TravelStream™ news feed for member jimmyandkristen on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/jimmyandkristen en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:34:56 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1247763264/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1247763264/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1247763264/tpod.html Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:34:56 -0400 Round the world in 128 days.

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Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

We woke up on our first morning in Dublin absolutely exhausted from the travel day before and with no real plan for what we would or could do in Ireland. I had made the mistake of booking only 1 night in our nice hotel, thinking we would get in early enough to figure stuff out and then we would probably leave Dublin, but that was a silly thought. So I got up early to try and get everything sorted out.

Of course, our hotel was booked for that Saturday night completely, so I had no chance of getting us a room at a reduced or full rate. Actually, most of the hostels were booked, and so I had to find us one that was affordable at the last minute, which was also tough, because Dublin is so expensive. We finally settled on the Blessington Hostel, about a 20 minute walk from our hotel and unfortunately more expensive.

Really, anyone going to Dublin should go to visitdublin.com, because you can really get some amazing deals...

But at least we had a place to stay, so we moved our stuff. Kristen was getting very ancy. We'd come to Ireland for the week, but it looked like we'd be spending half of our time figuring stuff out rather than doing stuff. This is the drawback of travel on the fly. Of course, we've planned plenty of things months in advance that had had their own drawbacks as well...

But not to worry, it all worked out perfectly in the end.

The Blessington Hostel was pretty nice for a hostel and we had a good double room. It was actually the Czech and Slovak hostel of Dublin, complete with Czech Republic and Slovakian flags and also old Czechloslovakian flag in front. The people were very nice, but they weren't all that helpful in offering advice for where to go and what to see in Ireland or what tours/bus routes to take.

So we headed to the Dublin Tourist Information Centre right in the heart of Dublin, which had plenty of information on a number of budget tours that would allow us to see Ireland, if you will. We settled on a four day West and South Tour with Paddy Wagon Tours that was reasonably priced and included all accommadation and entrance fees. It ended up being on the whole the best run tour of our entire trip, and I really have to reccommend Paddy Wagon to those visiting Ireland.

After waking up exhausted at 8:00 and nervous about what the heck we'd do in Ireland we had a great plan by 12:30. The four-day tour also left us one extra day so that if we wanted to we could do another day tour out of Dublin. And we had everything sorted in time to make it to the "free" Dublin walking tour. Even better, on the way to the "tour" we saw a sign for stand up comedy night at The Bankers, a pub just across the street from Temple Bar, a fun place to go out in Dublin...and what do you know, we even had a night plan set!

The tour was "free" in that you paid nothing for the tour, but you were asked to tip the tour guide at the end. We had no problem doing so, it was a terrific three + hour tour.

Our guide Daniel was a student and aspiring stand up comic who had taken the job to keep him in front of people as much as possible for the summer. He was studying Media and Communications, but as a former history major I was very impressed by his Encylopedic knowledge of Irish history and his ability to tell stories and help us learn about the history in a fun and entertaining way. We started outside City Hall with a 20 minute action packed run down of virtually the whole span of Irish history. He apologized to the English. "I'm sorry guys if it sounds like you are the bad guys...but we did have to deal with 800 years of oppression," he explained.

He was also quite self-deprecating with respect to the Irish, often joking that their actions hadn't always been "the smartest in the history of the world."

Right next to City Hall is the Dublin Castle, site of the 1916 Easter Rising. The "Castle," which was the symbolic fortified headquarters of British rule, would be a great place to hold for the Irish revolutionaries. The Rising had been set for Easter Sunday, and then was called off...only to be rescheduled for Easter Monday, which complete surprised the British, who knew everything about the "Rising." Thus they left Dublin Castle almost completely unguarded, with just one guard, the first casualty of the Rising, making it surprisingly easy for it to be taken by the 19 Irish sent to take it, 10 men and 9 women... Yes, the Irish sent 19 to take the most important place in the city, "It was not the best planned rising in the history of the world..." The 19 could have taken Dublin Castle easily, but when they arrived in the courtyard unscathed, they became sure that they were about to be ambushed, so they retreated to City Hall...where they raised an Irish flag, alerting the British authorities. The British easily quelled the Rising, and executed many of its leaders. They did not, however, execute one of the female ring leaders. In the spirit of equality she demanded execution as well...gotta love Irish feminism.

After taking us through the courtyard of the "Castle" he took us outside to show us the only part that actually looks like a castle, which was part of the original castle. The Records Tower had walls 4 meters thick. It had only been escaped from once when it was used as a prison, by a guy who went through the floor and joined one of Dublin's many underground rivers.

Behind Dublin Castle was the "world's prettiest helicopter landing pad" which featured an old Celtic design. there was also a pretty old stable house that had been built before Queen Elizabeth I's visit over 400 years ago to hide Europe's worst slums...a clever trick. In that courtyard there is also the Chester Beatty Library, which surprisingly houses the world's second biggest collection of Korans...where's the biggest? Istanbul...we've been there too.

Our guide thought it was quite funny that the second biggest collection of Koran's was in the almost all Catholic Ireland. I think it's funny that it was donated by an American, though Beatty was adopted as an Irish citizen eventually. Kristen and I smiled when we heard Beatty made his money at the Cripple Creek mine, because one of our favorite songs is The Band's "Up on Cripple Creek." Beatty was actually the only private citizen to ever receive and Irish State Funeral. I slowly was noticing that America and Americans had a different place in Ireland than in many of the countries we've visited...but more on that later.

The tour continued with stories of Jonathan Swift, a visit to a representation of an old Viking settlement and a location where the Dublin City Council, in "not the smartest move in the history of the world," had decided that rather on work on excavating the area had simply decided to pave over it.

We were taken to Temple Bar, the "center of culture" filled with pubs and music venues. It's where U2 got their start. It's really fun at night, but even during the day there are plenty of markets and street performers. Bono and the Edge actually own a hotel in Temple Bar that is quite famous as well. They are playing in Dublin next week and the city is buzzing. Of course that Saturday night the Boss was playing in Dublin and the city was buzzing. Oh, and the Oxegen outdoor music festival was going on with many current big acts including the Kings of Leon, The Killers, Katy Perry, Lady Ga Ga, Lily Allen, etc. etc. etc. The Irish love their music.

Our guide was not the biggest fan of U2, and joked "What's the difference between Bono and God? God doesn't think he's Bono." He was scandalized that Bono had been at Obama's concert because he didn't want Bono representing Ireland anywhere.

Our guide was a funny guy, he kept asking us if we'd ever fallen asleep in Lincoln's arms in DC. I haven't...and I don't think I'll ever try it.

He took us across the River Liffy on the Ha'penny Bridge, a famous crossing in just about every Dublin post card. In a show of reconcilliation, the British had paid for the reconsturction and refurbishing of the bridge...the company they paid to do it? The same as the one that built the Titanic...oops.

The River Liffy seperates North Dublin and South Dublin and is also a big class seperator as well. Though we didn't venture too far from the city centre, North Dublin (which is actually where we stayed) is quite a bit poorer than South Dublin. This dates back almost a thousand years. One of the things that is so fun about visiting Europe for an American is probably that it seems like everything dates back so far, much farther than our country has even existed. The class divisions go all the way back to Viking times when the vanquished Vikings who decided to stay in Ireland were moved to the North part of the city. Near the same time, aristocrats and nobles decided to move to the South. The rest is history.

We visited Trinity College, where if you pass certain amazingly difficult tests in the subject you wish to study you can earn free tuition, room and board, which includes, and I'm not even kidding, a free pint of Guiness each day. The Irish love their alcohol.

Daniel, our guide, did sort of explain that one though... Really, he sort of did. He said you can't really blame the Irish completely. When Elizabeth I was in power, the penal laws made it illegal to practice Catholocism in Ireland. Catholics were persecuted and would face harsh penalties for practicing their faith. In the countryside, you could sometimes get away with it because there was enough space to congregate and not cause too much of a commotion. But in the city that was nearly impossible. So the pub actually became a front for the church, and one that featured a good after mass atmosphere. People would go to the pub to go to church...not to the pub to avoid church. Not to mention it was a very social and communal atmosphere.

In other words...basically British oppression helped the Irish alcohol culture...interesting and ironic...Holding onto religion and holding onto your beer went hand in hand I guess.

Daniel told us a lot about Irish humor, such as showing how some Trinity students had placed a plaque dedicated to a Pastor who had "died" crossing the River Liffy Bridge in 1918...well, that guy had never existed. Of course when the city council wished to remove the plaque the people resisted and held memorials to that poor pastor.

Daniel gave us a taste of Irish Rhyming humor, telling us that any monument in Dublin was sure to have a number of humourous Irish names, such as the "millenium spire," a tall spire constructed for the millenium and finished in 2003...near the river...in the middle of O'Connell street...earning it the nicknames "The Stiffy by the Liffy," and "The Erection in the Intersection."

One of our last stops on the tour was at a postal box. All of the postal boxes in Dublin date back to British rule. When Ireland was granted independence, rather than dismantle the postal boxes with their references to British rule, they just painted them green...Good enough for some I guess.

We ended in a nice park after passing a government building on which the American White House is modelled. In the park Daniel told us one last story of Irish folk lore. He also told us a little about the famine, as there was a statue dedicated to it in the park.

I think the stop at the "postal box" was really representative of the walking tour and of my general impression of Dublin. In terms of general and traditional "attractions," there isn't too much to "see" in Dublin. There's no Parthenon, no Hagia Sofia, no Pyramids. But it is a city with a rich history dating back over a thousand years to Viking times. The vikings actually founded the city...which makes sense when you think about guys with big red beards, Irish or Viking. And really to hear all of that from an amicable Irishmen only adds to the fun. Dublin has its charm, no big buildings, some cobblestone streets (in Temple Bar),old buildings and old Trinity College, etc., but it's really hearing about the history and stuff like that that makes it fun during the day...

Because as we were walking back we could see that one of the Irish girls we met in our first week in New Zealand had been seriously confused. At one of our first stops in New Zealand, Taupo, there had been a number of Irish Pubs, one of which was called "Mulligans." She had stated that she thought it was very funny that there are Irish Pubs everywhere because there are no Irish Pubs in Ireland.

On the way to our hotel the night before we had passed Madigan's. Walking back to our hostel we saw Fitzgerald's, Fitzsimmons', Cassidy's, O'Brien's, Finnegan's, O'Sullivan's, etc. etc. Their names were all spelled out in the same "Gaelic"-like English alphabet as you see on every "Irish Pub" in the States or around the world... I mean, no they weren't all called "Fitzgerald's Irish Pub," but they were clearly Irish Pubs, and later in Temple Bar I did see a place with "Irish" in the name.

But what I really found funny was that there were also a number of "American Bars." Right on O'Connell street was Grand Central, complete with American flags everywhere and a sign saying that it was voted one of Ireland's best bars in 2009. Actually, American flags are in a lot of places. There is Thunder Road in Temple Bar (clearly an ode to the Boss), and later that night one of the busiest places in Temple Bar had a long Irish name, but a huge American flag out front (above a number of other flags) and was filled with American parafanalia. It really just looked like a Boston bar to me, and Temple Bar kind of reminded me of the area around Fenway in Beantown.

There are really a lot of ties between America and Ireland, and we are generally held in a pretty good light in Ireland. I mean, it makes sense on the most fundemental level that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," and boy did we whip those Brits back in the day, but really America was such a major palce for Irish immigrants to go. Other than Dublin and Belfast, it's likely there are more Irishmen in Boston than anywhere else in the world, especially when you consider that Limmerick, Galway, and Cork in the Republic all have populations under 120,000. And when Americans talk about the "Land of Opportunity," well it really was for the oppressed Irish. I mean sure, the Irish joke about Americans like everyone in the world jokes about Americans, but generally we're pretty well liked, and everyone has family somewhere in the States. The American Ambassador's residence is right near the Irish President's Residence, and it is nice and massive, as we'd see on the start of our Paddy Wagon tour the next day.

We stopped at a conveinence store/deli on the walk back where we were reminded that we'd finally made it back to the English speaking world... the guy at the deli was an immigrant from Bangladesh who didn't speak hardly any English and didn't understand that the menu said we got a salad with our sandwich...he gave me a dollup of egg salad... It's good to be back.

I was really excited for our comedy night, but as the Brits would say, I was "knackered," so I passed out for a while.

When it came time to go get some dinner and see the show it was absolutely pouring. It was about a 20 minute walk to The Bankers and I just couldn't take it. We got a cab. It was the first cab driver we've had in months that spoke perfect English. Our Irish cabbie was a good guy, he felt bad for the people at the Boss concert that night who'd all paid at least 80 Euro for a ticket.

He dropped us off near The Bankers and I was so happy that we'd had a real conversation that I tipped him though I don't think that's customary. He also let us off right in front of "Rick's" which claimed to serve "real hamburgers." Not "proper" hamburgers like the Brits, Irish, Kiwis, and Aussies would say, but "REAL" burgers. I was excited.

The burger was decent but a bit of a let down...it wasn't "real" in the sense I was looking for: it wasn't anywhere close to as good as those made in the US of A.

There 4 kids sitting next to us, three of which were clearly American and I struck up a conversation. They were all high school teachers in London, and believe it or not...they were in town to see Bruce...though they had tickets to the Sunday night show. One of the teachers had gone to Middlebury and played lacrosse. Another teacher had taught at NCS just down the street from where I went to high school.

Small world.

Wow, I just refered to the teachers as "kids" because they seemed like "kids my age," but they were all teachers, not kids, and all a bit older than me. Does that mean I'm not a kid anymore?

Nah...

The comedy show at The Bankers was fantastic.

I had my first "real" Guiness. I put that in quotes, but really it's like a totally different drink here in Ireland. Actually it's more than a drink, it's a religion, in which any Irishmen will tell you it takes 119.5 seconds of waiting after the primary pour for the Guiness to settle and then you top it up.

Of course after my first Guiness I was just happy to see a Coors Light on tap! American beers on tap! And they all say the world hates American beers. If American beers are good enough for the Irish they're good enough for everyone...well, maybe that's not perfect logic since the Irish just like to drink, but seriously, if they can sell Coors Light in the land of beer enthusiasts, then you know it's good...and it's good...and light beer, finally.

Then again, I developed a real taste for Guiness during my time here...it just won't be the same back home...

The show had 4 comedians and an MC in a room that held between 50 and 75. It was great, and somehow it all just made it funnier that they all had thick Irish accents. I was sitting at the front of the bar on a stool right at eye level with the comics wearing a bright nearly neon green polo shirt that I bought in Turkey. I am also American. I think every comic worked me into their bit, starting with the MC who made more than a few jokes about the brightness of my shirt.

The first act found out I was American and made a lot of jokes about the Iraq War. People were relatively warm, though some were a bit too political to elicit as good a response as they should have.

He did have two terrific war bits though.

The first was actually about Iceland, where we are heading next, and the fact that Iceland was a participant, albeit a small one, in the Iraq War. Actually, the Daily Show did a hilarious bit on this when Iceland pulled their one soldier out of Iraq. His joke was that Iceland hadn't been in a war since the Viking days.

"Can't you just imagine them rowing down to Iraq? Row Sigmund row! Faster, this war started three years ago! Hmm, maybe we shouldn't have stopped to rape and pillage along the way!"

The Irish are very proud of their Viking heritage, and actually that an Irish king was so strong that he basically said to the Vikings around 1000 AD you can either fight and be killed, or you can come live here in peace, and apparently a lot did, such that some Vikings became more Irish than the Irish.

The first comic also started talking about the evolution of war and what we might be headed for in terms of communication on the battle field. He theorized that in WWI, the average age of fighters had been 28, and in WWII it was 22. So were we headed towards WWIII fought by 16 year olds.

"Can't you just imagine them at the front lines, texting back and forth to their superiors? 'R U OK?' 'Getting shot, not LOL. TTYL.'" After the previous day's overheard conversation I was bawling during that bit.

The second comic was overweight, in his fifties, balding, and wore a plaid shirt. He was a master of self-deprecation, and just generally hilarious. He did a great bit on "Pimp my Ride," but I really liked his reaction to hearing that I was American.

"What's it like to have Denzel for president?"

He did a great explanation of Irish humor when he told us that in Ireland you could say anything and get away with it as long as you follow it up with a wink and a nod.

"You are a serial killer" he said to me, followed by the wink and a nod. We were cool after that.

The third comedian was good and again noticed my shirt.

The last comedian ended with a bit in which he took various supermarket pizza boxes and found the differences between the instructions on the packages. It was hilarious, and that was the mark of a good comedian: taking something ordinary and boring and making it funny, just plain funny. It was a good night.

We walked down to Temple Bar and it was jumping, the streets were packed with people and performers. We decided to check out a bar with live Irish music. When we went in they were singing good Irish songs to a nearly all Irish mid 40s-mid 50s very overweight mostly female crowd that knew all the words. It looked like a bachelorette party, only all the women were too old. It had a very sort of small town ladies night out feel, it was funny.

We walked down the street some more to the American bar/Boston-like bar that was absolutely packed, with Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" playing and WWF on the big screens. (I later saw advertisments for "American Wrestling" in another bar, so I guess some people here watch it, at least on pub nights.

We passed Thunder Roads and headed home, ready for an early start on the Paddy Wagon and our tour of the rest of Ireland the next day.



DISCLAIMER:
I am obviously a million years behind on my blog...we are actually done with Ireland and headed to Iceland tomorrow (July 17th), but I haven't had time to catch up...I probably won't be all caught up until I get home in a week, but I will catch up, I promise. Thanks for your patience, all 3 fans of mine.

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1247588996/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1247588996/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1247588996/tpod.html Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:11:08 -0400 Round the world in 128 days.

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Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Greeting from Dublin, Ireland, where it is cold, rainy, and...of course...lovely.

It got hot in Greece, too hot, especially when there was no wind. Before that we'd been in Turkey, where it was hot, Egypt where it was REALLY HOT, Jordan...um...hot, and Doha...smokin' hot. We just wanted to be cold for a change, just a little cold...

But it took awhile for us to get to that point...

We left our over-priced hostel in Athens (which got us a bed room in a part of the city not filled with junkies...) at around 10:00am. We easily caught the airport bus, and even ran into Elizabeth, a fellow passenger on our sail boat cruise around the islands.

We were joined on the bus by a nice Canadian family taking their grandmother out to the airport to see her off. The mother of the family spotted Kristen's GAP Adventures t-shirt from our Nepal trek and asked her if we'd done a GAP Tour. Aparently the woman's friend owned GAP...which I didn't hear...luckily I wasn't really in the talking mood so I didn't let her know about my frustrations with our latest tour...or our tour of Egypt...or our tour in Nepal...or how I will never ever consider going on a GAP tour again, nor will I ever recommend it...

The family provided a bit of entertainment on the hour long ride. First was when the 10-12 year old younger daughter asked her dad where the Canadian Embassy was after we passed the American Embassy. "I don't know, probably in the basement of the American Embassy!"

I got a good laugh from that one...except we'd probably put them in the attic, it would keep the geographical representation intact and ensure the Canadians got to feel a little heat.

The teenage daughter had a conversation with her grandmother that both made me wish that my grandparents were still around and made me feel old... What I love about grandparents, or just "old people" in general is how they ask very genuine and earnest questions that are ridiculous in their lack of knowledge of today's customs. They are questions from another time. I overheard one of those conversations on the bus...

"Oh man, I miss my cellphone," the teenage girl said.

"Oh, you have a cell phone?" asked Granny.

"Of course, I love my cellphone!"

"And do you use it much?"

"Why yes, every day!"

"Really? Do you call people? Who calls you?"

"I don't call anybody, I never call, I just TEXT!"

As you can imagine, that just added to the confusion... It also made me feel old. Just using a cell phone to "text?" How ridiculous!? I mean, texts can be usefull and helpful, especially in loud places or in places with bad service or when you are busy or need to be quiet...but not all the time. Plus, I felt like this girl could be in some ABC special on "Teens and texting!" Man, I felt old. She and her father had a long conversation about "politics," which meant the school elections...such that I gathered that she was a rising senior or junior, so only 6 or 7 years younger than me...but in such a short time my how things have changed. I guess that's why "old people" (myself included) really have it tough sometimes...

Anyway, our travel day seemed to be going well...no problem finding the airport bus and getting there for €3.20 apiece, sweet. We waited in line and got our bags checked in no problem. Our ticket was on Olympic Airways to London but to get to Dublin we had to change to British Midland Airways because that was the only way to get from Athens to Dublin. Luckily we were able to check our bags all the way through to Dublin, despite the fact that we were technically on two different airlines because the ticket had been booked together. Sweet! We had been worried about that... We had plenty of time in part because our plane was delayed about 45 minutes, but we had a 3 hour layover in London, so we were feeling ok. We hung around the stores and shopping areas of the airport for a while before making it to our gate and through security about a half hour before we were supposed to board according to the screens. In airports outside the states there are much clearer lines drawn between gate areas and eating/shopping lounges. I find it all very strange. But basically you don't actually "go to the gate" until what feels like the last minute, and when you get there you are cut off from food and newsstands. Personally, I don't like it at all and I find it to be very silly...

Especially when your plane is delayed for no reason and longer than the screens tell you!

So though our plane was supposedly delayed until 2:20 (we were supposed to leave at 1:30), 2:20 rolled around and nothing happened...except that they eventually put up on the screen that they would have "more information at 3:30." We were now looking at a 2 hour delay, cutting our transfer time in London to 1 hour, and I was getting nervous and frustrated. Of course they couldn't tell me anything at the desk and only one woman at the desk, who was overworked, could speak any English. Or at least was willing to speak any English... I talked at one guy who responded in Greek...

One woman was furious, speaking heavily accented English (but she was not Greek) because "You bring us all in here to go to the gate early why did you do that there is no food, no water, no place to smoke a cigarette, why did you bring us in early? You can't do that." It would have all been so much better if it was just like airports in the States: there is no divide between the gate waiting area and the "lounge." Quite silly.

Then I asked her to book us on the next British Midlands flight out of London so that we didn't miss it... She claimed that Olympic couldn't do that because it was another airline and that I would have to do that when I got to Heathrow...of course that was a ridiculous lie because the ticket had been booked as a single piece...there's no other way to get from Athens to Dublin.

But finally we did board the plane, about 2 hours and 15 minutes late...of course then we sat at the gate for 30+ minutes. I'm not sure why exactly... we were never told what had caused any of the delay, which of course made it all the more frustrating...

I suspect we may have had to wait for passengers who had been told that we wouldn't be boarding until at least 4:00...and left the "gate area" for the lounge. Ugh, it was all ridiculous.

We finally took off exactly 3 hours after we were supposed to, cutting out our 3 hour and 5 minute layover... But, according to the timing of when we were going to land, we actually would be getting in with about 30 minutes to spare...maybe...who knew...I have no idea how they determine all these ridiculous time tables and time scales, and that's what they are...ridiculous!

So we hoped that our British Midlands flight would be delayed. We prayed that our British Midlands flight would be delayed.

Our British Midlands flight was not delayed...

We asked a stewardess if we could move up to the front of the plance because we had a connection in London and we wanted to be able to immediately de-plane...

"Oh, no you don't need to do that. If you have a connection they will wait for you, and there will be an agent right when you leave the plane to take you there..."

There was no agent when we left the plane...and they didn't wait...

We got off the plane in Heathrow, one of the busiest airports in the world, and didn't see a soul. Literally, it was bizarre. There weren't gate agents...but there also weren't people. Like in the other foreign airports, I guess the divide between places where people actually congregate and the gates themselves left the area completely empty. We rushed through the halls of Heathrow for probably half a kilometer before we got to "Passport Control" where we were stamped into the UK and asked a number of questions about where we were going and why...questions I wanted to get through quick...

We arrived after a long long journey through many empty corridors at the Bitish Midlands flight desk at 6:30...5 minutes before our plane was set to depart...

We were told it was too late...and even worse...the next BMi flight to Dublin wasn't until 9:45...and we'd have to get on on standby. I was furious.

I took my complaints to the Olympic desk in the terminal...only it wasn't actually an Olympic desk... Olympic airways doesn't have a desk inside the terminals! I was dealing with a "handling" agent, who was accomadating and nice...but when he rang Olympic no one picked up. I wanted to make sure that if we couldn't get on the 9:45 flight to Dublin then Olympic would pay for our hotel room. And I was steamed because they'd really screwed up in two ways. First, they had refused to book us on the later flight from Athens, which they had the ability to do and which they should have done. Second, they promised us that there would be an available gate agent and assured us that we would be able to catch our next fight...which was a load of horse manure!

Olympic Airways is terrible.

After a second trip back to the "Olympic Desk" in which their handling agent was actually able to call up and reach someone at the real Olympic Desk on the outside of the airport, I was sure that if we missed the Dublin flight we would be compensated...so at least we had that going for us. I was still very on edge though, because I had managed to book a hotel room in Dublin at 49 euros in a 3 star hotel. I was so excited. Double rooms in hostels were at a minimum 25 euros per person per night, it's an expensive city, and 49 euros for a 3 star was a steal.

The "lounge" at Heathrow was pretty nice and had a terrific bookstore with a 4 for 3 deal and reasonable book prices... I went to town. I know I shouldn't have, but there were many books I knew I would enjoy reading/want to read. I bought Phillip Meyyer's "American Rust" because I liked the story on the back... I am almost done with it and it is terrific. I also bought a massive Robert Fisk book and Doloris Kearns Goodwin's team of rivals... My goal is to finish them before the summer is out.

When I went to check out I noticed a book commemorating Barack Obama's Innaugural, and also included Lincoln's Second Innaugural and something else. I looked up at the man behind the register, and said "I was there, good speech."

The black clerk responded in an accent I couldn't distinguish as West African or Jamacian by saying, "Well of course, he's never given a bad speech! You mean good speech like it got the crowd going or good because of what he said, because he always gets the crowd."

"It was good all around," I said, laughing.

"cause you know he's got that preacher style and that's what does it for him. You know with Obama it's all the wife. She got him into the church, and he's got that preacher style. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, but she made him who he is, she made him the preacher he is. It's all because of her...He's not Chicago, she's Chicago and the church."

"Well, you know you can say that about a lof of dudes, huh?" I said, and we both kind of laughed.

So it's not really the perfect analysis of Obama's charisma, but I did like the idea the immigrant bookstore clerks in London were giving so much credit to Michelle, because she is pretty awesome. To be fair he was a community organizer before he'd ever met Michelle and his charisma was taking him far before she came into his life. But it was still nice to see that our First Lady is an international celebrity as well.

After a long long wait with a pretty nice Italian dinner, we finally made our way to the gate...which was again about a kilometer beyond the "lounge..." We again saw very few people. When we finally got to the "gate" area we actually had to wait and wait and wait to find out which "gate" we were going to. Finally about 5 minutes before we were supposed to board we got our "gate," but the agents didn't arrive for another 10...at which point we still weren't sure whether or not we were getting on the plane...

Of course, the guy at the "Olympic Desk" who would be able to get our hotel situation sorted, was about a mile away and supposed to go off duty around 9:30...so we needed to know if we actually were getting on the plane or not.

I was just fuming. There was something so frustrating about it all, about what seemed so silly/inefficient and inept. Granted, I have had some royally terrible experiences in American airports...but at least, for instance, the gates are not situated a mile away from nice places to sit...and you generally know where you are going long before you have to get there. I think what made me most mad was that we were supposed to be back in "easy" land. I mean, they all spoke English! It was Britain, a western, very prosperous nation. I mean, this was the kind of innefficiency and annoyance and sillyness that I expect in Kathmandu and forgive in Cairo, but for pete's sake we're practically in the States in terms of "culture" and "communication." Ok, well maybe not, but still!

We did make it on the plane at the last minute. The plane left about a half hour late. We landed in Dublin around 11:15.

We took a shuttle into the city with our luggage that had thankfully made it on the plane, and were dropped off about 10 minutes away from our hotel. We got a little lost, but friendly Dublin revelers showed us the way, with garrolous voices and excitement at meeting new people.

We passed Madigan's, where a live band was playing "Sweet Caroline." Were we in Dublin or Boston?

We passed out in our very nice hotel, the nicest place we'd stayed in a while. I mean, it was a real 3 star hotel, sweet. It was about 17 hours after we'd left our Athens hotel when we passed out, looking forward to a fun week in rainy Ireland...


]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1247178675/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1247178675/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1247178675/tpod.html Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:39:25 -0400 Round the world in 128 days.

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Athens, Greece

Greetings from Athens.

So I admit, the blog totally fell by the wayside. I just got so far behind in Turkey and it just got overwhelming. I didn't finish my posts on Turkey until I had been in Greece for over a week, and now I have nothing from Greece.

I think I'm going to skip over it for the time being, and get back in the habit of trying to write a post every few days on what just happened.

It doesn't mean I'm not going to write about Greece, I will, but rather than staying behind I'm going to try to get current again and fill in the 2 week gap later. Greece had its moments, good and bad, and now I think I'm very ready for cold and rainy Ireland, where we head tomorrow. Don't worry, you'll get the Greece story, and I apologize to my "fans," all three of them...

But, in keeping with my new attempt to get back to being "current," tonight as we got off the ferry from Santorini, I overheard a girl telling her boyfriend, "Oh man, I could just go for some chips and guacamole!"

"I couldn't have said it better myself," I interjected, "You must be American!"

