Cappadocia

Part of the open air museum

It started with a mammoth trip across Turkey - getting up at 7, catching the tram to the airport, driving to the ferry to cross the Bosphorous then driving a good 8 or 9 hours to Göreme in Cappadocia, arriving at about 10:30. Cappadocia is dominated by a bizarre landscape often referred to as "Lunar" - usually by people who have never been to the moon. In fact the mass of Fairy Chimneys, also known as Hooroos, are created by erosion - the underlying soft stone (in this case I believe it's a kind of sandstone) is topped with a thin layer of harder rock, in this case volcanic in origin. As the ground erodes, chunks of the hard rock stay in place and protect the softer rock underneath, creating spires, pillars and other funky shapes. And being nice, free-standing formations of mainly soft stone, "olden times" people liked to dig their buildings into them. In this case it was mainly christians around the Byzantine era. The Unesco listed Göreme open air museum is in fact largely a huge complex of churches. The place was jam packed with tour groups when I was there so I have to admit my experience was less than Salubrious. The so-called "dark church" was impressive though, so called because it only has one small window. This means, with little light getting into it, the frescoes are still stunningly vibrant, or "livid" as the information board described it. I suppose if I were a fresco I'd be angry too if I were smeared onto a wall that never saw the sun, but after 1500 years I think I would have gotten over it.

Inside a church I was "allowed" to photograph

Anyway, photos were not allowed of the church interior, though if you Google image search "Dark Church Cappadocia" you'll get some quite pretty pictures of it. Also, my finger may or may not have "accidently" slipped onto the shutter button of my camera as it was coincidently pointing at a fresco I happened to be looking at, so if I'm ever showing you these pictures in person make sure you look away if I'm so careless as to show this one.

Çavuşin complex

After the open air museum I took a long walk to Çavuşin, the closest town to Göreme. Here I got to play Indiana Jones again as there is a partially collapsed town cut into the rock face above the modern settlement which you can simply clamber around like you own the place. And to be honest, it's more than a little bit dangerous if you're an idiot adventure seeker like me - many of the rooms and chambers are only accessible by clambering around steep ledges and up steep slopes covered in loose, fine sand from the deteriorating stone. I also managed to aquire some wounds, scraping my leg on the rock. Finally that day I wondered around the most scenic fairy chimney area, getting myself covered in even more dusty sand.

Some fairy chimneys

This morning I got up at the barbaric hour of 5:30 to catch a balloon. Cappadocia is famous for its balloon rides - it has stunning landscapes and for most of the year there is perfect wind conditions for ballooning. This morning was touch and go however. After waiting until long after sunrise (we were supposed to see the sunrise from the balloon) the wind finally dipped to an optimal 15 kmh.
And, well, it was a balloon ride. Spectacular. But I have to let the pictures do the talking.
All said and done, I think I could have spent a lot more time in Cappadocia. I only saw a fraction off all the valleys, fairy chimneys and rock-cut settlements in the area.

Istanbul day 2

Aya Sofia

Another jam packed day in Istanbul! It began with getting up late. Well, 8:30, but that's late for me at the moment. I then headed back to the main historical area in Istanbul to visit Aya Sofia. Now this is a building with some history. It was originally built in the fifth century by the Byzantines as a church on the site of an older one which had burnt down in the year 404. I'm told that the first occurence of the "404 error" was when someone showed up the next day and couldn't find the church. The new one, which is pretty much the same building that's standing there now, was Constantinople's primary cathedral until about 1453 and it's conversion into a mosque. And I have to admit, I'm impressed with the Sultan's conscientiousness. In Islam images of people and animals are not allowed in mosques, but instead of simply tearing down all the beautiful mosaics they were carefully documented and copied onto paper then plastered over. And as impressed with the liberal thinking of the Sultan as I may be, Ataturk takes the cake. When he came to power of the new republic in the 1920s he immediately set about secularizing Turkey and bringing it into the 20th century. Two of his actions were to convert this immensely important mosque and the Sultan's palace into a museum, uncovering again all the mosaics from Byzantine times.

