Our week's vacation began last Friday. I'm working on another post about the demands and rewards of the job, so it's enough to say here that my fellow RC teachers and I were really ready for this vacation. Friday was gray and cool and the forecast promised more of the same for our 3 day road trip. Immediately after school my friend Kristine and I had made a date to be the first at the Happy Hour sponsored by our headmaster at Bizemtepe. I only had a half hour because Sim and I were taking advantage of the free buses taking boarders to the airport, where we had a reservation for a rental car. Well, the buses were late, kids and my friend Ambrose who actually had planes to catch were getting anxious. We made it to the airport about 5:30, then began an hour and a half of messing around to try to get the rental car. First we needed to locate the Payless desk. That involved going in and out of the terminal and then back in, which involves going through security. When we found the desk they said their computers were down, then they finally found our reservation. But they didn't have the car we reserved. They offered a "free" upgrade to a bigger diesel (and with some of the roads we were driving on, bigger is not necessarily better). But he starts quoting prices and is insisting that we have to take the CDW, which is not true, and the bottom line, after looking at TL, Euro and figuring dollars in my head, he wanted twice as much as the price I had reserved. So we walked out, grumpy. Tried to use my iPad to see if we could contact Expedia, our booking agent, but couldn't get a connection. So we walked over to Thrifty and started to negotiate. Got a decent Fiat, for about 50 bucks more than our original price and finally hit the road.
We had planned to just drive part way to Gallipoli and I had tried to book a room in Tekirdag, but hadn't received a response from the Golden Yat Hotel (Yat in Turkish= yacht). We pulled off the road and wandered around the not very attractive town of Tekirdag, looking for GYH. Finally spotted it back on the highway. But they had no rooms, nor did the Rodosto next door, which I'd considered booking despite its decidedly mixed reviews. The bellman at GYH pointed us to the Yayoba Hotel down the road. We found it and a very nice young man checked us in and showed us the room, which was okay, except it smelled like cigarette smoke. The room was off a large echoy circular hall. Inside the door to the exterior hall was another small hall with the bathroom and both a double and a single room off it. Why he put us in there, when it was clear that there were lots of empty doubles, we don't know. Maybe we looked like we didn't want to sleep together. Or maybe it was just a way to charge us an extra 15 TL.
The same nice young man then waited on us for dinner. I ordered a glass of white wine (the area is supposed to have a lot of wine production.) What arrived was a color that might best be described as taupe. And it tasted like what you might expect from taupe-colored wine. While I was considering how to tell the nice young man that the wine was undrinkable, he asked me if I wanted Sprite or mineral water. I said I'd like mineral water (I was thirsty) When he came back with the mw and poured it into the wine, I really didn't know what to say. I gather if I had said yes to Sprite he would have added it to the wine for a special kind of spritzer. At that point I asked for a beer,which Sim had wisely opted for in the first place, and left the "wine" untouched.
Saturday morning we awoke to see pouring rain and strong wind. Not at all a day for touring the battlefields of Gallipolli, except it gave us a small glimpse into what the soldiers might have experiencd at just this time of year. We stopped for lunch in the village of Gelibolu (the Turkish name for the peninsula). My friend and department chair has a place there, where he will make his home after his retirement in June. I had just purchased an umbrella and were heading toward the restaurants that ring the harbor when we ran into Phil. He had just had lunch but he led us back to his favorite place and introduced us to the owner and gave instructions to treat us well. Our shrimp starter and broiled fish were very good. Eating out on the dock would have been lovely in better weather. That also would have helped us avoid inhaling the cigarette smoke which filled the dining room, where everyone, including the owner, were puffing away under the signs "Sigara Incilmez" (Literally, No cigarette drinking). This is a relatively new ban and is widely ignored, especially in little places like Gelibolu.
Back on the road, we soon entered with National Park commemorating the Gallipoli campaign where so many died and were wounded.
The coastline is spectacular and the overall effect very moving, as signs remind you that this is a cemetery and behavior should be respectful. The Gallipoli campaign really catapulted Ataturk's reputation. He halted and eventually repelled the Allied advance, exceeding his authority and contravening orders.
He's famously quoted as telling his troops, "I do not command you to fight, I command you to die. In the time it will take us to die we can be replenished by new forces." 86000 Turkish soldiers died, twice as many as from the combined Allied forces. Ataturk himself did not die, obviously. Apparently a bullet he would have taken in the heart was stopped by his pocket watch.
Canakkale Day is celebrated on March 18th in Turkey, commemorating the day the Turks repelled the Allied forces in the Dardanelles. ANZAC Day is April 25th, when the the largely Australian and New Zealand forces made landfall at ANZAC cove and began months of trench warfare. When we were there they were setting up stands for the large celebrations which will take place in a few weeks.
One of the monuments has this nice sentiment from Ataturk in 1935: "Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well."
After finishing our tour, we took the 25 minute ferry ride from Eceabat to the town of Canakkale, where we checked into the All Star Anzac Hotel.
