Last week (Sunday to Friday morning) we were in Austria & Bavaria - another of our flying visits to get a feel for the world around us. It left us wondering if we'd been visiting another planet.
I was a little under the weather still from the bug I picked up in Cappadocia, so I didn't get around as much as Ron. We did our usual thing: find a couple of tours to get a look at the area, and wander on our own some of the time.
Monday morning we had a tour of Salzburg city that included a 24-hour city pass that gave us free admission to the tourist places and use of any city bus. Ron used it in the afternoon while I stayed in the hotel room wrestling with the wireless system and sleeping.
Our hotel, by the way, was one of the nicest we've encountered in our recent travels. It was the Best Western Zum Hirschen, just near the railway station. I particularly enjoyed the softest down pillows and the comfiest down duvets I've ever experienced.
Monday night we had dinner and a concert at the Archbishop's castle fortress overlooking the city of Salzburg. This is the view from the restaurant window as sunset approached.
Tuesday we raced into Vienna on the train to see Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Volksoper. We were back in Salzburg again by Wednesday afternoon after walking around Stefansplatz and taking a short bus tour of the downtown area. We liked Vienna, but I noticed the large number of unemployed young people hanging around in the Metro system with their pit bulls and other unfriendly beasts. I also noticed that the stores I visited had very few staff members. I wondered if both situations were the result of a very high minimum wage, which makes it impractical for businesses to hire many staff members. And yet how do you ensure that everyone gets fairly paid? Turkey has a high level of official unemployment, but you don't see a lot of people hanging around feeling sorry for themselves. I think most people keep busy, whether they're officially employed or not, maybe helping Uncle Mustafa at his little shop down the street in return for non-monetary considerations. Strong family and friendship ties here make up in part for the lack of a social safety net.
Back in Salzburg on Thursday we walked around a bit and took a bus tour of the German Alps. Very pretty countryside indeed. And to finish up we went to a dinner concert in a restaurant attached to a monastery (supposed to be the oldest restaurant in Europe, dating from the 9th century or so). We were seated at tables of 8, arranged so that English-speakers sat together, and so did French-speakers, and so on. Our table had a couple from Ireland, one from England, a couple of Americans and us. I was wearing the dress I'd worn to the opera on Tuesday, complete with the string scarf I bought in Cappadocia. We were talking about having gone to the opera, and the English couple said they'd been there, too. And she asked, "Were you sitting in the 4th row of the balcony, with a pillar between you?" We admitted that we had been, and she said, "We were at the end of that row. I thought I recognized that scarf." Once again my 1 YTL scarf got noticed. I really must pick up a bunch more when we're in Cappadocia again next month.
That's the end of our foreign travels for now. For the next couple of weeks we're going to stay close to Izmir, maybe renting a car now and then and going for trips around the area. The weather is almost perfect just now, everything is in bloom, the temperature is ideal for getting out and about, so we need to catch up with things around here. At the end of April we'll be going to Ankara for the confirmation of one of the men from our church - our godson. This will be my first chance to meet the bishop of the Anglican Diocese in Europe, who works out of London. After that we plan to see some of the eastern part of the country, trusting that the troubles between the Kurdish people and the government won't get worse. And finally, when our Turkish daughter Begüm comes back from school in Canada, we'll take her for a tour of Cappadocia and the southwestern part of Turkey. And then it's back to Canada. I wonder what that will be like?
Monday, April 10, 2006
Friday, April 07, 2006
Twilight at 2 p.m.
We did get to Cappadocia to see the solar eclipse. We left Sunday afternoon, the 26th, and got back on the afternoon of the 30th just in time to meet Shadi's partner Jason - here from Rhode Island for a week or so - and do the laundry before taking off for a Sunday-to-Thursday in Austria.
Cappadocia is quite another part of Turkey. Izmir has always been a point of contact with the West. It isn't really very Turkish; Smyrna was a city in the Greek region of Ionia for ever and ever. When the Ottoman Empire assumed control Izmir was opened to Europeans from Britain, Germany, France and Italy. There's been a significant Turkish presence here only since 1922.
