... re turkeys for your dining pleasure please see next email.
I know it has been a while between messages and I think it is probably time to get myself sorted on a blog instead of email... but I have only just mastered facebook. I hope everyone's well.
TURKEY - A FAMILY TRIP
Many, many, months ago (well, three) I threw myself onto the Heathrow express train from Paddington, settled in and later in the day was stepping off into Istanbul’s International Ataturk Airport. Interesting. I remember my old uni flatmate Kylie studying Ataturk for one of her history units. Obviously an important guy if he has an airport named after him. At this point I was chugging through Istanbul on my way to my parents and our flat for that week the European side of the Bosporus, and trying to work out what I did know about Turkey.
Not much.
Fortunately the phone rang with my parents demanding to know where I was. The taxi driver certainly wasn’t going to tell me so I muttered something about bridges and tulips and traffic jams and went “grrrsssh grrrssssh signal breaking up” – my normal way of breaking off a parental conversation where I was being asked questions with no reasonable answer. I mean, really, I was pretty certain I was in Istanbul. I didn’t have any information beyond that.
[Fast forward 5 days]
I LOVED ISTANBUL.
... top 5 city without a doubt. You can walk around on your own without being nervous, the food and drink were great, you could get ferries all along the Bosporus, the cab drivers were insane, the people were amazingly friendly and intensely nationalistic, and it
had that great mix of country-market-you-can-buy-everything and haggle for it too (people just keep asking me “How can I spend your money?”), and then the designer shops and glam hotels that were straight out of Mr and Mrs Smiths. I would move there in a flash very happily.
... it was all helped by the best guide in the world – Pinar. Particularly when I discovered that dad’s request in doing the *very gruelling* itinerary was to arrange the visits chronologically – so we kicked off with Byzantium, moved onto the Ottoman, and so on. It says a lot for my general knowledge that I only realised this last week.
... very suspiciously, I went along carpet shopping – and then wholeheartedly embraced the Turkish retail tradition of having to accept every time coffee is offered. The nice man offered, I said yes. I finished, he offered again, I said yes. I smiled, he smiled. They were thunderingly impressed by my grasp of Turkish – “az” - it seemed to mean I wanted a little sugar. It all went swimmingly, I had coffee and the parents concentrated on rugs.
... a memorable rollercoaster ride through the city with the Kurdish taxidriver. Never knew his name, every question he answered with “I am Kurd!”. Ok, good. Then he would randomly ask “You know Bin Ladin?”. Well, of him, of course….. Then “Bush… he is terrorist.” Dad fielded those ones.
... the end of my tan in the Turkish baths. I was lying on the big hot stone platform and Helga (or whatever the Turkish equivalent is) came stomping over with flesh shaking like there was a menagerie of small animals in there trying to escape and wearing a pair
of black knickers and that was it. I was a little scared and so I just lay whimpering quietly as she scrubbed away at my tan and briskly slapped me each time she wanted me to roll over. I ended up squeaky clean and significantly paler and am still a little
traumatised.
GRAND AND MAGNIFICENT TRAVELLING
... the family headed off to do a guided tour from Ankara back to Istanbul - the Grand Turkey Tour. WithMagnificent Travel & Tourism. If I ever have a business I want it to be grand and magnificent too (I was a little disappointed there was no “unique” or
“super-exceptional” tours on offer at the time) so I thought this was a good sign of Mr Nihat’s belief in his team.
... the Mausoleum of Ataturk (Ankara), he of the international airport and generally-recognised founder of modern Turkey. He reformed the alphabet, the system of names, got on with the roads, recognized women’s rights, and in theory at least established Turkey as a secular society. Now this last seems to be getting a real bashing at the moment but all in all a mammoth job. I was quietly impressed and pleased for him that his picture seemed to be on every poster, tea towel and flag in Turkey.
