Turkey: Istanbul, Bergama, and Selçuk

A turkey is a funny little fowl that Benjamin Franklin thought should have been the national bird of America (1). Turkey is also a large nation that straddles Europe and Asia, with an elite that desperately wants to be European and a people that are just not there yet. Turkey is a nation of dry, desolate landscape peppered with the ruins of flourishing civilizations of times past. It is a nation with a brilliantly efficient and modern bus system (hello Inkheart dubbed in Turkish) and maddingly confusing bus stations.

Let’s start with those bus stations.

Escape from Istanbul

So Istanbul was, indeed, Constantinople. Its skylıne plus coastline falls in my rankings very nicely at #3, below Rio and NYC and above the Bay Area. Crossing the mouth of the Bosporus on a ferry was actually most reminiscent of the mouth of the Hudson, where in each direction there appears to an independent downtown.

It’s also apparently a hip place to be. In my day in Sultanhamet, the touristy downtown with the Hagia Sophia and so forth, I did not meet a single European that was heading towards the rest of Turkey. Instead, it seemed to be swarming with gap-year types who were partying their way across Europe, and Istanbul was another stop on the tour, with most people heading to Dubrovnik next and then on to Serbia’s Exit Festival. The best analogy for Sultanhamet would be Khoa San road in Bangkok (for my 2 readers who have been there), where everyone is a backpacker or some one trying to make money off of backpackers, except with two giant Mosques on the hilltop frowning down on the backpacker bacchanal below.

In summary, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Because of the lateness of Gina’s flight, we did not see anything in the city. We will come back and spend a few days in the city at the end of our circuit because there are too many must-sees, but I am thankful to be out of the city and exploring the rest of the country. And by country I mean classical ruins, because that’s about all we have seen so far. Konya should be a nice look into contemporary Turkey.

Right, those bus stations. So we arrived back at our hostel at 9pm, and the burly Turkish men at the front desk said I could come back at 9am when the booking desk opened to book a bus to Bergama. Not wont to trust burly Turkish men and all gung-ho at figuring out my way out of the city and on to our first destination(2), I went upstairs and spent several very stressful hours navigating the morass of the internet and decided that we (myself and the obedient Gina) would take the 7.30 am ferry to Bursa and book a bus from Bursa to Bergama, and maybe check out Bursa as there is a long wait from the bus leaves (3). So then I went to bed, listened for an hour to two drunk Dutchmen and their recently acquired English ladyfriend (4), and eventually shooed them out of my dorm at around 1am, which marked me as “that lame backpacker” that haunts all large hostels.

Woke up, taxied to ferry, successfully navigated ferry station and snagged some great seats with a view, before being ushered to our assigned seats where we awkwardly shared a table with a family of three. Arrived in Bursa port and figured out that Bursa was several miles inland(5), unlike every other Turkish costal town. We headed to the Otogar (see 3) on a city bus. Upon arrival at the bus station, all hell broke loose.

Here is an excerpt from a really grumpy email I sent my father and Kyle at the Bursa otogar cafeteria:

“Turkey and mcgauleys are not getting along… the guys at the front desk seem really shady and unhelpful… we are now stranded in Bursa. We took the first ferry here and went to the bus station but every bus was full. Bursa seems realy cool but station is 10K away. All the touts speak just enough English to suggest they can get you to your destination but not enough English to actually help you book a bus [6]. We went from desk to desk and the service was terrible, and one bus would have been perfect but we got as far as about to pay before they told us the bus was full. We think they couldn’t get gina a seat by herself. We got a one o clock bus to Izmir and hopefully backtrack from there to Bergama, so so far only two hour lost…”

And indeed, only two hours lost! We caught a bus from Izmir to Bergama for a paltry 8 YTL (after dropping over 60 already that day on transport), and then taxi to the hostel and staggered in well after the sun set. So long stressful day, but given we had no idea what we were doing, I think it went as well as it could have. So our balls to the walls (7) itinerary is already a day behind, but we have licked our wounds and learned from them.

