Blog At Sea

At sea days on a cruise ship are those during which the ship does not dock at any port. When in port of course everyone jumps off early in the morning and is gone until shortly before the ship leaves port – which is usually 4-6pm. What with breakfast before going ashore, and dinner after returning, there is little time to get practical things like laundry done. The ship has a one-room laudromat with free washing machine and dryer use. Not everyone aboard uses this facility. The ship will pick up, launder, and deliver your clothes for what they consider to be a small amount. It seems large to me, so I wait until an at sea day to do the laundry.

So does everyone else. Unlike other ships I’ve been laundering on, the Royal Princess’s machines have no timers on them. Consequently you cannot tell when the prior load will be done. The dryers are slower than the washers, but there are the same number of each, so things jam up pretty quickly. Lines form, and a little society gets going amongst those who also serve by standing and waiting for a machine.

Today an energetic woman with blond hair and a German accent had become the laudromat leader. Naïve users could easily be puzzled by features like a coin slot to start the machine which requires no coins, or soap dispensers which do not work and soap in a bucket with a scoop at the far end of the room. Frau X took care of that. She organized us all and issued instructions to newcomers. Since I am of the male persuasion she immediately assumed that I had no clue whatever. This worked out well. She found me an empty washing machine, got me the soap, told me when to come back, and generally ran a tight and pleasant ship. I got out quickly, came back to organize slides of Troy, and returned when the machine was due to complete the washing. A dryer showed up, I cleaned the lint panel to a chorus of exclamations from Frau X and her companions, and got the clothes dry in 45 minutes. No one had timed the dryer, so I came back early and got into a 3-way conversation that turned political. It developed that we had a woman from Aberdeen, Scotland with us in the Laundromat. I considered telling her about Bukka White (“Aberdeen is my home but the men don’t want me round”) but Frau X, who turned out to be British, went off on Labour Party politics and the conversation got lively. Then we hit President Bush, who in the opinion of Frau X and Ms. Aberdeen, is not in any way the master of public speaking that Tony Blair is. Blair used to be a barrister – a trial lawyer – and naturally he can speak well. It’s just too bad about Bush who doesn’t seem to be able to get a sentence together. It’s hard for someone to criticize the President around me without getting a strong reaction, especially when the critic is a foreigner. Naturally I leapt right in and agreed heartily.

Which reminds me of a conversation that I had in Istanbul. Mary Alice and I had sat down at an outdoor restaurant on the main shopping street, and were ordering what turned out to be a very expensive meal because of the exchange rate. Two businessmen in suit and tie outfits were next to us and once they heard our American accents they began a conversation with us. They have relatives in the US, of course. In Chicago, I believe. And they’d rather be there. I asked them if Turkey would become a member of the European Union. This is a hot topic right now because there is a perceived threat to secular rule in Turkey. The threat is that the candidate for President (who is elected by the Parliament, not by direct vote) has a wife who wears a headscarf. In public. This fact launched protests where up to 1 million people came out in to the streets to protest his election to the post and the secular parties refused to take part in Parliament which then did not have a quorum and could not conduct business therefore could not elect the man President.

Now fashion is important in Europe, of course. But public demonstrations bringing out
People in those numbers seems extreme, even for a headscarf. No one was criticizing the pattern of the scarf, either. Remember those schoolgirls in France who were denied entry into school to take their classes because they were wearing headscarves? What is it with these scarves? They are a symbol of conservative or fundamentalist Moslem believers. Turkey is 99% Moslem, but its government, like ours, is not aligned with any religion. The Turks who came out in protest are worried that the fundamentalists will seize control of the government and institute Sharia Moslem law. It is widely believed that the Turkish army would overthrow any such government in a coup. Indeed it has done so 4 times in the past 50 years.

What complicates everything is this issue of joining the EU. The EU has certain requirements for membership, and Sharia law is not going to cut it on the human rights issues. However the EU also stands for religious toleration – so why shouldn’t the President’s wife wear a scarf if she wants to?

