We're just back from a whirlwhind trip of Egypt. Well, actually we've been back for a few days, but I've needed some time to digest the experience and get my pictures onto Flickr. Our time there was so packed I really can't begin to describe it in detail, so I'll have to settle for some pictures and a few impressions.
I really didn't think I wanted to see Egypt all that much. I thought it might be one of those over-hyped tourist traps. But there we were in chilly Izmir with Kurban Bayram coming up, a whole week off. What to do? Stick around and freeze and veg in our apartment, or go someplace warm? Then Ron found this tour, there was space for us, so off we went. And I'm glad we did.
Here's our itinerary with some thoughts and pictures thrown in. I've included links to an excellent set of sites (www.touregypt.net) that contain all the information I wish I'd had before we set out.
Saturday, January 7
Went from Izmir to Istanbul in the afternoon, then to Cairo. Our plane left an hour late because the two baggage handlers were having trouble manhandling some huge crates into the luggage compartment (they eventually gave up and left them on the tarmac). Arrived in Cairo around 1 a.m. to be met by an efficient trouble-shooter who got us through immigration and to our hotel by 2.
Sunday, January 8
Up and out by 10 with another efficient guide who took us around the Saqqara ruins with the pyramid of Zoser, a carpet factory in a school for needy kids, and the pyramids and sphinx at Giza - all before lunch (at 3 p.m.). Whew!
I was so astonished by my first sight of the Sahara desert that I had to lean out the car window to get this shot. You're in the middle of trees and farms with nice black soil, and suddenly there's this mass of sand hanging over you. The black soil is in the region that used to be covered by the Nile during its annual inundations - before the Aswan High Dam was built. The whole rhythm of life in Egypt was set by this event. There were three seasons: planting/growing, harvest, and flood. During the flood season (which is also the coolest time) the pharaohs would take workers from the farms and use them to build things like the pyramids. The Hebrew slaves had nothing to do with the pyramids!
The pyramid of Zoser is the oldest stone structure in the world and the first pyramid. It isn't as big or as slick as the rest, but it's quite special.
The sheer mass of the Great Pyramid at Giza is overwhelming. Standing at its foot I could hardly make out the top - and the top several meters are missing! (Saladin took the outer layer of this pyramid to use in fortifying Cairo).
This picture makes good wallpaper for your computer desktop.
From the rooftop bar of our hotel in Cairo we had a stunning view of the pyramids of Giza. They would have been lovely at sunrise, too, but we somehow missed that sight!
Monday, January 9
Nominally a day off. We took a taxi to the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo. I don't normally enjoy museums - too much standing makes my back and hip hurt, and my eyes glaze over after the fiftieth whatnot. But this is a must-see place. We hired a guide for the morning who took us through the highlights. After lunch we went back and got a closer look at what interested us most. That kept us busy until it got too dark to see well. The Museum is frustrating: it holds so many treasures that someone said its basement is the largest unexplored archaeological dig in Egypt. But they really aren't well displayed, and the lighting is atrocious. But there are still flashes of beauty and wonder among all the stuff, and I'm glad we saw it. I'm also glad the Egyptians have a bit of their own stuff left; so much of it was taken off to other parts of the world during the early days of Egyptology.
That night we flew to Luxor and spent a few hours sleeping on the boat.
Tuesday, January 10
Our guide dragged us out at 6:30 so we could tour three of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, the area on the west bank of the Nile across from Luxor (formerly Thebes) where the Middle-Kingdom pharaohs were buried. The tombs were very impressive. The sunrise was great, too.
One thing you don't see in the picture is the armed guards on the hilltops all around. The Egyptians don't take any chances with their tourists or their antiquities.
The desolation of the countryside gives me a lot of respect for the Egyptologists who explored the area 100+ years ago, not to mention the workers who dug the tombs there in the first place. There's an article I find interesting on the geography and the geology of the area here.
Then we headed back towards Luxor via an alabaster workshop and the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut. She was the original tough lady who took the throne of Egypt from her stepson and ruled for about 20 years until he deposed her. It saddened me to see his attempts to erase her memory - removing her name and image everywhere it could be found. But he failed. Yay Hattie! You go, girl!
Then back across the river to Luxor and the Karnak temple.
The vast temple complex at Karnak was something like the Egyptian equivalent of the Vatican. It was the religious and political power centre of the empire for 2000 years. At one point some 80,000 people may have worked there. The "heretic pharaoh" Akhnaten, supposedly the first monotheist, tried to break the power of the hierarchy by adopting a new god (Aten, the sun disk) and moving his capital to a new city out in the desert. It didn't work. He died young (hmmm) and his young son Tutankhamen - or someone who had political influence - returned to the old system.
As a result of an unfortunate terrorist attack in 1998 on a party of tourists, all the places where tourists hang out seem to be heavily guarded. At the Luxor temple we chatted a bit with a guard, and I asked if we could take his picture. He wouldn't let us, but volunteered to take ours. I was happy about the idea, but Ron looks like he's not too sure about the photographer coming equipped with a machine gun.
Because we had joined the boat cruise a little late we had taken just one day to do Luxor instead of the two the other passengers had been given. The boat had moved on to its next stop and we needed to catch up. Tourists travel in convoys around Luxor for the same reason that there are armed guards everywhere. We got into a minibus that travelled with maybe a dozen other vehicles and a few trucks of soldiers upriver to Edfu.
Wednesday, January 11
"Another #$%^@ temple" we were beginning to think as we took a whirlwind trip around the one at Edfu. When we got back there was this remarkable creation on our bed. Instead of hanging the towels up neatly in the bathroom, our steward seemed to enjoy making animal sculptures out of them. One day we found a swan on our bed. Wednesday morning we discovered this crocodile, which incorporated my pashmina (an essential part of my wardrobe; Egypt is not as warm in January as I'd expected.)
