Transcript of Tape-recorded Diary
PART 7 of 7
Ankara is a huge city - possibly four million people - secular, bustling, modern. The internet has several websites that detail the population of Turkey by regions, and list the major population centres. The most recent figures, for cities of more than a million population, are:
Istanbul 9.2m Konya 1.9m
Ankara 3.7m Adana 1.7m
Izmir 3.1m Bursa 1.2m
That evening, a free evening, free in the sense that Simon had not arranged for us to be together, some of us walked the streets near the hotel - and with Faye and David we enjoyed the unaccustomed luxury of a McDonald’s snack. We’d previously asked for a beer at a pavement restaurant and been told that beer is not available in that particular street but the next street along is the place to go. We went there, had our beer, and were surrounded by hundreds of Turkish men enjoying their beers together in a dozen separate outdoor restaurants, each of which had up a large television screen for the evening’s soccer match. The custom of Turkish men meeting together for drinks, snacks, cards, dominoes - and now TV watching - to the total exclusion of female company that we’d seen in each of the centres we visited was here being replicated on a massive scale. Despite the fact that this is their way we, frankly, found it quite distasteful.
Between Urgup and Ankara we visited our second Dervish lodge, at a place called Hacibectas. We’d previously seen one of these lodges two days earlier on the Wednesday. The Whirling Dervishes are a sect of Islam that arose around the year 800, about two hundred years after the prophet Mohammed had founded the religion. They were not more fundamental and conservative, but nonetheless felt that Islam needed to be reformed, and they took that reform in the direction of mysticism. The Whirling Dervish dance, with the simple black and white costuming and with one hand cupped upward towards heaven and one hand cupped downward to the earth, symbolised the transmission of God’s spirit.
These lodges were set up by the leaders of the sect and were in fact monasteries with communal living, extensive kitchen facilities, and the whole premises giving the status of monks. And even today visitors, although the premises have been de-sanctified and converted into museums, are expected to remove their shoes and wear respectful clothing.
Konya is a very large city - the fifth largest in Turkey [actually fourth] - and we passed through it on our way from Egirdir to the Cappadocia region. In addition to the location of our visit to the first Whirling Dervish lodge and its attached museum, it was also our lunch stop - although not for me. I was full up with food and decided to spend the hour walking the nearby streets. I was befriended by Mehmet and Mustafa. Depending where else in the world you’d say “accosted”, but in Turkey it’s “befriended”. Mehmet spoke good English and wanted to practise on me - his friend Mustafa spoke no English at all - and we walked together along the streets for several hundred metres before I had to retrace my steps, and they went their way. During my hour I walked through a huge cemetery. We’ve seen cemeteries in small villages and in many places, and have marvelled at the way in which they’re often tucked along the roadside or stuck on a stony hillside. Heaven help those who have to dig the graves. But in Konya the land was quite flat and the scene was tranquil although cluttered. The gravestones are typically much smaller than gravestones in Australia and almost always of white stone, probably marble. And the headstones are almost always of the same stone, although some are dark stone with no inscriptions. The white headstones are tall and narrow, about two feet wide at the most and standing about four feet tall often with ........... [missing]
Tape 4, side 1
The other notable stop on our way from Egirdir to Urgup was the caravanserai at Sultanhani. I’d always known a caravanserai as a camel train but here the real meaning became apparent.
It’s an enormous fortified structure to protect travellers, and to be a trading post in its own right, with space for all the animals and a sizeable population, although none of the dwellings is extant. These caravanserai were set up hundreds of years ago, at intervals of some forty miles, by the reigning powers in acknowledgement that this part of central Anatolia was a focal point for the trade with the East.
Our trip through Turkey has been an ideal mixture of history and culture and scenery. We’ve covered nearly 4000 kilometres. A bit arduous sometimes in the bus, but certainly not life-threatening, and although Turkey has more than 1500 so-called historical sites, during our fortnight we’ve seen - so they tell us - the majority of the most important ones. I’ve already talked of Troy and Pergamum and Ephesus and Hierapolis. Two other magical places were Alinda and Aphrodisias.
