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.