The boat continued upriver to Kom Ombo and another temple, and then during the night to Aswan, the nicest place in Egypt in my humble opinion.
Thursday, January 12
Aswan has it all: an ancient quarry with an unfinished obelisk, the Aswan High Dam, the temple of Philae, feluccas, a Nubian village, and much more. We saw them all.
Unlike Turkey, Egypt has birds. The Nile's shores seem particularly popular. All through our trip I was enjoying cattle egrets, grey herons, kingfishers, and this. I think it's a green heron. We saw it as we returned to the mainland from the island temple of Philae.
In the afternoon we had a chance to sail in a felucca, an ancient boat of a type that could have been used by the pharaohs. There are scads of them all along the Nile. The one were in looked like the one in the picture, which is sailing past some of the dozens of tour boats like ours docked at Aswan.
After a bit of sailing we transferred into a motor launch for a voyage through the First Cataract of the Nile (we'd call it rapids in Canada) to a village of Nubians who were displaced by the flooding of their land when the Aswan High Dam was built. They've discovered a lucrative market in tourists who want to see their homes (complete with baby crocodiles) and ride their camels. The scenery on the way was stunning, like these sand dunes. The Sahara comes right up to the river.
Friday, January 13
Friday the 13th indeed. We had to leave our lovely cruise and fly back to Cairo. The plane was a couple of hours late leaving Aswan because of fog in Cairo. Then our luggage spent ages turning up on the carousel. We were met by the same efficient troubleshooter who greeted us early Sunday morning, and he eventually took matters into his own hands. He got onto the carousel and climbed into the baggage handling area behind. There he found a pile-up of stuck luggage and sorted the mess out himself. What a man!
We went back to our old familiar hotel and had a bit of lunch. But we didn't do much else because our flight to Istanbul was scheduled to leave at 3:45 the next morning. We caught a good six hours or so of sleep before having supper in our room and meeting our helpful troubleshooter again at midnight.
Saturday, January 14
Flying and sleeping. Arrived in Istanbul around 6 a.m., checked our bag through to Izmir and waited for our plane, which left around noon. About 10 a.m. I discovered I'd left my MP3 player (we were listening to an Elizabeth Peters mystery, The Curse of the Pharaoh, as we travelled) on the plane from Cairo. Not having much hope of getting it back I went to the customer service agent of Turkish Airlines. She called their lost property office - and it was there! So I had to navigate back to the international terminal and wait for the lost property person to come. Meanwhile I had a chance to observe a huge crowd of people around the international arrivals exit. It was the hajjis again, the ones who'd shared Izmir airport with us as Rachel was trying to leave. They were being greeted as heroes, with applause and television cameras and news photographers. And they looked so happy; radiant, even.
And finally we were back home again in Izmir. Tired, with a touch of the "pharaoh's revenge" (maybe from the tea we drank at the Nubian home), glad to be back, but entirely satisfied with our week's adventure.
General impressions:
A well organized tour. We were particularly impressed with the troubleshooter who got is into and out of Cairo. He really knew his way around the system.
Most Egyptians we met spoke useable English. There are also lots of people who speak French, Italian, Spanish and German. There aren't many North Americans; the Egyptians say Americans are afraid to come now. Lots of Spanish tourists, though. Egypt is where the Spanish go when their own country is overrun by the English.
Baksheesh. Everyone who does anything for you expects a handout. Every woman's washroom has its young boy or older lady who will hand you a wad of toilet paper and expect money in return. I hate it.
Great food, a little spicier than Turkish. Lentil soup to die for.
Crowds. Noise. Cigarette smoke. Just like Turkey.
We want to do it again.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Christmas, continued
So, as I was saying before life intruded...
We went to Ephesus the day after Christmas on our own private tour. We're very fortunate to have met a couple of wonderful people at our church: Janet,an archaeologist whose special interest is Christianity in Ephesus, and Mick, whose wife Evin is an expert guide used by the Smithsonian and other august groups. They both gave us time that day.
Janet has helped organize an exhibit of inscriptions found at Ephesus relating to early Christianity. She took us around that exhibit at the museum in Selçuk (the modern town on the edge of the ruins), and her enthusiasm was irresistable. How one can look at a list of names on a block of stone and discover something that sheds light on the book of Acts I don't understand, but she can do it. We were fortunate to be able to borrow her eyes for a time.
Evin showed us and some of Mick's cousins about the site of Ephesus. It's huge, and only partly excavated. It was the most important city in Asia Minor (the Asian part of Turkey) in its day, and remained important until the river silted in. St. Paul taught there (and nearly got stoned in the amphitheatre), Antony and Cleopatra made love there, the ancient mother-goddess Cybele in the form of Artemis was worshipped there, and people built baths and libraries and other monumental structures all over the place. About a quarter of the city has been excavated - there are centuries of innocent entertainment for archaeologists waiting to be uncovered. Amazing place.
Oh yes - the picture. They had public lavatories with running water there in Roman times. The waste was carried away by water draining from the public baths next door. We decided to try a bit of togetherness. The seats would have been far less cold in Roman days.
Evan left the next day and we had Rachel to ourselves for a bit. Mostly we vegged around a lot (I developed a cold on Christmas Day and Ron got his a few days later), but we managed a bit of sightseeing from time to time. We went to Kadefikale (the castle on the hilltop in the centre of town) in time to hear the mid-afternoon call to prayer rising from all the hundreds of mosques in the city - a wave of sound sweeping over the place. Then we walked down the hill, passing the mosque built on top of the stadium where St. Polycarp was martyred, until we came to the ruins of the ancient Agora. This was the public square in Hellenistic and Roman times where all the official business was carried out. It was used as a cemetery in Selcuk and Ottoman times, so it was easy to dig up much of it when archaeologists decided to have a look. There's still a lot underneath the houses around, but there's enough now to get an idea of the scale of the place.
