Travelling Hopefully - Fluffy Squirrel of Troy Edition

 Troy, one of the most famous cities in the ancient world or at least the Mediterranean adjacent part thereof. It’s history goes back to at least 2500BC and whenever it got wrecked such of the locals as survived persistently rebuilt it. So far about a dozen iterations of the same city have been found piled on top of each other.

Of course Troy is most famous for the entire Greek-Trojan war thing which may or may not have happened and if it did happen may or may not have played out the way we think. We have Homer’s word for it of course but since there’s some doubt as to whether he existed or not his testimony shouldn’t necessarily be taken at face value.

Still something pretty devastating happened to the Troy du jour at roughly time that we think the Trojan War may have happened. The survivors pieced together their shattered lives and their shattered city as best they could. Like many fallen empire since they relied on the tourist trade to restore their economy. Fortunately they had an amazing publicist. Homer may not have existed but he had a way with words and everybody who was anybody in the ancient world wanted a few selfies on the spot where Hector and Achilles threw hands. It got even more intense when the Romans took over as the Romans claimed their city was founded by a Trojan prince who escaped the city when it fell. As creation myths go this has the advantage of being slightly more plausible than the entire “suckled by a she-wolf” thing which was the Roman’s other stab at explaining their existence.

Troy rose and fell so often that an outside observer would probably have got nauseous just watching it. Finally Troy fell for good (so far) and eventually got covered in dirt. Strangely the worst thing to happen to Troy occurred some  centuries later when a light fingered egomaniac from Germany turned up. This charmer thought archaeology involved blowing things up with dynamite and stealing everything not nailed down. He was only half right. Still his antics put Troy back on the map.

All of which is a very long winded way of explaining why I was currently traipsing through partially unearthed rubble for the third day in a row. Don’t misunderstand me, I was well aware of the historical and cultural significance of Troy it’s just that to the untrained eye one crumbling piece of stone seems very like another and,  hey look! A squirrel! Our guide informed us that the site of Troy was rather well endowed with squirrels and I spent the rest of my time there looking for a photo opportunity with one. Perhaps that could be Troy’s new marketing slogan “Come for the horse, stay for the squirrels”. 

Travelling Hopefully - Yet More Ruins Edition

Despite being possessed of St John’s basilica, a rather significant mosque and the ruins of an aqueduct running through the middle of town Selcuk is most famous for being a five minute drive from Ephesus.

What is Ephesus? Well nowadays it’s a large expanse of stone and ruins but back in the day it was one of the most important cities in the world as long as you define “the world” as being the central eastern Mediterranean. Still Ephesus was somewhere significant and had been for a considerably long time.

Ancient (or at least reasonably old) Greeks founded the place allegedly on an existing cult centre. As with most things Ancient Greek it wound up being slightly less ancient Roman as if to prove that no amount of philosophy and learning will protect you from a hard bastard with a sword.

Subsequent to that it became one of the earliest centres of Christian learning. Saint John preached there and St Paul wrote them endless letters and various church councils were held there. Eventually a combination of Goths, earthquakes and river siltation persuaded the surviving occupants to move somewhere a little less fragile.

In addition to the above Ephesus was home to the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Unfortunately some nutcase burnt it down and all that’s left is a single column slapped together from the ruins to mark the spot.

We spent a happy few hours wandering around the ruins and photographing the random cats and dogs that were also wandering the ruins. My favourite was the library of Celcius which was built to honour a prominent local Roman. His son had actually wanted to build a big mausoleum for his father on some of the choicest real estate in the city. The local officials said “No” at which point the son came back and said “How about I build a really impressive library instead and stuff Daddy’s corpse under the floorboards?” Apparently the city authorities were fine with that so an awesome library holding twelve thousand scrolls (and at least one corpse) was created. Modern librarians might want to take note if they’re short on funding.

Ephesus also has an onsite museum that gives a video show of the city’s history. It’s quite a good show and at the end of it my knowledge of Ephesus had been marginally increased.

Travelling Hopefully - Overunning Cup Edition

Our tour guide presented with two pieces of good news before we left Pumukkale. Firstly he had managed to wangle us a balloon ride over the ruins of Hierapolis the next day. Great joy was evinced by all and sundry. Then having dangled the bait he pulled out the big one. That afternoon we would go to a wine tasting from a local winery. Cheers rang out around the room. Some of the more emotional had cheeks wet with tears.

It is fair to say that we looked forward to the coming dawn with a sense of anticipation normally only felt by those who believed the last judgment was at hand.

Early (but not too early) the next morning we were deposited in a field and left in the care of people whose idea of fun was blasting immense amounts of air and gas into giant condom shaped things spread out on the grass.

Air and gas were duly blasted and when the sad shriveled fabric had transformed into round bulbous growths looming over our heads we were invited to clamber into the basket. Assistance was given to the feeble and those who had changed their minds at the last minute.

