her she danced with her head and her heart and and body, and she cried. She wasn't some jaded old woman who'd been doing it for a lifetime. She was a student of the art and knew it inside out. Worth doing.

So tomorrow we leave for Malaga, then Gatwick, then Izmir - the cheapest way by far, tourist agent Ron says. Stay tuned.

Finishing Portugal, on to Spain

We're in Madrid, with a reliable Internet connection. Tomorrow we move on to Granada. But I have a lot of rumination about Portugal to complete.

The southwest was a highlight for me. Here was where the Portuguese prepared themselves to explore the world, using Chinese data gathered by a Genoese. In Prince Henry's fortress at Sagres explorers planned their journeys to the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. They Portuguese were settled in the western hemisphere before Columbus set out to "discover" it, and they got around the Cape of Good Hope before the rest of the world even realized it was a good idea. When Columbus asked the Portuguese to support his expedition to China by sailing west they laughed at him because they knew it was closer by the eastern route. And all their knowledge was gained here, in this think tank.

But we could spend only a day here, and then we headed north. We drove to Lisbon using the excellent superhighway built using European Union money. It was a great road, and we really appreciated the excellent signs that made our navigation easier.

We tried to drop our car off at the railway station we'd picked it up at - but it was 1:30! You don't try to do business in Portugal between noon and 2 p.m. They take their siesta seriously. So Ron found a safe place to park the car, we had a nice lunch at a pleasant buffet in the station, and when 2 p.m. came he got the car returned. Meanwhile I discovered what my mobile phone number is (I bought the European SIM card in Italy last fall but never knew the number). If you need to call us while we're in Europe you can reach us at 00393466711056 (I found that out by going to a phone shop and calling their number).


So finally we caught the 3 p.m. train to Porto, Portugal's second-biggest city. We got there after dark on one of the amazing super-fast trains - for much of the time we were going over 200 km/h and not feeling like it was more than 80. It was a shame we arrived so late, because our first impression of the city was dark and dirty. We never really warmed up to it, probably because it's so much older than Lisbon, which was destroyed by an earthquake in 1755. A very competent Prime Minister, the Marquis de Pombal, planned the new Lisbon on an open and modern grid system with some lovely parks and monuments. Porto is built on solid granite and wasn't rattled by the earthquake, unfortunately. It has lots of narrow, dark, dirty streets - even some old Roman pavements left behind. I found myself liking it a little more after a tour that showed us some of the newer parts and the Atlantic Ocean beaches. The tour ended with a port wine tasting, which put us in a much more accepting frame of mind.

The best part of our stay in Porto was a train trip along the Douro river inland into the wine country. The grapes that produce port wine grow in a geologically unique area (very similar to the East Kootenays, actually) where the bedrock is schist. The soil is terribly rocky - no problem for grapes - but these rocks absorb moisture and measure it back out to the soil and plants gradually during the dry summer. The cool mountain weather suits these grapes, and the results are spectacular.

So was the train trip. We took a normal train to a large riverside town, then got into a single narrow-gauge car to go up to the mountainside town of Vila Real. We thought it would be a small village, but it was really a substantial and quite new city - mostly built after a new superhighway arrived, I think. We explored the remaining old city on foot, then caught a taxi to Casa Mateus, the building that adorns the label of the wine we drank too much in our youth. The grounds were closed for siesta (of course), so we consumed some more Mateus while eating lunch at a snack bar across the road.

As we were eating, we browsed the local map we'd found in a bookstore in town. It talked about a Roman sanctuary of Serapis at Panoias, a little way down the road. So after we'd walked around the lovely gardens we had the ticket-taker call a taxi for us and convinced the surprised driver to take us to Panoias. He had the time of his life. Why should he spend the time waiting in his taxi for us do to the tour? He came along, and saw something he'd never seen before. Apparently a Roman official who came from southern Anatolia brought his worship of the Egyptian god Serapis to Portugal when he was appointed governer there. That's what the inscriptions say, but I find it puzzling. The sanctuary was set up for the sacrifice of animals to purify adherents of the rite, culminating in the ritual burial and resurrection of the devotee and a sacrifice of a bull. One odd thing is that I can't find any references to Serapis being a god of death and resurrection. Mithras was, and the sacrifice of a bull was important in Mithraism as the Romans practised it. Another odd thing is that this sanctuary was oriented towards the setting sun on the winter solstice - the day the Mithraists celebrated as the rebirth day of their god. And it looked a lot older than Roman. I think more research is needed.