... [Just as an interesting aside that probably belongs in the next email – a pretty unlikely and certainly unsubstantiated but fun story about the Turks (the Ottomans in those days) and the croissant – the summer of 1683 and the city of Vienna is under siege. The Ottoman Empire has asked that the Hapsburg city to surrender, and the leaders have told the Turks to bugger off home. The Turks are, as you would expect, unhappy and set about laying siege to the city. One way they planned to infiltrate the city was
to set off explosions underneath the city walls – and a plan they began to implement by digging tunnels to set the explosions in. Unfortunately for them, a baker, working in his basement during the siege, heard the noise of the digging, alerted the authorities, and thus foiled the evil plan. The baker, being something of a marketing genius, and not one to miss an opportunity, created a pastry in the shape of a crescent, the symbol of the Ottoman empire. It became a local traditional to serve this crescent-shaped delight with coffee, and a century later, when the Viennese princess Marie Antoinette married the French King Louis XVI, she insisted that the bakers in Paris learn how to make it. Over the years, the French bakers added butter and yeast to the mix (as they tend to do with most things), and the croissant (meaning 'crescent') as we know it was born.]
... anyway, back to Turkey and the Evans Road Trip.
... finally got up in a hot air balloon (having been held back by mist first in Kenya and then again in Cappadocia one morning) – I was determined to get up the next morning – and it was great. Mum even went up although she stayed squarely in the middle of the basket at all times.
.... Capadoccia and the underground cities, the fairy chimneys, and many, many, many rock chapels.
... I met the Australian bikers in Cappadocia too. A huge hairy bearded man came to my aid when trying to access the local wifi network. It transpired he was from Queanbeyan (of course) and on a bike tour with about 30 other Australian bikers. He was also writing a trip journal for a motorcycle magazine back home and was travelling with the magazine’s resident teddy bear as travel and photo muse (and making friends with other Turkish stuffed animals – people would apparently produce their own teddy or piglet or whatnot so that could be photographed with BikerBear).
... the Whirling Dervishes. I’d seen the Sudanese version of this in Khartoum, I was really interested to see what they would be like in Konya. Very formal, almost like a concert, and without the Sudanese feeling of a community event, lots of chatter, a healthy marketplace going next door. And I got in trouble for wanting to take a picture.
... I saw – I kid you not - the antique box which supposedly contains Mohammed's beard. Apparently these kind of relics were brought back to Turkey from the Middle East by Ottoman Sultans to preserve them from fundamentalist Islamic sects who were out to destroy the “idolatrous” Mohammed relics. I read that the museum also has a reliquary, which supposedly houses one of Mohammed's teeth. The poor man must be spread all over the place.
... hitting the Mediterranean coast was beautiful. There were lots of truly spectacular ruins along the way and I have the photos, but really, I was ready for out of that bus and onto the foreshore. Not for long. Hell, we had an itinerary and a timetable to stick to. Perge. Aspendos. Manavgat... an afternoon at the travertine pools at Pamukkale – with hundreds of determined tourists walking up the salt pools in their bare feet. Aphrodisias. Ephesus. Pergamum. The old medical centre at Asclepion. Stopped in at Troy. The horse was long gone.
"THOSE HEROES THAT SHED THEIR BLOOD AND LOST THEIR LIVES... YOU ARE NOW LYING IN THE SOIL OF A FRIENDLY COUNTRY..."
But the most amazing sites were on the last day – and that was our visit over the Dardanelles to Gallipoli. We were there just a few days before Anzac Day, so Lone Pine and Anzac Cove were being set up with hundreds of rows of seating for the ceremonies. But obviously people just come and go on the day, as there were very few other visitors when we were there. We did bump into a couple of lovely guys from the Australian Federal Police who were along to make sure everything was going to run smoothly that week, and who offered advice on what to see – “The Nek? Why would you want to go there? If I was you, mate, if you want to see a bunker, your best bet is to go along the road towards the New Zealand Memorial and just before it on the right, …. “ and so on. Our local guide was a bit taken aback.
And the cemeteries were unbelievably moving. Just row on row of stone plaques, looking out to sea, or sitting up on ridges, it was the only indication in such a peaceful place that there had ever been a war. I wasn’t sure what it would be like on Anzac Day, with the roads clogged and busloads of people trying to get in and out, and decided I’d probably have hated it. If you’re going to go, I say go when it’s quiet.
[Note - Gallipoli is also home to my prize of “Best Interactive Information Centre” for Turkey, teeny little flashing lights and everything.]
Then back to Istanbul, back to Ataturk’s airport, and back to London. For less than a day and then I was off again, to learn about turkey the bird, and how to make those pastries shaped like half the Turkish flag (and lots more).
xxc
__________________________
"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move." Robert Louis Stevenson
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment