Turkey and Switzerland May 2008
The Impressions of Omar DeWitt
May 11, 2008
The hardest part of traveling is getting packed. Fortunately, Sue did most of that for me. I spent that last day on the roof trying to get the air conditioners in working order, figuring that our house sitter, Mary, might need them before we got back. On the two I worked on, the copper tubing broke and had to be replaced. After many trips up and down the ladder, I got them working, although one of them needs more work in the copper tubing.
We drove off to the airport at almost 10 AM to begin our Road Scholar trip to Turkey followed by our independent trip to Switzerland. At the parking lot we got our backpacks and two bags out of the car and into the parking lot’s van, which got us to the airport in a quick time.
At the desk we found a problem. Chicago was experiencing bad weather, and planes coming to and from there were delayed. Our flight to Chicago was coming from there, which made an even bigger problem. The desk clerk wasn’t sure we could get on our scheduled flight from Chicago to Paris. She spent ten or fifteen minutes checking various options. She finally gave us a printed confirmation for the same flight a day later going first class. That was one of our concerns--that we fly business. We decided to take our regular flight to Chicago, leaving at 2:15 rather than 12:50, and hope for the best. Almost a year ago we had the same problem flying to Britain through Dallas, which was experiencing a bad rain storm. We were delayed one full day on that trip. What were the odds?
The flight from Chicago arrived at 1:45, along with the news that our flight back to Chicago was delayed until 3:30! Well, that seemed to assure that we would spend the night in Chicago. We left a little early. We were in the first class section, since there was no business class on the plane. There were six first-class seats. We had a drink, mine was orange juice, and two packets of nuts and pretzels. Then, to our surprise, we were each given a snack box, which contained a packet of nuts, a small envelope of pretzels with a container of pretzel dip, and a small container of salad, which consisted of pasta, carrots, beans, and a few other items.
Chicago was overcast, but dry and not too windy. Taxiing to our gate seemed to take almost as long as the flight. Being at the front of the aircraft, we were off quickly, but we saw no United people to ask about our flight to Paris. Finally we found a departure display and were surprised to see that our plane would not leave for another 15 minutes! We were in concourse B in the airport and had to go to concourse C, so we started walking very fast. The corridors at O’Hare seemed very narrow and full of people idly walking, standing, talking. The path went down an escalator, under a passageway for airplanes, and up another escalator to the C terminal. Our gate was right at the top of the stairs, and we approached the desk at high speed with five minutes to spare. As we neared the desk, the attendant asked, “Mr. and Mrs. DeWitt?” We said, “Yes,” and handed her our boarding passes.
While we were settling in, a half dozen more late passengers trooped in past us. At 7:05 the doors were closed and the captain came on the loudspeaker to say they were loading a few last bags and then we would be on our way. At 7:30 we were in the air. The seats were as nice as we remembered them in this Boeing 767, although some items seemed not to work.
When we were at cruising altitude we were served wine and warm nuts. For dinner I had pork and Sue had chicken, both of which were good. After dinner, we put our seatbacks back, put on our eyeshades and ear plugs, and went to sleep. I slept at any rate; Sue has trouble sleeping in her own bed, let alone on an airplane. At 2:30 in the AM, our time, we were served breakfast of fruit, coffee, and a smashed croissant.
We landed at Charles de Gaulle airport an hour late, about 10:30 local time. I had thought that it was a more newly-built airport, but it looks left over from WWII. There are kiosks that accommodate about six airplanes each set around the main building. They look not unlike large pill boxes. Inside the building, the corridors are narrow and low. We were let out into the building where the shops and gates were and followed the Sortie signs. Eventually we passed through the passport control, where they stamped our passports and glanced at the yellow cards we had filled out with our names, etc. Following more signs we finally arrived at carrousel number 1 to await our bags.
Since our bags had to be the last boarded, I figured they would be the first off. They weren’t. We waited and waited. Eventually we decided they were not coming. Two French women on our flight asked us if we had come from Chicago, too. We said yes and the four of us went around several carrousels to the United desk to check on the bags. The French women were ahead of us and went up to the end of the long desk where two clerks were talking. One of the clerks pointed to the next section. There was no one at the next section. Eventually a woman did appear and dealt with the French couple. Sue then explained our situation, and the woman said the bags were still in Chicago, although she checked nothing. She took our tags and gave Sue a piece of paper with the tag numbers on it. We were told the bags would probably arrive that afternoon and they would be delivered to our hotel.
Walking outside, we waited for transportation to our hotel. After waiting a while, we weren’t sure we were in the right spot, so Sue went to the Information Desk in a glassed-in section. The Information Man may have had information, but he didn’t speak English. In answer to Sue’s “Millennium?” (the name of our hotel) he pointed. I wasn’t sure if he was pointing outside the section or at the phones on the end of the section, but Sue figured he meant outside. After waiting another five minutes, Sue went up to a man who was also waiting and asked if he spoke English. He said we were in the right place. It took almost a half hour of waiting, but we finally got on a bus that had “Millennium” written on it.
The hotel, and a dozen others, were in a small town not far from the airport. Some of the hotels were six or seven floors, ours had four. Sue checked us in and got the plastic key cards. At the elevators, one had to put one’s card in a slot before pressing the floor key. The room was fairly large, with a table and chair and an easy chair at another table. We showered and I took a nap for a couple of hours. Thanks to Sue’s planning ahead, we each had a change of underwear in our carry-on bags.
There wasn’t much to do in the spot where our hotel was, but we took a walk and found an “exercise” trail that went into the village. It was the middle of the day, but every store and business was closed. Later I asked at the hotel what the holiday was and I was told there was no holiday; then they thought some more and decided there was something, but they weren’t sure what. Sue figured it was some sort of Bank Holiday. The walk we were on went through greenery and past a series of large signs. The signs carried photographs of families from around the world with a short explanation in English, French, and the language of the picture’s country. There was one from New Mexico, a small town that neither of us had heard of. It was very warm and we were tired, so we didn’t walk long.
The bar at the hotel had draft beer and we each ordered one. While the clerk was drawing the beer, I asked her if they had sandwiches. She said “Yes,” but not very excitedly. After we had our beers, she went into the back and we never saw her again. When we were about halfway though our beers, a waitress came into our area to clean off a table. As she walked by, I asked her if they had sandwiches. She said Yes. It was some time later, we had seen her walking around the restaurant several times, that she came over with a menu; I had assumed that she was ignoring us, too. I ordered a chicken sandwich with French fries. It arrived fairly quickly, and I ordered another beer. The sandwich was a panini, which is pressed between hot plates, and it was quite large. Sue took half but neither of us finished our halves. The French fries were good.
To get on the internet in the room, we had to pay another 5 euros. We found later that the time was counted from when you started to use it, not as the time was used. Our bags had still not been found.
We sat around in the room, reading and mulling. Sue decided that if our bags did not show up the next day, she was going home. I said it was kind of a waste of money to get to Paris and then go home. Sue said she had no clothes. I suggested buying clothes here, which would be cheaper than losing our trip money. Sue said where could she buy clothes. I suggested Paris. Sue shrugged that off; it was unlikely that she could get what she needed in Paris in one day. This disagreement kept coming up for the next 24 hours. [Men do not understand the shoe requirements of a large-footed woman.]