Our new friend said he thought it would take 2 centuries for Turkey to get into the EU. Istanbul is not the whole country, he said. It is 12 million of the 70 million Turks, however. But he said out in the countryside people are backward, they haven’t caught up with the people in the city in social thinking.

Well that got me watching for outward manifestations of fundamentalism. First thing of note is that the streets do not empty when the call to prayer comes. Our tour guide in Canakkale was Moslem, and she did not wear a scarf. “Religion is what is in your heart, not what is on your head, “she told me. I thought of, but did not get into with her, Jesus saying of dietary restrictions, “It is not what goes into a person’s mouth which defiles them, it is what comes out.” So what did I see? A minority of women wear scarves. Most are older and wear a kind of shapeless overcoat. I saw one woman in total black covering with only her face visible; and I saw a couple of college women wearing scarves. They mixed with other young women not wearing scarves, so it appears that things are not polarized.

Turkey could go either way: modern, secular, and into the EU; or backwards, fundamentalist, and into chaos. There have already been one or two bombings. I vote for modern secular civilization myself, but I’m not a Turk.

Blog Malta

Malta seems to be an island (6 but Malta itself is the main island) made of limestone. As a result all of the buildings on Malta are build of stone, primarily limestone. I did see a few cinder blocks being used here and there but I think that’s cheating. The buildings we saw were mainly 2-4 story, and solid stone. Kind of like the Federal buildings in downtown DC, as I recall them.

Malta’s farmers use walls made of rubble – ie pieces of limestone- to mark off their fields, which are fairly small. The farmland looks like a city that’s been bombed back to the stone age, the cities look like amazingly sturdy places. It’s a contrast that took some getting used to. If they have slums, they are very solid slums.

We took tour. Probably a mistake. But our guide did give us some insight into the way Maltese see themselves. Twice they have saved western civilitzation. In the 1600s during the period of Turkish expansion (remember, they almost seized Vienna) Malta fortified by the military monk order, held them off. In the second world war, Malta held out against the Axis powers which included Italy. Italy is right above Malta and quite a bit bigger. From the defeat of Napolean until 1964 Malta was a British colony, and the King of England awarded Malta a special cross as a token of their valor, and that cross is now incorporated into their flag. So lets hear it for the twice saviors of Western civilization.

But Malta has two official languages: Maltese and English. Despite being a colony for over 250 years, English is clearly a second language for the Maltese. They have an odd accent and their tonality is unusual. Their first language is an Arabic one descended from their days under Arab rule some 1000-1500 years ago. Given that what would you think their religion is? 99% of the Maltese are Roman Catholic. St Peter visited Malta and they’ve been Catholic ever since according to the guide.

Our tour took us to the cave of darkness, where big piles of bones of extinct animals have been found, most of which are in display cabinets. These all predate human entry into the cave but the guide could not explain why the animals were in there when they died. The idea is that the animals retreated to Malta during the glacier period when the glaciers held so much water that the sea was quite a bit lower than at present and there was a land bridge to Sicily and Italy. There was not a land bridge to Africa but they found elephants and hippopotami bones in the cave.

We went to the prehistoric temple. Malta has a structure designated as the oldest surviving free-standing structure on earth – it predates the pyramids and Stonehenge. It was unfortunately on another island and we didn’t see it. We did see a prehistoric structure which the guide felt strongly was a temple. It contained some really big rocks and someone worked very hard to get them to the top of the hill. They did this about 5000 years ago and we don’t really have much of a clue about who they were or what they were doing.

We went to a fishing village – now here’s the thing about stone buildings. They just shouldn’t be in village. They should be in a city. And you can’t really tell when one village or city ends and another begins, except for some boundary signs by the road. They are built right up onto one another, and if fields separate them the fields look like city areas that have been destroyed by bombing, or urban renewal. There was an outdoor market and we were offered door knockers and lace table cloths. Then I found the post-office trailer offering philatelic (look it up) items: a quick trip to the ATM machine and I became the proud possessor of one copy of every stamp issued by Malta from 2003-2006.