In ancient times the marketplace extended from the Agora to the seaport, and it still does today. I think some of those shops with workshops attached may have been there since Roman days. Who knows? Maybe the family that makes tinware for the tourist trade made swords for the Romans.
Rachel and I poked around the old market on Thursday, spending most of our time in the refurbished caravanserai where people sell things tourists like. It's a lot better than the İstanbul Grand Bazaar - less touristy, fewer high-pressure touts, better quality stuff. We got a few things and then went to meet Ron, who had been teaching across the harbour at Çiğli, for supper at a nice fish restaurant.
Saturday Rachel and I tried visiting the ancient city at Tepekule in the suburb of Bayraklı. Still no luck; still closed. We prowled around Bayraklı a bit, marvelling at the New Year's Eve crowds and enjoying a mild, sunny day. There were people in the parks along the seashore sunbathing and socializing - at the end of December! (And there were bees in the flowers, too, and open daffodils). Ron made a magnificent smoked salmon quiche for New Year's Eve, and then we welcomed the New Year on our rooftop terrace by waving sparklers and watching the fireworks pop up over the neighbours' roofs.
Sunday both Ron and I were under the weather with our colds hanging on longer than we wanted, but by the afternoon we couldn't resist the warm sun so piled our daughter into the bus and headed south to the Teleferik again. When we visited it with Evan a couple of weeks before it was windy and freezing cold, but on New Year's it was warm and sunny with almost no wind. Lots of people up there, too - kids playing with their New Year's gifts; young couples enjoying some time away from the watchful eyes of their families; many generations of the same family picnicking together. They have an unusual sort of facility on the top of the mountain: a "You Cook, You Eat" place where you can buy food at a little convenience store (or bring your own?), rent a barbecue, get coals from a huge central furnace and cook your food. Lots of people were doing that, and the smells were wonderful. Turks are superb barbecue artists.
And then Rachel went home, as you read in the earlier post.
For the rest of the week we're just going to slouch around and be lazy. But on Saturday we're taking off for the Kurban Bayram holidays. To Egypt! Three nights in Cairo, four nights on a cruise of the Nile between Luxor and Aswan. Details are here. Maybe we'll be warm again for a bit.
We went to Ephesus the day after Christmas on our own private tour. We're very fortunate to have met a couple of wonderful people at our church: Janet,an archaeologist whose special interest is Christianity in Ephesus, and Mick, whose wife Evin is an expert guide used by the Smithsonian and other august groups. They both gave us time that day.
Janet has helped organize an exhibit of inscriptions found at Ephesus relating to early Christianity. She took us around that exhibit at the museum in Selçuk (the modern town on the edge of the ruins), and her enthusiasm was irresistable. How one can look at a list of names on a block of stone and discover something that sheds light on the book of Acts I don't understand, but she can do it. We were fortunate to be able to borrow her eyes for a time.
Evin showed us and some of Mick's cousins about the site of Ephesus. It's huge, and only partly excavated. It was the most important city in Asia Minor (the Asian part of Turkey) in its day, and remained important until the river silted in. St. Paul taught there (and nearly got stoned in the amphitheatre), Antony and Cleopatra made love there, the ancient mother-goddess Cybele in the form of Artemis was worshipped there, and people built baths and libraries and other monumental structures all over the place. About a quarter of the city has been excavated - there are centuries of innocent entertainment for archaeologists waiting to be uncovered. Amazing place.
Oh yes - the picture. They had public lavatories with running water there in Roman times. The waste was carried away by water draining from the public baths next door. We decided to try a bit of togetherness. The seats would have been far less cold in Roman days.
Evan left the next day and we had Rachel to ourselves for a bit. Mostly we vegged around a lot (I developed a cold on Christmas Day and Ron got his a few days later), but we managed a bit of sightseeing from time to time. We went to Kadefikale (the castle on the hilltop in the centre of town) in time to hear the mid-afternoon call to prayer rising from all the hundreds of mosques in the city - a wave of sound sweeping over the place. Then we walked down the hill, passing the mosque built on top of the stadium where St. Polycarp was martyred, until we came to the ruins of the ancient Agora. This was the public square in Hellenistic and Roman times where all the official business was carried out. It was used as a cemetery in Selcuk and Ottoman times, so it was easy to dig up much of it when archaeologists decided to have a look. There's still a lot underneath the houses around, but there's enough now to get an idea of the scale of the place.
In ancient times the marketplace extended from the Agora to the seaport, and it still does today. I think some of those shops with workshops attached may have been there since Roman days. Who knows? Maybe the family that makes tinware for the tourist trade made swords for the Romans.
Rachel and I poked around the old market on Thursday, spending most of our time in the refurbished caravanserai where people sell things tourists like. It's a lot better than the İstanbul Grand Bazaar - less touristy, fewer high-pressure touts, better quality stuff. We got a few things and then went to meet Ron, who had been teaching across the harbour at Çiğli, for supper at a nice fish restaurant.
Saturday Rachel and I tried visiting the ancient city at Tepekule in the suburb of Bayraklı. Still no luck; still closed. We prowled around Bayraklı a bit, marvelling at the New Year's Eve crowds and enjoying a mild, sunny day. There were people in the parks along the seashore sunbathing and socializing - at the end of December! (And there were bees in the flowers, too, and open daffodils). Ron made a magnificent smoked salmon quiche for New Year's Eve, and then we welcomed the New Year on our rooftop terrace by waving sparklers and watching the fireworks pop up over the neighbours' roofs.
