In the Summer of 2005, I received a grant from the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia to spend six weeks in Turkey. Educators were awarded the trip after having written several essays, including a proposal on how they would incorporated the experience into the curriculum for the subject they taught. I teach German. Germany invited its first "Gastarbeiter" (guest workers) into the country during the economic miracle in the mid-Fifties. Most came from Turkey. I proposed that I could better understand the cultural and social issues concerning the some 3 million Turks living in the Federal Republic of Germany, if I traveled to Turkey and got to know the country and its people.
The trip was all that I had imagined it would be. I had no idea how many ruins Turkey has, more than either Greece or Italy, so we were told. Of all the ruins we saw, which like the cathedrals of Europe, start running together after a while, Ephesus impressed me the most. While walking around there, I could really imagine what it was like in its heyday. And the idea that Paul preached the gospel there was somehow moving to me. My fat ass could have sat on the same spot as Paul's did to rest while he marveled at the then still in tact Temple of Artremis. Gallipoli was even more moving. Such a waste! They're all in their late teens and early twenties. Just a few years later Atta Turk was able to write that there was no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets who lie there. I'll have to rent the film with Mel Gibson and watch it again.
Cappadocia, whose enormous rock formations were created eons ago by volcanoes, had the most beautiful terrain. I wish we had had a day to hike around in among those wonderful "fairy chimneys" instead of just a couple of hours. Fortunately, my mild claustrophobia didn't prevent me from exploring the underground cities which date back to the Hittites. It's remarkable what people did there. They go many stories below the earth, housed as many as twenty thousand at one point and are complete with stables for the animals, cisterns for water, and large storage areas for food. My mild claustrophobia did manifest itself once. About ten of us were squatting in a small room listening to our guide. Suddenly, I needed out. The only way out was through a two thousand year old pitch black tunnel that I had to scurry through all bent over. I prayed that wherever I wound up I would be able to stand and put my hands over my head without being able to touch the ceiling. Thank God, I could! After that, I was fine for the rest of the tour.
We had so much fun with the name Uerguep, one of the cities in Cappadocia which serves as a starting point for the tourists. It became a verb, an adjective and the name of a musical one of the teachers will write for her middle school kids. She wants to dedicate it to me who became the first to start fooling around with the name and the Scandinavian-like intonation patterns of the language.
Istanbul is so exciting, beautiful along the Bosphorus, and Taksim Square on a Saturday night evokes Times Square. I just loved how it teams with life. The last night we were there, we treated ourselves to dinner in a good restaurant, then took a taxi to the Bosphorus to see the Bogazici Bridge, which connects European Istanbul with Asia Minor Istanbul, all lit up at night and to enjoy the night life.
A trip to the Virgin Mary's house in Kusadasi was interesting, but I didn't feel moved in any particular way. Perhaps that's because I think it's just an interesting legend, although the Catholic Church declared it a place of pilgrimage and Pope John Paul VI visited there. Nonetheless, de regueur I lit a candle and said a prayer for my mother, for my sister, Robin and for my niece, Jennifer.
One of the women on the trip was raised an Irish Catholic, but she rejected it all long ago and is pretty much an atheist now. Nonetheless, out of respect for her father's memory, she always lights a candle for him. She was startled to feel his presence so strongly by her side that she got goose bumps and started to cry. She was moved to tears off and on the whole day by the experience. I felt nothing, but, then, again, my mother wasted no time letting us know she was still around! :-) A most likely still devout Catholic, her poor father had probably been waiting in eager anticipation for that very moment his daughter would find herself in the alleged home of the Blessed Mother. Who knows? Maybe it just says something about how deeply ingrained it all is. Even years after one thinks one has left it all behind, it still stirs from some place deep in ones soul. I certainly took advantage of the fountains which carry water, said to be holy, from a near by mountain stream.
We did not have time to see a concert in one of the perfectly preserved ancient theaters, but that would have been wonderful. In the Aspendus theater, said to be the most perfectly preserved in the ancient world, the Kirov was performing Eugene Onegin. Although we missed that, we did see dervishes whirl and bellies dance. I was volunteered to dance, and along with five other men, walked out into the center of the room. The dancer approached me first, and I was horrified when she started to take off my shirt. Then she wrapped a silk skirt around my waist. Almost immediately I just decided to go with the flow, and for about a half hour we five men, one of the guys wouldn't remove his shirt and was gestured back to his table, individually mimicked her every move and shook both our bellies and our booties as the eyes of some two hundred people were riveted to our every move. It provided my group with a ton of laughs and made me realize the benefits of losing yet another thirty pounds just in case I ever get back there someday. After it was all over, I went back to the table and straight for the Raki. After a few more shots, I didn't give a damn about the shirtless dirty dancing.