We kept trying to use the phone, with no results. We were dialing it wrong. After three trips down to the desk, we finally got the right process. Phone calls to United Airlines got no real information; I talked briefly with a woman in India, but she was primarily a reservation clerk. She gave me a phone number, but no one answered. Sue phoned our travel agent in Rio Rancho, and he said he would look into the problem. (After we got home, Sue talked to the agent and he had checked and found that the bags would be delivered the next day. He then called our Paris hotel and asked them to give us the message. We got no message.)
At eight, we went down for dinner. I had a sandwich and Sue had some soup. Neither of us slept well that night. After breakfast, Sue talked with the desk clerk, who was not very helpful.
Somehow, one of our four phone numbers finally got us to the local United travel desk. Sue gave her our name, and the clerk checked it out on the computer and said our bags would arrive at 9:30 and they would be delivered to our hotel. Yea!
After lunch, around 1 PM, our bags had not arrived. Sue called United again. No answer. After talking with the desk clerk, Sue decided to go to the airport and talk to a United representative. I went with her.
We waited for the bus, then took the long ride back to Terminal 1, which was the last stop. After a long look, we found the United desk. It was unattended, and a sign said they closed the desk at 2:30. It was now an hour later. We wandered around some and Sue stopped at the Cyprus Air desk and accosted the poor woman who was sitting there. After various phone calls, she suggested we go though the “DO NOT enter” door and talk to someone inside about our bags.
We had to wait at the door until someone came out, and when we went through the door, we were immediate confronted by four policemen. Sue explained our problem to the policeman who spoke English, and we waved us on. Sue talked a long time with a man at the Air France desk, then with a woman at the Lufthansa desk, then again with the Air France man. No one knew anything and had no suggestions.
So. We went back outside. The wait for the return bus was not long, and Sue reiterated that she was going home if the bags did not arrive. She was going to call our travel agent in Rio Rancho and get things going for the return flight. He would not be at work until 7 PM our time.
We tried to get on line to check with United again, but as soon as we had paid another 5 euros, my computer ran out of juice. The recharging cables were in our luggage. Sue went downstairs and paid 10 euros to use their computer. She got United’s new site and was told that our bags had arrived in Paris and would be delivered to our hotel between 3 PM and midnight.
A little past 6:30 we went down to dinner, only to find that dinner didn’t start until 7. At the desk we found our bags had not yet arrived. A few minutes after we got back to our room, the phone rang. Our bags had arrived!
We had a lot of trouble with our room keys. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. Fortunately they didn’t both not work at the same time. Not only did one have to use his room key to go up in the elevator, he had to use it to go down. The keys did not always work there either.
We asked for a 4:30 wake-up call since our flight left at 7 AM. At 4:15 the phone rang and someone said something in French. At 4:30, the TV came on with an increasingly loud peep-peep-PEEP. At 4:35 the telephone rang again, and I was told it was time to get up. Thorough.
We were in the lobby a little past 5 and waited for the bus until 5:30. Air France was our airline, and we check our two bags through to Ankara, via Vienna. We were back in coach class. The security check was different than the US. Shoes did not need to be removed but belts did. Computers still needed to be out of their carrying cases. Inside, we tried unsuccessfully to find a store selling AAA batteries, since the alarm clock’s batteries were about dead. There were a few shops selling food and a couple of others; one sold clocks and watches, but no batteries.
After bussing to the aircraft with most of the women wearing head scarves, the flight to Vienna took an hour and a half. We had to have our passports checked and we had to go through security again. We finally found some batteries. After a two-hour flight, we landed in Ankara, which has a beautiful airport. It is new, large, with few people. Ours was the only aircraft landing then, and most of the gates were empty.
The bags had arrived with us. After getting our passports checked, we bought local currency, the lira, and looked for the busses going into town. For 9 lira each (about $8) we got into town and then got in a “taksi” to go to our hotel, the Doga Residence. The two big bags were put in the trunk and strapped in; the trunk door did not close over them. The trip cost 10 lira.
We checked in and at 6 PM attended the Road Scholar welcome. Our guide was Sami, who talked a lot, said most things two or three times, and only occasionally mispronounced a word. I had a glass of the local wine, which tasted much like ouzo, and gave quite a kick. We socialized with the others (seven other couples); I had brought my book along, but Sami didn’t believe in introductory introductions, let alone name badges, so I put it in my belt. During his talk, Sami explained that no one in Turkey drank the tap water; there were so many chemicals in the water that it tasted very bad. He said there were about 1.25 lira per dollar and that we would need lira to buy water, wine, beer, etc. Liquor and gas were taxed very high; petrol was the most expensive in the world.
My feet and ankles swelled up. This had happened before when I took a plane overseas. It was hard to get into shoes, and there were twinges in the feet and ankles when I walked.
Upstairs we had dinner. Our wine cost about $6 a glass, and that was the local wine. Napkins throughout the trip were tiny one ply pieces of paper, and really stopped nothing from getting through to your lap. Toilet paper was longer than wide and thicker than the napkins. Tissues were smaller and thinner than usual. Waste baskets had covers and a small foot-pedal to open them with—a real bother.
Breakfast had tea but only instant coffee. Cheese was always present, with a few cold cuts, and usually some pastries. Of course bread was always available. Hardboiled eggs were usually available.
A woman college professor answered questions for an hour on the state of Turkey. She spoke well and was against the “raincoat brigade,” the Turkish women who wear cloths over their heads and, often, long raincoats. The head scarves are usually of some dull color with a design on them, but we saw some very colorful head scarves worn with very colorful blouses.
We and our luggage boarded the bus and drove to the Mausoleum of Ataturk. It is a very large area, with buildings in several places. While we were there it rained quite hard; some of our group with no rain gear got wet. A walk through the mausoleum was interesting; I remember the rooms on the battle of Gallipoli, which was a source of Turkish pride. There was a large mural, with men in the action of battle in front of it, with their artillery. We walked rather quickly through the rest of the mausoleum, passing the small herds of school children of all ages here and there. To get to the bus we had to cross a wide courtyard in the rain. In a room on the other side we saw Ataturk’s Cadillac and small boat. Ataturk is revered in Turkey because he separated the church and state, a very rare thing for an Islamic state. There were objectors, of course, and today’s government is trying to undo what Ataturk accomplished. They are allowing, for instance, women to wear head scarves in college, and skipping over women in job appointments. There is now a legal attack on the government for their actions.
We lunched, visited the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, and drove to Urgup in the Cappadocia region. We arrived at Yunak Evleri after 7 and were given dinner right away. This was a high class hotel, and the food was good. Throughout our trip the food was good, although the selection was better at some stops. After dinner we were shown to our room, which was a cave. Actually it was a large, rectangular room carved out of the rock. It had a wooden floor and two, small high windows. The lights were not bright, so it was fairly dim in our quarters.
We asked for a 4:30 wakeup call because we were taking a balloon ride in the morning. Ten of us got into the bus around 5:30 and were taken to the balloon HQ, where 50 or so people were waiting around. We paid our $650 for an hour and a half ride and grabbed a “free” cup of coffee/tea and a couple of cookies. After everyone else had left, our four balloons and their occupants got into busses and we drove to an empty field. The balloons were unfolded, attached to the basket, cold inflated, and then hot inflated. There were about 20 balloons flying in the area, which was full of empty cave homes. The government had made the people who were living in the cave homes leave and take up residence in free-standing homes, much to the irritation of the people, who found the caves warmer and easier to warm/cool. The type of ballooning we were on was called “contour ballooning.” Sue and I were amazed at the skill of our pilot, who got us very close to the houses and hills without touching anything. The day was overcast, which might have made our photos better or worse, and the wind was slight and steady. We came down with another balloon and both landed on the flatbed trailer behind the truck! I assumed it was an accident, which shows how much I know. The ballooning was advertised as ending with a Champagne breakfast. If a glass of Champagne is a Champagne breakfast, then they lived up to the ad. We did get a nice breakfast back at the hotel, however.
The Goreme Open Air Museum was our after-breakfast stop. It was a monastic center dating from the early period of Christianity and all the churches and homes were cut into the rock. We went into a large church first, which was quite elaborate. Arches and niches and some paintings remained, although many had been vandalized. The ceiling rose about 40 feet; that is a lot of rock carving. The rest of the group visited several other churches, but one was enough for me. As we walked around the area, we could see the results of time and weather; cliff sides (room walls) had fallen down, exposing the rest of the room. Some rooms were still in good shape. It depended on the amount of building and the condition of the rock as to what survived. As at all the sites we visited, there were many other tourists and locals.
Lunch was at the home of some locals, in their yard under a sun cover. The women had their heads covered and each had a small child. The meal had several courses, starting as usual with soup. It was all good. They had a flock of chickens in a stone barn, and we all checked them out. They lived up a steep hill on narrow lanes, so we had to walk up and back.
We went through parts of an underground city. We were told that people who normally lived above ground would come here when they were approached by enemies, and they would stay for several months. There were several floors (8 I believe) with round stones that rolled in place to protect passageways. Many of the passages were low and there were innumerable rooms off the passageways. Ventilation ducts were very efficient.
After dinner we attended a Whirling Dervish performance at a restored 13th century caravanserai. It was quite different from the performance we had seen in Egypt several years before. At the Egyptian performance, one man twirled quite fast for too long a time. At this performance, there were ten men who came in. One spoke for several minutes in, I assume, Turkish. Five men played music for a while with stringed instruments. Four men then got up and whirled rather sedately with their arms out, one palm up and one down. They were “supervised” by another man. They paused and then whirled again. They all bowed, man by man, and walked out.
In the morning—a bright sunny day—I was out taking photos before breakfast. Some of the old holes in the cliff had been filled with blocks of stone to keep the cliff from collapsing, which happens when there are too many holes there for too long. All of the hotel rooms had wooden doors, and there was a locked gate before the several rooms we were near. Birds were flying about looking for nesting sites. We put our bags outside the room and went to another nice breakfast at Yunak Evleri.
We were to learn that there was a lot of travel on this trip. I don’t know how else it could have been done, but it took a lot out of the trip for me. Hours on the bus; days on the boat.
Seats were changed every day on the bus, everyone moving one seat in a clockwise manner. At least Sue and I did, as did most of the others. Some were quite vague about it all.
On the way to Konya we stopped to visit Sultanhani, a well preserved caravanserai—a place where caravans stopped for a day or so on their journey. Except for a few miscellaneous farm implements sitting in the center of the courtyard, the place was essentially large, empty rooms. The rooms were about three to four stories high with columns supporting the ceilings. There was a small structure in the middle of the courtyard that was two stories high; the second story could be reached by high, rock stairs, but there was nothing on the second floor except a different view.
The Rumi Hotel in Konya was the “worst” of the trip. Small room, limited amenities, but it was in the middle of town near everything.
The Mausoleum of Rumi was nearby. Rumi (Mevlana) was the 13th-century founder of the mystical sect of whirling dervishes. The name “Rumi” is a derivation of Rome, from whence he came. The mausoleum was packed with people. Konya is very religious, and there are more women wearing head scarves and raincoats. To walk through the mausoleum, one had to put a covering over one’s shoes; plastic bags were available for that purpose. The building was full of caskets and incidental items. Pictures and icons are not part of the Muslim religion and none are found in any mosques. Sue and I whisked through and sat outside watching the people; the men were dressed rather normally, but the women were in a great variety of dress, from the normal grey and black to bright red and orange.
Our group was taken to a nearby home, where we removed our shoes and moved into a somewhat overhead-protected outdoor area that was covered with rugs and cushions and low tables. The covering was small, straight tree trunks with some cloth over them. Rain did not seem like a desirable happening. A local Sufi leader talked for an hour on love and harmony. We held hands for a bit and mumbled something. Two of his students were present, one a black man from the U.S. Tea was served. The leader apparently impressed a following, but Sue and I were not in that group. He went with us to dinner, where he sat at a table behind us and talked loudly most of the meal. Some of our group were very intrigued by him.
There was an open meeting that night, a Sufi “dergah,” a meeting where the Sufis met and conversed. Sue and I eschewed it—electing to get some sleep before the early morning call to prayer. Whoever invented ear plugs should be sainted.
After breakfast, we were back on the bus on the way to Antalya. We stopped to visit Aspendos, the “best” preserved Roman theater from the second century. It was quite hot. We walked to the theater past three camels wearing hats; they were available for riding, and on the way back to the bus, someone was riding one. They looked cute, lying on the ground with their legs tucked up under them chewing something. The theater was in good shape; the rooms were all empty, the wood ceilings and stairs having been taken or rotted. Lots of people were standing and walking around.
We later stopped at Perge, a Greek-Roman city in Pamphylia. Parts of two towers still stood, and some columns in the agora had been replaced. The base of a steam room was visible, and Sami talked about the poor guys who had to tend the fires to keep the room hot.
Our stay that night was at the Divan Talya Hotel. It was an eat-on-your-own night, and Sue and I had the excellent buffet at the hotel; we still ate too much.
In the morning we stopped at Phaselis, a Greek-Roman city near the Mediterranean. There were graves in the vertical stone from a much earlier time that had been featured in National Geographic magazine. We climbed up to the top of the theater, which was in pretty good shape.
Lunch was at Myra, which the Turks consider the birthplace of St. Nicholas.
There seems to be some credence to this belief, but it is hard to consider the bundled up Santa Claus being born in this hot city. We ate at an outdoor café in the middle of the street. We were all amused when we came across a shop with a sign stating “Genuine Fake Watches.” Later in our trip we came across two more! Was it a franchise? Actually, the first shop was the funniest.
At Cayagzi we boarded our Turkish gulet, the Holiday 10. The boat was quite large, larger than most of the gulets we saw, and it carried only our group of 16 plus Sami. We took off our shoes on the top deck. The crew appeared all in white, the captain, three deck hands, who also fed us, and the cook. There was a woman with us part of the way, but her sole job was to make our beds. Two tables were on the rear deck under canvas, and we ate there. The aft contained, from starboard to port, a seven-foot cushion with head rests, which was quite popular. The fore deck also had chairs and cushions but no cover from the sun.
Our cabin was fairly roomy, with a double bed for me and a single bed for Sue. The bathroom had a shower and the usual amenities with a reasonable amount of room. There were closets and drawers, but no real place to put our bags.
Breakfast was always at eight. Dinner was after eight for some reason, and Sue and I went to bed right after dinner. There was a drink signup sheet; we had two bottles of red wine and two beers on the trip.
Soon after we got under way, we were at Kekova Island, which has a sunken city. Very little underwater could be seen, except some walls near the shore. The surface of the water prevented our seeing anything of real interest. The city is supposedly 10 feet under water, and Sami said he thought it didn’t sink so much as the water rose.
We stopped at the city of Kale (ancient Simena) and climbed the rocky path to its citadel. A small group (6-8) of girls followed us trying to sell scarves and similar things they had made. It was all quite elaborate, and the material was thin, so I wonder how long they would last in the real world. The girls were quite attractive and all spoke English. On the way back we visited some burial spots; stone coffins standing on stones. All had been looted long time in the past. An elderly woman came by, driving a herd of goats. She expressed concern that she did not look her best for the photographers.
Over all, we didn’t travel far in the gulet, and when we did travel it was during the day. At the end of the sail, the captain would drop the anchor and back toward the shore. A rope from either side of the ship would be taken ashore and tied to a tree or rock. The ship would still roll a little bit, but it was quite stable.
The captain impressed everyone when he docked at Kas. He went in backward and docked between two ships with barely a foot of space on each side of the ship. Sue and I disembarked and were walking along the dock when a large shadow passed over us. We looked up in time to see a paraglider land fifty feet in front of us. The part of the group who had gotten off before us were walking ahead and never noticed him. There were a lot of paragliders in Turkey, and we saw many when we were in Switzerland. Obviously a very popular sport.
We walked up to the local theater and looked around—a nice ocean view. A woman was at the top selling things. When we walked back into town, we decided to get a beer and picked a spot near the center of town. Almost every restaurant has someone standing in front to urge the passers-by to come it. Our fellow, a Kurd from eastern Turkey, spoke good English, and we ordered draft beer which was quite good. We sat there in the shade for a long time. Occasionally some of our group would pass by.
Eventually we left and wandered up the street. An antique shop caught our attention. They had several paintings that were attractive. Sue found one she liked and haggled over the price and finally bought it. Buying anything on a trip is tough; it means rearranging your bags, and, if it is heavy, that has to be considered.
Further up the street was a tree with benches under it, and we had our lunch granola bars there. There’s nothing like a simple energy bar after days of 4-course lunches.
May 21
After breakfast the boat moved closer to the city of Kalkan, and we got into the Zodiac in groups of five and motored to the beach where we got into the bus that Oktay had driven overland. He took us up the hill to a grammar school, and we went into a classroom. It was all rather strange; we were told to find a student or two to talk to. The students were young, about fifth grade. I went into the back of the room where two students were beckoning me. The boy offered me his seat, but I could not get into it, since it was too small and against the wall. Eventually, I sat sideways. There was not much to talk about because they had not been studying English long enough. They could ask my name, and they could tell me their names. Then the students brought out paper and pencil and asked us to write our names (and e-mail addresses!). They were very interested in having us there and were cute. They all wore the same uniform, but everyone had a different collar. Most of the collars had a blue design on a white cloth, but one had an embroidered collar. One had a Turkish flag in red on his collar. We finally hugged some of them and left. I forgot that in Turkey one hugged both sides.
Santos, an ancient ruin of the Illesiums was next. These people were fierce defenders of their own land, but did not operate offensively. When defeat seemed imminent, they committed suicide rather than submit to surrender. Our guide thought they must have believed in afterlife because of their graves and this suicide. There were several tombs; this town had been used by Greeks and Romans as well. An amphitheater was in pretty good shape, and Sami took us to a point over the river where the about-to-be-defeated warriors jumped to their death.
Our lunch was in an attractive government park. One of the specialties was thin bread, rolled into a circle with a large dowel and cooked on an upside down pot, with a little oil. When we ate ours, we saw that it had been filled with finely chopped vegetables. Sue ordered trout, and I had chicken shish kabobs; we shared, of course.
We visited an abandoned Greek village. In 1925 Greece and Turkey had an exchange of population. Greeks living in Turkey went home, as did Turks living in Greece. Often the people exchanged homes, but this area was not in the favor of the Turks and disintegrated. The only roofs were on a few churches. Doors and windows were missing from the stone houses. The village was fairly large, built on the hillsides. The paths/roads were quite steep. Turks live around the base of the hills and some were selling souvenirs.
From the beach we were boated back to our ship. Sue and several of the others “went swimming,” although it looked to me as if they were just floating around talking. Dinner was served at 8:30, and we went to bed right after.
Breakfast was, as usual, at 8. A little before nine we boated in to St. Nicholas Island and hiked to the top. Going and coming was very slow, but the day was sunny and the views spectacular. There were many ruins to check out. The Japanese (!) apparently had done some archeological work on the island. Some of the work was apparent. At the top were a few holes that we were told had been graves. Back on the ship we sailed for an hour or so and parked and had lunch. After lunch we sailed to an island where some grave sites were pointed out on a sheer cliff face. We parked for the night: the anchor was dropped and we backed toward land where each side was tied with a rope to some object on shore. Tea was served; some of the group “swam”; some of the group read.
After breakfast we motored for 20 minutes to Gocek and disembarked. Oktay and the bus were there. Another lunch. The town of Selcuk was packed with busses and people. Tourists bus into the town during the day, but it is quiet during the night. We left our bags at the outskirts of town to be taken to the hotel, the Nisanyan Houses, and we started walking. It was a fairly long, steep walk with many turns, all on cobble stones. Some of us were in the main building and others were in two houses a little below us. We were on the third floor. Two couples in our group had been put in a house. It had only one bathroom, and the only way into that bathroom was through a bedroom. Friendly as these couples were, one of them asked to be relocated!
We went back to town after a bit to look around. Our evening meal the next day was not included, so we decided to get a bottle of wine and some cheese. There were many wine shops in town, but only one grocery store that we saw. Toward the end of town we were looking in the Oriental Wine Shop, when the owner came out and spoke to us in good English. We went in and tasted three of his wines and decided to buy one of them. We hadn’t been able to find the cork screw that we thought we’d packed, so we asked the owner to partially open the bottle, which he was happy to do. Olive oil soap had caught our eye on the walk, and we stopped at a shop, whose owner also spoke excellent English (and 7 other languages, he told us). He sold us four bars and when we asked where we could buy cheese, he said nowhere. The shops in town sold only poor cheese, but he bought his from a good cheese seller and would be happy to buy some for us. We left 5 lira with him, and he said it would be available the next day. We showered when we got back to our room and were ready to eat at 7:30, which was the most convenient time for the hotel.
The breakfast was good, and then we were off to hear a lecture on graffiti and religion at Ephesus (Efes in Turkish, and the name of their popular beer). The professor of antiquities was a good speaker, but the chairs got pretty hard after an hour. He thought that graffiti was a good source of common thought, since the pros were definitely one way and the cons the other. He showed a few examples, but nothing to stand us on our ears.
After coffee we started off to Ephesus. It was an important port for many years, but it eventually silted up, and eventually the town was abandoned. At its height, it contained 250,000 people. We visited the terraces houses, which were on a hillside where six families had originally lived, very rich, of course. Some of the wall pictures and designs were still visible, and many of the floor designs were still there.
The library had been the third or fourth largest in the ancient world, behind Alexandria and Pergamum. The façade of the building is still standing. The theater is one of the largest of the Roman era, seating around 25,000. It is still used once a year for camel wrestling. Yes, camels are taught to wrestle, mostly with their necks. The camel that forces the other out of a circle is the winner. Betting is very important here, and the only reason the camels wrestle. Care is taken so that no camel is hurt, we were told.
After another lunch, we walked through the market, which is set up each Saturday. The market is very large and sells food and nonfood articles. We noticed that the booths selling raspberries and tomatoes used red umbrellas over their wares.