Anyway, we clambered around the rocks, and so did our taxi driver, and then he showed us around a couple of lovely churches in town (which led to an entry in my other blog). And then we headed back down the mountainside in the little train car. This time we were on the downhill side of the car and could appreciate how steep the drop was from the edge of the tracks. Great scenery!

Some menu items should not be translated

The other day in Lisbon a restaurant's English menu offered us
Vegetables cooked in spit.....3.50

I don't think so.

The next day a charming lunch place in Evora offered
It wakes up eggs with shellfish.....5.00

I wonder if they meant scrambled?

Update from Porto

If this is Thursday it must be Porto. Since we were last heard from we've gone to the farthest southwest corner of Portugal to the largest city in its north. We're still having fun, too.

We made it to the fado restaurant, or at least one our Lisbon hotel recommended that specialized in a folklorico show. There were some fine singers, and a trio: two men who played a bass drum and an accordion (is that the Portuguese national combination of instruments?) and a woman who played tambourine and sang. Occasionally she and the drummer danced as well. It was altogether a most enjoyable show.

The next day we picked up a car and Ron drove us to Evora, an attractive old town east of Lisbon with a Roman temple of Diana right beside the 12th-century cathedral and the former offices of the Inquisition. (We keep encountering disquieting reminders of Christianity's darkest days). That afternoon we explored some megalithic remains: a solitary standing stone, and a field full of dolmens that seemed oriented towards sunrise at the equinox.

We spent the night in Beija at a posada - a government-run high quality inn - in a former convent. It was a huge building, quite attractively made into a hotel and with a fine restaurant. But it had a strange, haunted, sad, cold feeling. I slept well but woke feeling like something had drained my batteries overnight. I wouldn't go there again even though it seems like a good enough hotel.

The next day, Tuesday, we drove to Sagres at the southwest corner of the country, stopping first at Vila Nova de Milfonte on the coast - a very pretty fishing village and summer resort (for the Portuguese, not Europeans). I could have spent days there; we didn't even get to explore the castle. Definitely a place to see.

Sagres is the place Prince Henry the Navigator established a navigation school for his fleet of explorers. The fortress there has a large wind rose laid out on the ground that I think the captains used to help plot their anticipated courses. They may have had Chinese sailing directions for at least the seas around India and Africa and have been translating them into charts they could use in their voyages. Sir Francis Drake raided the place once, I think for the maps - they were worth more than gold at that time.

A little further along the coast is Cape St. Vincent, where the body of St. Vincent the martyr was said to have washed up as it made its escape from his hometown of Zaragossa in Spain. It's the furthest southwest point in Portugal, and the Romans said the sun sank hissing into the sea just beyond it. We watched the sunset later from our balcony in the very comfortable posada in Sagres, but we didn't hear any hissing.

Gotta go now. The wireless connection is becoming intolerably slow and unreliable. To be continued later.

On the Road Again

So much for a peaceful life in Canmore. We're off and travelling again.

At the moment I'm curled up on my bed in the cozy and friendly Hotel Principe, Lisbon, recovering from our third day of seeing the city and environs. I've taken a real liking to Lisbon. I'm prejudiced in favour of the Portuguese, anyway, after getting to know some fine specimens when we lived in Toronto. There are more of the same here.

I suppose I should catch up with what's been happening for the past week first. We left Canmore with our friend Mallory (who will be house-sitting for us when her term at Malaspina University College ends in May) a week ago, taking a day and a bit to get to Nanaimo. There we left our car, picked up some of Begum's stuff to take to Turkey, and (on Monday) tried to catch a plane to Vancouver. No luck. Nanaimo had too much fog for it to land. So off we went to the Duke Pt. ferry and then Vancouver airport, where we caught a later plane to Toronto. Tuesday afternoon we finally got to the home of Elena, Vladimir and Alexei, our son Evan's future in-laws. I think we all wanted to check each other out and see if our children had chosen a good new family. We definitely approve of Evan's choice; Anna's family will look after him extremely well indeed.