Sunday both Ron and I were under the weather with our colds hanging on longer than we wanted, but by the afternoon we couldn't resist the warm sun so piled our daughter into the bus and headed south to the Teleferik again. When we visited it with Evan a couple of weeks before it was windy and freezing cold, but on New Year's it was warm and sunny with almost no wind. Lots of people up there, too - kids playing with their New Year's gifts; young couples enjoying some time away from the watchful eyes of their families; many generations of the same family picnicking together. They have an unusual sort of facility on the top of the mountain: a "You Cook, You Eat" place where you can buy food at a little convenience store (or bring your own?), rent a barbecue, get coals from a huge central furnace and cook your food. Lots of people were doing that, and the smells were wonderful. Turks are superb barbecue artists.
And then Rachel went home, as you read in the earlier post.
For the rest of the week we're just going to slouch around and be lazy. But on Saturday we're taking off for the Kurban Bayram holidays. To Egypt! Three nights in Cairo, four nights on a cruise of the Nile between Luxor and Aswan. Details are here. Maybe we'll be warm again for a bit.
Rachel & the hajis
Yesterday Rachel tried to leave town. Unfortunately she decided to do it at the same time as several thousand people heading out on the haj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. That would have been no problem - they were well organized and the airport was set up to deal with the situation - but there was no wind and fog descended upon İzmir. Nothing moved until mid-afternoon. Eventually we got her switched to another airline - Turkish Cyprus - that flew direct to London, and she disappeared into the boarding area about 2:30. Don't know yet when she left.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
What a Christmas!
So much has been going on since the last episode I hardly know where to start. Why don't I ever learn to keep up with this blog?
When we left off we had just spent a week or so doing the town with Evan and were on our way to Chios to renew our visas. We have to leave the country every three months for long enough to turn around and go back in again, paying €45 for the privilege. In September and again this month we've taken the opportunity to go to the Greek island of Chios, a couple of km off the Turkish coast, where we can get things like peanut butter and sherry. This one was a whirlwind trip - the boats run only Tuesday-Sunday evenings and Wednesday-Monday mornings, and we had to be in İstanbul Wednesday afternoon to meet Rachel. So we took the bus to the gorgeous port town of Çeşme Tuesday afternoon, got on the boat, arrived in Chios half an hour later, shopped, ate a pizza in our chilly room, slept, jumped out of bed, and arrived back in İzmir in time to pack and catch a taxi to the airport. Our plane landed in İstanbul about the same time as Rachel got in from New York via London, so everything worked out extremely smoothly.
Begüm's parents Hülya and İskender rearranged their lives and household for us again, putting us up for a couple of nights while we glimpsed a few of the sights. It was a little frustrating not being able to spend more than an hour or so at Aya Sofya and the Grand Bazaar, and just being able to glimpse Topkapı through the gates. I hope it whetted their appetites, anyway.
Then back to İzmir by plane in time to tuck Rachel into bed.
The next day was Christmas Eve. Even though I'm retired I still needed to do some church stuff - get the bulletins ready for three services and prepare for the evening one. I was privileged to celebrate at the 8 p.m. service at St. John's. It's a popular place to go on Christmas Eve in Izmir; we had maybe 30 people receive communion but a whole lot more were in the congregation to watch the show!
Christmas Day was a bit of a rush. We had our traditional ketchup sandwiches for breakfast, thanks to Evan who brought some bacon from Canada. Then I needed to rush off to Bornova to get ready for the service there (someday I'll take the time to tell you about the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Bornova). We actually had 35 people there - more than 3 times the previous high. After the service we were invited back to the amazing home of some of the descendants of the builder of the church for sherry and conversation - then home quickly to open presents and prepare for dinner.
I can't honestly say we've ever had a Christmas dinner like that before. We had four guests: Adolfo, a young man from Mozambique who showed up at the church a couple of months ago; Numan, a Turkish friend of his (a serious Muslim); Ayser, another friend of his, Palestinian born in the United Arab Emirates; and Andreas, a Swiss pastor making a pilgrimage around the seven churches of Revelation, whom I met at the church bazaar at the beginning of the month. Andreas recorded the event in his blog (http://www.johannesoffenbarung.ch/arbeitsjournal/Izmir_weihnachten.php) in a very clear and readable German. Scroll down quite far to see pictures of our Christmas Eve service and our dinner party.
One thing that stands out for me from the dinner was Numan excusing himself and borrowing our bedroom to do his evening prayers. I'm glad he felt free to do that, although our bedroom was an incredible disaster area and I'm not sure it was a fitting place. And then, after he was done, we popped our Christmas crackers and discovered they each contained a numbered whistle (more or less tuned) and a silly hat with music on it. Evan discovered a baton and instruction sheet containing the scores for several Christmas carols & other ditties. Good thing there were 8 of us, because that's exactly what we needed to play Joy to the World and Frosty the Snowman. Too silly. And when our guests left to make their way home on the bus and subway they were still wearing their hats and carrying their whistles.
Gotta take a break now. You've been reading long enough. I hope I'll catch up completely tomorrow.
Please note that I'm moving my photo album to Flickr - it's more flexible and more fun than Yahoo. Click on the link to the left to see it.
We'd also like to map where all our friends and family are. Click on the Frapr link to the left to add yourself to our map.
When we left off we had just spent a week or so doing the town with Evan and were on our way to Chios to renew our visas. We have to leave the country every three months for long enough to turn around and go back in again, paying €45 for the privilege. In September and again this month we've taken the opportunity to go to the Greek island of Chios, a couple of km off the Turkish coast, where we can get things like peanut butter and sherry. This one was a whirlwind trip - the boats run only Tuesday-Sunday evenings and Wednesday-Monday mornings, and we had to be in İstanbul Wednesday afternoon to meet Rachel. So we took the bus to the gorgeous port town of Çeşme Tuesday afternoon, got on the boat, arrived in Chios half an hour later, shopped, ate a pizza in our chilly room, slept, jumped out of bed, and arrived back in İzmir in time to pack and catch a taxi to the airport. Our plane landed in İstanbul about the same time as Rachel got in from New York via London, so everything worked out extremely smoothly.
