Turkish Delights

Merhaba everybody,

Our story begins with a sad tale.. a tale of a backpack lost in the wilderness.  A backpack that ended up sitting for 17 days in Turkish Airlines storage hall 2 at Ataturk airport, a place where baby strollers go to die.  A backpack that somehow was tagged with the name "Samir Brescic" which will now be my new alias (replacing "Ron Mexico").  A backpack that had all my clothes, shoes, and (most importantly) underwear in it.  In Istanbul, a city which averages 83 degrees and 70% humidity in August.

At the Blue Mosque

I'm not going to pretend that I don't stress out a bit when I set out on a trip, but I would not suggest attempting the following tasks in the two-week period prior to leaving on vacation:  Moving in with your girlfriend (our story's special guest star Dawn), negotiating a move-out agreement with your previous landlord, going on two job interviews, finishing a work contract, and dealing with certain maniacal distant relatives which is a soap opera unto itself.  Let's just say that between all that plus the lost bag plus the crushing jetlag due to 10 hours time difference and 20 hours traveling... I may not have been the best traveling companion for our special guest star during the first couple of days in Turkey.  Thanks to Turkish Airlines' crushing incompetence they could not tell us where the bag was or when it might be found.  "Call back tomorrow.  Call back in 5 business days.  Please fill out the online form.  You need to talk to the baggage department but they don't have a phone number, only email."  I had to buy clothes bit by bit since I didn't know if I'd be getting my bag today or never.  By the way, I found out the hard way that Turkish clothing runs about two sizes too small.  Had I known that from the beginning I would not have started my shopping with underwear, even though the need was dire.  It was a tough lesson to learn.

Istanbul can be a bit of a sensory overload, with 14 million inhabitants plus who knows how many tourists.  It's overwhelming from a historical perspective as well, with buildings and structures dating from Roman through Byzantine and Ottoman periods.  During our first couple of days we weaved through many historic sites such as shopping centers, outdoor clothing bazaars, backpack vendors, and of course the historic alleyways of the power adapter vendor neighborhood.  Thank you Turkish Airways for enabling such a culturally rewarding itinerary!  Oh sure, we visited the Blue Mosque, but that paled in comparison with the excitement of haggling over an undersized pair of knock-off shorts.  We enjoyed a cruise on the Bosphorus,the strait that separates Europe and Asia, for about 15 minutes until we both passed out.  We also enjoyed an extended power outage which rendered the fan in our room useless. For two days, I was a sweaty, anxious, delirious mess.  So even though Istanbul is a fantastic city it was with a bit of relief that we traveled to Selcuk, in search of a clean slate and a true beginning to the vacation.

We found that in the 2000-year-old Greco-Roman ruins of Ephesus.  Maybe it's because ancient Greece and Rome were my favorite subjects in college but walking through what was once the third largest Roman city in Asia Minor felt overwhelming.  These remains are about as close as I'll ever get to being able to visualize how an actual city of that time looked.  We walked around with goosebumps down the original marble-paved roads, through ancient temples, amphitheaters and even a brothel.  From the temple of Hadrian to the ancient terraced houses that are being painstakingly restored by a squadron of archaeologists, it was like stepping back into history... if you could somehow erase the legions of tourists from your perception.  Of course, every once in a while I'd hear "Ooh look a kitty!" and catch Dawn taking a picture of some random cat lying across a slab of marble or ancient Greek carving.  We have about 20 cat pictures in that roll that I had to edit out of my uploads.  Did the ancient Romans have to deal with ADD?  Anyhow, another plus is that Ephesus lent its name to the #1 brand of Turkish beer, Efes, a pleasant reminder of these wondrous ruins every time we cracked open a bottle.

