(Istanbul and Gelibulu, Turkey – Paris and Rouen, France)
We had flown into Turkey along the Amara Sea where mile upon mile of enticing lights were hugging the coastline (looking much prettier than the freeways, crumbling apartments and industries that could be seen from the bus from Gelibulu three days later).
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Orient Express passengers used to arrive in Istanbul in time for an elegant luncheon, leaving their train through the first class waiting room at Sircesy station, past the glowering visage of Attaturk at the end of the platform for a first glimpse of Asia across the Bosphorus.
I spent my first day in Turkey scouring the lanes behind Sircesy, purchasing shirt and smalls on Air France’s dubious generosity. I found that this was somewhat easier than doing the same thing in North Africa.
At first glance, all seemed fairly relaxed and friendly, it was only later in the day that the extent of security following the precious day’s bombing became clear with a huge police presence. This included security checks in and out of the metro (with teams of police with electric wands patting random passengers down) and the odd water canon on the streets of tourist areas. Getting in and out of Haga Sophia and museums was the full airport security scene with scans of bags and bodies, as it is also now in Paris.
Istanbul has a more European feel than Tunisia and Morocco, and badly wants to become part of the EC. The EURO brand name is all over the place, in anticipation? They prefer the currency too. So I “did” the Blue Mosque, a few of the Ottoman palaces and the wonderful Haga Sophia, which was my first introduction to Islamic and Byzantine art and architecture as a year 8 schoolkid. I then had the real and unexpected treat of stumbling across the tiled animal reliefs from the Gates of Babylon in the Antiquities Museum, in amongst other ancient Assyrian, Anatolian, Egyptian and Roman artefacts. My Ancient History teaching colleagues probably have spent several days in that one museum.
From Takisim Square back to the Golden Horn is a long and crowded pedestrian mall, occasionally interrupted by a restored tram gonging and grinding its way up the hill, with young boys grabbing a free ride on the rear bumper (as generations of kids have done before them). The waterfront looking to Asia and the Galati Bridge over the Golden Horn from pics and the odd travel display are much as you imagine. Yes, there are fishermen and diving boys and restaurants on the lower level and kiosks selling individual cigarettes, but what you cannot imagine is the smell of caught/gutted fish mixed in with the bus exhausts, smoky diesel ferries, stale urine and freshly grilled fish from the waterfront stalls. All of this is tinged with dusty sunset colours and peak hour crowds and backgrounded by the shadowy domes and minarets of several large mosques and the echoing, tuneful call to sunset prayers (while drinking Cola Turka, or bottled sour cherry nectar: delicious!).
In the arcade under the northern approaches to the bridge are many technology shops which which also sell guns which sit on racks with the IPods and radios. Can you imagine the sales pitch: “Here’s your DVD, and would you like shotgun with that?”?
During the night the only sounds in my back street guesthouse were seagulls, the occasional tram bell and the dawn call to prayer from several local mosques interspersed with police sirens, car horns and arriving local trains at Sircesy.
After a fair amount of “finding out”, and given the delayed arrival of my pack, there was only one day available to get to Gallipoli and back. Easy: attach yourself to a two day tour to Gallipoli and Troy, and be put onto the 7.30pm express bus from Carnakele to Istanbul (taking maybe 5 or 6 hours?). Deal!
I can’t speak highly enough of “Hassle Free Tours” from:
http://www.anzachouse.com/daily_tours-lists.html
After a 6.30am start we were let doze for the first two hours until a “rest stop” at a bus station where there wasn’t enough crockery so we queued and took turns using the few available coffee cups which were hastily rinsed in the local water between customers. Across the road was the “Kangouoru Supermarketi”. For the next two hours the ponderous tones of Sam Neill and familiar Kiwi, Australian and English actors boomed through the bus on last year’s 2 hour TV program on Gallipoli which presented the whole wasteful campaign from all sides. Our very subdued group then opened the bus curtains to look out at the Bosphorus and Carnakele, the scenes we would return to during the afternoon. We also passed by the “Sydney Caravan Park”.