Then we and fifty or so other balloons were aloft, rising into the morning sky silent except for the blasts from the flame jets and the excited squeals of the passengers. My apologies to anyone who was disturbed by my excited squeals.

From up above I could look down on the theatre at Hierapolis and gaze across the countryside laid out like the world’s best map beneath me. Down below vehicles raced down the streets trying to reach our landing spot before we did. The sun came up from behind the Taurus mountains (yes, they’re still around) and I almost gibbered with joy. 

Eventually what goes up had to come down. A four wheel drive with a trailer was parked in a convenient field. We glided low and the pilot actually landed us on the trailer at which point willing hands lashed the basket to the trailer to prevent us drifting off again.

Once safely back on terra firma we headed off for wine tasting. Sorry, I mean the charming Turkish town of Selcuk which was conveniently located near the ruins of the city of Ephesus a major centre and port of the ancient world.  Selcuk is also the location of the basilica of St John the Apostle (the one who wrote the Book of Revelations). Allegedly he is buried there although solid proof is lacking.

We ate lunch in a mounting frenzy of anticipation until our guide could withstand the pointed comments no longer and we made the short voyage to the village of Sirince which is famous for its picturesque architecture and fruit wines.

We arrived, wine was drunk. Some of it was quite good all of it was consumed. Then I had ice cream, as you do.

Travelling Hopefully - Limestone Edition

It is a commonly held fallacy that any liquid takes on magical qualities if it has bubbles in it. This explains the appeal of champagne and soda water. If you pass said water through a couple of random chemicals suddenly you have a healing spring and people will flock to it eagerly for a “cure”. 

This made a lot more sense in ancient times when a one in ten survival rate was still better than most doctors could claim. So it isn’t surprising that when the Ancients in what would eventually become Turkey discovered warm springs bubbling out of limestone they went nuts for it and built a spa town called Hierapolis right next to the source of these healthful waters. What is slightly more surprising is that the place is now a ruin rather than a thriving health resort.

And what an impressive ruin it is. There are Roman ruins heaped on top of earlier Greek ruins. There is an impressive set of Roman baths, now a museum containing relics dug up from the surrounding site. There’s also an extensive necropolis. As any medical practitioner will tell you the best place to find corpses is a hospital. People die there all the time. It’s the same with Hierapolis, being a centre of health and healing meant it attracted the sick and the dying. A goodly number of them never left.

One can still bathe in the warm mineral springs if you think it will do you any good. The occasional drowning aside it probably won’t do you any harm which is the first requirement for a medical treatment. I didn’t bother, deciding to treat my disease riddled body in the traditional manner, by paying a doctor to misinterpret my symptoms and prescribe some generic drugs that probably cause your colon to explode if you mix up the dosage. Medical science, as you can see, has moved on although its destination remains in doubt.

I did go to the theatre which is huge for the ancient world and amazingly well preserved given that the entire city was flattened by an earthquake. I managed to get a few good photos once we shoved the influencers out of the way.

By this time it was evening and we repaired to our hotel in nearby Pamukkale. This is a Turkish town that seems to exist so tourist buses heading for Hierapolis have somewhere to park. Our hotel had a pool that we didn’t swim in.

Travelling Hopefully - Greenhouse Edition

One of the hidden gems of the trip so far has been being informed of whatever agricultural product the particular region of Turkey we’re travelling through is famous for. As we headed towards Beypazari on the first day it was all about carrots. Cappadocia was grapes and pumpkins then Konya, centre of Turkey’s wheat belt. As we approached the Taurus Mountains we were solemnly informed that strawberries were the crop du jour and down around Antalya and Kas it is cucumbers, zucchini and tomatoes.

To facilitate the production of the latter the flat land (there isn’t much) is covered in domed structures. From a distance it looks like an industrial estate but they’re actually greenhouses. Only these aren’t just greenhouses they’re more like green mansions, sprawling estates where the aforementioned vegetation can grow unhindered by such trivialities as the weather.

Of course this proud defiance of nature has its limits. A flood has recently sloshed through the region leaving the locals to conduct frantic repair work. We passed them digging ditches and laying pipes. We lolled back in our comfortable minibus and wished them well as we put their efforts behind us.

We thought about these noble sons of the soil as we ate our salad that night. Well I didn’t but presumably somebody did. Or at least had vaguely positive thoughts towards farmers in general. On the positive side if there’s another flood the locals can upend their greenhouses and paddle them to safety.

Travelling Hopefully - Brief History Lesson

The trouble with anywhere in Turkey and indeed the whole Middle East is that no matter how long someone has been living in a place someone else was there first. Take Lycia where I am temporarily domiciled at the moment.