Yeah, I am looking forward to some Mexican or "tex-mex" once we get home. The American girl had been away for 11 days and was craving Chipotle, we've been gone for almost 4 months... it's more than a craving... I just keep telling myself these things so that I don't get down about the end of this adventure and the return to the real world (well, sort of, law school doesn't start until the end of August). It's good to keep it all in perspective I guess.

Well, off to Ireland to eat a lot of potatoes, enjoy the rain, dance some jigs, and force down a Guiness or two.

--Jimmy




]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1246243123/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1246243123/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1246243123/tpod.html Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:59:17 -0400 Round the world in 128 days.

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Istanbul, Turkey

Unfortunately the last two days of the Fez Bus did not resemble the days before them. They were incredibly frustrating and tough. But hey, I guess we made it through alive. And despite the problems...there were some funny moments.

I was just so down to be leaving Cappadocia, but I guess I was also excited to be headed back to Istanbul, which is still my favorite city of our trip, or rather, I guess, Sultanhamet is my favorite place in a city.

Most people ride the night bus back from Cappadocia to Istanbul. The Fez Bus actually used to do that, but this year they have a new route passing through Safronbolu, a town in the north/central part of Turkey where many Ottoman houses have been preserved.

Kristen and I discussed the option of taking the night bus back straight from Goreme, but our conversation was relatively short, probably shorter than it should have been. There were certainly some benefits to the Fez Bus, one of which was that it was paid for. It also passed through Ankara, the Turkish Capital, that I was interested in seeing. I knew it wasn't going to be the most exciting place, but I felt like I should at least see the capital city of the country I was traveling through if it was a possibility. Safronbolu sounded nice and we were staying in a bed and breakfast with really really nice owners according to Jeremy, who would still be our guide, so that sounded nice. We knew it would be two long days on the bus, but we just bit the bullet and decided to do it. Turkey is a BIG country, about twice the size of California. LONG DAYS.

Day 1 got off to a horrible start. I pulled out my camera to look at my pictures from the day before. My beloved 12 megapixel camera I had haggled for and bought in Hong Kong, my camera that had even become the subject of a blog post, was broken. The screen was cracked. You could still see most of the screen, but there were cracks all up and down the screen. It still takes the same pictures and does a darn good job of it, but you can't be sure completely of the picture you are taking, and since it is a new camera there isn't even a view finder on the thing. I was devastated, and I had no idea how it could have happened.

I thought and though and thought.

One trick pony...

The only explanation is that for whatever reason I had taken my camera out with me that night. I have a hard case with a long strap that I always loop to my belt and then I stick the camera in my pocket, hopeully secure.

I had left the camera in my pocket when I did the worm, totally forgetting that it was there since I don't even think about it now, it's just always there...which is exactly why I SHOULD have known it was there and ironically exactly why I DIDN'T notice anything in my pocket.

Devastated.

At least it still takes good pictures... At least it had been in the hard case so the screen hasn't disappeared yet, though the cracks are getting progressively worse. Oh my beloved camera.

I sat dejected for many of the first hours of the long long long bus ride. Kristen and I were joined by Bart and Jo, a middle aged couple from New Zealand. Bart was a pilot for Air New Zealand and flew 747s from Auckland to Hong Kong to London to LA and back. They were perfectly nice...

But they got off to a bad start... they spent a long long time complaining about the 4:30 AM call to prayer waking them up...

Believe it or not, in a Muslim country they don't stop praying to that tourists can sleep.

Ok, so it's not the greatest thing in the world for a non-believer...it's also not something worth complaining about...ugg.

Before reaching Ankara we had a stop at the big salt lake in central Anatolia. It was pretty, kind of like the great Salt Lake in Utah.

The landscape of the Cenral Anatolian plain could have been the midwest of the United States. It was mostly flat with some rolling hills and it was all farmland. Large agro-farms it looked like rather than small family farms. You pass miles of those before you finally arrive in the bustling 5 million person city of Ankara.

We had to stop for lunch outside Ankara because there was no where we could easily park the bus within the city.

Bart and Jo insisted that they really wanted Pides. Of course, with the language barrier between the driver, guide and passengers it's not always that easy to set everything up perfectly.

Our new driver, Joshka, was doing his best to find us a restaurant. He found one, jumped out and talked to the owner, then returned to the bus having been told by the owner where he could park.

The restaurant did not serve Pides...Bart and Jo just couldn't understand why Jeremy would just go to that restaurant rather than embarrass or anger Joshka, who had clearly just set something up for us...

It was fine for them to go get their Pides, but Jeremy was probably going to go with the restuarant chosen by the driver.

And we liked Jeremy and didn't care whether we ate Pides or Kofte, so we just settled... Bart and Jo just couldn't understand that... Thankfully they finally just left and got their pides.

The restaurant lacked any English on the menu. The waiter spoke very very limited English. It was clear that the place did not have many English speaking patrons...

Of course, the Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" was playing on the speakers...I guess music is the universal language.

We drove into Ankara heading for a stop at Attaturk's mausoleam.

The language barrier between guide and driver got really annoying...

We spent about an hour driving lost around Ankara before we actually made it to the mausoleam.

The mausoleam was pretty intertesting. It kind of looked like the Lincoln Memorial and Turkish tourists were flocking there like American tourists flock to the DC monuments. It was packed with Turkish tourists.

The Turkish soliders were there to do the changing of the guard, with many Turkish tourists gazing on proudly. I saw a group following the guard as they went to change with a little boy maybe 5 of 6 kicking up his legs to march in step with the soldiers. I didn't realize it at the time, but Turkey has compulsory military service, which is remarkable for a country of its size, or at least that's what I think.

At the mausoleam there is an extensive Turkish History museum that is also really just a shrine to Attaturk. Attaturk is Turkish history, Turkish history is Attaturk.

The parallels to Mao are really quite apparent. One good one is that the Chinese flag has 5 stars representing, according to Frank, our guide in China, the soldier, the worker, the farmer, the student, and the party. Well at the Mausoleum, Attaturk's reverence for the teacher, the producer (worker) and the soldier are displayed. Attaturk predates Mao, so I guess you should really say that Mao is the Chinese Attaturk. But I also couldn't help but think about how our tour guide Frank had asked us in Tianamen Square if there was someone in our respective countries (America, Canada, and New Zealand in our group) whose place in our collective history were similar to Mao. If I'd been Turkish, I would have definetely said Attaturk.

The museum has sections that are devoted simply to Attaturk, but much of the museum is actually devoted to war. Jeremy said he liked seeing the mural that showed the Turkish view from atop the Gallipoli campaign, though I am not actually so sure why.

The whole thing was a little crazy. There were halls lined with murals depicting various important battles and wars in Turkish history, complete with sound effects and sounds of carnage, I guess meant to make you feel like you were really there.

I don't know why anyone would want to feel like they were in war, even if it were the war that gave your country independence or freedom. I don't want to be at Lexington and Concord. Count me out of Gettysburg.

It was like every war museum I guess. Though it did have quite a bit of pure propaganda as well, such as the sign that explained a painting of a Greek massacre that read something along the lines of "historical evidence has proven that the Greeks perpetrated horrific massacres at as stirred by horrible clerics." There were actually massacres of Greeks as well, it went both ways, but of course the museum doesn't say that.

It was just interesting to be at a sight of great significance to Turks. It was interesting to see what they take pride in and to see how ultimately it's similar to what we take pride in. We celebrate our generals. We celebrate Attaturk and Washington, who fought the good fight for our independence and succeeded. And in many ways there's nothing wrong with that.

I just don't like sound effects and murals that appear to celebrate the act of war as much if not more than the outcome of independence for a nation.

But maybe I'm too much of a pacifist.

We got a great view of the changing of the guard as we left the mausoleum around 4:00 pm... with only about 4 more hours left of driving.

It was a LONG day.

We got into Safronbolu around 8:00 PM. There was not enough time to go into town and see the famous houses. In fact, our B & B was way outside town. All I wanted to do was get to work on the blog (the very blog I am over a week behind on right now!), but alas there was no internet.

But Jeremy wasn't kidding, the owners were incredibly sweet and nice. They didn't speak hardly a word of English but they did everything with a sweet smile on their face and gave us a tour of their home. The daughter and the father were the only two in at the time. They made us dinner to have in their quint little garden in the back yard. The B & B was in the Hills above town and there were nice views.

Dinner was good, but the conversation, well sort of the conversation...was better.

Joshka ate with us and he noticed my t-shirt with Chuck Norris on it that reads "Chuck Norris counted to infinity.... Twice!" He goes "Ahh, Chuck Norris! America!"

All of the sudden we'd got Joshka talking and we just couldn't quiet him down. He basically just started listing actors and then asking for confirmation on where they were from.

First he told us that Jean Claude Van Damme was Turkish...he's actually Belgian (the muscles from Brussels).

Then he just started listing action heroes and some more traditional actors.

"De Niro, Sly Stallone, Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood, John Wayne..."

Half the time he would get their nationality wrong.

"De Niro, French!"

He insisted Robert De Niro was French, and you really couldn't talk him out of it.

No one really knew what he was talking about, but if we left the conversation a couple minutes later he'd jump in with "Burce Willis, American" or something like that.

He was a talkative chap.

He was very much like our waiter who spewed out all the English words he knew.

We asked him where Azerbaijan was on a map, because we weren't sure whether or not it bordered Turkey.

"Azerbaijan? Yes. Denmark...Sweeden...Australia...Mexico...New Zealand."

And then he just continued to name the names of countries he knew the English name of. It was really quite funny and he was quite excited to show off.

We were able to learn that he had a kid who was 6 at home. But that's about all we actually learned from Joshka that night. We never did find out exactly where Azerbaijan was on a map...

The next day was going to be a long one back to Istanbul. According to the schedule, we weren't going to get in until about 7:30 PM after leaving Safronbolu around 10:00 AM, so that we'd have some time to see the Ottoman houses there.

The last day of the Fez Bus was poorly planned and terrible. And the brochure...well it wasn't even close to accurate.

According to the brochure, we would leave Safronbolu at 10:00 and go to Amasra, a town on the Black Sea Coast, for lunch. After Amasra, we'd head to a beach on the Black Sea for a two hour stop. From there we'd head to Istanbul and get in at 7:30. There would also be the option of whitewater rafting along the way. That is what the brochure told us to expect from the day in terms of timing and activities.

We wanted to leave Safronbolu as early as possible, because we were all ready to get back to Istanbul. According to Jeremy, we were actually supposed to leave at 11:00, because the trip to the beach on the Black Sea had been cut out. The beginning of the year training trip had revealed the beach to be really slimy and scummy, so they had cut that out. Whitewater rafting? Well, that wasn't in the plans...Jeremy had never even heard of that as an option...that was not in the plan. The brochure was blatantly wrong.

In order to get to Istanbul earlier, we asked to leave the B & B as early as possible, like around 8:00. It was about 20 or so minutes to the town of Safronbolu (part of the reason we hadn't seen the houses the night before), so we ended up getting there about 8:30 because we'd left a little late.

The town was nice. It was "cute." There were old houses and narrow cobblestone streets.

Most of the stores weren't open yet thought...the whole point was to go into the old markets for hand made goods and toys, but most of the stuff was shut down, obviously. So we walked and walked and waited for some stuff to open.

Finally we did get to see a few nice stores with hand made toys and other crafts. In one store there looked to be some more mass produced items, and that store was quite funny. In Safronbolu for 60 lira you can get a "Kouboy Biblo" figurine. You can also get Cowboys vs. Indians figurines and American Indians vs.Buffalo figures. You can even get an aboriginal action figure. It was really quite funny.

We were pretty done and ready to go around 9:45, an hour and fifteen minutes earlier than Jeremy's schedule had us leaving and even fifteen minutes earlier than the brochure had us going... we were feeling pretty good about our timing...we shouldn't have.

From Safronbolu we drove straight North to the Black Sea coast town of Amasra, which was kind of quaint. There were no foreign tourists from what we could see and almost no one seemed to speak English. We walked through one of the markets quickly, mainly Jeremy's attempt to kill a little bit of time (about 15 minutes) because we were so early for lunch, and then we went to this terrific fish restaurant. The restaurant brings all you can eat small fried fish, not much bigger than sardines. Some are big enough that you have to snap off the head and then be careful about the bones. Some are small enough you can just eat everything. Some are in the middle such that you just eat below the head and don't have to worry about the bones. Those are the best. I probably ate 35 of those little suckers at that meal. Yum yum.

Of course, when we finished our hour long stop, given that we'd cut two hours and 15 minutes off the brochure's schedule (which included an hour in Amasra) we assumed that it would be about 4 and a half hours to Istanbul, putting us in around 5:30, at the most.

WRONG.

Jeremy told us it would take about six hours from Amasra and that we should be getting in around 7:00.

It made no sense at all. Or rather, apparently, the brochure made no sense whatsoever in terms of timing.

And, in fact, Jeremy's estimate was an underestimate. We did run into traffic outside of Istanbul. They closed down one of the two bridges over the Bosphorus and allowing the city to span two continents, but we didn't even reach the start of that traffic jam until about 7:30. With the jam, which was unforeseeable of course, we didn't get into Istanbul until almost 9:00 O'Clock!

And, while the itinerary on the brochure had included a two hour stop at the beach and even whitewater rafting if you wanted it, our long long day of roughly 11 hours from leaving Safronbolu had included a one hour lunch stop. Don't get me wrong, it was a good lunch stop, but it wasn't worth not taking a more direct route or not even going on the two day trip from Cappadocia altogether.

And it had just been so poorly planned, because if you actually wanted to get to Istanbul at any decent hour, you'd have to leave Safronbolu so early that nothing was actually open (and the night before you were bound to get into Safronbolu too late to visit the cool part of town anyway). If we'd left Safronbolu at 11:00 like Jeremy had wanted, then we would have gotten into Istanbul at 8:30 without traffic! It wasn't at all like what the brochure promised and it was poorly planned which just made it worse. On a map we could also see that the Amasra detour had cost us many many hours because we had to drive almost the whole way back to Safronbolu to get a road that took us in the direction of the highway back to Istanbul. That highway went directly from Ankara, so Safronbolu wasn't even close to it.

The whole thing was exhausting and infuriating. It was just terrible. To just get something so completely contrary to what you pay for is very frustrating. I let Fez know in my feedback form that No, I would not be recommending Fez Travel.

I read another Mike Gayle book on the bus, "Mr. Committment," that wasn't bad, but I was still just so stressed out about how far behind I was on the blog (I am STILL stressed out about how far behind I am on the blog...I don't even want to say where I am right now...) that those days were very painful.

Our last 48 hours in Istanbul were largely devoted to the blog and my attempts to catch up and also devoted to ensuring that all of my photos were uploaded somewhere online (though I know I need to catch up on blog post photos...ugg) so that I wouldn't lose them all if something else bad happened to my precious camera.

But that doesn't mean that I don't still have some stories to tell.

Because when we had been in Istanbul the first time, we'd had our full free day on a Monday. The Hagia Sofia museum is closed on Mondays. Luckily, this time we were back on a Tuesday, and that was, of course, our first stop on the docket.

In my internet obsessed state though, I did check my e-mail that morning before leaving. Two teenage girls walked in while I was on the computer and I overheard one say to the other "Oh, Cricket, that's just like baseball for British people."

"So, where in the States are you from?"

I miss baseball, and I do like meeting Americans...

I learned that they were both from Minnesota. Among other things they were planning to go to Cappadocia, so I started telling them how fun it was and how they should rent motorscooters. I was considering whether or not to tell them about Fatboys, but they did look pretty young, I wasn't sure though, and as far as I'm concerned from 18-25 it can sometimes really be anybody's guess.

Or maybe 16 to 25...

"Um, motor scooters sound fun, but we're with a group so we don't know if that's really in the plans or anything."

"Oh cool, like a school group or something?" I knew they were at least still in school, high school or college. I suspected high school, but if I'd said that and they weren't it would have been really embarrassing on both ends.

"Well actually no, we're doing the M word."

"Yeah, you can't even say it around here or you'll get in trouble"

"The M word?" I asked.

"Uh, yeah...we're with a missionary group."

"Oh, that's cool," I said...though I didn't really think it. "Oh so how many people in your group and stuff and, how old are you guys?"

"Oh I'm 18."

"Yeah, and I'm 16, but we're really pretty all over the place, like one guy's 27 and some other people are in college."

"Oh, ok, so what exactly are you guys doing?"

"Well you know, we have to be sort of careful because we're really not supposed to be here, but you know, we're just doing our best to learn all about the culture and talk to people and stuff, you know," the 18 year old...who looked younger than the 16 year old...replied.

"Yeah, like the other day we just had like a 40 minute talk with this guy in the Blue Mosque you know doing our best talking about and questioning him about Islam and stuff, I mean yea," the 16 year old replied.

I can't remember how I ended the conversation, but I was really kind of boiling.

I don't know that much about missionary work, except that I'm generally unopposed because it seems to me that the majority of missionary work seems focused on humanitarian issues, even if there is an undercurrent that hopes to convert those who it helps. Doug, one of our fellow travelers in Nepal, was the son of missionaries and worked for a missionary organization. We passed a school in Nepal that his organization funded and ran for underprivileged Nepali children.

But going into someone else's country, going into someone else's mosque, and bombarding them telling them their religion is wrong and yours is right, well that just seemed ridiculous to me. And I recognize that that is a central component of being a "missionary" and in fact what many missionaries did and have done through the years, that is the point, but I think never before had it just made me so mad.

It was probably because I was talking to a 16 year old American. I have learned more in the last 7 years than I did in the first 16. I have probably forgotten more in the last 5 than I learned in the 18 before it. I just don't understand how at 16 someone has an understanding of the world that allows them to travel 5000 miles and tell people who have been born and raised with a different belief system that they are wrong.

Of course, my confusion is also part of why I actually wouldn't have too much of a problem with a missionary trying to convert me. I haven't "found God" and I don't have "faith in a higher power," at least I don't think. I lack a moral code based on religion, which I have been told means I lack a true moral code. I remember a conversation I had with a devout Christian at Stanford Law Admitted Students Weekend when he told me that God had to exist because if people stopped believing in God they'd stop believing that they were being judged, they'd ignore responsibility and the world would fall to pieces. I disagree with that, I think there's such a thing as morality that exists outside of fear of god, or even of fear of not surviving (as Thomas Hobbes might argue), but maybe I'm in the minority.

Nevertheless, I do get the idea of helping people "find God" in order to allow them to live a better life, to enjoy life, and to live by a moral code and standards that make the world better.

But Muslims have found God...and it's the same God that Christians and Jews worship. Yes, the exact same one.

That was definitely highlighted in the Hagia Sofia, which apart from being gorgeous and spectacular reinforced many of my beliefs in how we are all fundamentally alike and how the idea of using religion to split us apart is silly and altogether terrible.

The Hagia Sofia was built as a Byzantine church between 522-527 A.D. It's remarkable to think how people so long ago managed to create the building's massive dome at its center. The inside was beautifully painted with frescos and mosaics, and though, unfortunately it's all under renovation right now, the inside is fantastic. After the fall of Constantinople, the church was converted into a Mosque. Because there is no iconography in Islam, the frescos and mosaics were covered with plaster, but they were not destroyed, there was no need for unnecessary destruction of the works of other people of the book. Large circular calligraphy panels were placed around the former church and the marble of the floor was covered with carpets. In 1934 Attaturk decided that the place could neither be a church nor a mosque, that its heritage could not be singularly defined, and thus it was turned into a museum. They pealed off the plaster and revealed the beautiful images below, many of which were almost perfectly preserved.

When we went to visit there was a long long line. I went up near the front to see what the deal was and a tour guide with an official badge told me that we could skip the line, he would buy our 20 lira tickets for us with our money, and then we'd only have to pay him 10 lira apiece for a guided tour. We'd have to wait a bit for others, but it sounded like a great deal. I gave him 25 at the end with a little tip because he did a very good job.

We were joined on the tour by 4 kiwis with little knowledge of Islam or of the history of Istanbul. Our tour guide was patient, but he definitely needed to fill in a number of things for them that Kristen and I already knew.

He gave us a good tour of the inside and pointed out all the main points of interest on the first floor. My favorite part was when he took us to the alter at the far end of the cathedral/mosque.

In Eastern Orthodoxy, prayer is supposed to be conducted in the direction of Jerusalem, hence the church had been built such that it was perfectly facing Jerusalem. When the church had been converted into a mosque, there was a slight problem. In Islam you are supposed to face Mecca. Well from Istanbul the direction of Mecca is only 7 degrees off the direction of Jerusalem, so the alter was moved a slight 7 degrees to the right. Our guide told us that that's how he likes to think of the differences of Islam and Christianity: there are only 7 degrees of separation. Tell that to the 16 year old missionaries....

It really seemed like the perfect metaphor to me though, and nicely representative of the actual similarities between all religions. Ultimately, it seems to me that true religion is and should about ascribing to a belief system and a faith that gives one's life meaning and guides one toward a happier and healthier existence. In that way, all religions are fundamentally similar, and all people are fundamentally similar. As I said I felt earlier thinking about stuff in the Blue Mosque, our lives are driven by how we rationalize our faith and how we come to believe that we have meaning in our world. In that sense, whether Christian or Jew, Muslim or Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist, or even Agnostic, and possibly Rastafarian, we are all the same. I really just wish we could all figure that fact of life out.

The dual religiosity of the Hagia Sofia is just so refreshing. Originally, the museum's curators had wanted to remove the large boards with the names of Muhammad and the 4 rightly guided Caliphs in Arabic calligraphy around the room, but the circular pieces wouldn't fit through the door. Thank goodness they weren't removed. Now you can look up at a fresco of the Virgin Mary painted just above the calligraphy of Muhammad's name in Arabic. The two most popular religions in the world that are too often placed in competition with one another are seen in concert. It's just great.

The top floor, which our guide left us to explore on our own, offered great views around the church/mosque, and some of the best preserved mosaics. Out one window there was a terrific view across the square to the Blue Mosque.

The Hagia Sofia is being renovated because next year Istanbul will be the "cultural capital of Europe" (even though Turkey isn't in the EU...) so they are working hard to clean up and do maintenance work on the building. Unfortunately that meant the main hall was jam packed with scaffolding. It certainly didn't diminish the splendor though, and now I just have an excuse for why I need to go back and see it again.

We left the Hagia Sofia and I headed for the internet cafe...of course...but the day's festivities did not end despite my many hours of blogging.

When we had purchased a rug two weeks earlier, Abdullah, the guy we bought from, had told us to come visit when we got back to Istanbul. Since, among other things, the rug hadn't arrived yet, we decided to pay good old Abdullah a visit.

By the way, you can see a picture of Abdullah with his picture of himself and Bill Clinton here: http://www.newyorkshoppingdiary.com/article/41.

Well, Abdullah wasn't in, but his partner, whose name I never got, was. He sat to have tea and a chat with us. First he told us that though the rug was supposed to arrive in 5 days, it hadn't because he'd made a mistake and it had just been shipped... Of course it still hasn't arrived and I'm quite nervous...

But anyway, we were chatting and I told him about our experience at the other rug factory, where a silk on silk carpet had cost 10 times what we paid.

"Yeah, I remember you, you got very good price on carpet," the man said, "If you want I will buy carpet back in 1 year for twice what you pay. I don't know why Abdullah made that deal, we made nothing on that sale, He must have bad day or something."

Now I know that if the carpet really were silk and silk, pure silk, then we did get the deal of a lifetime. Of course...I'm now almost sure it probably wasn't pure silk and silk, and I'm worried its never going to arrive. Ugg.

But anyways, the man looks at me and he goes, "You know, I have a very interesting proposition for you."

I didn't want to buy another carpet. I shouldn't have listened to the proposition. I did though...oh well.

According to the man, he has a store in Carmel. When he imports rugs into the US he has to pay a 45% tax on the price determined by some Turkish rug board. That price is very far below the sticker price, of course, because rugs are like cars, you never pay the sticker price. He reasoned that Abdullah had sold me the rug so cheaply because for every hundred dollars of a purchase made and sent to the US duty free (and every US citizen can bring in 3 rugs duty free), the store was allowed to import $1000 of carpet duty free. It was all complex and confusing.

But here was his proposition, which he said would more than pay for the other rug I bought:

He said he could tell I was an honest man and that I would do what I said I would do. He brought out a 6 by 9 "silk on silk" carpet that was absolutely spectacular. It was just beautiful, whether silk on silk or not. It had a sticker price of $44,000 dollars. It's "real" price determined by the Turkish board was closer to $25,000 dollars.

The man wanted to get the rug to California, but he wanted to avoid paying 45% of $25,000 in taxes.

So what he wanted to do was "give" me the rug for a year, and in a year he would buy it back. Why would he need to buy back a gift? Because in order for me to take the rug with a receipt and everything, I would have to pay the value-added tax on rugs sold in Turkey. Because I had already spent a certain amount, that would be deducted from the value added tax that I would pay.

For $3900 I could walk out with a silk carpet with the sticker price of $44,000 dollars. (He showed me the sticker itself.) Then I could take it home, keep it for a year, and after a year I could sell it back to him for $7800. A year waiting period would have to occur to avoid taxes in some other way. How would he know that I wouldn't sell the rug for far more than $7800? Well, because I was an honest man and it was his rug that he was giving me. How would I know that he'd buy the rug back? Because it was his rug and he could make a boatload of money on it. How did I know that it was silk? "Look at it, feel it, its silk, you can't fake silk!" I told him they'd figured out how to make cheeseburgers out of vegetables, you can fake anything! How would I put down $3900? "Well, just charge it, even with all of the interest on your charge card, you will still make money when I buy back my rug!"

"It's a deal you cannot refuse," he told me.

It did seem pretty good, too good to be true, which is part of the reason I definitely didn't take it, but not before I, of course, called my father and discussed it with him. His first response was pretty good, "Come on, rug dealers are like used car salesmen!" (Sorry to all of the rug dealers and used car salesmen out there reading the blog...all none of them...)

I came back in from my phone call and told the man that it just wasn't going to happen.

"You westerners are too skeptical, I marry an Australian, I know," he told me. "But here in Turkey, in the Middle East, things are more different, you know. People work by handshake, and by feel and I feel good that you will not steal my rug. People work on trust, but you Westerners are too skeptical. Your father cannot see this rug, he cannot know. You see it, you feel it, you know, you cannot refuse."

I refused.

It was hard, I really would have liked to make $3900 for doing nothing...he claimed the rug would be delivered right to my doorstep...just like the other rug I bought...which still hasn't arrived.

Of course he also told me I could walk out of the store with the rug right then and there... It would have been too much of a hassle to carry though anyway....

I mean the rug was great, and if it was silk on silk then man, what a deal if he didn't come back and buy the rug. What a deal for something I didn't need and something that is over priced to begin with. It's a rug...it's something you walk on and possibly spill red wine on, $3900, whew, think of what else you can do...but I guess they are just so pretty... and they are handmade, so given that you're paying next to nothing for the actual labor costs...then again it could have been made in a factory in China.

Oh man, but if it had been silk on silk, oh jeez, so much money.

I'm still worried about the other rug I bought, and I still wonder if it really is a silk on silk rug made in the Kayseri region. I sure hope so, just as I hope it actually arrives in the mail like it's supposed to...jeez louise.

It was fun to be in there talking with this guy trying to do shady deals, etc. etc.

"$3900 too much? I give you smaller one, show him smaller one," he said, and then brought back out the calculator, "This one only $1800."

"Come on, it's just not going to happen, that last rug was the biggest single purchase of my life and I'm not going to do it again."

"Well it's going to happen sometime, and here I buy back my rug in a year, we both win. You get your money and I don't have to pay taxes."

"Not going to happen, sorry."

"Ok, well you think about it and if you change your mind we do the deal."

It was about an hour and a half process. I apologized to Kristen for how long it had taken. "Oh no, that was great, that was so much fun!"

Haha, why is it that sometimes the most ridiculous things that happen when traveling are the most fun. I could have been a borderline rug smuggler! Forget law school, I'd just go back and forth between Istanbul and home.

Of course, that was maybe the best thing, he said he knew I couldn't lie because I was going to be a lawyer... "You can't lie, it is illegal. And I know you, I see you, I know you will do the right thing." Can't lie because I'm a lawyer, Ha! This guy really was shady and crazy!

Oh man, it was an entertaining final afternoon at the Grand Bazaar, much more fun than typical shopping. I also loved how he attributed my refusal to my Westernness and his certainty that the deal was perfect to his Middle Eastern ways. Of course, when I'd bought the carpet our bargaining had ended when I quoted a price and Abdullah shook my hand. Maybe business really does surround the handshake. Actually, I know it does. I never did see Abduallah, but oh well, I'll be back in Istanbul some time I'm sure.

I spent most of the afternoon blogging, but we did go out for one last incredible Turkish dinner. We went to a typical doner kabob place where I ordered Iskender doner, which is where they serve the kabob on top of pita bread doused in yogurt with red sauce. If you buy doner kabob other ways it will not come with the yogurt sauce. It was so good, and the guys at the restaurant were very excited that we knew something that wasn't even on their menu but that they all clearly thought was a specialty. I licked the plate clean.

It was one final beer on the roof deck looking at the lit up Blue Mosque and the Sea of Marmara before we went to bed, looking forward to new adventures and Greece the next day...of course that is if we ever woke up.