A visit to the small museum of Efes showed some of the artifacts taken from that site and some large statues. A room on gladiators was also present, showing the different weapons they used and skeletal remains of mortal wounds. Then we had a quick trip back to the hotel. Sue and I showered and eventually ate dinner at the pool—up the road from the hotel and down a fairly long stone then dirt path. There were lounge chairs above the pool, and a snack area with a mini-bar of soft drinks. It was cool, and the bread (which we had gotten from our lunch restaurant) and cheese (from the olive oil salesman) were good, along with the wine. The hotel had a few more buildings further up the hill, and some of their occupants (Russians?) passed us on their way up.
Sami said that if a woman is wearing high heeled shoes anywhere in Turkey, she is Russian. The name “Turkey” comes from a word meaning turk user. A turk is a sword.
At six AM we got up, washed and got our bags ready for the flight to Istanbul. Breakfast was good, with French toast, along with the usual breakfast items: cheeses, olives, bread, jams, tomatoes, cucumber, tea/coffee, orange juice, and a few items I never identified.
I paid our wine bill of 10 lira for the poor wine we had had the first night, and Sue and I walked down to the bus. The first stop our bus made was at a place that made and sold Turkish carpets. The owner, a thin man with a pot belly, showed us three young “nomads” who were weaving carpets. He takes them in for four months and teaches them how to weave; they then go back home and weave and he buys their output. He showed us how they made dyes to color the wool or silk they made the carpets out of. We also saw how they disentangled silk from the cocoon; the cocoons are heated in a large pot of water until they loosen up; then the loose ends of several are added to a string being wound on a wooden device.
The place was alive with swallows. They were flying all around, and the nests were everywhere, filled with young. One nest over the weavers had four youngsters. In another two weeks, I imagine they would be all gone. We then went inside, through several rooms filled with carpets to a room where our guide talked about the carpets. He showed us about fifty carpets, one at a time, which his four men rolled out for us. Some were silk, some were wool. At the end we were offered wine, tea, or coffee. The wine helped some of us seriously consider a purchase.
We were interested in the carpets, and we looked at several, wanting to replace the dining room carpet. All the carpets were different, and we found nothing appropriate for the dining room. We did find something for the front foyer, and then Sue found something she liked but as yet isn’t sure where she will put it. The two carpets came to only $2,800. Our salesman said they would arrive in NM in six to eight weeks.
Lunch was served outside under some trees. The weather was very pleasant as was the lunch. The owner’s homemade red wine was a bit raw, but the white was good, said Sue.
We got to the airport and waited a long time for Sami to check our luggage and get our tickets. Baggage check was right at the door, and they checked the luggage to be checked and the carry-ons. There was another security check point before we got to our gate, and we finally found the cork screw that had eluded us for so long. Even after it showed up on the security monitor, it took Sue some time to find it. We couldn’t check it, so someone in Turkey is using it now. At the gate, we boarded a bus, which took us to our Atlas Jet aircraft. The flight to Istanbul took under an hour, and a bus picked us up from the aircraft and took us to the terminal.
Another bus driver picked us up and drove us to one of Istanbul’s sites: an underground cistern in the middle of town. It was dark, cooler, and damp. Only a few lights were on and occasionally a drop of water fell from the high ceiling. The giant room had held some 80,000 cubic meters of water, which today is only a drop in the daily water use. The walls were four meters thick; columns every 30 feet or so held up the ceiling. The place was packed with people, and their voices echoed back and forth.
We were finally deposited at the Armada Hotel. Sami went home (he lives in Istanbul), and we had dinner in the hotel at 7:30.
The Armada was an expensive hotel, but they offered no lotion and no tissues. Shampoo was in the bar of soap, which was olive oil, and worked quite well.
May 26
Sami took us to Topkapi Palace, the seat of the Ottoman sultans for 400 years. We had to pass security to get in. It was all very attractive, ornate, and interesting. We visited the harem, which is not a gathering of concubines but a haven for some women and their children. Once the women were in the harem, it was tough to get out; if one did not leave by the age of 28, one stayed in the harem for life. Intricate stonework covered most of the walls, ceilings, and floors. There were lots of people visiting the Palace. We were given some time to look around on our own. There were even some Christian artifacts to view, such as a finger bone of St. John. Sue and I went down to the tea room for a glass of tea, overlooking the water.
Before lunch, we were given time to walk through the Spice Bazaar. There were all kinds of spices in jars and in large, open bags. Sue bought some curry on a whim. The vendors all talked to us to get us to buy, but they were not obnoxious. One of the spices that everyone had was Turkish saffron. It looked as if it may have had some real saffron in it, but it was not the real stuff.
The group was dropped at Taksim Square, a shopping district, so we could walk on Istiklal Avenue and look at the shops. Part way down the street we decided we should get more lira, and I went up to one of the many ATMs with my VISA card. When I typed in the information, I was told my bank would not authorize the transaction. I had already received money from an ATM, so that could have meant anything, and I tried it again in a different machine—with the same results. After walking further down the street, I thought I would try it just once more. The machine did not accept my card in its slot easily, but I kept trying, and eventually it went in. However, I could get nothing on the screen, no matter what buttons I pushed. Eventually, Sue went into the bank; I had to stay by the machine so no one else would try to use it. Later, she came out with a woman, the only one in the bank who spoke any English at all. She pushed a few buttons then went back into the bank to get someone who knew the machines. It must have taken ten minutes. Sue came out a few times to say they were trying. Apparently the men were “busy” with something else and Sue had to be very obsequious to get them to eventually acknowledge her. After some time, a bank guard with a surly look on his face came out, grabbed the sides of the machine, and yanked. My card was lying on the bottom of the machine. He grabbed it, put the cover back on, and gave the card to the woman. She compared it with my passport and gave them back to me. I assumed in that case that the machine had not been put together correctly and that anyone who tried it would have lost his card as I did.
It was almost time to be back at the bus, so we walked quickly back up the street and made it with several seconds to spare. Three members of our group were still missing, however. Since there was no where to park, we drove around the square for a quarter of an hour until the three showed up.
Dinner was another “free” night, and we went up the street a couple of blocks to a local restaurant. At one of the tables, two people were playing backgammon while the man smoked a hookah, exhaling large clouds of smoke. The meal was quite good, along with a glass of wine. Next door was a Korean restaurant getting action from Asians; I assume most were Korean.
There was a classical Turkish concert in a large room back at the hotel. There were six players from around the city, one of whom played a wind instrument. The other instruments were string; one looked like a zither, one a guitar, and one a banjo with no opening in its face. The music was interesting, but not something I would listen to for very long. The several pieces that they played took up almost a half hour. I asked if the “banjo” without an opening would sound different with an opening. He said the wood was so thin, that there would be little difference; at one time they had put small holes in the face.
May 27
Kazim, owner of the tour company running our group, was our new guide, since Sami was with a group just coming in.
The former hippodrome was our first stop of this busy day. Two obelisks are all that is left of the hippodrome. One has Egyptian symbols on it and is only 2/3 there. When it was shipped in during the first millennium, it broke and the bottom bit has been lost. The surrounding stands are gone, with the stones recycled into other buildings. Roads run on either side of the obelisks.