We got the tour bus to drop us off at the city, rather than return us to port. A short walk got us onto the main pedestrian shopping street. We found a restaurant and got lunch: I should have had spaghetti with rabbit sauce, but instead I had Maltese steak – which is a thin steak with mushrooms, onions, and tomatoes on it. For ice tea they brought a can of Lipton’s peach tea.

The place was like North Beach used to be. Stone walls, two story high ceiling, big hanging fans, some inscriptions in Italian that seemed to say the building was really swell; some photos of old guys in groups, pool tables, a bar, and tables for eating – which is where we were. I got the price-fixe #3 that included some wine –not very good wine unfortunately. Mary Alice had fish and thought it was very fresh and very good. For dessert we wandered further down the street until we reached an outdoor café – about a city block of tables with big umbrellas. I got a double-thick vanilla shake, she got lemon sorbet, expresso, and a local liquor made from cactus. Our waitress was a sullen teen-ager with lots of attitude.

Mary Alice got a bottle of the cactus drink. We discussed the price to take a horse drawn carriage ride back to the ship. The driver insisted that we take the 30 minute tour of the city with photo op for 50 euros (nearly $70). We walked back, which was very pleasant.

If I had it to do over I would skip the tour. That is often true, what the traveler needs - what I need – is faith that I can just get off the boat and have an interesting time in whatever port we reach.

Tomorrow is an “at sea” day, which will be followed by 5 ports in 5 days, so I’m trying to get ready for it.

Canakkale

We got on the bus and went to Troy. Seeing the road sign, TROY 5 was like having legends spring to life. I had a similar feeling when I went to the Mississippi Delta in the 1990s and saw the road signs with the names of the towns that I had only known from the old blues: Rolling Fork, Belzoni, and now Troy

Our guide was an intense young woman who was able to bring the site to life well. She told us the legend of Paris picking the most beautiful goddess, getting Helen as a reward, and thus being with the woman’s whose face launched 1000 ships and toppled Illium’s towers, as they say. The Greek arrive and they besiege Troy. For 10 years the battle see-saws back and forth, on the plain below Troy’s walls. Then one day the Greeks are gone. They have left a huge wooden horse. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts says the wise man. He is ignored. The Trogans take the horse into the city. That night the Greeks hidden inside come out, overwhelm the guard, open the gates, and Troy is destroyed.

The site itself was disappointing. The problem in a nutshell was that there wasn’t one city found under the earthen hill that marked Troy. There were 9 or 10, built one atop and amongst the others. Troy had risen and fallen many times over the thousands = years that the site was inhabited. There were fires, earthquakes, wars, rebuilding and alternations. The Troy of the Illiad is thought to be Troy 6, or possibly Troy 7. To see Troy 7 fully it is necessary to dig up and move Troy 8-9. But we know of Troy 0-6 beneath Troy 7. How do we know. We know because parts of Troy 7-9 have been dug up and removedl. What we see at Troy are bits and pieces of the various Troys, and not in chronological order. Here is part of the outer wall of Troy 7, and right by it is a wall built hundreds of years later by the Romans as part of a subsequent Troy. It is difficult to get a grip on it.

Then too the grave goods and other treasures found on site have been removed, by archologists, tourists, villagers and vandals. Now museums and their governments fight over them, but there are none to see at Troy.

On the other hand you can look out to the Bosphorus, across the plain, and imagine the Greek armies camped there while the defenders stand on walls, and sally forth to do battle. One has to give up the idea of a 10 years war, since Troy is so small that it doesn’t seem one could provision it to allow a siege of 10 years. But they say they’ve only uncoverd about 10% of the city, so who knows what surprises await future generations.

I was glad to have seen the legendary city, but Machu Piccu with its simpler history was much more impressive to walk through. Lets see how Pompei turns out.