Begüm's parents Hülya and İskender rearranged their lives and household for us again, putting us up for a couple of nights while we glimpsed a few of the sights. It was a little frustrating not being able to spend more than an hour or so at Aya Sofya and the Grand Bazaar, and just being able to glimpse Topkapı through the gates. I hope it whetted their appetites, anyway.
Then back to İzmir by plane in time to tuck Rachel into bed.
The next day was Christmas Eve. Even though I'm retired I still needed to do some church stuff - get the bulletins ready for three services and prepare for the evening one. I was privileged to celebrate at the 8 p.m. service at St. John's. It's a popular place to go on Christmas Eve in Izmir; we had maybe 30 people receive communion but a whole lot more were in the congregation to watch the show!
Christmas Day was a bit of a rush. We had our traditional ketchup sandwiches for breakfast, thanks to Evan who brought some bacon from Canada. Then I needed to rush off to Bornova to get ready for the service there (someday I'll take the time to tell you about the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Bornova). We actually had 35 people there - more than 3 times the previous high. After the service we were invited back to the amazing home of some of the descendants of the builder of the church for sherry and conversation - then home quickly to open presents and prepare for dinner.
I can't honestly say we've ever had a Christmas dinner like that before. We had four guests: Adolfo, a young man from Mozambique who showed up at the church a couple of months ago; Numan, a Turkish friend of his (a serious Muslim); Ayser, another friend of his, Palestinian born in the United Arab Emirates; and Andreas, a Swiss pastor making a pilgrimage around the seven churches of Revelation, whom I met at the church bazaar at the beginning of the month. Andreas recorded the event in his blog (http://www.johannesoffenbarung.ch/arbeitsjournal/Izmir_weihnachten.php) in a very clear and readable German. Scroll down quite far to see pictures of our Christmas Eve service and our dinner party.
One thing that stands out for me from the dinner was Numan excusing himself and borrowing our bedroom to do his evening prayers. I'm glad he felt free to do that, although our bedroom was an incredible disaster area and I'm not sure it was a fitting place. And then, after he was done, we popped our Christmas crackers and discovered they each contained a numbered whistle (more or less tuned) and a silly hat with music on it. Evan discovered a baton and instruction sheet containing the scores for several Christmas carols & other ditties. Good thing there were 8 of us, because that's exactly what we needed to play Joy to the World and Frosty the Snowman. Too silly. And when our guests left to make their way home on the bus and subway they were still wearing their hats and carrying their whistles.
Gotta take a break now. You've been reading long enough. I hope I'll catch up completely tomorrow.
Please note that I'm moving my photo album to Flickr - it's more flexible and more fun than Yahoo. Click on the link to the left to see it.
We'd also like to map where all our friends and family are. Click on the Frapr link to the left to add yourself to our map.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Exploring Izmir with our boy
Since Evan arrived last Wednesday we've been sharing our city with him. We haven't got all that much done, what with his mild jet lag and our extreme sloth, but we've been enjoying ourselves anyway.
Ron (who teaches English to a couple of classes of people who know it fairly well) had the brilliant idea of asking his students to tell him where they'd take our son if they wanted to show him the sights. He collected a list of 15 restaurants and a bunch of places to visit, so we've been working our way through the list (with a few of our own favourites thrown in).
Wednesday night we dragged our sleepy kid out into our dark and rainy neighbourhood to visit the Asensör restaurant, a couple of blocks away. I mentioned it way back on Sept. 7, when the weather was still hot and sunny. It has a fantastic view over the city and the harbour, and pretty good food as well. Evan managed to stay awake long enough to enjoy his first Turkish meal and the view, and then fell into bed and slept for 12 hours.
It's been a bit of a blur since then. One day - I think it was Thursday - Evan and I took a ferry across the harbour to the northwest end of town and bussed partway back to where I thought we might find the Tepekule tumulus, the remains of the earliest settlement in Izmir. Turned out I was wrong by a couple of kilometers, but that meant we had a walk along a busy highway that runs beside the seashore until we got to the Bayraklı marketplace. And there it was, a fenced-in vineyard where they've been growing grapes for at least 5000 years, maybe 7000. Not much to see just now; there are excavations going on, but not in the winter so the gate was locked and all we could see was a grassy area with some grapevines. Still, we could see why people would settle there: there's a freshwater stream flowing out of the mountains, a hill behind the settled area where the townsfolk could flee for protection in case of trouble, a wide fertile plain spreading out in front, and the sea for fish and transportation. Folk were writing there at least 5000 years ago, although there were a few dark ages when they forgot. Homer was probably born there. Even though the site was closed, it felt rather wonderful to be walking over ground that Homer had touched.
Thursday night we dragged Evan to the church choir practice, where he wowed them all by doing a violin obligatto where I'd been supposed to play the recorder. Then out for supper and beer with our parish priest, and home to let the kid fall into bed again.
Friday night the Izmir symphony gave a concert at their hall downtown - a magical performance of the Dvorak cello concerto by a German cellist, and Mahler's 1st symphony. It was our first concert since we settled here, but it won't be our last. It's a good little orchestra and they apparently get great soloists.
