Today Tolga and I rented a car and drove about an hour north of Didim to see the ancient city of Ephesus, the house of Mother Mary, and a small town called Sirince (pronounced SHIR-in-je) where they produce wine.
We forced ourselves to get out of bed at 9am after a late night out in Didim and started the day with a traditional Turkish breakfast in a nearby village called Akkoy. SO DELICIOUS. Everything was fresh from the farm: eggs literally taken from the chicken coop, tomatoes and cucumbers plucked from the garden, olives taken from local trees, olive oil squeezed fresh at the house, not to mention the homemade bread, butter, and honey. This is the way food is supposed to be enjoyed.
Ephesus is one of the largest intact of all world's ancient cities. At many historical sights you see one building: the Colosseum, Temple of Zeus, a monastery. But Ephesus is actually a whole dang city where at its high point 200,000 people lived over the last five thousand years. People like Cleopatra, Marc Antony and other Greek and Roman leaders made visits. If you look at it, its just a bunch of heaps of rocks and stone carvings thrown together—some buildings are mostly intact but others just consists of walls and pillars here and there. But learning about each building individually allows you to put the picture together.
In the US, our history classes teach us about events mostly in the last 200 years as being the most important in terms of issues that impact us as Americans. A lot of times we put Western society in high regard and forget “the east.” But looking at these sites really makes you think beyond what you have learned in textbooks . Also you are able to tie together everything you have learned from movies or in world history classes and visualize it in the place where it actually took place. For example, Ephesus has a huge meeting hall where the leaders came together to discuss government and democracy. There are huge bathhouses where people came together to wash and socialize and then waterworks that brought water to different parts of the city. There are even rows of port-o-potty style toilets at the bathhouse that let the waste drop into a deep pit where it was then washed away by the water system.
Kind of makes you think twice about what constitutes modernity and who we can thank for who we are today. How much have we really changed over time? How is it that 5,000 later we are still using similar structures and enjoying similar past times?
Additionally, visiting these kind of sites in various countries over the past few months allows me to make a lot of global connections. Sure, today these isolated sites are in different countries and accessing them requires different currencies, methods of travel and knowledge of different languages, but then you realize that in the time that these cities were thriving and the buildings were in business, the world was organized in a wholeee different manner. You realized that they weren't so isolated as they seem today.
For example, I was in Rome over Spring Break. In a few different places around the city, there are obelisks which were gifted to the Roman empire by the ancient Egyptians. In Egypt, I saw the places where those obelisks were made and the tombs of the people who commissioned them and sent them abroad. In Istanbul, there is another obelisk and in Ephesus, statues and tablets with Greek gods and inscriptions are scattered around. In Greece, I visited the archeological museum where some of the most well known statues in the same styles are displayed. No matter how much you read about this stuff or how many multiple choice questions you answer correctly about ancient Mediterranean relations, it doesn't really soak in until you see it.
Turkey is a really beautiful country. The drive to Epehsus was beautiful with many views of the Aegean sea and the nearby Greek isles, as well as small towns buried among fields of olive trees, the donkeys and chickens that live there, and the mountains and rolling farmland that you see in between. From my limited time here, this country seems a strange mix of old and new, modern and traditional, east and west. Here in Didim its especially unique. For example, I can sit on the beach, next to the topless woman tanning a few chairs away, sipping a beer, hearing the call to prayer every so often, seeing a woman swimming in a full body swimsuit including head cover. Then on the way back to the apartment, you see the man on his porch reading the Qur'an out loud, pass the street cats and dogs that wander the street and have to remember to not talk or laugh to loud for fear of what the neighbors might think. Then at the clubs, people are absolutely schwasted, dirty dancing on the floor, having sex on the roof of the club (yes, I really saw this and consequently, am scarred for life). Its important to note here, though, that there are a lot of British tourist here. Still, there are plenty of Turkish people who take part in this debauchery is well.
As for Istanbul, it could be Europe (but no, I am not asserting here that Turkey as a whole should be part of the European Union). There is traffic, but people follow traffic lights. There is litter, but there are trash receptacles here and there. You see women who are wearing hijabs, but they are the minority and I have yet to see anyone wearing a full niqab. It even seems from the people that I've talked to that they are looked down upon. There are great bars and clubs, and you have no problem finding alcohol.
At the same time, I do feel limited at times in terms of what I can wear due to disgusting creepers who roams the streets. I even got my ass grabbed twice the other day when there was a celebration going on for a soccer team that won. Its so incredibly degrading because you can't do anything about it. A wise woman once told me that God punishes. Insha'allah that is true. If God is cruel enough to allow war, then he must be cruel enough to rip off these men's balls and grill them in front of their noses. Inshallah.
Well, I'm off to take homemade jello shots with Tolga.
Güle güle!
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