The Library of Celsus at Ephesus

Selcuk also houses a couple of other notable historical ruins namely the Ayasaluk Fortress that was in use up through the mid 14th century and the Basilica of St. John where it's said that his remains are buried.  Supposedly St. John and the virgin Mary retired to this area after that whole crucifixion business went down.  The thing we might remember most about our time in Selcuk however is the conversation we had with the owner of a souvenir shop named Osman.  As is usually the case in Turkey it's difficult to walk down a street without someone trying to wave you into their shop and when you are traveling with a certain Miss Dawn who has been known to enjoy the purchasing of goods it is easy to become ensnared.  The aforementioned Miss Dawn became interested in Ottoman shoes so that's how we ended up partaking in a conversation, or more like a lecture, with our new friend Osman the Kurdish Turk who looked like a klingon.  Suffice it to say that Osman has led a very interesting life... from growing up as an impoverished dirt farmer in eastern Turkey ("We had to burn dried animal shit to stay warm.  If you did not bring animal shit to school they would not let you in.") to his unsuccessful immigration to Italy ("I jumped out of the boat and had to swim 4 kilometers to shore but the police caught me anyway and kicked me out of the country") to his opening of the shop in Selcuk using the money he made selling his dead grandmother's rugs, it has been quite an adventure.  Apparently he also has a cousin that owns a restaurant named Dunya in San Francisco that he insisted we go to, but one thing you find out when you're in Turkey is that everybody has a lot of cousins and they are everywhere and can get you anything.  "Oh, I have a cousin who's a pharmacist right around the corner.  My cousin has a pant store down the street if you need some pants.  Oh yeah, I have a cousin that has a bus that can get you to the coast.  You're Italian?  I have a cousin that lives in Italy!"  Anyhow, 45 minutes later we didn't even end up with a pair of Ottoman shoes.

Side note:  Everyone thinks I'm Turkish.  They get about 5 sentences in before they realize I'm giving them the old deer in the headlights look and then the guessing game begins.  Spanish?  Greek?  Italian?  My ethnically ambiguous features strike again!

Dawn's new calling

From Selcuk we took a day trip to Pamukkale which is a series of travertines and hot springs that date back to ancient Roman times.  It's said that Cleopatra used to bathe in the mineral waters there, which are said to be excellent for your skin.  To be honest, I wish the waters contained bleach considering the number of people that were sharing what is essentially a giant outdoor bath/bacteria broth.  We did discover, however, that Dawn may have a second career  in the spa industry spreading mud over old ladies.  Makes sense.  Sometimes it's hard to reach all the nooks and crannies so you should ask some random person to go ahead and lather you up.  I have to admit, though, that I've never seen anything quite like those blindingly bright white travertines that have formed over millennia through the accumulation of calcium carbonate.

Our next stop was in Fethiye, a coastal boating town that was the jump-off point for our 4-day Gulet cruise along the Turquoise coast.  They used to be sailboats but now work strictly under engine power.  The crew consisted of three guys:  Yusuf, Volken (aka Volcano) and Captain Salami.  Yes, that's his real name.  The pictures will speak more to this experience than any words would do, so the only thing I can say is that at the end of the four days I was ready to jump back on the boat and do it all over again.  It's not called the Turquoise coast for nothing.  The water is absolutely gorgeous and we spent as much time swimming as possible.  The food cooked on board was fantastic and everyone on the boat (mostly Americans and Australians) was friendly and relaxed, although Dawn sprung the classic "Are Australians always this loud?" question on me to which I replied "Yes.  Yes they are."  We would cruise along the waters enjoying bbq and beers then stop for a couple of hours to hike up  the Byzantine ruins of St. Nicholas island.  We waded over the sunken city of Kekova, climbed to the top of the old castle at Simena, then at night were ferried over to a pirate bar that could only be reached by boat and smelled like sewage.  Hey, nothing is 100% awesome all the time.  In that vein, at the end of our cruise we had a couple of days in Olympos, renowned for its bungalows and treehouses among the forest near a rocky beach.  While this village has been set up to give off the hippyish backpacker vibe with its loungy reclined outdoor booths and baggy linen pant-wearing clientele, I still can't get my head around how they can charge $80/night for a "bungalow" which is more like a sweatbox straight out of Cool Hand Luke.  We found some good ice cream though that got served to us in a waffle that had the consistency (and flavor) of styrofoam.