Never once did I feel ill at ease. Except for the souvenir hustlers, nobody on the street paid any attention to us at all. Shop keepers and others would often ask where we were from. Nobody did anything but smile broadly when we answered, "From America." Only a couple of times did politics came up in our encounters with regular Turks. In answer to a desk clerk's question in broken English about Bush, I said in equally broken English, "America very good! Bush very bad!" It seemed to sum up not only my attitude but his as well. It always got a smile and a thumbs up. I don't know what the reaction would have been had I said, "America very good! Bush very good, too!'' It might have made things more interesting. But like I said, there weren't that many occasions when politics came up naturally. We did have a visit scheduled with a representative from the government. After a nice presentation, she surprised us by asking us what we thought about the Bush and Iraq. We tried to be diplomatic. There was only one conservative in our group, and I felt sorry for her. The rest of us, even the two boys, rising college freshman who plan to major in international studies, were flaming liberals.
My mother, who could never travel with me while she was alive, seems to travel with me frequently in death.
Many remarkable synchronicities have taken place during my trips since her death in December of 2002, and they began on the very first trip I went abroad to Germany in the spring of 2003. They followed through while I was in Singapore and then in Turkey. She has often used her sign, Taurus, in these meaningful coincidences.
The last thing I did before I went to Turkey was to take all my Mother's teenage drawings of cartoon characters to Staples and have them copied. On the same day in Turkey, all this happened: In the morning, I almost bumped into a woman on the street who was wearing a Bugs Bunny T-shirt. But it was a knock off T-shirt, because Bug's Bunny was spelled with the unneeded apostrophe, exactly as my mother spelled it on the picture she drew as a teenager.
Then, later that morning in the Museum of Anatolian Antiquities, I saw a three thousand year old relief of the god Pan-- one of Mom's sketches but hers was Pan by Disney. By then, I wondered just how many of those characters Mom would manage to fit into the day. That night, instead of having a final drink in the bar with the rest of the group, I decided to watch some news and go to bed. Just as I turned the TV on, all the Disney characters were there on CNN ringing the bell to open up Wall Street that morning. She fit in every single one of them in the same day with just minutes to spare! Had I come to the room just a couple of minutes later, I would have missed it.
The next day, our guide told us that we were in the Taurus Mountains. No, I don't think that my mother put an entire mountain range there just for me, but I do think that the fact that these meaningful coincidences took place during the two days of the two week trip that we were in the Taurus Mountains was significant. I am sure she was very much at home in them.
Relaxing eight or nine stories under the earth.
The cemetery at Gallipoli
Theater of Pergamon, the steepest theater in the ancient world. No binoculars or hearing assists back then! If you were poor or hard of hearing, too bad!
The trip was all that I had imagined it would be. I had no idea how many ruins Turkey has, more than either Greece or Italy, so we were told. Of all the ruins we saw, which like the cathedrals of Europe, start running together after a while, Ephesus impressed me the most. While walking around there, I could really imagine what it was like in its heyday. And the idea that Paul preached the gospel there was somehow moving to me. My fat ass could have sat on the same spot as Paul's did to rest while he marveled at the then still in tact Temple of Artremis. Gallipoli was even more moving. Such a waste! They're all in their late teens and early twenties. Just a few years later Atta Turk was able to write that there was no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets who lie there. I'll have to rent the film with Mel Gibson and watch it again.
Cappadocia, whose enormous rock formations were created eons ago by volcanoes, had the most beautiful terrain. I wish we had had a day to hike around in among those wonderful "fairy chimneys" instead of just a couple of hours. Fortunately, my mild claustrophobia didn't prevent me from exploring the underground cities which date back to the Hittites. It's remarkable what people did there. They go many stories below the earth, housed as many as twenty thousand at one point and are complete with stables for the animals, cisterns for water, and large storage areas for food. My mild claustrophobia did manifest itself once. About ten of us were squatting in a small room listening to our guide. Suddenly, I needed out. The only way out was through a two thousand year old pitch black tunnel that I had to scurry through all bent over. I prayed that wherever I wound up I would be able to stand and put my hands over my head without being able to touch the ceiling. Thank God, I could! After that, I was fine for the rest of the tour.
Istanbul is so exciting, beautiful along the Bosphorus, and Taksim Square on a Saturday night evokes Times Square. I just loved how it teams with life. The last night we were there, we treated ourselves to dinner in a good restaurant, then took a taxi to the Bosphorus to see the Bogazici Bridge, which connects European Istanbul with Asia Minor Istanbul, all lit up at night and to enjoy the night life.
A trip to the Virgin Mary's house in Kusadasi was interesting, but I didn't feel moved in any particular way. Perhaps that's because I think it's just an interesting legend, although the Catholic Church declared it a place of pilgrimage and Pope John Paul VI visited there. Nonetheless, de regueur I lit a candle and said a prayer for my mother, for my sister, Robin and for my niece, Jennifer.