Interior of Aya Sofia

After Aya Sofia I naturally headed into the palace, but not before having a quick look at the tombs of the Sultans next to the museum. I've visited a lot of tombs, crypts, mausoleums and catacombs, but in a way these were the creepiest. And the reason was somehow because of how mundane they were. They consisted simply of large octagonal rooms, the centre of which were filled at ground level with simple, unadorned wooden sarcophaguses. Most of them were very small, and it gives you a bit of a chill to walk past them within centimetres. Without all the extravagence of hellenistic sarcophogi, you become acutley aware that these are boxes with dead people in them.

Sultans' tomb

So then it was the palace. This sprawling complex was home to the Sultans and their families for about 600 years, but there's little I can say about it and due to its size it's hard to give a good impression with pictures. I will say though that the Ottomans were very fond of painted and glazed tiles, giving the impression - especially in the Harem - of being in a very expensive bathroom.

Inside the palace

Finally after the palace I headed to the Bazaar district, first going to check out the Çemberlitaş, a monument commissioned by Constantine to commemorate the founding of Constantinople, and the Aquaduct. After having a quick look at these I dove into the twisting bowels of the Grand Bazaar then the Spice Bazaar. You could lose yourself for hours in the Grand Bazaar, but somehow I enjoyed the much smaller Spice Bazaar more. That's probably because I liked to imagine all the curries and spicy dishes I could make with the mounds of herbs and spices, whereas I had little use for the various sheeshes, teapots, silk dresses, and pieces of jewellery on offer in the Grand Bazaar.

Çemberlitaş

Aquaduct

Spice Bazaar

Istanbul day 1 photos

As promised, pretty pictures!

Some ancient Mesopotamian art

Basilica Cistern

The Blue Mosque

The Blue Mosque from the inside

Galata tower

Sunset from Galata tower

Istanbul, day 1

Well, I'm certainly glad that I decided not to drive in this city. Yesterday I drove to Istanbul International Airport from Cannakale and left my car in the long term carpark there. The drive there was nasty enough, as I still had to drive through about 10 kilometres of Istanbul motorways to get there, and half of it was a big roadwork site. Turkish people are pretty Laissez-Faire when it comes to road rules at the best of times, but when there's no lines on a technically three lane road with stop-start traffic its positively harrowing. The traffic in the city proper is worse.
Well anyway, I'm glad I don't have to think about the car for a few days. Right now I'm in one of the most vibrant, cultural cities in the world. And it's huge - with a population possibly larger than the whole of Australia and a history that spans over two thousand years, I don't think I can do it justice in the few days I'm here, but I'm giving it a shot.
Today I started off with the Istanbul Archaeological museums. Basically it's a complex of three buildings with a bewildering amount of antiquities to see. About halfway through the second one I had a brainfart and simply couldn't process any more. I knew this would happen, which is why I went to the Mesopotamian exhibit first, as I've seen precious little of Mesopotamian finds so far in any museum, and the culture intrigues me at least as much as the Minoan. The Sumerian culture of the area of course was the world's first civilization, starting off at the whopping early time of before 3000 BC. Remember how much effort I put into explaining how old the Minoans were at 1800 BC? Let that sink in.
The other thing I took from the museums was a decent understanding of the history of Turkey and Istanbul.
Lying as it does at the important position between east and west, Turkey has been invaded and ruled by more people than seems fair. The first empire that controlled the area was the Hittites, coming from the same cultural space as the Mesopotamian civilizations. These guys held onto the country until about 800 BC. After the Hittites the Persians took the reigns and generally made life difficult for the Greeks for a few hundred years. When Alexander the Great came out of Macedonia and started taking over the world of course he needed to have a go at Turkey as well. Next of course came the Romans. In the early fourth century AD the Roman empire, getting too big for its boots, was divided into the eastern province and the western, with the city of Byzantium as its capital and renamed Constantinople after the Emperor at the time, Constantine. Today this city is known as Istanbul. Not long after, this divide turned into a complete split, the eastern and western empires becoming effectively independant of each other. The western part, after a particularly nasty invasion from the Germanic tribes, fell to bits, but the eastern part, known nowadays as the Byzantine empire, chuffed along, slowly stagnating until the crusades finally put an end to their fun. It's something most people don't realize, but the existence of the Byzantine empire for all this time effectively means that Rome survived well into the second millenium AD.
So then it was the Ottoman Turks' turn to have a piece of the Turkey Pie (sounds tasty). These guys, led by fat, beardy Sultans, turned Turkey into an Islamic country, converting its many churches into Mosques. The Ottoman Empire lasted until 1923 when, after a war of independence, the Sultans were kicked out and the country became a republic under Mustafa Kemal Pasha, renamed Ataturk. This same dude led the Turkish forces in World War I against the Anzacs.
So now you know the history of Turkey as well!
After the museums I visited the so-called "Basilica Cistern". This huge underground cistern was built in the Byzantine era to supply water to the palace and was forgotten until the 16th century when a French archaeologist noticed the locals catching fish by dropping a bucket through a hole in their floor.
It's a strange, eerie kind of place - or at least it would be without the hordes of tourists and built up gangways about the place. It's filled with a forest of columns, and a population of carp even swim about in the water. Interesting to note is the two columns at the far end with carved medusa heads as their bases. Nobody really knows why they were used, where the Byzantines got them or why one is upside down and the other on its side.
After the Basilica Cistern I visited the Blue Mosque, which is one of the prettiest buildings in the city. And its then that I realized that for my whole time in Turkey this was the first time I visited a mosque.
Finally I visited the Galata tower. This building is very prominent in the skyline of Istanbul. It was built in 1348 on the site of a much older tower. At the time the district of Galata was a walled citadel, and this one of its main defenses. Throughout the years it's been damaged, burnt, repaired and repurposed a number of times, and at the moment it serves as a restaurant and bar. My constant desire to climb landmarks drove me to go up it, despite numerous advice not to bother and go the hotel next door for exactly the same views. I should have listened. I thought it would have been a gruelling stair climb for just a balcony like most of the other monuments I've climbed, but as it turned out it was an elevator to a restaurant and a narrow balcony that was so packed I couldn't even go out onto it.
Still, it was a great day. And Istanbul is... well, it's Istanbul.
Photos tomorrow.