Usually with group tours in foreign countries, people tend to wear their new T shhirts from where they have been. On this trip, blokes of a certain age were wearing their Kiwi T shirts or AUSTRALIA hats, and taking copious notes. Our battlefield historian guide for 5 hours asked our origins, our reasons for being there, then, because no-one was from Britain he said: “Good, we can be direct about their terrible commanders.” He was. (And also about the Turkish stuffups).
This is probably the most subdued and respectful group tour I have experienced, apart from one LOUD and aggressive American, recently retired from the Marines and studying International Relations who was doing a kind of barking Labrador impression wanting EVERYONE to like him: “HEY! Gallipoli is the BIG ONE for you OSSIES, RIGHT!!?” …and everyone avoided eye contact as best they could to concentrate on why we (Kiwis, Australians, French and Canadians) really wanted to be there.
Our tour leader was excellent: taking us – physically – step by step, through the stuffups by British commanders (in the comfort of London, until Kitchener was convinced to travel and see the disaster first-hand) and of the Turks (5 bullets only available for each soldier to fire at one stage, and ANZAC Cove defended by only 160 poorly equipped Turks, who ran away when the ammunition ran out).
So, we were walked through the failed naval campaign and the planned invasion, which ignored the available intention if it didn’t suit the British government’s fantasy that the Turks would be so shocked and awed by the strength of the Allied forces that they would just give up and welcome the conquerors into into Istanbul. Isn’t it a comfort to know that more recent wars couldn’t possibly be so poorly planned on such selective “intelligence” and ignorance of local powers in the minds of the planners?
And we were walked, carefully and dispassionately, through “Brighton Beach”, ANZAC Cove-: which is only about the size of Bronte Beach in Sydney and scores of thousands died there: many by drowning when first trying to land. Then to the burial sites at the ends of ANZAC Cove, the shadows of the remaining landing craft sunk off the beach, Lone Pine, The Neck, the museum which attempts to present a balanced view view (difficult when only 5 percent of Turks were literate, so primary source letters are difficult to find) and Suvla Bay and the memorials of all nations involved: all cared for and immaculate.
The Turks are grateful that the campaign gave them Attaturk, but not so thankful for the hundreds needlessly dead in an attempted invasion of their nation. They do admit to a little fraudulent use of German war ships, but that was because the British refused to hand over the new ones that the Turks had ordered and paid for from British shipbuilders.
When standing on a narrow road and seeing the trenches of both sides, barely 10 metres apart on either side of that road, we were hearing again the various tales of strengths and idiocy of wartime leadership but also of the the individual heroism of, and respect for, both sides. I guess by this stage the group mood was one of quiet reflection mixed with outrage at the colossal, stupid waste.
Ending the tour under (yet another) glowering sculpture of Ataturk, and seeing how the control of one strategic hill top could have effectively blocked the Bosphorus to shipping, it’s clear why Churchill and the Admiralty saw it as such a prize: pity about the collosssal human cost, though.
Every Turkish school child is now required to visit Gelibulu (Gallipoli) as part of their understanding of the birth of Turkey as a secular state. The one good thing that Gallipoli gave to the Turks, according to our guide, was the leadership of Attaturk and of Turkey as a secular nation. This put recent events and demonstrations about the growing power of Islamic political parties into a new context. Politics is (apparently) becoming more fundamentalist, but only 60 percent of women wear headscarves or something like traditional Moslem dress (and this is in decline amongst younger women), and all this as the nation is looking to Europe. Interesting.
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The six hours on the service bus back to Istanbul was fairly humorous. Every express bus has an attendant to ensure your safety and comfort. In reality this means that every time you doze, the lights flicker on and a new service is provided like: deodorising the aisle carpet, tea and coffee with stale cake, perfume for the palms of your hands shaken from a dirty bottle, and regularly turning on the reading lights above seated pairs of unmarried passengers to ensure that nothing untoward is going on. Looking for a taxi at 1am in the creepy Istanbul bus station is not an experience that I want to repeat. My friendly driver INSISTED on a quick, early morning guided tour of the floodlit mosques, Roman aqueduct and the spice market before being blocked by police from entering the back streets to the guest house.
