I thought I was watching about the utmost Amazing Turk Trick a few nights ago. It turned out to be something other than what it appeared, though. It was the same evening we had beer and fish at the Mamure Castle, actually. We drove past the castle to check into our hotel, then drove back to take a look at the castle. When we got back to the hotel, well after dark, the parking lot was filled a couple times over. We weren't sure what to do when a Turk came over and told us to just park behind a particular car. He turned out to be the barber, whose shop fronted on the parking lot. Later that night, Judy and Susan had gone up to the rooftop of the hotel to experience "disco-Turkish style." I was in my room, writing some letters. During a break, I peeked out my window - which overlooked the parking lot - and saw some guy trying to back his car around ours. He just didn't quite have enough room and he was out there discussing the situation with a number of other Turks, among them the barber. Judy had the car keys, so I dashed up to the disco so I could get the keys and move the car. But I couldn't get in. The doors were locked. It turns out there was another way into the disco that I didn't know about. But when I went back to my room and looked out the window - lo and behold - our little white Renault was sitting kind of crooked not far from where we'd parked it and the trapped Turk's car was gone. Not much later, someone else wanted to get past the little white car and six young Turk men went to the front of it, grabbed hold and at the count of Bir, Iki, Uc! they lifted the front of the car and moved it over about six inches. I was dumbfounded. They did that three or four more times until the car was no longer blocking anyone. I was even more impressed with the Turkish "can do" mentality. Would you ever think of moving a car that way? I wouldn't. Alas, it turns out they didn't move our car that way. I found out the next morning the guy who'd originally been blocked in by our rented Renault was drunk and he smashed in our driver's side window, reached in and put the car in neutral and rolled it out of the way. The parking lot entourage somehow found Judy and Susan in the disco, where they had just consumed three or four shots of raki. They were told there had been "a problem" in the parking lot. Judy and Susan went down and moved everything from the passenger area of the car into the trunk and the Turks stood guard over the car until the next morning, when the hotel chef took it off to have the window replaced. The hotel took full responsibility without the slightest quarrel. The Turks just love Americans. They want to be Americans, I think. When we arrived in Bodrum yesterday and finally found our hotel, we found it closed. We walked to a nearby hotel where a young Turk in a Metallica t-shirt told us it hadn't opened this year, but he had a couple rooms for us. When he found out I couldn't hook my laptop up to his phone system, he personally walked me several blocks to the local Internet Café. When I told him we were looking for a boat ride, he called someone who came to the hotel and set us up with the cruise.

That evening, after seven hours of cruising, swimming and snorkeling in the sun, I came back to the hotel and he was still on duty. They work long, long days here. He asked about the women and I told him they were still at the Internet Café. He asked about the boat ride and I told him it was Cok Iyi! Remember that? Then we talked about the earthquake. He told me thousands had died and many countries were trying to help but the United States was doing the best job. He said America was "Number 1." He'd changed out of his heavy metal shirt and was wearing a Garfield. We're down to less than a week left in Turkey. We've logged more than 3,000 kilometers driving around this wonderful country. They were selling some strange little green fruit by the road as we zoomed around today. Yesterday, they were selling what appeared to be honey, and bottles of something. Maybe if I had it to do over again, I'd stop and at least sample these wares they are offering. I'm not sure what the date is now. We're supposed to catch a flight from Istanbul back to the states Aug. 28. We have Ephesus and Troy yet on our menu. Our plan is to slip back in Europe across the Dardenelles on a ferry out of Canakkale on about the 26th. That way, we will approach Istanbul from the west. We've herd most of the damage from the earthquake is to the east, the direction in which we left Istanbul. Judy talked with a travel agent who helped with our agenda and asked if she could find accommodations for us near the airport Aug. 26 and 27. The travel agent didn't seem to think that would be a problem. We're to call her back in a couple days. We're figuring we can turn in the rental car and take a taksi or dolmus into Istanbul and finish up our business there. Which reminds me. Brace yourself. The taxis are all painted yellow now. Even in the smallest of towns. They aren't the recycled American cars we left over here in the sixties. They are little foreign cars. And the dolmuses? White vans. All of them.