We saw Alinda on Friday the 26th, on our day between Selcuk and Dalyan. Alinda was set up by Queen Ada who was exiled from her own nation but later did a deal with Alexander the Great in return for which she gained immunity from his armies and treated him as an adopted son. Ada was a queen of the Carians, a nation of lower Anatolia, identifiable from before 800 B.C. They may have had their origins in Crete, or from Aegean pirates - anyway they were seafarers. They survived incursions from the Athenians and the Spartans; and retained a degree of independence under later Persian rule. Then came Alexander, taking control with Queen Ada’s help. There was a power vacuum after Alexander - until the Romans. Caria prospered under Augustus Caesar, and didn’t decline until about the end of the Roman empire, fragmenting into a collection of coastal towns. The most notable Carian was King Mausolus (King from 377 to 353 B.C.), who ruled from Halicarnassus, and whose tomb is included as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and from whose name we have the word mausoleum. Sited high on a hill, and with no tourists other than ourselves,
the ruins, dating from the 340s B.C. with later Roman additions, had a magical feel, especially the modestly-sized amphitheatre. The seating area, virtually intact, with three or four impertinent olive trees growing where they shouldn’t be. A place to sit for a few hours - dreaming of princes and potentates, and marvelling at the vanity of it all.
The Alinda ruins sit above the small village of Karpuzlu, meaning watermelon, a delicious name that belies the conservatism of the local people; and on our descent from Alinda and walk through the town Simon asked the ladies to cover their shoulders and had previously asked them not to wear shorts on the day.
Aphrodisias, which we visited on Monday the 29th, was stunning in a different way - stunning because of its vastness and because of the way in which it’s been excavated. The driving force behind its excavation was an American archaeologist of Turkish extraction, and New York University. True to say that American money has made it all possible; and the work continues. Unlike other places the tourist entrance is a delightful area of lawns and gardens with a reconstructed Roman gateway. A delightful and welcoming introduction to what lies ahead, and in considerable contrast to the dusty arrival at Ephesus, say. Some of the significant civic buildings of the city have been excavated but much remains yet to be done.
The most exciting building is the stadium - not to be confused with a hippodrome, the place for chariot races, or with a theatre for dramatic performances. The stadium was for the games, the athletic games. It’s a great oval structure, all the seats are still there, and the sporting field some 400 metres long. Hamish did the 400 metres dash and against no opposition whatever was the clear winner. Sadly, there was no laurel wreath to present.
Back in the parkland sitting at Aphrodisias there’s a new museum building housing a collection of the statuary and other artefacts unearthed at the site. The marble used by the Romans has a wonderful lustre, and because it’s a soft stone it’s pretty lucky to find a piece that hasn’t got bibs and bobs missing. Nevertheless, the collection at Aphrodisias leaves you in no doubt about the might and the majesty of the Roman Empire.
It was the day after Aphrodisias that we’d visited Hierapolis, and cultural indigestion was a prospect, but a prospect avoided by the fact that Hierapolis is sited right at the amazing natural feature of Pamukkale. Pamukkale is another world heritage-listed site and it’s an astonishing natural formation of white solidified salt deposits down a long hillside - a waterfall effect resulting from millions of years of flow from mineral springs high up on the hill. And it’s because of these mineral springs and their therapeutic effect that people have been coming to this site for thousands of years, and the reason why Hierapolis itself was established further up the hill.
Because of the adverse impact of tourists, the site has now been managed, with the water flow being diverted through a man-made channel; and the various pools are now off limits - but this is all to the good. It’s possible to bathe in the mineral pool but this is now a tourist complex and there’s an admission charge. Three of the group took the plunge.
After Pamukkale we were on to Egirdir, on the shore of Lake Egirdir; and the only point of importance to note is that Anne had a swim in the lake, reporting that the water wasn’t as cold as the water had been at a couple of the hotels. The bottom, however, fell away very quickly from the shore and it was pebbly, and she found it very treacherous getting out.
