Ancient Cities: Pergamon

We rested in Izmir for a day before venturing up the Western Coast via a 3-hour busride to Bergama.   Overlooking Bergama is the Hellenic city of Pergamon, dating back to 281 BC.   Our bus pulled into to the small and grimy Bergama station.  Lucky Mom had her first, and perhaps last, squat toilet experience there.  I love that this refined 76-year old southern lady doesn’t blink in these situations.   She has always been and will always be my adventurous traveller role model. 

We decided to make a fast escape from the squalor of the station and grabbed a cab up to the top of the mountain.  There lay the ancient city, cloaked in a fine mist.  Aside from one smallish tour group, we had the place to ourselves.  

Interesting to learn that the city was re-discovered by a German engineer in 1871, when locals showed him a bit of a mosaic peaking through the grassy mountaintop.  He immediately saw the treasure trove that was Pergamon, and oversaw a massive excavation.  Money passed hands, and lickety split, many of the antiquities were shipped off to Germany, including an entire Altar to Zeus complete with gorgeous friezes.  One day I’ll visit the Pergamon museum in Berlin, and have very mixed feelings about these artifacts:  good that they’ve been preserved, bad that they’re so far removed from their home on the misty Anatolian mountaintop.

Quite a bit of the city remains, and we spent a peaceful afternoon soaking it all in.  Mom enjoyed the view from the very tip-top of the super steep amphitheater (seats 10,000) dug into the side of the mountain while the boys rambled up and down the steep steps, borrowing the cell phone to capture silly pictures.   Three generations of the Tigrett/Hunter/McCann clan playing out our small dramas in this 2,000-year old theater. 

Ancient Cities: Ephesus

From Izmir, we set out on two separate day trips.  On Tuesday, we took a bus two hours south to Selçuk, where we caught a cab to Ephesus in the morning and a bus to the town of Şirince in the afternoon.  On Thursday, we took a bus three hours to the north to the town of Bergama, which sits at the base of the fantabulous ancient city of Pergamon. 

Ephesus is “the” must see for visitors to Turkey.  It practically glitters with the wealth of the ancient Byzantine inhabitants.  We walked down the long marble street past well-preserved marble mansions, bathhouses, mosaic floors, and a grand temple with detailed friezes, on the way to the massive two-story library and huge amphitheater.  The city is bursting with art – literature, theater and sculpture – clearly a central feature of life for the cosmopolitan Byzantine inhabitants of Ephesus.

Even amidst the museum quality artifacts that filled every nook and cranny of the site, there was very little oversight.  It was up to me to rein in the boys as they leapt like mountain goats around the ruins.  November once again proved to be a great time to travel in Turkey.  There was a crowd, but it was nothing like the shoulder-to-shoulder throngs described in the guidebooks. 

In contrast, the little village of Şirince where we spent our afternoon, was incredibly crowded.  Perhaps it hit me more because I was expecting to an intimate village setting.  I guess that’s what the rest of the bus-loads of visitors were seeking out as well.  It was originally a Greek village in the 1500s but most of the houses you see are 19th century white washed red-tiled ottoman style villas, surrounded by vineyards and olive orchards.  We stopped immediately at a beautiful hillside restaurant and tried the local wine while looking out over the red-roofed houses dotting the hillside.  

Walking through the town, though, was like being at the Grand Bazaar.  Vendors and shopkeepers beseeched us to buy their wares.  It was depressing.  

The occasional passing tractors and trucks filled with bags of olives were evidence that this town is not purely a tourist attraction.  Hard-working farmer men and women, many whom appeared to be my mother’s age, were returning from a long day in the olive orchards. 

Izmir! (catching up)

If you want to practice your Turkish, Izmir is a great city to visit.  My mastery extends to little beyond hello, thank you, right here and numbers 1 through 29, but I am pretty good at wild gesturing and exaggerated facial expressions.  Izmir is the third largest city in Turkey, but tourists clearly beeline from the airport to the more picturesque nearby ancient cities.  Bucking that trend, Mom, the boys and I stayed in a little duplex we rented through airbnb for five nights. 