One of the women on the trip was raised an Irish Catholic, but she rejected it all long ago and is pretty much an atheist now. Nonetheless, out of respect for her father's memory, she always lights a candle for him. She was startled to feel his presence so strongly by her side that she got goose bumps and started to cry. She was moved to tears off and on the whole day by the experience. I felt nothing, but, then, again, my mother wasted no time letting us know she was still around! :-) A most likely still devout Catholic, her poor father had probably been waiting in eager anticipation for that very moment his daughter would find herself in the alleged home of the Blessed Mother. Who knows? Maybe it just says something about how deeply ingrained it all is. Even years after one thinks one has left it all behind, it still stirs from some place deep in ones soul. I certainly took advantage of the fountains which carry water, said to be holy, from a near by mountain stream.
We did not have time to see a concert in one of the perfectly preserved ancient theaters, but that would have been wonderful. In the Aspendus theater, said to be the most perfectly preserved in the ancient world, the Kirov was performing Eugene Onegin. Although we missed that, we did see dervishes whirl and bellies dance. I was volunteered to dance, and along with five other men, walked out into the center of the room. The dancer approached me first, and I was horrified when she started to take off my shirt. Then she wrapped a silk skirt around my waist. Almost immediately I just decided to go with the flow, and for about a half hour we five men, one of the guys wouldn't remove his shirt and was gestured back to his table, individually mimicked her every move and shook both our bellies and our booties as the eyes of some two hundred people were riveted to our every move. It provided my group with a ton of laughs and made me realize the benefits of losing yet another thirty pounds just in case I ever get back there someday. After it was all over, I went back to the table and straight for the Raki. After a few more shots, I didn't give a damn about the shirtless dirty dancing.
Never once did I feel ill at ease. Except for the souvenir hustlers, nobody on the street paid any attention to us at all. Shop keepers and others would often ask where we were from. Nobody did anything but smile broadly when we answered, "From America." Only a couple of times did politics came up in our encounters with regular Turks. In answer to a desk clerk's question in broken English about Bush, I said in equally broken English, "America very good! Bush very bad!" It seemed to sum up not only my attitude but his as well. It always got a smile and a thumbs up. I don't know what the reaction would have been had I said, "America very good! Bush very good, too!'' It might have made things more interesting. But like I said, there weren't that many occasions when politics came up naturally. We did have a visit scheduled with a representative from the government. After a nice presentation, she surprised us by asking us what we thought about the Bush and Iraq. We tried to be diplomatic. There was only one conservative in our group, and I felt sorry for her. The rest of us, even the two boys, rising college freshman who plan to major in international studies, were flaming liberals.
My mother, who could never travel with me while she was alive, seems to travel with me frequently in death.
Many remarkable synchronicities have taken place during my trips since her death in December of 2002, and they began on the very first trip I went abroad to Germany in the spring of 2003. They followed through while I was in Singapore and then in Turkey. She has often used her sign, Taurus, in these meaningful coincidences.
The last thing I did before I went to Turkey was to take all my Mother's teenage drawings of cartoon characters to Staples and have them copied. On the same day in Turkey, all this happened: In the morning, I almost bumped into a woman on the street who was wearing a Bugs Bunny T-shirt. But it was a knock off T-shirt, because Bug's Bunny was spelled with the unneeded apostrophe, exactly as my mother spelled it on the picture she drew as a teenager.
Then, later that morning in the Museum of Anatolian Antiquities, I saw a three thousand year old relief of the god Pan-- one of Mom's sketches but hers was Pan by Disney. By then, I wondered just how many of those characters Mom would manage to fit into the day. That night, instead of having a final drink in the bar with the rest of the group, I decided to watch some news and go to bed. Just as I turned the TV on, all the Disney characters were there on CNN ringing the bell to open up Wall Street that morning. She fit in every single one of them in the same day with just minutes to spare! Had I come to the room just a couple of minutes later, I would have missed it.
The next day, our guide told us that we were in the Taurus Mountains. No, I don't think that my mother put an entire mountain range there just for me, but I do think that the fact that these meaningful coincidences took place during the two days of the two week trip that we were in the Taurus Mountains was significant. I am sure she was very much at home in them.
Relaxing eight or nine stories under the earth.
The cemetery at Gallipoli
Theater of Pergamon, the steepest theater in the ancient world. No binoculars or hearing assists back then! If you were poor or hard of hearing, too bad!
I must admit I was proud of myself for being able to scale this rock and get up there. Here I am with our guide.
Ruins of Troy
The Grand Bizarre. A couple of vendors asked us why we were taking this picture. We said because of the light. They called their friends over and marveled at it, as if seeing if for the first time through the eyes of tourists.
Straddling two continents, Europe and Asia.
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