In the afternoon we visited the Grand Bazaar, which contains 3,000 or so shops, literally the first shopping mall in history. Sue and I wandered around in it. There were lots of jewelry stores, with gold items displayed in their shop windows. The Bazaar is all covered and each shop is a separate room. The vendors were as usual, alert and talkative, but not obnoxious. In our travels through the myriad of side walkways, we came across a shop selling paintings. We saw a few we liked and bargained the seller down a pittance before we bought them. One is a watercolor of water, ships, and mosques; the other is three whirling dervishes.
May 28
Sue had decided against it, but I wanted to go to a Turkish bath. After breakfast, I put some clean clothes in a back pack, took a map of the city, and started out. I got about halfway to the bath, when the street I was following was no longer the street I was following. The streets in Istanbul are like those in London. They are short, and they change names at random, and here there were very few street signs. For a while I wandered around, trying to see a familiar landmark. Eventually I came upon the Grand Bazaar again and figured I was truly lost. I showed my map to a corner bread salesman. He did not speak English and was not very good at maps. He pointed to another bread salesman (they had moveable carts with breads inside a glass case), who seemed to be able to read maps and showed me eight fingers and pointed. I assumed he probably meant it would take eight minutes and I should go the direction he pointed, which was through several blocks of buildings. I walked a couple of blocks and stood on a corner until an empty “taksi” came by. I got in and showed the driver my map, saying aloud two of the streets at the intersection. He frowned and kept looking at the map. Very shortly, he stopped and pointed, very happy. We were at one of the streets! I paid him 2.5 lira and got out. After looking around, I could see nothing, not even the street name on a sign post.
I went up to a corner bread salesman (they are everywhere) and asked him “Turkish bath?” He said, “Turkish bat?” I said, “Bath,” and rubbed my hand around my body. This man spoke English and told me to go 100 meters down the street and turn left. I thanked him profusely and started off. At the second street, I turned left. A street crew was repairing the street on one side of the road; the street was made up of small, flat rocks, and they were fitting these into the sand and hammering them down. Halfway down the street, I still saw nothing of a bath sign. A local woman was coming toward me and nodded. I stopped her and asked “Turkish bath?” while rubbing my hand on my chest. She smiled and pointed back the way I had come, and there was a 3 x 4 foot sign! I thanked her several times and went down the steps into the bath, already sweating from my walk. My goal was one of the “thousand places to see before you die,” from the book of that title. It was Cagaloglu Hamami, a 300-year old Turkish bath. You would not have thought such a famous place would be so hard for me to find.
The price list showed five different choices. I picked number four since I didn’t want to spend a lot of time there. The cost was about 39 lira, which I paid in lira and dollars. The clerk, who spoke excellent English, took me to their shop and talked me into buying a rough scrubbing pad; the $15 pad came with a large bar of olive oil soap. I had grown partial to that soap, which was probably why I bought it. He told me that the attendant would use my scrubbing pad rather than the house pad, and I would be ahead hygienically. He put the pad and soap in a woven bag. The pad was never used.
I was shown changing room number 5, where I undressed and put on a towel. Shoes had to be removed before entering the changing room and wooden clogs were available for use in the bath. I wore my glasses, a mistake, took the key, and was shown the steam room. I had trouble using my clogs; my heels kept coming off the shoe, which was somewhat painful. My glasses immediately were useless. It was a large, round room with a large, octagonal, marble seat in the middle. Around the room, in the various corners and niches, were about 20 water sinks with taps. High overhead was a dome with large holes in it. The floor was always slanted toward drains and always wet. I was the only person in the room.
After a half hour or so, one of the staff came in and was sloshing around in the sinks. It was time enough, and I went out through the two doors into the towel room. The attendant was very solicitous, but did not speak much English. We determined that I next wanted a massage and someone else came through the room saying “5 minutes.” The attendant had me lie down on a bench and put a towel under and over me. I had no idea what “5 minutes” meant. I assumed all people waiting were told “5 minutes.” It wasn’t long, 5 minutes?, until the masseuse got me up and took me back into the steam room. He was shorter than I am, about twice the girth, and wearing a wraparound towel with the same design. He put a pad on the central marble “seat” and told me to lie down. He spoke some English, but used lots of gestures. He said “Ten minutes. OK?” I said, “OK.” During the massage, he pushed down on me at times so I though I would bruise the boney corners of my body. When he was squeezing my calves, it hurt; whether this was still a result of the swelling from the plane ride or not, I don’t know. While rubbing my back, he was really leaning into it and grunting as he worked. Ten minutes was quite enough.
He then took me over to one of the sinks and washed me, scrubbing me down with his own rough pad from a large container of soapy water—olive oil soap. He rubbed my head, the shampoo, and I got soap in the eye, which smarted. While he was rubbing my arm, he pointed to some black spots on the arm, which I initially took to be something I had leaned into. But it was body dirt that the scrubber was rubbing out of the skin. He soaped and rubbed most of my body, and poured water over me to rinse me off. I was finished.
In the towel room, I was given two towels and told I could stay as long as I wanted. On the way out of the room I had a chance to buy coffee or soft drinks, but I just sat in front of my room in the main hall to cool down and dry off. The main room was tall and large, with a few tables and benches and a central low fountain. I sat there about 15 minutes with my towels around me. Three women came in, paid their money and were taken off to the women’s section. My masseur gave me a comb, which I had forgotten to bring. The clerk who had taken my money told me I was lucky to have had my masseur, since he was the top man in his field. I went into my room, dried off, combed without a mirror, dressed, and left.
The experience satisfied me. I imagine with the most expensive bath, more of the body was dealt with more thoroughly, but that was enough for me at that time.
I wasn’t sure if I would walk back to the hotel or take a taksi. I started off down the hill toward the water, but there are too many ways to walk down a hill, and water was on several sides. It wasn’t long before I decided to take a taksi and I waited at a likely spot. Soon a taksi came by; I got in and showed the driver a piece of paper from the hotel with its name and street address. He kept looking at the paper as he drove back up the hill with a puzzled expression. At the top he stuck his head out the window and asked a couple of people where the Armada Hotel was. Another taxi driver said something to him, and we were soon in an area I was familiar with. He stopped once again for directions, and we finally made it. The fare was 4.21 lira. I gave him a 5 lira note, and he made no indication that I was to get anything back. He was a young man, apparently new to the taksi game. He was the only driver who wasn’t quite solicitous.
We had nothing to do at the hotel except wait, so we got our stuff together and went down to the main desk. They called for a taksi, and one came within five minutes. The fare to the airport turned out to be about 27 lira. Inside we couldn’t find the Swiss Air desk; our flight didn’t leave for 2 ½ hours. I went downstairs to get a beer, but they were too expensive: 13 ½ lira; I had only 11. Eventually we checked in, showing our passports for the first of three times. After passport control we looked around for some way to spend our 11 lira, and finally bought some toffees. At our gate we had to wait for them to open it, which took a couple of chapters in my book. We showed our passports again, and had our carry-ons run through the machine again.
The plane was pretty full, but Sue had an empty seat next to her. The flight took almost three hours, and we gained an hour. Another passport control, our bags had arrived, Swiss francs were purchased. Sue activated our train passes, and we took the train into Zurich. Our hotel was on the other side of the train depot, and we wheeled our bags under the tracks, then up the escalator. The hotel sign was visible down the street, so we wheeled our bags that way. We passed a couple of restaurants, and I was thinking about getting a sandwich and a beer. Sue said that sounded good to her. There was a Thai restaurant under the hotel sign but no hotel visible. Sue went inside to ask and an employee was good enough to come out and point the way to the hotel and mentioned that the above sign had arrows on it, which we had missed. Another block and a half and we were there.