Lycia has been around in some form or another as far back as Wikipedia can remember. The Hittites knew about it at which time the Lycians had their own language and government. Then the Persians turned up and dispossessed the Lycians of such foolish notions. Only not really because the Persians were quite happy for the Lycians to go on being Lycian as long as they did what they were told. Which the Lycians dutifully did.

They fought with the Persians against the Greeks, lost and wound up as part of the empire of Athens. Apparently that wasn’t to their liking so they left, got conquered by somebody else who wound up being beaten by the Persians so Lycia wound up being Persian again. Then Alexander the Great dropped by. Once again the Lycians found that siding with the Persians against the Greeks was a losing proposition.

After that lax immigration policies resulted in most of the Lycians vanishing under a tide of Greek immigrants as Alexander’s successors settled down to rule various parts of his empire. That should be enough for any self respecting society but then the Romans came. The Romans gave Lycia to Rhodes (Why? Don’t know) then took it back again and made them a self governing protectorate. Some time later the Romans converted them to a non self governing province.

Over a thousand years went by and any surviving Lycians and their Greek replacements might thought things had settled down a bit. Then Romanus Diogenes made a mess of the Battle of Manzikert and suddenly Lycia was welcoming the Seljuk Turks. The Seljuks didn’t hang around long in the grand scheme of things and little over a century later Lycia was part of the Beylik of Teke. Never heard of the Beylik of Teke? Don’t worry it didn’t last any longer than it took the Ottoman Turks to become aware of its existence.

Now Lycia is an integral part of modern Turkey and surely will remain so because history never repeats itself over and over again. All we have to remember the Lycians is a bunch of looted sarcophagi with roofs that look like ships and the occasional ruined city. Why the ship shaped sarcophagus roofs? Apparently the sea was very important to the Lycians. Possibly because it constituted the only escape route from the people constantly overrunning their homeland.

Travelling Hopefully - A Little More Side a Good Deal More Sea

After the house of death we clambered back into our minibus and headed for Kas. Kas should have a little curly thing on the “s” but I don’t know how to do Turkish accents so adjust your pronunciation accordingly.

The Taurus Mountains pretty much hit the coast at this point so our journey to Kas (don’t forget the accent) was appropriately windy with towering hills on one side and the ocean on the other. The scenery scened impressively and I attempted to take photos out of the window with a marked lack of success. We stopped for lunch in a small town and dined amidst a German tour group. I don’t know if Alternative for Deutschland does package tours but I was rather glad when they left.

We paused at a lookout which gave us a view of the two eastern most Greek islands just a couple of miles off the coast. With that cultural experience under our belts we headed into Kas.

Kas is a small town with the standard fit out of narrow picturesque streets and alleys full of shops catering to/preying on tourists. I was very restrained and made only one modest purchase.

The next day we set out for a life on the ocean wave. Honesty compels me to admit that the life was very brief and the waves were very small. We piled onto a modest sized vessel and spent the day noodling from cove to cove, pausing to swim, photograph a submerged Lycian city and marvel at the turquoise waters. We also marvelled at tiny fish, storm runoff from a recent flood, random sarcophagi and a helicopter that was searching for a couple of missing persons. You name it we marvelled at it.

What does a submerged Lycian city look like I hear you cry? It looks like any other Lycian city that’s been relocated to the bottom of the sea by an earthquake. Possibly a lesson to build a little further inland in future.

Travelling Hopefully - Ho For the Seaside

 We left Konya and pointed the nose of the minibus towards the Mediterranean. First though we had to cross the Taurus Mountains. The Taurus Mountains are located between the Aries Hills and the Gemini Plains. I saw my first snow in Turkey clinging modestly to the peaks as we wound our way through. Scenery abounded and I photographed as much of it as I could through the window as it went by.

Once over the Taurus Mountains we stopped for gozleme at a family home nestled among the ruins of a Roman bath. The family have monetised cooking by selling a delicious lunch to passers by. Replete we headed on to Antalya, a seaside town famous for its Roman harbour and ceremonial gate memorialising the day that the emperor Hadrian dropped by for a visit. It’s called the Visitor’s Gate.

No it isn’t, it’s called Hadrian’s Gate because Hadrian couldn’t pass by a rubbish bin without naming it after himself. Hadrian was an emperor of the Antonine dynasty widely regarded as the high point of pagan Rome. There were six emperors in the Antonine dynasty only two of whom were actually related to each other. “Dynasty” being a rather broad definition applied by later historians.

Antalya is a pleasant town with the usual collection of old buildings. There’s a Seljuk mosque, Ottoman houses, a Roman harbour and a statue honouring the town’s founder back when it was the Kingdom of Pergamon. Even that doesn’t seem to be the beginning of the story as artefacts have been found which pre-date even him.

All this means there are lots of narrow, twisty streets and a bizarre variety of souvenirs to be hawked from every second shop. It also means people have been dying here for ridiculously long period of time.