Turkey was exhausting and we were at the point in our trip where we were just worn out, tired and missed home. Luckily though, some tough final days had not stopped us from having great times in Turkey and, at least on my part, coming away with a desire to go back again (I would love to go back to Cappadocia and do all the hikes and everything, among other things). Unfortunately, we'd also be leaving Turkey a few pounds heavier, all of which were gained by me, because Kristen remains skinny and beautiful always..., because the food was so good! Ahh, of course I was just looking forward to a Greek Gyro...

Eating your way through countries is the best way of doing it, we successfully did that in Turkey, and we went to bed dreaming of doing it again in Greece... yum yum yum.

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1246219571/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1246219571/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1246219571/tpod.html Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:34:46 -0400 Round the world in 128 days.

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Goreme, Cappadocia, Turkey

A big night of belly dancing and real dancing did not slow us down one bit on our first full day in Cappadocia. And what a day it was.

Goreme is home to an amazing "open-air" museum consisting of almost 20 Byzantine Churches carved into the rocks of Cappadocia, the oldest of which dates back to the late 11th century.

That was stop one for the day. The "open-air" museum is located about a kilometer outside the center of Goreme, so we had a nice walk there, passing fields with horses and interesting rock formations. It was all beautiful and we were excited to be in the landscape that looks so cool in photos.

The open-air museum is not to be missed, but it is also unfortunately not missed by a single tour bus. The place is packed with tours and tour guides. The key is to eavesdrop while they describe the cool stuff you are going to see inside the churches and then run into the actual churches before the tour group goes inside. It is an art that Kristen and I have not yet perfected.

From the outside, the churches look like, well, rocks. On the inside though there are amazing frescos and arched ceilings and domes cut into the rocks. It's hard to think of the domes being put in today with modern tools, amazing still to think of them being created with chisels hundreds of years ago. The churches are all in the form of a cross imprint in the Byzantine style within the rocks.

When you go in, head to the right and do the loop that way, because if you go in that direction the "dark church" will be your last or second to last stop.

The dark church costs an extra 8 lira, which is annoying, but Kristen and I decided that we probably wouldn't be back in Cappadocia any time soon and we should just bite the bullet.

Good choice.

It's called the "dark church" because almost no light makes it into the alter. Thus, the frescos have been perfectly preserved. And they are spectacular. We got really lucky in there because there was an English speaking tour guide explaining the various paintings all over the ceiling.

I don't think I can properly put into words how incredible the ceilings look, except to say think of the many shapes and arches created in the top of a church or cathedral or other inticrately created building. They are all there inside each of the churches of Goreme...only you are looking at rock, standing in rock.

The depictions of Jesus were quite interesting. He was definitely white. He had a thick beard, which was actually partially parted down the middle, so that his goatee hung off his chin in two sections. It was kind of goofy looking, but every picture of Jesus had the same double beard. His hair was pulled back, but a stretch of it came out of the middle of his forhead. Think a widows peat, only it wasn't a peak, it was more like a plateau. I don't think I've ever actually seen a person whose features matched those of Jesus's figure. Interesting as well was the uniformity of Jesus's depiction; every single picture of him had the same basic qualities I am describing.

The dark church ended up being the highlight of a very good day, which was really quite surprising. It was just that good. I wish I could have taken pictures or something, but obviously you aren't allowed to...which is what has allowed it to remain so pristine. I haven't been to the Sistine Chapel, which Kristen says I would love if I liked the dark church. At the same time, she said the dark church is like a mini version...carved into a rock...really cool.

After the open air museum we walked back to town to pick up our...motor scooters!

I love motor scooters.

I want a motor scooter.

Ok, I actually want a motorcycle. But motor scooters are under rated.

The guy at the motor scooter/ATV was kind of like the paragliding guys...he looked like exactly the kind of dude you could rent ATVs from anywhere. He had a short beard that was perfectly manicured to have little gaps in it. There were vertical stripes throughout the whole beard... It was not the coolest look...though I'm sure he thought it was all the rage.

Actually, we didn't know what we wanted. Hayden told us that quadbiking/ATV riding/Four-wheeling, whatever you want to put it, in Cappadocia was the very best thing to do in all of Turkey. We felt like we sort of had to take the guided ATV tour, which lasts about two and a half hours. But we also wanted to tootle around the rest of the region, and I just love motor scooters, and we had all day.

The ATV guided tour was best done at sunset. They would take us to various valleys and spots and then up to the perfect sunset spot above the town of Goreme. It started at 5:30...It was about 12:00. That sounded pretty good, but we had all day.

So we, of course, did both.

We got some motor scooters, one for Kristen and one for me, which surprised the guys at the shop, they shought we'd just share one, and we rented them for 4 hours. It seemed like a long time, but they were really just our form of transportation.

The guy drew out a long route for us on a little map, which turned out to be pretty terrible, and sent us off in search of various special spots in the region in "North Cappadocia." It was going to be perfect because the next day we'd be doing the "South Cappadocia" tour with a group the next day.

So it was "Wolverines, Go" part two (see the entry from Pohkara, Nepal).

Kristen and I headed out of town in our sweet two person motor scooter gang named the Wolverines in honor of the television show Scrubs. We headed out of town not exactly sure where we were going, armed with a map that was not to scale, and, we soon found out, didn't actually make much sense at all.

But that didn't really matter. We just tootled around on the scooters, which had a top speed of about 75 Kph, which felt nice and fast for both of us. We didn't really find anything we were looking for at all actually for the first long portion of the ride. But the whole area was beautiful, farm land, rock formations, towns with rock houses. It was a great ride.

One of the spots we were supposed to check out was the "Camel," a rock formation that looks like...well...you guessed it...a camel.

We got into this valley on the scooters that looked, for lack of a better way of putting it, just so Cappadocia-like. It was full of the rock formations that look like fully formed extra large hardened drip-castles that you make at the beach when you are a little kid. The road was so cool that I just kept stopping to take pictures of the road itself. I'm not sure the name of that "valley" but near the end of it there was a little parking lot and the "camel" was there. Success! We had actually made it to one of our "spots" on the map that we were headed for. And, of course, we really had no idea how that had happened.

Past that great valley there was a turn off to the left and you could start climbing the hill above the valley, so, even though we really had no idea where the road went, we obviously took the left. We made it up to a bluff with a great view over the valley we had just driven through and a great view of all of Cappadocia. It was outstanding.

We continued on, unsure of where we were going, just following signs to semi-random spots on the map. Only we got lucky again. We made it to a really nice fairy chimney spot with famous cylindrical rocks complete with little hats of rock slabs lying on top of the cylinder. The spot is in a lot of post cards. You can also see the now snow capped volcano off in the distance that played a major role in shaping the region's geology.

We knew we were in a good spot in part because of the parking lot and the shops and the tour buses. But I have decided there is a better measure of whether or not you've arrived in a place of "importance." There was a camel on the side of the road and if you wanted to you could sit on the camel and have your picture taken. If there is a camel picture spot then you really know you are in a place of importance. At the Goreme open -air museum, a terrific UNESCO World Heritage site (which I didn't think was necessarily worth mentioning earlier) there is a random camel that you can get your picture taken on top of...who knows, maybe those Byzantines were big camel fans, it's not out of the question.

We continued on to the town of Urguchup, which was kind of similar to Goreme. There were fewer hotels though and more "real" rock homes. It looked like we were in a real-life version of the Flintstones. People really do live in rock cave homes and park their trucks and BMWs and etc. in rock cave parking car ports. It's really funny.

We had no idea where to go and I slowed up too much in the middle of town, getting whistled at by a traffic cop. It was the first sense either of us had that the roads we were speeding around on were policed or anything.

We tried to go up and around this "mountain" to a "view point" we saw sign posts for, but we never made it. Instead we just did a big circle around the thing and found ourselves in the center of town with the angry traffic cop again... Oh well.

We made it out of town and saw signs for the Rose Valley. The Rose Valley look-out point is really the best place to watch the sunset in Cappadocia. The rock formations of the rose valley are...surprise surprise...rose colored, and the view of the red sunset with the red rock in the forground is supposed to be fantastic. So fantastic in fact that you have to pay money to get to the Rose Valley look out point after 6:30 PM.

Of course, it was about 3:00...so we didn't have to pay.

The view ain't bad during the day either...

It was great. Cappadocia was just so beautiful.

At the lookout point there was a guy selling the same caramel/seseme seed encrusted peanuts that we'd bought earlier on the Agean Coast. They are amazing. We snapped up a bag immediately when we saw them, before we even made it to the look out point.

More riding around brought us back to the rental place content but tired a little before 4:00 PM. We'd been scootering for 3 and a half hours. We'd thought we only needed a 2 hour rental, but apparently the 4 hour rental had really been the right mood.

But, of course, we were exhausted and we'd seen a lot. We decided to take a short nap before our 5:30 ATV riding tour...

A cave is a great place to nap...it's dark and cool...it's perhaps too good for a nap...

"Kristen, wake up!"

"Why?"

"Because it's 5:31!"

"Oh Shit!"

Apparently I'd set my watch alarm for 5:00 AM, not 5:00 PM. Such a typical screw up. We jumped out of bed and sprinted down to the ATV office, arriving at 5:37.

To our delight Phoenix and Jess were there. We had told them that we intended to go ATV riding and when they'd checked in at the office and been told there were two other Fez Bus people on the tour. They'd kept dancing until 4:00 AM the night before and slept in until 1:00 PM...but they were also staying 5 nights as opposed to our 3. We were quite envious.

To our dismay the group was 9 people...

There were 7 girls and 2 guys. Someone asked the ATV rental guy if there would be a guide at the back to make sure people were ok...of course there wasn't going to be so he asked me to bring up the rear and make sure everyone was ok...I didn't want to but I felt guilty for having arrived late...So I, of course, got suck with the job... oh well.

The two and a half hour tour started with us doing a couple laps around town...Pretty boring and not really the off roading we'd been expecting.

Then we went off into the bottom of the Rose Valley though, looking up at the look out point we'd been to on our scooters earlier that day.

In a group of 9 you move quite slow and I was actually a bit disappointed. On the scooter we had had total freedom and had topped out at 75 kph... For the first part of our ATV ride we were being passed by kids on bikes...such is the hazard of being in a group of 9, I guess.

But the scenery was spectacular, so that was good. Being at the back had its perk too. I'd play the game I used to play when I went on horseback trailrides as a kid and we weren't allowed to do anything but walk our horses. I'd get in the back of the pack and hold back my horse and let it eat and do whatever it wanted... Then with a couple hundred yards in between me and the last horse, I'd kick the horse into gear and trot, or if I was lucky canter. Now I was just doing that with an ATV.

From the base of the Rose Valley we went to the Love Valley. The Love Valley can only be named for the rock representation of a certain male body part used in acts of love. It's very beautiful, but certainly phallically funny... We had a nice little stop for pictures, including awesome jumping photos. There was aguy selling fresh squeezed OJ, which was really good. It was a good stop in Love Valley before we hopped back on the ATVs to cruise a bit more.

On the map, the guy at the ATV shop had showed me an elaborate route of many valleys and cool stops leading us ultimately to the sunset look out spot high above Goreme... Of course, our guide, far ahead on a dirt bike, never actually told us what valley or what places we'd been through and seen. So we really weren't sure whether or not we were getting to all of the places we'd been promised...

We were sure though, that after literally doing a circle around Goreme and then going up a hill passing right by Jess and Phoenix's hostel, we weren't too happy to be off our ATVs and sitting around at our sunset spot at 7:20...about 50 minutes before sunset...and well under two hours after the start of our two and a half hour tour... We were actually so close to Jess and Phoenix's hostel that Phoenix walked down and used the bathroom while we waited.

Grrr....

Of course, it had been a pretty good ride, with some absolutely beautiful spots. And we were in a beautiful spot. The location above Goreme was pretty special, or as I like to joke, it sure didn't suck. We took some great photos, including more jumping shots, of course, though I could never manage to get Jess, Phoenix, and Kristen all correctly in sync for a good shot.

And yet we were all just kind of annoyed. We'd paid 60 lira for a two and a half hour tour...we hadn't really gotten that. The guy at the ATV shop had promised Kristen and me that he'd give us our money back if we weren't satisfied. But I wasn't about to ask for that because I really didn't want my money back, I just wanted what I'd paid for.

Again though, it wasn't like it was the worst thing in the world, which was part of the frustration. It certainly wasn't bad enough to ask for 60 lira back. As we sat up there waiting for the spectacular sunset we'd eventually get to see, we noted that bitching is an integral part of travel. When you put yourself in the hands of others, or when you try to make choices and organize things in an area that is new and different to you, there are inevitably screw ups and problems. It never seems to go just right. And you meet lots of other people who have similar situations and similar frustrations...so you just talk about it constantly, in some ways it leads you to connect with others. It is a very funny phenomenon though, because you always remember the good stuff more than the frustrations, as I've mentioned before. At least those were the conclusions we came to.

The sunset was great from that spot. That was something to be happy about. And in the end the tour was good...just for more like 40 lira than 60. Oh well.

On the whole, I was much more pleased with the motor scootering than the ATV. Among other things, I think motor scooters are a whole lot more fun unless you have a really good off road track. Motor scooters go faster and are smoother. ATVs lack a differential, so they really feel quite squirly on turns. If you've ever driven a car with a locked differential, where the front wheels turn at the same speed rather than adjusting given that the inside wheel on a turn has less distance to cover than the outer wheel, then you will know what I mean by the squirly feeling. On a motor scooter you lean into the turns...on an ATV the turns lean you. I'm sure that on the proper off road track though the benefits of an ATV are more than obvious.

Back at the ATV rental shop our guide had a hose with hot air to blow all of the dust from the ride off you. Kristen and I chose to just deal with the little bit of dust. Phoenix and Jess said it was the first time they had felt violated by air.

Immediately upon leaving the ATV rental spot and stepping out onto the street in search of a restaurant, we ran into the owner of Fat Boys, the awesome bar from the night before, who remembered us and greeted us warmly. He asked us where we were going to dinner.

We really wanted Pottery Kebabs. Pottery Kebabs are a specialty in Cappadocia. The meat or chicken stew is cooked inside of a sealed clay pot that is put right into the wood fired oven. Then a hammer is brought out and the top of the pot is smashed off. Well, it's not really smashed off, its more like you tap the pot pretty hard until the top is loosened and pops off, but Jeremy had told us that they smash off the top of the pot.

Most pottery kebabs are premade. You go into a restaurant and they have various pots with ingredients brought in from the outside already ready-made in the pot. You order, they throw the pot in the fire, and voila, you're done. The best restaurant in town though, Dibek, asks that you order your Kebab at least 3 hours in advance. They make the whole mixture from scratch according to your order and then they cook it.

Well, it turned out that the owner of Fat Boys, the best bar in town, was good friends with the owner of Dibek, the best restaurant in town. So when I told the owner of Fat Boys we wanted to try pottery Kebabs, we were set right up. Though we hadn't ordered in advance, they always make a couple extras in case parties show up with more people than expected or what not. If we waited until 9:00 PM, then they could make us 4 pottery kebabs, 2 chicken and 2 meat. Sweet, we had just gotten into the best restaurant in town, the one where oyu have to order at least 3 hours in advance...and we'd just have to wait a little over 45 minutes. Great!

We walked in and the restaurant had great ambiance. You sit on the floor on cushions at low tables. It feels very "Turkish" or Middle Eastern or perhaps just "Non-Western." The restaurant is housed in a 450 year old building that was renovated extensively in 2004. It is absolutely beautiful and the inside just has such a good feel.

We'd gotten our tea and were waiting for dinner when in walked Jeremy a few minutes later. He'd been passing out front of the restaurant and the owner had told him that the Fez people were inside, so he decided to stop in and say hi. He'd already eaten...but he stayed the whole time. It was a great dinner among friends, filled with the same kind of ridiculous conversations about movies and god knows what else as on the bus the day before. We just had a great time.

And the food... mmmmm....the food was fantastic. The kebab stew was great poured on top of rice. I had the beef and Kristen had the chicken... I had the beef and half of the chicken in other words. So good. It also came with red beat salad...which I found out I really like! Everyone laughed quite hard when I scarfed down the beats.

"What is that?"

"Heck if I know!"

Yum yum yum.

Even though we'd eaten a feast, we weren't ready to go home. Jess and Phoenix wanted cake...how could we refuse?

The five of us walked into a bakery down the street...

They had little personal cakes that looked quite good...they cost 4 lira a person.

Above the personal cakes were regular sized cakes, including a nice heart shaped valentines day-like cake with chocolate flakes on top and cherries.

"How much for the love-heart?" Jeremy asked, careful to distinguish "love" hearts from "heart" hearts.

"25 Lira."

"We'll take it," I chimed in.

So, yeah, given the option of personal cakes for 4 lira apiece or a full cake for 5 lira apiece, we went for the love heart.

We sat down to devour our cake, but first we wanted to take a picture at Phoenix's request, who was the first to whip out her camera. The owner of the bakery asked us where we were all from, and then asked Phoenix the more directed question, "Are you Chinese?"

A big smile came across her face, genuinely touched that someone had correctly guessed her blended ethnicity. "Well, actually yes...how did you know?"

"Because you have camera," he responded without missing a beat.

I don't think I've laughed that hard in months. I don't think any of us have laughed that hard in months. I haven't laughed that hard since. Man, way to be blunt.

I just wonder how he knew she was Chinese and not Japanese.

It was much better than when the guy asked her if she was Venezuelan. It was just great.

When we were sitting there an American, Oren, I'd met the day earlier at the hostel from DC, having graduated from Blair High School two years after me. Oren walked in with another American who saw my Williams Football shirt and asked me if I knew Brian Morrissey, our former star tailback and the all-time Williams rushing leader who I played with for three years in college. That kid had gone to high school with Mo. Small world. I never learned his name, but anyways the two Americans sat down with us.

In any international setting among a group of people from various countries, much of the conversation is a discussion of cultural and country differences. In fact, that will always dominate conversation. "What are things like in Australia?" "What about in America?" etc. etc. You share your stories and customs. You laugh about what is the same and what is different. But the key is to share, not to dominate. The key is to not just talk about where you are from. And, as we all should know, "interested is interesting."

Oren really didn't seem to get any of that. He was content to come in and dominate the conversation, but all he wanted to talk about was America, and mostly DC. Of course a discussion of getting into traffic leaving Antayla soon became Oren's take on traffic in the DC area and the normal day to day complaining about the inefficiencies of the Beltway. I really don't think anybody could have cared less about the Beltway.

Oren badly wanted to start the Rugby vs. Football argument. I have had that argument about 40 times in 3 months. It never ends well. Well, actually, it just never ends. But he just didn't get that. I just kept having to say, "Look man, we don't want to talk about that, they don't watch football, we don't watch rugby, we're never going to agree, they'll never get it, they think we'll never get it." It was a pretty tense situation on my end.

If anyone ever wants to really have the discussion I will keep it simple and explain why football is about a thousand times a tougher and rougher sport than rugby... but it just wasn't an argument worth having at that time, and it's just become an argument not worth having with people in Rugby cultures. We'll never see eye to eye.

Of course it was probably my fault as I started talking briefly about the Redskins with him...

I don't know, I think it was because he'd just spent the semester studying abroad in Israel and hadn't even headed home, instead spending some time on the road in Turkey before heading back to Israel for a summer. He was probably both really happy to meet someone from home and used to being in a setting, Israel, where people are probably quite a bit more familiar with America. At least I would hope that's the case, we certainly send enough money their way.

Anyway, his behavior was in a way a lesson to us all: don't dominate and talk non-stop about where you are from and what things are like back home. Everyone has a different reference point...and what's best for you is not always best for everyone else.

There was also another lesson learned that night: You can put down what's yours...but be careful when talking about other people's places.

We were all talking about the geographical and population make up of Australia. Australia is about the area of the lower 48, but the vast majority of that area is barren dessert. The population is 21 million, or 1/15th the population of the US. Phoenix and Jess were talking about how much of the country really is just desert, except of course for Uluru (you are no longer allowed to call it Ayers Rock by decree of the Australian government).

"Yeah," said Jeremy, the Kiwi. "You fly over Australia and you look down and it's all the same, its so boring!"

"It's not the same!" Phoenix interjected, "No way, it's desert but it's different, it's diverse, I like the desert!"

You can't be a Kiwi and talk about how boring the Aussie landscape is...you can only be an Aussie and talk about how boring the Aussie landscape is.

Lesson learned. Haha.

Jeremy, Kristen, and I had a good laugh about that on the way back to our hostel. We didn't finish the cake, though we did make Phoenix finish her enormous piece, despite her protests, and we put it in the fridge at the hostel with a plan to meet up the next day and finish it at Fat Boys...Yes, we were planning a BYO Cake night at the bar.

But there was another action packed Cappadocia day in store before that.

We signed up for the South Cappadocia tour, since we'd been able to hit many of the North Cappadocia sights the day before. The best part of the South Cappadocia tour on the docket: we would visit one of Cappadocia's famed "Underground Cities."

The tour started with a stop at the "Goreme Panorama." I was worried that that was a bad sign of things to come. Hadn't we seen the Goreme panorama? And our tour van was so full that Kristen and I rode up front with the driver. But actually, the Goreme Panorama was a different look out spot that was phenomenol, and a place for phenomenal jumping photos. It was also a great place to get together and learn a little about the history of the region that I've included earlier.

It was also where we first ran into Jennifer and Catherine, who had just arrived on the night bus from Olympos and were doing the exact same tour with a different tour company. Funny. There would be two more friends at Fat Boys that night.

It was about a 30 minute drive to the Underground City, during which time our comical 23 year old tour guide got to know everyone on the bus, making introductions and finding out where we were all from and stuff. He cracked a lot of jokes and said a lot of very un-PC things. He called the guy from Japan Samuri... But probably the funniest was when a guy said he was from South Korea.

"So is your name Lee or Kim?"

He was quite a joker, as was the bus driver who showed off his command of various phrases in multiple languages. He didn't speak fluent English, but he could tell us how to say camel in Japanese...

The underground city we went to was very impressive. So in the early years of Christianity, Christian Hittite settlers in the Cappadocia region faced a lot of persecution from the Romans. Later the Christians had to worry about Arab invaders as well storming into central Anatolia. So they built massive underground cave networks in the soft rocks of Cappadocia (so "soft" you can ship away at them with your finger nails. They literally made underground cities to live in for generally 4 months at a time. The caves had intricate ventilation shafts which would allow them to breathe. The halls were tight and narrow such that if invaders ever discovered the cities they would surely not have the upper hand coming through tight spaces onto the spears of defenders. They had places to store food and they even dug wells so that should invaders try to poison their water sources they'd still have water. The underground cities have not been completely excavated, but archeologists estimate that as many as 5000 people lived in the cities.

It doesn't matter how "soft" the rock is, the fact that people made these cities over 1500 years ago is incredible. The fact they are still structurally significant today is also remarkable. To think that people really lived under the ground for months at a time also reflects the power of their religious devotion, and, of course the force of persectution. Very impressive.

Of course, like so many times on tours or while travelling, the "attraction" wasn't as entertaining as the people you meet. The tour guide was a hoot...

I was standing at the urinal in the bathroom when in walks our happy-go-lucky goofy tour guide. He steps up to the urinal a couple down from me and lets loose a contented "Ahhhhhhhh."

"In my mind, there are three things that relaxes the peoples," he said. "Small toilet, big toilet, and erection."

I laughed awkwardly.

"What Jimmy, you don't like sex? I do, it's my business of life."

Oh man, what a funny thing to hear at the urinal. The candidness of it all, of course, reminded me of a conversation that Lin has with Prabu, his best Indian friend, in Shantaram.

I gave away the book, so luckily for all the young readers out there I can't quote it...

But there was something very amusing about our tour guide, or the owner of the bakery the night before, or even the waiter two days before... They certainly weren't shy, that's for sure.

We drove from the underground city to the Ilhara Valley...or as our tour guide pronounced it, the Ilhara Walley. We drove across large fields of amber waves of grain...almost America-like, haha...with two snow capped volcanos looking Mt. Ranier-esqe in the background.

On our ride there we got more linguistic entertainment from Ibrahim, our bus driver who had by then told us his name. From my count he could say thank you in 13 languages. He quized us, but every now and then his Turkish accent made the words indistinguishable.

It was clear Ibrahim wasn't used to having passangers up front. He loved talking to us.

It was a great drive.

In the Ilhara Valley we went for a group hike. Thankfully we would be getting some excercise in Cappadocia after all. Had we had more time we would have gone on a number of great hikes in the area, but due to time constraints we opted for quicker methods of transport to see more.

The Ilhara Valley is very pretty, it's more of a canyon than a valley and there are old caves on each side. The wildflowers are terrific, and our 7 km walk was a very pleasant experience...except...

For the Aussie girls...

We met three pairs of Aussie girls in Turkey. Two pairs were great, one pair was...well...dreadful.

These two were traveling for 6 months. They'd been on the road for about as long as we have.

They are the greatest world travelers ever!

EVER!

There has never been a deal that they haven't gotten. They have never stayed in a bad hotel. They have never purchased an expensive beer. They know the best places for everything.

This is what they told us for all of the 7 k walk and all of the hour long lunch.

Let's see, they'd spent a month in Manhattan, but gosh, Turkish food was SO expensive, and beers at 5 lira ($3.33 roughly for 500 mL) were just outrageous.

"You know where the cheapest beer is? London."

They were so full of it... Honestly, they somehow had a story about how they'd done everything cheaply and successfully and they'd spent a month in Manhattan and time in London where, "All the pubs have 1 pound beers, it is just so cheap."

That's news to Londoners...I asked Jeremy, who lived in London for 8 months before Turkey if he'd found that to be the case..."Um, maybe in the dodgy ones."

Catherine, who'd lived in London for a year and a half, said the same things...

There were the typical complaints about the prices of food in the States. "God, it's all just so expensive, and the tipping is ridiculous."

The American at our table and Kristen and I tried to explain the concept of tipping to the Aussies...it was no use...

Of course they thought food was too expensive...they spent a month in New York!

The night before they'd gotten free dirtbike rides from Hitchhikers, the ATV rental place, which is part of the reason they were scandalized to hear what we'd paid for our rentals (which of course they somewhat rudely asked about). One of them was pretty...she'd bought a handbag from a carpet shot... The owner's best friend worked at Hitchhikers... So the two of the them took the two girls out to dinner and then for a dirtbike ride to the Love Valley, where after sunset they built a bonfire for the four of them.

"I mean, they were just so nice you know, they said they weren't going to charge us, just for gas you know, and then I mean they didn't even do that. They were so nice about it."

Well yeah, they were nice about it...they thought they were on a double date! Ugg!

"And I mean, one of them tried to kiss me, but I just told him no, and he was totally fine with that. He was so nice."

Yeah, I'm sure he was totally fine with it. If he weren't fine with it he probably would have raped you or hit you or something that would have landed him in jail for the rest of his life...

The ignorance of it all really bothered me. But what really bothered me was thinking about the wages of the people who had taken the girls out. It was more likely that they weren't really "owners" of the businesses. It was also likely that buying two girls dinner and taking them out for a night ride was a somewhat considerable investment... Did the girls object? No. It was clear what the guys wanted and what they were thinking...but no, the girls they didn't care, they were just so happy the guys were being "nice," blowing their paychecks on a couple of annoying Aussie girls. I feel bad for those guys, I really do.

Lesson from the Aussie girls: do not talk non-stop about your trip. Do not never shut up about how amazing you are as a travelar. As we left lunch, which was in an idyllic spot where we ate on little raised platforms in the middle of the river, Kristen said, "Let's that be a lesson not to talk too much about the trip when we get home." I hope I learned that lesson properly.

From lunch we went to what was probably my favorite spot of the tour "Selim's cathedral/monastary." It was named for Selim, an Ottoman sultan who had been buried there, but the main attraction was an amazingly intricate monastary that had been cut into the cool rock formations. That's Cappadocia for you: amazing rock formations and amazing creations of people made within rock formations.

We made it all the way back to Goreme before a short stop at the Pigeon "Walley" for another good photo opt. Then, of course, we had to be taken to a place to buy something. The "Onyx demonstration" was a pain, but luckily it was over quick and we could talk with Jennifer and Catherine (arriving for their own Onyx demonstation) in the showroom. They were headed to Dibek's for dinner, having ordered their pottery kebabs immediately upon arrival in Goreme. They were in for a treat.

Our generally great tour ended around 6:00 pm. We were happy we'd done it. It had been good value, we'd liked our guide and our driver, we'd been taken to sights too far away for motor scootering, and it'd been a good experience. Two thumbs up.

Before heading back to the Hostel, we decided to stop in at the second hand English bookstore in town. The space was owned by someone else, but the books themselves were the collection of a middle aged British woman engaged in deep conversation with two British tourists. I couldn't help but eavesdrop.

"You know, the place has been changing a lot. I've been here for 10 years and I moved in far out of town away from the hotels, you know trying to get away from it all, and you know now my place is just surrounded by hotels. They're just building them constantly and it's always full of tourists and people are always trying to cater to the tourists. You know it's become a big place for gap year people, a lot of Aussies, to so they have the upscale and the hostels and pensions and yeah, it's just taking over the town."

We'd passed the bookshop in our 9 man ATV caravan the night before...I guess I could see her point.

"But you know the money's coming in, the people have good roads and they have good wages and power and good houses and I mean I guess you can't do anything to change that. You know it's just a shame though it really is, but I guess it's good too. It just used to be different."