After seeing Troy – and what strange words those are to be writing – we grabbed a shuttle bus into Canakkale to see the town. To quote the song “I was hungry” . Its not so easy to find a particular food in a Turkish town because the Turkish language is not related to Indo-European. The blessing is that Attaturk did away with the Arabic script and gave us latin letters for Modern Turkish. There are no cognates but lots of loan words. Take a taksi, or an ambulans, watch for the polis. Have tost for breakfast. There’s more, especially on menus, but the problem is we wanted Turkish food – the very items that would not require loan words because the dishes are traditional. Mary Alice had her heart set on octopus salad – what’s that in Turkish? We didn’t know either.

we went into a small place with no menu, just some kebaps (kebobs to Americans) in the window and two people working the cooking area. Beyond them were two benches which wouold seat perhaps 8 people, max. English was almost non-existant but we pointed and the young woman began grilling two skewers of meat. She got some large enlongated pieces of flexible flat bread – like tortillas but stretched ovals and more than a foot long- and put chopped up lettuce and tomatos on it, possibly some sauce, and when the meat was done, added it. Then she folded the whole thing up and put it on the fire. That hardened the bread enough to give it the body to allow you to hold it and eat it. It was great. We got something between buttermilk and liquid yoghurt to drink with it. While eating we met a woman from Quebec who was spending a month in Turkey just wandering around. Sounded like fun.

Prices were more reasonable here. To put that another way, we got screwed in Istanbul because we were in the tourist district. The YTL (Turkish lira) is 75 cents. I got an ice cream cone from a store front vendor for 1 YTL, we got Turkish Delight for 1 YTL. Lunch was 10 YTL. Yesterday we had lunch at a modest outdoor café in Istanbul’s tourist area for about 40 YTL.

We walked around several blocks in the business district, eating pastries, and other nibbles. Turkey seems male. There are more men than women on the streets. Many of the older women were in what I called Turkish burkas. They wear headscarfs, and a formless coat that covers them neck to ankle, We passed a store selling these, and they had a variety so some style must exist even among these repressive clothes. Very few younger women had headscarves – this is a college town with a large retirement community so it may not be typical on either end of the spectrum. I saw young women with scarves in groups of young women without them, so it is not a sign of withdrawing from the world into a community of believers. I found the scarves disturbing – not because someone chose to wear one, but because it represents repression of women, to me, on an individual basis, and a danger to civilization on a mass basis. Probably I just don’t understand the social implications of what I am seeing—but this scarf business has featured large in both French and Turkish politics recently so there is something there, whether I understand it or not.

We found the Turks pleasant, friendly, helpful, and not at all proficient in English. It is taught in high school as one of a variety of 2nd language choices – along with French and Japanese (Japanese?) Our guides on the tours and shuttles had a very good command of English – better than usual in fact. I think they were from the University. I talked with one young woman guide who said her father was an English teacher, and she aspired to be the same – probably in a high school – and wanted to go to the US for a few months to polish up her English.

I wondered why all the cruise ships stop at Santorini in the Greek islands. Surely
There is more than one island to stop at. When we pulled in this morning about 6 a.m. I began to see. Santorini is what’s left of a much larger island created, and destroyed by a volcano. Sometime about 1500 BC it blew big time and now Santorini and a couple of other islands are the rim of a caldera. The island rises pretty much straight up from the sea at a guess about 1000 feet. The top 100 feet or so are lava. On top of that is the town. Almost every building is painted white, making the town look like snow on top of the cliffs.

We were the third cruise ship to pull in this morning. The Emerald Princess was already an anchor, and a Costa ship was a bit further out. That means about 5000 people landed on Santorini this morning. We all landed by tender, that is by small boats which shuttled us from ship to shore. Ours held about 30 people each trip – meaning about 700/30 = 23 boatloads. The sea was an incredible blue, and very clear, and very rough which slowed down the loading and unloading of the boats because you had to wait until the wave pushed the tender against the dock, then jump quickly before it was knocked down and out by the wave trough.

