Confession

Pictures:

market scenes in Kula.

The narrow streets of old Kula... the part of the houses overhanging the street belonged to the women of the household, so they could watch the world go by.

A watch puppy from the archaeological dig at Sardis. He may be fierce some day, but he was a sweetie today.

The kedi of the day, on the street in Kula. Wanted patting desperately

Isn't this the sweetest baby? Her mom was very pleased to let us take her picture and rave about her!

A very bored young lady who watched the Americans intently.

Off to town, a couple in their motorcycle.

Our wonderful driver on top of the bus checking on the fan. It wasn't his day... when we came upstairs from dinner, he was sitting in the hallway as the hotel staff tried to fix his door on his room. Sigh.




A confession.. we didn't go to a single mosque today. Not once did I have to put on a headscarf. It feels sort of weird.

Not that we didn't do a lot. After we loaded up the bus in Kutahya, we headed up the mountain to see the fortress at the top.. it dates to Hittite times, long before the Ottomans, the Turks, the Romans or anybody else. But it was occupied over the centuries and held pretty much by everyone up to and including the Ottomans. It is rugged and crenelated and huge... and we couldn't figure out what road to take. Turkish people are hospitable and helpful to a fault. One problem (and fault) is that if you ask for directions, they will give you directions even if they are making them up. We had more than a couple false starts and our bus driver made a couple of nearly vertical U-turns.... and a 29 passenger bus is not easy to turn around on a street with one lane. Finally we got up there, admired it, and drove back down much more quickly.

Then began the road trip. We were relatively high up in rolling mountain meadows.. .lots of fields of grain, some corn, still some trees, some evergreens, occasional cows. At first it was pretty dry looking but it became lusher as we headed south.

This is the country of the fight for independence (actually the whole country was, but this bore much of the brunt of the battles that took place between 1919 and 1924 or so.) To refresh your history... the Ottoman Emopire, in its dying years, allied itself with Germany in WWI. They lost. The Anatolian peninsula had never been a country per se but rather the seat of empire and now that empire was gone and smashed. Kemal Mustafa Ataturk began to try to unite the regions that were occupied by five countries.... Britain, Italy, France, Russia, and most of all in the west, Greece. At first the attempts to push the occupiers out were sporadic but Ataturk formed the Turkish army from the ragged regional militias, and formed the plan to liberate and create a new republic. Generally speaking, the fighting went on for several years until the last hold outs of Greek soldiers were pushed off the land and off into the Aegean. It was hard fighting and there are still bullet holes here and there. Nevertheless, some Greeks stayed and became citizens of the new Turkey. Some intermarried. There is still a different flavor of this post-Ottoman society.

The next stop was the small town of Kula. Kula is about 25,000 and still has many of the old Ottoman style houses I mentioned yesterday. It also had a market day. Because it is summer and hot and sunny, many of the stands in the marketplace were covered by canopies that were suspended from ropes tied to the nearby buildings... which would have been just dandy had our bus not caught one of the ropes in the fan assembly at the top of the bus. Broke the fan, made horrendous noise, got a bit of attention. We were cowards... offloaded and took a long walk around the village while our poor driver dealt with the issue. He decided, after climbinb up on top, that we were okay for the moment, two of the three fans were fine.... meanwhile we went off to see the old houses, the market, an old Greek elementary school from pre-independence times, tobacco drying places, and more of the market. People were very nice and I got some nice pictures that I'll add to this. One phenomenon was that since the streets are very narrow, the two primary methods of personal transport were motorcycles (some with sidecars) and tractors, some with small wagons for the family to ride in. It worked.

After Kula, we headed south again for Sardis. This ancient site was a bustling city for centuries.. from about 600 BC to about 600 AD. Excavations are ongoing, with a splendid gymnasium and a temple to Artemis and city walls and dwellings and much more. Two very interesting professors,one from Wisconsin, one from Berkeley, met with us. They were generous with their time and gave us much more insight than we would hav ehad from just wandering around.

Then, sweating and sunburnt, we headed for our hotel. We hit the jackpot.... a resort with thermal baths, etc., etc. We were greeted in the lobby with champagne flutes of freshly squeezed fruit juices (with glasses rimmed with red and blue sugars). We ate the best food --mostly Turkish -- that I've had in a long time... very very plush. One of our group has already announced he's not ever leaving. I don't quite know how that is going to work out for him, but....

I am going to add a few pictures, mostly people.. and then sleep. I hope, though I may regret the cup of Turkish coffee after dinner....

Tomorrow we finish the ruins here and then head for Kusadasi, on the Aegean coast, where we will stay for 3 days.....