A girl walks into a Turkish town...
Day 1:
Fly from London to Turkey.
The flight over the pond is easy and painless - 4 hours from London to Istanbul, a short change over and then 1 hour to Izmir Adnan Menderes airpot. Honestly, the time spent waiting to board then waiting on the runway takes longer than the actual flight. 2:30 am and we get off at Izmir and start feeling the excitement - our feet are on Turkish soil, and they want to dance a dervish whirl.
Pick up the car and drive to Bergama, our final destination.
Bearing in mind that we have arrived at 2:30 in the morning, and pre-booked a car, the process should be over in 5 minutes. However. First we can't find the booking office. So we ask a helpful but slightly suspicious airport security officer. He looks at the address on the email and then regretfully but kndly informs us that to pick up our booked car we would have to travel 400km back in the direction we came...which to be honest is not ideal. Our options are either a bus service to central Izmir and then up to Bergama or hope one of the other rental car agencies might be open at this unearthly hour. We try the latter option and within 10 minutes we are sorted and ready to go with another car! Setting the GPS is our next challenge as it is in Turkish. And you'd think that it is simple to change it to English, but this is only partly true. The steps that lead you to language options are all in Turkish which our limited knowledge of Turkish, including 'hello' 'thank you' and 'beer please', does not help with. Using a strong sense of guess work and common sense we change to English settings and off we go. Fill up with petrol. Drive for 30 minutes. Stop in the middle of a roundabout after a couple of orbits because it's 3:30am and we want to make sure we are heading in the right direction. Say a silent prayer of thanks that our temporary road block is not creating traffic. Head off again.
Arrival in Bergama city of dogs
It's now 5:30am and we are at our final destination. Our check in is only for 12:00 that afternoon so we have 5.5 hours to fill after a sleepless night. So we do what any normal person does at that time, we find that tallest hill with the oldest ruins and enjoy the sunrise and a bush pee, looking out for one of the many stray dogs wandering the streets. It's quite intimidating sitting squat in a bush hoping you don't come face to face with a rabid canine. But when that's your only option, and you need material to write about that's borderline amusing, squat you do. Another characteristic of the male life that I envy - standing upright pretty much anywhere you want and relieving yourself without baring your dignity to the world.
Post-sunrise and we find the narrowest streets we can and wind our way through them to find our air BnB. We're still too early for check-in so the boys go down to town for a coffee and I nap in the car. It's not just because I'm slack-jaw tired and starting to fray at the edges of patience. As we drove through the awakening town, we were greeted by early-riser shop owners preparing for the day as well as dozens of nomadic dogs. Short- and long-legged, shiny coated and mangey, they were everywhere. And in my experience dogs like to lick. Now on a good day I can tolerate a few saliva brush strokes on my leg or hand as I pet the closest pedigree dog but I have no desire to make friends with a wondering fur ball with no hygiene to his name whose tongue gives you rabies, worms or salmonella. So nap I did.
9am and time to check in.
Our host has kindly opened our rooms for us earlier than expected. Time to colonise the bed.
Afternoon walks:
Pete and I go for a walk instead of spending the afternoon sleeping. Who can sleep now anyway with the caffeine-fortified tea we've been drinking. I'm wearing a sleeveless top with a keffiyeh scarf and my black work out tights that I was traveling in. Mercifully I am accompanied by a man so my integrity and womanly virtue is somewhat maintained. But judging by the fact that none of the few woman that are out and about are wearing anything shorter than ankle length or short-sleeve, I am quite obviously a tourist. In a quest to maintain this womanly virtue (and mainly to avoid been ogled and propositioned) I shall restrict my wanderings to morning and evening walks, always accompanied by one of my male companions.
This is not to say I experienced harassment or a leering attitude from the town. Certainly a little suspicion from the local women and some stares from the men, but nothing that has thus far made me feel particularly uncomfortable. In fact I've found that everyone has been very friendly and helpful, a much more welcoming experience than Istanbul which, typically city-like, was abrupt and harassing.
What made me feel uncomfortable were my own observations. How different my culture is to the predominantly Muslim Turkish culture. How these differences can be seen in small but obvious ways. The few women who walk in town, the coffee shops whose tables spill onto the sidewalk and are occupied only by men, the way everyone is wearing conservative clothing from upper arms all the way down to ankles despite the 34 degree heat. Despite being surrounded by dozens of my own kind, I still felt a little alienated which was accelerated by the difficulty in verbal communication. However, the friendliness and helpfulness of the locals countered these differences. It did make me understand a little better how easily fear and suspicion can grow when you feel so different from others. It also reinforced how important it is for us to travel and get to know other cultures and people, and make the effort to get to know them as fellow human beings. Give them a chance to get to know us and give them a chance to show how similar they are to us. To achieve some sort of unification as a human species we need to put in the time and effort to remind ourselves of what it means to be human and then see those qualities in the people around us.
Dinner time: a lesson in Turkish
There is no better motivation for learning a new language than hunger. We successfully manage our way through 2 courses and the traditional tea and Raki digestif with only marginal punctuation errors.
