12/3/06 - Istanbul, Turkey

see a map of how I got to Istanbul from Catania here

Highlights, Observations, Rants, etc.

• Maltese Lap of Luxury - suffering from travel fatigue & major frustration with half-being able to speak in Italian, I decided to head somewhere relaxing where I could speak good old English for a little while. So after an unexpected 2 day delay (the Sicilian travel agency I went to sold me a ticket for a ferry that had already been cancelled because of rough seas, so I had to wait for the next one), I took the 90 minute boat trip from Pozzallo in SE Sicily to Malta. After spending a day and a half in Valletta, the capital, which can probably rival Rome, London or Paris in terms of history per square foot, I booked a last-minute deal for 4 nights in the Le Meridien St. Julians. Admittedly, 5 months of hostels and pensions may have skewed my perception, but this was quite possibly the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in. It was awesome to do not much of anything for a few days, just lounge by the rooftop pool, sleep in a huge comfortable bed, and hang out with some German and Swiss girls I met who were in Malta taking an English language course for a few weeks. Although I could have used one or two extra days to completely top up the batteries, when I left I was refreshed and much more ready to go back to schlepping the pack around...
  
• The Pelopponese by 'Car' - In Greece I wanted to try to get off the beaten path a little bit, and the prospect of trying to do so by bus wasn't terribly appealing, so I decided to rent a car for a week. Well, 'car' might be a bit of an overstatement, because I ended up with a Chevrolet Matiz, which Chevy's UK website describes as 'one of the most exciting small cars around' (which is sort of like calling a grain of rice 'a delicious snack'), but in actuality was more like a glorified go-cart. But regardless of the whopping 66 horses (who often felt like they hadn't been fed in several days), it was great not to be reliant on public transportation for a little while, and to have complete freedom of movement as well as a safe place to leave the pack whenever I wanted. Starting in Patra, I headed counter-clockwise, hitting pretty much all the major sites: Ancient Olympia, Nestor's Palace near Pylos, the Byzantine city of Mystra, the Mani (famous for its rugged scenery and violent history of family blood-feuds), the other main Byzantine city of Monemvasia, Nafplio (Greece's first capital), the ancient theatre at Epidavros (see below), Mycenae, and the rack-and-pinion railway up the Vouraikos Gorge from Dhaikopto to Kalavryta. But having my own wheels also meant I could stop when- and wherever I felt like it, and for me this yielded as many highlights as the more heavily touted places listed above. As I was driving south from Olympia along the coast, I saw what looked like the ruins of an old fortress at the top of a hill high up above, followed shortly thereafter by a sign reading 'ancient acropolis', so I headed up a washed out dirt road (who says you need an SUV to go offroading - if the H3 is the 'baby' Hummer, maybe GM could market the Matiz as its post-fertilazation embryonic sibling) to the top and what must have once been a large and impressive town. Granted, all that was really left where the 5-foot high walls off massive rough-hewn stone, but I was at my leisure to wander around and enjoy the stunning views the acropolis commanded over the surrounding fields, hills, and sea.
  In addition to exploring, just driving was half the fun as well - the Pelopponese is actually incredibly hilly/mountainous, meaning there are plenty of roads switchbacking up and down mountainsides, and lots to look at out the window. The roads were fun enough to drive that I often wished I was behind the wheel of something with a little more muscle, but given the hairpin curves, steep drops and lack of guard rails, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing... Navigating was also sometimes interesting, especially in smaller towns where the roadsigns tended to be significantly older than me and were therefore still only in Greek, but with one or two minor exceptions I managed to make it everywhere I wanted to go without much difficulty, and also to some places I didn't intend at all -- but that was at least half the fun, and maybe more...
  