Gallipoli

Anzac Cove

Even though I had a very long day today, I'm choosing to keep this post short. There's a lot I could write, but it's a topic I'm sure most of my readers will be familiar with. I visited Gallipoli today - pretty much a must for any Australian tourist in this part of the world. Gallipoli, obviously, ıs the place where the ANZACs - the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps - fought in World War I. It's a little penninsula on the European side of the Dardanelles. The Dardanelles is a waterway connecting the Aegean sea to the inland sea of Marmara - a very important strategic point at the time. Turkey, at that time the Ottoman Empire, was dragged somwhat unwillingly into the war by the Germans, and the British and ANZACs basically tried unsuccessfully to gain the Dardenelles and Istanbul thereby removing Turkey from the war and getting access to the sea of Marmara. The whole campaign is identified with mistakes, the biggest one for the ANZACs or course being they landed about a mile too far north of their intended point.

Lone Pine Cemetary

The beach they had planned to take was a long beach from which it would be an easy, gentle climb to Chunuk Bair, the high peak that commanded a superior view of the peninsula. Where they ended up landing on the 25th of April 1915, later known as ANZAC Cove, has just a short beach of about 600 metres and the way up to Chunuk Bair from there is over steep, difficult terrain.
A short time after landing on the beach the campaign hit a stalemate with both sides dug into trenches, not budging. About 9 months later, realizing it was futile to continue, the ANZACs pulled out.

What's left of one of the trenches

All up there were about a quarter of a million soldiers killed and twice as many wounded in this campaign. Even so it's often referred to as the last 'gentleman's war' - throughout the course of the campaign there were numerous cease-fires called in whice both sides would do things such as help each other collect their dead or, as during Christmas, even have a football match in nomans land. Even while there was fighting, each side would throw into each others' trenches presents and exchanges such as tobacco and rations. And then they would shoot at each other.

