Month: June 2015

Three days of R&R in Ayvalik, a busy town on the North Aegean coast. Lazing, browsing the shops, one of us that is, and walking the narrow streets with their old Greek stone houses. Ramadan has started with a cannon at night announcing the end of the day’s fast though the cafes and restaurants just appear as busy as they were earlier in the week.

I’ll post a couple of photos though the camera has been in the bag for a couple of days while I have been giving the sketchbook a run.

 

I don’t want to sound like I work for the Turkish Council for Promoting Positive Thoughts and Good International Relations between Tourists and Locals,  hereafter to be spoken as the TCFPTAGIRBTAL for brevity, but I have to speak again about how welcoming the people in this country are. The young jeweller summed it up well when we spoke for half an hour outside his shop.

“Turkey is like everywhere,” he said. “We just want a good life for ourselves and our families. There are some bad people here like you probably have in your country, but most people are good. We like life, we like people, we sit and talk and drink tea. I drink 20 cups a day.”

Turkey is a modern country, an ancient land of ruins and a varied history, is unpredictable, is a fertile and green country of wonderful landscape. You should visit. Spoken by a new member of the TCFPTAGIRBTAL. I wrote that just so I could use that acronym again.

Yesterday we drove west of Selcuk through the fertile valley of corn fields, olives and fruit trees to Tire because Tuesday was the day the town, population 90 000, has their market day. We arrived to find the streets of the old part of town abuzz with market stalls and shoppers. When I say streets, I mean all of them.

We walked for hours and every turn of the road was another lane of women sitting behind a stall of beans, peppers, cherries, vine leaves and zucchini, men selling large bright tomatoes, melons, beetroot and squash, stalls of clothes, shoes, coats, materials, rugs, kilims, cushions.

Food stalls, seed stalls, spice stalls, stalls selling pots, knives, farm requirements, ice cream stalls, lolly stalls. It went on and on, street after covered street. This farming town market day was the best we had ever seen.

The markets of Istanbul, the Grand Bazaar and Spice Bazaar were for tourists and we couldn’t walk ten metres without the hassle of being hassled. Here we were respectfully ignored. I’m sure we were the only tourists in town and even if we had worn Star Wars suits we couldn’t have stuck out more. The logistics of setting something like this up every week must have required the services of a retired major in the Turkish Air Force, who we met in the Turkish equivalent of the TAB.

Many cafes here appear to be men only affairs and we are at times unsure about the protocol of us entering these places. Seeing men drinking tea, I ventured forth. But, discovering no counter for serving, and with the Shell Service Station smoko tea drinkers episode still fresh in my memory, I turned to walk out.

“You are welcome. Stay. Sit and drink tea,” said a voice from a table of three men.

Like me, he had a two day stubble on his chin and he smiled readily as he asked the usual question.

“Where are you from?”

By now we had the script down pat and we spoke of our trip, where from, where to, how long, how good. It works well to start a chat.

We sat, me on a chair and Sharon on a woven, rug-covered bench near the window and we discovered the betting slips on the table. Men stood facing the wall where pages of newspapers were pinned detailing the race schedules around the country. We could have been at the RSL.

The stocky stubbled man, who appeared to be the only Australian speaker in the TAB, walked to our table.

“What work did you do?” and said his wife also was a teacher but now retired like us.

“I am retired too. I was an officer in the Turkish Air Force.”

I smiled and told him my name.

“I’m a major, you’re a Sargent!”

We all laughed, even his non-Australian speaking companions, and we saluted each other as he returned to his table.

Having drunk our Turkish coffee, we all shook hands. He gripped mine for an eternity while we spoke till it became slippery with his and my perspiration and they slid apart.

We strolled some more, meeting a tailor in his doorway and we talked, he in Turkish and me in my babble about something to which he pointed at in the sky, Australia in that direction perhaps.

Was he saying go home with a smile?

I said the only Turkish words I knew in a string which to him probably sounded like, “Beer thank you two wine nice hello tea please,” all said with lots of nods, smiles, upturned hands, and shakes of the head. The photo pleased him. We shook hands, patted each other on the back and I wandered on.

I met a man and his young son selling gorgeous tomatoes. After talking about his produce,  I showed them the photo I took. The boy jumped in excitement and his sheer delight told me he didn’t see his image often, if at all. Sharon had walked off and turned to see me shaking their hands.

“Every time I lose you I turn and see you shaking someone else’s hand!”

It’s like that here. You only have to say hello and a hand is extended and a “conversation” begins. I would like to think that we are as welcoming to strangers in our land as these wonderful people are to us.

A lone eucalypt tree stood in a busy square and approaching it I picked up a leaf to crush and smell and remember home. A scarfed woman selling beans saw me and smiled so I walked to her patting the tree trunk as I passed. I think she told me the name of the tree so I told her what we call it plus other things she couldn’t understand and she did the same for me.