• Theatre at Epidavros - I think I saw just about every major archaeological site in the Pelopponese, and after a little while the foundations of what once were buildings, columns littered on the ground, and the occasional erect pillar started to lose their luster. I guess I simply lack the imaginative powers to picture things as they once were. The exception to this and definitely my favorite ancient site in Greece was the ancient theater at Epidavros, about 15 miles east of Nafplio (also one of the nicest towns in Greece) in the NE Pelopponese. It was built around 325 BC, but only rediscovered and unearthed in the late 19th century, meaning it's very well preserved. There are 54 rows of seats looking down on the beaten earth stage and its backdrop of rolling hills, but that's not what makes Epidavros unique. The acoustics are absolutely amazing, meaning that no matter where you sit, you can hear everything from the stage below with incredible quality. I sat probably 3/4 of the way up, and could hear someone drop a coin onto the packed dirt stage. And unlike the large other ancients theatre I've seen in Syracuse, Athens, and Ephesus, visitors have completely unfettered access to the entire site. This means that most people end up on the stage at some point, drawn to the small stone disc marking the center of the stage as if it were a human magnet. Normally lots of tourists crawling around a place does nothing but make me want to get the hell out, but this is one of the few places I've ever been where other tourists actually enhance the experience, because they end up using the structure for exactly the same purpose as it was originally built 2300 years ago: as a venue for entertainment. American college kids singing a cappella, middle-aged eastern European tour guides reciting poetry, and old German women belting out Beethoven's Ode to Joy all help to demonstrate the genius of ancient Greeks who built the theater, and the 'audience' (i.e. those sitting around the theater, rather than congregating around the stage) gets into the act as well, generally applauding after every amateur performance. It's good fun, because it's spontaneous entertainment in a very cool setting, and if other places weren't beckoning, I probably could have sat there all day.
• Imperfections of English (or at least one) - Over the past few months, lots of people I've met have asked me how to say a variety of things in English, ranging from "what else can you say in response to 'thank you' other than 'you're welcome'?" to the sans underwear equivalent of "topless" ("bottomless???"). These seemingly simple questions are often harder than you'd imagine, because as a native speaker they would never occur to you, and you try have to think of a situation where you would want/have to express yourself in that particular way. But in general, even if it's taken me a little while to come up with something, I've generally been able give a satisfactory answer. One thing, question, however, had (and still has) me stumped. A friend here in Turkey asked me how you would ask where in a sequence something is located. For example, JFK was the 35th president; how would one ask what number president he was? You couldn't just ask 'which president was Kennedy', because it's not specific enough: your answers could range anywhere from 'the best one' to 'the catholic one with the funny accent' to 'the one who got his brains splattered all over the presidential limo in Dallas'. So what would you say? In both Turkish and German, there's a word to refer to an unknown ordinal number (not sure about Turkish, but in German it's effectively the 'howmanieth'). As far as I can come up with, such a word, or even way of asking this, doesn't really exist in English -- the best I can think of asking this is what I wrote above: "what/which number xxx", which doesn't sound exactly right to me but is I guess how I would express the question if I had to.
  

Random Tidbits

• The Maltese Lira might be the strongest unit of currency in the world vs. the good old USD. While I was there, one Lira (confusingly also referred to in English as the Pound) was equivalent to almost exactly $3, making it more costly than a British Pound, which I had previously assumed to be the most expensive. It's currently pegged to the Euro, and slated to disappear sometime next year, at which point I guess the title will revert to GBP, unless there's some other random-assed currency out there that that takes the cake.
• In both Malta and Greece, I ended up hanging out with a bunch of German girls, and for the first time I really realized how much English has infiltrated the German language. It makes sense: most German kids start learning English around 2nd grade, so by the time they're teenagers, they speak pretty good English and their everyday language is infused with English words. But at the same time, it results in some interesting expressions native English speakers would raise their eyebrows at. For example, my favorite: apparently, in neudeutsch (as the new, anglicized version of German is known) another word for backpack is 'body bag', giving a whole new meaning to back to school shopping...
  
• In NE Greece, I spent three nights in Greek Orthodox monasteries (for more on my trip to Mount Athos, read the review I wrote on travbuddy.com here), where it's apparently considered in bad form to keep your hands in your pockets, hold them behind your back, or cross your legs while sitting. Okay, not a big deal, or so I thought... Just try to keep your hands out of your pockets for a few hours sometime -- it's not nearly as easy as you might think (or at least it wasn't for me), especially if you're spending a lot of time just standing around. It's almost completely unconscious behaviour; there were plenty of times when I realized my hands were in my pockets or behind my back, or I caught myself in the middle of putting them there completely without thinking about it...

Photos

Next Stops

• none, at least not immediately - I've got a place here in Istanbul until mid-January, so I'll be here for a little while. After that, it's still up in air (although I probably ought to book tickets reasonably soon); Cyprus, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Southern Africa and India are all under consideration as the next tour stop.