Our room had been held until 4 PM, before our plane landed, and then the hotel gave it to someone else. We were really pissed off. How this could have happened was unexplainable, especially since our plane wasn’t scheduled to get in until after the deadline. Sue thought she had already paid for the room, but apparently she had just paid Best Western, who gave her a card with the dollars on it. The clerk was very nice and explained everything in excellent English. There were two other rooms that might be available if their renters did not show up by six. Why their deadline was 6 and ours was 4 was never explained. So we waited around, at 6 the people called, and we were out of a room.
While we had been waiting we checked other possibilities. Zurich’s hotels were all full, but no one seemed to know why. There was a Best Western in Lucerne, which was on the way to Grindelwald, but there the hotels were full, too! Sue got the clerk to call our hotel in Grindelwald to see if they had any room; they had one room open! The helpful clerk ran off a rail itinerary to get to Grindelwald, and we wheeled our bags back to the station. We are in our 70s and were getting tired.
At the station I bought a couple of sandwiches and a bottle of water. There was no escalator up to track 12, so we had to carry our 60?, 70?, 80? pound bags up two flights of stairs. The Swiss train system is quite impressive. The trains leave on time and arrive on time. There were only a few minutes between our two train changes, but we made it easily. With 100-pound bags. The train arrived in Grindelwald after dark about 9:30, and there were no taxis at the station. There were no taxis at the taxi stand. The man at the hotel was kind enough to phone for the taxi, which arrived about 10 minutes later. The driver was a woman who flung our bags into the back with no problem. The short drive to the hotel cost 14 francs; the franc was just a little less than a dollar.
The check-in was quick, and we were in our room 221 and in our bed very quickly. Finally, after a long, confusing day.
Walking in to breakfast was a visual delight. The Eigerblick Hotel is on a hillside overlooking a small town next to Grindelwald, and the town was below us and houses dotted the hillside on the other side of the town. It looked like a wonderful postcard, even if there was no sun. The mountains rose into the clouds around us, still with patches of snow on them. A very great sight.
Breakfast was familiar, with scrambled eggs, bacon (quite underdone but tasty), croissants, various cheeses, jams, fruit, etc. Around noon we changed into our regular room 554, which was a bit larger and had washcloths and shampoo—and a great view.
We walked into town and had a beer with our granola bars before going to the First (pronounced “fearst”) gondola station. The top was closed to hiking because of wet trails, so we bought tickets to the first stop, Bort, and planned to walk back. The rail pass saved us 50%. The day was overcast, with occasional sun and occasional mist. The ride was very pleasant, but not as nice as the first trip, in 1963, when we rode in open-air seats. There were fewer houses around then, too.
After we got off, we milled around for a bit, then started off on a path going uphill, which we hoped, according to the map, would lead us downhill soon. We passed a man and asked him if this was the way to Grindelwald. It was a strange conversation, because he tried to get us to go to Grindelwald a way we did not want to go. At first he talked as if he did not know English very well, but after we had talked a bit he switched and talked quite well. He was a bald German, if that explains anything. In the end, we went back to the train stop and took the trail from there to Grindelwald. The macadam path was very steep, and halfway down I tightened my shoe laces so my toes didn’t rub on the front of the shoes. Although it misted heavily at times, the scenery was very pleasant. We passed a herd of cows, all of whom were wearing large bells; the calves wore smaller bells. Sue took a “movie” with her camera so we could remember the bells ringing. Each cow seemed to have a different note on her bell. There were other people on the path, and several passed us. We passed a maintenance crew that was working on the sides of the path. They had a truck that almost blocked the way. For a brief time, we waited for the worker to stop so we could get by. I said, “Thank you.” He said something back, not in the best of moods was he. The path passed back and forth under the gondolas and along a stream of fast moving water. My knees and legs were getting sore by the time we got back into town. We stopped for tea at one of the hotels on the main street before continuing up the hill to our hotel. Fondue for dinner.
We joined a Japanese tour group for breakfast. There seems to be a different tour every day. My guess is that they stay one day and bus on to the next stop. They sit huddled together and tend to move as a group. It is tough to compete with them for food or walking space.
Ballenberg, a Swiss open-air museum was our goal for today. If we could find it. Around 9 we left the hotel and walked down the hill to the train station. Sue had the train times of the two trains we had to take. The day was partly cloudy and stayed that way all day, although our weather forecast had warned of rain. At Interlaken Ost, there was a 35 minute wait, and we wandered into the Coop across the street from the train station. Coop is a chain of supermarkets, and we had not been in one. The store was laid out in an unusual manner; the nonfood items were mixed in with the food items; an isle of clothing would be next to an isle of coffee and tea. They were using a new method of shopping: handheld devices that one picked up before entering the store. The shopper scanned each item and then gave the device to the checker as he/she checked out. Everything was expensive. Tropicana orange juice was $6 a half gallon, for instance. We bought two sandwiches for lunch.
The final train stop was in Brienz, at the other end of Brienzersee from Interlaken. The directions we had were rather vague from here. From the signs at the bus stop, we found Ballenberg West and Ballenberg East and no other mention of the site. We asked around and seemed to be in the right spot. Ten minutes later the bus pulled up and we got on. The rail pass got us on free. After a seven minute wait, the doors closed and we were off.
The roads were very narrow; I don’t know if a car and a bus could pass by each other without one pulling over. The bus climbed the hills, stopping occasionally. The next stop was printed in lights on a banner at the front of the bus, and if someone had pressed a “Stop” button, that was indicated. We picked up about eight middle school kids at two stops; Sue figured it was early-day Friday. One of the girls asked me in French/German if she could sit across from us, and I waved them in. They seemed to be in constant interaction with each other throughout the bus, without being loud or annoying. Girls came to talk to our girls; our girls went to talk to other girls, all with some purpose lost on geriatric foreigners. When we got off, they said “Goodbye” and I said “Goodbye.”
Our exit was the west end of Ballenberg; there is an east entrance, but the bus does not go there very often, and it is farther on. The wonderful rail pass was good here, too, and we paid only two francs to get in. We used the WC, Sue bought a bottle of water for 5 francs, and we went into the park. Soon we came to the dining spot, and we each had a beer with the sandwiches we had brought. Ballenberg stretches over an area of 66 hectares and has about 100 rural buildings. The buildings have been collected from sites all over Switzerland and moved and reconstructed here. They have done a wonderful job; all the buildings we saw looked as if they had always been where we saw them. Animals, gardens, trees all give the place an authentic look and feel.
Activities were going on in some of the structures. A man was making breads for sale in the shop; when we went in, some were rising, and he was forming other loaves. The wood-fired oven was hot in the next room. In the cooking spot, a man was making soup, and he gave us each a small bowl. It was quite good. He said he had retired at the mandatory age from his regular cooking job, but he worked part time here. There was a dish for tips, and I left one franc. All of the inside rooms were low and dark, and the doorways were even lower. Wood was by far the main building material, dark and large. Two horses pulled a carriage around the park if one cared to hire it.
Some of the rooms were roped off; a good many of them were furnished with beds, clothing, pictures (religious, mostly), machinery, implements.