Saturday Ron invited Evan and me to drop in on one of the classes that had planned our itinerary. We were supposed to give them a report on what we'd seen so far, but we spent so much time just talking about families, our countries, and other stuff people need to know about each other that we didn't get to that. I think we all enjoyed it, though. Then we explored a little corner of the huge Kemeraltı market, which stretches from the sea to the Agora, the ruins of the Greco-Roman marketplace and town square. That's another thing I love about this place: the market is where it's always been, and the same families have probably been selling the same things at the same stalls for a couple of thousand years. It makes you think... Somehow wars and natural disasters can't defeat the human spirit.
Sunday night Evan helped out at our church's Christmas service of lessons and carols. Some Turkish members of the choir had never sung this music, or even any music, before, but they did a more than acceptable job. Our volunteer temporary choir leader had worked unbelievably hard getting us into shape, and I hope we didn't let him down. We had a good crowd. In Turkey Christmas is a favourite celebration and even non-Christians turn up at church events. You don't hear much Christmas music around town or see many decorations, and you certainly don't get the buy-buy-buy pressure we experience in North America, but there's plenty of Christmas spirit.
Yesterday - Monday - we took a trip out to the Teleferik, a cable car that runs up a mountain to the south of the city. There's a magnificent view of the town and harbour, and a quite acceptable restaurant. It's obviously set up to handle hordes of visitors, but yesterday was so cold we were among a dozen or so visitors. It was Ron's 60th birthday, so we had his birthday dinner up there among the pines and the chickadees.
It is %^#$*& cold just now. It was so cold last night that I wore a woolen hat to bed. We have a great fleece-stuffed comforter that usually keeps us more than warm enough, but last night I was thinking of getting up and putting on another blanket. It was far too cold to get out of our warmish bed for that, though. Today we take a sea cruise to Chios to get our visas renewed again - just the thing for a brisk winter's day. And then tomorrow we rush back here, catch the plane for Istanbul, and meet Rachel. We'll have a couple of days doing the sights there, then back here for Christmas.
I'll add pictures when I manage to get my guys to download them from their cameras - mine ran out of battery a while ago and I've only just remembered to recharge it.
Next installment: the Lewis family hits Istanbul. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, check out our church's web page (see the link in the sidebar).
Ron (who teaches English to a couple of classes of people who know it fairly well) had the brilliant idea of asking his students to tell him where they'd take our son if they wanted to show him the sights. He collected a list of 15 restaurants and a bunch of places to visit, so we've been working our way through the list (with a few of our own favourites thrown in).
Wednesday night we dragged our sleepy kid out into our dark and rainy neighbourhood to visit the Asensör restaurant, a couple of blocks away. I mentioned it way back on Sept. 7, when the weather was still hot and sunny. It has a fantastic view over the city and the harbour, and pretty good food as well. Evan managed to stay awake long enough to enjoy his first Turkish meal and the view, and then fell into bed and slept for 12 hours.
It's been a bit of a blur since then. One day - I think it was Thursday - Evan and I took a ferry across the harbour to the northwest end of town and bussed partway back to where I thought we might find the Tepekule tumulus, the remains of the earliest settlement in Izmir. Turned out I was wrong by a couple of kilometers, but that meant we had a walk along a busy highway that runs beside the seashore until we got to the Bayraklı marketplace. And there it was, a fenced-in vineyard where they've been growing grapes for at least 5000 years, maybe 7000. Not much to see just now; there are excavations going on, but not in the winter so the gate was locked and all we could see was a grassy area with some grapevines. Still, we could see why people would settle there: there's a freshwater stream flowing out of the mountains, a hill behind the settled area where the townsfolk could flee for protection in case of trouble, a wide fertile plain spreading out in front, and the sea for fish and transportation. Folk were writing there at least 5000 years ago, although there were a few dark ages when they forgot. Homer was probably born there. Even though the site was closed, it felt rather wonderful to be walking over ground that Homer had touched.
Thursday night we dragged Evan to the church choir practice, where he wowed them all by doing a violin obligatto where I'd been supposed to play the recorder. Then out for supper and beer with our parish priest, and home to let the kid fall into bed again.
Friday night the Izmir symphony gave a concert at their hall downtown - a magical performance of the Dvorak cello concerto by a German cellist, and Mahler's 1st symphony. It was our first concert since we settled here, but it won't be our last. It's a good little orchestra and they apparently get great soloists.
Saturday Ron invited Evan and me to drop in on one of the classes that had planned our itinerary. We were supposed to give them a report on what we'd seen so far, but we spent so much time just talking about families, our countries, and other stuff people need to know about each other that we didn't get to that. I think we all enjoyed it, though. Then we explored a little corner of the huge Kemeraltı market, which stretches from the sea to the Agora, the ruins of the Greco-Roman marketplace and town square. That's another thing I love about this place: the market is where it's always been, and the same families have probably been selling the same things at the same stalls for a couple of thousand years. It makes you think... Somehow wars and natural disasters can't defeat the human spirit.
Sunday night Evan helped out at our church's Christmas service of lessons and carols. Some Turkish members of the choir had never sung this music, or even any music, before, but they did a more than acceptable job. Our volunteer temporary choir leader had worked unbelievably hard getting us into shape, and I hope we didn't let him down. We had a good crowd. In Turkey Christmas is a favourite celebration and even non-Christians turn up at church events. You don't hear much Christmas music around town or see many decorations, and you certainly don't get the buy-buy-buy pressure we experience in North America, but there's plenty of Christmas spirit.
Yesterday - Monday - we took a trip out to the Teleferik, a cable car that runs up a mountain to the south of the city. There's a magnificent view of the town and harbour, and a quite acceptable restaurant. It's obviously set up to handle hordes of visitors, but yesterday was so cold we were among a dozen or so visitors. It was Ron's 60th birthday, so we had his birthday dinner up there among the pines and the chickadees.