Cappadocia is quite another country. It is mainland Anatolia. Its history dates from the Hittites. And its history has been shaped by its geology. Up until about 10,000 years ago the area was being covered with ash from its three volcanoes. Over time the ash has been carved into fantastic shapes - many of them sort of like Alberta's hoodooes. Quite early in human history people found that these structures were soft and easy to dig into, so they hollowed out shelters that evolved into whole cities of homes and even churches. There are also cities dug down into the rock, some as many as 9 stories deep.
We took hundreds of pictures, a few of which are on my Flickr site, and picked up a couple of nice souvenirs that will end up decorating our friends' and families' places if we can bear to part with them.
In Cappadocia many of the people selling things at tourist sites are women who have made what they sell. The first day of touring I walked into a little shelter belonging to a woman who proudly showed me a scarf with a tatted edging. We talked a bit - or she did, and I nodded - about how much harder tatting was than crocheting, which edged most of her other scarves. So what could I do but buy one of the two she'd tatted? And then she showed me how to wear it. The women of that area have quite a distinctive way of wearing their scarves, and when I emerged wearing my scarf properly arranged I got a lot of good-natured kidding from the guides and drivers. But one of the other women in our little tour group got the other tatted one and we felt quite comfortable together.
The next day I found a woman selling the simplest imaginable scarf: pieces of thread arranged into a mesh pattern and joined with dabs of a glue gun. It cost all of 1 YTL - maybe 75 cents. Now I wish I'd picked up a dozen, because a couple of stops later, while I was wearing it carelessly tied around my neck, a French woman came up to me and said "Madame! Comme c'est belle! Ou avez-vous trouvez cette belle echarpe?" Well... I've never been complimented by a French woman on my clothing before! Talk about a moment to treasure.
Anyway, the whole point of the trip was to see the solar eclipse, and we did. And I really don't know what to say about it. It was all I'd hoped and more. A couple of the people in our group had seen one off Madagascar and had come back for more - I can see why. Their help in pointing out what to watch for added a lot to the experience. I didn't know about ground waves - ripples running over surfaces near you as the sun shrinks to a point source and the wave nature of light becomes more obvious. They also showed us how to make a pinhole camera with our hands - as the sun gets really tiny even the circle of your thumb and forefinger is small enough to show its true image on the ground. But they remarked on how different this experience was from their last one, where the darkness seemed to come rushing up at them like a storm. This time the air was hazy enough that it was more like a gradual sunset and long twilight. A long, eerie twilight with no shadows and with sunset colours all around.
A cold twilight, too. None of us expected how cold we'd be. My goodness it was cold! And it took so long to warm up!
That's why, some of my Turkish friends would say, I caught a cold that day. It couldn't have had anything to do with the unfamiliar North American flu germs shared with us by the other members of our tour group. It must have been the cold. So I got back to Izmir on Thursday afternoon with a blocked ear, plugged sinuses, a sore throat, a wheezing chest, and feeling like death warmed over only slightly. But it was worth it.
Earth Observatory has an image of the area taken from the International Space Station at about the time we were at totality. Kinda neat seeing it from above.
Cappadocia is quite another part of Turkey. Izmir has always been a point of contact with the West. It isn't really very Turkish; Smyrna was a city in the Greek region of Ionia for ever and ever. When the Ottoman Empire assumed control Izmir was opened to Europeans from Britain, Germany, France and Italy. There's been a significant Turkish presence here only since 1922.
Cappadocia is quite another country. It is mainland Anatolia. Its history dates from the Hittites. And its history has been shaped by its geology. Up until about 10,000 years ago the area was being covered with ash from its three volcanoes. Over time the ash has been carved into fantastic shapes - many of them sort of like Alberta's hoodooes. Quite early in human history people found that these structures were soft and easy to dig into, so they hollowed out shelters that evolved into whole cities of homes and even churches. There are also cities dug down into the rock, some as many as 9 stories deep.
