Turkey Trot

Turkey Trot
April 22-May 10,2010

We’re 29 in our tour group with 15, I being the newest recruit of the Olympians, belonging to my classmate Josie Olympia’s travel group from Buffalo. For such a large group we got along very well. We should know how to behave, after all most of us have already qualified for Medicare. However, very likely, our exemplary behavior was shaped by our program director, Serif, who led the tour with the precision and discipline of an army sergeant and the erudition of a professor combined, which he was both in another life. He is proud of his country and its history and we’re incurable romantics, so we were easily charmed and won over. And we loved the tales about Tamel, a beguiling figure of humor who knows not to sweat life's details, and eagerly awaited our daily installment.

Turkey is an amazing land and visiting it brings to life the history of the world which in high school in my case was a dreary class that involved memorizing dates and wars. Turkey indeed is a crossroad of civilization and this educational and cultural tour conveyed that vividly, but what’s breathtaking is the transformation of a nation gestated from centuries of imperial sectarian rule and birthed from a bloody war into a modern secular republic. With Ataturk’s leadership it brought about legal, social, and economic reforms that propelled the country into the 21st century in a generation. The father of the republic is beloved in Turkey, and his name is spoken in reverence, a larger than life figure, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

We’d start our day with Tamel. His antics kept us alert and set our mood right. Serif ran a tight schedule and packed a lot of stuff in a day. He was determined to enrich our experience and educate us about Turkey, and he even gave us a quiz at the end of the tour and graded our paper! Here’s a Tamel tale: Tamel just became a new father and his neighbor asks him, “What did you have, a boy or a girl?” He answers, “ A boy.” “So what’s his name?”, the neighbor asks. And Tamel answers, “ I don’t know, he can’t talk yet”.

Our tour started in Istanbul and immediately we’re hooked. From the airport on our way to the hotel in Taksim Square, we drove along the coast of the Sea of Marmara, then the Golden Horn, its banks lined with parks and promenades and bursting with multi-hued tulips. The tulip originated from Turkey, the flower is featured in ancient carpets, ceramics , and art, but flourished in Holland after it was exported there by a British diplomat. Istanbul is reclaiming it by staging a Tulip Festival in spring and planting millions of the bulb annually. It’s simply awesome to know that the city sits on 2 continents, Europe and Asia, and the narrow Bosphorus Strait that separates them connects 2 seas, the Marmara and the Black Sea. We were out early one morning and it startled us to see dolphins bobbing in and out of the water in the middle of a bustling city.I don’t know what to make of Istanbul. It has the romance of the past, it was once Constantinople. It has magnificent structures, the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, Dolmabahce Palace. It wears its history with the new high rises among ruins of Roman rule with the underground cisterns and aqueduct, the hippodrome, it is Asia with the Egyptian Spice market and the grand bazaar, it is Europe with outdoor cafes and the ballet and opera, and its grand houses and mansions along the Bosphorus, it is bustling with commerce along the Golden Horn and Taksim Square is lined with restaurants and pubs. But the country, though secular is 99% Muslim and the chanting call for prayers 5 times a day is announced from minarets that pierce the skyline like standing sentinels. This might be odd to a Christian but what about a Muslim who is jolted by church bells tolling? One doesn’t see the burqa but many women young and old still wear the scarf and keep themselves covered and some men still wear the fez. I can imagine some identity confusion in the young generation that would be akin to the ambivalence and cultural dilemma faced by children of immigrants from SE Asia in the USA. Unless you’re in tourist areas, ordering a drink can be a challenge, and pork is not part of the cuisine.

Aah, the cuisine, I could eat it everyday, especially the eggplant dishes and the cold appetizers, and I love lamb, so it's a match, the kebaps are seasoned so well and very tasty, grilled to tenderness. Baklava originated from Turkey but somehow the Greeks attached it to themselves and marketed that to the world.There is an infinite variety of flavors of baklava, and each one packs calories, but who cares? We loved the lahmahcun, a flat thin crust dough painted with sweetish tomato paste and can have cheese or ground meat on top, baked in a stone oven, then garnished with parsley and sprinkled with fresh lemon juice, rolled and eaten immediately, melts in your mouth. I discovered a new fruit which I had everyday for breakfast, the loquat, and I developed a taste for halva too. We had a cooking demonstration by Sahin, a renowned Antalya chef, and I will adapt his halva for my dinner guests, with extra Metty flourish. In the coastal provinces, fresh whole fish grilled with olive oil is perfection.

We crossed the Dardanelles from Turkey in Europe to Turkey in Asia, moving along the coast of the Sea of Marmara. In Galipoli, we stopped to ponder the human tragedy of war. Turkish troops led by Ataturk defeated the ANZAC forces of the Allies here in WWI with heavy casualties on both sides, about 250,000 each. We arrived the day after the anniversary of the battle and there were still fresh flowers on the graves.

