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Archive for the ‘Summer 09’ Category

Turning Homeward

10 Aug

Ishak Pasha Palace through the window of a nearby mosque

Ercan, my hotel manager in Hasankeyf, sat outside with me and we drank tea while waiting for the bus to Tatvan. There was no scheduled stop in Hasankeyf, which meant Ercan would have to wave it down so I could board. We sat for a bit and talked with a few of the other Turks sitting in the morning sun and drinking tea, until Ercan saw the bus coming and ran out into the street to stop it.

I loaded my pack into the back of the bus, which was more of a large cargo van, and climbed into the back seat with three other Turkish guys, all of whom were interested to find out why a lone American was traveling by dolmus from one small Turkish town off the beaten path to another. Of course, none of them spoke English, and by now I spoke a bare minimum of Turkish, so the usual gesturing, drawing, and language lessons ensued, as we passed east over rolling prairie and farmland. Every half hour we would run into road construction and the bus would slow to a crawl, bumping over temporary dirt roads while road crews worked in the dust to the right. “Roads Kurdistan not so good,” one of my seatmates said–being a Kurd, he referred to most of southeastern Turkey as “Kurdistan”–”not like Istanbul.” He kissed his fingertips. “Chok giselle.” Very nice.

Tatvan was a little town next to Lake Van in central eastern Turkey. It was picturesque and sunny, but not picturesque enough to tempt me to stay. I walked to the harbor along the lakeshore, where boys were splashing about in the water and yelling “Touriste! Touriste!” as I passed. When I finally got to the ferry station–rusty, empty ferry lolling in the murky water by the dock–the guard informed me that there would be no lake crossing the next day.

Kurdish friends in Dogubeyazit

Another bus it was, then. I headed back into town and picked up a ticket, waiting half an hour or so til departure. I was becoming quite a bus connoisseur, and this one was more of the same. Bad roads, good scenery, the rural landscape along the shores of lake Van, until we arrived a few hours at the city of Van. The biggest city on the lake, Van was a sprawling settlement with a very relaxed but metropolitan feel to it. I walked around a bit before dark, then headed back to my hotel–passing on the way a drum circle in a crowded park, surrounded by a wide circle of Turks, arm in arm, kick-dancing to the rhythm.

Van castle

The next morning I took a dolmus out to the Van castle. This place used to be the capital of the Urartu empire, before getting conquered by Xerxes the Great of the Persian empire. There are still cuneiform inscriptions on the walls of the citadel dating back to the Persian conquest, a good 2700 years ago.

Ararat

It was all very historical, but my feet were itching and I headed back to the otogar early to continue my trip east. I managed, after much asking of directions, to find the dolmus station to Dogubeyazit, a little town near the base of Mt. Ararat, and only a dozen or so kilometers from the Iranian border. I found it, and sat waiting for a couple hours until the next available departure, spending most of the time talking to the Kurds drinking tea there in the shade. Monica, back in Istanbul, had given me a few Kurdish phrases, and using them here made me an instant celebrity–Kurds called their friends and gathered around, teaching me as much Kurdish as they could think of, as quickly as I could write it down. I got quite a send-off–and then got on the bus to sit next to a Turkish police officer from Istanbul, a very nice guy, but as opposite (and opposed to in ideology) the Kurds as possible while still being from the same country. I always find it interesting how people can be so friendly to an outsider like myself while being so hateful to a person defined by mindset as “one of them.” As one of the bystanders commented, “Kurdistan, Turkistan … problem.”

Sunset in Dogubeyazit

The bus ride to Dogubeyazit was the best of my entire trip. It passed from the rural surroundings of Lake Van to the frontier feeling of the eastern borderlands, rolling, wild hills of soft green grass, jagged crags of black volcanic rock jutting out here and there in the distance. When we climbed the hill and rounded a long curve in to the valley of Dogubeyazit, Mt. Ararat appeared, towering above it, spectacular in it’s sole sovereignty over the scene in the setting sun. A volcano, Ararat isn’t part of a mountain range, and has a monolithic presence over the wide valley. The entire time I was there it was crowned by a halo of clouds.

Kurdish kids in Dogubeyazit

I found a place to stay, cheap as can be all the way out here, and found a place to sit and write. I ended up staying two nights, and spent the next day heading out of town to nearby Ishak Pasha palace, a beautiful old Ottoman general’s residence on a hill overlooking the valley, in the center of what was the old city of Dogubeyazit before an earthquake brought it all down centuries ago. I also learned that the only other Americans in town were a group of rich evangelicals hear to search the mountain for Noah’s Ark. I met one of them, briefly–Don Patton, a self-styled archaeologist and creationist, from Texas. He was buying rugs from some more Kurdish friends I had made (again, thanks to my magic Kurdish phrases–Monica, you are amazing), and was not too talkative. I suppose he may be tired of the standard reaction he must get from Americans, especially travelers, when he tells them he’s looking for Noah’s ark.

Inside Ishak Pasha

He need not have been so worried. I was amused to see that one of the local campgrounds actually offers tours to it–along with the world’s second-biggest meteor crater (on the Iranian border) and a few nearby points of archaeological interest. Noah’s ark or not, this particular part of the world smells of age, and people have been here for a very long time.

A chance to visit Noah's Ark ... awesome

Sun set for a second night on Dogubeyazit, and it was time to plan my all-too-sudden turn west. I decided to take a bus to Trabzon the next day, on the Black Sea coast in northern Turkey, then a ship to Istanbul.

More inside Ishak Pasha Palace

I wasn’t so lucky. I took the bus to Trabzon, surprising a Turkish shop attendant at a middle-of-nowhere bus stop at 10PM by being American, and booked yet another cheap hotel room around midnight. I have to admit, cheap accomadation in this part of the world is spoiling me–I haven’t camped a single night since Gaziantep, and not once for a couple of weeks before that.

Trabzon

I slept, after picking up an autobiography of Sidney Sheldon for the next day’s bus, and woke up to look for a ship. Trabzon is a major port for Russian passenger and freight transport, so most of the port workers speak only Turkish and Russian. Using my bad Russian, I inquired and discovered that the Trabzon-Istanbul service had been cancelled. I would have, it seemed, yet another bus ride–this one almost twenty hours long, along the Black Sea coast all the way back to the Bosphorous. With only a few days left of my trip, though, I was in a moving kind of mood anyway. I spent the day writing at a cafe in Trabzon, watching the waves crash on the Black Sea coast under gray skies, wishing I could stay longer. Then, at 5:30 that evening, I got on a bus.

My boots in Trabzon

I read. Sidney Sheldon’s autobiography was highly entertaining and over far too quickly. I drank tea at the bus stops every four hours or so. I slept, fitfully.

I arrived back in Istanbul the next morning, yesterday, around 11, and headed back to backpacker central: Sultanahmet. After a week in eastern Turkey and almost no fellow tourists, let alone native English-speakers, Istanbul seemed awash in foreigners like myself.

But, of course, it’s still Istanbul, and Istanbul will always–no matter how crowded–be a little bit magic. There are one or two things I plan to see here: live Turkish music in Taksim, the Princes’ Islands. Then, time to carry on home, via bus to Thessaloniki, plane to Frankfurt, and long haul flight to Washington, D.C. on Thursday evening. Soon, I’m tempted to think, it’s all going to be over.

But then, I think, maybe not. My flight home, dear readers, isn’t going to be the end of the Good and Lost book. It’s only going to be the end of chapter one.

Ishak Pasha Palace

 
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Posted in Summer 09

 

Indiana Jones, Eat Your Heart Out

03 Aug

Palmyra, modern city, by nightfall

Time limits now pressing, it was time to leave Damascus. There were still two places I wanted to see in Syria–the now-abandoned Roman city of Palmyra, in the middle of the Syrian desert, and the Crusader castle of Krak des Chevaliers. There was a direct bus to Palmyra from Damascus, so I headed there first.

 Palmyra

The already-sparse terrain around Damascus faded as we headed north to the bare rock and blowing sand. Every now and then groups of Bedouin on motorcycles would roar past the bus, dusty bikes and Arabian-rug saddles, red-checkered headcloths blowing in the wind. We arrived in Palmyra at a sunset made red with a sky full of dust and sand from the constant wind. I walked from the station through the dry streets of the modern town outside the ruins and found a hotel to drop my bags–it was the off season, so I was able to get a private air-conditioned room with television and fridge for about eight USD per night. Not at all a bad deal, I thought, and headed out to see the ruins at night.

Bedouin bikers

Night falls quickly here, and it was already almost dark. The ruins nearest the town were lit with incandescent light, and glowed golden out across the desert. As I was walking past a restaurant that was more half-shack, half-tent, three men sitting outside called me over and invited me to join them in tea. It turned out they were Bedouin, and Christian–”Bedouin sleeps out in the desert,” one of them said, “Christian,” pointed at me and nodded, “but in the cities many Muslim. Problem … problem.” So it goes, I suppose. They proceeded from these religious distinctions to tell me about what makes the Bedouin strong. Motorcycles, tobacco, the desert, making love to all ten wives in one night. They gave me some local beer and shrugged, pointing to the “3 percent alcohol” label. “Syrian beer,” they said, “no strong.”

A human jawbone in one of the Palmyra tombs

I drank tea and talked as much as I could around the language barrier for an hour or two before heading back for the night. The next day dawned bright and clear, already blazingly hot by ten in the morning. I bought myself a traditional Bedouin headcloth for the sun, which worked surprisingly well, and headed out into the desert.

Palmyra was, around and for a few centuries after the birth of Christ, a major center of trade and economy in the area. An aqueduct carried water from the nearby oasis (now a watering hole and seasonal residence for the Bedouin of the desert, as well as a site for several tourist-catering hotels and restaurants when the weather cools down in the fall), allowing an expansive Roman settlement that was a key stop on the silk road carrying goods from the East.

Palmyra tombs

These days it’s been abandoned to the sand. For several hundred years it was inhabited solely by nomads and local peasants–tourism has only seriously begun here in the last century or so. Walking out of the modern town, I crossed the open ground between the oasis and the ruins to meet sand-colored columns and crumbling walls, shimmering in the heat of the day. Palmyra is no small village or single ruin–it’s a sprawling city, and in this heat, I had it entirely to myself. The desert and the ruins and the lack of a single other human within sight leads to a definite feeling of solitude, of the inevitable work of time; good writing experience.