Tourists are always sure its a "shame" when places change, as are many residents... I don't like change personally. I don't like the way my hometown has changed; how the beautiful forest a couple miles from my house was turned into a montrous housing development of McMansions. I don't like the way Jackson Hole keeps getting more and more built up. So I do get that. But is "change" always a shame? And to the degree that change represents progress, what is "shameful" about it. But to the tourist or perhaps the ex-pat, she was from North England she told me, the "authentic" is the ideal. "Authentic" though, it seems, always operates independently of the tourist. I mean, Goreme is and always will be Goreme... But somehow the Goreme of 10 years ago was more authentic, or at least that's what the woman was implying, and less "touristy." The more "touristy" the less "authentic," which is such an irony when one realizes the degree to which tourists are always seeking out "authenticity." I really wanted to ask her why it was "a shame" at all? Because now she had hotels near her? What about the house built before her? Did its inhabitant think it was a "shame" when she moved in? Yes its a little more complicated than that, but not completely. A change had to happen for all of us to find a home, so it's very funny when we turn up our noses at the change that occurs around us. My house was once a forest also... But NIMBY syndrome is probably as human as anything (NIMBY being Not In My Back Yard). Oh well, still interesting to listen to the conversation and especially to hear the very type of debate we had over and over again in Nepal with respect to a different tourist location.

Kristen and I were both excited for the night ahead at dinner that night. That, of course, did not keep us from thoroughly enjoying our Pides, which were definitely the best we'd had in Turkey. The crust had a distinctly tandoori flavor that was just so good... Or was that just because earlier at the underground city our tour guid had pointed out the Tandoori ovens and reminded us that the Turks were closely related to Indians who had moved away from the subcontinent and across Asia to Anatolia.

We got our cake from the fridge and brought it down to the bar. Outside of Fatboys there are a number of square seating areas with mattress pads where you sit on the floor around very low tables.

Like clockwork all of our friends started showing up. Jennifer and Catherine were introduced to Jessica and Phoenix, our Aussie friends became friends.

A middle aged Brit at the table next to ours overheard that I was American and joined us for a bit. Clive and his buddies were riding motorcycles from London around the world... The whole way. They were soon taking their cycles across all the "stans" (Kazakstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, etc.) and into Siberia, all the way across Asia, then on a ferry across the Pacific and across North America as well. They'd end up in NYC on their BMW roadsters. Clive claimed that a BMW was a real bike, a Harley was a nothing. I'll talk a Harley's character any day. Their plan at the time did not include a pass through Yellowstone. I told Clive I would definitely suggest that they try to make it down there, but it was great that they planned to enter the States by coming down through Glacier National Park. They then planned to make at least 600 miles in a day across South Dakota. He was asking me about speed limits in the States, certain that they'd be oppressive.

"If anybody tries to stop me, I'm just pulling out the Union Jack," he explained, "and saying we've got fucking troops in afghanistan too, so what are you going to do about it!"

I'd love to see that! Maybe he's forgotton that there's nothing Americans like more than kicking out the British...

I wasn't too dissappointed when he left our table, though I have to say I thought his trip sounded pretty interesting.

We waited awhile to break open the cake for Jeremy to arrive, but he was a little late. By the time he got there we had totally destroyed the thing.

We were joing by a couple of Canadians and an American. That's where I learned that Canada had recognized the Armenian Genocide and that that was why they paid so much for their Visas.

Exhausted, Jennifer and Catherine left early. It was nice to see them again, but as usual it was a bittersweet experience...I do at least know who do see if I have any health problems while in Melbourne. I really do have to go back to Australia at some point.

As the night wore on though, Phoenix was getting back into the dancing mood that had kept her and Jess out until 4:00 Am two nights before.

We started talking a lot about dancing and about goofy dance music.

My personal favorite uber goofy dance song: the YMCA. Well, actually I don't like the song, and it's actually not that fun to dance to. As only a crazy politico like me could actually think, I love the YMCA for the irony in it's popularity. Take any sporting event anywhere in America and you can find the YMCA. Everyone does it, old, young, male, female, etc. It's at baseball, football, basketball, probably even Nascar (though I've never bothered to watch). It's a sensation. And...

It's clearly a song about being a young gay guy! "You can get yourself cleaned, you can have a good meal, you can do whatever you feel!" Just listen to the words sometime! It's a celebration of being gay sung by an all gay group. Ok, so it may not be quite as obvious as "In the Navy," but it's clearly there...

And no one seems to listen or get it...so in a horrifically homophobic country you have the most homophobic people jumping up and down celebrating gayness in spite of themselves. And I love it! Because really, who cares? From now on there should be a rule: if you have ever done the YMCA you cannot legally oppose gay marriage. I'll be the entire Republican caucus has done the YMCA. I wouldn't be surprised if it has ever been played at a Convention to stir up the crowd...I'd be that it has. Oh man, that'd be a good way to legalize gay marriage everywhere.

Of course, on the topic of truly goofy songs, the Macarena was up there...

Phoenix was storing all of this in her memory bank...

We also talked about the "Life is good, na na na na na" song we kept hearing on the Gulet cruise, or anywhere else in Turkey for that matter... Actually the song is "Live is Life" by the Swiss band Opus, which was recently rereleased in 2008. It is all the rage in Turkey...they love it!

Finally it was time to move inside to the dance floor. The entire front porch of the bar and all the tables out there were full, but we started the move inside...

At first it was just some of us... the Canadians for instance weren't into it.

The bar started filling up a bit though...

Three Eastern-European girls walked in, though I'm not positive where they were from... They seemed pretty luke warm about the dancing, trying to dance a bit before sitting down and shooting bored glances around the room.

More and more people were filing in, but the dance floor just wasn't expanding at a proportionate rate...

And then I looked over and saw the Aussie wife on the computer setting up the next song and she smiled.

That familiar guitar riff came on and the place went nuts...the stand offish trip in the corner were up on their feet...

"Big wheels keep on turning...."

Ahh, I was so happy, the REAL SWEET HOME ALABAMA. And, of course, it totally energized the crowd. Sometimes you just can't mess with a classic.

And of course, if you have a classic, sometimes you just have to follow it up with a classic. Totally different, but Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" kept the crowd alive.

And from then on it was like we were back in a real bar, not just a tiny sleepy tourist town. I mean, yeah, there were a lot of tourists, but it was full of people dancing and having a good time, and it was a very collegial atmosphere. People knew each other, introduced friends to friends, etc. It was just great.

And of course Phoenix had a few tricks up her sleeve... She kept running to the bar and returning with a devious grin before, believe it or not, YMCA and the Macarena actually made appearences. I don't know what was more amazing, that the songs were played or that the dance party was good enough that they didn't kill the vibe.

"Live is Life" was a big hit with all the Turks in the bar, and the non-Turks.

I will never know if those three girls energized by "Sweet Home Alabama" were Eastern European or not...but I will say that I really don't think they spoke English given that they were the only people who didn't "get low" during the chorus to Flow Rida's "Low" which says "shorty got low low low low low low low low." Either they didn't speak English or 8 times wasn't enough.

Then of course people started getting pushed in for dance solos...Kristen told me to do the worm...and I am a one-trick pony...so I did it...I would regret it later.

Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" came on the owner of Dibek, which I have mentioned is the best restaurant in town and is housed in a 450 year old building, was dragging me out in the middle of the dance floor to groove with him. What a night, haha.

As if reading my mind, the DJ played "Land Down Under" and "You Shook Me All Night Long," two great Aussie songs that stand alone and would never fit together...

The dog from the Shoestring Hostel was there with the hostel workers. Kristen dissappeared from the dance floor every few minutes to "pet the puppy" and occasionally picked it up and brought it back to dance with her.

On a big screen television some ridiculous game show featured a bulldog and a chimpanzee trading sit ups... where the heck were we?

It was just so fun.

It finally got late and so we just decided to leave after the next decent song, which ended up being Fatboy Slim's "Funk Soul Brother." It wasn't a great song to end on, but it had to end sadly.

We said our sad goodbyes to Phoneix and Jess and headed home.

I was very sad to leave Cappadocia. More than just being a terrific place, in a matter of days it had started to feel very home like. We were friends with the owners at the best bar and restaurant in town. We had a cast of characters and a group of people that were recognizable and that we got along with and were friends with. It had all the feelings that I miss from home.

I mean, as I regretted our departure I thought about how weird it was to just long for a place where I could meet up with all my friends and have a good time.

I mean, I promise, my aspiration in life is not to be a character on the sitcom Cheers.

Though, was there a happy successful lawyer on Cheers?

Just kidding.

But anyway, it just felt so good for a night to be in that type of a stituation and that type of atmosphere. To have friends, to know people. To have inside jokes even, as Phoenix's little giggles showed off, while the rest of the crowd wondered why we were actually listening to the Macarena.

It was fun, that's really all there is to it.

In some ways, as sad as I was to leave Cappadocia though, it was an almost perfect travel experience. I loved the place, I had a great time in the place, but in doing so it reminded me what I missed about home and made me look forward to going home.

I've got a lot to do and a lot to see before that, and I don't wish away a minute of it.

But when I'm on a plane home, I definetely will think about how much fun we had in Goreme on our motor scooters, exploring the "walleys" and even in Fatboys, and I think I'll be ready to stay in one place for a bit.







]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1246099047/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1246099047/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1246099047/tpod.html Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:17:29 -0400 Round the world in 128 days.

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Goreme, Cappadocia, Turkey

We left Olympos for Cappadocia around 8 the next morning. We were a little late getting going because our new driver, Aleem, had gotten mixed up on our time of departure...

We met our new "guide," Jeremy, another Kiwi who made up for his lack of command of the Turkish language with amicability and good naturedness. Jeremy was quite a good dude.

We met back up with Phoenix and Jess, who were headed to Cappadocia for 5 nights, us for 3. It was the four of us + Jeremy on the bus... Like usual the Fez Bus was completely empty.

Well, actually, at first we had two more girls from Kadir's, the biggest treehouse hotel in Olympos and the first treehouse of the area, who just needed a ride to go shopping in Antayla, about an hour from Olympos. We got a sense of how insular Olympos really is. Basically all the hostels and hotels are in stiff competition with one another, so the people who work at them really only get a sense of their place. And since all the eating is done at the hostels, they all are hotels, bars, and restaurants all-in-one, the two girls were very very interested to hear everything about where we had stayed (Bayrums and Jess and Phoenix had stayed at Shavons) because they had never actually been anywhere but Kadir's for the past 5 weeks. "How much did it cost? What did you think of it? What was it like? Why did you choose to stay there?" they asked.

One of the girls was a Kiwi who had gone traveling and after Southeast Asia had headed to Turkey for ANZAC day. She liked it and though, what the heck, why not get free room and board of a couple hours of work at a hostel, so she'd just moved to Olympos for a while to check out of the real world. It sounded like she was enjoying it, but felt a bit issolated.

Antalya is a much bigger blace, a tourist town with an international airport, and I think the 5th biggest city in Turkey with more than a million residents. Jeremy pointed out that there was a population sign in most big towns, only it said "nufus" which is the Turkish word I believe, so he liked to wait for that sign and then call out to the bus, "And now we're entering ---- population ----." For some reason he usually got away with it, without people noticing the sign he'd just read seconds before.

After dropping off the two Kadir's workers, we saw that Jeremy and Aleem really had the most minimal of communication skills, as Aleem took a random right in the middle of town, a seemingly random left, and then ended up taking us exactly where we had been going. Jeremy had no idea what had happened, and no ability to find out...

Funnier though was when, roughly 10 minutes after a toilet and petrol stop, Aleem just pulled over into the parking lot of a bakery... He stopped the bus, jumped out, and waved to a friend sitting on the bench in front of the bakery.

"What's he doing Jeremy?"

"I don't know...we weren't going to stop here..."

Aleem popped back in a minute later with an enourmous loaf of beautiful Turkish bread, warm and fresh and delicious, for the bus to share.

The drivers, though unable to speak much English at all, really do care about their passengers, which is quite nice.

The ride to Cappadocia that day was long, very long. A lot of people do it on the night bus from Olympos, but I'm kind of glad we didn't do that, since on the night bus, though you don't have to pay for accomodation, you really don't sleep, so you lose the night and much of the next day too in terms of tired misery. But our journey was made unfortunately longer by a big traffic jam coming out of Antayla. It seems like half the roads in Turkey are under repair...only half of those don't actually seem to have workers on them.

It was kind of nice to have a group of four passangers on the bus. It was enough not to feel awkward with Jeremy offering a private tour to a couple, but small enough that we could all talk and converse and make the time pass a little faster. If someone wasn't in the mood they could just head to the back and sleep. Sometimes full buses are so much less social because everyone is afraid to disturb someone else. I kind of hate situations like that, in which you have fairly large groups of people together and yet meaningful social interaction is somehow socially unacceptable. It strikes me as incredibly silly and annoying, and it's the only thing I really don't like about riding the Metro to work. Morning subway cars are silent boxes full of people, and the smallest attempts at interaction are admonished with dirty looks...

Our journey was also made a bit longer by the hills we had to go over to reach Goreme, the town in Cappadocia we were headed to. Our bus struggled up the hills. Unfortunately that was the case with all the Fez Buses. I wonder what happens when they are full of passengers...

At around two we had the funniest if not the best lunch stop of the entire trip. Again, we weren't exactly sure why we stopped for lunch there. It was kind of a gas/station rest stop area and the restaurant didn't look that good or nice, but Aleem just pulled over and turned off the bus. I don't think it was Jeremy's plan, but hey, they had Pides, so it was fine.

We sat down in the heavily overstaffed restaurant with many waiters buzzing around trying to figure out: A: what to do, since the place was pretty much empty, and B: who spoke good enough English to take our table.

Our waiter was very smily and a little pudgy. He arrived at our table looking like a kid on Christmas, excited to get a chance to show off his English. Though the menu was in both Turkish and English, he just began rattling off everything on the menu he remembered the English words for, but it sounded like that was virtually all the English he knew. "We have cheese pide, big meat pide, little meat pide, kabob, salad..." His voice trailed off not because he notice that we actually had the menu and could read it, but rather because he ran out of English words...

Jeremy, Kristen and I went for the "Big meat" pide while Jess went for the "small meat" pide...we weren't really sure what the difference was... Phoenix wasn't really in the mood for meat, so she asked if she could get some veggies with her Pide or something, though that wasn't on the menu, and the waiter said he'd take care of it.

Of course he wanted to know where we were from. In Turkey, if you are white, they think you are from Australia or New Zealand, so that was his assumption for Jeremy, Jessica, Kristen, and I.

Phoenix is half-Chinese, but she doesn't have a very distinctive look, only her skin tone is a little different. Our smiley waiter was really sure he'd figured her out..."Venezuela!?" Phoenix could certainly pass for Hispanic and I'm convinced he simply threw out the only Spanish-speaking country he knew how to say in English. Haha, he sure was smiley.

But the highlight of the meal came when he brought out our food. Everyone was served before Phoenix...he was saving his best for last...

In a triumphant motion he brought down the plate, pleased with his creation, "Pide with cheese...and...WEDGE-IT-TABLES!" He was so happy that he'd been able to make them what she wanted off the menu, which he treated as totally his idea. And he was just tickled to bring it out to her so magnificently. Pride beamed ear to ear.

Only his English was very off, so rather than "vegitables" it came out "wedge-it-tables," with emphasis on each syllable. Germans often pronounce the w as a v, as in Havaii rather than Hawaii. The Turks are the opposite, they pronounce the V as a W, hence we saw many "walleys" in Cappadocia. Our waiter was so sweet...and so funny...

We had a long laugh over that one, as I'm sure I have made plenty of people laugh in Spanish speaking countries when I've tried to speak the language. Oh well.

We mostly talked about movies for the next leg of the ride. Phoenix is a huge huge fan of "Remember the Titans," one of my favorite movies of all time and one of the best football movies/sports movies I've ever seen. It was so funny to hear from an Aussie who knew not the slightest bit about American football (real football!) talk about how great "Remember the Titans" is. Ahh, I miss football, I can't wait for the season to start again. I'm tired of having to debate Rugby and Football and all that other stuff associated with traveling abroad where real football isn't played. Not only are American sports the most profitable and greatest shows on Earth, the movies made about them are also the best. Imagine if the sport movie genre lacked "Bull Durham," "Field of Dreams," "Major League," "Rudy," "Remember the Titans," "Brian's Song," "A League of Their Own," "The Longest Yard" or "The Natural." I mean...it'd still have "Rocky" and "Raging Bull," but many of the greatest sports flicks ever made...well...wouldn't have been made without real football and baseball (which is becoming much more international, we'll call that a Western Hemishphere+Asian Islands sport). We'd be left with "Bend It Like Beckham," a great flick I will freely admit to liking...but in doing so get laughed at by everyone...or at least that's how it happened on the bus.

We also discussed funny teen movies that cut across continents, chick flicks and everything else in between. Both in the teen movie and chick flick genre is probably the best chick flick ever made, and a great adaptation of Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" is "10 Things I Hate About You," starring, among others, the late Aussie Heath Ledger. But Ledger's character, though quite likeable, is the most unrealistic and frustrating character in the film in that he plays a social outcast. He's a weirdo at his high school. Come on! Heath Ledger?! Heath Ledger would not have trouble in high school! Which is, of course, the problem with all rags-to-riches, the underdog wins high school movies. In "She's All That," two guys make a bet over making a "loser" into Prom Queen...the "loser..." the smoking hot Rachel Leigh Cook! I mean come on... No one in their right mind could not think Mandy Moore was hot, even in long dresses in "A Walk to Remember." Teen movies always feature pretty "ugly" girls. Then again, that's probably why Molly Ringwald was such a terrific teen movie actor, because she was pretty, but not a walk down the street everyone faints way like Mandy Moore or, come on guys admit it, Heath Ledger. She was much more believable as an underdog, therefore a heck of a lot more likable...hence her success.

We also discussed "Shantaram," which Jess had read in a two day sitting over Christmas several years ago. Kristen and I decided to part with our beloved bootleg Indian copy of the book, a gift of our buddy Lloyd, seeing as it's quite heavy for traveling, and give it to Phoenix to read next. I have told her that not only does she need to tell me what she thinks of the novel, she should pass it on to another friend and let me know, and then on and on and on and hopefully that bootleg Indian copy makes it around the world. That'd be cool!

We had one stop in between lunch and Goreme at a Caravansarahi. In the old days of the silk route, Caravansarahis were basically truck stops. Yes, we visited a 450 year old truck stop. They were big buildings in issolated areas along the route where you could sleep, go to the market, interact with other traders, and even have a place to rest your camels. The one we saw was interesting, but they are all empty now and just look like old stonemade warehouses, which is, in some ways, what they are. The best part about the stop was that I was able to find out that the song we'd heard so many times on the Gulet was Tarkan's "Dudu" when it was playing in the shop where we bought soda.

Man it was a long day...

We didn't get into Goreme until around 8.

Cappadocia is a phenomenal region. Goreme is the town, Cappadocia the region. Hundreds of thousands of years ago there were major volcanic eruptions in the region. The result today are interesting igneous formations dotting the landscape, the most famous of which look like chimineys with hats on top and are called "Ferry chimneys." The rock is technically quite "soft," which has allowed people to cut into it easily through the years and for thousands of years people have been living in man made caves in the Cappadocia Region, and they still do today. The "softness" of the rock is also what allowed widespread erosion that left the rock in its interesting formations today, formations that make Cappadocia the best place to Hot Air Baloon in the world (though at 250 Euro per person that just wasn't an option for us...). The region is mentioned in the Bible, and was also a location of many Byzantine Churches carved right into the rock. The rock is also multicolored according to age, so the rocks are Red, Yellow, and White. It looks similar to the soutwest of the United States, and there are sections that look "desert-like," but perhaps what really makes it incredible is that it is not a desert area. There are beautiful grassfields and a lot of fertile farm land dots the surrounding area as well. In Goreme, all of the hotels are built into the rocks and you stay in caves. Our hotel, Shoestring, was completely built into rocks with a nice courtyard in the middle. Our room was a cave room. It was a little damp, but wonderfully cool, as was the region itself. Looking at pictures make you think it will be desert-like and hot, but actually Cappadocia was a lot more comfortable that the south Turkish Coast temperature wise. Our room was big and clean, but the best part, or perhaps just funniest part, was probably the bathroom, which was a huge marble box roughly 2 meters by 2 meters with a sink, a toilet, and a hand held shower head with no place to lock in the shower for a tradtional soak. In many of the hotels we've stayed in, the shower has more or less been on top of the toilet, with the bathroom not divided like in many Western hotels. That was the case in Goreme...but it was funny because the room itself was so big you could shower in the corner and the water would hardly even make it near the toilet or sink, despite the lack of a shower curtain, raised shower platform, or even a place to hang the shower head.

We walked into Shoestring to see an excited Hayden. The Fez Guides are given time off in Olympos and Cappadocia, so instead of leaving the very next day they are given three nights to stay in each place. Hayden was headed out the next morning, but he was around for the evening, which is why he was excited...

Each night the Fez Bus pulls into town, the guides and passangers are given the option of going to "Turkish Nights." "Turkish Nights" shows are all you can eat all you can drink extravaganzas featuring Whirling Dervishes, a dance troupe doing various Turkish dances from various regions, and eventually a belly dancer. They get the crowd into it and its held in a large underground cave, of course. It's a big tourist attraction in Cappadocia and there are various "Turkish Nights" locations.

It's kind of like heaven on earth.

There is SO MUCH food. There is so much everything. It's just great.

We had a group of 6, the four "passengers" and two "guides," and we headed to Turkish Nights at around 8:30. It was very pretty to be above Goreme around twilight...so pretty that Aleem decided that while driving he would attempt to take a picture out of the front of the bus...We tried to figure out how to tell him that A: it wouldn't come out if the flash was on, and B: That probably wasn't the best idea while moving...

The food just kept coming out and coming out once we got there. Oh it was so good. Wedge-it-tables, meat, bread, sauce, lamb kebabs, yum yum yum.

The Whirling Dervishes went on first, spinning to get closer to God. It's a religious dance that dates back over 500 years. The Dervishes come out and they literally spin for minutes at a time. Any kid who has ever spun in circles to get dizzy with their arms above their heads has essentially done a whirling dervish dance. But these guys are crazy good. I started timing their spins of over a minute and a half and they didn't fall over with dizzyness, which was truly amazing. Just fantastic.

It's a religious dance, so the lights are dimmed and there is no photography allowed during the dance...of course the second it ends the lights come up, photos are allowed and carts of booze are rolled in. It's very touristy...very. But in my mind what differentiates it from other "cultural" shows is that the emphasis really isn't on showing you "authentic Turkish dance," it's on showing you a good time. The tag line is "All The Food and Drinks You Can Handle." It's much more of a lively show than an attempt at an "authentic experience." Our hotel workers actually go every now and then just because the food is so good and the booze so plentiful.

And they get everyone dancing in a bunch of numbers. They did this one Turkish dance/improvization in which there is a princess who is brought in on a real live horse (yes, a horse is brought into the dance hall) and a number of suitors ask for the princess's hand in marriage through various elaborate dances. She sits in the middle on a chair and shekes her head throughout most of their advances. At the conclusion of the song everyone is invited up to dance in the celebration. We all got up to dance and it was quite fun...only I was still hungry and they were getting into a Conga line...

I hate Conga Lines. They are cheesy and awkward. The person in front of you is never going the right pace, the person behind you is always falling into you. They are pretty bad...so I ducked out, had a laugh and some lamb on the sides...

The conga line went around the room and out of the building to a big bonfire before coming back in, at which point the audience was asked to reperform the courting ceremony, with Phoenix asked to sit in as the princess. She got Jeremy to propose and accepted his proposal to end the dance.

I made a big mistake skipping out on that conga line...

The climax of the night arrived with the belly dancer, who was brought in on a neon platform lowered in from the ceiling...was she a belly dancer or a stripper?...

She did her thing and then it was time to get the audience involved...so she started calling up guys...and the was moving around the room clockwise coming closer and closer to our table...

The guys were being outfitted with belly dancing sashes and prepared....

And she was getting closer...

And then all the stinkers at our table nominated me and started cheering and pointing at me and yelling and she came over and grabbed my hand.

It was awful. I had no choice. I downed a glass of Raki, which at 45% still didn't seem strong enough for the moment...

It was terrible. Just terrible.

Not fun.

I was paraded up with 5 other guys and she made us roll our shirts up exposing our bellies...it is belly dancing after all. Luckily I was the youngest one by 30 years, had much better rhythm than way to excited old European guys, and despite the belly that grew and greww on delicious Turkish, I was the thinnest of the group... That didn't make it any less humiliating.

Then she started making guys solo... I was second to last...standing there not looking forward to a gyrating solo bound to make me cry. If it looked anything like what the other guys were throwing out, I was sure tears would be hitting the floor before it was done.

Then it was my turn...I clapped awkwardly looking for some way, some how, to get out of it.

Ahhh HA!

It hit me!

I kicked off my sandals slowly...

I am a one trick pony when it come to dance solos...

The Worm!

The belly dancer was shocked.

I had about 2 seconds of feeling good...then the embarassment hit again.

But at least I'd be sitting down again soon. Thank god.

And then finally it was all over.

Hayden walked in from the outside, having missed the whole thing. Thank goodness. If only everyone in the hall had missed the whole thing...

The night ended with a really awesome throwing knives routine...where they put knives in their teeth and threw them at a board on the floor making them stick straight up. That was cool.

The forced belly dancing was not cool.

The food was good, that was cool.

The forced belly dancing was not cool.

The beer and raki on request was cool.

The forced belly dancing was not cool.

The forced belly dancing would not have happened without beer and raki.

Maybe beer and raki are not cool...

Of course that didn't stop us from leaving Turkish night and heading to the best bar in town, Fat Boys, owned by a Turk married to an Aussie girl. We were all in a good mood and it was a good time, though my pool playing ability really really has disappeared over the years.

The place was great, but not perfect. The DJ, who I later found out was the Aussie wife, put on a mix of Nelly's "Country Grammer" (the best song ever written about drive by shootings...) and Lynard Skynard's "Sweet Home Alabama" (the best song ever written about being a Southerner...), in which the rap lyrics of Nelly are superimposed over "Sweet Home Alabama's" sweet guitar rifts. It was terrible. You can't just mix and match completely unrelated songs from completely different genres (rap and classic rock). "Sweet Home Alabama" is a classic, "Country Grammer" is good, but not even on the same level. The mix ruined a classic...and it also ruined the hip song as well. I was none too pleased... Of course it was also put on by an Aussie, come on, that's like me mixing "Land Down Under" with "You Shook Me All Night Long." Seperate you have two good Aussie songs... together...not good.

Anyways, the music after that was better, but Kristen and I were tired and the dance floor was not that busy (though Jeremy, Hayen, Phoenix and Jess, and for some time Kristen and I were doing our best). I did the worm for Hayden to see outside, which he said warranted one more drink, but we were tired. We headed home...looking forward to a big next couple of days in Cappadoccia....

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1245877967/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1245877967/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1245877967/tpod.html Sat, 27 Jun 2009 06:36:34 -0400 Round the world in 128 days.

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Olympos, Antalya, Turkey

The night before our four day cruise from Fethiye to Olympos, Kristen
looked out into the harbor full of boats and guessed that the beautiful
big boat that pulled in was probably ours...

It wasn't...

But
though at first we couldn't believe that the boat that looked so small
and common, like all the other boats in the harbor, would be big enough
to hold 12 people comfortably, it actually was. Get the Allaturka out
on the water and man, it was a great boat. There was enough room for
everyone to have their own cabin (in pairs) with an ensuite that was
relatively nice. About half the people slept in the cabin and about
half the people slept on the deck at night though, as the cabins were
somewhat cramped and hot, while the deck was open and cool. There were
matress like pads all over the deck.


So first, what is a Gulet?

A gulet, pronounced goo-let, not
gull-let or, as I like to say it, Robert Goulet, is a "hand-made"
Turkish sailing vessel with a mast...but it doesn't use sails, in fact
the mast is actually kind of pointless. It just uses a motor.


So at around 11:00 am we boarded the boat.

There were 11 of us.

Jennifer
and Catherine were traveling together and were friends from Melbourne.
Jennifer is a 2nd year resident in Melbourne, and a doctor at age 25.
I guess we have some doctors at 25 in the states, but jeez, these other
countries seem to have a much quicker path to becoming full-fledged
professionals that in the States would require years of post-Graduate
education. I think she was in a 6 year program, bu I'm not sure (and
yes, I know that there are some 6 year programs in the states, but it
is not the norm, the norm being 4 years of undergrad plus 4 years of
Med School, often with years in between). Catherine had spent the last
year and a half working as a secretary in London just to make money for
a big trip (and to get some time living abroad). She's going to be
traveling Europe for a while, and spending a month in France taking
French, after Turkey. In some ways Jennifer and Catherine kind of
parralleled Phoenix and Jess. Jennifer and Phoenix were both on 1
month holidays from the hospital. Catherine and Jess were both on 6
month oddessies. Either way, the Aussies seem to travel well. We got
along best with Jennifer and Catherine, they were great fun. As I said
in the last post, we just kept meeting pairs of Aussie girls!


Blake and Nick were travelling together. Two more Aussies. We
never really were sure how they were related, where they were coming
from exactly, or many other details, though I am pretty sure Nick had
just spent time living in London working as an electrition. They were
funny dudes. Well, Blake was a funny dude.


Esther was a 29 year old dental nurse traveling alone on holiday. Born and raised in England, she now lives in Edinborough.

