Happy Holidays!

I really did need to get out of that marina in Marmaris to feel less ‘stuck’, and we did just that.  We rented a car in Marmaris and are now on a tour of Turkey.  Leaving Marmaris, we headed straight to Ephesus…as in the Ephesians…as in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians in the book of John.  That is pretty much where Code and I started drinking from the fire-hose trying to learn our pre-Christian, early-Christian, Byzantine, and Ottoman history.  It has been a crash course, to say the least. 

We heard people saying that Ephesus is a place not to be missed.  They were right.  At first, we thought it was just another round of seeing Greek and Roman ruins with the usual stuff…the agora, the stoas, the brothels, the amplitheaters, etc.  But as we’re walking through the site, we soon learn that the Virgin Mary lived out the rest of her days here along with the apostle John who promised Jesus to look after  his mother.   Spending the day there made me realize just how real the biblical characters are.  No matter what your beliefs, these are real people who were off trying to create a new religion at a time when your spiritual choices were pretty limited.  If you were not born Jewish, then you could partake of the pagan gods of the Romans/Greeks which really did not fulfill much in terms of real spiritual guidance, rather it was just a barter system of a sacrifice in return for favors.  The Jews weren’t totally enthralled with one of their own inviting outsiders into their clan either.  It must have been a pretty tough row to sow, and if nothing else, it is a miracle that Christianity got off the ground given the challenges faced in communication and spiritual inertia.

Troy was another eye-opener.  Given that it was one of the first walled cities of Europe, first inhabitants were around 3,000 BC, There were thousands of years of history before the Romans. All of a sudden all these Roman and Greek ruins started to not seem so old to us anymore. 

After Troy we got to Istanbul at long last.  It has been a city I have wanted to visit for most of my life.  I remember as a kid looking at pictures of sultans and the ottoman dress with a great fascination of their mystique and exotic look and live.  Harems, sabers, whirling dervishes, fezs, sultans, the foreign religion, and those crazy mustaches.  It was too foreign for me to comprehend looking at pictures in the encyclopedia as a grade school kid.  The ‘old school’ Turkey is obviously gone with the Ottoman Empire, but their descendants are a mosaic of every type of Muslim (from conservative to those who are in name only) who are well integrated with the Eastern Orthodox faith.   It is an amazing city, amazing history, beautiful, and vibrant.  I expected it to have more of a ‘crazy’ feel to it…like Rome on cheap steroids, but remarkably, it felt much like Toronto or Washington.   The city infrastructure felt orderly, functional, and clean, but definitely with a feel of a very old city that has gracefully transitioned to contemporary culture.  The skyline is filled with minarets instead of steeples, but the shops and stores in between reflect the west more than the east. 

We also met up with my friend Pam Danagher and her family, who coincidentally also are doing a sabbatical (but by plane and going around the world).  I used to work with Pam in California and I was so happy to hear that we were going to cross paths in Istanbul.  Our kids are the same age (she has three:  13, 10, and 3) and they are traveling by backpack…and I thought we had to travel light!  We adults had a ton of fun exchanging travel stories, but the kids reveled in the opportunity to play with real American kids with similar experiences.  It was so great, we stayed an extra half day just to gab and play. 

Today we spend the day in Ankara, where we visited the Citadel (built by King Midas) and castle.  There is also a beautifully restored Han (which is a ‘caravanassi’ – or a inn/market/restaurant/meet-up point for ancient traders).  The Han is now a Hotel which we had the opportunity to peek into (the Divan Cukurhan).  There is a walled citadel which uses the pieces of statues, columns, and other (probably priceless) artifacts from other ruins along with regular stones as part of their building blocks for a wall.  It is crazy. 

Afterwards, we decided to hit a fairground so the kids could have some fun.  They did the usual rides, cotton candy, but had lamb kabobs instead of hot dogs (not halal).  It happens to be a religious holiday – the day that Abraham did not have to sacrifice his son for God, but sacrificed a lamb instead.  We don’t know the name of the holiday, but we like to call it “Don’t have to kill my kid day”.  Muslims celebrate by killing sheep today, too.  Yep, there is literally blood in the streets today.  We got to see a guy skinning a, shall we say, ‘fresh’ sheep.  No…not in the countryside, but in the street outside his apartment building.  I am not sure what Hallmark has to say about this one.