Sunday, October 2, 2011
Kusadasi, Turkey then sailing toward Rhodes, Greece
We like Turkey, this is our second time here in about four months, first Istanbul and now a tiny sea port on the west coast.
This port has grown up from a tiny little fishing villiage into a major tourist destination in the past few years. Tourism is an absolutely huge income source for Turkey, and they want to develop it further. The history of this region is huge, there being settlements here documented to over 2000 years before Christ. But the history covered on this visit is more religious in nature than purely historical, and our first stop was the ruins of the Basilica of St. John, built over the remains of St. John himself. That said, the remains have been long removed (to somewhere, I'm not sure) but the facts are that he once walked these rocks and hillsides. So sure are the church powers that a pope (not sure which, wasn't listening that carefully) actually came and said mass there. All is in ruins now, smashed and broken by many invaders, but some walls remain and the remains of the foundation and pillars, etc, are still in place. Enough to give the general feel of the place.
From there, on the busses again and this time off to the final resting place of the Virgin Mary. What?? Yes, apparently well documented and again blessed by a pope as being the final resting place, The Da Vinci Code movie be damned. Up the hill, up the mountain, nearly up to the sky, at the very top was the shrine and her house. Evidently she was taken away by St. John and lived up there while he preached in the Basillica below. The life of the early Christians was a tough one, and the faithful had to flee from the Romans on a regular basis. When we got to the parking lot there were, easily, 25 tour busses milling about either waiting, arriving, leaving, picking up passengers or disgorging passengers. Several cruise ships in port here, evidently, plus some land tourists arrived by plane. I'm not religious at all, but this turned me off so much. Out of the bus, we walked toward the washrooms and concession stand, which was on the way to the pathway to the shrine. I got to the washroom, crowded and smelly, and stood in line. A lesson here was learned, never stand in line after an old man at a urinal, they take absolutely forever to get started, then forever to stow everything away again. Choose young guys to wait behind, I learned, they are quick and don't stand around forever.
The pushing and shoving and loud talking of the concession stand put me off, and I headed the other way to wait by the bus. Shouldn't religion be an experience of peace and serenity, at one with your god? What does this place have to do with anything like that, other than the money god. Anyway, I didn't go, just couldn't. I sat on a wall by the bus and watched the tours come and go for 45 minutes until our group returned. The more I see people on tours, the more I like animals.
From there back down to a huge (20 feet tall?) statue of a golden Mary, with a crown on her head for a photo op. Please tell me again how this golden statue of a woman in a shining robe and a crown squares with a little old woman on the hilltop above, hounded and persecuted for her part in an unapproved religion? How do we reconcile her final days and her humble resting place with the 'golden' person she has become, idealized in form and presence, storied in print and glorified in art. How, again, does that work??? Revisionist history, if you ask me. History written by the victors, the boss religion, the priests. Crap, I say, it hurts me for reasons I don't fully understand, and I avoid it.
After the photos, down the hill a bit and we get off to tour Ephesus. Huh? What's an Ephesus? Funny, I asked that question myself. It was in its heyday a city of over 300,000 souls, the big smoke, a main player in the events of its day, of commerce and culture and civilization as it was then, and was a Roman capital. It was a seaport too, but earthquakes and the silting of a nearby river have driven the ruins six miles inland from its original site in the past 2000 years. Or rater, the ocean has been driven away from the ruins. Beyond that, this page is NOT the place to tell the story, which is huge and remarkable and well outside of my abilities or this sites space. Google it, and look at all of our pictures, the 700 or so that you don't see here on this page, and about half an hour of movies I took. The excavation work is ongoing, led by a team of Austrians from a Vienna university, detailed and painstaking. Much has been done, much left to do, earthquakes knocked things down but also covered them up with dirt too, preserving them and preventing the theft over the centuries. Such a story, and so well documented on storyboards around the site. Superb visit.
Finally back on the bus, after buying trinkets, spices, and Jan's picture with a camel (1 Euro, please, said the turbaned man) we were on the bus and heading to the ship. The guide tried to get us into a carpet manufacturing shop, but only got about half of us. Jan and I escaped, and the guide wasn't happy. Can't blame her, the shop is a co-op and employs a lot of young people in one of the VERY FEW foreign exchange earning jobs available in this part of Turkey. Sure, but we don't need another carpet so we bolted the hundred yards to the ship and safety. Tomorrow we run the gauntlet again in Rhodes, buying opportunities are in abundance here.