Dusin
and Calvin were also Aussies, but they were both of Turkish descent and
spke fluent Turkish. I am pretty sure they were in their late 20s and
not married, but I didn't learn too much about them except that they
initially acted as an interesting bridge between the crew and
passangers, as they could actually speak Turkish. Calvin had come to
Turkey in 1997, but Dustin was making her first trip to the country of
her parents. Calvin was really excited to be getting on the gulet, he
said it was the first thing he had booked when they planned to get to
Turkey...poor Calvin... (you'll soon find out why...)


Geoffrey and Ruth were far and away the most interesting characters
on the boat... They were actually pretty nice and amicable...but they
were...interesting....

Geoffrey was a retired 55 year-old
adrenaline junkie. He had run or been in some sort of business
involving refridegerator repair. He was injured in his first big
accident in 1978. The car crash left the nerves completely gone in his
upper left arm. (Jennifer was a doctor, so she asked what had happened
and he told her and she told us.) The result was that all muscle had
just completely wasted away from the lifeless arm that hung at his
side. His arms together stood in a contrast like that between a polio
stricken leg and a healthy leg. When he was wearing a shirt and pands,
he would generally tuck his left hand into his pocket, keeping his arm
out of the way. Without his arm tucked away, his hand and arm seemed
to hang down almost too far, though when you checked on your own body
how far your hand reaches, you realized that skinny things just look
longer. Geoffrey didn't let his deformity slow him down one bit
though, nor was he shy about it...he pretty much spent the 4 days in a
speedo...much to the rest of our chagrin as he would often lie sideways
with one leg propped up and far more of a spread eagle than anyone
wearing a speedo should ever make in public...not that anyone should
ever wear a speedo in public. Given the extremely leather quality of
his body, it was clear he spends much of his time in a speedo.


Nor had Geoff let one arm take away from his adrenaline pursuits.
He still skiied avidly, had even been to Jackson Hole, and several
years ago was badly injured in a ski accident heli-skiing, needing a
facefull of stitches. He told us that when you die it's all over,
nothing happens, because last year he'd been in a high speed boating
accident and had been dead on the table for 10 minutes. Other hobbies
included racing antique Aston Martins, and he and Ruth were always
going to Monacco and other sights to watch the Grand Prix Forumla One
Races. He was not one to keep his somewhat strong opinions to himself,
or to crack dirty jokes that were just a little too realistic... He
declared that the key to a good life were to "Never have kids, marry a
woman who makes money, and buy real estate." Geoffrey reasoned that
kids were just a way for women to trap men, and therefore got a
vasectomy at 25...claiming he was the youngest person ever in New South
Wales to get a voluntary vasectomy. An added bonus, he saw, was that
he had so much more money because he'd never spent a cent on kids, part
of what allowed him to be retired at 55 and to travel for 2 to 3 months
every year. His response to the economic hardships of the poor:
"Everyone on social security should just be steralized." He wasn't
mean to us or a major grump or a big downer...but he certainly was
interesting...


Ruth was 47 and Geoffrey's fiance of 12 years... They said it was
financially better for them to stay apart. He had probosed to her in
the back of a car during a tourist test run on a great Formula 1
track. She too was, as Catherine put it, a "petrolhead." She looked
older than 47, but had the body of a younger woman... Too many hours
under the sun had left her body looking like bad bad leather...a body
which we saw too much of outside of her "too skimpy for a 47 year old"
bikini, that also suggested she'd had work done in multiple places... Her sunglasses
tan didn't make her look any younger despite whatever attempts might
have been made under the knife... She was in the business of giving out
mortgage loans, and apparently was very good at it, allowed to take 3
months off every year. Geoffrey and Ruth had a lifestyle that it was
hard not to envy...

Or was it?

Geoffrey and Ruth had sort of set out a course that seems like a dream...don't work much, travel a lot. But it was hard to understand what Geoffrey did all day, and his boredom seemed reflected in the fact that he appeared to try to kill himself repeatedly for fun. Someone had died in that boating accident...though we were never sure exactly who or how. Maybe not having kids had made him rich and allowed him to take vacations, but I'm sure there are plenty of poorer, but happier fathers out there. One wondered if Geoffrey never stopped talking because of how little time he actually got to spend with a family, as if a lack of human interaction in his day to day life had left him in desperate need of it the second it was there. The dream-like juvenile lifestyle probably kept Ruth in her skimpy bikinis, but also left her incredibly self-conscious about her age. She was more uncomfortable with being 47 than she should have been...the result was the off kilter look of a 55+ year old...which probably didn't help here self-effacing complex. Don't get me wrong, in some ways Geoffrey and Ruth were lovely, amicable people. Even the sterilization comment wasn't made so much out of malice as ut of a firebrand personality. But in others they screamed of desperation to be young and free, even as they were past their prime. An interesting life they led, for sure, but one that also made you fee like it wasn't such a bad aspiration to settle down, have a family, and care about that family and your job.

Aside from the 11 passengers, there were 3 crew members. Our captain was named Umut...something we learned after we had left the boat. For the duration of the cruise we wrongly thought him to be named Mahmoud... We never did learn the names of our deck hand and our cook, neither of whom spoke any English. Umut had a round belly and longish blond hair. His Englsih was not that good...well...it was bad enough for him to let us all think he was named Mahmoud for 4 days. He was 28, but looked 38...a life of sea cruises, complete with sun bathing and beer, had allowed him to age fast. He'd been in the business since he was 13. Our cook and Umut had worked together for 8 years. Our deck hand was younger, but probably not by much, he just looked younger. The boat life hadn't aged him quite as fast.

But anyway, perhaps that's enough on introductions. It's great to know the characters, more interesting to know their story.

When we set sail, so to speak, or not, given that there were no sails, at 11:00, I was distraught that I hadn't finished more of the blog the night before in Fethiye. Given that my posts have been so long (sorry folks) and my handwriting so big and bad, I didn't want to use my entire journal to write one post, so I had taken various brochures from the local tourist office. In the margins of a brochure on various hotsprings around Turkey, I went to work by hand on a post about Gallipoli while sitting at the table at the back of the boat. I was only about halfway done when we stopped for lunch around 1:30.

The food on the boat was fantastic. It was light and seemingly healthy, mostly vegetables and beans and rice for lunch. I say seemingly healthy, because of course it was all bathed in oil, which was what made it so delicious. But it was, I suspect, food chosen because, hopefully, it wouldn't make you too sick.

Oh poor Nick...well sort of...we hardly even met him until day 2 as he spent that first voyage below deck. Enormous hangovers and the motion of the ocean are not a good mix...or so I am told.

After lunch we got a taste of what the cruise was all about...It did follow a pretty simple formula: 1. Go to a pretty spot. 2. Swim, if you want, in said pretty spot. 3. Be sure to use the side hose to wash off the incredible salt deposits of pretty spot before lying on sun deck mattresses (or be reminded harshly by the crew). 4. Sit around drying off (or just tanning if you never got into the water) at said pretty spot until Umut had had either A: a sufficient nap or B: a sufficient swim or C. Both, to send you on your way. 5. Repeat.

It's a tough life...most people say that sarcastically...I say it semi-sarcastically. No, it was not difficult...but it was not action packed either. Lets just say, after 4 days I was very happy to be on dry land.

Actually though, there were minor variations each day that did involve land excursions...and, unfortunately for my credibility, day one was in some ways our most active off land day. After our initial swim we did go for a land excursion to the "Butterfly Valley," a cove and gorge said to have many many big and beautiful butterflies in it.

I saw one butterfly. I saw many many big, and some would say beautiful, marijuana plants.

There is a waterfall you can walk to up in the butterfly valley about a kilometer in from the sea. On land we found a big time Turkish hippie community, complete with flowerchild signs and slogans and pot plants. The people of the butterfly valley were more than willing to extend peace and love to all who offer them 6 lira at the gate.

Kristen and I departed the ship with Jennifer, Blake and Nick (trying to walk off the sickness), Esther,, and Geoffrey and Ruth. Geoff went with the plain speedo and sneakers look, which, if your wondering, is just as bad as the speedo and sandals look and the speedo and barefeet look, though perhaps funnier...

The signs walking up the valey to the waterfall were pretty darn funny. "Quiet...loud noises kill the butterflies" was my favorite, probably devised after a few too many joints. The walk up to the waterfall was more difficult than we had expected, but rewarding. There was actually not much of a waterfall there, and we simply ran out of more rocks to scramble up (which is what made it a little difficult). But the view back through the valley from the high point was quite goo, and it was a cool little gorge. My well worn sandles, the ones that had actually broken and had to be fixed in the middle of Cairo, did not help the ascent, and made me a little nervous about the descent. .

You know where this story is going...

On the way back down I was ahead of the group. It was hotter than Hades, I had completely sweat through my brand new "burburry" collared shirt, and I just wanted to get back and have a swim. After sccessfully navigating my way down the rocks in my fragile thong sandle, I was happy to be walking on level ground. Then I took a step and my left sandle broke. The Egyptian cobbler had done well, his repair held...but the other sandle was kaputz.

The situtation worsened when I completely lost the trail and soon found myself walking, one foot with a sandle on, one foot barefoot through brush up to my face. I had stayed on a trail for a bit, and then it had ended, only for me to find another trail, walk on it for a bit, and have it end, only to do that about three times before I found a long black pipe. I followed the black pipe, which had about two inches of bruch cleared on each side, but that didn't help me with the other brush up to my ears. I knew which way to go directionally, it was pretty easy to see where the sea was, but it was not a good feeling to be lost. Finally I reached a fence, completely hidden and covered by the brush such that I almost walked into it... I hopped that and thankfully didn't break it. When everything finally started to clear, I found myself walking in smelly mud, and finally past a number of places the Earth loving hippies had chosen to turn into garbage dumps. Finally I made it back to a gate, which was thankfully unlocked. I walked through the gate to see a confused guy on the other side, wondering where the hell I had come from. I booked it for the sea to find Kristen sitting alone on the beach.

Of the 8 of us who had gone to the waterfall, Kristen was the only one who made it back unscathed. I was confused to see her sitting there alone. She had found the right path. I sadly threw my wonderfully beautiful, though I guess not that functional, Sanjuk sandles in a trash bin on the beach, chucked off my shirt and dove in. Oh man, it felt good after a hot bruch walk.

10 minutes later the rest arrived. Apparently they had run into guys who had hacked them a path with machetes... The hippies can be more violent than you would think.

Jennifer offered a funny portrait after the fact of Geoffrey the adrenaline junkie, who had speedo, sneakers, and all simply charged right into the bush without a care in the world, determined to lead them back to the beach. I found it uncomfortable in a t-shirt and shorts...he really was a wild dude of sorts.

Of course, after the butterfly valley it was my turn to get the adrenaline flowing.

We headed back to the sight of Kristen and my adventure from a day before, Oludeniz beach and the Blue Lagoon. The top of the mountain we jumped off of was barely visible, and there weren't 45 gliders in the air as there had been the other day. We parked the boat outside of the lagoon and had some free time for a swim.

About 300 meters off the beach on the "non-lagoon" side of the beach, there is another minor peninsula. The boats dock outside that spot. The little "peninsula" really consists of one big hill of rocks and cliffs coming down to a narrow crossway and then joining up with the hat of the "T" that utimatly helps form the lagoon. The big rock hill forms a cliff that is roughly 10 meters high, and certainly no less, but hopefully more.

Because....

I jumped off it!

When we got there a guy about my age had just done a jump. It was easy enough to scramble up there and he had survived, though I thought, "Why the heck not?" Kristen stayed behind on the boat and readied the camera... Dustin and Calvin pulled out their video camera as well.

The first jumper's girlfriend was in front of me and he was cheering her on. Together they had swum out from Oludeniz beach with snorkels and surveyed the landing, deeming it to be more than deep enough. He had taken the plunge. Now it was her turn.

She wasn't ready.

After 3 minutes of watching her not be ready, I was.

I get really scared before big jumps. Really scared. In New Zealand there was a 7 meter jump on my white water rafting trip which I loved so much I did 3 times...each time I froze for roughly a minute at the top.

But with the whole crowd watching, my boat and others, I was able to jump less than 10 seconds after landing at the launching spot, thanks to the scared girlfriend who allowed me to get my butterflies out during her own moment of freak out.

I don't know what is best about the two mid air pictures Kristen got.

1. Is it that the scared girlfriend is up on the rocks smiling throughout the jump?

2. Is it that immediately after take off my right wrist is incredibly limp...?

3. Is it that about 3 meters from the water, I have a look of sheer terror on my face?

4. Or is it that for whatever reason I thought I could actually fly and extended my arms like wings?

Number 4 really eally really hurt.

I also landed in more of a seated position than straight. For lack of a better way of putting it, man that hurts your butt...

My new resolution is that I need to find some 5 meter or less jumps and practice my landing. Then I can jump back up t the 10 meter plus mondo cliff and it won't hurt so much.

At least it entertained the crowd. And Dustin and Calvin said they had the whole thing on tape and hat they would send it to me, which was exciting.

I felt bad for the girlfriend of the first jumper. She was up there a good 30 minutes before her boyfriend would finally let her come down. In the mean time we got to hang out in the cool blue Mediterranean, and I even got to try my hand at snorkeling. I saw not a single fish...but at least I didn't roast on top of a rock while scared out of my wits...

After our swim we had our 5 o'clock tea, which consisted of coffee or tea, all you could drink, and biscuits, all you could eat. Boating is just an excuse to eat and drink as far as I am concerned.

After tea we were ready to move to our final resting spot of the day, a calm bay where the boat would dock for the night. To our slight surpise, it was actually just the bay behind the T of the Blue Lagoon, in between an island and the coast. You can see the spot in all of my paragliding photos actually.

It was there that Umut pulled out his map and gave us somewhat of an idea of where we were going all the way to Demere, where we would get off.

The boat cruise from Fethiye to Olympos was actually a cruise from Fethiye to Demere and an hour and a half "free transfer" by van to Olympos. In the tourism industry trips are never what they seem.

The next day we would set sail at quarter to 5, it was our big travel day and the boat would be in motion until breakfast. We needed to get to Kas, a little fishing village where we would be given some time on land, and where thankfully I would get to the internet. Writing in the margins of a brochure wasn't doing it for me. Even if I'd written and filled my whole journal though, I don't think it would have done it for me...I am of a new generation where thoughts flow into keyboards much more smoothly than pens...

We found that Calvin and Dustin were good people to have around on that first day, as they were the only ones really able to fully communicate with the crew. They were both quite excited by their position and excited to be in Turkey, the country of their heritage that they had learned so much about but that had always been so distant in reality. They loved how people thinking them to be unsuspecting "tourists," which they admittedly were, would attempt to rip them off, only to have them snap off a few Turkish phrases and put them in their place.

We sat around the table talking a bit about Turkey and what we had seen and experienced since arriving. It was so large and so interesting. And it was great to talk aobut how amazingly rich its short history as a republic was. The thing most stunning about Turkish history is that before Attaturk its language was written in Arabic like script. More or less overnight Attaturk came to power and "reformed" the society, abadoning the old script for a more modern and Westernized version, with only a few variations. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but it is exactly what baffles any group of foreigners talking or thinking about Turkish history. It is also a sign of how quickly and drastically Turkey was changed and transformed with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Mustafa Kemal was called Attaturk because he literally was "father Turk." He practically defined and created the identity. Seeing how truly modern and successful much of the country is was a great source of pride for Calvin. Just as in China Mao had managed to take an incredibly oppulent and innefficient empire and turn it into an efficient and in many ways modern society, so to had Attaturk really brought Turkey into the 20th century, and today much of Turkey is as Western European as Britain or France.

Of course, a major stipulation of that modernization had also been to do away with the Islamic nature of the Ottoman Empire. Secularization was treated as akin to modernization. The seperation of Church and State, a major change from Ottoman days, is written into Attaturk's constitution, and the secularization of the government is protected by the army and Attaturk's legacy, which is, of course, a source of tension in a big country with rising Islamist tides and factions, many of which have been squashed. I discussed some of those tensions with Calvin, whose family incidentally is all from Istanbul, arguably the most Western European of Turkey's Western European areas.

"I mean what he did to bring us to where we are today was just incredible," Calvin explained, no doubt reciting much of what he learned in "Turkish school" on Saturdays while growing up. "I mean, we could have been Iran you know. If he hadn't done what he did, we'd just be another Iran, and would we want that?"

It was obviously an oversimplification. It was interesting to hear the perspective of a thoroughly westernized Turk, who wasn't even really a Turk, he was an Aussie, because it assumed that Islam was the root of Iran's problems. What about the problems created within any oligarchy or dictatorship? And to what degree are those problems ignored by those on the side of those in power, such that even the most brutal and repressive of regimes will always have power. The beloved Attaturk ut in lace a republic in which it is illegal to criticize the government and illegal to even mention the G word--genocide--that occured during World War I and after the fall of the Ottoman Empire (some of which was likely carried out with Attaturk's blessing, as seen by the fact that his war of independence involved the conquer of many lands that had been carved out for Armenians. I would later learn that Canadians pay more for their visas just because their country has officially recognized the Armenian Genocide. Outside historians are not all in agreement as to whether or not it should be called "genocide" because it was not soley ordained and specifically monitored by a government, but they are in agreement that hundreds of thousands died in multiple massacres perpetrated due to ethnic hatred. Historians and journalists have been thrown in jail for mentioning it, or for any criticism of the government, which is illegal in the Turkish Republic. And as much as Turkey wants to become a part of the EU (it's in the newspapers daily) the repression of freedom of speech seems to be as big an obstacle to admission as the country's Muslim majority.

Then again, the biggest opposition to the admittance of Turkey is coming from France...where arguments about the wearing of the veil among Muslim immigrants are a daily occurrence. In Turkey, girls are not allowed to wear the veil to school or public universities... I guess that is a form of cultural oppression that is acceptable in the Western world though....

Anyway, it was interesting to see the rigid formula of the "modern" "Attaturk" disciple: Islamic state = bad. Repression or state control to ensure that the Islamic state would never occur = good. One wonders if some day Turkey will actually become another Iran due to the rigidness of that formula...

Of course, I didn't say anything about that to Calvin, in part because I hadn't come to those thoughts yet and done enough reasearch. But I did point out that while the majority of Turks remain faithful to their heroic founder, it is easy to spot the tensions that must exist in Turkey. Istanbul is the most populous city at around 13 million, and the most modern, and Western, and it's easy to think of that as "real Turkey," and it is. But it's just as easy to imagine that to a Turk living in the Eastern Anatolian countryside, having grown up in a traditional village and culture, the constant pressure to move towards the West is not only frustrating, but almost scary. Anyone who follows American politics closely by now should realize that many people will hold onto their "culture" and "values" far more strongly than one might think, even voting contrary to their economic interests in favor of their social interests.

(It's the brilliance of the Reagan Era Republican Party's tent platform, as Professor Michael MacDonald once told me. The "business wing" of the party supports the expansion of markets and the "business of business" as an economic strategy. This strategy also leads to a reallignment of values and a breakdown of culture [money trumps tradition]. But then, in the turmoil of the de-culturation [or whatever the word would be] of America that the markets they support aid, the Republicans step in to proclaim themselves the defenders of tradition and the extreme supporters of the old guard.)

The next day on the boat, I was flipping through Catherine's Lonely Planet. The first section that offered a bit of Turkish history and information about Turkey's culture was all about the divide I have just described. Of course it was also annoying in that ultimately as a sign of the divide it cited the use of the Western style toilet in Western Turkey and the squat toilet in Eastern Anatolia...

Calvin's responses were interesting though in their total acceptance of the securlar state and Attaturk's greatness at all costs because they parralleled the feeling you got in China surrounding Mao and the communist government. Jennifer's boyfriend is from Shanghai, so our conversations about China were often about how he just accepted everything the government did without question. Was Calvin at that stage? Not quite, but Turkey is a place where despite its democracy acceptance of the government is legally ordained.

Then again, in the Bush years you could be unofficially blacklisted for criticism of the American president (see the Dixie Chicks), so maybe I'm really not one to talk...

Anyway, after our interesting conversation in the pleasant bay, Umut told us that we could go over to the Island and see a spectacular sunset. The Island we were parked near had ruins of an old Greek settlement officially abandoned during the Turkish War of Independence, but probably older than even the United States. It was 6 lira to get in...we began to figure out that the spots along the edge were perfectly set up to cater to various boats. That was also clear when the Ice Cream man came around to our boat to offer us Ice Cream. Calvin actually went jet skiing as well, but I missed out on that unfortunately.

The Island featured a hill that was probably 150 meters high, and Umut was right, the sunset was spectacular from up there. What he judged wrong, and what we didn't correct him on, was when the sunset would actually occur. For whatever reason, he sent us over to the island about an hour and a half too early.

Not that our spot at the top was unpleasant. It wasn't. I got some good jumping photos, which have become my past time more or less, including one of me jumping right in front of the paragliding mountain. Sweet!

It was Catherine, Jennifer, Ruth, Geoff, Kristen and I up top. MNost of the conversation was centered on Geoffrey's pain killers, as unfortunately his arm leaves him in pretty tough shape much of the time. For whatever reason, even though I know there are 25 (well I think she's not yet 25) year old doctors out there in the States, it felt weird to be hearing form a doctor so young, and jennifer was having much of the discussion about painkillers. We also talked about why the heck we were up there so early! Haha, I guess that is typical when you are traveling...bitching about inefficient usages of time, even in the prettiest of spots. We also heard the story of how unlike the rest of us Geoffrey and Rose had gotten onto the boat at the very last minute, with Geoffrey driving like a bat out of hell along the coast from Kas to Fethiye that morning. Geoff went on and on and on about how that road was his favorite road in the world, going perfectly along the Meditteranean...We would hear about his love for that road about 5 times away for the rest of the trip...

I ran into a father and son who had gone to Stanford up top, so that was cool. They wanted to hear all about paragliding, which I proudly described. I also met a guy from St. Louis who confirmed what my dad always claims: When someone from St. Louis asks where you went to school they are asking about high school not college. He went to a rival of my dad's alma mater John Burroughs today, but not its biggest rival traditionally, Country Day, where his father went.

The sunset came and went in about 2 minutes...A long time waiting, but worth the wait indeed.

Back on the boat we had a fantastic grilled fish dinner. The food was really a high light of the boat.

I said that boating was really just an excuse to eat and drink. Convinced I would have trouble falling asleep, I wasn't afraid to use that as an excuse to have a few beers.

Having Dustin and Calvin on the boat allowed us to make immediate contact with the crew despite all language barriers. While I wouldn't call our boat a total "party boat," we were not like the Australians Umut told us about who said "Don't even bother making breakfast for us, we aren't getting up until 12:00 and don't bother taking us anywhere, we intend to get drunk for 4 days" (as if you couldn't do that in Australia...), we did have a knack for having post dinner fun on the back of the ship.

The crew, obviously thrilled to have some passengers they could relate to, really got into it that first night, breaking out all of their Turkish pop and dance club CD mixes. Like in so many non-Western countries (well, Turkey's half-non-Western) it seems, the guys were just as likely to drag other guys out there to dance as girls. In Nepal, for instance, the porters always pulled up the guys in our group, and Soam, our beloved assistant guide, would always want to dance with me. I know I'm a great dancer...for a white guy I'm terrific!... but if I were a man and I were given the choice I'd take dancing with Kristen over dancing with another me any day! I'm convinced that the reason goes beyond just the cultural division of the sexes, but also relates to the lack of outed amnd accepted homosexuality in such places. I mean as the ever reliable Mahmoud Ahmedinijad explained "There are no gay people in Iran." Actually a better example is the reaction of Jasminda, the main character in the movie surrounding an Indian Londoner's soccer dreams "Bend It Like Beckham" to her best male friend's coming out. "What?! But you're Indian!" The result as I see it is a lack of American-style homophobia, or perhaps intercultural homophobia (why be afraid of something that doesn't exist?), and thus a total lack of cultural self-conciousness about grooving with someone of the same sex. I just like to dance, so it doesn't bother me...but I think I'll keep asking the ladies to dance...its more my style.

Calvin and Umut and our deck hand were getting down! I've noticed Turkish men dance in two major styles to their pop music. One is hands raised high above the head, moving with the music side to side with the hands not completely motionless, but always up. The other is just the opposite, hands always down at the side. The movement of hands up and down we might see in American dancing isn't really there.

Umut did dance a bit with Catherine though, spinning her round and round and teaching her the hands held high dance style, which she said was really quite fun.

Asked to do some dance solos, I was more or less at a loss for a bit before pulling out the worm. When it comes to dance solos...well...I'm a one trick pony.

Kristen went to bed early, as usual...but she didn't totally miss the party...our cabin was right under the dance floor. When I went to bed I excitedly told her about my perfect worm... "I know...I heard it...3 times!"

The crew really liked this Turkish song "Dudu" by Tarkan... whenever they were in charge of the music...which was all the time...it played about every 4th song. They also liked "I Will Survive" and "Like a Prayer," those were played a lot. Another favoite was a dance hit I still don't know the name to surrounding the phrase in the chorus, "Life is Nice, Na na na na na." Or was it "Life is good," or was it "life is great?" Still not sure. With so many Aussies on the boat they were sure to play "I Come from the Land Down Under" quite often. I personall asked that Hotel California be played about once an hour. The music on the boat was pretty good.

Really it was just fun to dance and socialize with our all Turkish crew, despite language barriers. Jennifer, Catherine, and I were the only non-Turkish speakers up that night. Dustin and Calvin, well, mostly Calvin, seemed to be having a great time. Dustin had the video camera out filming all the dancing...including my worm.

I collapsed in our cabin and slept a few hours...

It's not easy to sleep on a boat, even in the calmest of waters it rocks.

It's much harder to sleep on a moving boat...

Especially when the engine is loud in your cabin...and while there aren't fumes flowing in I don't think...it really smells.

So when the boat started up at 4:45 I was startled awake and crawled above deck to try and get some sleep in the cool air up top.

It was an incredibly pleasant morning, and incredibly pleasant to be out on the water early...Unfortunately that didn't mean that I could sleep...

I picked out Gabrial Garcia Marquez's "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" from the book kitty on the boat. It said that Marquez won the nobel prize in literature. Not for that short piece of crap. The title should have dissuaded me...but I didn't have Shantaram to read...and it was only a hundred pages. I was done by sunrise.

I got to watch the sunrise twice, which was pretty cool. We were in a bay with mountains coming down and the sun rising just over them when I first saw it rise...but then we kept moving and the sun was blocked once again...so I watched it rise again.

Two sunrises didn't make me any less tired.

So I got about 4 hours of sleep that first night...at the most. That was pretty typical...maybe that's why our "relaxing" boat trip was so damned exhausting.

Our 9:45 breakfast couldn't come too soon. We finally stopped for a bit of a feast in a nice little cove. Everybody was surprised that Kristen and I only ate the egg whites of our hard boiled eggs (the Turkish breakfast is essentially Feta Cheese, cucumbers, tomatos, bread, and a hard boiled egg). Seems like such an easy way to cut calories though...With 4 days of sitting on a boat, I needed to cut calories any way possible.

I did have a nice swim. I did some very poorly executed flips that were a great source of entertainment for our fellow passengers off the jumping in point on the side of the boat. But in some ways there is nothing worse than being tired and exhausted and unable to sleep. I have always had trouble sleeping. My mind always races and I find it impossible to shut down. It makes me a light sleeper, though I don't think anyone else slept much that first night on the boat...

I was also agitated about being away from a computer and desperately wanting to type up and finish my blog post... I related my desire to reach the internet in front of the others. "Why do you need a computer so bad?" Geoffrey asked. "Are you missing your porn?"

"No," I replied, with an awkward laugh at Geoffrey's poor attempt at humor.

"Because I sure am!" he cut in almost before I finished "no" with not a hint of sarcasm or humor whatsoever...which only made things more awkward...

It was over 3 more hours of moving to Kas where I would finally get to go on my beloved internet...

Setting foot on land after being on a boat for awhile is a strange strange experience... The land doesn't rock...but you do. I mean seriously, you still move with the ocean and oh man, it kind of makes you sick.

Of course, priority number one, even before internet, surprisingly, was to get some new sandals. I went for non-thong flip flops...I've been longing to get rid of that thing between my toes for awhile. Unfortunately though, despite being a little more uncomfortable, that little thing really does hold the shoe in place... I got non-thong flip flops and they were nearly a disaster...but oh well, they were also the only sandals in the shop that were my size (in the only affordable shop in Kas).

Kas is a quaint little fishing village not too much unlike Fethiye. I didn't see much of it...I was in the internet cafe...oh the price we pay to write.

At Kas we picked up two more passengers, two Korean guys who more or less kept to theirselves and didn't speak much English.

After Kas we sailed for a while more before arriving at a bay filled with other gulets, including 3 more from the same company as us. It was like the bay the night before, where an Ice Cream boat came around and stuff. Somehow Blake managed to get an ice cream while swimming...we later found out he had a few coins in his swim trunks.

But when we got there some people were conspicuously absent. I'd been wondering where Dustin and Calvin were for a while, but I assumed they were sleeping or having private time or something below deck. But no, actually they had just left. They had gotten off and in a flash were gone. I wasn't too dissappointed that they had left, it's not like we'd been the best of friends or anything, I'd known them for all of 28 hours. But It was strange because they'd been so personable...or at least Calvin had been...and had been video taping everything and offering to send us videos and basically doing things or making comments or offers they didn't have to make. So leaving without a word or anything was just bizarre.