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Behind the city proper the bare mountains rise from the desert. In the valley between them is a long double line of tower tombs, some as much as five stories high, with individual stories compose of foot-thick stone floors and twelve-foot ceilings. Only the best-preserved are restricted to access, and I spent the better part of the afternoon exploring them and the smaller (presumably poorer) tomb complexes dug into the stone sides of the mountain. Many of them are virtually untouched–in some of them, you look into the shadowy side passages and see parts of human skeletons looking back.

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A middle-aged Bedouin man gave me a ride on his motorcycle from the ruins to one of the admission-fee tombs, where, of course, he had a rug of merchandise to sell to tourists. I managed to resist, and ended up getting a ride with him back towards time. I arrived back in Palmyra that night around dark and had a good meal before calling it a night and turning in.

View from the top of the Krak

The next day I headed for the Krak. Before I could get a bus, a taxi driver heading to Homs (the city nearest to the castle) offered to take me for about four dollars, so I rode with him and a couple of other Syrians on the long drive out of the desert and back into the cities. At Homs I found I had to take another taxi, for about ten dollars, to the castle itself. After stopping to restock on cash at the Homs bank, I headed west to the castle.

The countryside around Krak des Chevaliers

After the desert, the relative greenness of the hills closer to the coast seemed absolutely lush. After a half an hour on the highway out of Homs we turned off and headed in a long, winding path up one of the highest hills in the region til finally we turned a corner to see the Krak, a huge castle built with a commanding view over the surrounding countryside in three directions. It was too late to visit the castle that night, so I booked a hotel roof–three dollars a night–and walked around, watching the light turn colors and then fade over the countryside below.

Krak des Chevaliers

I woke the next morning to a cool and cloudy day, and headed to the castle. Krak des Chevaliers is essentially the Crusader castle–the model on which all after were based. It was never conquered until the west finally pulled out of Syria and the garrison left. It consists of a massive outer wall and a high inner keep, and is catacombed underneath with water cisterns, dungeons, and who knows what else. None of it is lit, either, and I didn’t have a decent flashlight at the time, so I did the best I could with my camrea flash and a lighter. The castle even had a hammam, or a Turkish bath, and the view from the command tower inside the keep commands the entire country for miles in every direction. The Crusaders stationed here, I thought, had it pretty good.

Inside the Krak

Old stones can only hold the interest so long, though, and in the early afternoon I headed back into Homs in a rickety transport van, bouncing along the highway east across Syria with Arabic music blasting on the radio. From Homs I headed north to Aleppo, where I had to switch bus stations for the trip into Turkey. By now it was late, and I decided to stay another night there. I met a group of around six British students and a German by the name of Sven, who were staying at a hostel I very much wished I known about when I was here a week ago. It was only a couple of blocks from where I’d stayed before, and a fraction of the price–only about five dollars a night, in an old stone building with wrought-iron staircases and a comfortable lounge on the top floor. I had dinner with Sven outside the Citadel, then met up with the Brits for drinks at the Baron hotel, a throwback from the early twentieth century with a guest list that includes Charles Lindberg, Agatha Christie, and T.E. Lawrence.

Inside the Krak, near the "secret entrance," which was maddeningly bricked over

I bought “Revolt in the Desert” by Lawrence there for the bus ride up to Turkey. There were no regular busses to Turkey the next day, but the hostel owner had a “friend of a friend” who knew of a bus at noon. I headed to the bus station, thankfully close, and found the bus. I was surprised to note that I was the only passenger other than the four employees, but passed it off as a bad business day, and settled in to read. For the record, if anyone wants a masterpiece of travel and autobiographical writing, pick up Revolt in the Desert.

As we neared the border, I found out why the bus was empty. The employees, none of whom spoke English, began pulling cartons of cigarettes out of the overhead bins, ripping them open, and storing the packs in rows under seat cushions, in trash bins, and everywhere else in the bus they could find. One of them handed me a shopping bag with two cartons, about twenty packs each, and said, “say yours”–the extent of her English.

It seemed I had fallen in with cigarette smugglers. They were nice people, and I’m always happy to stick it to the man, so to speak, so I went along with their plan whole-heartedly. When the border officials searched our luggage, the officer raised his eyebrows at me. “Like to smoke, eh?”

“Yep,” I answered, “sure do.” We got through the border without a hitch, to the general applause of the smugglers, to whom I became an instant friend thanks to my performance. “Thank you!” one of the women said, grinning. “Bravo!”

New friends at a Turkish gas station

The bus was supposed to go to the bus station at Antakya, but apparently smuggling buses go somewhere else. This one dropped me off at a gas station with instructions in Turkish to a friend they had there. So I sat for two hours at a gas station half an hour outside of Antakya, talking as best I could with the attendants, who did their best to teach me some Turkish, and, as always with middle eastern hospitality, gave me plenty of tea.

I did finally get on a bus to the bus station, which was on its way to pick up passengers eaastbound, and sat for about a half hour at a maintenance station out in the beautiful Turkish countryside at sunset while the crew cleaned and prepared for the bus. Then it was a four hour ride north and east to Gaziantep, where, completely out of Turkish cash, I slept in a field near the station.

My Turkish tutors at the bus station in Diyarbakir

The next morning, another beautiful day in Turkey, I walked into town and finally found an ATM to get some cash. Then a good Turkish breakfast and back to the station. At the last moment I decided to go through with my original plan to see eastern Turkey, or as much of it as I could before I had to head back to Istanbul, and took the bus to Batman. In typical Turkish style, that meant paying a driver who happened to be leaving the station the ticket fare, then getting dropped off at the station in Diyarbakir, where the bus driver had a friend who was heading to the other station in the city, where _that_ driver had a friend who was heading in a smaller bus to Batman. There were no other westerners at all at these stations, and I was again something of a celebrity, surrounded by a crowd of kids who worked there, who taught me the Turkish numbers, tried to sell me extra water and sesame seed bagels, and had their pictures taken.

Sunset over the Tigris river

Finally, I caught a dolmus from Batman to Hasankeyf, and arrived just before sunset. The trip east had been across wide rolling grasslands and fields of corn, blue sky marked by an occasional column of black smoke where a farmer was clearing his fields. When I finally approaced Hasankeyf, the ground opened up into the wide Tigris river valley, with high sandstone cliffs along the river’s edge, red with the setting sun. Atop the cliffs was a ruined city dug right into the rock. I took some pictures before it got to dark and then had a fish dinner at one of the open-air restaurants built on wood platforms out over the water.

Cliff dwellings in Hasankeyf

The next morning it was out into the heat again, Bedouin headgear and all, to explore the clifftop ruins. The city was built on a high mesa of rock, with sheer cliffs on all sides, and only two trails lead to the top–both carved into the rock. It’s been around for over 4000 years now, and, despite its perfect defensive position, has been conquered by everyone from the Romans to the initial Arabic muslim empire, the Mongols, and the Ottomans. The Mongols, as usual, destroyed everything, so the most intact actual buildings are the Ottoman ones–several mosques and the rebuilt Roman fortress on the cliff edge. More interesting, though, are the network of underground cave houses in the city proper. Most of them have multiple rooms, some multiple levels and built-in cisterns. There’s nothing left inside now but sand and the occasional fragment of pottery, but it’s not hard to imagine what this city must have been like in its heyday, prosperous, with it’s wide open view across the green-and-red cliffs around and the winding Tigris below.

The ruins of the old Arabic bridge over the Tigris

 

Hasankeyf

 

The view from a cave house porch

Tomorrow I’m continuing my path eastward, taking a bus to Tatvan a few hours further east, where I’ll take a boat across Lake Van before turning north and beginning the long curve back towards Istanbul. I just hope I can see everything I want to before I have to head back to the States.

Somehow, I doubt it.

Hasankeyf, from its southern edge

 
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Posted in Summer 09

 

To the Oldest City on Earth

28 Jul

Statue in Damascus

The last morning in Aleppo was spent finding a way to Damascus. I first walked to the train station, only to find that there were no trains until the next day. As nice as Aleppo was, I was on a schedule now, and took a taxi to the bus station. Tourists, it seems, tend to head straight to Damascus–as soon as I stepped inside the station touts from one of the country started shouting: “Eh! English! Damascus?” I nodded, and got a ticket all the way for only two hundred SYP, or about four dollars.

Man selling watermelons in Damascus

It was about a four hour ride across dry, dry country, with some kind of Syrian soap opera playing on the bus television–and judging by the overlaid website address and poor video quality, a pirated one at that. When we finally got into the Damascus bus station we were met by a swarm of taxis and drivers, one of whom spoke English and told me he knew of cheap hotels to stay in. It wasn’t until we were driving that I noticed how fast the meter was rising–and that the “cheap” hotels he was talking about were “very nice, very cheap, only sixty dollars for night!” When we stopped in front of a ritzy establishment with fake waterfalls and a faux Mongol theme, I figured out what was happening. Those hotels were full anyway, and the taxi driver wanted to take me somewhere else (my bags were locked in the trunk), but the meter was already at 450 SYP, over double what the entire ride from Aleppo had cost, and I convinced him to get my bags out for me, and, grudgingly, paid.

Damascus architecture

At this point, of course, I had no idea where I was. By now it was also getting dark, so I walked around for a bit, trying to find some cheap hotels I’d heard of, and finally settled on the cheapest one I could find at the hour–a three bed room for thirty dollars. Not bad by American standards, but it still hurt in the wallet.

Damascus street

The next day, I picked up a map from the local tourist information office and finally located the backpacker district of Damascus. This worked rather better–after checking a few places I found one where I could sleep on the roof for only 300 SYP a night, and, if I wanted, get a full breakfast for another 100 on top of that. Six dollars for lodging, I thought, was well worth the price, so I moved my luggage.

Al Hamidieh in Damascus

Now, finally, it was time to do what I had come to do: explore Damascus. I made my way into the old town, which has been an active city for at least five thousand years–the oldest on the planet–and headed for the main attraction, the Ummayad mosque. To get there, I took the main souq, a long thoroughfare called Souq Hamidieh. The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul had struck me as an Arabic shopping mall and the Aleppo souqs had seemed interesting and labyrinthine; this, the main souq of Damascus, was something else again. A wide road lined with shops and a high, arching metal ceiling, the souq is packed with people and curves into the distance. The constant foot traffic stirs up a lot of dust, and the holes in the ceiling–supposedly bullet holes from some of the battles for independence from the French in the early twentieth century–let in pencil-thin rays of sunlight that dapple the ground. Though more touristed than the Aleppo souqs, Al Hamidieh still manages to put off a combined feeling of medieval Arabic commerce and French colonial sophistication.