As evidence of the previous point the next day we visited a charnel house. Sorry I mean a museum dedicated to the dead. The museum is planted on top of an ancient cemetery that appears to have been used from pre-Hellenic times until well after the Romans adopted (or abducted) Christianity. As is traditional in cities of this age the cemetery was discovered when the foundations were being dug for something else, in this case a convention centre.

The museum now occupies the site and displays selected pieces of the sarcophagi, ossuaries and grave goods that have been unearthed. There was no mention of what became of the convention centre. Presumably it was relocated to somewhere a little less corpse intensive. After our visit to the museum we were similarly relocated.

Travelling Hopefully - Giving it a Whirl

 After a few days crawling into holes and over suggestively shaped rocks we piled into our faithful mechanical steed and headed to Konya.

Konya is the fifth, sixth or seventh largest city in Turkey depending on refugee influx and who’s counting. It’s also the centre of Turkey’s wheat belt and a major car parts manufacturer. But all of this pales into insignificance compared with one other fact our guide imparted. Konya is the most conservative city in Turkey. There was a pause as that sank in then a trembling voice from the rear asked the question we were all thinking. “Does this mean we can’t buy alcohol?” Our guide dolefully confirmed that this was the case. Wisely the guide had waited to tell us of this fact until we were actually on the road. Nevertheless there was a concerted scramble for the windows as we attempted to flee back to Goreme.

Despite our tearful pleas the minibus continued towards Konya. Of course Konya has more to offer than just the sight of a collection of senior citizens undergoing delirium tremens. It is also the death place of Rumi. His full name was apparently Jalal al Din Muhammad Rumi. The “Rumi” was a nickname meaning “Roman” which he wasn’t. But he gained his fame in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum which was so called because their territory was traditionally Roman or at least it was until the Seljuks arrived. Rumi was actually Persian by which I mean he was born in Afghanistan.

Rumi founded the Mevlevi order of Islamic mystics who would become famous to people who knew nothing of Islam or Sufism as the Whirling Dervishes. Rumi’s romb is a magnificent building, now a museum, and we were able to walk through it along with what appeared to be half the population of Turkey. Rumi himself is apparently buried under a gorgeous turquoise spire. Apparently Rumi had asked for his tomb to be open to the air so he could look up at the sky but his followers hadn’t been able to resist honouring him by building an impressive pile over the top of him. They coloured it turquoise in the hopes that Rumi would still feel he was looking at the sky. It’s an interesting lesson in exactly how much people are going to honour the wishes of even the most respected person once they’ve unlikely to return and berate you.

That night we went to a Whirling Dervish performance which was a lot more elegant and impressive than my ignorant mind had imagined.

Travelling Hopefully - Pumpkin Edition

We passed through Turkey’s carrot country on our way to Cappadocia but once we arrived it was all about the pumpkins. In between the tortured rock formations, fairy chimneys and churches carved into holes in the stone there were pumpkins. Every flat piece of ground was given over to these bulbous orange plants.

You might think, therefore, that every meal would have abounded in pumpkin soup, roast pumpkin, grilled pumpkin, pumpkin with ice cream and pumpkin juice. You would have been wrong. I think I am yet to see a pumpkin adorning a dinner plate in any form whatsoever.

Pumpkins originated in Central America and have since colonised the world, including Turkey. According to my research they are one of the most popular winter vegetables in the country. Which doesn’t explain why I haven’t yet managed to eat one.

According to our guide the pumpkins in our region are harvested for their seeds or not. Apparently if the pumpkin price is not competitive then the pumpkins are simply left in the fields to fertilise the next generation of pumpkins. Essentially the pumpkins are eating their parents.

Of course cannibalising ones parents and other esteemed family members is a tradition in some ancient cultures. Painfully gained wisdom and positive attributes are thus passed on to the next generation. By this argument the pumpkins of Cappadocia must be some of the most gifted and knowledgeable in all the world. No wonder the Turks don’t want to eat them, they’re probably afraid of the uber pumpkins they have created. I give it a few more years before these hyped up psycho pumpkins erupt out of their fields and take over the world. At that point somebody is going to pay for Halloween.

Travelling Hopefully - Not Air Ballooning Edition

So the hot air balloon ride didn’t happen. The weather was inclement on the day we were due to go and we were unable to reschedule for another day. We got up early one day and watched the balloons ascending majestically into the sky while we wept and ground our teeth in frustration.

Having failed on the ballooning front our guide decided to bury us in the earth instead. The rock churches and such were a mere teaser, today we were visiting an underground city.

Here the predilection for gouging holes out of soft volcanic rock had reached its ultimate expression. Cappadocia dwellers of days gone by excavated not one but several of these underground accommodations to shelter them from the ravenous hordes which apparently swept across the landscape on a semi regular basis.