It is %^#$*& cold just now. It was so cold last night that I wore a woolen hat to bed. We have a great fleece-stuffed comforter that usually keeps us more than warm enough, but last night I was thinking of getting up and putting on another blanket. It was far too cold to get out of our warmish bed for that, though. Today we take a sea cruise to Chios to get our visas renewed again - just the thing for a brisk winter's day. And then tomorrow we rush back here, catch the plane for Istanbul, and meet Rachel. We'll have a couple of days doing the sights there, then back here for Christmas.
I'll add pictures when I manage to get my guys to download them from their cameras - mine ran out of battery a while ago and I've only just remembered to recharge it.
Next installment: the Lewis family hits Istanbul. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, check out our church's web page (see the link in the sidebar).
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
An evening with the ladies
I was feeding "my" cats some elderly chicken yesterday afternoon when the woman downstairs came by. She's a pleasant young mother of two lively, bright children. We've exchanged greetings on the stairs quite often, and the kids have practised their English on me, but my Turkish hasn't been up to more than that. Yesterday we were able to chat a bit about the cats - how I love cats, and what a good thing it was for me to feed them (sevap she called it, which means an act that fulfils the Muslim's requirement to be compassionate). And then she said it was her daughter's birthday and how they'd like me to drop in in the evening to have some cake.
So I knocked on their door a little after 6 and was swept into their apartment. It was the first time I'd seen the mom without a head covering, and she looked a lot younger and prettier. We spent some time exchanging names - Leslie is a very difficult name for Turks to pronounce. Then the kids wanted me to help them learn the English alphabet. You have to have learned the alphabet in Turkish to appreciate how difficult ours is. There's nothing logical about the letter names. Why "aitch" and "ef" but "gee" and "pee"? And "vee" is surprisingly difficult; the Turkish letter "v" is pronounced somewhere between our "w" and "v" sounds. Most adult Turks can't hear the difference between the two sounds, but I was able to help the kids understand the difference.
And then they put on a video of the mom's home town in the southeast, and when the music started playing they started dancing. First the daughter, who's 12, did quite an amazing belly dance - she can ripple her tummy like the best dancers I've seen. Then mom danced and dragged me into it. Another woman friend of hers turned up and we all danced. The video showed only men dancing together, and there we were all women dancing together - and I realized that here dancing is not traditionally a man-woman thing but something groups of people do together to enjoy the music and the companionship. Turkish society has always been strongly divided into men's groups and women's groups, and traditional people still live that way. If Ron had been able to come (he was teaching) he would have messed up the whole evening!
A couple more neighbour women turned up, and the poor birthday girl just had one friend her own age! But it seems that birthday parties here are for adults, not kids. Anyway, all us ladies chattered away - or they did, and I listened, just letting it flow over me, not trying to decode and translate but just let understanding happen. And for much of the time it did. They talked about the brother of one of them, who'd just died, and about how hard it was for another to find good food in London and not be spoken to in Arabic. Mostly I just enjoyed being in the midst of a group of people who treated me as a friend, one of them. Good thing they didn't expect me to make intelligent conversation, though!
I was there for about 3 hours, and left feeling exhausted but contented. I'm so grateful to have been invited.
Just now I'm sitting near our dear son listening to the Messiah CD he brought along. Evan arrived safely this afternoon and will be here until just after Christmas. "May your eyes shine", the Turks said when I told them he was coming. And indeed my eyes are shining. We're just about to go off for dinner at the Asensör restaurant, and then he will fall into bed. Tomorrow we start showing him "our" city.
So I knocked on their door a little after 6 and was swept into their apartment. It was the first time I'd seen the mom without a head covering, and she looked a lot younger and prettier. We spent some time exchanging names - Leslie is a very difficult name for Turks to pronounce. Then the kids wanted me to help them learn the English alphabet. You have to have learned the alphabet in Turkish to appreciate how difficult ours is. There's nothing logical about the letter names. Why "aitch" and "ef" but "gee" and "pee"? And "vee" is surprisingly difficult; the Turkish letter "v" is pronounced somewhere between our "w" and "v" sounds. Most adult Turks can't hear the difference between the two sounds, but I was able to help the kids understand the difference.
And then they put on a video of the mom's home town in the southeast, and when the music started playing they started dancing. First the daughter, who's 12, did quite an amazing belly dance - she can ripple her tummy like the best dancers I've seen. Then mom danced and dragged me into it. Another woman friend of hers turned up and we all danced. The video showed only men dancing together, and there we were all women dancing together - and I realized that here dancing is not traditionally a man-woman thing but something groups of people do together to enjoy the music and the companionship. Turkish society has always been strongly divided into men's groups and women's groups, and traditional people still live that way. If Ron had been able to come (he was teaching) he would have messed up the whole evening!
A couple more neighbour women turned up, and the poor birthday girl just had one friend her own age! But it seems that birthday parties here are for adults, not kids. Anyway, all us ladies chattered away - or they did, and I listened, just letting it flow over me, not trying to decode and translate but just let understanding happen. And for much of the time it did. They talked about the brother of one of them, who'd just died, and about how hard it was for another to find good food in London and not be spoken to in Arabic. Mostly I just enjoyed being in the midst of a group of people who treated me as a friend, one of them. Good thing they didn't expect me to make intelligent conversation, though!
I was there for about 3 hours, and left feeling exhausted but contented. I'm so grateful to have been invited.
Just now I'm sitting near our dear son listening to the Messiah CD he brought along. Evan arrived safely this afternoon and will be here until just after Christmas. "May your eyes shine", the Turks said when I told them he was coming. And indeed my eyes are shining. We're just about to go off for dinner at the Asensör restaurant, and then he will fall into bed. Tomorrow we start showing him "our" city.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
In the bleak midwinter
... frosty winds made moan? Not exactly! It's been partly sunny and in the mid-to-upper teens for some time now, and not too windy for a change. Sometimes the winds on our top-floor terrace are strong enough to whip laundry off the drying rack if we don't pin it down securely. I discovered that in early September when I heard some women discussing something below our open window. "Büyük adam!" said one. "Çok büyük adam!" said another (Big man! Very big man!). Shortly afterwards our doorbell rang, and the helpful gentleman from the second floor handed me one of Ron's shirts. It had flown off the rack and down into the courtyard, causing great consternation among the neighbours.
