The Crossroads

Turkey is the second largest NATO ally offering the alliance military support only second to the United States. Despite Europe's ambivalence about validating Turkey's claim to being a European country (due to Thrace in the northwest), Turkey plays a critical role in the global balance of power due to its control of the Bosphorous Strait and the Dardanelles – the gateways between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean – Russia's fastest and most reliable shipping lane.

The once seat of the Ottoman Empire is more accurately a crossroads of civilization sitting at the nexus between Europe, the Steppes, the Slavic world and the Middle East. Linguistically and culturally, Turkey is a word salad with vocabulary from a broad base of other languages. This is in part because circa 1920 modern Turkish was really created on the base of an older Turkish, but designed to improve the ability of a newly formed republic shorn of its formerly vast empire to identify and communicate as Turks – an ethnic identity most of the population actually wasn't. 

Therefore, it should be no surprise that Turkey has many cultural influences and impulses – many of which are seemingly contradictory like raging nightclubs in the shadow of a mosque or the Armenian flatbread Lamachun adopted as a very Turkish food. In fact, after its language, nothing captures Turkey's multicultural composition quite like its cuisine.

"Greeks, the people of Yugoslavia and Turks – we are all the same people who have taken this turn and that – but we have the same history, we are the same," one Turkish man told me in 2010. "The only difference between us and the Greeks is that Turks work."

Indeed they do and at restaurants like Mezzemore – the Mehane (restaurant that specializes in dips and small bite foods) we went to last night on a beautiful pedestrian-only, narrow, windy street in the Kaleci – Turkey's influences were on display. The past few years, I have been so focused on Greek food and Greek mezzes – the category of foods in which dips and small bites reside shared by many of the cultures the nice man identified as being essentially the same – that I nearly forgot how awesome the Turkish versions of them are. In fact, Turkish breakfast and dinner aren't dissimilar in that they are made of lots of small things. Variety is important.

Especially to me. 

That makes mehanes – places dedicated to mezzes and trying lots of delicious things in one meal – my playground. And while in most cases there are no clear winners or losers among the Greek and Turkish versions of mezzes – like tzatziki and cecik, the yogurt dips that lean more toward cucumber and garlic on the Greek side and cucumber, shallots and mint in the Turkish version – I award Turkey the prize for diversity and selection. While recognizing a restaurant called Mezzemore inherently pulls out the big guns, I have yet to see a Mezzetekia (the Greek counterpart to a mehane) offer much more than half the options, let alone such diverse ones. Imagine zucchini replacing eggplant in babaganoush. We had that. Sautéed baby leeks, currants and roasted pine nuts as an appetizer may or may not sound appealing, but I can assure you it was one of the most interesting and compelling mezzes I've ever had. 

Both Greeks and Turks make mezzes of the ingredients they find in the most abundance which by and large are eggplant, zucchini, peppers, onions, garlic, beans, cucumbers, carrots, seafood, olives, yogurt, goat and sheep cheeses and olive oil. Over the past few thousand years, the peoples of the Aegean have figured out nearly every combination of these ingredients that can exist. I imagine over time – and as people got wealthier – some less popular items fell off the menu. So I have to believe the pantheon of mezzes offered today is the best of the best of 3,000+ years of mezze making. 

Other customs have fallen more by the wayside – but not completely. Hamams – Turkish baths – were somewhat of a marvel in their day – in some cases dating back more than 600 years. When you think about it, their origins and function are kind of remarkable. On Fridays – the muslim sabbath – men would go for their weekly bath where they first sat in a steam room and then, laying naked on heated marble slabs, were soaped and scrubbed from head to toe by attendants, then doused clean with large bowls of water. 

This means long before Europe had running water and baths were only for the very rich, on occasion – the average Turkish man was bathing weekly with heat, soap and running water. Although the Romans had much earlier proven the concept could be achieved, the technology and knowledge seemed to have dropped by the wayside for a very long time. The Ottomans picked it up again much earlier than most Europeans. 

In modern Turkey, there is no shortage of "hamams" catering to tourists – but most are contrived modern spas that give a nod to tradition. They are not actual hamams. Still, most cities have an original, historical hamam if you look for it – and that's exactly what I did. The Bardakci Hamam has only been around since the late 1700's and is now tucked into the grounds of the Hotel Delphi.

Of the legit, old school Hamams I've visited, Bardakaci may have had the weakest sauce. The very friendly people were perhaps too friendly. They massaged us well – almost too well – put us in a dry sauna (not steam room) for only five minutes and the scrubbed gently during the "peeling" and washing on the marble slabs. Sure, they did follow all the traditional washing protocols and they did a great job of dousing us with tons of water – my favorite part.

But a true Hamam tender – usually a man – is hardened. Your skin is nothing he hasn't exfoliated the shit out of before and no kindnesses are given. You are nothing but the next car coming down the line at his car wash and his job is to leave you gleaming. When he "peels" or scrubs you, he scrubs into places you might not have had anyone scrub since you were a baby in the bathtub. His water dousing feels like something between walking into a waterfall and an intentional drowning. When it's over, you feel clean in a way you would never otherwise have known existed. 

Despite having most of the same infrastructure, this wasn't that hamam. 

Nonetheless, Michelle got the basic idea of the hamam experience and I enjoyed it for what it was. The hamam was still a very Turkish experience and somehow rounded out the day.

Of course, no Turkish experience – let alone day – is complete without Turkish dessert and yesterday – our second and final night – we had a recommendation. Yunuslar Karadeniz Unlu Mamulleri can only be called impressive. The sheer spectrum of colors in the bakery cases and incredible variety of desserts is overwhelming. I had focus. I needed the traditional Turkish puddings I had not tried at the dessert shop near our hotel the night before. No pretty looking red velvet cake or purple encrusted black forest cake was going to distract me from my mission. Michelle, however was not dedicated to the same pursuits and examined and entertained all options. In the end, she chose a jar layered with intense chocolate cake crumbles and pistachio pudding. I got a traditional firin sutlac (seared rice pudding) and a tavuk gogsu kazendibi (a pan seared, thick vanilla "chicken" pudding with cinnamon). They were both excellent and left me regretting that I had neither more days to return or more than one stomach. I may or may not have also purchased a few cookies I couldn't identify to eat while we walked around and shopped. 

Hamam, Kaleci, walking, cuisine and for Michelle beach swimming all completed, we had extracted all we needed from Bodrum. Our time at the house music blaring, beachy edge of the nexus of civilizations had come to an end. We woke up early this morning to catch the ferry back to Greece ready to return to Patmos. A toilet that consistently works and lack of sow bugs/rolly-pollies in our room alone will be a step up.

More importantly, I'm willing to trade some mezzes for peace. Patmos is many levels of adrenaline lower and I'm ready to go back to back to running three errands as the definition of a stressful day. Sure, there may not be pudding or hard-core hamam attendants to scrub me down. Patmos' reserve of local men with shotguns to help defend the island if called upon doesn't match Turkey's military standing within NATO, nor its rich history as seat of a vast empire (which in fact, Patmos along with most of Greece deeply resented for centuries). But for those few things it doesn't have – it makes up for in spades with everything that matters.