They didn’t live here full time, rather it was a place of refuge where the surface dwellers could hide when dangers such as raiders or Winter threatened. Then the denizens would retreat beneath the surface and roll sturdy obsidian plugs across the entrances to discourage ingress.

Stern warnings were issued by our guide. Were we claustrophobic? Did we suffer from high blood pressure? How about heart conditions? For a group whose average age was over sixty he might as well have said “Are you still alive?” Taking our greasy assurances of remarkable health and mental stability at face value he led us into the bowels of the earth.

Although possibly “colon of the earth” would be a better term. Narrow passage ways twisted and turned, wrapped over each other and down, always down. Carved out rooms on the sides of the passages marked where people lived, prayed and made wine. Because being driven underground by savage marauders was no excuse for the latest vintage to be tardy. Priorities guys.

Of course in these days of peace and tranquility the underground cities are merely tourist attractions and sites of archaeological interest and absolutely nobody lives in caves anymore. Well except for one lady so we went and had lunch with her. Our tour information pack mentioned a lady living in a cave and I must admit I had visions of some desiccated hag in rags squatting in a cavern. In fact she was a friendly and charming lady whose house had been built into the cave. She gave us lunch (which was delicious) and discussed the decorations she had been awarded for baklava making. She was a former mathematics teacher who had had to retire due to MS. Now she entertains guests in a cave house with magnificent carpets on the floor which looked like they had been woven yesterday despite being more than thirty years old.

Replete with lunch we heaved our sagging bellies towards Love Valley for an afternoon constitutional. Love Valley is so called because of the immense number of phallically shaped fairy chimneys that stud its surface. I guess Love Valley is somewhat more socially acceptable than “Dick Valley” which would be the only other plausible name.

By the way a fairy chimney is a spire of soft volcanic rock which maintains its existence due to being capped with a layer of much tougher volcanic rock. The results, if you are of an innocent mind, rather resemble mushrooms.

Travelling Hopefully - Tuff Guys Edition

Under grey skies we left the baklava ridden delights of Beypazari behind and pointed our collective noses at Cappadocia. Our guide informed us that the name derived from an ancient Persian reference to horses. He also informed us that was almost certainly untrue and that a more likely reference was to some Hittite god. This didn’t prevent statues of horses welcoming visitors to Cappadocia beside the highway.

Cappadocia isn’t actually an official region of Turkey. The name is a geographic and historical reference which doesn’t stop it being plastered across the sign of every shop pandering to tourists. On our way to Cappadocia we brushed the outskirts of Ankara, Turkey’s capital. Unless you’re a civil servant or work in Turkey’s defence industry there doesn’t seem to be much reason to go there and we didn’t.

Instead we went to Goreme a charming village consisting entirely of hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops. What the tourists come to see is all around; a twisted landscape of soft volcanic rock abounding in cones, hills and caves. The volcanic rock is largely tuff and, despite its name, is so soft you can excavate it with a soup spoon. Residents in earlier more violent times hollowed out the caves and made churches and living quarters inside the rock.

The next day we drove approximately ten minutes to a collection of shops and cafes. On the other side of this example of opportunistic retail was an open air museum consisting of a collection of churches carved and hollowed out of the obligingly soft rock. The best was the Dark Church so called because little natural light entered it. This meant the frescoes on the walls and ceiling were still of breathtaking quality. You’ll have to take my word on that because no photography was permitted.

We scrambled around poking our heads in various places of worship that looked like they could accommodate a congregation of three at most and took photos of the outside of the churches which means essentially I have a lot of pictures of holes in the rock.

Once the amusement value of this was exhausted we were driven to a place that made Turkish carpets. More accurately women in rural areas of Turkey made carpets and these people sell them. A pleasant gentleman named Attila explained the process and the incredibly long time it took to make a single decent sized carpet. He also said it was a dying art. Apparently young women in Turkey can find less mind numbingly tedious things to do with their lives.

Still the carpets were exquisite, the hospitality was charming and raki flowed which may go some way to explaining why I will be having a silk/cotton rug I have absolutely no use for delivered to my home some time in the next couple of months. I may have to live on biscuits for a while to cover the cost.

Travelling Hopefully - Carrot Country Edition

 My days wandering alone were at an end. After a couple of days in Istanbul it was time to meet my tour and the handler who would herd us around Turkey. We gathered at the hotel and sniffed each other out. The first thing I noticed was they were all quite old. They hovered more or less around the age of sixty. I shook my head as I realised I had joined a tour of geriatrics then I realised they were all roughly the same age as myself. Fuck! 

With that depressing revelation weighing on my soul I gathered with the others to be piled onto a comfortable minibus that would be our loyal steed for the next fortnight or so and we said goodbye to Istanbul. Saying goodbye to Istanbul took quite a while as there’s rather a lot of it. Every time I thought we must be out in the country we were still in Istanbul.