Woman in Ummayad square

The end of the souq opens up through an archway of ancient Roman columns, now hung with rugs and swarming with street vendors, onto the square of the Ummayad mosque. Like the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Ummayad Mosque also reflects the history of its city. It began its life as the Roman temple to Zeus. The columns at the end of the souq were once the main entrance to the temple, and one can still see the old Roman structure now built into the walls of the mosque. One of the gates still has Latin inscriptions from the time. With the Byzantines, the temple was converted into a church. And, with the rise of the Ummayad Dynasty in Damascus (the first Islamic empire) the church was converted into a mosque, which is what it is to this day.

Ummayad Mosque

I walked around the mosque, quite an impressive structure with its wide marble courtyard. Inside, behind an ornate bronze latticework wall and inside a marble box, is supposedly the head of John the Baptist, also considered to be a prophet in Islam. After making the rounds and stopping in next door to pay my respects at the grave of Saladin, I headed back onto the streets to just explore. Damascus is full of old and winding streets, many built over with wooden crossbeams to provide both more building space above and more shade below. The streets are really too narrow for vehicle traffic, but that doesn’t seem to stop anybody; you’ll be walking along a street when a taxi or truck rumbles down behind you, honking, and everyone presses to the wall to let it pass.

Inside the Ummayad mosque

On the way back some carpenters in a shop waved to me to take a picture of their shop, and then invited me, with almost no English, to stop for some tea. We started talking as best we could–I spoke no Arabic, and one of them spoke only a little English, and both of us spoke a little Russian. I told him in Russian I wanted to come back to Damascus to study Russian, and he and his friends immediately started pointing to objects and telling me how to say them. I pulled out my notebook and started writing, filling a few pages of my notebook. Their favorite was “hmar kbir”: big donkey.

Ummayad Minaret

As the sun began to go down I made it back to the Ummayad square, where I was approached by a Syrian man who spoke excellent English, and wanted to ask me some questions. I said all right. He then proceeded to ask me a series of completely random questions about English phrases and syntax–we started talking, and he ended up showing me around, including a good place to eat at an old house that had been converted into a restaurant, now known as Beit Jabri, or House Jabri.

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His name was Moumen, and we ended up meeting the next day as well, after I’d walked around the souks for some time. One of my favorite parts of Syria is the juice sellers–freshly squeezed strawberry juice, blackberry juice, tamarind juice, a glass with ice for only twenty-five SYP or so. Moumen showed me around a bit, pointing out the old gates of the city and interesting landmarks, and told me about living in Syria. Perhaps the most interesting thing to me, as a westerner, was hearing about the “vice police”: how adultery, or premarital sex, is still a punishable crime in Syria, and the lengths to which young non-Muslim Syrians go to to escape the watchful eyes of neighbors and hotel owners.

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My last full day in Damascus I met some of Moumen’s friends, three Dutch girls who were visiting Syria for a couple of weeks, and were leaving the same day I was (today). All three of them had studied psychology, though only one was going through with her studies, and all three lived and worked in Amsterdam. The four of us and two of Moumen’s friends, Tarik and Mahmoud, went out for dinner and talked until late in the evening.

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I’m still in Damascus now, the southernmost point of my trip. In a few hours I’ll head north to the old Roman city of Palmyra, now abandoned out in the desert, and from there continue on back up into eastern Turkey and, hopefully, Georgia before I have to head back to Istanbul.

Birds on a lamppost in Ummayad square

 
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Posted in Summer 09

 

Sorry, I don’t speak Arabic

23 Jul

Istanbul at sunset

I stayed in Istanbul one more day to see the Hagia Sophia and the fabled Grand Bazaar. After walking around the Bazaar for about twenty minutes, I was ready to leave–the ancient souk tradition of middle eastern commerce, combined with the massive inflow of western tourism Istanbul receives, have created what is essentially an enormous Arabic-themed shopping mall, teeming with jewelry stores and trinket shops, clean, efficient, and, in my opinion, devoid of whatever character it may once have had. That being said, if you’re traveling to shop, it seems to be the place to go in Istanbul–though you’ll get charged significantly more there than at some of the smaller shops frequented by the Turks in other parts of the city.

Inside the Hagia Sophia

The Hagia Sophia, on the other hand, still packs quite a punch to the visitor. It’s history essentially mirrors that of Turkey: it began its existance as an Orthodox Cathedral when Istanbul was Byzantium, and Christian; it was converted to a mosque under the Ottoman empire; now, after the secularization of Turkey under Ataturk, it has been converted again to a museum. It’s also under repair, with a mass of scaffolding rising to the dome towering above in the center of the building. The walls are peeling, but it’s still possible to feel the grandeur this place once had, both under the Church and under the ownership of Islam.

The view from the Hagia

Considering it high time to head on to Syria, I booked a twenty hour bus ride all the way from Istanbul to Aleppo for only ninety lira–about forty-five euro. Not a bad price at all, and hopefully a sign of tickets to come. I also considered my schedule (only three weeks left!) and reformulated my initial travel plans. So here, loyal readers, is the new itinerary: a week of exploration in Syria, a few days in eastern Turkey, a few days in Georgia, and then the remnant of the time traveling either by ship from Poti or along Turkey’s Black Sea coast back to Istanbul. From there I’ll catch a cheap regional flight to Frankfurt, and then, finally, back to the States. Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic will have to wait until next time.

Relativisitic effects at bus-level velocities may be negligible (that one’s for you, Philippe) but I’d say it’s a proven fact that twenty hours on a bus is longer than twenty hours anywhere else. I slept, assuming of course a broad definition of the verb “to sleep”, and read the entire book “Dandelion Wine” by Ray Bradbury. It was strange to be immersed in an excellently wrought of idealized Americana while driving through the sparse terrain of Southern Turkey, with talk shows in Turkish playing on the bus television, and conversations in Turkish and Arabic on all sides.

After switching buses in Antakya (that’s Antioch for you Biblical/Mesopotamian scholars out there) we headed for the Syrian border. This was the tensest moment of my trip, as my visa had actually expired the day before (note to self: next time apply closer to departure). We stepped out of the air-conditioned bus at the border to meet a wall of dry heat from the Syrian desert and walked into the visa office. Fortunately, the officials didn’t notice or didn’t care about the visa date, and after an hour or so of paperwork, I was officially welcomed into the country–by a rather surprised tourist information representative. I got the feeling the road borders didn’t get many American visitors.

The souk in Aleppo

The ticket was to Aleppo, but the bus driver informed us that they were actually going to Damascus, and so got us a taxi. The taxi driver was ostensibly waiting for someone else, but the only other passenger to Aleppo (a Syrian living in Canada, visiting home for a couple of weeks) and I “paid” (a.k.a. “bribed”) him five dollars and he drove us straight in. For the first time on my trip, I knew I was in really in another place. Stark desert, with villages built of desert stone, big machine shops servicing the trucks that crossed it, houses with camels tied up in front of them, and no English in sight.

More of the souk in Aleppo

Aleppo appeared after about sixty kilometers (very fast; the taxi driver, it seemed, had places to be), a modern city sprawled out across the desert, with the monolithic Aleppo Citadel rising in the very center. My taxi driver, who barely spoke English, transferred me to another, who spoke none, and I was driven to the cheap hotel district for about twenty five Syrian pounds. That works out to about fifty cents, USD: a good sign, I thought, for the price of living in Syria.

Turns out I was right. A hotel room for two nights was only sixty USD–a little more than I usually pay, but there’s nowhere to camp in Aleppo, and no hostels either. Still, a private room and a big free Syrian breakfast every morning aren’t bad at all. I dumped my bags and headed into town.

Aleppo from the Citadel steps

I hadn’t eaten for almost two days thanks to the twenty hour bus, so I decided to try a local restaurant. Monica had said Syrian food was unbelievable, and she turned out to be right. And cheap–I stuffed myself on a ground beef and tomato sauce dish with rice, pita bread with hummus, turkish coffee, a big salad, and a coke–all for less than ten USD. This, I thought, I can live with.

It was already getting dark and the citadel was closed, so I spent several hours just walking the old city streets. Aleppo is an ancient city, older than almost any in the world short of Damascus, and it feels it. The streets are narrow and winding, built of desert stone, and absolutely alive at night. Outside of the citadel itself and surrounding souks (more on those soon) there are almost no tourists, and I’m dark enough now after two and a half months of walking in the sun that for the most part I didn’t even get a second glance. At night, the temperature here is perfect, especially compared to the stifling heat of the day (visiting Syria in late July–what was I thinking?). As a result, that’s when the locals come out. Public squares are full of men talking and smoking or sitting with their women, nearly all of whom are clad in either full burqa or at least modest clothing and head scarf. The interesting thing is that, unlike in certain modest-dress sects of Christianity, Syrian women are still very fashionable–even the full burqas are embroidered and very elegant, as gender-oppressive as they may be.

Me on the citadel, looking quite pleased with myself

There is also food, everywhere. I almost wished I hadn’t eaten. Fresh fruit, meats, fried falafel, squeezed fruit juice, coffee. The souks are concentrated into districts, as are the shops just outside of the old city. The best was on the walk from the citadel back to my hotel: the spice market. Every breeze brings whiffs of cardamom, cumin, tea, rosemary; the effect is enchanting. Supermarket owners in the States, listen up: if you really want some customers, set up a wholesale spice section, and put it upwind.

A random Syrian who wanted his picture taken

I slept, woke up for an amazing Syrian breakfast of eggs, stuffed olives, pita bread, fresh jam, cheese, turkish coffee and tea, and cream. Rather beats the American tradition of stale pastries and old coffee, I have to say (if you think I’m bashing American industry to much, I’d just like to mention here that after experiencing Turkish and Syrian hole-in-the-ground toilets, for me the American bathroom industry as much as has wings and a halo).