Wednesday evening we caught the plane for London. It was a pleasant enough flight, although too short for us to get enough sleep to face the hellhole that's Heathrow Airport with equanimity. We'll pass over those hours of waiting in various lineups and try to pretend they didn't exist.

Finally we were flying into Lisbon. The city makes a good impression from the air - green and clean, old and scenic with lots of new bits too. That first impression seems to have been accurate. The city is a lot like Izmir in many ways, but it's cleaner and looks much more prosperous. The EU has been good to Portugal, I suspect, although wages are still low (€700 a month, we're told). Prices seem low, too, at least for Europe. And the weather has been perfect: 22 at most, and clear with a brilliant blue sky. It helps having the Atlantic Ocean to the west acting as a giant air scrubber.

The first full day - Friday - we took our usual hop on-hop off tour. We find these a helpful way of getting acquainted with a city. We take most of the tour the first time around and get off at the furthest place we think might be interesting. After we've seen that we hop back on and go around again to the next neat sight. We do that as long as the light holds and stagger back home to recover.
So first we stopped off at the huge S. Jeronimo monastery, which now houses an archaeological museum, national library and a whole bunch of other stuff. It still has a functioning church attached, complete with the tomb of Vasco da Gama, the first European to sail around the world (using maps compiled by the Chinese earlier in the 15th century, according to this site.) Across the road was the Discoverers' Monument, celebrating the incredible achievements of the Portuguese in the Age of Exploration. Portuguese is still the 5th most spoken language in the world, and when you look around on the streets of Lisbon you can see why. There are people from all over the world in this city - many from Africa, some from Brazil or parts of Asia, all speaking Portuguese. And they seem to fit in and work together well.

Anyway... where was I? Oh yes, we caught the bus and went back into the centre of town to find the #28 tram, which our book said we mustn't miss. It goes up a steep hill towards the castle through the most ancient part of town (not destroyed by the 1755 earthquake, which wiped out most of the fashionable parts and powerful people of Lisbon and put an end to the glorious age of empire). The tram was crowded and Ron lost his wallet to a pickpocket - but some kind angel had hinted to him that he should take everything out of it except a bit of money, and carry just one credit card separately. So that was not a disaster.

We got out of the tram at the highest part of its trip to take some pictures from a viewpoint, then caught it again, found our way back to the subway, learned how it works, and found our way back to the hotel. When we were somewhat rested we went out in search of a restaurant the desk clerk recommended. Couldn't find that one but ended up in a place that claimed to be "the king of bacalhau (dried codfish)". And that's what we had. Not bad, really - way better than what I've had in Canada, which is salty and tough. This was just really chewy but flavourful.

Yesterday - Saturday - we caught the train out to Sintra, the summer home of Portugal's royalty since at least the 12th century. We poked around the town, explored the palace, and were serenaded twice: once by a drum band, and a second time by a men's singing group. They were both excellent examples of their art form.

Today we headed out quite early, trying to get downtown to catch a walking tour. But I misled us and we missed the subway entrance, so we ended up walking the whole way and getting there an hour late. It was a pleasant walk, though. We ended up catching an old tram car tour that covered much of the same territory we'd seen on Friday but more interestingly. Then we caught a minibus up to the castle, which had been staring down at us the previous couple of days, tempting us to get up there and have a look. It's a very nice castle, probably more than 1000 years old in its oldest bits. You get a fantastic view of Lisbon from its ramparts, and it's nicely restored and maintained - an example of what Izmir could do with its Kale if it had the money. Lisbon's castle is an EU restoration project.

Tonight we're planning on going downtown again to a restaurant in the old part of the city where we can hear fado, a traditional style of Portuguese singing. We'll see. We're both pretty wiped from our day on our feet in the sun. Maybe we'll try the snack bar down the street.