Surrounded by politically unstable countries, Turkey maintains a large compulsory armed forces. It has Syria,Iraq and Iran in its SE border, Armenia and Georgia NE, and Russia in the Black Sea, Greece and Bulgaria in the NW. It has been invaded through the centuries from all directions and its current real estate has been carved out of war. Its recent revolutionary past is fresh in the nation’s mind so serving in the force is an honor and carries much prestige. A young man’s lack of service credential could be a deal breaker in applying for jobs or in marriage.

Asian Turkey is Anatolia, in Asia Minor in ancient times, in the Fertile Crescent, the Cradle of Civilization and it shared epochal events with other legendary lands like Mesopotamia, Troy, Persia, Baghdad, Palestine, Jerusalem, Egypt, Greece, Rome; where god-like men ruled as Suleiman the Magnificent, Alexander the Great, Homer hailed from Turkey. There are many Christian sites in Turkey. The Virgin Mary retired in Ephesus after Jesus’ crucifixion. Mt. Ararat of Noah’s fame is in Turkey . St Paul did his conversion in Turkey and addressed the Seven Churches of the Revelation. There’s the Basilica of St. John and his tomb. Christians fled to Cappadocia from Roman persecution and carved living spaces and churches in the Tufa formations, and their magnificent frescoes still shine brilliantly today . There are self-contained cities underground that are 9 stories deep that protected inhabitants from enemies, with animals, provisions, even wine making facilities. Cappadocia is incredible with fanciful tufa formations that look like fairy chimneys, or if you’re really imaginative, they look like penis heads in an obscene valley, and white undulating mountains like an alien landscape. We glided over this surreal landscape at sunrise in a hot air balloon. In Pamukkale there are hot springs and white travertine pool terraces that defy description.You can even swim in a pool littered with ancient artifacts and fed by hot springs.Turkey has an esteemed past, and excavations throughout Turkey document its history and this rich yield of artifacts fill their antiquities museum and tell the story of man himself. The great civilizations of the ancient world had a foothold in Turkey, from the Chalcolithic period eons ago to the modern republic, they marched along through their golden apex until their destruction by conquest, or nature's ire. The Hittites, Lydians, Lyceans, Phrygians, the Hellenistic and Roman conquests, Troy, Byzantine, the Crusades,the Seljuks, Celtic, the Ottoman Empire. We visited all the remains of these civilizations and imagined what it was like.

In Izmir, we had a home visit in Gobeller, a small village of 100 families, where the family spoke no English and we spoke no Turkish, but we managed and had a great time. We were in groups of 5, and I was with the group who had lunch with Birol and his family. He is a tractor operator from what we can gather, has a pretty wife who was very sweet and proudly served us lunch using her good matching dinner set, 2 daughters ages 6 and 3, the latter was at home, and the cutest ever, her 2 grandmothers live with her. The older girl was in school. We visited a village 1-room school teaching grades 1-3, and a 4th grade classroom in another school in a larger town . All the school children wears uniform, all excited to have their pictures taken and to speak English, very happy and open and spontaneous. Children are special in Ataturk's vision, they have a National Children Holiday. The student, the farmer, and the soldier are the vessels to the future for this young republic.

We covered great distances on this tour and it was crucial to have timely pit stops. Serif was cognizant of that and in every stop he gave directions to the WC first thing, and we learned very quickly that Bayan is for girls and Giris is enter, and you have to ask for directions to the water closet, not the ladies room, and in some you must pay a Lira to use it and there's no guarantee whether you get a sit down commode or an Asian squat hole, or if there's toilet paper provided. Some were not able to do it squatting and were forced to queue for a long time for the limited seat commode. But bathing is an art and the famous Turkish bath was a discovery for me in Cannakale. You are scrubbed and washed and covered with suds laid out nude on a warm marble platform, under a skylight, in a coed bath with 2 young and gorgeous Turks on each side, how much more exciting Turkey can be?

Our flight back home was canceled due to the ashes still being blown by Iceland's Eyjafjallajokul volcano. I was rebooked to Chicago from Istanbul, and system computer glitches caused verification delays which almost caused us to miss flight connections. We had to sprint to board and in Chicago I had to recheck my luggage myself from Terminal 5 to Terminal 2, and get them up and down the train with only 20 minutes to make it. I was almost denied boarding and luckily I'm a platinum Skymiles member so I was upgraded to first class, and whew!made it. I ordered a beer as soon as I was seated.

So here's Tamel on his first flight, he was going to the Black Sea. He got on board and sat in the First class cabin whereas his ticket was economy. He wouldn't budge after the stewardess repeatedly requested him to transfer so she called the pilot to handle the matter. The pilot recognizing Tamel's origins from his attire, whispered something in his ear and promptly Tamel got up and transferred to the economy cabin. The stewardess, impressed asked the pilot what he whispered in Tamel's ear. The pilot said," Oh, I just told him that the seat he was on wasn't going to the Black Sea, that it was in the next cabin."

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