We took hundreds of pictures, a few of which are on my Flickr site, and picked up a couple of nice souvenirs that will end up decorating our friends' and families' places if we can bear to part with them.
In Cappadocia many of the people selling things at tourist sites are women who have made what they sell. The first day of touring I walked into a little shelter belonging to a woman who proudly showed me a scarf with a tatted edging. We talked a bit - or she did, and I nodded - about how much harder tatting was than crocheting, which edged most of her other scarves. So what could I do but buy one of the two she'd tatted? And then she showed me how to wear it. The women of that area have quite a distinctive way of wearing their scarves, and when I emerged wearing my scarf properly arranged I got a lot of good-natured kidding from the guides and drivers. But one of the other women in our little tour group got the other tatted one and we felt quite comfortable together.
The next day I found a woman selling the simplest imaginable scarf: pieces of thread arranged into a mesh pattern and joined with dabs of a glue gun. It cost all of 1 YTL - maybe 75 cents. Now I wish I'd picked up a dozen, because a couple of stops later, while I was wearing it carelessly tied around my neck, a French woman came up to me and said "Madame! Comme c'est belle! Ou avez-vous trouvez cette belle echarpe?" Well... I've never been complimented by a French woman on my clothing before! Talk about a moment to treasure.
Anyway, the whole point of the trip was to see the solar eclipse, and we did. And I really don't know what to say about it. It was all I'd hoped and more. A couple of the people in our group had seen one off Madagascar and had come back for more - I can see why. Their help in pointing out what to watch for added a lot to the experience. I didn't know about ground waves - ripples running over surfaces near you as the sun shrinks to a point source and the wave nature of light becomes more obvious. They also showed us how to make a pinhole camera with our hands - as the sun gets really tiny even the circle of your thumb and forefinger is small enough to show its true image on the ground. But they remarked on how different this experience was from their last one, where the darkness seemed to come rushing up at them like a storm. This time the air was hazy enough that it was more like a gradual sunset and long twilight. A long, eerie twilight with no shadows and with sunset colours all around.
A cold twilight, too. None of us expected how cold we'd be. My goodness it was cold! And it took so long to warm up!
That's why, some of my Turkish friends would say, I caught a cold that day. It couldn't have had anything to do with the unfamiliar North American flu germs shared with us by the other members of our tour group. It must have been the cold. So I got back to Izmir on Thursday afternoon with a blocked ear, plugged sinuses, a sore throat, a wheezing chest, and feeling like death warmed over only slightly. But it was worth it.
Earth Observatory has an image of the area taken from the International Space Station at about the time we were at totality. Kinda neat seeing it from above.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
What in heaven's name is going on?
Got off the bus on the way home from church this morning and heard the most unearthly drumming and tootling. There, just ahead of me, was a parade of gentlemen dressed in what I assume are Ottoman uniforms. The ones in front were marching with swords, swinging from side to side and looking fierce. Behind them were some equally fierce bell-janglers, then some trumpet and horn players, then some drummers, and finally a guy in the back of a pickup whacking a couple of bass drums. The truck had the web address of our local lokmaci - maker of donuts in syrup given out free in front of homes or businisses in memory of a departed loved one I caught them on video - you can watch a couple of the little segments here.
Now we really must leave to go on our solar eclipse tour.
Now we really must leave to go on our solar eclipse tour.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Bergama
One fine warm day this week we decided to rent a car and head north to check out the area around Bergama, about 100 km from Izmir, to see if we could find any locally-made carpets. We left the highway and headed into the part of the mountains where we'd heard Turkmen shepherds wove traditional patterns.
Almost first thing we got a clue that there were plenty of sheep in the area - this mother and her two lambs so young their umbilical cords were still attached. Mother moved away with great dignity on being photographed. Lambs tried their first gambols - quite successfully, too, if a bit wobbly.