Troy

One of the main entrances to Troy in one of the earlier
building stages

Well, today I visited the legendary Troy. To be honest I've only grudgingly accepted the fact that this site probably was the real site of Troy. At first I was skeptical - it was excavated by Schliemann after all, and I'm sure if he had unearthed a Burger King he would have called it Troy in his excitement. But after checking out the site and reading all the information I have to admit the argument sounds pretty convincing. Troy would have been the biggest, most important city in the area, and it's hard to imagine a bigger, more important one than this. The first city was built on this site about 3000 BC, and among other things it's one of the first places in the world known to have used bronze.

Different layers in Troy's history

Despite Schliemann overzealously destroying a lot of important things to get to the lowest strata, archaeologists have been able to piece together an astounding amount of detail of Troy's building history. The great thing for archaeologists is that for a lot of its history Troy was built with mudbricks, unlike in most of Europe. The good thing about mudbrick is that it can't be very well repurposed by successive builders, so it tends to be built over. That means the individual layers are buried and preserved rather than ripped up and reused.

Walls of Troy. I think these might have dated from the
Trojan War period, but don't quote me...

Of course as nice as this is for archaeologists, it makes the site bewildering for the likes of me - it's very difficult to picture what it looked like at any stage of its existence. And obviously the part that everyone's the most interested in is what it was like during the famous war chronicled in the Iliad by Homer (Troy's alternate name was Ilias by the way). Of course nobody's even sure that war even happened - the only evidence we have is from poets such as Homer who were reciting oral legends. The war with Troy may well have originally been with Thebes, and over hundreds of years the legend changed through the telling. There is evidence that one building phase ended with the city being sacked, but that was about 500 years after the war Homer talks about would have occurred.
Still, the place is fascinating.

Pergamom

Yet another damn Zeus temple, Pergamom

Just in case you weren't getting sick of ruins, here's another post about them! This time it's the city of Pergamom which I visited yesterday. Karen obviously decided she had something against me that day. There were a few things I wanted to see in and around the modern town of Bergama. The acropolis, the main attraction, I found by myself without any problems because signs were everywhere. Obviously Karen took offense to my taking the initiative and proceeded to mess up all her directions for the other things I wanted to see. Firstly, when I followed her directions to the archaeological museum I ended up on a random street with nothing resembling a museum in sight (I later found out that it was about 100 metres further down than she said ıt was). Her directions to the Asklepion led me to a tiny intersection in the middle of a tangle of narrow, one-way streets. If you'll remember back to my Epidauros post, an Asklepion was a kind of day spa cum hotel cum hospital, usually located in a calming, peaceful location out in the country. This did not resemble such a place at all.

The view from the Pergamom Acropolis

And finally, selecting the other museum Karen offered me, she led me all the way around the town and into a razor-wire surrounded military base! The gun toting soldiers politely but firmly told me I was way off. After that adventure I managed to find all the locations by myself.

Ancient road to the Asclepeion

Okay, onto the history: fırst the Acropolis. Interestingly, this Acropolis could be reached via gondola (think skiing. A venetian gondola could prove difficult). That would have been a nice addition for the grueling Corinth Acropolis! This, like all the Acropolises of these kinds of cities, represent the religious, cultural and political heart of the city. Pergamom was another very important city in this part of the world - another one originally settled by the greeks and later taken over by the romans. Perhaps Pergamom's biggest claim to fame was the enormous altar - 36 by 34 metres in size. It's thought that it was commissioned by king Eumenes II to commemorate his victories against Pergamom's enemies and making Pergamom all-round awesome. It's not certain to which God the altar was dedicated, but it was probably Athena as she had the biggest, comfiest, nicest temple on the Acropolis. However, it's also often attributed to Zeus (as if he doesn't have enough nice thing already). All the pieces of it were put back together and now it's in the museum of Berlin, but they had a nice wooden model of it in the local museum. I would also like to add that some ancient historians considered this one of the 7 ancient wonders, so that means I've been to the site of 5 of them!

Grounds of the Asclepeion

When I finally found it (without Karen's help), I was also very intrigued by the Asklepeion. The actual site was certainly quite pretty and tranquil. Supposedly it was founded by a dude called Archias who was injured while hunting one day and brought to the Asclepeion (yes I know I keep changing the spelling) in Epidauros. He was so impressed by his recovery there that he was prompted to build one himself. In it's day it was the most advanced medical centre possibly in the world.