Another break from the culture-fest had been our time on the gulet. The gulet is a type of local boat - sailing boat, two masts, but motorised and I would expect the sails are rarely used. A tourist boat with accommodation for our group of seventeen - Salih the driver and Sinan the silent guide didn’t accompany us - plus the family of four erstwhile fisherfolk who own and crew the boat. And do the cooking. The food during our two water-borne days was probably the best we’ve had in Turkey.
We picked up the boat on Saturday the 27th. We’d spent the Friday night at Dalyan on the coast, and first thing on the Saturday morning enjoyed the bonding experience of a mud bath together. We took a local riverboat up river a few kilometres from Dalyan to a little tourist complex that has a mud pool. We immersed ourselves, caked ourselves with mud, stood around in the sun till the mud dried looking very much like creatures from the black lagoon. Photo opportunity.
Powerful showers to get the mud off. Back on the riverboat and down the river to the open sea, around the sandbars and through the narrow river mouth, to the gulet waiting for us to board. On the journey downstream we passed under rock tombs, high up on the cliff-face, with extraordinary carved portals. Fourth century B.C. And we disembarked and strolled through the ruins of the ancient Carian city of Caunus. The amphitheatre was spectacular. Caunus prospered and survived despite its reputation as an unhealthy place - the nearby marshes harboured malaria.
We spent two nights on the gulet, the days spent cruising around the southern coast of Turkey
- not travelling far, not travelling fast - reading, sunning, swimming. There was room on deck for all of us to sleep above if we wished. Many did. Card games and joke telling at night, and my portable CD player got its first and only airing in Turkey, with considerable enjoyment from the “Best Hits of the 60s” and Blossom Dearie.
Dalyan had been a busy tourist port, and equally so Fethiye where we disembarked on the Monday morning, the 29th. A large and sophisticated town with good shopping, a European air, a big fish and grocery market; and, on the drive out of town, miles and miles of glasshouses. A very fertile and productive area.
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And here we are back in Istanbul. I recorded yesterday afternoon sitting in the garden restaurant on the top of our hotel - the Orient Express Hotel - pretentiously, according to its brochure, offering all the luxury of the famous train, even though it’s only three star. But it’s a good place, and our only complaint is with the food - not really up to scratch - but the location is great. We had our meal last night in the hotel roof garden overlooking the Bosporus, undoubtedly one of the great city views on the planet. Every so often Jim would call “ten seconds” and we’d all look out to sea - to remind ourselves for a moment of our good fortune.
Our tour group hotel had been the Orsep, a hundred metres or so around the corner, and although we’d spent the Saturday night there after the tour ended, we had to move to the Orient Express for our final two nights. The Orsep, I think, is totally committed to tour groups - one moves out and another moves in, and Simon having presided over our farewell dinner on the Saturday night was back at six o’clock on the Sunday evening doing his introductory meeting with his next bunch of pilgrims.
We’ve been fortunate, I think, to be located in one of the older parts of Istanbul and within walking distance of so many of the great cultural attractions. And right by Istanbul’s sole tramline, which in turn runs down to connect with the train to the airport - so a location easy to recommend to any other visitors to Istanbul.
Our arrival in the city was just over a fortnight ago, but it seems a world away. Our little hiccup at the airport was soon overcome. We’d been instructed, when leaving the departure gate, to look for someone holding a sign with the name Pasha Tours, but there was no such person. David and I patrolled up and down the dozens of people holding placards with names of individuals and organisations, and then at Anne’s suggestion we simply asked another tour operator, assuming that they’d be known to each other. The one we spoke to was Tempo Tours and his response: “that’s me”. When we later looked at our travel agent’s literature we saw the name Tempo, and when we looked at the guide and the driver who took us to the Orsep Hotel, we noticed that notwithstanding the Tempo placard their shirts carried the Pasha Tours monogram.
