Izmir

Last week Turkey had a week long Muslim religious holiday, Bayram, to celebrate the end of Ramazan. Ramazan lasted the whole month of September and its where Muslim people fast for 30 days. School was of course closed for the holiday so I went with my friends Marisa and KG to the city of Izmir and we stayed at the house of our Turkish friend, Basar (pronounced Bashar). He is also a student at Koc. We orginially wanted to go on a tour of the Black Sea coast region, but we started planning too late and so all the tours were booked.

 Izmir is the third largest city in Turkey (pop. 2.6 mil.) and is the second biggest port city behind Istanbul. Its right on the Agean Sea, but its very much like the port of Seattle – with beautiful waterfront but no beaches or anything like that. We took a 9 hour overnight bus from Istanbul to Izmir and then took another bus for 45 mins to the part of town that Basar’s parents house is located. I was excited to stay with a Turkish family to see what Turkish home life is like. His parents were so welcoming and every morning his mom made a huge traditional Turkish breakfast (bread, cheese, honey, tomato, cucumber, olives, peppers, jam and tea) and a huge Turkish dinner. I’m not for sure, but I would consider Basar’s family to be middle class by Turkish standards. His parents do not speak English so there was a lot of face and hand gesturing and smiling going on all week.

 Basar had to translate any verbal conversation that took place.

 We spent the first day walking around Izmir and doing the typical things: bazaar browsing and having Turkish coffee and chai at cafés. The next day we got up early and took the bus to the main bus station and got on a 1.5 hour bus ride inland to the city of Selcuk. From Selcuk we caught another bus to the preserved classical city of Ephesus (see related post). After spending most of the day there we caught a bus back to Selcuk and caught another bus to the neighboring village of Sirince (pronounced siringe). Sirince is up in the hills and the housing is very pretty. We only had time to walk around for a bit and have dinner there before catching the bus back to Selcuk and then catching another bus back to Izmir.

 On Wednesday we again woke up early and caught the bus to the bus station and got on a 3.5 hour bus ride to the southwestern towns of Denizli and Pamukkale. Although those towns are talked up as a place to visit, we found them completely boring. So we sat and had chai and watched the sunset. We stayed the night in Pamukkale in a cute hostel where I went to bed at 8pm because I was feeling sick. Probably from all the bus riding. The next day Mehmet’s “uncle” (Mehmet is the hostel owner and he referred to his older friend as hi

s uncle) drove us in his little car to another great archeaoligcal site, Afrodesias (see related post). It was a 1.5 hour car ride in sweltering heat in the middle of the desert. We paid Mehmet’s uncle a good amount of money to take us out there and Afrodesias is in the middle of nowhere so private car or tour bus is really the only way to get there. Mehmet’s uncle drank chai and waited for the two hours we were at the site. He then drove us back to the bus station in Denizli where I bargained and pitted bus companies against eachother to give us cheap tickets home. I consider myself to be an above average haggler. I enjoy itJ Another 3.5 hour bus ride back to Izmir.

By the time Friday rolled around I was exhausted. We did some more sightseeing in Izmir and I made the mistake of wearing flip flops. It was raining all day long and I ended up stubbing my toe and now I think its either broken or sprained. It does not look pretty. Friday night I left on the 9 hour overnight bus ride back to Istanbul with a swollen toe. A 9 hour bus ride is very rough, but tickets to fly to Izmir were way too expensive for the holiday, especially on a student budget. I spend an enormous amount of t

ime on buses. Buses are the main mode of transportation around Turkey. On our bus was a family that I believe was moving to Izmir because they had literally all their belongings with them. I saw boxes of toys, dishes, bedding, appliances, etc. It was insane! There’s no luggage restrictions on buses here.

 Travelling is exhausting and very logistically difficult in Turkey. I would definitely not recommend traveling through Turkey for anyone who has not had prior travel experience in developing countries (unless you hire a tour group to do everything for you). Now I’m back in Istanbul and its back to school again I guess.