Katie in Bursa: A Vacation into Mythology

The funny thing about Greek ruins is, not all of them are in Greece. This is a good thing for someone who is near Greece, but cannot actually enter it. This weekend a gaggle of American students studying Turkish visited the area around the Dardanelles. A short history, from someone who knows nothing about it:

During WWI Turkey fought against allied forces including Great Britain, France, Australia, and New Zealand. This took place in the Dardanelles, the strait that connects the Aegean and the Sea of Marmara, and surrounding the Gallipoli Peninsula. The Turks were defending Istanbul from invasion, something the allied forces wanted to accomplish in order to have more direct access to Russia. This took place in 1915 and is considered one of the most important events in Turkish history. Not only were many lives lost in the biggest military campaign Turkey has ever participated in, it was also the moment Mustafa Kemal Ataturk burst onto the scene - he was a commander during the campaign, and later went on to transform Turkey by becoming its first President after the end of the (extremely long) Ottoman Empire.

*phew*

Ok, enough of that. So we visited a handful of somber museums and graveyards and memorials commemorating the campaign, all nineteen of us (and our peer buddies) shuffling on and off the bus every fifteen minutes or so. Apparently Americans are dawdlers, because by the third or fourth stop the tour guide laughingly threatened to make us pay him five Lira every time we were late to the bus. Ten minutes here, fifteen minutes there, and by the end we had bussed around a good portion of the area around Çanakkale.

Visiting places like this really puts into perspective the importance of bodies of water in human history. Not far at all from where one of the bloodiest battles of WWI took place is the ancient city of Troy where, for those of you who saw the Blockbuster film, Brad Pitt was forever etched into the tableau of history for having really bitchin' calves. Troy is by far the strangest place I have visited so far. Barely a hundred years ago nobody even knew for sure if it existed - Homer didn't exactly provide us with GPS navigational directions to the place. But there it is, all nine layers of it dating back well into the BCs, its geographic position near the Aegean so vitally important to the economy of the area that humans just kept building and building and building on top of the same spot. The feeling of stepping into a place that was once considered by many to be mere mythology is bizarre. And so like the good little tourist I am I took photos, and followed the predetermined walking path around the ruins of a city where empires have been made and destroyed over and over. I still get all giddy when I do stuff like that.

In Assos, many years ago, Aristotle opened an Academy. St. Paul also visited there. I like to think as they hauled themselves up the intimidatingly steep hill toward the Temple of Athena, they too passed dozens and dozens of little street stores selling magnets and glass bead jewelry and postcards. From the ruins of the temple you can see for miles - apparently on a good day you can see the famed island of Lesbos, something more than a few of my male compatriots pointed out. A short bus ride and additional calf-burning uphill walk later we also visited Zeus's altar, which is even higher up on a hill. You cannot help but sense the grandeur that these places naturally exude - looking down over the Aegean from so high up makes it extremely easy to believe that some all-powerful dude in the sky could zap you with a lightning bolt any minute. You just get that sort of feeling.

I am always so happy to see Greek ruins because of how inexorably tied they are to the mythologies for which they were usually created. Seeing these places in person blurs the line between fantasy and reality in a way that is a little unsettling, but most definitely pleasant. I plopped myself down on a rock from atop Zeus's altar and wondered to myself what it would look like to watch the history of this very spot on fast forward since the dawn of time. There's always been something particularly important about hills, not to mention hills near seas. They're grand, and beautiful, and serene, and so uplifting you sort of feel like you could stand up and just keep on floating.

And now I find myself back in Bursa, memorizing verbs and trying to communicate to the guy in the nearest bus stop station that I need twenty lira on my bus card so I can get to class. What a strange experience.