We didn't find any weavers on our way to Bergama, but we settled into a hotel highly (and rightly) recommended by Lonely Planet and stared out the window. This is what greeted us: a full frontal view of the Acropolis.
That evening we walked around the lower city and found a carpet shop - one of several, but the man looking after this one seemed particularly friendly and relaxed. He showed us dozens of carpets, including this and some others made in the area from traditional designs. We were quite pleased that his starting prices seemed to be in our range. We'll be back.
The next morning we went to the museum across the street. This is such a quiet time of the year that we were the first visitors of the day - while we were there another tourist couple arrived, and that was it.
There were a lot of the usual statues and things from the Hellenistic and Roman periods of the town, but there were also a very few Byzantine items. I was struck by how Celtic they looked, including this bit of architectural ornamentation.
Then we went to the Acropolis. Started in Hellenistic times (after Alexander the Great & before the Romans) and renewed by the emperor Hadrian, it's far more interesting to explore than Athens' Acropolis. You can climb over everything and even break your neck if you choose to be careless.
This arch looked down over the city, a monument to the Romans' ingenuity in discovering this simple and elegant structure.
Then we headed to the Aesclepion, an ancient wellness centre. Galen, the 'father of medicine', was born in Pergamon and came back after training at all the best medical schools of the time. He became famous treating his home-town's gladiators. He also worked at the Aesclepion, using both physical and spiritual methods to help heal.
The waters of the healing spring still flow and are still used by local people today as a remedy for whatever ails you.
The Aesclepion still seems to be a good place to live, at least as far as tortoises are concerned. This was the second we saw. He/she was heading straight for one of the healing pools, perhaps looking for some juicy worms or greens or something on the way.
On our way out of town we discovered the carpet weavers' co-op building and took a tour. It was set up to display and sell the local weavers' work - the village women get almost all the proceeds. We saw how they process silk (they raise silk worms here) and how they know the carpets. There were some beautiful designs, slightly more expensive than the shop in town, we thought, but excellent quality. We'll definitely be back.
Tomorrow we're off again, this time to Capadoccia to see the solar eclipse and a bit of the local scenery. So stay tuned.
Almost first thing we got a clue that there were plenty of sheep in the area - this mother and her two lambs so young their umbilical cords were still attached. Mother moved away with great dignity on being photographed. Lambs tried their first gambols - quite successfully, too, if a bit wobbly.
We didn't find any weavers on our way to Bergama, but we settled into a hotel highly (and rightly) recommended by Lonely Planet and stared out the window. This is what greeted us: a full frontal view of the Acropolis.
That evening we walked around the lower city and found a carpet shop - one of several, but the man looking after this one seemed particularly friendly and relaxed. He showed us dozens of carpets, including this and some others made in the area from traditional designs. We were quite pleased that his starting prices seemed to be in our range. We'll be back.
The next morning we went to the museum across the street. This is such a quiet time of the year that we were the first visitors of the day - while we were there another tourist couple arrived, and that was it.
There were a lot of the usual statues and things from the Hellenistic and Roman periods of the town, but there were also a very few Byzantine items. I was struck by how Celtic they looked, including this bit of architectural ornamentation.
Then we went to the Acropolis. Started in Hellenistic times (after Alexander the Great & before the Romans) and renewed by the emperor Hadrian, it's far more interesting to explore than Athens' Acropolis. You can climb over everything and even break your neck if you choose to be careless.
This arch looked down over the city, a monument to the Romans' ingenuity in discovering this simple and elegant structure.
The real treasure of Pergamon, as Bergama was known in ancient times, was its library. When Marc Antony looted it to give to Cleopatra, he took 20,000 scrolls. Parchment was invented here, because the jealous Egyptians stopped shipping papyrus to Pergamon.