Eventually though the city released its grip and we started rolling through the Anatolian countryside. This, according to our guide, was the carrot centre of Turkey. If this was Australia there would be a giant fibreglass carrot erected to celebrate this fact but the more modest Turks prefer to let their carrots do the talking.

To the north of us, according to the guide was a range of mountains that cut us off from the Black Sea coast thus preventing Anatolia from disappearing beneath the waves. It also explained why this region didn’t get much rain. It started raining. Apparently some clouds had managed to sneak over the peaks.

Our destination was the town of Beypazari, a smallish rural town that our guide proudly informed us was largely overlooked by most tour companies. When asked why we were stopping there he was a little less clear.

Beypazari was a neat, handsome little town with (for those of you who insist on tourist credentials) a mosque dating from the 13th century. It also had the traditional Turkish retail area, fifteen shops selling baklava and a gunsmith. Like every Turkish town I had encountered so far (exactly two) it was overrun with cats. 

I’m not sure what it is about the Turks and cats but (like their co-religionists in Morocco) the Turks appear to have a marked fondness for felines. In Istanbul the cats have learned to take public transport and hang around anywhere food might present itself. That covers a great deal of the city. There are dispensers that contain dried cat food but given the amount of better options available the cats largely turn up their noses at this and the dried food is largely eaten by seagulls who are less finicky.

Back in Beypazari we visited a living museum. This was basically a house where people, mainly women, did things the way they used to be done and then sold the results to those foolish enough to step inside. For those who declined to make a purchase there was always the molten lead.

Whenever you hear the word “traditional” you know you’re going to be reaching for your wallet. But I was on holiday and my money wasn’t going to spend itself. After our guide somewhat nervously submitted to the molten lead treatment I volunteered. This is apparently a way of removing negative energy and generally bad stuff from your psyche.

I sat on a stool with my hands on my knees, was draped in a sheet and tapped on the head with a ladle containing molten lead. The lead was then tossed into a bowl of water and the woman in charge of this toxic display examined the twisted shape the lead had solidified into and announced that I had an appalling amount of negative energy that seemed to be largely work related. My faith in her abilities climbed somewhat. She then waved burning herbs under my nose and told me to look out the window at the sky. Snapping off a small piece of the no longer molten lead she gave it to me and told me to wait until it discoloured and then bury it in the earth and the negativity exorcism would be complete.

Our guide explained the reason for his unease. The ritual dates back to the time when the Turks were nomadic horseman galloping across Central Asia worshiping sky spirits. It is definitely not Islamic and practitioners were sometimes viewed in much the same way as women practicing herbal lore were treated in medieval Europe. Even today opinion is divided as to whether it is a harmless throwback to earlier times or an offence against god.

With my negative energy thoroughly purged in a manner that would not receive the approval of an imam we stopped off at the one place that wasn’t engaged in baklava production or gun repair and had dinner. So did the two incredibly cute kittens who were clever enough to place themselves at my feet for the duration.

Travelling Hopefully - Istanbul Comes Good

 I would have slept if jet lag permitted. Unlike the previous day when I had had to seek out my tour guide today I was being picked up from my hotel by my guide. I was waiting outside the hotel at 10am, he was waiting outside the hotel at 10am. Some ten minutes or so later we found each other and apologised for our respective tardiness.

Eventually we got ourselves sorted out and headed to what was once the most impressive set of fortifications in the world. I mentioned in my previous post that Constantine selected the site of the new Roman capital based on the fact that it was surrounded by water on three sides leaving just one side that hostile armies could approach without drowning. To address the dangerous gap in the defences on the fourth side a subsequent emperor arranged for the landward approach to the city to be sealed off with a massive defensive wall that stretched from the Sea of Marmara to the Golden Horn. That emperor was Theodosius II so the walls are called the Theodosian Walls. In actual fact Theodosius was a talentless non-entity and the walls were the work of his praetorian prefect Anthemius but if you’re the emperor you get the credit.

It has to be said Anthemius did his emperor proud. A triple belt of fortifications stretching from coast to coast. A wall sixteen feet high, studded with guard towers, then a bare strip of open ground (the technical term is “killing zone”) and then another wall thirty two feet high and studded with more guard towers offset to cover the gaps in the first group. Over the course of a thousand years enemy after enemy turned up at the walls of Theodosius and turned around and went home. Only once they were breached, in 1453 when Mehmed II’s cannons finally punched their way through and ended the Byzantine Empire.

And they’re still there. Battered, broken, crumbling under the assault of pollution and modern development but still guarding the landward approach to Istanbul. My guide was delighted to find someone who wanted to see the walls. Apparently not too many people do. Most of those who do are retired American military gentlemen.

Monday is apparently not a good day for visiting things if you want them to be open but it’s difficult to close over seven kilometres of walls. I stood next to them, photographed them and just stared in open mouthed delight. Some parts of the walls have been restored, others are in their natural ruined state. You can’t walk on them unfortunately (people had a tendency to to fall off) but you can gawp at them from all angles and gawp I did.