If there is a touristy section of Izmir, which I doubt, our little duplex was not in it.  It was little oasis of Ikea décor situated in a real working class Turkish neighborhood.  We were about a 10-minute walk to the metro station, which in turn was about a 20-minute train ride to the waterfront.  From outward appearances, we definitely occupied the nicest place in the hood.  Just out the front door were lots of street cats and dogs (generally friendly but very rowdy at 2am), men hauling fruit and veggie carts down the street, and residents of all ages ambling down the middle of the street rather than on the sidewalks. 

We arrived on a Sunday afternoon (November 10) and set out by metro to the waterfront at Konak square, where the boys happily chased flocks of pigeons around the clock tower while Mom and I admired the perfectly tiny blue tiled 800-year old Seljuk mosque, one of the few remaining antiquities in the city. 

From there we walked along the waterfront to a very modern enclosed pier (fancy mall with cafes and a bookstore).  Just outside the pier/mall, we ran into two separate groups of Georgetown students!  In a city of 3 million, the Americans find each other at the mall…of course.  We also managed to rendezvous with Bryan, who stayed with us for the night and following day before re-joining the Georgetown study trip up the Western Coast.

Unfortunately, very little of the city’s previous incarnation, the ancient city of Smyrna, remains.  It was practically erased in 1922 when the Turkish army, under Ataturk, pushed out the Greeks in a gruesome and bloody battle that left 70 percent of the city burned to the ground.  What was once a booming multi-ethnic port city with impressive Roman, Seljuk, Byzantine and Ottoman architecture, is now a middle-class commercial city with frankly cheap and ugly architecture.  Alas.  One Roman site is currently being excavated, known as the “Agora” or marketplace.  It’s below ground level and we watched as the workers put it back together like a kid reassembling a broken Lego set. 

It was absolutely refreshing to be in a Turkish city that didn’t revolve around tourists.  What a contrast to Alanya, where workers perched on stools outside their shops and beg you to come in, with the constant curious refrain of "Hi Hi Yes Please" and then as you walk away a last desperate attempt to get your attention by repeatedly asking "Hey Lady, Where are you from??  Where are you frommmm!).  I loved attracting little to no notice as we strolled along the waterfront promenade, plowed through the noisy fish market and wandered around the interior warren of city streets filled with residents, all of whom barely gave us a second glance.

The Epiloog

In two weeks’ time, really 12 days, I’ll no longer be reporting live from Alanya, so I’d better get cracking.  At the very least, I’ll post some of the many (many) photos taken over the past month and a half, during my blog hiatus.  In short – over the past 6 weeks, we’ve had a lot of wonderful visits by family and done a lot of traveling throughout Turkey.

My mom arrived November 5^th and we spent the second week of her visit exploring Western coast of Turkey with the boys, while Bryan was on his long bus-trek up the same coast with the Georgetown students.  Mom, Booker, Seamus and I spent a day in Antalya before flying to Izmir.  From our Izmir home base, we explored Ephesus, Sirinçe and Bergama (Pergamon).  Back home to Alanya for a few days, and then Mom and I set off, just the two of us, to spend 4 days Istanbul, where we were joined by my adventurous niece, Elizabeth.  From there, I flew back to Alanya (a rare solo flight) just in time to receive Sean, Minou and Dexter for a Thanksgiving visit!  We all managed to squeeze in visits to the Alara Castle and an old Seljuk bridge in the Taurus mountains on one day, and to the Mamure castle and the Roman city of Anemurium, outside the town of Anamur, a three-hour drive east from Alanya along the stunning and treacherous coastline.  Four days later, Bryan the boys and I took a bus for a second visit to Antalya with our fellow Georgetown faculty family and good friends, the Bartleys.  The following day, both families spent a day climbing in the Taurus Mountains to visit the misty mountaintop ruins of Termessos.  Wow.  There’s so much to tell.

And here we find ourselves tonight heading to the McGhee Center final dinner.  Most everyone, students and faculty alike, will scatter in all directions tomorrow.  It will be very hard to say good-bye to this crew.  They’ve all added so much interest, hilarity and warmth to our lives here.  While I hate to see them go, I’m glad to be staying on for a bit.  I'm not quite prepared to fly off into the horizon just yet.  As Seamus would say, we have one more chapter, and then the “epiloog” left in this story.