Then into town, where, while waiting for the lighting on the citadel to improve, I explored the souks. If there’s one obvious thing that still surprised me about the middle east, it’s that this whole part of the world has an immense shopping culture. And they do it well. The Aleppo souk is labyrinthine, and roofed, making it a welcome cool refuge from the day’s heat. And, unlike the Great Shopping Mall of Istanbul, it’s a functioning marketplace. A long walk brings you past silver and gold sellers, wool sellers, wholesale silk and cotton sellers, whole corridors of markets full of olives, full of spices, full of roasted nuts, full of dairy products. And clothing stores. It’s an interesting commentary on the culture that almost every woman I’ve seen is very modestly dressed, and a good half of them are in the full black burqas, but nearly every clothing store was tailored toward women. And these shops look like they’re trying to compete with New York and Paris (ladies, pardon my laymanship if I’m spectacularly wrong). The lingerie–sold exclusively by men, as is everything else here–would look racy in the windows of a Victoria’s Secret outlet.

The mosque / throne room inside the Citadel

I walked for a bit out of the souks themselves into the surrounding town, and found much of the same culture of commerce. Covered streets, shouting, tiny markets, selling absolutely everything. I haven’t seen a single supermarket here, simply because you can buy literaly everything in these shops. One entire street, covered in tin, was entirely lined with blacksmiths’ shops, selling everything from machine parts to construction tools. The next was tin workers, and the next auto repair shops. The souk culture is very different from the American business model, and clearly translates well into modernity. I’d be interested to see an economic comparison of the two methods.

A hot air balloon filling outside the Citadel

Finally, after sitting down for an amazing sort of milkshake made from almonds (for about … a dollar) I decided to check out the main tourist attraction: the Aleppo Citadel. In the very heart of the old town, the Citadel dominates the city. It’s the oldest castle in the world (and has been conquered by just about everybody since and including Alexander the Great), has a moat around the mountain it stands on, and high walls encircling the entire perimeter. The only entrance is a span of stone that stretches out across the moat and has two gates. I got a student entry for ten pounds (ie twenty cents) and spent a couple of hours just exploring. This place was a fortress, and it’s still possible to visit the great cisterns beneath it where water was kept in case of attack. In fact, tunnels catacomb the entire fortress, though most of them are either unexcavated or blocked off to visitors. But the view is a spectacular one–from the walls, you can see out all the way across the old town to the glittering modern city around it, and, on the horizon, the dry expanse of the Syrian desert. Built into the fortifications above the entrance is a mosque (or possibly the throne room–if there was a sign, it was in Arabic) with expansive marble floors and perfectly kept; quite a surprise to come upon when exploring the crumbling ruins and tunnels of the rest of the citadel.

The Citadel entrance

After thoroughly exploring the place and (finally) getting my picture taken in front of some scenery, I headed back into town and sat down to write at an open-air cafe just outside the entrance, enjoying the feeling of the city coming to life as the sun went down and the day finally began to cool.

Now, back at my hotel, I’m finally having to think about coming home. It’s less than a month away, and for the first time is really giving me a set date when I have to somewhere (namely, Istanbul). Every place I’ve been so far I’ve wanted to stay longer, and at every train station, all I see is possibilities–to Vienna from Trieste, or Moscow from Belgrade, to Jordan or Lebanon from Syria, to everywhere from Istanbul. Entrancing possibilities, temptations to just go that get stronger rather than weaker the longer I travel. The last two months seem to have passed in no time at all, but at the same time Dublin feels an eternity behind. Forever and an instant; the world is immense, and very small; six billion friendly people who are constantly at war. It seems travel deals in paradox, and it’s done the same to me. I’m more comfortable alone than I ever was, and at the same time more able to meet new people. I have more questions, but feel more strongly what I believe. I’m ready to wander for as long as I can foresee, but I think more and more of home, even as my definitions of the word constantly shift. I’m going to come back a different person than when I left. I suppose that’s how it’s meant to be.

The Citadel at dusk

 

Entering Asia

20 Jul

Leaving Santorini

After writing my last blog post, I finally got in touch with Sophia, only to find out that her work schedule was tight and wouldn’t take them through Fira. So, we said our final goodbyes over the phone and I camped outside of town, heading down to the port to catch the ferry to Rhodes the next morning. It was a long ride, sliding past Greek islands under clear skies and a red sunset. I arrived in Rhodes an hour or so after dark, and, not wanting to try to find a place to camp so late, got a ride to a hostel with the manager of the place, who was waiting at the port.

Rhodes street

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He drove me from the port into the middle of the old down of Rhodes, a fortified medieval city dating from the Crusades. My hostel, the Rhodes Youth Hostel, was right in the middle of the old town, next to an old Byzantine church. I dropped my bags and went out to take a look around. Narrow stone streets, old Byzantine churches and Ottoman mosques side by side, archways spanning the walkways just above head level–this island has been a major focal point for Mediterranean trade for a few thousand years now, and shows it in the feeling of a crossroads of eastern and western sea culture. In the old days it was famous for housing one of the seven wonders of the ancient world–the Rhodes Colossus, an enormous statue that dominated the harbor and was the first thing many ships saw upon sailing into the city.

The mosque in Rhodes

I booked two nights, since the ferry to Marmaris on the Turkish coast left too early in the morning to give me enough time to explore the city. I spent the next day walking around, seeing as much of the old city as I could and walking out along the seafront, where more recent Turkish architecture can be found, as well as the island’s long beaches. That afternoon I stopped back by the hostel, and met a fellow traveler called Philippe, a Canadian from Quebec who was traveling for a bit before beginning a PhD program in mathematics in Paris. It turned out he was also traveling to Turkey, so we joined forces and caught the ferry the next morning to the Turkish coast.

Architecture in Rhodes

The fortified walls of Rhodes

The Turkish visa process was surprisingly easy, costing only twenty USD and taking no more than ten minutes to process. We headed straight to the Marmaris bus station and caught the first bus north along the coast to a city called Denizli. In Turkey, the city buses that connect the main cities are fast, comfortable, and generally on time. On top of that, passengers are served tea and snacks en route, even on trips of only a couple of hours. Quite a refreshing change from some of the other bus journeys I’ve taken.

The mineral springs at Pamukkhale

After a trip through the arid mountains and plains just inland from the Turkish Aegean coast, we arrived in Denizli and took a small bus, or dolmus, to the town of Pammukahle. In Turkey, dolmuses provide local public transportation, usually at a rate of around two lira (roughly one Euro) for a ride. They’re shortened white buses, generally packed with locals, that network out from every major city to the smaller villages and towns nearby.

The ruins at Hieropolis

Our destination, Pammukahle, is home to a cascading series of sulfuric pools, resulting in pure white cliffs and still pools of milky warm water, with the sprawling ruins of the ancient Roman settlement of Hieropolis stretching out on the plateau of them. We checked into a local inn for only about fifteen lira each and were introduced for the first time to Turkish hospitality. The owner, a portly man by the name of Omar Sharrif, sat us down after we’d paid, gave us tea (in the traditional Turkish style, served hot in curved glasses), and talked to us for a bit. Despite his thick accent and our lack of Turkish, we got on well. When his wife came to ask him for the money, he shook his head and rubbed his brow. “Wife asks for money. Son asks for money. Little son asks for money. I am crazy.” I suppose some things are the same in every culture.

The sun beginning to set over old Hieropolis

The hot springs are famous in the region as a health spot for visiting tourists to wade in mineral water, and for a hefty fee, to go swimming in the old baths–complete with original Roman marble columns. The stairstep pools, with their white walls and pale water, were pretty enough, but I was especially impressed by the ruins of Hieropolis. Sprawled out across the valley, the vast majority of theme seem untouched, and none of them are closed off or restricted to visitors. As Philippe and I were walking through the ruins of an early Byzantine style octagonal church, we were approached by some gypsies who offered to sell us some Roman coins for twenty lira. They felt fake, and I very much hope they were, because I didn’t buy one.

We headed back to the hotel around sunset, where we were treated to a truly excellent Turkish dinner of lamb kebabs, grilled eggplant, rice with butter, and a number of other excellent side dishes, by Omar’s wife. As we ate, Turkish music played, and the hotel owners’ teenage daughter and twenty-one year old son danced in the courtyard as the rest of us watched and clapped in time. Altogether, not bad for less than the price of a dorm bed in a hostel in some of the big cities of Europe.

The ruins at Ephesus

The next day we headed to the ruins Ephesus, taking another bus to Selcuk. We picked up a hotel room there and were driven to teh ruins by a friend of the owner, where we walked down through the crumbling city. Though better preserved than Hieropolis had been, Ephesus was more crowded and more restricted. Still, at around six most of the tourists left to head back to their cruise ships on the nearby coast and the ruins were nicely abandoned for sunset. We walked back into town, where we met back up with the friend who’d given us a ride to the ruins. He was a Kurd, who owned with some friends and relatives a trio of shops just off the main street of Selcuk. We sat around and talked, drank tea, and smoked nargila, or a Turkish water pipe with flavored tobacco. The owners showed me their rugs, including some truly spectacular specimens–which were, of course, well beyond my price range.

Sunset over Ephesus

We finally headed back to our hotel at around two in the morning, and unlocked our room to find a couple sleeping in our bed. Needless to say, we were somewhat confused, and headed back downstairs to wake up the managers. This turned out to be harder than it looked, and when one of them finally stirred himself, he told us that they’d moved our room, and gave us the new key.

Monica and Philippe

The next day we’d planned to head further north, but we both liked the feel of Selcuk and wanted to look around a bit more. At breakfast (provided, as usual, by our hotel–fruit, cheese, olives, bread with sweet Turkish honey, and tea) we met an American girl named Monica who was in Turkey for studies in Istanbul, and was exploring a bit the week before her classes started. She also spoke some Turkish, which turned out to be quite helpful as we explored the city. The three of us headed out that evening to the beach, a long beautiful stretch of sand with the sun setting behind the rocky mountains up the coast. We were the only ones there, a welcome change from the noise and crowds of Santorini’s main beach a few days earlier.

After another night in the hotel we headed for Istanbul. We decided to take the train through Izmir, a pretty port town, and on up the coast to Menemen. The train took us through a wide valley, past vineyards and villages, into the bustling port city of Izmir, where we booked a ticket on to Menemen. It only cost us a few lira each, and we were told to be back to catch a shuttle to the other train station in the city. So, we walked around for a few hours and returned to catch our shuttle bus. After half an hour in said shuttle, we were wondering just where this other train station was. After an hour, we saw the signs for the Menemen train station and had to laugh–we’d just taken a bus, using a train ticket, from the train station in one town to the train station in the next.