Once I had been surfeited on walls my guide took me to the Chora Church. Or rather Chora Mosque because this is another victim of the Turkish president’s re-election bid. Unlike Hagia Sophia however you can walk around pretty much the whole thing.

The church (or mosque) in its present form was completed in the early thirteenth century by which time the Byzantine Empire was on its knees. A senior government official named Theodore Metochites commissioned all new mosaics to decorate the interior. Here were the mosaics I had hoped for at Hagia Sophia. Breathtakingly beautiful and covering the walls and ceiling with depictions of the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary.

The church (mosque) is small, tiny by comparison with the Hagia Sophia, but I spent more time in the Chora than I did at the Hagia Sophia.

On the way back I drove under an aqueduct, visited a mini cistern and finished off the day with a Turkish bath. OK Istanbul you’re off the hook because that was pretty damned special.

Travelling Hopefully Slight Disappointment Edition

 I had booked a tour for my first full day in Istanbul which would take me to and, more importantly, inside the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and Istanbul’s cisterns. First I had to find my tour guide. I was meeting him at Galataport which is a gleaming new facility where cruise liners park. I wasn’t too far away so I plugged my destination into google maps and set off boldly in the wrong direction.

Fortunately some frantic turns brought me onto the right path and I plunged through Galata heading downwards. This reassured me as I’ve noticed that ports tend not to be on the tops of hills.

Galata is on the Asian side of Istanbul whereas everything I was going to see was on the European side. Fortunately no swimming was involved. Despite my initial screw up I made it to the port area without any real problems and hung around with a bunch of other hopeful looking tourists speaking German. That is they were speaking German, I maintained a polite silence. With departure time rapidly approaching I accosted a random tour guide and asked him who I should speak to. Apparently it was him. He apologised and said he thought I was German. Which made ignoring me somewhat more forgivable.

With his charges belatedly gathered our guide herded us in the direction of the light rail which was our key to crossing the Bosphorus without getting our feet wet. It was early on a Sunday morning so we experienced the unusual luxury of being able to get a seat. As we crossed the Bosphorus we noticed the bridge was crowded with people fishing. The seafood restaurants near the bridge have the freshest fish in Istanbul.

Eventually the light rail spat us out near, well everything. The Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and the cisterns are within about a five minute walk of each other. But first the Hippodrome.

Yes I didn’t mention the hippodrome did I? This was the social and political centre of the Byzantine Empire. Here people would come to cheer on the charioteers as they raced around the track. A royal box connected to the imperial palace and allowed the emperor to watch the races. It also allowed the populace (or at least the hundred thousand or so who could get a seat) to tell the emperor exactly what they thought of him and his policies. Which they did, frequently with vigour.

KThe stands and the palace are long gone but the actual course is now a public plaza with an ancient Egyptian obelisk standing at one end. More accurately there is half an ancient Egyptian obelisk standing at one end. The Romans/Byzantines pinched it from Egypt, cut it in half for easier transportation and lost half of it overboard on the journey. What’s left is at the Hippodrome, the other half is at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

Leaving behind this appalling example of colonial appropriation our guide took us to the Blue Mosque. The Blue Mosque is actually the Sultan Ahmed Mosque but so many tourists commented on the blue tiled interior that the Turks essentially stopped bothering to correct them. Sultan Ahmed was a little annoyed that the most impressive mosque in Constantinople was a former church (the Hagia Sophia) and commissioned this building to outshine it.

Grey and monumental on the outside, the interior is warm well lit and adorned with stained glass that was a gift from the Venetians. It is a working mosque so visits are arranged around prayer times. The famous blue tiles within are pale and not at all the cobalt blue I was expecting. Nevertheless if you had to pick a colour you would definitely go with blue. Great chandeliers adorned with faux ostrich eggs provide additional light.

The ostrich eggs probably require a little explanation. Back in the day the eggs were real and, coated with a special paste, happily rotted above the heads of the congregation. The combination of the paste and rotting ostrich egg created an odour too subtle for the human nose but that insects absolutely hated. It was in short 16th century insect repellent.

Once the wonders of the Blue mosque were if not exhausted then at least breathing heavily we put our shoes back on and took the five minute walk to the Hagia Sophia.

Sadly the Hagia Sophia did not live up to expectations. This is Justinian’s great church built in the sixth century. I had read much about it and was eager to walk in the footsteps of Justinian, gaze up at the great dome and examine the mosaics said to decorate the interior. Sadly politics and renovations have combined to interfere. 

