Foraging in the (city of) Bodrum
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
6
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Bodrum,
Turkey
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Equally prominenty displayed - but not just in shops but in vehicles, embedded in streets and buildings, even used on television as dividers in split-screen shots - is the ward against the evil eye: This superstition I understand not at all. If anyone out there gets it please email me. Either the Turks find it very attractive because their culture has shaped their tastes in that way (it's appearance is a wobbly dark blue oval with a smaller sky blue ring in it and a white dot in the middle) or else the importance of warding off the evil eye is equally ingrained in cultural sensibilties.
I ran into two fellow tourists way back in Selcuk last week and then I was fortunate to run into them again in the castle of Bodrum. There are few tourists here and let me explain fortunate: perhaps 60% of hotels and hostels are closed - I was the only one at my Backpacker's Inn; even the staff had left! Bodrum is one of those summer places that doesn't see tourists in the winter (I will delve into travelling in the off-season at some later time). Company is hard to come by so happily I accepted the invitation to sip chai with them and their friends by the harbour just next to the castle.
Actually I arrived in Bodrum late in the day due to some uninformed choices on my part, chiefly due to seasonal closures (there's always an excuse from this quarter!), and I was very happy for a moment to discover that my entry into Bodrum castle was waived on account of my student status! I saved about $9; however I was soon to find out that more than anything else I was saved the anguish of paying for a site in which most of the displays were closed and which was itself closing in 40 minutes.
The old crusader-built castle did yield two interesting faces to me though: a proto-graffiti of carved crests and writings in latin in the English tower (mostly 'I was here' sort of thing, as far as I can tell, will try to put up photos); and a dungeon! The latter was excavated in 1990 after 470 years of being shut up behind rubble. Upon clearing the rocks and debris, excavators found skeletons of victims and various bits of rusted chains and torture apparatus. Sadly the Crusaders used the dungeon against Turkish folks and the Ottoman Turks closed the spot up after taking over the castle, for what we are told were reasons stemming from empathy with the victims. Hope they made sure that it was clear of people before they blocked it up though. The plaque didn't say whose skeletons were found! (did the Ottomans punish anyone?). The castle isn't like a European castle though, even if the style of construction is the same. There are lots of plants growing throughout the courtyards, making the castle seem more like a garden than a military fortress, and there is nothing in the way of crusader memorabilia left behind. Either the Crusaders took it all with them or the Turks carried it all away a long time ago. I did kind of miss seeing suits of armour.
Speaking of carrying things away, however, as the crusader* I am, I did the same thing in my inn. Since there was no one there, I couldn't ask for blankets or pillows or such things (my room was, shall I say, spartan to the maximum degree; as far as that could be while still remaining a bedroom!). Thankfully no doors were locked, but it appeared that the cleaning staff had gone for the season with the tourists. One room was just like mine but it had a pillow. Another room had a sheet. A third had a blanket. A fourth had a little night table and a heater (it is cool here at night). Thankfully that was all I had to gather. Natural acoustics did me the favour of providing tonal entertainments: I have never seen this before but the noise from the street was louder in my room than it was on the street. I checked. It wasn't bad by any means because I have earplugs - but I truly have never seen that before. Sometimes I think I have seen everything but then I wake up and live another day.
*allusion to a flippant remark in my amended first entry.