Menemen seemed to be a town fairly devoid of tourists or any of the infrastructure needed to attract them. It was sprawling and industrial, with no clear center. When we got to the bus station, Monica’s Turkish turned out to be a life saver, as no one there spoke English, and the station was a madhouse of regional buses and dozens of dolmuses. We also turned out to be minor celebrities, as they hardly got any tourists. My camera especially was a big hit, and at least half a dozen of the Turks lounging about in the station cafe asked me to take their pictures.

Boy in the Menemen bus station

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A chef at the bus station making doner kebabs

The bus toward Istanbul, to Ayvalik, where we planned to spend the night, turned out to be an hour late, not showing up until seven in the evening, and took longer than we expected. We had planned to go from Ayvalik to Assos, a little beach town nearby, but weren’t sure of the possibility of doing so arriving at midnight, so we hopped off a stop before, at a city on the coast. I didn’t (and still don’t) know the name of the town, but it turned out to be a sort of Turkish nightlife center, with plenty of Turks visiting and next to no foreign tourists–none, in fact, that we saw, other than ourselves. We ended up sleeping out next to a lighthouse, as it was a warm night and we wanted to catch an early bus the next morning on to Istanbul.

A mosque from the Bosphorus in Istanbul

After a rather sleepless night and some good Turkish coffee the next morning, we boarded a bus to Istanbul, which took the better part of the day, and finally arrived that evening. Istanbul is truly enchanting, and I loved it from the moment I arrived. The city is massive, sprawling out across the land on either side of the Bosphorous, straddling Asia and Europe. Here, no buildings can be built higher than the mosques, and to look out across the city is to see a sea of buildings punctuated with minarets. Five times a day the call to prayer wails out across the city, sung by some of the best voices in the Muslim world–a sound not to be ignored, or easily forgotten. All combined, the city is alive, vibrant, and (to us westerners, at least) like something at the edges of another world.

The underground cisterns

We went out that night to the Taksim quarter. This was Monica’s third visit, and she knew her way around–we picked up some dinner (fish sandwiches on one of the Bosphorus bridges) and found a little bar with live Kurdish music. With a steady rhythm and beautiful wavering vocals sung by a Kurdish woman, I was fascinated. The best part was that other people in the bar were handing in requests–this isn’t folk music of the variety found in the states, meant to introduce a style of music to those unfamiliar with it; this is regional music, and the Kurds who come here know the songs by heart and often sing along.

A conservative muslim female tourist

Then, over the next few days, exploration and more exploration. We climbed a hill through an Ottoman cemetery and sat and watched the city. We walked through the Blue Mosque, craning our necks at the vaulted dome, inscribed in Arabic, far above. We descended into the old cisterns of the city, built in the 6th century and only rediscovered in the 16th–a cavernous vaulted space underground, with two feet of water in the bottom, fish swimming about, and rows upon rows of stone columns. We explored the opulence of the Topkapi Palace, seat of the Sultanate in the Ottoman Empire. And, of course, we walked, to innumerable little coffee shops and parks.

Istanbul has been the most unforgettable city yet, and I still have two more days here. On Tuesday I’ll catch a train to Aleppo, in Syria. I have less than a month left now, and am beginning to dread the date when it will all have to end. But I suppose it has to–after all, I’m going to have to start making enough money to pay for the next trip.

The courtyard of Istanbul's Blue Mosque

 

To the Islands

10 Jul

Fira, Santorini

After booking my ticket to Santorini, I found that I had a lucky coincidence. Sophia works for a Greek travel website as a translator, writing content in English. As it happened, she and two of her colleagues were making a trip to Santorini as well–on the same ferry I had booked that morning. I took the metro to Piraeus, the port of Athens, and made my way to the massive ferry that awaited the hordes of tourists heading to the islands.

Fira

I found Sophia and her friends, Stavros and Michael, half an hour or so after departure. We found a place on deck and talked for the entire five hour journey–philosophy and history, and then, because Michael is a bass player in a jazz band, music theory and bands. It was dark when we disembarked. The three of them had driven a car that was full of equipment with absolutely no room (Sophia was sitting near the roof on the pile in the back), so we split up at the docks, with a plan to meet the next day. I headed to Fira, the main town of Santorini, on a two euro bus that took the winding road up the high cliffs from the harbor. The ferry was leaving as we climbed, a glittering mass of light that reflected in the still water of the bay under the full moon above.

Sophia!

Fortunately, Fira isn’t all that large of a town, and the bus station is on the edge, so I was able to find a place to camp less than ten minutes’ walk from the station. Not so fortunately, my sleep schedule was still on Athens weekend time–going to sleep at sunrise, waking up at noon. I slept briefly and fitfully, then gave it up when the sun came up and the day got hot. I walked into town at seven to the beautiful sight of the white buildings built into the volcanic cliffs high above the blue waters of the Aegean. The town was empty save for a few people hosing down the streets.

Ship in the Santorini bay, seen from Ia

That changed quickly. In the sea below Fira, two cruise ships were anchored, and a stream of small boats were heading out to bring in the first loads of tourists. Half an hour later they were arriving at the city via cable cars from the old harbor or by the donkey trains that still run up the steep path down to the water’s edge. It was hot, too, and bright: with the deep blue of the waters, the clear blue of the skies, and the pure white of the buildings, it’s easy enough to see where Greece got its national colors.

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I met up with Sophia, Stavros and Michael a little after noon, and had my first taste of the life of a professional travel writer. They had a list of sites to visit and photograph, and were madly dashing from place to place to get it all in in the five days or so they’ll be here. That day, that meant hiking through Fira along the coast to its highest point, and then out to a bare pinnacle of rock. I, of course, had to climb it–and found, on the top, the ruins of old houses dug into the top. Michael told me there had been a problem with piracy here at one point, and this pinnacle has a naturally commanding view of the harbor, and was used as a fortress until a great earthquake destroyed most of the town that had been here.

Sunset from Ia

After finally getting back to the car (empty of equipment now) we headed for the famous sunset at Ia, on one of the points of the island’s crescent-like shape. There were no clouds in the sky, so the sunset was only an average one (Michael: “That’s it? I want my money back!”), but it was pretty enough, and a good place to just sit for a couple of hours.

At one of the wineries of Santorini

I camped that night near where they were staying, in Akrotiri, on the other end of the island, and met with them the next morning for a full day’s work. Wine-tasting in the morning and early afternoon: different local wines in rustic surroundings, and “Vinsanto,” a local dessert wine made from sun-dried grapes–tasting, perhaps not surprisingly, like sweet raisins. We photographed everything, and then took a walk through a beautiful little village without so much of the crowded tourist-focused feel of Fira or even Ia. We climbed to the top, where a Greek Orthodox church and the ruins of a castle give a wide view across the coast in both directions, over the white buildings of the village, and the white clusters farther away of the other cities.

Wine grapes

As the sun set we made one last hike down from the cliffs to an overlook and an old church. The top layer of Santorini is compressed volcanic ash with a texture and color almost like white plaster, and there are cave houses everywhere dug into it. At the edge, where we were hiking, the rock is eroded into the fantastical shapes one can see in the states in the redrock canyons of the southwest.

Eroded volcanic ash

Then it was time to part again, and this time possibly for good. They dropped me off in Perissa. My plan was to go to Thira the next day (today) and get my next ticket to continue my journey towards Turkey and Istanbul, and to call them if I ended up being here for another day. So, I said my goodbyes and headed to the beach to spend the night–quite a long walk, through the vineyards around Perissa, as the sun finally set behind me. I arrived on the long black sand beach and slept on a beach chair.

The inner cliff of Santorini

This morning I took an early swim and then took the bus to Thira to check my tickets. I had two options: either go back through Athens and take the train or bus from there to Turkey, or to try to cross the Aegean to the Turkish coast and bus north from there. I chose the latter, and booked a ferry to Rhodes for tomorrow afternoon, then called Sophia–and found that her cell phone was off or broken. I’ll try again soon, but if I don’t get in touch with her before I leave: Sophia, thanks again for everything.

The blue and white architecture of Santorini

 

Archaeology and Anarchists

05 Jul

The Thessaloniki waterfront

I slept–surprisingly well–in the train station in Skopje, on the train platform two stories above the city. The train to Thessaloniki, as if to provide an accurate parting impression of Eastern Europe, was two hours late, and I got into Thessaloniki around three in the afternoon, passing from the farmlands of Macedonia to the sparser terrain of northern Greece, and the hot sun of the Mediterranean coast.

Grafitti in Thessaloniki

I called Sophia, my couchsurfing host for Athens, but a recorded message informed me that her phone had been disconnected. Hmmm. An obstacle. To be safe, I booked the overnight train rather than the bus that would get me there an hour before midnight–and only then found a place to check my email, where I found a message from Sophia saying her cell phone was out of commission and providing me with her home phone. I called and let her know the new plan, and settled in to wait.

More grafitti in Thessaloniki

In the bakery in the Thessaloniki train station I met a couple, Eli and Charlotte, who’d just hitchhiked south through the Balkans. Eli was from Montana as well, and we started talking. He had quite an interesting story to tell: he and Charlotte were on their way to the Greek island of Lesbos to attend Eli’s sister’s wedding there. Apparently she had been working as an English teacher at a school in Istanbul. Most of the English teachers were non-Turkish citizens, and working without work visas thanks to the difficulty of obtaining them in Turkey.

Statue of Alexander the Great in Thessaloniki

The government had come down on the school and deported all the teachers without valid work visas, which meant Eli’s sister couldn’t come back to Istanbul. So, on short notice, she announced to her family she was marrying her Turkish boyfriend, which would, of course, let her come back to Istanbul to work. Eli even invited me to the wedding–another random Montanan, he said, might as well show up–but I unfortunately wouldn’t be in the island on time.

The Roman Agora in Athens

I said goodbye and boarded my train for yet another uncomfortable attempt to sleep on the train. I arrived in Athens around 7:30 the next morning and called Sophia for directions to her apartment, barely more than a hundred meters from the Athens Archeological museum. We talked for a bit and then she headed to work while I dropped my pack and walked out to get my first taste of the city.

Ruin on the Acropolis

The key point for any tourist activity in Athens is, of course, the Acropolis. Since the first day in a city for me is usually tourist day, I walked from Sophia’s house through the city to get there. I’d underestimated just how dominating the formation is. A great stone mountain rising to some hundred and fifty meters above sea level, the Acropolis is visible from nearly anywhere in the city. Sophia later told me that Athens building codes restricted building anything so high that it would obstruct the view–the city is still justifiably proud of its most significant (and visible) piece of ancient history.