Pottery Kebab

Speaking of which, one of the things we discovered during one of our (many) samplings of Turkish ice cream is that it's made with something called mastic gum which makes it a bit more chewy and strange to eat.  You can't really lick it... it's like licking teflon.  Nothing comes off.  You have to bite the ice cream.  I'm not complaining or anything, it's just weird.  Overall, the food in Turkey was fantastic.  There wasn't any one meal that blew me away, but the quality and freshness at almost every place we ate was superb.  Breakfast featuring dolmas, figs, fresh fruit and yogurt.  Kebabs, more yogurt, pide, eggplant, stuffed peppers and this spicy tomato sauce that's served with bread.  That was one thing that really surprised us, the quality of the bread.  It was fresh-baked and fantastic everywhere we went. There are fresh-squeezed juice stands everywhere you go, usually specializing in orange and pomegranate.  Surprisingly, it was tough to find good coffee.  If you like that thick and spicy Turkish coffee you're ok, but if you want regular coffee most of the time you end up stuck with Nescafe.  And, inexplicably, they charge the same for Nescafe as they do for regular coffee, like Nescafe is a really big deal.  Also, Turks really like plastic bags.  No matter what you buy, they will give you a plastic bag even if you already have one.  Sometimes they give you two.  They have custom sized plastic bags for everything from chewing gum to baby shoes to large backpacks.  Somehow, at the end of the day you end up with more plastic bags than items that you bought.  And I haven't mentioned the Evil Eyes yet.  Every house, car, and miscellaneous vehicle in Turkey has an Evil Eye in it.  You can see them sold everywhere... a flat blue ceramic disc with an eye-shaped pattern in the center.  The idea is that these talismans will protect you from other people's malicious thoughts so you had better put them everywhere you can.  Especially in gift shops for sappy tourists (like me).  Random Dawn quote:  "I love Turkish men's haircuts.  Rat tails make me happy."  There you go, some random shit about Turkey.

Anyhow, we had to take an overnight bus ride from Antalya to get to our destination of Goreme in Cappadocia at the center of Turkey and that's where things really started to head south for our special guest Dawn.  I may have declared at some point in the past that I will never take an overnight bus again because I can't sleep and even the best ones can only aspire to the rank of "shitty", but we had no choice since there is only one flight per week from Antalya to Cappadocia.  Dawn was already feeling crappy and the brutal discomfort and erratic driving of the overnight bus ride just blew it up.  On the plus side my legs were eaten alive by fleas.  Note to self:  Don't wear shorts on an overnight Turkish bus.  The first stop we made once we arrived in Goreme was to the pharmacy where you can get heavy-duty drugs and antibiotics for less than $5, so we pumped Dawn full of pills in order to catch our first tour of Cappadocia.  She's definitely a trooper.

Selime Cathedral

It's really hard to describe the weirdness that encompasses the Cappadocian landscape.  From above it looks like a series of giant brown meringues.  Sometimes you can see formations called "fairy chimneys" that are formed by volcanic rocks of different densities, with basalt on top and tufa underneath.  Cappadocia served as a sanctuary for Christians fleeing persecution in the 3rd and 4th centuries so there are many networks of cave shelters, cave monasteries and even underground cities.  It's truly something that has to be seen to be believed.  Many of these monasteries contained churches with 1500 year old frescoes still visible on the cave walls.  The crazy thing about these setups is the creativity that was exhibited in creating these cave habitats.  Basically, you had to carve out anything you used, but these guys were like the master builders in the Lego movie.  Dining table?  Bam!  Carved out of the rock on the floor, with bench seating.  Oven?  Dug out of the floor.  Recessed lighting?  Check.  Bunks for sleeping?  Done.  I'll bet if they'd had thermal waters we would've seen a jacuzzi in these caves.

The highlight for us was a trip to the Selime Cathedral, a remarkable series of caverns that served as the inspiration for the desert dwellings of the sand people in the first Star Wars movie.  The story is that George Lucas petitioned the Turkish government for permission to film at the monastery.  They wouldn't give him permission, however, so he took a bunch of pictures and reproduced the set in Tunisia.  As I mentioned above, it is a remarkable experience to be wandering through this warren of cave dwellings and imagining what it would be like to live there.  The cathedral reaches to the top of a hill with fantastic views through the cave "windows" onto a valley of fairy chimneys.  Another amazing place was the underground city that we visited, with 8 stories reaching 70 meters below ground level.  Dawn was not so crazy about this one since she is slightly claustrophobic, so it was a bit touch-and-go when we were stuck behind some chubby tourists on a long passageway that was only about 4 feet high.