Fly from London to Turkey.
The flight over the pond is easy and painless - 4 hours from London to Istanbul, a short change over and then 1 hour to Izmir Adnan Menderes airpot. Honestly, the time spent waiting to board then waiting on the runway takes longer than the actual flight. 2:30 am and we get off at Izmir and start feeling the excitement - our feet are on Turkish soil, and they want to dance a dervish whirl.
Pick up the car and drive to Bergama, our final destination.
Bearing in mind that we have arrived at 2:30 in the morning, and pre-booked a car, the process should be over in 5 minutes. However. First we can't find the booking office. So we ask a helpful but slightly suspicious airport security officer. He looks at the address on the email and then regretfully but kndly informs us that to pick up our booked car we would have to travel 400km back in the direction we came...which to be honest is not ideal. Our options are either a bus service to central Izmir and then up to Bergama or hope one of the other rental car agencies might be open at this unearthly hour. We try the latter option and within 10 minutes we are sorted and ready to go with another car! Setting the GPS is our next challenge as it is in Turkish. And you'd think that it is simple to change it to English, but this is only partly true. The steps that lead you to language options are all in Turkish which our limited knowledge of Turkish, including 'hello' 'thank you' and 'beer please', does not help with. Using a strong sense of guess work and common sense we change to English settings and off we go. Fill up with petrol. Drive for 30 minutes. Stop in the middle of a roundabout after a couple of orbits because it's 3:30am and we want to make sure we are heading in the right direction. Say a silent prayer of thanks that our temporary road block is not creating traffic. Head off again.
Arrival in Bergama city of dogs
It's now 5:30am and we are at our final destination. Our check in is only for 12:00 that afternoon so we have 5.5 hours to fill after a sleepless night. So we do what any normal person does at that time, we find that tallest hill with the oldest ruins and enjoy the sunrise and a bush pee, looking out for one of the many stray dogs wandering the streets. It's quite intimidating sitting squat in a bush hoping you don't come face to face with a rabid canine. But when that's your only option, and you need material to write about that's borderline amusing, squat you do. Another characteristic of the male life that I envy - standing upright pretty much anywhere you want and relieving yourself without baring your dignity to the world.
Post-sunrise and we find the narrowest streets we can and wind our way through them to find our air BnB. We're still too early for check-in so the boys go down to town for a coffee and I nap in the car. It's not just because I'm slack-jaw tired and starting to fray at the edges of patience. As we drove through the awakening town, we were greeted by early-riser shop owners preparing for the day as well as dozens of nomadic dogs. Short- and long-legged, shiny coated and mangey, they were everywhere. And in my experience dogs like to lick. Now on a good day I can tolerate a few saliva brush strokes on my leg or hand as I pet the closest pedigree dog but I have no desire to make friends with a wondering fur ball with no hygiene to his name whose tongue gives you rabies, worms or salmonella. So nap I did.
9am and time to check in.
Our host has kindly opened our rooms for us earlier than expected. Time to colonise the bed.
Afternoon walks:
Pete and I go for a walk instead of spending the afternoon sleeping. Who can sleep now anyway with the caffeine-fortified tea we've been drinking. I'm wearing a sleeveless top with a keffiyeh scarf and my black work out tights that I was traveling in. Mercifully I am accompanied by a man so my integrity and womanly virtue is somewhat maintained. But judging by the fact that none of the few woman that are out and about are wearing anything shorter than ankle length or short-sleeve, I am quite obviously a tourist. In a quest to maintain this womanly virtue (and mainly to avoid been ogled and propositioned) I shall restrict my wanderings to morning and evening walks, always accompanied by one of my male companions.
This is not to say I experienced harassment or a leering attitude from the town. Certainly a little suspicion from the local women and some stares from the men, but nothing that has thus far made me feel particularly uncomfortable. In fact I've found that everyone has been very friendly and helpful, a much more welcoming experience than Istanbul which, typically city-like, was abrupt and harassing.
What made me feel uncomfortable were my own observations. How different my culture is to the predominantly Muslim Turkish culture. How these differences can be seen in small but obvious ways. The few women who walk in town, the coffee shops whose tables spill onto the sidewalk and are occupied only by men, the way everyone is wearing conservative clothing from upper arms all the way down to ankles despite the 34 degree heat. Despite being surrounded by dozens of my own kind, I still felt a little alienated which was accelerated by the difficulty in verbal communication. However, the friendliness and helpfulness of the locals countered these differences. It did make me understand a little better how easily fear and suspicion can grow when you feel so different from others. It also reinforced how important it is for us to travel and get to know other cultures and people, and make the effort to get to know them as fellow human beings. Give them a chance to get to know us and give them a chance to show how similar they are to us. To achieve some sort of unification as a human species we need to put in the time and effort to remind ourselves of what it means to be human and then see those qualities in the people around us.
Dinner time: a lesson in Turkish
There is no better motivation for learning a new language than hunger. We successfully manage our way through 2 courses and the traditional tea and Raki digestif with only marginal punctuation errors.
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