The Parthenon

On the way, I explored the Roman agora, the center of commerce in Athens during Roman times, and bought the student ticket packet (six Euro) that would let me into any of the sites in the city. Then, after walking through the old town at the base of the formation, I passed the gates and began the long climb to the top. It was hot, and very crowded, voices chattering in every possible language and people standing in lines to take pictures of themselves and their friends and families in front of the Parthenon. The dominating structure on top of the Acropolis, the Parthenon (from the Greek for “virgin”) was dedicated to the godess Athena, for whom the city is named. Legend has it that the first king of Athens was a half-snake, half-man named Cecrops, who promised to give patronage of the city to the god who could give it the best gift. Poseidon and Athena competed for the privelege: Poseidon struck the earth with his spear and a great spring rose from the ground. But, as he was god of the sea, the spring was salty, and not very useful. Athena struck the ground with hers and an olive tree grew there, to this day a symbol of peace and prosperity. Cecrops liked the olive tree and Athena got the job, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Gypsy caravan in Athens, surrounded by dogs

After the Acroplis I walked toward the sea and climbed the adjacent Hill of Muses, where, suddenly, I was alone. The hill is topped with a single ruin, a dedication to the muses, and there is no entrance fee–either way, the tourists seem to stop at the line of refreshment stalls at the bottom of the Acropolis without continuing past to the other side. I walked for some time, on dirt paths through the hill and the two others beside it, before finally cutting back out and heading back toward the city center.

Flowers in front of the Acropolis

I stopped briefly at the temple of Zeus. Though all that remains is a dozen or so massive pillars, it’s still quite an impressive sight, towering above the few people walking below. When it was finished, by the Roman emperor Hadrian (an impressive number of the giant ancient buildings I’ve seen so far bear the attribute of “finished by Hadrian”), it had well over fifty of these towering columns, no doubt instigating in its attendees the sort of religious awe that can still be felt in the Catholic cathedrals of today.

The temple of Zeus in Athens

By now Sophia was off work, and we met so she could show me around the city. I was fortunate: she translates Greek travel material into English for a living and just finished a piece about a walk around Athens, so she took me on it and narrated, with detail to the point that we both started laughing at how much like a professional tour guide she sounded.

The corner where the killing happened--the boy's picture is in the lower right

Then we went for a couple of drinks into the Exarchia district of Athens, which was an experience entirely unlike my ruin and tourist filled day. Exarchia is the meeting place of activists, young intellectuals, edgy musicians, and anarchists, and the air itself seemed charged. Young people were seated everywhere, drinking coffee or wine, with tattoos, dreadlocks, and the fashions of Greek alternative culture. The walls were covered in political grafitti of significantly higher intellectual content than your average city block: lines of poetry, political slogans, and the ever popular circled A of the anarchist. One street corner in the center of the district was the site of the infamous police killing of a sixteen year old boy last december, which sparked the riots that reached national television around the world. The corner is covered in memorial grafitti and tacked up pictures of the boy. Sophia was near one of the protests with a friend when the police came down on them, and was afraid to try to get home for fear of being arrested. The conflict is still very current, and as an outsider it’s difficult to say who is at fault: Sophia told me the (government-friendly) media spoke only of the rioting actions of the anarchists, while independent videos were released on the internet and in some private publications revealing police actually inciting protestors to violence and starting some of the fires themselves. Either way, it’s a tragic situation, and one that will happen again–both here in Athens, and around the world.

Grafitti in Athens

The next day was back to tourism again, and I spent most of it exploring the Archaeological Museum of Athens, two expansive floors of artifacts from around Greece from the neolithic period up through Roman rule. I had also visited the Acropolis museum the day before, and had noticed something interesting: many of the main pieces, such as the statues from the Parthenon, were plaster casts rather than the original stone. I overheard a tour guide talking about how the pieces were looted during past wars. “These are only the plaster-cast miniatures,” she says. Pause. “The originals are in the British museum.” One can almost hear her teeth grinding.

One thing I have to comment on is the Athens metro system. It is by far the cleanest I’ve seen anywhere, and is especially interesting because of all of the layers of history beneath the city: a fair percentage of the metro stops have glass floors opening to archaeological excavations going on beneath their floors, uncovered during the construction of the metro system. You’ll be walking through a steel and glass corridor full of modern art and look down and see, beneath your feet, the labyrinthine stone streets and architecture of ancient Athens. As I was walking into one of them with Sophia, she nodded and said, “They are the best thing about Athens.” Pause. “And the Acropolis.”

Sophia is fairly well connected with the rest of the couchsurfing community in Athens, and we went out that night with a French expat named Cedric who lives here in Athens and two American girls, Cate and Linda, who he was hosting for the night. The place was a bar on a rooftop, unmarked from the street, with a perfect view of the Acropolis, grandly lit up and towering against the dark and glittering lights of the city below.

A caught soul in Athens

I spent the next day “soul catching,” or walking around the city taking pictures of people–if the old tribes are right, that taking someone’s picture entitles you to his or her soul, I’m amassing quite a spiritual army. Then it was more couchsurfer meetings, for the next couple of nights–I can’t honestly say much happened during the days, as it was the weekend and we were generally out until between five and eight in the morning (Greeks, apparently, are nocturnal). One of the best things about Couchsurfing, I think, is that it creates a truly international community–the long discussions on everything from politics to film to religion and philosophy, with people from all over the world, will be some of my best memories of Athens. I even made a friend from Chihuahua, Mexico, which is the starting point for exploring one of the biggest canyons in the world–look forward to a few such Good and Lost episodes in the next few years!

A statue in a park in Athens

Tomorrow, hopefully, I catch a ferry on to either Folegandros or Santorini, to experience a few of the Greek islands. I’ve got a place to stay in Istanbul lined up, again through couchsurfing, though I have a feeling that, as usual, I may be a few days late.

 

Broken Trains and Cultural Divides

28 Jun

A a smaller version of Mostar Old Bridge

We gave Split a few hours chance to shape itself up, but with no luck. It was still raining by two thirty in the afternoon, and we picked up our bags and caught the three thirty bus to Mostar, Bosnia. The bus, I’ve decided, does have its advantages, especially when you’re in an area you’re unfamiliar with. The bus took us up into the Balkans, winding its way up through heavily wooded mountains and past outcroppings of black granite. In places the road was under repair–probably had been for decades–and amounted to little more than a dirt road full of potholes, slowing the bus down to barely over walking speed.

We passed the border, adding another passport stamp to the collection, and began to descend into the wide river valley that held the old town of Mostar. We stepped off the bus into the usual (for Eastern Europe, at least) crowd of apartment renters, local property owners looking to supplement their incomes by taking on boarders. Alex drove a hard bargain–eighteen euro for the three of us–and soon found an older woman who was willing to deal. She led us up into a nearby apartment block built in an Arabic style of architecture, with a high series of terraced flats and vine-covered arches. The lower level was covered in graffitti, but the apartment itself turned out to be quite nice. Anxious to see the town before dark, we dropped our bags and headed toward the river.

Our lodging in Mostar

Mostar was heavily bombed during the breakup of Yugoslavia, and almost everything in the city center has been rebuilt since the war. The biggest rebuilding project is the famous bridge the town is named for (the “Stari Most,” or old bridge), and they’ve done an admirable job–today’s bridge is a stone arch high above the river between two towers almost identical to the prewar version. Surrounding it is an expansive bazaar, selling jewelry, knockoff sunglasses, food, and clothes in the colorful Arabic style. We walked around until after dark, taking pictures and just seeing the sights. Next to the bridge is a photographic exhibition of the bridge’s rebuilding process, including footage of the fall of the bridge during the bombing of Mostar. It’s a thought provoking sight, especially for someone like myself from a country that hasn’t seen widescale war on its home soil for a century and a half.

Stari Most

We headed back to the apartment, hoping to get up early and take some more pictures before our 7:30 train ride to Sarajevo the next day, and ended up talking on the balcony until after midnight. Sleep, as usual, proved too persuasive an argument, and we barely made it to the train station in time. Mostar, it seems, will need to be added to the rapidly growing list of places I’m going to have to come back to.

The train ride to Sarajevo was only supposed to be a few hours, and took us back up into the mountains, through long tunnels carved into the rock, and past little Bosnian towns with their squat stone cottages and fading red tile roofs, and the narrow stacks of hay piled high around guide poles planted in the ground. As we were passing along the shores of a long artificial lake that filleda deep mountain valley, we entered a tunnel and, suddenly, were shaken by an ear-splitting whistle from the train and the grinding of the brakes.

There was a moment of silence, and then loud Bosnian cursing filled the corridor outside. Kiril managed to catch enough of the drift of the shouting to translate that a couple of gypsies had pulled the emergency brakes in the tunnel and jumped the train. We sat a bit longer, waiting to get underway, but nothing happened. Finally we leaned out into the corridor to see the two railroad officials that were on the train trying to jam the brake handle back into place, but with no luck. A crowd of locals were gathered around, giving advice and trying their hands at it. The standard method of Bosnian train repair, as far as I can tell, is a mixture of kicking, pounding and cursing in roughly equal dosages.

The broken rail car, left behind somewhere in the Balkans

As the train seemed to be lacking in any kind of proper tools, I pulled out my pocketknife with the screwdriver attachment and managed to get the cover off the brake. The knife was too small for the screws on the brake itself, so we tried a bigger knife, a series of coins, and a pair of fingernail clippers without success. Finally I used the pliers on my kinfe to fashion one out of a pen lid, and we managed to get the brake apart. The other passengers, all apparently from Bosnia or one of its neighboring countries, were interested in the three of us–Irish, English-Bulgarian, and American–and one, grinning, said “More interesting than bus, no?”

Meanwhile, a few other people were trying to disconnect the brake manually by fiddling around under the carriage, again employing liberal amounts of kicking and cursing. Either they dislodged something doing so, or something happened to the brake when the train stopped, because when we finally got the brake back into place, the car still refused to move.

The railroad officials gave up and moved everyone out of the broken train car, and within half an hour had it disconnected, and we were finally on our way. We got to Sarajevo around noon, to gray skies and Soviet architecture–the two seem to go quite well, and often, together. I was, of course, trying to get south toward Athens, but the Eastern European transport lines tend to use the hub mode of transport, which meant the only train south had to go north first to Belgrade. We decided to try to get a bus to Skopje, in Macedonia, which was due south and only an eight or ten hour train journey from Athens.