But it was also so representative of what I have been talking about and thinking about with respect to traveling. There is a lot of meeting people and enjoying each other and having fun and yada yada yada, but it always ends so abruptly.

Whatever, it was just kind of bizarre. We think that Dustin and Calvin got in a fight. The captain made a comment about how he and Dustin had a bit of a row, and Geoff was certain the couple had fought, mainly because Calvin kept going on and on about how the Gulet was just exactly what he wanted to do in Turkey. He certainly seemed to be having more fun than she was. We all felt a little bad.

So we would always get to the bay around 6:00 or earlier...and then there would be a lot of down time...and then dinner... and yeah, well... there was a lot of down time.

Our dinner conversation was, in my mind, excellent. Of course it made others uncomfortable. I say excellent as in fun. Basically we spent a long time discussing the comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen, the brilliant Cambridge educated creator of Da Ali G Show, Borat, and soon Bruno. Basically, Cohen has said in an excellent interview with Terry Gross that the goal of his characters is to expose how silly and stupid other people are in that they actually take the characters somewhat seriously. With Ali G, the point is "How could anyone ever think that young people really act that way?" With Borat it's "How could anyone think that foreigners really act that way?" and with Bruno it's "How could anyone really think that this is the typical gay Austrian?" There is definitely a degree of manipulation in Cohen's work, he tricks people and makes the people think that they are talking to the real thing and not a character. That's the point.

In Borat, he boards a camper van with several frat boy students of the University of South Carolina. With cameras rolling, they proceed to discuss the world, with the students making extremely inflamatory and bigoted statements, thinking they are simply talking to a dumb, impressionable foreigner who really is stupid enough to think that all Jews have hidden horns.

The students sued, claiming that they had been manipulated and used.

The argument was essentially over whether or not we should care about those students. Yes they were used...they were used to expose bigotry for the idiocy that it really is, at least that's what Cohen would argue, as well as arguing that it's damn funny to watch them make fools out of themselves. He would also say that the comedy of it is in part what exposes the bigotry. I agree with Cohen. I ultimately don't really give a hoot about the racist, sexist, anti-semitic idiots who said everything that they now claims "defamed" them on camera without being forced to. Nick took a different line, arguing that the kids had essentially been set up, that Cohen had played them and that that was ultimately wrong. They'd been made to look like fools. I disagreed, bigotry is bigotry, they made fools of themselves, and that wasn't Cohen or his camera man's doing. Nick said that we all harbor certain prejudices and deficiencies that can be drawn out by any skilled manipulator, and that no matter how poltically correct and not prejudiced we all try to be and think ourselves to be, there is a way to bring those thoughts out, Cohen did that, and thus the foolishness (or, as I kept saying, bigotry) was ultimately drawn out by him. Therefore, he made fools out of them, which was wrong, by skillfully leading them make fools out of themselves, it was Cohen's fault and his responsability for completely ruining the lives of these students, and he should be held accountable.

Certainly Cohen played a role, and he did "play" the students, that is, of course, his very job and his purpose whenever he gets into character. But I don't think its fair to heap the blame on him, because his whole point is we can laugh at the bigots because they reveal themselves to be so stupid! By extenstion, bigotry is worse than just wrong, its stupid also. When there are cameras rolling, you have to watch what you say, no matter what.

I think though, in a way the simpleness of that fact, that when cameras are rolling you are in a public setting and you have to watch what you say and do, is what makes Cohen's comedy more powerful and of a greater social impact than simply making us laugh. I think there are few people out there who have absolutely spot on perfect records when it comes to following that rule. We've all said or done something silly in a public setting that we look back on and just go "man, that was dumb." The idiots exposed in Cohen's comedy are in all too many ways far too much like everyone else. Cohen is showing us that racism, agism, homophobia, etc. all exist, they're out there among "regular" individuals all over the place (especially in America as Borat shows). Cohen tells us we can laugh at its stupidity and take away its power, but we also need to recognize that it is there, and that it is something we always have to work as a society to make better.

As usual, I loved the philosophical/political heated argument while some of our boatmates were a little uncomfortable... All I can say is, while I am still terrified...I can't wait for law school!

It turns out that the bay we were staying in was actually supposed to be our resting spot for the final night, but the bay we'd hoped to stay in for night 2 had been too crowded. Not a big deal, but we were all thinking, "Hmm...how come this cruise isn't going farther?"

That night we were taken by boat to the Pirate's Cove Bar, a "secret" bar/club on land where you can "party in secret like the pirates once did," or something like that. Despite the fact there were many boats in our bay, for whatever reason the bar was pretty much people from our boat and crew members from the surrounding boats. Like every bar in every non-English speaking, non-Western (or should I say somewhat-non-Western) country we have been there were Bob Marley posters everywhere. There was also a big Jimi Hendrix poster. Of course when I requested that they play a Jimi Hendrix song...they had none... And I asked for Bob Marley, they took forever to play "No Woman No Cry" (one of my favorite songs ever) and then they faded out in the middle of the guitar solo...the second greatest guitar solo of all time...after Hendrix's solo during "All Along the Watchtower," which they didn't play at all...because they didn't have any Hendrix music!

If you are going to put a poster of a music icon up in the bar, you better have that music to play when requested!

Ugg, the bar was a little dissappointing, a lot less cool than in the brochure photos up on the walls of our boat...but that is becoming typical, haha.

The next day we cruised around a bit...it was a cruise after all....of course I had had trouble sleeping...again...so I was quite tired. First we went to an old Ottoman castle. Kristen and I took the opportunity to get on dry land again, no matter how much we were rocking, but it was hotter than heck, so we didn't pay the extra 6 lira to go into the castle, just walked up the hill for a good view out over the water with Catherine and Jennifer and then hung out. From there we took the boat past the "Sunken City," an old Greek city that is now for the most part under water, though to be honest it wasn't nearly as impressive as in the post cards... It never is...haha. The sunken city is protected so you aren't allowed to stop there or swim. It all went by pretty quickly.

Our major hang out spot for the day was a secluded little bay that was very pretty and when we got there very empty. There was a stream coming down into the ocean of very very cold glacier water, making the bay very cold, which was pretty cool. Amazing to be in the hot sun of the Meditterranean thinking about cold cold water flowing all the way down from a high mountain glacier.

Geoff kept going on and on about how ridiculous that no one else was in the bay. "This is just...fantastic...there is no one here. Wow!"

Of course, after he said that the bay filled up with other boats.

We were there for over 3 hours. I got a little bored, though by then I was reading another book from the book kitty, Mike Gayle's "My Legendary Girlfriend." No Shantaram, but much better than Marquez's novella. I don't know though, I just can't really sit in one spot for three hours, but swimming never keeps me occupied for too long either.

Perhaps one of the highlights of the trip did occer while we were sitting in the bay though. I made a lot of comments in China about Asian tourists loving to throw up the peace sign or V for victory in every one of their photos and how funny it is.

Well Eastern European women, from what I've seen, love to pose. They do not take a straight picture. They pose and mimic the models in magazines.

While we were sitting in the bay a boat pulled up about 100 yards away full of what looked like Eastern European women, though to be fair we couldn't really see faces. One by one they took turns walking to the front of the boat and posing for pictures. They had a line going. Ruth, Jennifer, Kristen and I couldn't stop laughing. There was the leg up hair flowing model shot (with many hair fixes). There was the stick out the rear and look over your shoulder shot. It was just too funny. The best was probably a very overweight woman who straddled the front strip of the boat, leaned forward and did her best to show off her cleavage. They were ridiculous, and at least as funny as the Asian peace sign pictures.

Finally, or so it seemed finally, we got moving again. Only it turned out we were actually only about 10 minutes away from our bay where we'd slept the night before...

There was a rock I tried jumping off of, but I worried on the top spot that I wouldn't be able to get far enough out over the water...but then the lower spot was probably lower than the jump into the water from the boat, so it was kind of a waste.

For dinner we had Kofte, which are Turkish lamb meatballs. I introduced Blake, Nick and the others to what the lineman of the Williams football team liked to call "Man-Sauce:" the mixture of ketschup and mayonaise that is just phenomenal. Oh how I miss being able to pig out all the time and not feel guilty about it...

Dinner conversation was mostly about mortgages, as Ruth's job is essentially to give them out and Jennifer had just bought her first place, a one-bedroom apartment in Melbourne. I don't understand how something can be so complex and confusing AND boring at the same time...

We had a great last night. Period. There was dancing and music and partying and everything until quite late. At least that night we were "the party boat." We didn't bother going back to the underwhelming pirate bar. Instead we started out by taking turns playing songs on Blake and Nick's Ipod with their docking station.

It's fun to sit around and discuss and share favorite songs, especially with people from other countries/cultures, etc. Nick and Blake loved my candidness in discussing what songs I liked and didn't. As I've said many times, there are two kinds of music: good and bad.

After the Ipod, the dance music kicked in and the crew got into it. We all got into it. A lot of Rolling Stones songs played, which I was quite happy with. The crew started making moves too...which was oh so funny.

Best overheard line: "I have a boyfirend. I have a partner...do you know what a partner is?" The deck hand had less successful than the captain...

Jennifer had the fantastic idea of jumping into the Mediterranean at night. Ok, so it wasn't necessarily the most exciting thing to think about after the fact, but it was just so fun at the time and the stars were amazing, really spectactular, as was the moon. One of the best parts about jumping in in the near dark is not knowing when you are going to hit the water...Then you hit and it's freezing and hilarious.

More and more dancing led to a second jump around 2:45. The deck hand followed us in, confused as to why it was fun or funny...but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. His thought process was probably, "She's cute...oh man the water's cold."

I thought it was all a blast.

The next day we woke up and laughed about our evening of dancing the night before in which I somehow had managed to escape having to do the worm.

Geoff, who had slept on the deck right next to the landing to get back onto the boat after a swim made the scumy old man comment of the morning. He explained that "The highlight of my night was watching young Jennifer shower" after swimming...sounding completely serious.

We started moving...and all of the sudden...about 25 minutes later...we were in a big harbor. On the way we had had a 3 minute swim stop at the "pirate's cove" that we'd heard about upon arrival into our sleeping spot several nights ago... It was about 10 O Clock...we anchored...with a perfect view of the other boats... and of the buses set to take us to Olympos...

The water was fairly disgusting in that harbor, even though we were anchored off shore...whenever all the boats are in one calm spot the water is oily and awful. I was, like everyone, exhausted, and I all wanted to do was get on dry land...but no, we were going to wait for lunch...

The only thing that got us through this period were the laughs to be had surrounding the captain's discussion with the lovely lady he'd shared a moment with the night before... Blake kept joking that as they sat at the front of the boat he kept telling her, "I'm sorry babe, but I'm married to the sea. It's a tough lonely job in this ocean of love, but someone has to do it..."

Later we found out that that is more or less exactly what he had said...and had showed her his ring...which had an anchor on it! He had also said, "Even though we love each other, it's just not to be." He was pretty intense, but she was amused. He tracked her down at the hostel later that night...well sort of...a guy came over to our table and asked for her with a message that "A member of the crew is waiting to hear from you." Ahh, text messaging, spreading love around the world.

"Married to the sea," it was a good line.

3 hours of frustrated waiting and we finally got off...

There are a lot of times on tours and stuff where you just think to yourself, who came up with this?

Had we stopped in a nice spot around the corner no one would have cared... but instead we were all just tired and angry.

Then, we got off in Demere, actual home to St. Nicholas...because everything...even Santa Claus...comes from Turkey...walked around town for a half hour per our van driver's request...and drove an hour and a half to Olympos...

It was a much longer process than it should have been.

It left a bad taste in your mouth...we got to Olympos around 4, we'd been ready to be there much earlier...and day 4 of our cruise had been just being on a boat in a harbor...not really cruising.

We got to Olympos, exhausted, at about 4:00.

There is really nothing about Olympos that feels Turkish...

It is a beach town where there are hotels with tree houses. Well...the hotels are tree houses.

There are ruins of the ancient Greek City of Olympos by the beach...there are ruins everywhere.

The whole place feels quite issolated and insular. But what's kind of funny is that for a place that doesn't feel Turkish at all, it has actually become quite popular with Turkish tourists.

Kristen and I stayed at Bayrums in a "bungalow" which was actually pretty nice with good airconditioning. There was a nice little courtyard to hang out in and stuff.

Within about 10 minutes of arriving I ran into Jess and Phoenix coming back from the beach, which was really pretty funny. Small world. Their boat trip sounded much more chill than ours, but they had had fun too. They did not like Olympos much though and were more than ready to be hopping on the Fez bus with us the next morning.

We walked around the ruins at the beach. Really the nice part was a high point with a great view of the sea and surrounding mountains. It was a nice spot.

But we were tired!

We opted not to go see the Chimera flames, this place on top of Mt. Olympos (not the Greek Gods one) where there are permanent flames...too tired and it cost money.

Dinner was included with the room,w hich was nice and we had a big buffet/family style meal...food...yum.

One thing we hadn't known when we got back the boat was that there was no BYO allowed, so Catherine, Jennifer, Kristen and I enjoyed our bottles of weak fruit wine. They weren't quite as good warm...but they still tasted great. The fruit wine of Sirinche can take down the real wine of Italy or Napa or whereever any day as far as I'm concerned.

We decided to explore town a bit, only to find out from an annoyingly "full on" South African (as Catherine put it) named Nick who had been to Olympos every holiday for 7 years that nothing was happening at Kadir's, the traditional party spot, and that we'd have to check out the Orange Bar...

We walked in at about 12 and the bar was actually pretty cool. It was open air with a big courtyard with a dance floor and tables and stuff and a DJ spinning a mix of English music and Turkish pop.

Of course, it was empty!

We saw Nick on the way out who admonished us for not sticking around. "Come on, it'll get going by like 2:30 or 3:00...don't go home, have some fun guys."

I had fun finally getting some sleep...key word some before our 9:00 Am bus. I couldn't sleep because I was rocking too much. That wasn't the fruit wine, I promise. Since being back on dry land I just couldn't stand it...I rocked back and forth constantly as if to the motion of the ocean... 10 days on a sailboat will be interesting.

Honestly, I don't get the go out at 2:30 thing...what do you do before then? It just seems so boring...

Of course in the States I don't understand why people wait until 10 or 11:00 or later... it makes no sense.

I guess I'm just not hip enough for Olympos. It's ok though, I'm happy with being different...no problems for me not fitting in in the Meditteranean...after all I'm not married to the sea.

The partying on the boat had been fun though, I will say that. What was funnier to me perhaps was experiencing what I can only refer to as a "Post-Shantaram contemplative period." Everything I thought about, every last thing I wanted to write down...most of which I didn't get around to.

On our last night, after too many beers, I stared up at our useless mast without sails, making a perfect cross on the stary night sky. Ruth asked me what I was doing, hanging off the boat for the best look.

"Oh, I don't know...I was just thinking how I wish I'd been raised a Christian so I could look up at that beautiful cross against the sky and have some sort of epiphany or something...Instead I just think how beautiful it all is but how amazing that an amazingly simple symbol changed the whole world...and perhaps drives it today."

Ruth was a bit shocked.

"Oh Jimmy, you're too serious! You're being too deep! Haha!"

"I'm not being too deep," I told her, "I'm just a writer..."

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Fethiye, Muğla Province, Turkey

Ahh, continuing on...

So we left the next morning from Koycegiz headed for the Sakklikent Gorge and on to Fethiye. I was down, but feeling pretty good, because, among other things, it looked like Phoenix and Jess were going to be on our four day boat cruise leaving the next day, and they were cool. They HAD danced with the male belly dancer and were both fun and down to Earth. By the end of the day, after that day's festivities, we liked them even more. It was only minutes away from the hostel though that Kristen and I learned we had mixed up the dates.

See, we had booked our Gulet cruise online months in advance. On the little sheet with Fez activities, it said that the Gulet cruises left on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturdays... But that only applied to the people booking with V-Go, the secondary carrier in charge of the Gulet cruises, at the last minute. We would be going Sunday, not Saturday like we originally thought, and we would not be hanging out with Jess and Phoenix.

We had booked a paragliding flight for Saturday morning, thinking that we'd go paragliding early over Oludyeniz Beach and then hop on the boat. Hayden told us that early morning was the best time because the beach would be empty. At least we wouldn't have to feel rushed or nervous that we wouldn't make it to the boat on time, because even though we had asked Hayden to book the flight several days earlier, when he let it sit for two days we were only able to get pilots for 8:30. I think that may have actually been the earliest flight of the day, but we were still thrown for a curve since our boat was set to leave at 10:00, and we didn't want to miss paragliding. Now at least we could be confident that we would get a good paraglide in and not be rushed to the boat, and we could visit Oludyeniz beach, which is one of the prettiest in the Mediterranean. But we wouldn't be cruising with Jess and Phoenix, and from the looks of it, we wouldn't be cruising with any fellow Fez Travel people. Once again, Fez wasn't exactly offering much different by way of meeting and getting to know fun people from taking public buses...Oh well.

When we left Koycegiz we picked up a tour guide, for reasons none of us, not even Hayden, could understand. The Sakklikent Gorge is a gorge that was formed when an Earth quake literally split apart a mountain. There is a fast running glacial stream moving through the gorge that turns into a river. We knew from the brochure map that it wasn't far from Fethiye, and it really did look like it might be a short day.

What we didn't know is that Fethiye was about an hour and 15 minutes past Koygeciz...and that our trip to Sakklikent would pass right by Fethiye. Given that we didn't get to go on the mud cruise in Koygeciz, it was very frustrating to pass Fethiye, which was a bigger, cooler town, with a nice harbor and a fantastic fish market (which we would learn about later that night). Our meal by the lake was decent, but that and the male belly dancer did not really warrant a stay in Koygeciz.

I was very entrenched in Shantaram when we arrived at some rock tombs that our tour guide told us little about. His "tour" up to that point had been to tell us that people in the area did a lot of farming...I had already guessed that...by the farms we saw along the road... I wasn't too surprised for whatever reason...

The tombs were on the side of the hill, with some sort of Ottoman compound up top. You could pretty much see everything from where the bus parked, so none of us were keen to pay the 10 lira entrance fee to walk up to the high point, maybe, at most 150 meters above us. That was also the suggestion of our "tour guide," who wasn't about to walk us up to the top. Silly, useless and pointless do not do enough to desribe his roll in our day. We had seen snow capped mountains on the way in, which was sweet in my book, because snow capped mountains make the world a better place, but it was hot and I think we all just wanted to get to the gorge, despite what might have been a good view. We commented that the 10 lira entrance fee was really quite silly, because there was no more than 15 minutes of sight seeing to be had. For 3 lira, we all probably would have paid to go to the top...but for 10 we'd all be content to look at the ruins from outside the compound.

Something had been mentioned about going to a carpet weaving factory that day, and having seen a sign on the way to the rock tombs/Ottoman spot saying that the Sakklikent was within 21 kilometers, we were all excited thinking that we had somehow avoided the "carpet weaving" demonstration, which, incidentally, was the only pointless stop that actually was in the brochure. We were wrong. We went to the carpet weaving factory, where, as I said, I was berated for having purchased a "fake" silk on silk carpet as clearly shown by the fact I did not pay $6000 for it...

Finally finally finally, we made it to the Gorge around lunch time. There was a nice little river side restaurant next to the river coming out of the gorge, where we sat in little "on the floor" style booths. We had delicious trout and good french fries and got to know each other. As I said, Jess and Phoenix were quite fun. I probed them a bit, withas with just about every Aussie and Kiwi I meet, about Gallipoli and ANZAC day and told them Elliot's response to my question about the meaning of ANZAC day and its remembverence. "Ugg," Phoenix said, "That's just the younger generation."

"Yeah," Jess added, "They just have no respect for it, it's not supposed to be like that, it's not just supposed to be a day to drink, but for younger people it is."

We were given the option of going for an hour long tubing ride on the river after lunch and after a walk up into the gorge. Kristen, Jess, Phoenix and I jumped at the offer, and obviously Hayden wanted to and did come too. The gorge was cool, but the water was very very cold, very fast moving, and really hard to navigate without shoes or proper sandles due to the rocks on the bottom. I had also badly cut my feet on the rocks at the waterfall the day before. I soldiered on for a bit into the gorge, but everyone else stayed back. Kristen took a couple funny pictures of ridiculous old men in speedos for whatever perverse reason you want to think of... Ok, it was a joke, but yea...there were way too many old men in speedos. In the middle of the river gorge there is a guy with a camera who takes your picture as you fight your way up river. When you get to the bottom the pictures are all developed... The old men in t-shirts and speedos make for some funny pictures...

After the Gorge we got our tubes and paddles. We all had a tube and a two sided, kayak like paddle. In the end we had almost no control over our tubes, but that didn't matter...

Our guide was a Turkish guy who spoke not a word of English except for "Bottoms up" which is what he told us to do when our tube went into shallow water so that we would not scrape the bottom. He had on a Delbarton T-shirt, as in Delbarton in New Jersey, that has been educating the "finest" youth of "New Jersey," as if there are any fine youth in New Jersey...where they don't pump their gas, they just pump their fists, for years. I was quite amused. Our guide had not the slightest clue what I was saying when I asked him where he got his t-shirt and not the slightest clue how to respond...

Along the sides of the river, there are mud spots that are supposedly theraputic, or what not. All I know is that there was a photographer there ready to take picture of of us all caked in mud. The guide didn't really give us a choice, we got out of the very fast moving but shallow water, which was really quite hard to do, and he just started slinging. He grabbed each of us and plopped huge hand fuls of mud on us. I got him back with several all over him. There was mud, mud and more mud everywhere. It was actually as fun as all the silly pictures you've ever seen of people at mud baths look. Afterwards, washing off in the cold water was not so easy or fun, but it certainly was interesting. I went right under and tried to swim up stream in the foot and a half of very fast moving water, but it was hard. I mostly just held myself in one place while the water washed over me before struggling to stand and get out. The guide grabbed Kristen's arms and held her in place while the water washed over her, which was actually a little scary, since she really had no escape and didn't know if he'd notice when she had to come up for air. I got almost all the mud off me and was read to go. Thank goodness our guide noticed that I had forgotton to get by beloved Stanford hat off the bank where I had left it in hopes that it wouldn't get filled with mud.

After a short ride back to the restaurant/compound by the side of the river, we went for a swim in the small pool on the edge of the river, where Ali and his big belly had been swimming and sunbathing. I tried doing a couple dives off the edge into the pool. Kristen says I am just about the worst diver she has ever seen in her life, and she and Ali sure let me know it with their uproarious laughter.

What was funnier though was Ali's joly swimming. He would point to the water and then motion towards one end of the pool and back, indicating that he intended to swim the length of the pool underwater... But then he would try. He'd take a huge breath puffing his cheeks way out and jump up and then down into the water he'd go. Without pushing off one end of the pool, he'd make 5 or so fitful and pitiful breast strokes which would move his rotund body about 6 feet. Having gone nowhere he would pop up gasping for air, completely out of breath and utter his favorite, and in some ways only, English phrase: "OHHH MY GAWHHHD!" Anything that got a rise out of Ali would lead to a spirited "OHHH MY GAWHHHD!" What a character.

The poor older Aussies hadn't gone tubing and hadn't spent much time in the gorge either, but they seemed ok sipping beers on the side of the river. The tour guide was REALLY ok though... He had done NOTHING. He didn't lead us up to the gorge or anything. He was a waste of space. And when we went to have a cup of tea before a 4 PM departure from the gorge (that should have been earlier, but for whatever reason it was deemed we should stay there longer) we found the tour guide sitting alone at a table having a smoke, talking on his cell phone, and drinking a beer. What a joke.

It was about an hour and a half back to Fethiye, during which I finally reached the climax of Shantaram and all of the pieces came together! I'm not going to ruin it, but it happens somewhere in the 700s, so if you are getting tired and worn out from such a long book, you can do it, just keep going and you'll love it!

The main hostel where most of the bus passengers stay in Fethiye didn't have any doubles left, so we said goodbye to Jess and Phoenix, hoping to see them again in Olympus, and goodbye to the three elder Aussies, they would be going on by bus and we'd miss them entirely. We weren't sure if we'd run into Hayden again, though it turns out he had days off that allowed us to catch up to him again, and we knew we'd never see Ali again. We were at Hayden and Ali's hotel, but even though we contemplated meeting up for dinner at the fish market, Hayden and Ali weren't really in the mood and we didn't see them when we went. No more Ali and his "Oh My GAWHHHHD." Oh well.

Fethiye is a cool little harbor town. Like seemingly every other town on the Turkish Coast, there is, of course a over 1600 year old Roman Theater in town, which was cool, and countless other ruins. The streets are lined with nice little shops, most of which sell the same knock off clothing as everywhere else in Turkey or, my personal favorite, "Genuine fake watches!"

The fish market in Fethiye though, is really its best spot. It is a big courtyard with restaurants all around. In the middle there is a rectangular island divided into roughly 16 sections with various fishemermen selling their catch of the day. You choose the fish and they gut it for you right there and give it to you in a bag. You take it to one of the restaurants where for 5 lira a person they grill the fish for you and provide bread and a salad. It was great. We got a bunch of prawns...delicious...and a sea bass and sea bream to try. I just loved the spot.

After a walk around town, I returned to the hotel where I was just too tired to work on the blog, and too wired to go to sleep and so I read and read Shantaram past midnight and then turned out the light. Even though the next day we were set to do just about the coolest thing ever, go paragliding over the Olyudinez Beach, jumping off a mountain over 2000 meters high and flying in over the sea, and we were supposed to wake up at 7:15 am to do it, I just couldn't sleep. My mind was racing and I just still felt down. There had been some good moments that day, and some frustrations, but something was just eating at me.

Traveling is just exhausting for so many reasons, and it is just so tough sometimes in part because you don't want to let yourself be down or frustrated. The result is compound frustration, and sometimes there is nothing worse than being mad at yourself for being mad, or down on yourself for being down. When you are traveling, pouring all your energy into the pursuit of "fun" and when that pursuit takes effort and, perhaps most importantly, money, you never want to be frustrated or down. But the truth is that its not always fun. Even more importantly, the truth is that sometimes the very experiences you have that are "unfun" is are what offer you very fun memories.

Take for example, Kristen and my experience on a Jordanian public pus to the Dead Sea. It was tense and crazy, we had no idea where we were going. We smiled at each other and laughed a bit at the chickens ahead of us, but we were both still a little on edge. Then we hopped into an unmarked van serving as a cab for a ride with a guy who spoke no English. And all this happened because the easy route suddenly was not availible, there were "no buses" to the Dead Sea that day. It wasn't the worst experience we've had, but it sure wasn't the best. But, it is one of my favorite stories of the trip. Our rides on Jordanian public buses and the stories we have are like our own little merit badges that prove we were uncomfortable and we did it, and we cherish those memories.

Sometimes traveling is like hiking, the best thing about it is being done and remembering and looking back on what you have done...not actually doing it. That's something hard to come to grips with. Another great example was one of our fellow travelers in Egypt who spen t much of our trip very upset with the way things were going and down and out about the vvarious problems that arose. Then again, when that person got home, facebook proclaimed that "Egypt was amazing!"

Here's the really confusing thing: It WAS! The bad times don't necessarily outweigh the good, and even when they do, the "bad" can be a "good" memory... in that case it's better than a wash, the experience trumps not having the experience.

But while just being "tired" was eating at me, I don't think that was it. It was really that I was missing home. I realized what was going on and it hit me so hard jumped out of bed and I had to write it down in my journal, given to me by a friend I at the time felt quite out of touch with.

Probably the best thing about traveling is not actually going to different locations, or seeing new landscapes. A new place is great. But ultimately, people generally trump place. Traveling is made better by the people you meet and the human experiences you share with others. As good as the descriptions of the slums and the things Lin sees in Shantaram are, it's the characters that fill his sometimes transient world that make it special. But while traveling, for every connection there is a far more powerful, far more real, disconnection. When Ali walked out the door of the hotel to go to dinner, I knew there was a 99.9% chance I'd never see him again, and he classifies still as my favorite "character" of the trip. I started thinking of all the people we'd met over the months, people who had walked into my life and left just as quickly. There was that night of chatting it up with Johnny and Kerry after our caving experience in Waitomo. There was the 4 hour conversation with Karla and James ont hat first night in Whitianga. There was Byron, the biggest Brett Favre fan int he world...Brett's not playing anymore so I can't even track him down at a Jets game. Frank Mary and Allison all made for a great trip through China...might never see them again. I know that I'll never see Mr. Deng again, who like Ali spoke not a word of English but was as kind and fun as can be. I wracked my brain to realize that the guy I had written down in the blog as "Ken" from just three nights ago in Gallipoli was really named Keith...I think... Soam, our beloved assistant guide in Nepal, always ready to answer yes, no matter what you asked him, nope probably not going to see him.

You hope to see people again, but you know that for the vast majority of people wou won't. Days of Facebook offer hope and keep you in contact, but it's almost just a tease, and some people you know will one day purge their "friend lists" and eliminate you just as easily as you were added.

A great thing about meeting people from other countries is that they are from other countries. A terrible thing about meeting people from other countries is that they are from other countries...and live in other countries.

To some degree these feelings and these situations are true of many many forms of social interaction, especially in big cities, or in a country like America, which is vast beyond belief. Many of the people that you meet every day you may never run into again. And I am about to move across the country, leaving behind many close friends. But you do form relationships that are everlasting, and I do know that there are people who, though I will be far from them next year, I will talk to regularly, just as there are some people who I was far from this year and talked to regularly.