The first day of the tour was spent in Istanbul itself, and we commenced, after a short walk up the hill, with the local guide Mustafa, the very expert local guide who took us first to the area that was the site of the old Roman Hippodrome - an area still bearing the same name. Parkland, a meeting place, and two obelisks - one of them brought from Egypt, a companion piece to the ones on the Thames Embankment and in the Place de la Concorde.
From the Hippodrome to the Blue Mosque, an extraordinary structure built by the sultan as his own personal mosque, not personal in the sense that it was for him alone, but in the sense that this is where he used to pray. Not blue on the outside but blue tiling inside, massive interior space, and a fitting use for the word awesome. Multiple minarets, the sign of the sultan’s mosque.
From there just across the way to the Topkapi Palace, the Palace occupied by most of the Ottoman sultans. The beauty and the opulence and the grandeur is indescribable ..... so I shan’t try.
The group dispersed at this point and - get this - Anne and Gary had lunch at the Palace; and then we walked to and through the Grand Bazaar, described in the literature as having 4000 separate shops and you’d better believe it, we certainly had 4000 invitations to buy.
Very laid-back shopkeepers, and very little badgering of potential customers. And from there, after seeking directions a number of times, we found our way to the Spice Market, coming full circle back to the hotel only a couple of hundred yards away.
Two weeks on, we had an early 7.00am start on Saturday from Ankara, arriving at Istanbul at 2.00pm. The terrain hilly to mountainous most of the way, very picturesque. Couple of short stops, at one of which Anne acted as spokes for the group and said some words of thanks to Salih our driver and presented him with the remains of our tipping kitty.
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Well, it’s Tuesday morning, quarter to six, our last day in Istanbul and the last day of our trip. We’re being picked up from our hotel at five to eleven, and later this morning we’ll be visiting Suleiman’s Mosque, the mosque built for Suleiman the Great and described in the guide books as the biggest and best mosque in Istanbul. Some boast.
It’s very quiet in the street this time of the morning, the first tram hasn’t come by. The cats, as always, are stealthy. A garbage truck appears in the distance, and the daily clean-up begins. Yesterday was a warm day again, say 26 degrees, but last night there was quite a stiff breeze and our waiter assured us that it would rain - certainly rain tomorrow, that’s today - but it hasn’t yet rained. The breeze is still fresh but it’s a delicious morning. I’m in shirt sleeves, although it will be long trousers today for the trip home. If the rain comes I guess the temperature will fall but hopefully we’ll leave all that behind us. We’ll also leave behind us such wonderful memories of the great city and the great country, spectacular scenery, the enthralling history, memories of the wonderful people and of the spectacular good weather, and of our friendly travelling companions, the last of whom - the eight of us from Melbourne - are dispersing this morning; while at the same time Simon Boas leaves with his latest group on the first day of their Anatolian journey.
As the first tram for the day passes by - a long tram, four joined sections - and as the electronically detached voices of the muezzins start up all over the city, I’ll try to capture the missing bits of our nearly seven weeks away.
On Sunday our first task was to transfer hotels. Check-out time at the Orsep was midday but check-in time at the Orient Express wasn’t until 2.00 p.m. But at the Orient Express they have a secure baggage room and we simply trundled our bags a hundred metres around the corner and locked them up; then hit the road. The first stop was the Byzantine Cistern, the underground tank used in early years as the water storage facility for the city, the water having being brought from some distance away.
These were cannibalised and brought from some other place when the Cistern was built - no one knows from where. And the other great mystery is why the faces have not been placed in an upright position - one is lying on its side and the other has its head downwards. A charming mystery to excite the archaeologists and to interest the tourists.
From the Cistern to the Aya Sofia, another sultan’s mosque, almost within spitting distance of the Blue Mosque, and of the Topkapi Palace, this one no longer functioning as a mosque but sitting there for all to come and admire.