A shot up train car on the way to Sarajevo

The bus station, however, was unhelpful. A local man who spoke English translated the schedules for us, and we discovered that there were only two buses a week, on Tuesday and Friday, this being Saturday. He shrugged. “Too bad,” he said. “You miss bus by only one day!” That, in my mind, about somes up Eastern European transportation.

We opted for the long way around, northeast to Belgrade, south to Macedonia, and, for me, on to Athens. The train for that wasn’t until almost ten that night, so we spent the day exploring Sarajevo, sitting down for a few hours at a cafe next to the famous bridge where, on June 18, 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinan was shot dead, sparking the first World War.

The Latin Bridge in Sarajevo

These days shopping was the activity of choice, and as it was Saturday night, the city was gearing up for what looked to be an active night of nightclubs and disco bars. As we walked, the tonal wail of the Muslim call to prayer wafted from the mosques that scattered the area, and I was reminded once again that this wasn’t Kansas anymore. In this part of the world, Islam and Eastern Orthodox Christianity exist side by side, and the skyline is a strange mix of steeples, Soviet apartment high rises, and the minarets of mosques.

We boarded our train as night fell. There was no point trying to sleep. As far as I can tell, the train lines were laid before the breakup of Yugoslavia, and probably while the entire area was under Soviet rule. We expected one border crossing into Serbia, but instead were greeted by Croatian border officials at our first stop. Apparently the line cuts through a small corner of Croatia, which meant four long stops over the course of our journey: leaving Bosnia and entering Croatia, and then leaving Croatia an hour later and entering Serbia.

Alex, left, and Kiril

We managed to get at least a little sleep around these stops, and stumbled bleary-eyed out into the early morning in Belgrade at a quarter to seven the next morning. I checked the timetables, and it was finally time to part ways with Kiril and Alex. They planned to stay in Belgrade, and I would catch the train at 7:50 am to Skopje. We had a coffee at the station cafe–eastern Europe is, at least, cheap–and then said our goodbyes.

A Serbian house on the way to Skopje

The train journey took the better part of a day, moving from the dark mountains of northern Serbia into the more arid hills and rolling farmlands of southern Serbia and Macedonia. I got into Skopje around five and walked through the city, noticing, among other things, the smallest street in the world (one meter wide by seven long) and the street where, according to the sign, sixty percent of Macedonians bought their wedding rings. All of this was in the old bazaar district of the city, mostly closed this late on a Sunday, but still an interesting maze of streets in a mix of European and Arabic architecture, and regularly punctuated by mosques. Macedonian girls in low slung jeans and tight tank tops walked side by side with Muslim girls in long dresses and head scarves and this, it seems, is simply the way it is.

A mosque in Skopje

I stopped at a tiny restaurant on a hill in the middle of one of the poorer districts of the city, where no one spoke English, and ordered kebabs. Iended up with three sausages and bread and a Pepsi, all of which was still quite good–and cheap, at barely a euro fifty for the lot. Then a long walk back through the city to the train station. The parts of the city I walked through were poor, but didn’t seem uncomfortably so. The buildings were cheap cinderblock and concrete constructions, but decorated with colorful cloth and wooden balconies. Children played soccer in the streets, and I could see women on the open second floor terraces talking and drinking tea from gilded–if tarnished–Turkish teapots. To see these very Middle Eastern sorts of scenes while hearing the Slavic sound of the Macedonian language and reading Cyrillic on every sign reminded me again of just how much of a melting pot this place really is.

A street in the Old Bazaar district of Skopje

The next train to Thessaloniki and then to Athens wasn’t until seven the next morning, and I didn’t feel like blowing ten Euro on a hostel, so I headed back to the train station for likely quite a long night in a hard waiting room chair, or in a corner with my sleeping bag. In the process I found–blessing of blessings–a place right in the station called “Insomnia Internet Club.” As I had hoped to get some work done online anyway, I decided I could sleep on the train.

Tomorrow, Athens. I hope to couchsurf for two days there, and then head on to a few of the Greek islands, and afterwards, Istanbul. My trip is almost halfway over already, and my biggest regret so far is that I don’t have more time. Though everyone tells me that it’s good to do a trip like this now, because I won’t be able to later in life, I’m getting an increasingly nagging feeling that this first long journey will be far from the last.

 

Into the East

26 Jun

A church in Pula

On the train from Venice to Trieste, a shift in feeling and architecture is a matter of just a few hours. Venice is Italian, and its eastern influences are Byzantine in origin, ornate and wealthy. When I got off the train the sky was overcast for the first time since I left London, and the buildings, massive, Austrian, fit the atmosphere perfectly. This kind of architecture, with Italy’s signature red tiles, graffiti in various Slav languages, and a bus station advertising destinations everywhere from Venice to Vienna to Ljubljana and Belgrade, made this city seem like a meeting place for three different cultures–the western Mediterranean, personified by Italy, the north-central European, especially Austrian, and the eastern European.

A street in Pula

I didn’t stay long, as I wanted to make it to Croatia before nightfall. I got to the bus station thirty seconds too late to catch the 4:30 bus to Pula, and so bought a ticket on the 6:00 instead. I can’t count how many times a thirty second difference like this has made a major difference in my trip, or led to completely unexpected encounters. In this case, it led to my meeting two other travelers from Britain, Kiril and Alex. They’d been traveling across Europe by Land Rover, but had broken down in northern Italy. Their friends were with the vehicle, waiting for parts, and these two had packed a couple of backpacks and headed out on foot.

Guns in a museum in Pula

Kiril was also Bulgarian by birth, and spoke the language fluently. While not the same as Croatian, it’s close enough that he could understand the locals and they could more or less understand him. Even I could pick up at least as much of the local conversation as I could in Paris, since many of the basics of these languages are tied with Russian.

The bus took us out of Italy, stopping briefly at the border for passport checks, and then we were on our way south into Croatia. With this, the shift was complete. The large, ornate buildings of Trieste were replaced with fading Soviet apartment blocks, and the first rolling hills of the Istrian peninsula rose around the bus.

The Roman amphitheater in Pula

Kiril and Alex were of my philosophy and were carrying a tent, so we camped out that night in some thick woods near Pula, and even built a fire, my first so far this trip. The next morning we explored the town. I was surprised to see quite a large Roman amphitheater, almost completely intact, which was being prepared for some kind of concert. There were quite a few here, from the posters–both Sinead O’Connor to Madonna were booked for the near future. Kiril informed me that this part of the world loves its rock festivals and big concerts.

I’d heard of a place called Plitvice Lakes, and was determined to visit, so Kiril and Alex decided to come along. We caught the bus to Rijeka, a bustling port city, and from there on to Karlovac. By now it was dark, so the three of us walked out of town, past row after row of tall Soviet apartment buildings. The walls facing the freeway were marked with scattered clusters of bullet holes, probably from the Croatian Homeland War in the early nineties. The next day we would see old tanks sitting in an empty lot just outside of town.

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We found a good enough place to sleep, though–Croatia so far has provided good camping ground–and in the morning, with no real desire to see more of Karlovac, caught the first bus to Plitvice. From Karlovac, the road plunged into the Balkan mountain range, with rolling, heavily wooded hills raising on all sides. The Plitvice stop was unassuming enough, a wooden shack in front of a post office that stood alone in the woods, complete with stacks of firewood in the back.

The park itself was just a few dozen meters down the road. Apparently it’s quite a tourist attraction, and there were people there from all over western and eastern Europe, as well as a few people from Australia. There were three different hotels and a couple of restaurants situated just outside the entrance, but we weren’t interested in spending fifty Euro a night, and headed straight into the park.

Plitvice Park walking path

At first, we walked a wooded trail that skirted the edges of still lakes with bright blue water. Pretty enough, but then the trail climbed up to the second tier of lakes. Here waterfalls cascaded down the rocks and wooden walking bridges wound across the shallows and around the edges. From here there were tier after tier of lakes and more waterfalls, everywhere, some of them carved into spouts and tunnels in the rock from millenia of running water. The lakes themselves were still and clear, fish swimming just beneath the surface. A beautiful place.

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Heading out of the park, we met a couple of other English guys who had heard us asking about the nearest campground–a good eight kilometers away–and invited us to stay in the flat they’d rented for the night. One of them was studying to be a doctor, and was waiting for his graduation results, which would come out the next day, at which point he planned to throw a party either in celebration or drink anyway to drown his sorrows. Despite this offer of proper English drinking, we parted ways the next morning and tried to catch a bus from the park to either Zagreb, to the northeast, or Split, to the south. And tried. And tried. Everyone we asked had different answers, and timetables varied depending on where they were posted. Just when we were beginning to think we’d stumbled into the Hotel California, a bus rumbled up to the stop at the time posted, for once, and we headed south down the coast to Split.

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It was a long but beautiful bus ride, down out of the mountains into the sparse scrubland along Croatia’s curving coastline and the clear blue Mediterranean. Here the cities were sundrenched, with palm trees and beaches, sailboats gleaming white out to sea, and the occasional coastal castle in ruins on high promontories.

The Croatian countryside from the bus

We arrived in Split around 7:30 that evening, bought some groceries, and talked with one of the hordes of room owners trying to get us to stay with them. The price started at 450 kuna–at a conversion rate of about seven kuna to a euro–and dropped to 250 for the three of us when we played the poor young travelers card. At barely over ten euro for a decent nights sleep in an apartment with two beds, a kitchen, and our own bathroom, not too bad at all. We capped it all off with a bottle of Rakia before bed, a sort of local plum brandy. Quite good but, Kiril says, nowhere near as good as the homemade stuff. I’ll have to come back to eastern Europe again, I think, and explore a little more in depth.

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Today it started sunny, but now it’s started raining. We’ll probably explore a bit anyway and see what happens. After that we finally part ways; I head down toward Athens, which I’ll hopefully reach in a couple of days, and Kiril and Alex head east to Bulgaria and Kiril’s father’s fiftieth birthday. What I see in between is still entirely up in the air; as usual, I’ll see what I see.

 

Rome and the Pope, and a City on the Sea

22 Jun

Statues above St. Peter's Square

Rome is nothing if not dense. Though in terms of area it’s significantly smaller than many of the world’s other major cities–it’s possible to walk across the city proper in little over an hour, and thirty minutes on the train brings you out into the fields and farmland outside the city–there are things to see and do on every corner. Fountains, parks, art exhibitions, and of course massive churches are all across the city.