There were tours offered, but none of the descriptions hit the spot, so we decided to just get off the tender at the island and see what we could find on our own. Great decision.
There are 3 ways up the cliff. Walk up 1000’ of stairs, take a mule ride up the stairs, or take the cable car for 4 euros. We took the cable car up. Walked back down at the end of the day, which was hard on the knees.

The town at the top is fairly narrow, dropping away on both sides. Those readers who have had occasion to go to Fox Camp gate will have a good idea of the landform. The streets at the top are narrow; often just walkways, and those follow irregular routes. Buildings are jammed into every space that will hold them, inching down the cliff face until the really steep part. It’s a kind of maze. The center is heavily tourist oriented. Why anyone would come to Santorini to buy jewelry is beyond me, but there are dozens of jewelry shops with items that are often exquisite and always expensive. Packed in with them are hotels, restaurants (authentic Greek food served, except at the Chinese restaurant.) and bars. Did I forget cheesy souvenirs?

We found the archeological museum and for 2 euros each looked through its three rooms of exhibits, mostly vases from a cemetery dating to about 800 BC. Probably interesting to specialists. There were a few later vases with decorations of Greek heroes and myths – more interesting. Two women were looking at pottery and writing down notes or drawing pictures of them. One had a little folding chair, which fell over when she got too into one piece of pottery. We left just before a large number of small schoolchildren came in.

Wandering to the left we found an exhibit of Wall Paintings. Not promising but we went. The gallery entrance was a long tunnel with photographs of the archeological dig that found the paintings. They were in a villa covered by the ash from the volcano, so they predate c 1500 BC. Not that I know much, but I would relate them to the Minoan art on Crete (people jumping over bulls and all that). They were replicated in the exhibit rooms, in three dimensions. Now, you might ask, aren’t paintings 2d objects? Yes, but these were done on plaster that was uneven. The replication was done with some innovative photographic technique, which I don’t understand.

The paintings were wonderful, very stylized, and locally famous. One is of a naked man holding up a bunch of fish he has caught, another of two birds beak fighting, a third of two boys boxing. Doesn’t sound like much, but you ought to see them. Execution is everything and several of these images are masterpieces.

Lunch was at the Flame. We had never heard of it, but the sign said Ocotopus, and Mary Alice had that on her must eat list. There were patio tables covered with a thatch roof and a view of the caldera, which is unbeatable. If only photos were easily uploaded to this blog, etc. The owner was multi-lingual and quite friendly, in a way that made you feel like an old friend in about 30 seconds. We had Mixed Appetizers for two, and grilled octopus. The appetizers went from a kind of cheese toast, to dolmas, and grilled eggplant. Really good. The octopus likewise. Wrapped it up with Expressos and, for me, a milk shake. We looked at the volcano and the cruise ships with binocs the owner brought for us, we had a digestif, and we left. Lunch took about an hour and a half. It was one of the best meals we have had, ever.

Then more walking thru town looking at stores. We got a 1/10th of local red wine to try at home. Last time we brought home something local to a tour stop it was awful. We have higher hopes this time. As we reached the far side of our walk, a Princess tour group came by – our tablemate from the second seating- and his wife were in the lead, just behind the guide. They waved, but they were not giving up that spot, so they were gone again in a flash. With some bemusement we watched as the rest of the tour passed by. There must have been 50 of them. Those at the end were not going to hear the guide’s lecture because it would be over before they caught up. Everyone was rushing past all the sights. No fun.