Travel throws that all into a knot in some ways. The people you meet and spend time with get to know you very well and very fast, in part due to the hardships of travel that you go through together, in part due to the sheer amount of time spent together. By the end of our trek in Nepal, spending hours upon hours day after day with the same people, I felt like I really knew them. But it's an experience that nevertheless occurs in a vacuum outside "the real world" and it all ends too damned fast. I will try to stay in touch, but I know that with some people it won't be possible and I know that it certainly won't be as easy as staying in touch with those who I have formed "real world" friendships with, even though when I go home I am moving across the country for law school. Those still at home while I am off going around the world probably feel like I just fell out of their lives for a bit, so it's not like they're always the quickest to stay in touch which is more than understandable.

More than home, I think I just miss real friendship, friendship that doesn't end (or seemingly end, because it doesn't always end...that's too cynical a view) when you say goodbye, or the day you leave the country or city or where ever it was that you were spending time. That, I think, is really what after a while makes traveling tough, because at first it is just fun and new. At the end of our trip in Nepal, when Kristen and I felt very close with three other people, Kristen said to me that the last few nights out together while so fun, just really made her miss having friends, being in a place with people you know and like...being...home.

Of course, I guess I shouldn't be too melodramatic...because after a fitfull night sleep we got up and went... Paragliding! There are definitely perks to travel as well, believe me...but as I said earlier, I think it's important to try to give the full picture, including the duldrums.

The Olyudeniz Beach stretches out into the Mediterranean in a peninsula. But there is another peninsula such that the two peninsulas form a virtual T, with a narrow straight preventing a total T. Thus a blue lagoon, with the blue waters of the Med, is formed. High above the blue lagoon there is a mountain that rises over 2000 meters out of the sea. That is where you can paraglide from over Olyudeniz, coming down through the mountains, ending up over the sea, and landing on the beach. It is one of the best places in the world to paraglide, or so I have read, and I believe it.

We were picked up a little late in a truck and driven about a half hour from Fethiye to Olyudeniz. There we all piled into the back of the rickety pick up, on seats, with our guides in the cab and a solo paraglider and his guide in back with us. The guide, armed with an SLR camera to record the client's flight, wore a t-shirt emblazoned with Che Guevara references. I wondered what the third world revolutionary would think about this man now living off helping tourist fly off mountains... Hmm, what would Che think of what tourism is today?

The ride up the mountain on a rickety one lane dirt road was far far scarier than the flight down. There were several sheer drop offs only feet from the side of the truck, which I was almost sure we would fall out of... And though the brochure said the ride up was about 45 minutes, it was more like an hour and 10, so I just couldn't believe how high we were going and I kept thinking we were about to reach the top.

Because we went early, it was about 9:20 when we jumped off, we were the only ones at the top and we were assured that we could use the top launch spot at around 6500 feet, instead of the one about 200 meters below. It was just Kristen and I flying tandem and the two solos, though they both waited a little for us to leave and get out of their way and with less weight they were able to stay up for longer.

Kristen got a great guide who spoke good English and was a crafty camera man, using a monopod to hold the camera out from his body and get good shots. I got Ibo, who spoke very little English, was not as good a camera man, with only the camera in his hand, and asked me on the way down if I spoke German...

Kristen took off by running down the hill...you don't really jump off anything...and immediately caught an updraft, doing several circles while Ibo and I readied for take off. We ran off the mountain and immediately started to drop like flies...

"Let's go up, let's go up like them!"

"Too many kilograms!" Ibo told me, "Your girlfriend not so many kilograms, but us too many kilograms, not enough air, too many kilos."

Ugg...I knew I had a reason to lose some weight...

The flight, though short because of my weight, was spectacular...and I got great pictures...which will be uploaded...at some point...

We came over the mounatins, with snow capped mountains off in the distance away from the sea. We looked down on Olyudeniz, which appeared as a mere postage stamp from 6000 feet. We went out over the Mediteranean and looked down on ships that looked like little toys from the game battleship.

Paragliders are incredibly manoeuverable and Kristen and I went down in tandem in addition to riding tandem with a guide. Kristen was able to actually sit on top of my glider and has pictures of her feet touching the top of my glider, which is what I think caused its lack of aerodynamicness and its freefall. I blame her foot as much as my weight.

Out over the ocean, they pull down one side of the glider and you go into a big spin, the G-Forces hitting you quite hard. Thankfully I didn't get sick. It was awesome!

The landing was far too soon. Our flight was a little over 20 mintues, though they say the typical one takes 30-45 (but like so many time estimates, that's probably an overstatement). But we had come down over the beach with not a soul on it, which was the benefit of going early, even if the air wasn't as good. For some reason I guess no one goes to the beach early in Olyudeniz, the swanky beach town. I of course tortured myself a bit over the merits of going early or late, when probably i should have been

After watching our videos we bought Kristen's, because even though it was way too expensive, it was way too cool not to have. I patted myself on the back for some pictures of Kristen's flight that were postcard worthy...she did not have many of me... she was a little too scared to use her camera. It's understandable, and she probably had more fun just enjoying it. I, however, always need that photo.

We had brunch, which was for Kristen scrambled eggs, toast and apple tea and for me a Pide and a beer, and got ready to go to the famous beach. One thing came to us that was really funny. Standing outside our restaurant was a paragliding guide trying to sell trips to passing tourists. The guide had semi-bleached hair that was dissheveled, a hip paragliding t-shirt and pink board shorts with flip flops. He was Turkish, but he could have been anything. What he was was a paragliding guide, plain and simple, and you could have found his type in Jackson, Wyoming, or Queenstown, NZ, or anywhere else around the world and he could have grown up in a village in Turkey, a city in the States, a city in Turkey, a farm in the states, etc. Sometimes subcultures seem to trump macroculture and ethnicity.

The beach at Olyudeniz was nice, but it was really really rocky. There wasn't any sand. I guess that's a big knock on Mediterranean beachs. The water is blue and clear and great, but very salty. I went for a nice swim but got out and spent most of my time reading Shantaram and getting a totally uneven burn due to crappy old sunscreen (don't worry, we bought better stuff) that only worked in palces where the glob had actually been applied, but worked nowhere that the glob had been rubbed in. After about 2 and a half hours we were more than ready to head to Fethiye.

The dolmish ride took about 45 mintues, though the beach is only 15 km from Fethiye. Kristen fell asleep immediately and I read Shantaram, the ride ending with me having only 2 pages left of the 933 page novel! It was frustrating that Fethiye ended up being far less accessible to Oluydeniz than we thought, but it was fine if you started the day out with a "free" transfer for paragliding...

I don't understand why sitting at the beach is so exhuasting...but it is... The afternoon was a long long nap.

That night I spent most of the night working on my earlier blog post on Istanbul, but we did venture out to go to dinner. We got Doner Iskender, which is the best way to get Doner Kabob with the best sauce. Yum, yum yum.

On the way back we did some shopping to get some beach towels for our upcoming boat cruise. That was where I probably had the funniest conversation of my time abroad.

I bought two towels and two knock off polo shirts off a nice guy...

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"America," I replied.

"Ahh, America. Ahh, Obama. You like Obama?"

"Yes I do," I said.

"Oh. I got a question. Obama, is he capitalist or is he regular? Because the Americans, they suck the blood of the world," he explained, taking a mock bite out of his arm. "I am not Muslim but you know, I like all of us, we all hate Americans. But the American people I meet, they are not capitalist, they are friendly."

I just laughed as I handed him my money to buy new pieces of private property in the market place... I wonder, was that shopkeeper capitalist, or was he regular?

It was a late night of blog writing that felt like it had gone nowhere when I was forced to shut down at 12:30. Up early the next morning, I did dome more work, but in an attempt to not monopolize the computer too much, I gave it to an Aussie woman and American woman, both in their early 50s I would guess, traveling together and blogging at travelblog under the handle "Two blondes on holiday" or something like that. I have not bothered to look at their blog.

I've realized that there is one major problem with meeting other travelers while traveling, and its a reason why meeting locals is and always will be in some ways much more fun: everyone has had THE PERFECT trip. If they haven't had the perfect trip, they have certainly had the ONLY trip worth having and anything you have seen and experienced differently, well, you've experienced it WRONG. (I was admonished for liking a hotel that someone else had had a bad night at once...oh how could it be!) They had traveled to Syria, which is something I really would have loved to do, but I admittedly sort of chickened out on (lesson number two: if it is there, people will travel to it, so never chicken out...just make a decision that you'd rather go somewhere else). The had also been to Jordan. They, of course, couldn't believe that I'd been to Jordan and not Syria. I, of course, can't believe they went to Jordan and Syria and not Nepal, or China, or...or Peru!...what idiots! But really what got me was when they actually started talking about the nearly 3 weeks they had spent in Jordan, as opposed my 5 full days there.

"You didn't go to Jerash?" one asked, shocked. "It's fantastic, it has the absolute best Roman ruins outside of Rome itself. It's so much better than Petra!"

"Oh, yeah, oops, I didn't have time to get there, but I loved Petra."

"Oh, well Petra is good, but it's just so spread out you know. Like you have to walk all over the place and stuff. At Jerash it's all just there, so accessible and you don't have to walk everywhere."

I loved Petra because you got to walk everywhere, across these wide open expanses of beautiful rock and mountain filled desert. The fact it was more spread out meant that there weren't people everywhere as well. It was a major added bonus.

"You really should have gone to Jerash, you missed out," one of the "two blonde chicks on holiday" told me.

You really should go for a walk...then maybe your appearence would live up to your blog handle...

And we were soon off on our Gulet cruise...
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Koycegiz, Turkish Aegean Coast, Turkey

Greetings from Istanbul. We are back from our tour around Turkey and I have a lot of catching up to do, goodness gracious.

So after a nice night in Eçebat after, what was for me, a strange day at Gallipoli, we got up early to start a long long day of driving down to Kuşidasi, with tours of the ancient cities of Troy and Pergamum on the way. I knew it wqould be a long day...I didn't realize it would be as long as it ended up being.

The Fez Bus actually spent the night across the Dardenelles in Çannakale, whereas we stayed in Eçebat at the suggestion of our guide Hayden. That meant that we needed to take the Ferry before meeting up with the bus. Kristen and I got our signals crossed on who had and was taking the key down...so she accidentally locked the key in our room...making for a few tense moments as we all shuffled out to meet the Ferry on time...

Of course, Ms. "Independent Traveler" from Wisconsin was the one who almost made us late when she wandered off to look at God knows what on the side of the road. It was a tense moment among many other tense moments that morning for Hayden, our Kiwi guide who speaks very limited Turkish. While I really liked our guides on the Fez Bus, Hayden and Jeremy were a blast, their limited Turkish and our drivers' limited English made for both hilarious but also horribly frustrating times.

When we got to the other sdide of the Dardenelles, our Turkish tour guide for Troy was nowhere to be found. We picked up a few travelers at the first hotel, where the tour guide was supposed to meet us, but he wasn't there. Hayden tried calling the office to track him down and everything, but he couldn't.

Well over half the people on our Troy tour and Pergamum tour were not "hjop on/hop offers." They were instead on some form of Gallipoli+Troy or Gallipoli+Troy+Pergamum package. The ones only seeing Gallipoli and Troy, including the Aussies Kiley and Elliot we had talked to the day before, were staying at the Iris Hotel. Hayden thought that while trying to track down the Troy guide over the phone, we could at least go pıck them up, so he asked Ali if he knew where the Iris Hotel was.

"Iris Hotel, Ali?"

Ali shakes his head.

"Come on, Iris Hotel, where the others are staying?"

Still no positive response.

This went on for a couple minutes before Hayden finally realized his problem. "Eee-ris Hotel?"

"Ahh, yes Ayy-den." Simly pronouncing Iris in the English manner, with the "I" making and "I" sound and not an "eee" sound had completely stalled communication. Hayden and Ali are the best of friends...in a non-verbal way. Of course, luckily Hayden checked with Ali as to how far away the Iris Hotel was..."25 kilos." Thus we turned around just after leaving town and headed back to the first roundabout to consider searching for our guide, rather than doing a huge loop to pick up others. The guide still nowhere in sight, we stopped at the Trojan Horse in Çanakkale.

In New Zealand, we saw plenty of what I can only call "movie tourism" with people going to see locations that made appearences in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. In Çanakkale, we got to see...wait for it...let the suspense build...the genuine, authentic, "real" Trojan Horse...used in...the Brad Pitt movie Troy! I thought it was so funny the pictures people took with the horse that helped add to Pitt's fame. I took some pictures with the fake horse made by the Turkish government in 1979 at the site, but at least you could walk up it. I thought it was funny how the movie Troy kept coming up even as our guide took us around Troy. "That over there is the tomb of Achilles, that's Brad Pitt's tomb," he said at one point...I wonder how Mr. Pitt feels about that....

Anyway, after 15 minutes of looking at a movie prop, the guide finally arrived, claiming he'd been waiting at the roundabout past the Ferry Landing the whole time. How he missed a big Fez Travel Bus doing circles we shall never know. So far we were at least 1 hour off schedule...

The trip to Troy took about an hour. Our guide worked hard to tell us a little about the surrounding area. I have come to really appreciate the effort that foreigners make to speak Englishj, but their mistakes are still, perhaps unfortunately, very funny to me, just as I am sure my mistakes are funny when I try to speak Spanish. Our guide had clearly carefully practiced his speech, and yet he had memorized it partially wrong...

We passed a number of big windmills on the hills surrounding Çanakkale. "Those windmills provide power to One-Thousand-Fifty-Hundred people. One-thousand-fifty-hundred people. Yeah, that's right our windmills provide for one-thousand-fifty-hundred people." I still have no idea how many people the windmills provide for, even though I was told three times in quick succession...

At Troy there is a big horse that you can walk up and lean your head out for photos. I did that, of course, like all tourists... Photos with the horse took probably 10-15 minutes of our 1 hour tour...as one expects with a group of roughly 20. Fez gave us a tour guide, but we had to pay our own entrance fee...the tour guide showed up an hour late...he also wasn't very good...thank you Fez.

Kristen, having taken years of Latin for reasons she still doesn't understand, was just thrilled to be at Troy. "If I had to translate the damned Aeneid over and over again and we are going to Turkey we are going to Troy!" Of course, there isn't actually that much to be seen at Troy. The city is roughly 10% excavated and the Turkish Government, according to our tour guide, doesn't have nearly enough money to continue the excavation, so it has eniısted the help of corporate sponsors. The city is amazing in that it was rebuilt more times than Liz Taylor got married, but I suspect the various levels of the city only make it more difficult to excavate. There is a small museum with some explanations, but sadly there are virtually no artifacts there, just some recreations. Probably the most impressively excavated part of the city was also the last stup on our tour where we spent no time: the theater. I was tired and unimpressed and frustrated by the delays, which were really no fault of Hayden's or Ali's but were still frustrating. Kristen was just happy to be there. "I mean there's not much here, but its cool to look down over at the sea and see where the Greeks would have waited and camped out for 10 years," she said. I guess I agreed with her.

You only need a little over an hour at Troy, and that's just about all we got. We stopped at a quaint shop on the way out of town where we lost a few people just doing the Gallipoli/Troy tour. Bye bye Kiley and Elliot, who found the real meaning of ANZAC day in the game two up...

From Troy we headed to Pergamum, an ancient Hellinistic capital of Anatolia.

Turkey is a big big country. Bus trips are very very long. The second day of the Fez Tour was very very long.

Our first stop was very short, to thankfully drop the "independent traveler" off at the ferry station. We spent all of 30 seconds in the 25 yard wide parking lot...It cost Fez Travel 10 lira...Hayden had forgotton that in Turkey it costs to park a bus anywhere...

We had a nice stop on our way to Bergama, where Pergamum is, at a series of side of the road stands selling Turkish delight and various nuts and dried fruit on a beautiful high spot above the Agean Sea. Hayden told us that the first stand had once refused to give all of his passangers samples, hence he had taken them to the third stand, where the nice guy had given out loads of samples and pretty much everyone on his bus had made a purchase. Hayden had later been screamed at by the guy in the first stand and told off as the worst human being on the face of the Earth.

We went to the third stand. We had numerous samples. We bought what Hayden called "The best Turkish Delight in Turkey." We bought sesame seed encrusted honey roasted peanuts, which I will call the best snack food in Turkey. As Neil Diamond would say, they were "so good, so good." We finished the massive bag of peanuts before we even made it to Bergama...

Hospitality and friendliness go such a long way. When the guy gave me all the samples and smiled, I knew I would end up buying something. When he gave me a sample of the best peanuts ever, I knew I would buy a lot of something. I really don't understand why people trying to sell stuff haven't figured that out...

My head was in Shantaram (see last two blog posts) for much of the ride or I was asleep. It just dragged and dragged and dragged. We did not reach our lunch spot in Bergama until about 3:15, over 4 hours after leaving Troy. As I said, it's a big country...

Lunch was an all you can eat buffet spread that was delicious, and only 10 lira (about $6.66). Of course, soda was not included in this price, which I knew, but I didn't bother checking exactly how much it was. I made one of the worst purchases of my life, which I learned when the bill came...4 lira, or $2.66, for a 250 ml Coke...I was in a foul mood. It didn't help that I was tired and the food, while good going down, wasn't sitting too well.

But luckily at Pergamum we had a terrific tour guide, a short amicable man who kept refering to the group as "My dear guests" and "My dear friends." Nearly everyone of his paragraphs led with that kind greeting.

Bergama, where Pergamum is located, is one of many formerly Greek towns now inhabited by Turks. During the horrific war of independence, the Greeks and Turks made forced "population exchanges." Entire towns and villages were moved from Greece to Turkey and from Turkey to Greece. It just seems so weird and kind of craz that people born and raised in Greece and Turkey were forcibly moved and exchanged between two nations because of linguistic and familial heritage...but hey, that's nationalism for you. Our tour guide's father had lived in Greece, born and raised, and had been moved to Turkey in the population exchange. Ironically, or maybe just interestingly, these formerly Greek towns are major tourist attractions in Turkey because of their distinctive Greek architecture. We are soon heading to Greece, and it was funny to think we were touring "Greek towns" in Turkey that were famous for their Greekness.

Pergamum was at one time a major Hellenistic capital and center of learning, and it was also a major city during Roman times. Using the Roman theater at the Acropolis of Pergamum, archeologists and historians have estimated that it once was home to 140,000 people.

In the lower city and ruins of Pergamum was, apparently, the first ever hospital. I have learned on this tour of Turkey that...well...just about everything came from Turkey...I am only half kidding, but according to our tour guide, a heck of a lot of things have come from Turkey...

We did not go to the first ever hospital. Instead, we headed up the road to the Acropolis, sitting on a high plateau above Bergama. The ride up was beautiful looking out over the Turkish countryside and at the surrounding hills. Turkey is very mountainous. We were inland, so the sea wasn't visible, but a large manmade lake created by a modern dam was. Our tour guide pointed out, "My dear guests, and now you can see on the left side a lake with a modern dam, and yet next to it you can see Roman Aquaducts used for bringing water. Here in Pergamum you can see the old and the new."

Up on the Acropolis, the high point of the city, we learned why some of the walls were immaculately built, whereas others looked haphazardly put together, without any thought toward aesthetic qualities. See the Greeks put together the walls and those walls were to be viewed by anyone who came to the city. But the romans build the walls of stone and then covered the outside with marble. The marble is no longer left, most of it pillaged by the Byzantines and now sitting in the Hagia Sophia actually. So all you see is the inside of the walls, which were build simply to stand but not to be looked at.

The top featured a "parthenon-like" structure and really cool ruins with great views beyond. I really liked it. Of course, as with so many of these ancient holy places, one of the best preserved statues from the Acropolis was not there...it was in a German museum in Berlin, having been taken, at some point, I can't remember when, unfortunately.

Pergamum features the steepest Roman theater in the world, built into the side of the hill. It is estimated that it held 14,000 people, which is how the estimate of a total population of roughly 140,000 was arrived at. Only the head of each family could attend the theater, and each family was roughly 10 people in those days.

According to our guide, the practice of clapping was derived in Pergamum (yes, clapping comes from Turkey...):

"My dear guests, see back in the days of the Roman empire, no one could leave the theater until the emperor had left. One time the emperor Hadrian, as in Hardian's Wall, my dear friends from Britain, he came to visit Pergamum and he went to the theater. Well he fell asleep during the show, which meant that at the end of the show, no one could leave. Well my dear guests, they sat there all night until the emperor finally woke up and they could go. This went on each time the emperor went to the show, each night for 5 days.

"Well, my deal guests, this was incredibly frustrating, the emperor falling asleep, my dear guests, and they had to do something about it. So finally, they all decided that at the end of the show they would have to find a way to wake up the emperor Hadrian. So at the end of the show, they all clapped their hands and made noise to rouse the emperor Hadrian. He awoke and left and they could leave. And that, my dear guests, right from this theater hear in Pergamum, is how clapping started."

He also had a story about Aesop coming to Pergamum:

"Well, my dear guests, Aesop he came to Pergamum once, and he was out there and he was going to tell some of his fables. But before the show he asked the crowd, 'Do you all know what I am going to talk about?'

" 'No,' the crowd replied.

" 'Well if you don't know about it there is no use talking about it!' Aesop said and left the stage.

"Well, my dear guests, the crowd really wanted to hear Aesop tell his tales, so the next night he asked 'Do you all know what I am going to talk about?' and the crowd responded 'Yes!'

" 'Well if you know about it, there's no use talking about it!' Aesop responded.

"So, my dear friends, the people of Pergamum were left in suspense, so they came up with a plan. Half the crowd would say yes and half the crowd would say no, and that, my dear friends is just what they did when Aesop asked 'Do you all know what I am going to talk about?'

" 'Well,' Aesop replied, 'If some of you know what I am going to talk about and some of you don't, then those who do can just tell those who don't.' My dear guests, Aesop was not a popular man in Pergamum!"

Our guide also regailed us with a story about Hadrian requesting that a gorilla fight a bear on the stage at Pergamum, as he was showing us the chambers where the animals for entertainment were kept. Unable to find a gorilla the director of the theater dressed an actor in a gorilla costume to fight the bear. The actor was upset and dismayed and didn't want to do it, he knew he would get killed by the bear, but if he didn't do it, he'd also get killed. He walked out to the middle of the stage.

"Please," he cried in vain, "Don't hurt me bear, I'm not a real gorilla..."

Of course, he heard on the other end, "Please, don't hurt me gorilla...I'm not a real bear!"

Our tour guide was funny!

We also learned how parchment paper, the ancient paper that was used along with Papyrus, came from Pergamum, and how Pergamum had once housed the second greatest library in the Hellenistic world after Alexandria. There are no books or parchment left at Pergamum, however, because the entire phenomenal library actually was moved to Alexandria. When Antony and Cleopatra were defeated by the Romans and Alexandria sacked, in part due to their romance, all of the treasures of Alexandria were burned, including the hundreds of thousands of parchment scrolls of Pergamum.

I heard a tourist say to his girlfriend, I think he was Danish and she was English, "Man, loves's a killer today. First we go see Troy, sacked for Helen, and now we hear about the greatest library int he world destroyed because of Cleopatra's affair. Jeez." I thought that was a pretty funny observation.

Our tour ended frustratingly, though it was still great. We were not given time to actually walk down and in the Roman Theater because our bus was so far behind schedule due to the screw up at Troy. Instead we were whisked out of the park without time to climb the steps of the theater (which, given how steep it was, maybe wasn't that bad...). It was one of those things that didn't really matter, it just bothered me, because of what came next...

It wasn't like we were whisked away from Pergamum so that we could head straight to Kusadasi and get in at an earlier hour... We left so that we could go to an Onyx factory...yes, an Onyx factory/demonstration...as the last part of our tour. Our sweet tour guide explained to us that Turkish hospitality would dictate that they brought out Tea for everyone, but that we were not being pressured to buy. He also explained how the very word "hospitality" comes from a time when Zeus visited an Anatolian family as a human and was very very impressed by the nice and pleasant treatment he received. The word "hospitality" comes from the names of that family. As nice as that little tidbit was, I didn't feel like being herded to another store, at the expense of more time at Pergamum... Of course that didn't stop me from buying a cheap little onyx turtle for my mom...I probably shouldn't have out of principle.

The trip from Bergama to Kusadasi was almost as long as that from Troy to Bergama...it was turning into the longest day ever. It had also become clear that we would not be able to see the major attraction in Kusadasi, Ephesus, the best preserved Hellenistic city in Turkey and perhaps the world. If I had paid perfectly close attention to the brochure, I admit that would have been clear, with us slated to get into Selcuk (the city right next to Ephesus) at 7:30 pm, and Kusadasi, about 30 minutes farther and on the water, at 8:00 pm. But Selcuk wasn't even on the map in the brochure, instead it just said "Ephesus," and pictures of Ephesus were so prevalent within the brochure that I thought you couldn't possibly miss it on the circuit.

The Fez Bus comes only ever two days, so if you hop off the bus you have to stay 3 nights,2 days in a place. We simply didn't have that much time, and like with our Kiwi Experience bus tour, in retrospect we needed more time. We could have probably made it work had been able to jump on the next day, hence spending only 2 nights in Kusadasi or Selcuk (which was the better place to stay...even though Fez stays in Kusadasi...which we also didn't know), but that wasn't an option. We also could have skipped days had we realized what was coming next...but I'll get into that soon. Ugg, Fez, Fez, Fez.

Anyway, we didn't get to Selcuk until about 8:45 or later, and not to Kusadasi until 9:15. The Fez bus is not supposed to take people to hotels other than the designated Fez location or a designated Fez location (where Fez has a deal and will book you a room...on the brochure it seemed like there would be multiple options, but there was only one place with more than one option...), but Hayden felt bad about the delay and dropped the various other passengers, none of whom were hop on, hop offers, at their hotels before taking us to ours.

We stayed in the dorm that night because the hotel was so empty that no one else was staying there and it was cheaper. No one else was staying there in part because Fez had chosen a hotel about 15-20 minutes out of the center of town in a residential area with nothing, no shops, no restaurants, around it. Hayden had sort of told us as much, but we didn't really have any other options, it was cheap, and we were getting in past 9:40. It was clean, but I was kind of annoyed by the fact it was away from everything. Location, location, location, make the hotels, and this was a poor choice.

Of course I was exhausted and still feeling quite sick. Hayden asked Kristen and me if we wanted to hang out, but as the British would say, we were just knackered. Only to make matters worse, my ATM card wasn't working still and there was no internet at the hotel, only wireless.

Before you go abroad, there are a lot of things you could never really see yourself doing that you just get used to doing and do in a heartbeat. I think the best example I have is taking a cab home from a bar at 1:30 am alone in Beijing. I think you really learn, in some ways, that the world is never as scary as you think it's goign to be. You also learn that sometimes non-verbal communication is as good as verbal communication. You also learn that human beings, for the most part, are pretty decent. That's probably the best effect of traveling abroad.

So I started walking to town, and realizing I had not a clue where I was going. I stepped accidently in a big pile of mud on the side of the road...Great. Luckily I soon a bus, or Dolmish as they are called in Turkey, and hopped right on, no big deal, headed for the center of town. It was pitched black and we were in a residential area with very few street lights, so I had a terrible time following where we were going. When we started to get to more town like areas, I just looked for the first internet cafe I could find and jumped off. How was I going to get home? Well...I'd figure that out...

Some time on the internet did me good, I guess...unfortunately I didn't work on the blog...but I did get the ATM card figured out. I was beyond tired and missing home like none other, especially when I started to think about actually how I was getting home. After a while, you just want to know where you are going, how to get there, and have it be easy. In some ways when youa re traveling its never easy, and if it is, it's bound to be easy in the wrong ways...like the Fez Bus dropping us right off at a hotel where our rooms were already booked...Easy, but the hotel was not in the right place...

I procrastinated on the internet for a while before leaving and unsuccessfully trying to hail two dolmishs and sprinting up the street exasperated in my muddy flip flops. Finally on the third try I got a dolmish, which surprisingly easily took me right where I wanted to go.

The one saving grace that was keeping me sane was that according to Hayden the next day wasn't that long, and even though we were going to miss Ephesus by leaving on the bus, Koycegiz looked cool and there was a waterfall there and then mudbaths. Hayden promised me that it was a shorter day, and we weren't going to leave the hotel until 9:00 am, so, thankfully, we could sleep in. But when I got home I found out from Kristen that we would be leaving at 8:00 am. All day the back air vents had leaked water, some of which fell on Kristen, and the air conditioning needed to be fixed. We would go to Selcuk at 8:00, getting there at 8:30, at which point Ali would get the bus fixed. We could walk around the cute little town for an hour and then pick up our other hop/on hop offers, there would be 5 of them, and we wouldn't be the only ones on the 25 person bus. I was at the time quite dissappointed with the few number of hop on/hop offers, as we had chosen to do the Fez tour in large part to meet people.

I was not in a great modd again rolling out of bed at 7:30. I still wanted to find a way to visit Ephesus, but it was a 20 lira entrance fee per person ($13+) and we would only have an hour, which really wasn't enough time to see much of anything, so instead we decided to walk to the now ruined Temple of Artemis, which used to be one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, and then explore the town of Selcuk. Seeing a 7 wonder didn't seem so bad, and Selcuk was supposed to be really quite nice. We needed to go to the bank for more cash anyway. So we drove to Selcuk and passed Ephesus...TIME 1.