It was built as a Christian church. There had been two previous churches on the site - each of them destroyed - and this, the third, was clearly built to impress. We’re talking here of the 500s, in the sixth century after Christ, and four or five hundred years, therefore, before the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe. A central feature of the Aya Sofia is a great dome and for its time the engineering was a marvel and would be a marvel even today. Much later the Aya Sofia became a mosque, and substantial additions were made including four minarets, and the provision internally for the sultan’s throne, for the muezzin’s lodge, and for the imam’s pulpit. The magnificent Christian mosaics were plastered over, fortunately plastered over and not stripped off the walls, and now many of them have been exposed and cleaned - and the work of restoration and maintenance continues incessantly. The Aya Sofia was decommissioned as a mosque by Ataturk and with its great interior space, is one of the must sees of Istanbul.
On the Saturday night, Simon led the group of sixteen on our last journey together up and around between the Aya Sofia and the Topkapi Palace, past a row of 1850s weatherboard Ottoman houses, to another street, an area Simon describes as his favourite part of Istanbul, and there to a restaurant for our farewell dinner.
Cheryl and David were leaving first thing the next morning for Tuscany. Brian back to London later in the day. Di, if her standby ticket comes good, off to Dubai to visit with her daughter who’s based there and flies with Emirates Airlines. Linda and Jason off to Germany. The rest of us left to contemplate our remaining time in Istanbul and how best to spend that time. On the one hand we’ve just about had enough of being tourists, on the other hand who can tell whether we’ll pass this way again, and if there’s something important to see then we should see it.
And thus it was that on the Sunday morning we walked the few kilometres to the Dolmabahce Palace.
This Palace in a different part of the city, not in the Golden Horn [It’s on the Asian side of Istanbul, not the European side], was built for and occupied by the Ottoman sultans in the 1800s and was occupied by the later six sultans, until the last of them was exiled in 1923. And it was occupied briefly by Ataturk who managed to fit out some living quarters and an office in a few of its hundreds of rooms; and that’s where he died. Why the sultan moved from the Topkapi to the Dolmabahce, I can’t imagine. It certainly wasn’t done because of feelings of modesty and the need to downsize or to reduce the opulence. Again, the great public reception rooms drip with chandeliers, and the separate living quarters, the harem - the place occupied by the sultan and his family – are only a little less extravagant. The decoration is rococo, so we don’t have marble pillars, we have concrete pillars painted to look like marble, but the effect is spectacular nonetheless. Unlike Topkapi, access is via conducted tours. This was okay and reasonably informative, but our Palace guide was a bit of a dork and we’d have been much better off if, as in so many places in Europe, we’d been able to plug into personalised audio guides.
Mooching and shopping yesterday, Monday. Back to the Spice Market,
And the last look at the guide book to learn that the Suleiman Mosque is the greatest in Istanbul, and that’s where we’re headed this morning during the couple of hours before our mini-bus arrives to take us to the airport. It’s all downhill from now on and we’re certainly looking forward to getting home, our expectation fuelled by the thought of a roast meal later in the week.
In this disjointed diary I bounced around in a temporal sense, certainly not recording every day, trying to remember the experiences already recounted and trying not to repeat myself. And I’ve tried to remember the parts of the trip yet to be described; and one gap I think, is the wonderful few days we had in Paris about a month ago. We started with our one-night stand in the Ibis Hotel, and then on the morning of the 31st August we moved down the street to our apartment, 43 rue de la Folie Regnault. [.......In the 11th arrondissement. Central Paris has 20 arrondissements (or neighbourhoods). They radiate out from the “centre”, the 1st arrondissement, where the Louvre is located. It is said that in earlier times people were known to spend their whole lives without venturing out of the arrondissement where they were born.] Dominique, the cleaning lady and our point of contact, was still there and after she’d completed her tasks we were off to explore the bustling street market down the centre of the Boulevard Beaumarchais, not far from our apartment, running off the Place de la Bastile - the place where three years earlier we’d seen the art display of objects painted in harlequin colours, and the place we’d had our funny experience changing currency at the Bank of France. Our principal destination was the Place des Vosges, a large formal garden in a square surrounded by buildings of uniform design on all four sides - so formal, so picturesque, so Paris. [And built for the famous Henry IV - remember him?]