Anyway... the wind isn't doing that just now. It's behaving itself very nicely. And the weather is quite fine much of the time, as you can see from some of our recent pictures; this one from the ferry boat travelling across the bay, for instance.
I caused a flap last Saturday - Dec. 3! - by going to the church's Christmas bazaar with bare feet in sandals. It was warm enough, and all my socks were in the laundry. People stared at me on the bus and on the street; they were wearing winter parkas because it was supposed to be cool.
But there is a little bleakness in my mood just now, caused perhaps by the shortness of the days and the long, dark, smoky nights. People here burn a lot of coal in their living-room sobalar or heater-stoves. And a soba is not a high-efficiency combustion device; it emits a lot of smoke. When you live on the top floor you're the recipient of that smoke, and my lungs don't like it. I'm very tired, probably from struggling to breathe at night.
The bleak mood seems to be affecting more than just me. I keep hearing people - Turks and foreigners alike - complaining about the idiocies of this country. I'm finding the ethnic charm of the crowded rattletrap buses, the insane drivers, and the people dumping garbage onto the street (shitting on their grandchildren, someone called it) beginning to wear a little thin. And today the gods of electricity decided to send a team of workers to cut all the overhead power lines leading into homes on our street in preparation for activating the new underground power lines. Fine, but we spent the day without power. It's hooked up again tonight, but you can bet they'll do it again tomorrow. Our neighbour across the street, who supports his family with his electric sewing machine, was not amused and spent a considerable amount of time in the street sharing his opinion with the world in general and the workers in particular. Not that the workers stayed around long enough to hear it - they evidently had a pressing and lengthy luncheon engagement. And I'm quite sure that once the underground power is connected the old wires will be left dangling until someone figures out how to harvest them for the copper.
Never mind. I must focus on the wonders of this place and not let the stupidities get me down. And one of the wonders is that the fresh produce continues to come. It's different every month but always good. There are orange trees everywhere, it turns out - they show up nicely now that their fruit has ripened. I always thought that orange colour was artificial. And there are lemon and grapefruit trees, too.
There's an interesting fruit ripe now called ayva - quince, I think. Our dear landlady Semiha came over the other day with a jar of marmalade she made from it. Delicious, of course. It looks and tastes a bit like a pear; marmalade is definitely the best way to enjoy it. There's also a lot of new salad greens, including our favourite, rocket - a plant in the cabbage and mustard family that has a sharp tang to it and just shrieks out "vitamins, vitamins!". It grows wild all over Canada but I've never eaten it there.
I guess this place isn't all that bad after all. And in a week Evan will be here for Christmas, and not long after that Rachel arrives, and I can't wait to share the good things around here with them both.
Anyway... the wind isn't doing that just now. It's behaving itself very nicely. And the weather is quite fine much of the time, as you can see from some of our recent pictures; this one from the ferry boat travelling across the bay, for instance.I caused a flap last Saturday - Dec. 3! - by going to the church's Christmas bazaar with bare feet in sandals. It was warm enough, and all my socks were in the laundry. People stared at me on the bus and on the street; they were wearing winter parkas because it was supposed to be cool.
But there is a little bleakness in my mood just now, caused perhaps by the shortness of the days and the long, dark, smoky nights. People here burn a lot of coal in their living-room sobalar or heater-stoves. And a soba is not a high-efficiency combustion device; it emits a lot of smoke. When you live on the top floor you're the recipient of that smoke, and my lungs don't like it. I'm very tired, probably from struggling to breathe at night.
The bleak mood seems to be affecting more than just me. I keep hearing people - Turks and foreigners alike - complaining about the idiocies of this country. I'm finding the ethnic charm of the crowded rattletrap buses, the insane drivers, and the people dumping garbage onto the street (shitting on their grandchildren, someone called it) beginning to wear a little thin. And today the gods of electricity decided to send a team of workers to cut all the overhead power lines leading into homes on our street in preparation for activating the new underground power lines. Fine, but we spent the day without power. It's hooked up again tonight, but you can bet they'll do it again tomorrow. Our neighbour across the street, who supports his family with his electric sewing machine, was not amused and spent a considerable amount of time in the street sharing his opinion with the world in general and the workers in particular. Not that the workers stayed around long enough to hear it - they evidently had a pressing and lengthy luncheon engagement. And I'm quite sure that once the underground power is connected the old wires will be left dangling until someone figures out how to harvest them for the copper.
Never mind. I must focus on the wonders of this place and not let the stupidities get me down. And one of the wonders is that the fresh produce continues to come. It's different every month but always good. There are orange trees everywhere, it turns out - they show up nicely now that their fruit has ripened. I always thought that orange colour was artificial. And there are lemon and grapefruit trees, too.
There's an interesting fruit ripe now called ayva - quince, I think. Our dear landlady Semiha came over the other day with a jar of marmalade she made from it. Delicious, of course. It looks and tastes a bit like a pear; marmalade is definitely the best way to enjoy it. There's also a lot of new salad greens, including our favourite, rocket - a plant in the cabbage and mustard family that has a sharp tang to it and just shrieks out "vitamins, vitamins!". It grows wild all over Canada but I've never eaten it there.
I guess this place isn't all that bad after all. And in a week Evan will be here for Christmas, and not long after that Rachel arrives, and I can't wait to share the good things around here with them both.
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