We walked down the 1000 feet of stairs. Hard on the knees, and somewhat of a problem when a group of mules would come by. Still, we made it, with a few rest stops, and quickly caught a tender back to the ship. I’m going up top when we leave the port at 6 p.m. and snap some shots to add to the 100 or so I took during the day

I haven’t really gotten a grip on our visit to Istanbul yet. We took an hour’s boat ride on the Bosphorus with a guide, Omar, who told us about the structures we were seeing; then we visited the Egyptian Obylisk, the Blue Mosque, and the underground Cistern. After that we wee taken to a carpet shop on a high-end shopping street, and wandered for a bit in the Grand Bizar. If anything else is essential to an understanding of Istanbul, then I missed it.

Istanbul, like Budapest, is a city divided by a body of water: the Danube river for Budapest, the Bosphorus straits for Istanbul. With a population of about 12 million, it is home to about one of every 6 Turks. We saw relatively little of it. The Bosphorus is a very narrow body of water connecting the Black Sea with, eventually, the Mediterranian. At Istanbul it is under 1 mile wide, and there are two bridges across it. These bridges actually connect Europe with Asia, and the city is located on both Continents. The Bosphorus has a current, but not a tide. It drains water from the Black Sea, which is swollen by rivers in the Spring, into the Mediterranian. Consequently people have built right up to the water’s edge – the new palace of the last Sultan stretches along the European side of the Bosphorus for perhaps 1/2 mile. Rich people built summer homes by the water, and now that is prime real estate, going for Manhattan pricess. Most of the rest of the hillside is covered with apartment buildings which appear to be 5-6 story walkups. A few modern skyscrapers pop up. The other visible pop-ups are minarettes from the many mosques in the city. The overall impression is of an aging city. It is not as run down as Bucharest or Belgrade, but its not all new and shiny either.

The boat trip on the Bosphorus was wonderful. The air was about 70 degrees, the boat, the Den Den 2, was small and powerful and it moved along so we had a welcome breeze. The Bosphorus is quite blue. If you look at the Pacific you could easily wonder why the poets sing of the deep blue sea. If you look at the Bosphorus you would wonder how they could call it anything else.

Once you get to the old city you realize that we have no idea in America what an old city or a historic city is. As the song says

”Its Istanbul, not Constantinople
Why? Its nobody’s business but the Turks”

Its Istanbul because the city founded by the Roman Emperor, Constantine, was conquered by the Turks in the midde ages and while it may have been Constantinople when it was the capitol of the Roman Empire, now it was part of the Islamic world and the word, Istan, is a corruption of the word “Islam” (our guide said). But before Constantine set up his city as part of Rome it was the Greek colony, founded by Bzyas, Bysantium. Yeats fans will know about this. In other words the city’s history goes back at least 3000 years and it has been in the hands of many cultures.

So we went to the ancient Hippodrome, built by the Romans, and saw the Egyptian Obelisk, which pre-dates the entire city, and then went into the Blue Mosque – right ahead of the tour group of the Senior Citizens of Mumbai.

Its Mumbai, not Bombay, and its nobody’s business but the Indians.

They all had yellow hats on, which made it easy to spot them. The mosque is huge and very impressive. There are 4 huge pillars holding up a dome which spans a great distance. Like the medieval cathedrals the structure itself is full of religious symbolism which I won’t go into. Moslems are iconoclasts – they don’t believe in images, and that idea has caused a vast amount of destruction of classical art from Venus di Milo’s arms to the Buddhas the Taliban destroyed, because they tend to destroy images, especially religious images when they get ahold of them. Worse yet, when they started beating the Christians in battle, the Eastern part of the Catholic church thought perhaps they should adopt this anti-image idea, and it got into Christianity. Many Protestants believe the Catholics are idol worshippers because the Cathoics have so many images in church. Oddly, to my way of thinking then, on a wall in the Blue Mosque is a very detailed, but written and not illustrated, description of the prophet Mohammed. The only point of which must be to allow you to create a mental image of him. Go figure.

Moslems pray 5 times a day. They are called to prayer by someone going up high on the minarets and giving the call. Nowadays this is done with loudspeakers, and may be a recording. When we heard the call to prayer we wondered if the city would suddenly look deserted as everyone went to the Mosque. It does not because they do not.