Today is our last day in Antalya and our last in Turkey until October when we return to Istanbul. Antalya has been good to us.
We were just commenting over dinner that people don’t seem too interested in American life or what the wealth and lure of America might be like for them, as is common in so many countries. People here seem very satisfied with their lives. What a wonderful thing that is.
And we are very satisfied with Antalya. Although we’re greatly looking forward to Rhodes and Greece in general, we’re a little sad to leave such a great city as Antalya.
A few observations we have yet to share. We’ve seen very few elderly out and about, no pregnant women whatsoever, only one female server in a restaurant, a few mentally ill, and two midgets.
Restaurants lower or stop their music during the evening call to prayer. No one seems to actually go – but they respectfully lower their volumes.
Pharmacists and taxi drivers are very professional trustworthy people here. There was something especially confidence inspiring about the pharmacy people.
And by and large, people were helpful and friendly. We met a shop owner who had worked for years on a cruise ship. His English was excellent and he helped us find the electric adapters we wanted to buy. He took the time to name and give directions to three different places, including the mall. Our guesthouse owner has given us directions, helped us buy the right bus tickets, made us fantastic meals and answered our every question.
The only people who were truly annoying were some of the restaurant people who hustled hard to get passers by into their establishments. And then, at the shwarma and kebab places, they lure you with fantastic prices on their specials, but it turns out the specials have only a smidgeon of meat in them. If you want the real deal, you pay more. Not any horrible price – but it’s never as good as it looks….
In better news, tonight we tried the local ice cream/dessert parlor’s own homemade ice cream. It tasted like smoke. Apparently, it’s flavored by flower essence – and that flower was recently charred in a terrible fire. Nonetheless, Emily liked it.
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post I would like to add that today I went to the barber down the street. He shaved my head and face with one hand while smoking a cigarette the whole time with the other. He did a great job of both – my head and face look great and my shirt reeks of cigarette smoke.
As we ready ourselves to leave Turkey, I think we can say that Turkey, as we have experienced it, is great. We both expect we’ll find a very different Turkey in Istanbul. From what we can tell, Antalya is sort of the Turkish equivalent to a west coast city in the United States – more relaxed, fewer rules, more liberal. Like our middle of the country, Turkey’s inland is supposed to be far more conservative and I’m sure Istanbul will reflect more of a cross section of Turkish society.
Similarly, Turkey is also interesting because – although from afar we wouldn’t much think of it – it’s actually a multicultural society. Much like the United States, numerous ethnic groupings of different histories and background reside in Turkey’s vast expanse.
Turks are just one ethnic group in the society and the one which became dominant after World War I when Attaturk (not his real name – means father Turk) organized the army to push out the Allies who were carving up the Ottoman Empire as the spoils of war. Before that, as the name suggests, the Ottomans were in charge (and the chairs and tables were pissed). And before them the Byzantines who were Orthodox Christian and are still hanging around some parts of Turkey.
Aside from that, there are numerous peoples who pre-date all of these since Turks and Ottomans were originally tribes as well as Kurds, Persians, a handful of surviving Armenians, and numerous others who either migrated over time (especially when Turkey was the seat of the vast Ottoman Empire which spanned most of the Middle East and some of Southeast Europe), or who settled during the years of overland East-West trade some refer to as the Silk Road.
Today, as in America, they all are sort of amalgamated under one common national culture – a common platform. But of course roots and traditions still vary by region and peoples. You can of course see it in the people with very different looks from light skin, light hair and blue eyes to those who are very dark. Today, they are all Turkish and interact, at least in Alanya and Antalya, seamlessly. Much like America, the ethnicity and nationality are separated and it is always more interesting when that happens.
Tonight we board a bus to Marmaris where we catch a morning ferry to Rhodes. Five days in Rhodes and then we sail to Crete where we will spend ten days in the town of Hania on the west side of the island. In Hania we have our visitors from home – Sharon and Autumn, Emily’s and now my good friends. Then on the 11th we fly from Crete to Tel Aviv for a two week stint in Israel before returning to Greece – this time to the island of Patmos where we intend to stay a month.
See you in Greece.
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