Akseki

Over the past two months, the Taurus Mountains have formed the backdrop of our life in Alanya.  Take a right out of our apartment building, walk for 10 to 15 minutes and you’re in the foothills of the mountains.  Each time the boys and I head that direction to buy groceries at Metro (the Turkish Costco) I remember my plan to spend a morning with them walking up into the hills.  Then I get back to the apartment and promptly forget.

My first close-up of the Taurus Mountains was from the bus window as we returned from Göreme.  So awe-inspiring.  Our bus entered foot of the mountains from the inland side, after passing through hours and hours of flat barren dusty Anatolian plateau, an area that is the very picture of the devastating effects of deforestation.  The boys can tell you all about this after our recent 6^th grade science lesson on how deforestation leads to desertification which in turn destroys biodiversity.  It was a relief to see deep green pines and cedar trees sprouting out of the jagged limestone slopes of the Taurus Mountains as our bus neared.  Fortunately, it’s not a hospitable landscape for clear-cutting.  As we entered deeper into the mountain pass, I had just enough time to imagine cute little goats hopping up the sides of the slopes before the sun dipped and night fell.  My attention turned back to the mother of young children sitting in the seat in front of me, wearing full black niqab speaking Arabic.  Where was she from (Syria, Iran, Iraq?), where was she going?  

Those questions weren’t answered, but we did return to the mountains for a closer look at the life within.  Bryan organized a weekend trip for us to Akseki, a small mountain village.  This is a place that doesn’t see many tourists.  An hour and a half from Alanya, well into the Taurus Mountains, our bus stopped briefly to drop our family of four on the side of highway before zooming over the mountain toward Konya.  We waited on a patch of gravel on the side of the highway, with a makeshift bench of old bus-seats leaning against a tree.  An Iranian hitchhiker, with only sunglasses and a pack, shared our little gravel patch.  He was heading home after two years of travelling the world by catching rides and surfing couches.  Nothing scared him, he said, except apparently Ebola.  He had jettisoned the Africa portion of his itinerary after reading about it.

The innkeeper of our “boutique” hotel arrived to retrieve us in short order, and drove us to the Ottoman era house converted into a hotel.  The house had beautifully restored ornate woodwork and the rooms were elegant and simple with windows opening onto a breathtaking mountain view.  The inn was, however, experiencing electrical difficulties due to recent rains, according to our innkeepers.  We had the only guest room with electricity, and the only shower that worked was in another room downstairs.  Seamus was thrilled to see that the downstairs bathroom had a BATHTUB!  Just as he was filling it up getting ready for the first soak in two months, the light went poof.  Poor little guy was crouched in the lukewarm water trying to cover himself while the innkeeper balanced tip-toe on an old chair to change the overhead light bulb.  That failed, and we were down to zero functioning showers.  Good thing our stay was only one night.  In any case, the nice innkeeper made up for it by shuttling us through the mountains to the town of Akseki where we caught the tail end of the town farmer’s market and hiked up into the surrounding mountains.  The townsfolk were hardy weathered mountain types, many of them selling their produce spread on blankets, or piled into plastic crates and large recycled buckets.  A couple of men had set up a table with tin bowls of tasty looking porridge.  As we passed they pulled us over and gave us each a bowl, gratis.  It contained various grains, chickpeas, fresh fruit, nuts, sugar and cinnamon.  Not sure whether the free distribution was connected to a municipal, civic or religious group, but we were happy to partake in the delicious offering.

The next day we wandered down to a tiny village that was next to our hotel.  It was eerie.  During our walk into the town we saw one man hammering away at his garage and a clutch of old ladies in head-scarves sorting olives on blanket.  Other than that, the one town administrative building, streets and houses were apparently deserted.  We walked by the town mosque just as the call to prayer rang out through the empty streets.  Clearly this town used to be bustling – the houses were old and well-constructed and the graveyards were full of impressive tombstones.  I suppose the young moved out to Akseki and beyond and the old are left to tend what’s left of the goat-herds and olive trees.