Most of the farmhouses were very big—successful farmers to be sure. In one “farmhouse,” a room was set up to show how ribbons were made. A large machine about 15 feet long and four high filled most of the room. There were products on sale from the device. Just before we figured it was time to quit, we went into a pharmacy. It was a mixture of the past and present; modern items were being sold. Other rooms were set up to show how things were in the past.
We rested for a minute or so then walked out of the park to the bus stop. We got to the stop just before the bus, so we had rested the right amount of time. On the way back, two young (5 years?) girls got on the bus; they were extremely attractive and sat across the isle from us. I thought they were with someone at the front of the bus, but Sue thought they were alone. It was a pleasure to look at them.
A ten minute wait got us on the train back to Interlaken Ost, and another short wait got our train going to Grindelwald. We decided to eat in our room, and we stopped by the local Coop to find food. They didn’t have any small corkscrews, so we hunted around the screw top bottles and found a sirah from France, which turned out OK. Also in our basket were ham pate, hazelnut cookies, a Caesar salad (with the different ingredients in separate plastic containers), crackers, and a knife. The walk up the hill to the hotel was hot, and we showered before eating.
Another breakfast with the same choices. I chose a couple of soft cheeses. At 10:15 we were at the train station with fleeces and raincoats and hats. On our way, the conductor told us that the rail pass was good only for 50% of the fare, so we had to pay 51 francs. This railway, a rack railway, was different; the cars were propelled by cogs turning in a central rail of cog holes. It traveled rather rapidly, nonetheless. Our destination was Kleine Scheidegg.
The day was mostly cloudy with a little mist off and on. There were some shafts of sunlight hitting the mountains, but we had only a glimpse of the top of one, and a brief sighting of The Top of Europe, a tourist complex near the top of the Jungfrau. We took a path going down, which we followed for 40 minutes or so, looking at the flowers, trees, mountains, and a pool of water, around a large pile of unmelted snow, that was full of frogs. There was only one bench on the trail, and we sat down on our way back to eat our bars.
We moseyed around the buildings near the train station, taking pictures. We went in a shop and found they had some place mats that interested me. The cost was 10 francs, and we decided to get them on the way back from our next hike. The next hike was much shorter, just up the hill in the other direction where there was a viewing station. Halfway up I was taking a picture, when my camera told me the batteries were too low. That really ticked me off. I hadn’t been using them very long, but then I had never used unrechargeable batteries before in that camera. The view from the top was very nice, even in cloudy weather. Grindelwald was visible down in the valley. When we got back to the train station, a train was about to leave, and we decided to get the placemats (if we could find them) and batteries in Grindelwald. A special train, which had been standing by, started down the mountain; it was full of Japanese.
The second shop we checked did have the 3v 2C batteries, and when the clerk (owner?) rang them up, they came to over 35 francs! The clerk asked if I had checked the old batteries, and I said all I knew is what the camera had said. We took the old batteries out of the case, and he checked them with a voltmeter. They all registered good! When they were back in the camera, it registered fully charged batteries. I was very appreciative of the clerk’s checking the batteries and told him so. He was pleased to have helped, but probably not as pleased as if he had made a sale.
Another shop down the way carried the placemats we were interested in, and they were two francs cheaper than at the top of the mountain.
The hotel was our restaurant again. I had the salmon dish, but it didn’t have a lot of salmon flavor. The sauces, rice, and vegetables added taste. Sue had a vegetable spaghetti dish made with olive oil, which was quite tasty. Our drink? A BIG beer.
Our last day in Grindelwald was cloudy, but the clouds were high and all of the peaks were visible for the first time. We walked over to the gondolas noticing that the grocery stores were both closed on Sunday, unfortunately. The half-price fare of 51 francs was charged to American Express. Another pleasant ride. Our cows were still chewing and bonging; the water was still raging down the hill; people were walking down and up; paragliders were sailing around the sky. There are three stops on the way, and the system takes a 90 degree turn at the second stop. There were piles of snow all over above stop two. We took lots of photos after getting out of the gondola; it was great being able just to see the entire mountain. Sue was naming them off, but a tall rock is a mountain. They were all snow covered at the top. Walking and shooting the camera took up a couple of hours. When we first got off the gondola we noticed a woman with two small children walking ahead of us. They soon disappeared. Occasionally some sun would shine through, but mostly it was just overcast. We took a lot of photos. The woman and the two children were coming down a hill as we were going up. We stopped and talked for a while. It turned out that she was a mountaineer and, with her husband, had made a new route up the Eiger. Also, they had taken part in the Imax movie The Alps, which we had not seen. We were quite impressed.
When we continued on, we met a young couple from Israel; the husband was quite voluble and excited about the mountains. They were taking photos of each other in front of the mountains, and I took a couple of the two of them. They took a couple of us. Back at the terminal, we had a sandwich and a beer each for lunch.
Quite a few people had been coming up the gondolas with large packs. They turned out to be paragliders. After lunch we went out on the deck and could see them unpacking and taking off several hundred feet below us. There was a paragliding competition going on we knew, and this was the last day. I don’t know how one won, maybe by staying aloft longest. We walked down to see how they took off. They had to unpack the glider and get all of the cables straightened out. They took everything with them. When they were ready to take off, their glider was behind them and they held the cables out on either side. There seemed to be two ways to take off. They could wait until a gust of wind picked up their glider; then they would run downhill and take off. The other way was to wait for a reasonable amount of wind then run down the hill; the air would fill the glider and they could take off. Like birds, they could find thermals to take them higher. Some of them performed acrobatics, like swinging in a circle. After a half hour or so we climbed back up to the gondola shed and went back to Grindelwald.
For dinner we walked down to Grindelwald again, about a 15 minute walk, and had an excellent meal at one of the hotels. Then we walked back up the hill.
All we had to do the next day was get to Zurich. We had the usual breakfast and paid our bill and the hotel took us down to the train station. We probably could have gotten them to pick us up, if we had been on the ball. The trains back were well timed, and the train into Zurich went on to the airport, so we just stayed on and got off there.
It took some phone calls and figuring out, but we got to the hotel by taxi. It was an “airport” hotel, but it wasn’t very near the airport. This was the second hotel on Sue’s Best Western card, but here our room was available and ready.
It was lunch time, and we walked out to find lunch. Walking to the left got us a gas station, but here the gas stations sell only gas, not food. Walking the other way, we found a Mexican restaurant, and I had nachos and cheese with a beer. The airport couldn’t have been too far away because a plane roared overhead on its way to a landing.
That evening we had sukiyaki at one of the two Japanese restaurants in the hotel. It was expensive and the beef was rather tasteless, but it was enjoyable. This hotel had two Japanese restaurants—an indication of the usual clientele.
Before we got on the 9:20 bus to the airport, we checked out rather bizarrely. I gave the clerk what Swiss francs I had, a little more than 37, and the card Sue had from Best Western, which should have paid for two hotel rooms. When the clerk had finished, the card was empty and we owed nothing more. What are the odds?! We got nowhere talking to the clerk, who mentioned “units” when referring to our prepaid card. There was nothing we could do there, so we added another item to the list for our travel agent.
At the airport we spent some time in the business lounge before our plane took off. The flight to Dulles was a boring eight hours, even in business class. When one can sleep, it is much better.
At Dulles, we spent a lot of time in lines; several large planes must have arrived at the same time. The business lounge there charged for beer! The plane took off two hours late. Rain. We sat on the runway wondering if we would have to get off and stay the night. Finally, we took off. Home.
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