It was nearing lunch, so spying some ripe peaches I picked out three whoppers and drew some money to pay.

“One kilo?” the lady said but I told her I just wanted these which were approaching half a kilo.

“OK, no money,” then and pushed the fruit at us.

I dropped some coins into her set of scales and she smiled shaking her head as she thanked us.

We walked through a park back to the car and came across the local Tire Memorial to soldiers who were killed in wars and I stood for some time in front of a panel of names from Canakkale, which is near Gallipoli.

Dates of their death matched some of the dates for men from Howard killed at Gallipoli. It was a sobering few moments of reflection.

We drove back to Selcuk talking about the incredible market and how comfortable and safe we feel here amongst these people considering the history of 1915.

This country gets better every day.

TCFPTAGIRBTAL

We returned to find our room made up again.

 

“Gidday mate. Ow’s it going,” greeted Suliman, the hotel keeper, with a very good impression of a Sydney Bridge painter. He informed us many Australian visitors frequent his establishment and we chatted for some time about his town, Selcuk (say sell chook), farming, hotel life and the price of lamb.

“Bastards charge too much!” he said with more venom than I had heard from any Turk.

From the rooftop terrace he pointed out the sites in the immediate vicinity, the 700 year old mosque next door, the 1500 year old church across the top of the adjoining hotel, the domes across the street of the 13th century Turkish bath where he and his boyhood friends used to play, and the sandy beach in the distance past the vineyards and olive and pomegranate groves.

“See that house on the hill?” he said pointing to a dot below two communication towers on a mountain in the distance.

“Mythology has it that that is the home of Mary, Jesus’s mother.”

The drive up the winding mountain road behind a rusting and smoking van allowed us to view over the fertile and plentiful countryside. The groves and vines we glimpsed from the terrace stretched to neighbouring mountains.

Mary’s house was seen in a vision by a bedridden German nun who had never left her native country but had described this setting in detail which was found by an enterprising French priest and pilgrims now visit the reconstructed building in droves. Many leave messages and prayers on a wall but visitors forget to bring note paper as most are written on tissue or toilet paper.

Our Australian ex-pat dinner companion from Antalya suggested a guide is essential for visiting Ephesus, the Roman city destroyed by an earthquake in the 3rd century AD. So we stood at the entrance for a moment, inconspicuous as tourists with a large camera slung around the neck and the Lonely Planet guide book in hand. . Thus disguised, we were ready to haggle a good price as experienced travellers. They came like pins drawn to a magnet and we/I negotiated a price which was agreed all too readily by Dervis. You know the feeling. You thought you’ve struck a good deal and, quick as a flash, his firm hand comes out to grab your limp one and immediately the feeling you’ve been had again strikes.

He was good though, obviously a history buff, and knew all the emperors, generals, sultans and their sultanas. Dervis was also proud of his Assyrian Christian heritage.

“I am from the east of Turkey near the Iranian border. I am Assyrian. Not from Syria,” he added as if confusing his heritage might alter the terms of our contract.

“That’s OK, Dervis. We have the same problems with kangaroos in Austria,” I said.

He gave us the cook’s tour of the site at a pace we were not used to. At times I observed him standing under his umbrella watching us read as if he were checking his meter to see if his deal was as good as he had originally agreed. When guide books say two hours recommended, we usually double that to four. We read, we sit, we photograph.

Dervis spoke to a number of people on the way through the site. Some were fellow guides and police. He spoke to another man in a bright orange shirt who seemed to be having technical issues with his audio guide. He showed one group of Japanese tourists a photo on his phone of a Japanese movie star he had guided, and they all babbled their excitement and took photos of him. He refused their offer to accompany them and still found time to tell us what we paid him for.

He pointed out a carving in the stones outside the ancient brothels. The inscription supposedly read.

“Place your foot here. If it is smaller, don’t bother entering!” The paths seemed a little further worn in this section of the road.

Austrian, not Australian, archaeologists interrupted their dig to watch with us two large dogs sniff each others bottoms then roll with each other in playful ecstasy on the marble street.

Ephesus is a wonderful ancient site. We meandered down a long marble-paved curving street lined with columns, arches, theatres, baths, latrines, fountains, terraced houses, the grand library and piles of seemingly meaningless carved rubble.

Reaching the bottom of the hill, Dervis wound up his presentation, a little quickly I thought, we shook hands and departed. I shouldn’t have been surprised when I caught him moments later leading a group which included the bright orange shirt who had technical issues with his audio guide.

It was two kilometres up the hill again so we retraced our steps up the paved street reading everything that Dervis had told us and leisurely exploring the site again.

The sun was lower, the crowds had thinned and the cats came out of their holes.

We parked the car outside Suliman’s hotel following our Ephesus visit and his head appeared over the terrace wall to greet us in the street.

“Gidday mates! Ow was the bloody pile of rocks?”

To join in his Australian spirit, we sat on the terrace with a beer and wine and saw the sunset again.