(1) Yes, America. Not the “United States.” Because those two words are meaningless to anyone in the Balkans or Turkey. This is in contrast to Western Europe, where my sister says they will smirk and ask, “Oh, where in America?”

(2) AJ wants to figure things out and do it his way! I know, imagine that?

(3) hahahahaha! Otogars, or bus stations, are always way outside of cities. Like way out. It’s like they decided that because Americans are all about cars, they would follow American urban planning for their bus station design (concrete, ugly, only accessible by car), while they rest of their cities are nice and European. Therefore train stations are right downtown next to all the stuff I want to go to. Except DON’T TAKE TRAINS in Turkey. Everyone has told me this. All the guidebooks, the internet, people I have spoken to, etc. As one person said, “the trains have departure times. No arrival times, just departure.” This advice to so well followed I have, in fact, not yet met anyone who has used a Turkish train. I think it might just be an urban myth, like sticking a cat into a microwave. No one has actually done that. So if you never hear from me again, I’m stuck somewhere on one of those mythical delayed Turkish Trains.

(4) English Girl, “No, I’m ashamed to tell you want I do!”
Drunk Dutchman, “What, are you a stripper?”
EG, “No, no! I’m a lawyer.”
DD, “Ug! You should have told us you were a stripper.”

(5) OK, I think Gina actually knew this beforehand.

(6) Cambodia had, “hello, want a tuk tuk?” Turkey has, “hello, where are you going?” Responding to these questions with politeness and efficacy is a carefully acquired skill.

(7) Interestingly, an aeronautical reference.

Bergama is Pergamon

Sadly, this name change lacks the rhythm of Istanbul and Constantinople.

As I alluded to in an earlier post, we have also gone to some places and saw some stuff. On July 3rd, that stuff was the ruins of Pergamon. For those Biblical scholars, this was one of the seven churches mentioned in the Book of Revelations, and the Egyptian cult temple that St John directed his vitriol towards is still standing. Pergamon was a strong city-state (re?)founded by Alexander the Great and run by one of his generals(1) that was never conquered by the Greeks or Romans but was oddly willed to the Romans by its last king.

Our hostel was quite good. The local cat had given birth to 2 kittens just a few hours before we arrives, so watching the meowing kittens nursing in a box in the front room was always a highlight of stopping by the hostel. In the morning, we asked the owner how to find the footpath up to the ruins. He responded with directions for the “shortcut,” which ended up taking us to a nice hole cut into the security fence. So after posing for pictures, we snuck into our first Turkish ruins.

The ruins were cool (well, actually really hot, but I think you are picking up what I’m putting down[2]), particularly the amphitheater. As the guidebook said, amphitheaters are a dime a dozen in Turkey, but they never fail to disappoint. We did the ruins in reverse order than they were signed, a process we repeated to great success in Ephesus (instead of following a guide you didn’t pay for, as you go from building to building you just wait for the next English tour group to arrive. Win.) The lower parts of the ruins were quite deserted, which made for a cool effect has lizards scurried everywhere among the rocks, and we encountered one rather large snake and a large tortoise just ambling along.

Ephesus was the superior ruin, but I’m glad we saw both as the crowds and therefore atmosphere was very different. Ephesus reminded me vividly of Pompeii, in terms of both size and quality of the ruins, the fact that most of the good stuff is actually rebuilt, and the Roman streets absolutely packed with tour groups. Like Pompeii, it was worth the crowds, and the Library of Celsius delivered. The city sits between two hills so the crowds follow a very linear path, which is actually better than Pompeii, where you can find yourself circling around city blocks thınking, 'waıt, have I seen this unmarked ruined store before?'.