And no trip to Turkey would be complete without a visit to a hamam, or Turkish bath.  In a traditional hamam like the one in Goreme, men and women are shuffled off into separate areas to be attended by members of the same sex.  I found myself in a sauna wearing only a bath towel and a facial mud mask and accompanied by a couple of guys who did not speak a word of English.  They, of course, did not have the mud mask.  After 15 uncomfortable minutes sweating up a storm and understanding only the word "tourist" as part of the Turkish conversation, the door to the sauna opened and this hairy, beefy specimen who looked like a fatter version of the serial killer from the movie "Manhunter" stepped in wearing only a pair of board shorts, pointed at me and beckoned me to go outside.  Flashbacks of Midnight Express ensued.  He led me into this marbled hall and pointed me to a bathtub where he told me to sit, after which he proceeded to pour buckets of cold then hot water on me.  Then after that he pointed me over to a marble slab and told me to lay down.  The slab was heated, which was nice, but then this guy started to knead me a ball of dough.  After about 10 minutes of that he led me to the tub again for another rinse, then back to the slab.  At this point it got a little weird because he started mixing together this concoction in a mesh bag an then proceeded to squeeze it out on top of me into some sort of soapy solution.  After I was completely covered in soap and bubbles he started massaging me again, which to be honest was not my favorite experience on the trip.  Not that there's anything wrong with a foamy, soapy massage from a beefy dude.

We capped off our time in Cappadocia with the requisite hot-air balloon ride at dawn.  Before you go thinking that this is some sort of extreme sport whimsy, just be aware that there are at least 20 ballooning companies in Goreme and that some of them have been operating for over 25 years.  This is a massive local industry, and one of the surprising early morning sights on the skyline is the sheer number of balloons that are floating in mid-air.  We were unfortunate in the fact that it was a windier than usual morning so our balloon ride turned out to be shorter than normal.  Even so, it was a fantastic experience.  To be honest, the views of the valleys themselves were great but the really amazing thing was being a few thousand feet up in the air along with about 50 or 60 other balloons.  The entire panorama was filled with balloons.  I will try not to mention the fact that I was a bit distracted by the fact that I am somewhat afraid of heights and was trying really hard not to poop myself.  Dawn was as supportive as could be expected, of course.  She tried to look the other way when she laughed at me.

After Cappadocia it was back to Istanbul for a couple of days of final sightseeing and, of course shopping (yay!).  The shopping (yay!) part of our trip is a new and apparently addition to our storied chronicles that was added by our special guest star Dawn.  Shocking, I know.  The only thing I wanted to do in our final two days is to get a Turkish shave from a Turkish barber who would give me a Turkish mustache.  So when we were finally done with shopping (yay!) we found a barber in the old town section of Istanbul and put him to work.  Out came the straight razor and he started with a clean shave on my skull.  Then the clippers came out and he shaped me a modern yet classic Turkish mustache, which of course I have not seen anyone else sporting in Turkey.  Then the straight razor went to work on my face and I thought I was done.  Oh no, I was not done.  Next, he lit this stick on fire and proceeded to hold the flame up to my ears which was apparently done to burn off any ear hairs I might have.  Next came the long shears which were stuck uncomfortably up my nose.  Then he pushed my face into the sink and poured cold water over my head which was followed by a vigorous massage, mostly of my face.  And there was my hot Turkish shave, one of the many highlights of the trip.

So we end our journey there, or in storage area 2 where I finally found my bag.  All I can tell you is... go to Turkey.  It's fantastic and has something for everybody.  It has kebabs.  It has Efes beer.  We should have had 4 weeks for the itinerary we put together but I'm glad we did it all.  Dawn didn't kill me, which is a plus in my book, although she did threaten on separate occasions to a) scoop my eyeballs out,  b) shove horse poop in my face, and c) put a tampon up my butt.  Between the two of us, Dawn and I took over 1500 pictures which I could only condense to about 500 or so (sorry) for your viewing pleasure by clicking on the album link below.  Without further ado:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/46MU5zMC5AeAkYwr6

Take 'er easy,
Dave