A lot of walking but a lazy day really, the late afternoon and evening spent watching television, the World Athletics Championships, and the repeated victories of the French long jump and 100 metre relay champion, Eunice Barber. If you thought Australian TV stations were obsessive about repeating the victories of Australian athletes, then welcome to true obsession.
Helen and Arthur had been in Paris for a week already and Faye and David were due to arrive on the Monday morning, and the plan was that the six of us would meet at 10am near the Pont Neuf, the new bridge. We did. And although Faye and David had just arrived from Melbourne, and hadn’t slept, the tourist bug couldn’t be ignored.
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Postscript, August 2004.
The tourist bug still couldn’t be ignored on our last day in Istanbul either, and I left off recording, and never returned to it. Anne and Gary visited the Suleiman Mosque on the morning of our flight home. Another vast interior. It was founded by Suleiman the Magnificent, the tenth Ottoman sultan, and built between 1550 and 1557. Although only the second largest in Istanbul (not a bad boast in itself) it is described as the finest and most magnificent. There is an assortment of structures attached to the Mosque including the tomb of Suleiman, and the tomb of its architect, Sinan.
The day of Faye and David’s arrival in Paris we took a one-hour river cruise on a Seine bateaux.
Then a prowl through the Samaritaine department store,
and lunch at the rooftop café - ordinary food, and expensive, but worth the view over Paris - the senses starting to tingle. We walked, and in the Rue Rivoli bought tickets for a planned excursion two days hence to see Monet’s house and garden at Giverny. At this point we split, Anne and Gary returning to our apartment - mostly on foot, via the Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde (as we "did" later, on our last day in Paris); across the Pont de la Concorde to the Left Bank, and to the Metro St.-Michel.
The next day, the Tuesday, a walk to the Place de la Republique. Then by Metro to the old opera house, Opera de Paris Garnier - Charles Garnier was the architect; built between 1862 and 1875 - with its extraordinary ceiling painted by Marc Chagall, completed 1964.
Thence to two more department stores, Printemps and Galleries Lafeyette.
At this point Anne went back to the apartment, while I went underground to Metro Ecole Militaire, walking the several kilometres home via the Military Academy, the Invalides precinct, Rue St.-Dominique (where we stayed on our previous time in Paris), St.-Germain Boulevard, and so on. Late in the day we went to the Metro at Gare d’Austerlitz, and from there walked to the Jardin des Plantes, the botanical gardens - dating from 1626! A really great park, also containing the natural history museum and the zoo. Then continuing on foot to Helen and Arthur’s apartment in the Marais district, near the Pompidou Centre. The six of us out for dinner, then coffee; then home via the Metro.
On the Wednesday morning we attended to diaries and postcards, then a walk along St.-Germain (where we’d first stayed together in Paris), and an early lunch in the gardens of the Petit Palace - the weather delightful. After a 1.15 bus departure, the afternoon was spent at Giverny. The Monet garden was spectacular, although not quite so magnificent as we’d remembered it from three years previously. Still, a “must see” for any Paris visitor who loves gardens, or who wants a sense of the environment in which the artist worked.
On the Thursday, the 4th of September, we prowled around our local neighbourhood; then had the Taylors and the Weeks for lunch at our place, followed by an amble through the Pere Lachaise cemetery.
Later, after we’d dispersed, Anne and Gary walked through the Luxembourg Garden.
The memory of this beautiful park is a fitting place to conclude this diary. We had a truly wonderful trip, seeing such a lot but not exhausting ourselves. Very little indisposition; few hassles; all well at home. Fine company throughout; and some really precious moments. And, the acid test: there was nowhere we went that we wouldn’t, one day, be happy to re-visit.
Gary Andrews
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