haifa.11

Haifa Fornightly(Editor--Huzefa Mehta) 11th edition 1/4/93 We returned back from a hectic trip to Turkey. We made use of the holidays(Pesakh) in Israel and spent 11 days travelling from Antalya to Istanbul. Its a beautiful country and wonderful and friendly people. We got our visas without any questions...no forms to fill nothing at all. The consulate helped us getting some travel brochures and maps. Since we both had our multiple entries back into Israel we had nothing to worry about getting Israel visas in Turkey. Our initial plan was to go to Istanbul stay there for a couple of days and then travel along the coast to Antalya and then to Central Turkey(Capadocia) Ankara and then back to Instanbul. We had our flights leaving on April 1st but we mÿûissed it arriving only 10 minutes before the flight and the security did not allow us to get through. We got the reservations for the next flight to Antalya and we changed the plans to make travel less hectic and hence travel from Antalya to Istanbul and then fly back from Istanbul. Our plan was to travel about 4-5 hours each day late in the evening and reach the next destination late in the night. April 1st We reached Antalya around 10ish. It was slightly cold. Got change for a few hundred dollars. Turkish currency is called Turkish Lira(TL) and the exchange rate is $1=10,000TL. So having got around 2 million TL we entered Turkey. We stayed in a pension house that night in the old city. The city was quite live even at around 12 in the night. With all whitewashed houses and clean narrow lanes and every pension having a carevenserai courtyard(small fountain and pond). There were lots of Turkish carpet sellers in the lanes. April 2nd We toured the nearby city ruins of Aspendos, Perge and Side. All of them having classical Greek ruins and Roman theatres and Aspendos especially having a very well restored theatre(though questionable to the purists) We travelled through dolmus(a minibus) and occasional short distances by taxi. Long distances we travelled by bus. We visited some waterfalls in the Antalya neighborhood. One of them was particullarly interesting because we could go underneath the falls. Antalya has a delightful setting with snow capped mountain peaks near the ocean. We found the Turkish people very very friendly. Picture an old Turkish manÿ with a golf hat and thick mustache, strong features and with a coat and a smile on his face. The young ones are invariably well dressed and groomed, clean shaven with leather jackets and with a cigarette in their hand and smile on their face. Every person wanted to find out where we were from and what language we spoke. The turkish map denotes India as Indistan. The conversation usually starting with a Turk innoculously offering a cigarrette and then slowly developing the conversation. The population is pretty mixed with lots of Turks having German Frau's. Most of the Turks have second language as German and especially ones involved in the tourist business speak other European languages too. Turkish is very similar to hindi and has a lot of common words (kitaab zameen duniya watan jawan..). It also has a lot of words from French. Its scripture however is not Arabic or Arabic based. Turkish was Arabic based in 1920's..however a charismatic first ruler Ataturk(Father of Turks) changed its alphabet reform in order to promote literacy and progress. Ataturk(Moustapha Kamal) is a national hero in Turkey. His picture his quotations, writing and his statues are omnipresent. He was born in Macedonia and with a promising battle against the British, New Zealanders and Australians in the Gallipoli battle made him famous and an Ottoman folk hero with the collapse of the Ottman empire. He held of a Greece invasion and introduced several reforms. To most of the Turks I talked to held him very high regard and always quoted something from his writings. He tried hard to change the image of the Turks from the "bad boys of Europe". To give you a brief description of Turkeys neighbours, Greece, Bulgaria, to the west, Black Sea and Russia to the north to the east Georgia(Gurkistan) Armenia(Ermenistan) and Azerbajan(Azerbaycan), to the south east Iran, Iraq and Syria, to the south the Mediterranean ,to the south west the Aegean sea and Sea of Marmara. Azerbajan now forms the five Turkish republic of central asia along with Kazakhstan, Kyrghyzkstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Turkey suffers from the neighbour paronia(so as rest of the world) with Greece. There seem to be a lot of disputes regarding ownership of islands and hence the constant present of the military. BTW an interesting fact which I discovered was that Turkey has the second largest army in the NATO(second to the US) We spent some part of the evening with a Kurdish carpet salesman..who had been to Delhi and was not particulary interested in selling us carpets because he believed Indian carpets were better. April 3rd We visited one more waterfall and then þtook the bus to Demre(Myra). We visited some rock tombs and is also known for Santa Claus, Church of St. Nicholas who