Then we headed to the Aesclepion, an ancient wellness centre. Galen, the 'father of medicine', was born in Pergamon and came back after training at all the best medical schools of the time. He became famous treating his home-town's gladiators. He also worked at the Aesclepion, using both physical and spiritual methods to help heal.
The waters of the healing spring still flow and are still used by local people today as a remedy for whatever ails you.
The Aesclepion still seems to be a good place to live, at least as far as tortoises are concerned. This was the second we saw. He/she was heading straight for one of the healing pools, perhaps looking for some juicy worms or greens or something on the way.
On our way out of town we discovered the carpet weavers' co-op building and took a tour. It was set up to display and sell the local weavers' work - the village women get almost all the proceeds. We saw how they process silk (they raise silk worms here) and how they know the carpets. There were some beautiful designs, slightly more expensive than the shop in town, we thought, but excellent quality. We'll definitely be back.
Tomorrow we're off again, this time to Capadoccia to see the solar eclipse and a bit of the local scenery. So stay tuned.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
To Greece and Back
We're back from Greece and wrapped up in Izmir life again. I haven't finished tidying up the pictures on Flickr yet, but I've got more to write about here so I urge you to go there to catch up with what we did and saw: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lesliel. It was great! I like Greece.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Taze! Taze!
This is a picture I've been wanting to get for months. Shadi took it in her first week here. This guy walks around our area every day with a tray of gevrek (called simit in Istanbul - big donuts covered in sesame seed) shouting "Taze! Taze!" (Fresh! Fresh!). He also delivers the mail.
We have a roommate
Life has become even more pleasant the last week with the addition of a young American to our little family.
Shadi Khadivi is a Fulbright scholar, an architect working in New York who was born in New Mexico and grew up in Texas (daughter of an Iranian family). Her Canadian partner Jason discovered my Flickr photos and got in touch a couple of months ago. We emailed back and forth and soon felt comfortable inviting Shadi to stay with us while she found a place to stay here. Then it became clear that this was the right place for her.
Shadi's work here is to document the old houses of the Basmane district, and the people who live in them, through photos and art. It's an "interesting" part of town, not the sort of place tourists feel comfortable in, the home of some of the people who have come here from eastern Turkey to find work. There are still a few pre-1922 houses standing (using the term loosely) there, and there's lots of life in and around them. Shadi discovered the area during an earlier trip and want to get to know it well.
It's good having her around. She's quiet and doesn't get in the way at all. She's also intelligent and interesting. I'm looking forward to learning lots from her.
This last week we've had a couple of chances to explore some of the Izmir we know with her, but she's quickly making friends of her own and going places with them, too. She's also taking Turkish classes every morning, and rapidly catching up with us on the language front.
Another adventure this week was getting my new cell phone working. The ones we borrowed from Begüm's family were showing their age a bit, so we picked up a new one for Ron at the Rome airport, and I found one for me on eBay that Shadi brought with her. It was properly unlocked and equipped to function here outside the U.S., but I couldn't find any way of getting it to work with my Turkcell SIM card. So I went to a phone shop, who sent me to a Turkcell office. The woman at the desk there spoke very fast and responded to my "Slowly please, I don't know much Turkish" by talking louder and faster. Finally she said "Do you have a Turkish friend?" "Yes." "Well come back with him, then. Goodbye."
So the next day my friend Emmanuel gave me a whole morning. We went to another Turkcell place and learned that they couldn't help us - go to Alsancak. Emmanuel checked at another Turkcell place, and they said Alsancak was wrong - go to Çankaya. Then he asked at a phone shop and they told us not to let Turkcell touch the phone - they'd break it for sure. The guy at the phone shop put a SIM card from another company, AVEA, into my phone and it worked properly. So we got an AVEA card and I have a new phone. I could never have done it without my friend Emmanuel. (He spent the afternoon helping Shadi get a bank account and a work permit. What a guy!)
In a few minutes we're leaving for Athens. We need to get out of the country to renew our visas again, so we thought we'd do some sightseeing in mainland Greece for a change.
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