We stayed in a Australia-NZ hostel, which had free bikes that we could take to bike to Ephesus and then to the Cave of the Seven Sleepers, and astonishingly, the bikes made the bikes we used in Cambodia look good. But hey, they got us there and back, and no monsoon this time. The night we arrived I had dinner in the hostel and ate with an English archeologist from Cornwall and 2 Candadians from Toronto. The Candians and I talked sports at length, and after covering basketall (college and pro), football (American, Australian, and European), baseball (major and minor – I threw in a reference to both Indy and Idaho Fall’s teams), rugby, men’s tennis, golf, and crew, the exasperated Englishwoman exclaimed, “How do you know so much about sports!” We explained that it was how we spent all of our spare time, and that Joe had once read, “one of those things with sheets of paper all together is a stack”[3]. Lauren from Corwall, despite being horribly unsports savvy, was super interesting. She studied at Keble College in Oxford, allowing a brief bonding moment in which we agreed that the token Victorian brick building in Oxford (Keble) wasn’t all that ugly, and she had spent the previous months after graduation traveling around the ‘Stans of central Asia, which made for some super interesting travel stories.

Before we caught our bus out of Selçuk (below Ephesus) Gina squeezed in a quick trip to the local museum while I went up to a ruined basilica (4) which sits over the marked grave of St John the evangelist. In front of the altar I helped some Americans translate something from Turkish (astonishing given my grasp of Turkish), and chatted with them a bit. They asked what I was doing, and when I saıd I was going to work for GE, one of the ladies said she expected me to work with Jeff Immelt some day, so if that happens we have St John to thank.

Seeing some of the Christian sites amongst the Greek and Roman ruins and the modern Mulism buildings has been very interesting. In addition the the above, we were able to walk around the church in which the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus was held (#3 I believe), and in Pamukkale at Heirapolis we walked around the ruined shire for St Phillip. I need to go back and read by Acts of the Apostles, but praying at these sites has been very spiritually fulfilling and makes be more interested in a trip to the Holy Land, which I can now see me doing at some point in my life.

Next post will have to wait for meeting up with Gina’s friend Kevin and exploring Pamukkale and onwards to Konya. Poor Gina is still battling a bad cold, and at the pace we travel I’m not sure if she will be able to shake it. She’s been a trooper so far.

(1) This Alex guy founded (or destroyed) like everything of worth around here. And everything was taken over by his generals. Either he had an impressive amount of competent generals running about to found all of the kingdoms that followed his empire, or they had so successfully obliterated everyone else that being a former general of Alexander was a cushy position.

(2) Or smelling what I’m stepping in, for fans of JenCoe.

(3) A book, or which Joe the Canadian has read only one.

(4) To continue my blog shout-out, the basilica’s reconstruction is being bankrolled by a group from Lima, OH. Which I think is close to Minster, OH.

***

I know this is a long post (I wrote it on Kevin’s laptop on yet another long bus ride), but I’m going to throw in some final musing. Turkey has been good, but not as good as I expected. I’m worried that we might be going too fast, and I hope that when we finally get to Cappadoccia we will be able to slow down for a few days. But it also might just pale in comparission to the Balkans, which far exceeded by expectations. Other than a few places, like Paris, which I intentionally left unfinished assuming I would visit them again, even if in a few decades, the Balkans are the first place were I left thinking, “I gotta get back here, and sooner rather than later.” But since I’m nearly killing all of the must-sees in Europe in this trip, my desire to always see and do something new means I think it will be awhile before I return to Euruope. I hope to keep my promise to myself to stay in America for the next few years and keep my traveling local, but I can already feel my heart moving towards the next challenge. Oddly, Latin America, which I had absolutely no interesting seeing when Anna and Sam were looking at the globe with everything on the table, intrigues me. Peru and Machu Piccu, which almost came true with Cherrica and Sylvia for Spring Break 2011, shines the brightest, but I could see myself doing something like Costa Rica if the rıght group presents itself. Petra remains at the top of my “if I could go anywhere in the world right now” list, as it has since I stood in the Roman Forum, but the list under it is starting to accumulate.