The Hagia Sophia was a Christian church up until 1453 when Sultan Mehmet II conquered the city and converted it to a mosque. It remained a mosque until the 1920s when the secular government of Ataturk converted it into a museum. Then in the early 2020s the current president of Turkey was trailing in the polls and sought to pander to his conservative base by turning it back into a mosque. When it was pointed out that tourist revenue had taken a nose dive an awkward compromise was cobbled together. The ground floor remains a mosque but the first level was reopened as a museum. The views are not as great as they would be if you could walk on the ground floor and they’re hampered more by great metal support beams and scaffolding due to ongoing renovations. It’s hard to complain about the renovations, the building is fifteen hundred years old and needs some love to keep standing but it doesn’t make for good photography.

Still I saw beautiful mosaics and marble work and at least glimpsed the dome. And I have walked somewhat adjacent to the footsteps of Justinian. After that we hit the cisterns.

All of these things incidentally are within a five minute walk of each other. We walked in a door and down several flights of stairs and we were in the cisterns.

Here’s the thing. When Constantine the Great chose this location for his new Roman capital it had many things to recommend it. Straddling Europe and Asia it was a vital knot tying the empire together. Being surrounded by sea on three sides it was eminently defensible. As city locations go it had just one problem. No water, at least none of the drinkable kind.  If you wanted water it had to come from a long way off. And once it arrived you needed somewhere to store it. Aqueducts answered the first part of the question and these cisterns, vast underground water storage answered the second. But the cisterns don’t only rely on aqueducts, rainfall filtered through specially laid layers of earth, sand and stone makes the contents of the cisterns some of the cleanest water in Istanbul.

Now they’ve lowered the water level to allow walking platforms to be placed and one can walk about an artificial grotto built over a thousand years ago. Walk I did, taking in the carved head of a Medusa that had been pressed into supporting one of the pillars. In deference to the concerns of the slaves who built the place the Medusa’s eyes had been carefully carved out so that no one got turned to stone during construction.

After that there was nothing left to do except buy a football shirt, eat a slice of cheesecake and go to bed.

Travelling Hopefully - Transfer Edition

 Approximately nineteen hours after my aircraft shook the dust of Sydney from its wheels a completely different and significantly smaller aircraft deposited me at Istanbul airport and informed me that I was on my own.

I swept through passport control and baggage pickup without a problem and stepped out to find the driver who would take me to my hotel. Of course he wasn’t there. I hung around a seething mass of what, in a fit of generosity, I shall call humanity in the hopes that such an individual might present himself. He didn’t of course, what did present itself was a pair of women clutching the same tour itinerary as I possessed who were explaining to a random individual that their transfer had turned out to be more illusory than real as well.

Fortunately the random individual was one of those who preyed on (or assisted depending on your point of view) those people whose transfers had inexplicably let them down. Since we were all going to the same hotel he cheerfully bundled us into a random van, informed us that the price would be fifty euros each and wished us Godspeed.

The only term I can use to describe this van is “pimped out”. It had a faux marble floor. The interior lighting was blue and red neon. The seats were padded and comfortable with ample room for a lap dancer to gyrate between them. One suspects the vehicle is normally used for bucks nights and porn scenes.

The sun set in approximately five seconds and soon I and two others were ploughing through the inky dark in a vehicle I desperately hoped wouldn’t be pulled over by the police. My fears fortunately were groundless. An hour or so later they pulled up outside our hotel and after we paid them graciously released our luggage.

I can’t say I was surprised at the transfer screw up. I was almost expecting it. Fortunately the hotel was comfortable and conveniently situated if you like being convenient to night clubs. I had been travelling for over twenty hours at this point and even a half hour struggle with the air conditioning couldn’t minimise my delight at crawling into a bed that didn’t fold up on landing.

Travelling Hopefully- The Usual Beginning

 As usual my journey begins at Sydney Airport, a location that prepares you for your trip by making leaving it an unadulterated joy. Actually I haven’t even got as far as the airport yet. I’m in the hotel across the street. This indulgence has been forced on me due to the fact that my plane leaves at Obscene o’clock in the morning. That means getting up before I go to bed. Pretty much my only hope of not sleeping through the plane’s departure is to get an adjacent hotel and then sleep in the gutter outside.The hotel staff persuaded me to go inside by pointing out that they charged just as much for a gutter stay and there was no TV. 

Assuming I wake up in time tomorrow will see me nestled in the bowels of a large metal bird hoping it avoids the drones over Dubai and spits me out somewhere in the vicinity of Istanbul. Assuming my journey progresses as planned a vehicle will be waiting to whisk me to my hotel. At least that’s the plan. The last time I tried something like that I wound up stranded at Nairobi airport and if it wasn’t for the kindness of a nearby soldier I’d probably still be there. And dead of course.

Two days of touring Istanbul await or possibly two days of hitchhiking through the city trying to find my hotel. I do have to find it because the professional tour starts from the hotel two days after I arrive. Which should be just enough time to find the hotel, fall in a cistern and buy a football shirt.

Excitement and cultural experiences await. Always assuming I wake up in time.