We walked to the ruins of the Temple of Artemis, and really there is nothing there. It's pretty unimpressive, especially since, like with Pergamum, all the marble was removed and taken to the Hagia Sophia. We were there all of 3 minutes. Selcuk was nice, and we did have a good little walk around and made it to the bank, where, thankfully, by ATM card worked.

At 9:30 we met two other hop on, hop offers at the tourist information center, where the Fez Bus picks people up. Jessica and Phoeniz are two Aussie girls about our age who we ended up becoming quite close with. They are great. Jessica graduated from "Uni" and spent time doing odd jobs to save up for a big 5-6 month trip around Europe, which she was just starting when we met her. She'll be gone until October. She is from Sydney. Phoenix is a radiographer who started working immediately after graduation. A one month vacation to Turkey is her first major vacation since graduation. In Australia, one month is the typical holiday time...we need that in the States. She works at a rural hospital in Port McCuary, about four hours north of Sydney. Jessica and Phoenix were the first pair of three pairs of Aussie girls we ended up meeting in Turkey. I can say it without Kristen even getting mad: Aussie girls are quite often very fun.

Surprisingly, amazingly, Ali arrived with the bus fixed right on time. That is because Ali is the greatest bus driver ever, and in so many ways my favorite character I have met since we left the States. He had a big smile on his face and was wearing his New Zealand hat side ways when he picked us up... Of course, if he was on time, the three other hop on/hop offers weren't...

They were nowhere to be found. Hayden was finally able to figure out that they had been told, for whatever reason, that we would pick them up at their hostel, and were waiting there...after about a 15 minute cell phone conversation.

So we headed for their hostel and soon came about 50 yards from jessica and Phoenix's hostel. "Hey, that's where we stayed!"

Hayden couldn't find the hostel he was looking for so he jumped out and started walking, but Ali had it figured out, he just hadn't been able to tell Hayden. He followed slowly in the bus, a big grin on his face, witht he door open mockingly whispering, "Ayy-Den....Ayyyyyyyyy-den," until Hayden and the bus arrived at the same spot, in front of the proper hotel, about 150 yards from where Jessica and Phoenix had stayed...

I was thinking, "Please let the people be cool, please let the people be cool!" well, the three who emerged did end up being quite nice and quite cool, three Aussies from Adelaide who had travelled the entirity of the Silk Route, starting in Beijing, which sounded like an amazing trip... They were also all in their late 60s... The "under 26 and student specialists" strike again! It's not that I mind older travelers. It really isn't that at all. But to be perfectly honest, I'd rather be meeting people closer to my own age, they are generally easier to get along and become friends with, and if I'm traveling with people significantly older than me, they might as well be my parents, who after 3 months I really miss quite a lot.

With all 7 of us in tow, I was ready to head for the Koycegiz waterfall, which was our major stop of the day, according to the brochure, where we could have a nice swim around and under a cool secluded waterfall that was not touristy. I had on my "bathers" as the Aussies call them, and was ready to go on our "short day."

Of course, Fez had other plans, plans certainly not in the brochure... All of the sudden, we were headed back towards Kusadasi! I couldn't believe it as we passed Ephesus. TIME 2. We were going to a ceramic factory. Sure, it was cool seeing how they made beautiful ceramic bowls, Turkish style...but I wanted to see the ceramic bowls made Hellenistic style over 2000 years ago! Jessica and Phoenix made some purchases, so it took about 45 minutes. I didn't resent them, I resented Fez...this was not in the brochure.

Only it didn't stop there...then we went to a leather factory, where tour buses are brought in and usually given a full on leather fashion show. Only the show had started, so instead they just took us into a big room of leather jackets, told us about them and shut the big doors behind us. I tried on one jacket and the guy in the store told me to wait because he had the perfect jacket for my fit. It did fit perfectly. It was also the most Euro Trashy jacket I have ever seen in my life, complete with gold embroidered seams... we couldn't leave the leather factory fast enough.

So we got back on the road and headed back to Selcuk...passing Ephesus. TIME 3. It was about 11:15.

According to Hayden, he'd talked with Ali about going to this cute formerly Greek town called Sirinche where they make fruit wine and you can taste delicious fruit wine for lunch, but Ali had vetoed it. Now, of course, for reasons Hayden didn't understand, Ali was taking us in that direction. A nice lunch spot in the mountains with fruit wine tasting sounded like a good plan...so we all went for it.

The fruit wine was delicious. At 8% it's a lot less alcoholic than regular wine. It tastes like fruit juice and you could practically drink it for breakfast. At 10 lira a bottle ($6.66, or the price of two beers at ever bar or restaurant we've been to), it was also a great deal. Kristen and I bought 3 bottles which we planned to have over the next few nights or on our Gulet cruise. Pomegranite, Melon, and Mulberry were our favorite flavors of the 8 or 9 plus tastes we had... It was fun...

Turkey is significantly more liberal than the other Muslim countries we went to, and alcohol is quite acceptable in the culture, at least in most places, despite the fact the country is 90% Muslim. Raki, for instance, is a widespread alcohol made from rice (I think) that turns cloudy when mixed with water, which is how you drink the 45% potent spirit. Wine is a big thing as well. Efes Beer, which comes in a bottle shaped like jars found at Efes (Ephesus to us) is everywhere.

The old Aussies (whose names I unfortunately never learned) insisted that a guide they'd had in Eastern Turkey had told them that virtually no one is "really Muslim" and that only maybe 10 or 20% are really Muslim even though it is a 90% Muslim country, because you religion has to be said on your identity card and if you don't mark anything you are Muslim by default. Certainly Islam is less in your face, so to speak, in a country where alcohol is plentifula nd girls are actually not allowed to wear headscarves to school (which is a major source of contention), but I suspect that the Aussies were under a false impression regardless of what their tour guide said. Islamist parties as recently as 1997 were actually able to acheive a plurality within the Turkish Republic, before they were forced to disband due to rules of Secularism. I also suspect the Aussie might take offence to me saying that most Aussies are not "really Christian" within that Christian country, though, even though Easter is a big holiday and the pubs are closed, a lot of people don't go to church...or read the Bible every day...or act in "Christian manners." I'm not sure how many people are "true Muslims," as President Obama would say, "That's above my pay grade," But I also suspect its an oversimplification to say that a country's faith is, ironically, totally overblown by it's secular government.

We walked around for about a half hour before arriving at a Pide place for lunch. I bought another knock off polo shirt, this time for 10 lira, half as much as in the Grand Bazaar...I basically have a whole new wardrobe of "polo" and "burburry" and "lacoste" shirts since I have gotten to Turkey, all purchased for under a total of $35.

I sat across from Ali at lunch who was getting quite a kick out of the "little shine" that Hayden had going on after the wine tasting. Hayden did look a bit flushed. When Hayden went to the bathroom Ali pointed in his direction and then gestured with his hands that Hayden had been drinking a lot. Then he used his hands to motion that Hayden's face was flushed and then did a little lazy eye/drunken head nodding/ We all laughed quite hard at Ali's non-verbal joke at the expense of his "hard drinking" mate.

We left Sirinche around 1:00 PM, headed for the cool Koygezis waterfall...In no time though we were back in Selcuk...right next to Ephesus...TIME 4! To say I was furious and beside myself was an understatement, but I also felt helpless. I had thought that it was likely our lunch stop was actually in the direction of where we were going...thought wrong... Kristen and I could have spent the whole morning at Ephesus and we wouldn't have had to make the bus go out of its way at all! I just couldn't believe it. I mean, it would have taken some thinking outside the box and maybe a little breaking of rules, but Hayden could have tried to do that for us...though when I told him about my frustration in Istanbul almost two weeks later he just threw up his hands...to be fair, he doesn't like going to leather shops or ceramic factories either...to be fair, he definitely could have helped us out if he'd thought a little, or maybe if he could have actually explained to Ali what exactly he was doing.

I was just so mad, but as Kristen kept reminding me, there was really nothing I could do about it. AGGGGG. Its trying times like that too when you just miss home more than anything, when you don't want to have to deal with all the bullshit. We had been so close to Ephesus and hadn't gotten to go. I guess I should have figured out what was going on, but even if I had...would the bus have let us do it the right way? I will never know.

I poured myself into Shantaram for the over 3 hour drive to the waterfall. We were supposed to arrive in Koycegiz at 2:30 according to the brochure...we didn't get to town until 6:30, after spending time at the waterfall, which we didn't arrive at until around 5:00.

Completely entralled with my book I kept thinking about the writing, how much I love writing, and how there is still a part of me that just wants to be a writer, whcih is why I put down every detail, every laugh and every hardship of this trip. Traveling around the world is, has been, and always will be one of the greatest experiences of my life. But writing about it truthfully and honestly, and detailing the frustration and pain associated with even what should be the best of times is as critical to me as "having fun" and, as one friend told me to do, "taking it all in."

On that day there was a lot of frustration, but there was definitely fun too. We did eventually make it to the waterfall. The trail was off a dirt road and it was about a 15 minute walk back to the secluded waterfall. There were no other tourists, just a number of local teenagers having a good time and jumping off the rocks near the waterfall. The falls weren't big by any standards, but it was pretty and it was a good swimming hole.

Over at the waterfall itself there were a fair number of fish jumping out of the water into the falls. I of course told Jess and Phoenix about the fish...only to have roughly 45 seconds pass without a single fish jumping... yeah, it was a tense time, hoping these two people I'd just met didn't think I was out of my mind...but thankfully a fish oblidged and jumped...Saved!

With the help of sxome Turkish youth I climbed up above the waterfall for a good 2 to 2 and a half meter jump (not very high) into the falls. The climb up was worse than the jump and I got scraped all over. Jess and Phoenix made it up onto the rocks but were scared to go any higher...they jumped from about a meter up. Kristen was finally convinced to jump in...It took her about 15 minutes to figure out how to navigate the rocks, and then she finally jumped from the same low spot as Phoenix and Jess. There was also a place just abit higher, but not high by any means, that I launched off a few times to the right of the waterfall. It was fun.

When I went to get out, big bellied jolly Ali started shaking my hand vigorously, waving his arms non-sensically, occassionally pointing to the sky and saying various things in Turkish. "I think he's telling you he's happy you survived, Hayden told me with a laugh... It really wasn't much of a jump though.

The real reason to go to Koycegiz is to take a cruise out to the islands of the lake there, where there are "theraputic mudbaths." You can go in the day or go on a night cruise. The night cruise is supposed to be very fun. The Fez website and brocuhure are full of picturews of smiley, muddy Fez Travelers.

Of course, you probably know where this is going... We only had 7 on our bus, 8 including Hayden. For the hostel we were staying at, which runs the tour out to the mudbaths, to take a boat out, you needed a minimum of 8 people... The older travelers weren't about to go mud bathing...and Phoenix and Jess weren' up for it either... So yeah... no mudbath at the mudbath location.

Even though we had dinner in a nice spot on the lake, I was really just feeling very down and out. Down about the frustration of the day and out of touch with friends back home too, it has been a long long time to be away. And, save for Phoenix and Jess, the Fez Bus wasn't really helping us meet a bunch of people and stuff...instead it was taking us to leather factories and driving me nuts.

Hayden had mentioned that the hostel did a belly dancing show every night after dinner. That sounded fun, though I had blocked out the key component that made it much less than interesting to me: The hostel had a MALE belly dancer... Yeah, I missed that one when I got excited for the evening ahead. I slowly mosied back from dinner while Kristen went ahead. When I got back I found that the belly dancer, performing his act for a crowd of...8...had pulled up Kristen and everyone else several times to dance by then...running out of people...I was not about to dance...and I didn't.

The only thing that saved me from total glumness that night was that after the belly dancer had exited stage right, after a feeble attempt at some sort of fire throwing thing, they put on a Toots and the Maytals CD. I love Toots! Good reggae always fixes glum times. I think Ali liked it ok, though from the looks he was giving me, though still smiling, he had been dissappointed to not get to see me dance...tough.

More to come...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1245038400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1245038400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jimmyandkristen/1/1245038400/tpod.html Mon, 15 Jun 2009 07:40:38 -0400 Round the world in 128 days.

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Eceabat, Çanakkale Province, Turkey

Greetings from Kaş on the South Turkish coast, but seeing as I am still behind, today's entry is about leaving Istanbu, our first experiences with Fez Travel, and Gallipoli

"Fez Travel" is a Turkish tour company that caters to English speaking tourists, and bills itself as "The under 26 and student specialists." It offers a variety of strict tours, but we went with the more independent option of the hop On, Hop off Bus. The bus takes a set route, going through towns every second day. There are activities that the guide can book for you and he can book you into your hotel. We did a hop on, hop off thing in New Zealand, though there it was a bit easier because the bus left every day, the every other day thing means that every time you hop off the bus you are spending 3 nights in a place, whice makes it a bit tougher for travelers with shorter time frames.

Nevertheless, from what we could tell when we set up the trip, we had more or less enough time to complete the circuit in a manner that suited us and build in time for a Gulet Cruise of the Southern Turkish Coast. As with so many planned activities of our trip, and so many unplanned activities, the bus has been quite frustrating.

We were met at 7:00 am at the pick up point by an amicable you Kiwi named Hayden, who had left his job at Barclay's in Edinborough, or gotten fired, and started traveling. He ended up in Turkey three months ago, where he got a job working for Fez Travel. Hıs Turkish is minimal, but he has been trained as an English tour guide.

Our driver Ali, on the otherhand, was Turkish and his English was minimal. The interactions between him and Hai-Den, as Ali pronounced it, provided quite a bit of comedy for the first days of our trip.

In typical fashion, the bus that was supposed to leave at 7:00 left at 7:45... Most of the people on the bus were not "Hop on, op offers," they were people doing two and three day tours to Gallipoli and Troy or Gallipoli, Troy and Pergamun. As Hop On, Hop Offers, we were given a little packet with instructions on how the system worked. Contained in the packet were Fez Travel stickers emblazoned with "The Under 26 and student specialists."

Apparently most people on the bus hadn't gotten that impression. The crowd was quite a bit older than us, the most prominent of which was a group of white haired Kiwi ladies headed to Gallipoli. Of the bus of about 22, only 5 were the hop on people, Kristen and me, Julia and Cecil, an older couple from Capetown, South Africa, and a middle aged nursing teacher from Milwaukee. Julia and Cecil were very nice. Cecil had severe speech problems and was pretty much mute, so whenever you said anything to him he would just smile big and nod or shrug his shoulders. I am not sure he knew English very well, or at least I know he had an easier time understanding Afrikkans, because he had trouble following our tour guides at Troy and Pergamun.

The nursing teacher from Milwaukee would not stop talking about how she was a completely independent world traveler and that she never ever did tours or anything like Fez. She had the distinction of putting down the Fez bus as "Always an hour late" in front of Hayden before she realized he was our guide, waiting for the bus to come himself and already stressed out (not an easy job guiding when you don't know the language). For me though, what really put me off was that she had grown up in the States, lived in the States, but liked to pretend she was from somewhere else, I don't know where. She asked me if I was travelling because I had just finished "Uni." "Yes, I did recently finish COLLEGE," I replied. You aren't British...you don't need to pretend you are. Hayden was not sad to see her hop off after Troy, complaining all the while about how the bus was either too late or cramped her style too much as an independent...which was why she made us late with her wandering off several times. Come on.

I, of course, have my own problems with the bus as well, but I also don't feel the need to brag about how I have seen the whole world alone.

It was a long ride from Istanbul to Gallipoli and I read and read and read. We stopped for breakfast and had Golunduz, Turkish pancakes filled with feta cheese and flipped over on a skillet. So good.

There I had one of those experiences that reflects misunderstandings due to language barriers. My Golunduz was so good I went back for a second one. I ordered it from the guy cooking at the skillet who spoke no English. I really had to go to the bathroom and I knew it would take a few minutes and someone had ordered before me, so my Golunduz was 2nd up anyway. Of course, when I came back there were two golunduzs on the skillet, and the first one that had been on when mine was thrown on had been given away. A German tourist on our bus whose English was minimal was waiting and so was I. I knew my Golunduz had been put on first. But she didn't know that because I had left to go to the bathroom. So there was a bit of a mix up when we both went to pay. Of course, the Turkish golunduz cooker was absent from the conversation, not that there was one, just a series of awkward glances as she looked at me like ı was crazy to have tried to cut her in line, while she took away MY Golunduz! I wonder if I have ever done that to someone and been blocked by the language barrier from knowing that the person who seemingly wronged me was actually in the right.

When we got to Ecebat, the gateway to Gallipoli National Park, we had lunch with Elliot and Kiley, two Aussies in their mid twenties doing the nationalistic thing and seeing Gallipoli. There were many Aussies and Kiwis in our group.

The Gallipoli campaign was waged by the Allies in WWI in order to attempt to take over the Dardenelles, which would have given then the shipping lanes to both cut off the Ottoman Empire from the war (which would have eased pressure in the Middle Eastern theater) and so that they would have easy supply lines to the Russians via the Black Sea. The 250 day campaign in 1915 cost over 500,000 lives, with slighly more lost on the Turkish side, but ultimately both sides lost, on average, a thousand men a day. The Gallipoli Campaign was an unequivocal success for the Ottoman Turks, despite the fact that they lost so many men and that they eventually lost the war, because they never did yield the Dardenelles to the Allies, who eventually were forced to pull out with their tails between their legs. The Turks were led by a young charismatic Lietenant Colonel, Mustafa Kemal, who later became Attaturk and the father of the Turkish nation. He is the closest thing Turks have to George Washington. His performance at Gallipoli made him a legend.

Some of the first troops to arrive at Gallipoli were members of the ANZAC, the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. This was the first time that Australia and New Zealand were fighting a major war as countries and not colonies. Though they did not comprise a majority of the fighters and they lost a fraction of men compared to the British and the French, their lolsses as a percentage of army size and population were huge. It is also believed that a mistaken landing on the first night at a cove a mere kilometer off course ultimately cost them their position and allowed Attaturk to sieve the peninsula's high point. Because of that mistake, thousands of young boys were thrust into a slaughter. Nevertheless, they fought bravely on the front lines of the conflict.

ANZAC day is in Australia and New Zealand akin to our Veterens Day, only it is far more celebrated and important. In many ways Gallipoli is as major a memorial sight for the Aussies and Kiwis as it is for the Turks.

I am not sure I have ever been to a stranger place in my life.

Usually in war to the victors go the spoils. Well at Gallipoli there was a winner, a big winner, the Turks, even though they ultimately lost the war. Their victory, forged on the back of over 250,000 deaths, seems like it was hardly worth it, and indeed after the war ended the Ottoman Empire was disbanded and the Turks didn't exactly have the easiest of times.

But Gallipoli is also not some place that the Allies can really celebrate. They too lost 250,000 men, 10,000 of which were Aussies and Kiwis, fighting a war half way around the Globe for their queen, but never once setting foot on the soil of mother Britain, which so many of the young men wished to visit. The Aussies and Kiwis though flock to the place where their grandfathers died, fighting in vain to gain a hill and peninsula that didn't ultimately matter. They lost. Southerners don't flock to Gettysburg...and in the end they DID win, because they are still Americans. At the Egyptian War Museum we visited on our last day in Cairo, the highly embarrassing 1967 war was conspicuouly absent, even though the museum covered virtually every other war that Egypt was involved in back to the days of the Pharaohs. Losses are much more easily forgotton than remembered.

And the spot, wow, it couldn't really be more serene and beautiful, with amazing views out across the turquoise blue Agean Sea or out across the Dardenelles. It was amazing to sit in that gorgeous spot and to think of what people can do to each other. At one point the trenches were a mere 8 meters away. A house can be 8 meters wide and not be the biggest house on the block. How could you kill thousands of people who were so close to you? What complete and total idiocy.

But Gallipoli is a place, as the various ,ANZAC day posters proclaim, where "Legends were born." We even found an ANZAC day brochure which showed a documentary with "legend" in the title was a part of the 2008 ANZAC day program.

"I just don't get it," I said to Kiley and Elliot. "So let me get this straight: ANZAC lost and thousands of people died. So why did this get so big and become so important. How did the myth grow?"

"Myth!?!" Kiley responded, visibly angered at my use of words, "It's not a myth! It actually happened."

I quickly backtracked, doing my best to explain what I meant. Why the "legend" (a word somewhat synonomous with myth) "of ANZAC," why a celebration and rememberence of a horrific loss?. Her answer was fairly unsatisfactory in my opinion. First, she explained away reality, "If they had just landed in the right spot, they would have taken the hill, they would have won." So it's a rememberence of a stupid mistake? I later met other Aussies who cursed those stupid British generals who screwed everything up and didn't care about just sacrificing the ANZACs. Of course Britain lost 200,000 men and ANZAC 10,000. I doubt the Britsh thought, "Oh well we can just sacrifice those ANZACs," everyone was dying.

Kiley's better answer was that it was the first time that Sussies and Kiwis fought for their own nations and not in the British empire.

That is the real reason for its importance and I do get that to a degree. What is confusing though, is also that it is all about ANZAC, not A-AC or NZAC. The Americans won the Revovolutionary War with the help of the French, we would not have won without them. Americans and French do not celebrate a American/French force, of course. Ok, it is not the perfect example or maybe even a good one, but the point is that I find işt interesting that the birth of nationhood for each nation is inextricably tied to another nation. The Aussies and the Kiwis love to hate each other, but on the celebration of ANZAC Day they each define their nationhood in concert with their Oceanic rivals.

Some would say simply that it isn't a celebration at all. Of course, I asked Kiley and Elliot what ANZAC day was like back home. "Oh it's huge," Elliot said, "Yeah everyone has the day off and there's this game that you can only play on ANZAC day in all the pubs called 2-up. You flip two coins at once and bet on it.1 Sounds like a somber day... The game was played by Aussies in the trenches before they went off to get slaughtered.

And now Aussies and Kiwis flock to Gallipoli to be led around by a Turkish tour guide and to sewe where the slaughter took place. Our tour guide was very knowledgable, only his English and vocals inflections completely resembled Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat. That is the genius of the character; that it comes close enough to resembling a foreigner in sound to convince people Borat is real despite it clearly being a fictious creation. "Turks won at Gallipoli...Very nice!"

And so we were paraded to various sites on the peninsula to see various battle spots and memorials. At each one "ANZAC" was written on prominent monuments. It was all about a losing foreign army that had attempted to conquer and failed. Were we in Turkey? Those foreigners that had attacked intent on conquest and destruction were celebrated as heroes and legends--for those were the words used. How? Why?

The monuments reflected great magnamimity on the part of Attaturk. He was quoted poetically at one monument:




Those heroes that shed their blood And lost their lives...
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore, rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
And the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side,
Here in this country of ours.
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries...
Wipe away your tears.
Your sons are now lying in our bosom And are in peace.
After having lost their lives on this land, they have
Become our sons as well.

The words were compassionate. But what was missing was the recognition of the uselessness of it all. Maybe we never want to say or feel that someone died in vain. But until we can admit the historical ubiquity of vain death, will we ever learn not to fight?

Henry Kissinger classifies as a meglomaniac as a Secretary of State and a politician, but as a historian and writer he is actually not so bad. In Diplomacy he offers an assesment of the causes of World War I, relating them to the formation of alliances between nations that created a system that could only be ruled reliably by the most skilled and gifted practioners of Realpolitik, namely Metternich and Bismarck. But what those leaders failed to do is create a system that stood on its own without great men like themselves.

Kissinger's assesment is, I believe, an incredibly useful one. The irony should not be lost that the completely unrealistic and Maniachan Kissinger then proceeds to argue that WWII resulted from the abandonment of Realpolitik and Europe's old system of alliances, the very system that plunged Europe into WWI...

At Gallipoli, the very notion that we all belong to nations or that we should belong to nations or that nations should "act" for our collecctive safety seems challenged even as it was celebrated. Attaturk's words rung through the place where bullets had killed so many, where Attaturk had killed so many, where people had slept less than 30 feet away only to kill each other the next morning. Whay had they fought? Because Kiwis should kill Turks and Turks should kill Kiwis because the Ottoman Empire and New Zealand, haşf a world apart from each other, were "enemies."

Which is, as I have alluded to, a remarkable thing about the location. In many respects, it wasn't even really their war!

ANZAC comprised a fraction of allied forces that died at Gallipoli. The Ottoman Army was a joke. The Ottomans had lost territory many times and been whipped on many fronts. The empire was, as our guide put it, the "sick man of Europe." It joined the fight out of neccessity, not choice.

Which is why the Turkish celebration makes so much more sense, but we weren't on the Turkish tour, we were on the ANZAC tourç Each year around 1 million Turks, or 1 in 75, visit Gallipoli. See Attaturk took the Ottoman army, the Turkish contingent, and won a battle that saved Turkey from outright conquer (at the time). His men knew that the would be finished if they didn't win at Gallipoli. When ANZAC lost, no one took over Australia. When the Ottomans lost WWI, the empire was finished.

But at Gallipoli, Attaturk proved that the Turks were not just the sick men of Europe. Despite incredible losses, there wasa clear Allied objective that was clearly not accomplished. The Turkish army that won there, though horrifically depleted, would later be the army of independence.

Nerertheless, Attaturk's very magnanimous statements make one think about the ridiculousness of it all, of the horrors of war and death. His quotes at the Turkish mounuments describe the courage and honor of the Turkish troops who knew they would die and threw themselves into battle, becoming martyrs. I thought about Falstaff's brilliant speech in Henry IV Part I in which he calls out for life and deems honor to be merely "a word."

I weas also struck by the way I could also relate my thoughts to Shantaram when Lin and his mafia mentor talk about doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. For while war seems so wrong, and generally the reasons for war are just as wrong as the act itself, I can understand why those who could be conquered fight back. That does make some sense to me.

What also felt wrong at Gallipoli though, were the many posed photographs of smiling tourists with ANZAC monuments or memorials. It just didn't seem like it should be a happy place. First we stopped at the beach the ANZACs were supposed to land at. Then we moved down the beach in 500 meter increments, traveling by bus, of course, to the various cemetaries and monuments. Later we drove up the hill where the fight had been waged to more monuments and some barely visible trenches.

At the top, the Kiwi ladies bough New Zealand hats for Ali, our Turkish driver, and our Turkish guide. Ali loved the hat and was still wearing it several days later when we left his bus.

What a strange world we live in. Thousands of men die, for nothing- and then 94 years later, the descendents of the losers buy hats bearing their country's name and symbols from the descendents of the winners. They then give those hats to other descendents of the winners.

I think ultimately, what allows Gallipoli to have so much significance for both sides is also what makes that significance confusing. The ANZACs and even the Ottomans, as I have noted, were secondary players in WWI. They did not start the war, they did not control it, they did not end it. They simply did their duty, to the best of their ability. The tragedy lies far more in what was asked of them than in the actions themselvs. We can only hope such tasks are asked of fewer and fewer people as the years go on.

Which is, of course, the fundamental problem with finding ways to memorialize the fallen soldier and with any battle site that has now become a tourist site. There is a tension that exists at each of these places. Can you faithfully honor the dead of war without honoring the act of war itself? Can you rightly criticize and destroy misplaced the glory of war that has existed for millenia without disgracing those who simply did their job? I think it is possible, but it doesn't happen at battlefields, which in my mind should be places of deep sorrow and mourning, places that invoke fear and terror, but in the act of honoring the dead become serene and just too nice.
I think the Vietnam War Memorial does a terrific job, actually, of treading the line that is so hard to find. It is not extremely obtrusive or flashy, you can't even see it from the road because so much of it is underground. There is no sign of glory in it, no large statue of a heroic fighter. Its power, to me, is that its szve hits you. There are just so many names. So many people who died for nothing. And they are etched one after another after another, roughly equally, with so little distinction that there is a book where you have to find the name of someone who died, because looking at the monument alone, it is almost impossible for one to just jump out at you.

At Gallipoli, I think one of the best and the worst monuments is of a Turkish soldier carrying a wounded ANZAC troop. Apparently there was an incident in which a Turkish soldier carried a fallen foe back to his camp, risking his own life, so that that foe might find some peace. It is a powerful monument in that it reinforces the notion that we are all in this together, and that we can find common ground. It shows the compassion and humanity of the ground troop, asked to do a horrific job. I also think its a terrible monument that gives too much humanity to the situation, a situation in my mind marked more by idiocy than compassion, and one that we should remember as such. The emphasis should not be on the honor of the Turkish troop but on the ridiculousness that the next day, after saving a man's life, he went back and was told to go kill others...and to keep his head down, for that man's buddies would surely kill him.

I recognize I am tough on Gallipoli. I think I am tough on war in general. But as we drove back to Eceabat, I just felt torn up by the whole experience.

At dinner that night, eating delicious meatballs at a restaurant by the Dardenelles, I laughed and joked with Hayden and an Aussie, Bianca, and Kiwi, Ken, traveling together that we met, but the fascination with Gallipoli remained fresh in my mind. Hayden said it was just simple: "It was the first time we went to war as Aussies and Kiwis." That is the answer to it all: Gallipoli is and remains a symbol of Aussie and Kiwi nationhood. That is why we have met travelers who have already put down $500 deposits to be at the 100th anniversary ANZAC day service in 2015. But having been to Gallipoli, having seen that beatiful spot, I really hope in the future that the locations where new nations celebrate their birth are marked by something other than blood.



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