Back "Home" to Turkey

Today we began in Thessaloniki, quite a big and modern city on the Aegaen coast of Greece. It reminds me very much of Izmir, with a large port for both commercial and tourist traffic, beautiful sea shore residences, hotels, restaurants, and a fortress on the hill above. This particular fortress dates to the Byzantine times, and was co opted by the Ottomans who liked Thessaloniki (Thess-a-loan-ee-key) so well they made it a provincial capital. It bears remnants of the Ottoman presence in some neighborhoods and buildings; and in a mosque now converted to a church. But believe me, this group knows a mosque when we see one!

We then continued out of Thessaloniki on modern superhighway... you cannot imagine how welcome THAT was. We were not bruised and battered from bouncing around the windy twisty up and down narrow roads. Our bus driver is a gifted man, but it was hard.

The landscape gradually flattened out... we were in the outer reaches of Macedonia at first. It is really easy to imagine Alexander or his dad, Philip, traveling those mountains off on conquest. Still rugged, but as we entered Western Thrace and then proceded into Eastern Thrace it became wider, more expansive plains. Still fertile, from the presence of farms, but dry. The fields were filled with corn, sunflowers, various grain and grass crops, and some veggies... hard to tell what some of them were, but some looked like mustard greens or similar things. Since that shows up on a lot of menus, as does chard, chances are good.

We flirted with the Aegean coastline along the way with some lovely vistas... there is no beach along here, but the rocks tumble straight down to water's edge. Occasionally it appears that a beach has been constructed or coaxed out of little bits of level land, but not much. It makes for splendid views, but bad sand castles, I guess. Building in the towns and cities goes right to water's edge.. the high rises on the water front in cities like Thessaloniki and Kavala, where we stopped for lunch, are multi purpose.. cafes and businesses on the ground floor, and then generally apartments on the upper floors. Lovely views.

We stopped in Kavala for lunch. Today it is a large city with modern amenities and a flourishing tourist trade. In Roman days it was the port for Philippi, to whose residents Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians after his visits there. It was a nice surprise for us... we were driving, as I said, on the modern superhighway... but said superhighway is so new it has no rest stops or services at least in this part of Greece. So we left it and drove straight down to the sea. We wandered about, ate at a seaside cafe (the food was all Italian... great canneloni for me!) and then bought kourabiedes, a local cookie specialty that is very similar to Mexican wedding cakes, except made with almonds. Very tasty.

Back on the road. It took over an hour to pass from Greece to Turkey. The border is very heavily fortified and guarded. As our guide said, this is Turkey's cold war. Both Greece and Turkey have large large military installations on their respective sides of the border, and they are taken seriously... many soldiers, all about 19 years old, all carrying machine guns very conspicuously. The road between the two border stations has barbed wire concertina on the top of the fences and there are posters that photography is forbidden. I obeyed the rules, not wanting to spend time in either a Greek or a Turkish prison, natuarlly. The Turkish side is also guarded by some very sleepy dogs and flocks of geese and peacocks. Really. Go figure. But we weren't asking questions. Our Turkish guide from earlier in the trip, Arzu, had met us in Thessaloniki and we were grateful since she speaks Greek fluently as well as her native Turkish. She guided us through the rather intimidating process... of course, it may have not helped that we were on an Albanian bus with an Albanian driver who did not speak Turkish, though he did speak Greek, Italian, and German.
We had to get out of the bus on the Greek side, show our passports, smile, wait till they returned them about 30 minutes later (we amused ourselves in the duty free shop and the FREE toilets). Back on bus, drive to the Turkish checkpoint, where Arzu worked miracles explaining 14 crazy American tourists, most of whom had a weird assortment of stamps in our passports. They did not make us unload luggage, for which we all were grateful since our small suitcases (most of our stuff is in Istanbul waiting for us to arrive tomorrow) have gotten overstuffed with souvenirs and dirty laundry. ((Everyone knows that dirty laundry takes up more room..... but there's been no time to wash things with 6 one-night hotel stays in a row.)

We drove just another 40 minutes or so to find one of the nicest surprises of the trip. We are in the frontier town of Edirne, noted as an early Ottoman capital and for its lovely 16th century mosque (lots of walking tomorrow). Our hotel is a converted 16th century caravansaray.. it is converted in the sense that it has electricity, internet, phones, air conditioning, but the rooms are probably not all that different and the courtyard is probably not all that different from when camels etc. were safely held in it. The only animal down there tonight was a kitty, however. I'llpost that picture, but possibly not tonight since the internet connection is very very very slow....

They carried our bags up the horrendously winding stairway and then led us a few blocks thru the city walking street to a "Balkan Chicken Restaurant" for a very acceptable dinner . Now we are back... unfortunately for us there is a rocking out wedding in the courtyard. Live music. Loud live music. Dancing. We would probably be welcome to join the party but on the other hand, we aren't all that up to it at this point. So... there is heavy traffic in earplugs.

But we get to sleep in till 7:30 tomorrow and then a walking tour of the Ottoman sites and then on to Istanbul.

So much more I want to tell you but my thoughts are jumbled. The two days we have in Istanbul before we leave are unscheduled so I hope to collect those thoughts there in addition to working on lesson plans and doing last minute explorations. I am going to bed! Pictures in the morning or tomorrow, depending on the internet gods.