original became Santa Claus because he gave anonymous gifts to village girls who had no dowry dropping gifts of coin from chimney. He later added sailor and childrens to his list. Don't know if this is yet another true Santa Claus story.. We wanted to reach Marmaris by evening, however it was pretty late and we got stuck in Kas because there was no bus leaving the city in the evening. Kas is a fishing village and had a wonderful setting with a lot of Greek Islands very close to the the shore. The town had one majjor lane and we stayed about 5 m from the shore. April 4th Had a swim in the sea in the morning. The water was around 20 degrees. We left for Fethiye. We reached in the afternoon and we left for Olundeniz a small lagoon some km from Fethiye. We had lunch and a short swim and left for Marmaris. The bus dropped us couple of km from Marmaris and we hitched to the main town. We found in Marmaris a lot of tourists mostly Germans spending their Easter holidays. April 5th. We inquired regarding trip to nearby island Rhodes but we needed a Greek visa from Izmir so we decided not to take it. We roamed around the bay aimlessly for most of the day visited a beach Icmeler. We took the bus to Denizele in the evening. April 6th We arrived Denizile early in the morning and found no connecting bus to Pamakulle which was our final destination. We staying as paying guests at a Turk place who approached us and drove us to his home. We left for Pamakulle in the morning. Pamakulle is famous for its milky castle made of calcium and it forms lots of hot spring pools on its slopes. We had a swim in the nearby hot spring and then visited the Hieropolis museum. April 7th We skipped Aphrodisias and reached Selcuk. From Selcuk we took a dolmus to the resort town Kusadasi. The stay was uneventful and we left for Ephesus in the morning. Ephesus had the best classical Greek ruins and had once the seven wonders of the world here. We left for Izmir and then to Bergama where we visited a Greek Acropolis. We wanted to reach Cannakale in the night however due to absence of busses we hitched from the highway and finally managed to reach Cannakale around 1am. We found place in a nearby hostel with lots of New Zealander and Australian students. ÿûApril 8th. We visited Gallipoli and toured all the battle grounds and visited a military museum too. Later in the after we left for Troy(with a famous horse at its enÿûtrance for tourist who would like to get atleast one remarkable photograph of the place) We left for Bursa and arrived late in the night. The bus travel through Turkey is excellent with lots of companies each trying to vie for the others business..the result was undercutting and cheap travel(a couple of dollars for 4-5 hour journey). AC and with a waiter waiting to give you eau de cologne and water. The smoke problem existed but not so predominant as in Egypt. April 9th We visited a few beautiful mosques in Bursa. and left for Istanbul and arrived late afternoon. Istanbul is a beautiful San-Fransisco like city with lots of bridges and hills on ocean however with 6 million people. We stayed near the famous Sancta Sophia church and the Bllue mosque with the Topkapi palace behind. Lots of tourists and students and bars and belly dancing places. visited the Bllue Mosque in the evening said to have nearly 800 shades of blue in its tilling. The preparations for the 2000 olympics is underway in Istanbul with lots of free trams and free public transportation provided. April 10th Visited the Sancta Sophia church(museum) and then the Topkapi palace residence of the Ottoman rulers for nearly 3 centuries. We also visited the Harem residence of the Ottomman rulers. April 11th We took a couple of ferries across the Bhosporus and the Golden Horn to go to the Dolmabache palace but found it was already booked for the day(limit was 1500 tourists) so weÿû spent the final part of the day just loitering. And took the plane back to Tel Aviv. When we arrived we found there was no busses or transportation to Haifa because of the holidays. We had the most expense of the trip there with around 150 shekels transportation back to haifa. What we collected in our trip was excellent posters and brochures(also an advertisement for world famous camel wrestling next year). Lots of turkish delightful food with doner, shish kebab...and for vegetarians there is whole bunch of middle eastern menu. We skipped a lot of the place specifically Ankara the capital, the black sea which is very beautiful, central turkey and eastern turkey and of course a visit to a Turkish bathhouse. Though tourism is growing severly in Turkey Turkey specially some of the routes is relatively unspoilt by tourism. Met a lot of crazy people-- a young guy from San Diego trekking in the gallipolli,who when camping on the black sea in bulgaria was convinced by a Turk to visit Turkey and his home in Instanbul, students from Australia crossing over from Lesbos(lesbians derived from this) in greece having spent almost 2 years outside their country partly working and travelling not yet decided what their next destination was.