So, I’m now on my last day in Paris, having spent yesterday in Rouen – the town where they barbecued Joan of Arc – and the previous day with decomposing artiste and with the Impressionists. I also took a cruise on the Seine in increasingly torrential rain. What’s under “The Bridges of Paris” these days isn’t anything that Eartha Kitt sang about.
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Sunday: Paris. I enjoyed the novelty of being woken by church bells, and NOT at dawn. There are worse places to be on a quietly drizzling day than visiting Rossini, Chopin, Edith Piaf, Moliere, La Fontaine and, yes, Jim Morrison in the Pere Lachaise cemetery. There’s quite an industry of map selling in selected languages about where to find your buried heroes and victims (Abelade and Heloise? Isadora Duncan?). Composers, singers and recently deceased actors have graves - often covered with recently placed flowers, but not the satirists and critics such as Moliere. One grave is utterly different: Oscar Wilde. The grave itself is a very large, warm-coloured stone block with a simple art nouveau carving of an Egyptian(ish) face. The stone is covered with lipstick kisses which have been planted there by many, many visitors over many years along with graffitied messages of admiration and thanks. Visitors walk slowly around the grave translating the messages and reading most. In the north eastern section of the vast and tree lined grounds are the memorials to those sent to the World War II extermination camps by the “Hitlerites” (I guess this includes the French collaborators). Other memorials are to the the murdered resistance fighters, to brigades who fought in the Spanish Civil war, interspersed with ornate graves of recent French Communist Party leaders: Interesting. The crematorium has many plaques to “unknown soldiers” from the early 1940’s with merely their cremation date. Those that predate the German invasion state pointedly that they “died for France”.
A wet afternoon at the D’Orsay Museum was a crowded but wonderful revisit to favourite artworks, however a new kind of thoughtless tourist menace emerged.
Let’s say that you are on one of those crazy rushed “city sights” tours and that you have limited time (and comprehension) in a museum of fine art. But you do own a digital camera with a flash. What would you do?
Any pleasure of quiet contemplation of say, a Renoir or Cezanne masterpiece is suddenly and rudely ambushed by the Serial Digital Photographer who quickly sidles from painting to painting, standing in front of viewers without awareness or consideration of their presence, flash-photographing every framed work. They do not even look at the artwork except for a brief, focused moment on the small digital screen. Hen, and this is very special, our time-poor tourist photographs the LABEL ON THE WALL of every art work so they have a record of what they haven’t seen. Why? It’s art appreciation with all of the sensitivity and aesthetic awareness of those blokes in shorts who spray insecticide all over you in Qantas cabins whenever you land back into Australia from OS.
After seeing so much of the Seine Valley area on the walls of the D’Orsay, I spent yesterday in Rouen, with a fair amount of time in the old town. This is a more colourful version of English Tudor architecture crowded around the cathedral which is very familiar from a large series of Monet paintings. (The restless school excursion groups were a bit of a reminder of what awaits me on Friday, though).
The trip each way through to Paris ‘burbs and the Seine Valley convinced me that I have now perfected the art of the “nana nap”. I do hope I can use this new skill back in the workplace!
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I’d been trying for some days to find a hairdresser to get the scruffy beard cut back, but hadn’t found the time to get to the “berbere” in Istanbul. (My last encounter with a Turkish “berbere”, in Edinburgh, included an attempt to set fire to my ears). I’d forgotten that a lot of France is closed on Mondays but, in searching for a suburban post office in the scarily neat, clipped and well planned suburbs of Rouen, I stumbled upon a hairdresser who was open. To the amusement of others in the shop, the barber and I negotiated a reasonable trim in appalling French. He was recently arrived from Tunisia.
Tunisia? Berber? … I think this is where I came in.
And so, goodnight.