Christmas update

I realize I didn't say much about our wonderful Christmas. I probably won't; it's far too late. But our son Evan has some delightful pictures of his experience in Canmore. Check them out.

The wet coast

We're just back from a week or so on the west coast of British Columbia, checking in on friends and relatives in preparation for our next expedition to Turkey and environs.

It's not fair to call it the "wet coast" really. The weather was almost perfect most of the time. But BC has had such a series of fierce storms in the last few months that I felt we were unusually blessed.

We had tons of people to catch up on, starting with daughter Rachel and her beloved Phil. They're good to hang out with, even if they are Warcraft freaks. Fortunately Rachel has now gone off on a two-month silent retreat, so maybe she'll be able to kick the habit while she's there. I don't even dare look at the site in case I get hooked, too.

We stayed at the Bayshore Inn down on the harbour so we could catch a seaplane flight to Saltspring Island the next morning. The plane leaves from right in front of the hotel! The Bayshore is nothing special, but the seaplane sure is, and so was the evening view from our window.

We flew alongside Stanley Park. I'd expected to see a lot of damage to this priceless Vancouver treasure from windstorms in November and December - the TV news made it look like the entire park was devastated - but the damage seemed confined to the seaward edge and along the road from Lion's Gate Bridge to the city. Bad enough, but there are still lots of trees.

Saltspring Island was quite lovely, as usual, and it was good to check in again with our friends the Weisners. We've known Ron and Cathy since the summer of 1967, when the two Rons were Ontario Hydro trainees. We still find we can reconnect without much trouble no matter how long it's been since we saw each other last.

We caught up with our friends Ruth and Beth the day after they moved into a retirement home. They're among the first women ordained priests in the Anglican Church of Canada. I think of Ruth as my godmother in the priesthood - I think I thought I could be as holy a person as she is if I was ordained, too (vain hope.) She's quite frail now, but Beth's faithful love brings joy to her life.



Then up to Nanaimo to check on "the girls" - Begüm and Mallory, who share an apartment as they go to Malaspina University College. They walked us through some lovely scenery and shared their apartment with us. It's good to have friends who are under 40!


We headed back to the mainland and up to the Sunshine Coast to say hello to my cousin Ardith and her partner Bill. Checked in by phone with our cousin Sandra - the three of us were born within a year of each other - and made a date to see her in the fall. Visited my father's sister Audrey and her husband Tammy, and met cousin Bob, whom I've seen once before at most! It's never too late to discover family.


Finally back to Vancouver and Aunt Elsie, the youngest of my Grant aunts, who is still lovely, active and creative in her late 80s. I don't think she will ever get old; she refuses to grouch about the way the world is going to hell or how her body is falling apart (it isn't as far as I can tell).

One last set of old friends that evening: Brian, who was Ron's best man, and his family at their horse farm in Surrey. More people with whom we don't feel strange whether it's days or years since the last visit. I wish we'd kept in touch with more of the old gang. Maybe we'll work harder at that when we get back.

It was good to see all these dear people, but the highlight of the trip was the last night when we collected another performance of Mozart's Magic Flute. There's never been a performance like it, although 10 years ago or so I sang in the chorus of one in Durham, Ont. that tried to do the same thing. The Vancouver Opera Company worked for three years with First Nations people to develop this production set in the BC forest. The costumes of Sarastro and his friends were West Coast native; the scenery was rocks and trees (well, papier mache and cloth streamers, but they worked), and the libretto was freshly and very well translated using some words from the language of the Musqueam people. We were entranced. This is the third Magic Flute we've seen in a year - Vienna and Banff were the other ones - and it's impossible for me to say which was the best. The singing was better in Vienna, but the production was stodgy compared to the other two. I'd have liked the Queen of the Night and Sarastro to have been more accurate in their pitches, but the spirit of this production made everything else irrelevant. Wow! This site says a bit more about it.

The beginning of March we're bound back to Turkey via Portugal and Spain. You'll hear from us then, if not before.