I went to the Vatican as planned and tagged behind a tour group before getting bored and heading off on my own. Standing in front of me were a couple I thought I recognized, who I hadn’t spoken to at the time, from a bus back in Corsica. Turns out that at the same time travel teaches you how big the world is, it teaches you just how small it is at the same time. Their names were Olly and Kaitlin, from the U.K. and Canada respectively, and they had in fact been sitting a few seats in front of me on the bus ride from Ajaccio to Bonifacio a couple of weeks ago.

Inside St. Peter's

We walked around St. Peter’s Basilica for a while, noting the fact that in the past the Catholic church seems to have had no lack for funding. The interior of the Basilica is cavernous, overawing, full of statues and expansive murals of Biblical stories. The tourists move along in a vast hushed crowd, counterclockwise around the interior, before emerging, blinking, back into the sunlight. Beneath the Basilica is the crypt, where several popes are buried, as well as several other important church personages. The most important, of course, is St. Peter himself–Christ had said, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” The Catholics have taken this both as a figurative foundation for their theology and for papal authority, and also quite literally. Father Withoos informed me that, after Peter was crucified, he was buried in an Etruscan cemetery on what was then Vatican hill, one of the seven hills of Rome. This became, naturally, a point of pilgrimage for early Christians, and a shrine was soon built on the site. The current basilica was built on the assumption that this was all true–the original cemetery was buried under the foundations of the successive shrines and churches that had been built on the spot.

During World War II, however, there were some doubts–after all, no one had ever seen the grave. So, starting under Mussolini’s dictatorship, the church undertook a secret investigation, excavating beneath the church even as masses were given to an unsuspecting following in the basilica above. Finally they found what seemed to be the original burial place–an altar covered with inscriptions dating back from the first few centuries after Christ, and beneath it, a burial chamber.

The only problem was, chemical testing of the soil revealed that no one had ever actually been buried there. The tomb was empty, and had always been empty. This, clearly, was a problem. Meanwhile, the altar itself had been cut open as the translation of the inscriptions were taking place, and inside it were found several human bones, wrapped in purple cloth. As purple cloth was only worn by Roman emperors, it was assumed that one of the later emperors had desired to be buried near where he thought the saint lay. One of the archaeologists on the project filed the bones away in storage for later examination, and the translation and analysis of the inscriptions continued for the next fifteen years.

Finally, when they’d translated nearly everything else, they came to one of the last inscriptions, older than the rest. And there it was: Here Lies Peter. Fortunately, the archaeologist was still around, and remembered the bones she’d stored away, and they were quickly put back in their place. The gist of the story is that all the forensic evidence points to crypt beneath St. Peter’s as the actual burial place of Peter the Apostle. Father Withoos says this is the best thing to see in Rome, but understandably, there’s quite a waiting list and I wasn’t able to make it.

On the way to the Sistine Chapel

And, of course, no trip to the Vatican is complete without a visit to the Sistine Chapel. Olly, Kaitlin and I headed into the Vatican Museum to take a look. We passed the Vatican post office, which is the most efficient in Europe after those in Switzerland–quite a feet, considering that the Vatican is right in the middle of Italy, which is, let us say, not the most efficient, or likely even the second least. The path to the Sistine Chapel runs through the old papal chambers, covered in priceless paintings by Raphael and others by the great Italian painters. High ceilings, marble floors–really rather posh, especially considering the rather more simple mode of living preferred by the religion’s founder.

The Sistine Chapel itself tends to take the breath away, especially if, like most people, you’re already familiar with Michaelangelo’s work. Intricate paintings span the whole ceiling, far above the craning necks of the crowd below. Michaelangelo painted it almost entirely by himself, standing on scaffolding and constantly working above his head until the whole series of masterpieces were complete. If there were chiropractors in his day, he must have made thim rich.

I had a pizza afterwards with Olly and Kaitlin and said goodbye, then headed back to the house. The next day was Roman day. I gritted my teeth and booked in with a tour group, which covered the Coliseum, Palatine Hill, and the Roman Forum. It turned out to be quite worth it, as the tour guide knew his topic and tried his best to make us understand what life was like in the days of Rome, down to the details–like how the floor of the Coliseum was made of wood and covered in sand, so that after the games the blood would be easier to clean, or how, in one of the games, twenty elephants and fifty lions were loosed to fight to the death, resulting in a chaos that, by all accounts, entirely entranced the huge audience arrayed on the three tiers of seating. This place, according to the guide at least, has seen the most concentrated number of deaths of any location in the world, with several centuries of almost daily combats, animal against animal, human against animal, and, most popularized, human against human.

Inside the Coliseum

Palatine Hill is nearby, with a view over the city. This was the place where, as legend has it, Romulus founded the city of Rome. It’s been popular ever since–at first the neighborhood of Rome’s early powermongers, and then a massive palace complex for the emperor Domitian, the ruins of which still dominate the surrounding landscape. Even Mussolini got a piece of the action–his name’s still inscribed on the building that is now the hills museum. Though now in ruins, the hill is still impressive–carved marble columns, wide brick arches and walls (originally plated in marble, all of which has now been “borrowed” by the Vatican), statues, and bushes of bright red flowers that, when they wilt and fall, durn dark and coat the ground in a carpet of crimson.

I walked down through the Forum, home to a good portion of the intrigues that went on seemingly constantly among the higher circles. Jealousy, adultery, murder, lies–Rome in its day was a bit like a soap opera that ruled the world. Although, it must be said, I have not yet found a case of amnesia that had any significance during the early Roman period.

After heading out, I took a wide circle that took me through most of the northern part of the city, up old roads and down the new ones that are now fronted with the main stores of the big Italian fashion brands, Prada, Gucci, Armani, suits that would cost me more than this trip, shoes for prices that could feed a fair sized family for half a year. Interesting, the lengths we humans go to to try to improve our standing in the eyes of our fellow mortals.

The Pope. Or, at least, the guy who played him.

That night I attended a play in the Forum put on by several English-speaking expats in the city, a humorous interpretation of the life of Michaelangelo, quite clever, and generously donated to afterwards. I also had a long talk with Fanika, a Romanian girl who works for the family I’m staying with, and who I met when she was taking care of Isaac and Saffron, the two children. She’d had an interesting life, and from the sounds of things would continue to do so–a trip to Thailand this Christmas, if all goes well. Fanika, best of luck.

For my final day in Rome, I took a bit of a bummeltag, walking with Isaac in the morning up a nearby hill and stopping for some truly excellent frozen yogurt and fruit–locally grown, and rather tastier than the American supermarket variety. Then it was time to say goodbye again, and I got on an overnight train to Venice.

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If Rome is a stately emperor, Venice is his mistress. Same sense of Roman respectability, but beautiful, a bit saucy, and with a tad too much makeup. The city is unreal, built barely a meter ab0ve the level of the sea, with canals snaking through it in every possible way. There are no cars inside the city, either–the streets, or “callas” are rarely more than sidewalk width, and the only form of motorized transportation inside the city is by boat. Indeed, some of the big five star hotels have their main entrances on the waterfront rather than the street front, as the wealthier tourists usually take one of the many water taxis directly to their destinations.

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The city is also a labyrinth. Perhaps the architects were drinking a bit too much when they planned it, or perhaps there wasn’t much of a plan in the first place. Either way, alleys collide at every possible angle, so dense that even a good map is still difficult to use. The biggest landmarks are the churches, and with their high bell towers it’s sometimes possible to navigate just by the sound–even then, I’ve found myself on more than one occasion making a wide circle around my target because no callas lead toward it, or if they do, end abruptly at the stone steps of a canal.

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Still, you can feel the sense of enchantment the city has always had, ever since the wealth it received during its days as the single most powerful city on the Mediterranean allowed the building of the extravagant archictecture still visible everywhere today. You’ll take a calla here and suddenly be out of earshot of the crowded main tourist arteries and find yourself beside a quiet and empty canal, with water so still you can see the reflection of the old stone walls above. Then again, the canal water is filthy, and the smells alternate from warm bakeries to dank seawater, depending on the whim of the breeze.

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Glassblowers, too, are everywhere, selling jewelry to the tourists and furniture and decorations to those–quite numerous–of richer blood visiting the city. Gondolas ferry passengers up and down beneath the arching stone bridges, and carpenters work on the exteriors of some of the older buildings from old boats full of scrap wood.

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Venice has always been a center of the arts, and that quickly becomes apparent. Vivaldi was born here, and one of the churches is hosting a collection of antique instruments in his honor, from beautiful cellos, to flutes, to some instruments that were designed for specific musical pieces. During Vivaldi’s time, Venice hosted an all-female orchestra–very rare for that era–gleaned from the poor and unfortunate young girls of the city. They were taken out of poverty, housed, and extensively trained to the point of musical excellence. Venice is justifiably proud of its history of care for its less fortunate citizens, with a whole host of public works projects, and, like the orchestra, cases of creating true beauty where others might have been content to simply give a donation.

The churches, too, often feel like art museums. Whereas Rome was more focused on gilding and statuary, the churches of Venice feature whole walls painted by Renaissance artists, some of them quite famous even today. So, while the great churches of Rome feel very Roman–imposing, grand, much increased by the same white marble that originally gave the same feeling to classical Rome–Venezian churches are a bit darker, a bit more chaotic in design, and rich with the colors of murals that span from floor to vaulted ceilings.

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It was a long day, and a good one. In the evening I took the train to Vicenza, a half hour’s ride from Venice, where there’s an American army base I have friends at. I met Daniel, a friend of mine from back in Montana, at the train station, and we walked around town for a bit. He pointed out bits of graffiti here and there, anti-American, referring to the tensions between the base and local officials. The base wants to buy up more land, the locals don’t want to give it; conflicts like these are, perhaps, inevitable.

So I spent the night back on American ground, more or less, in the U.S. Army barracks, before waking up at 5:30 when Daniel left for PT. I said my goodbyes and headed back to the train station, and back to Venice, where I’m now sitting, in a cafe I managed to find after a long and circuitous route. This afternoon I head to Trieste, and from there to Rijeka, in Croatia. The plan there is beaches and national parks–as much as I’ve enjoyed both Rome and Venice, I’m l0oking forward to getting back to nature for a bit.

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