Dream Deferred No More Part II

After leaving Troy, we made our way along the coast of the Aegean Sea to Assos, an ancient coastal city overlooking the island of Lesbos that was once the home of Aristotle. The winding road that lead us there made me grateful for my father's experiences with driving the mountain roads of Montana, as the possibility that a two cars, much less a tour bus and a car could pass one another in the space allotted seemed to defy the laws of physics. Once there, we breathed much easier and were rewarded for our feat with what must surely be one of the most beautiful views of the ancient world. Aristotle's former home ascends steeply from the modern-day beach resort community of Assos, a small area that is somewhat sheltered from Poseidon's fury by the island of Lesbos, which lies about a mile off the coast. We entered the city through the necropolis which lies at its foot, not having realized that the main part of the city lay at the end of the road that turned to the left and seemed to lead back into the village that currently lies behind the ruins of the ancient city (we often made such mistakes as the roads near tourist sites in Turkey tend to be marked with the names of very specific features of locations, without the notes in parentheses for those of us who don't know what it is we are looking for). We wandered around the necropolis and on to some of the ruins that lay beyond the wall beside it, then drove further down the road to the theater, where we found a few goats wandering around looking for their favorite plants among the tangled undergrowth. After Assos, we had a lovely lunch at a roadside restaurant with a beautiful view of the countryside, after which we made our way through some coastal mountains to the flatter areas along the sea and on to our next destination, Ayvalik. After some trouble locating out hotel and some trepidations about the somewhat makeshift elevator at the hotel, we settled our things in our room quickly and went to the seaside to find a restaurant. Ayvalik is a seaside resort town that is probably more densely populated during the high season, although it seems that the economic downturn of recent years has taken its toll there as well. Our hotel was in a neighborhood that seemed to be an offshoot of the main part of the town, more designed for busloads of tourists to make their way to and from other locations than for small families looking to explore the town itself. The next day we drove through the larger industrial city of Izmir, the town whose airport I had used on my way to Sirince a few months before our trip. We arrived in Selcuk, Sirince's valley-level neighbor, late in the morning, and decided to make our way to Ephesus that day rather than trying to do so the next morning before driving all the way to Canakkale. One of the owners of the hotel brought us to Ephesus himself, pausing as we piled into his van to grab a few handfuls of unbelievably delicious fresh-off-the-truck strawberries for us to eat for refreshment before making our way through Ephesus. Considering the difficulties my mother's blood-sugar issuescause her, it's a good thing we had those because we didn't really get the chance to eat anything until a couple of hours later when we left Ephesus and had a late lunch. Ephesus was everything we expected and more: one of the best-preserved sites of the ancient world. It was fairly full of tourists from all over the world, but not nearly as filled as it would have been in summer. The two hours we spent exploring the site were nearly perfect in terms of weather-it was sunny, warm but not hot, and there was a breeze that kept us from overheating from our exertions. Just as we made our way out of the immense amphitheater, a storm began approaching in the distance. The hotel's driver picked us up from our souvenir shopping just as the first raindrops began to fall, and we settled in for a delicious lunch of gozleme as the deluge hit. As soon as we finished, the rain abated and my father and I wandered up a short hill to the Cave of the Seven Sleepers; we opted to skip the side trip to "Mary's House" in favor of a nap for Mom and a hike to St. John's Church and Monastery for Dad and me. One of the highlights of Selcuk was the nesting storks just outside our hotel window; there were three nests atop the telephone poles nearest our hotel and my parents got some great pictures of them. They made a clicking sound with their beaks each time one of them arrived in the nest after foraging; it took a few minutes for us to realize what the sound was but we were delighted once we made the connection. Such huge birds! I hadn't seen any since the trip I took to Europe when I was 13, when I saw them in a small town in Hungary and realized they were not mythical creatures. The next day we began our two-day drive to Istanbul with an overnight stop back in Canakkale.

Dream Deferred No More

"When I was ten years old, my father handed me an illustrated encyclopedia of Greek and Roman gods." This is the beginning of the explanation I give to my students whenever they ask me the inevitable question, "How do you know so much about this mythology stuff?" My story finally has the ending it's been missing for the last twenty two years: I have now been to Troy. My parents came to Turkey for my spring break in April, and together we visited Gallipoli, Troy, Assos, Ephesus, and Pergamon. We began by trekking around the Gallipoli peninsula, following less-than-helpful signs until we finally found Anzac Cove to see for ourselves the narrow strip of land where the allied forces had made their failed attempt to take the strategically crucial Strait of Dardanelles. The view there was breathtaking, but it was easy to see why it was an offensive move that was doomed from the start. We took the trans-continental ferry to Canakkale, a beautiful seaside city that lies at the entrance to the Dardanelles and sees more ships pass by it in a year than most people will see in their entire lives, and made our way to our hotel with the help of directions from a local cab driver.

The next day was the one I had been looking forward to all these years: the day I would finally visit Troy. It was something my father and I have fantasized about most of our lives, and it did not disappoint. As Mom tried to avoid the bees and identify wildflowers, Dad and I stood back and soaked up the view of a lifetime: the plains below Priam's city where the Trojan War took place. We imagined Achilles dragging Hector's body behind his chariot, where the Greeks had build their defensive barricades, and how far the now-distant sea had been at the time. We looked at the many layers of cities that had occupied that place, each carefully marked and catalogued by the archaeologists who continue the job of excavating and restoring the pieces of those cities, and hurried past the giant beehive that has taken over one of the largest of those pieces lest my mother end up needing to use the epi-pen she carries with her everywhere she goes. But mostly we just used our imaginations to try and see what the city once har been: a majestic hilltop fortress that was home to many heroes, one overindulged prince, and the captive whose face had launched the thousand ships of Greece.