In AnamurI guess another reason why the Turks are such extraordinary people is that they have been around forever. Turkey is the Asia Minor of the ancient world. Everything happened here. Noah's Ark is said to have finally hit dry land on Mt. Arrarat. Troy is here. Alexander the Great marched through here, conquering everything in his path in the 3rd or 4th century B.C. Yesterday, we went to Ephesus, the queen of the ancient ruins of Turkey. It was a city of 250,000 in its heyday under Roman rule. But it goes back to the 9th century B.C., at least. One pillar still stands from the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and - I think - the only one with anything still standing. I remember seeing Ephesus during a family trip in 1964. Seeing it today, I am amazed at how much more has been uncovered. And still, our guide told us 80 percent of it is still buried underground. Judy and I are anxious to look at our fathers' photos of Ephesus, to see what it looked like then, as compared to now. To paraphrase what Carl K. said about Cleveland, if you haven't seen Cleveland lately, you haven't seen Cleveland. Same with Ephesus. (I can't believe I'm comparing Cleveland with Ephesus. Must be the Turkish Vodka). What's left of the marble and granite pillars and buildings and roads gives you some idea of what must have been the grandeur of the city. Christians and Jews tried to live quietly among the populace, carving secret signs in stone here and there throughout the city to let their religious compatriots know they were there. Ephesus reached its zenith under Roman rule, after Christianity had been established as the main religion by one of the Roman emporers. The Christians trashed a few of the nicer, older structures - unfortunately - in an effort to get rid of the polytheism of ancient Rome. Earthquakes took care of most of the rest. Ephesus was a nice harbor town, a center of trade on the silk road. But by 800 A.D., it had become a ghost town. Silt had washed down from the hills, filling in the harbor and - after a thousand years - the last Ephesians left for a better life, somewhere else. Now, Ephesus is pieces of marble and rock, laying randomly about. Archeologists started trying to piece the big jigsaw puzzle back together in the 19th century. Our guide told us that in their haste, they didn't get much of it right in the beginning. Later, they've done better. When we were there just yesterday, a Turkish-Austrian archeological crew with cranes was trying to uncover Ephesian houses not far from the great library. One of the really serious crimes in Turkey today is for a foreigner to try to take ancient artifacts out of the country. It's probably a backlash from early British archeological activities in which - as Judy puts it so well - they just backed the boats into the harbors, loaded all the lovely statues onto their ships and took them to England. They remain there today. The Germans did a bit of it, too. The Turks have tried repeatedly to get their treasures back, but to no avail. There are still some lovely artifacts at a museum near Ephesus - miniature carvings and statues from the B.C. days. Statues of Artemis. Even busts from a Socrates room. And Plato. After Ephesus, we drove to Bergama. If I understand it correctly, Bergama is the name of the town and Pergamum is the name of the ruins. We first dropped by the "Red Hall" - the Temple of the Egyptians from the 2nd century A.D. This temple is reportedly referenced in the New Testament - Gospel of St. John, Chapter 2, Verse 12. I'll have to check that out with my better Christian friends when I get back. Farther up a hill, with a splendid view of the surrounding lands, is a temple to Zeus from the first part of the 3rd century B.C. This whole area was given to one of Alexander the Great's generals after Alexander's death. This one had no heirs, so when he died, he willed it back to Rome. I suspect if the United States owned all this stuff, it would be cordoned off so you couldn't get to it. The admission fees would be very stiff. Here, a couple million TL will get you into the best of the ruins -- $5 tops. And once you are in, you can go anywhere and do anything. You can climb around and hike all over. You can run your fingers over marble carvings that were chiseled thousands of years ago. You can pick up the smaller pieces, roll them around in you hands and look for patching pieces laying nearby. There are many cisterns and other holes in the ground where you could easily fall and break a leg (or worse), but you're free to do that. We found an Internet Café in Bergama on our way back from the ruins. While Judy and Susie tried to access their Yahoo accounts. I was out in the hall reading a quote from Ataturk. As Susie pointed out today, nearly every shop of any substance in this country has a portrait of Ataturk on the wall. This one had a poster, his portrait overprinted with the quote. The quote was to the young people of Turkey. To paraphrase, it told them the future freedom of their country was in their hands. They needed to devote every ounce of energy and strength to protect that freedom, whether the enemy sprung from within or without. He told them it wouldn't be easy, but he assured them that history had put the strength and ability to defend freedom into their blood.

Breakfast at the Turtel Hotel in Kusadasi is included in the price of the room. This is our most expensive hotel -- $80 per night for the three of us, but it includes dinner as well. The hotel is kind of off in its own end of the town, so we skipped the free dinner last night and took a cab to town to look around. Another busy, touristy place. We were nearly consumed by hawkers during a short trip down an alley lined with Irish bars. More American music blasting from every bar. This is not Turkey. We're up early this morning, hoping for an early start. We have to drive through Izmir, the second largest city in Turkey. The map seems to show a bypass and we're hoping we hit it and don't end up downtown. The guy at the table across from me at breakfast - I'm not sure of his nationality - is wearing a T-shirt with "15 reasons why beer is better than women" on the front, in English of course. Someone else's shirt says, "The heart is in the past, the mind is in the future." I'll have to think about that one. A kid had on a Chicago Bulls No. 23 jersey the other day. Over the music system, Air Supply and Bruce Springsteen are gently entertaining the breakfast crowd. I have no idea what nationality these people are but I think we're the only Americans. The traditional Turkish breakfast has been bread, cheese, olives, cucumbers, tomatoes, something resembling meat sometimes, jelly, tea and sugar. It seems to be watermelon season. We've had it everywhere and it's as delicious as I've ever tasted. At the Turtel, breakfast is more elaborate, with something resembling eggs, sweet rolls, cereal and coffee. At lunch or dinner, it's quite common for us to be approached by a young, handsome Turk. They will first ask where we are from. Although Judy and I live in Washington and Susie lives in Wyoming, we'll often say we're from California. Most of them have heard of California. It turns out quite a few know of Seattle and when we learn that, we tell them we live near Seattle. A few of them have been to America. One exceptionally friendly and charming young man told us he had spent time in San Francisco last year. He'd driven a rental car to Sacramento. A little honk when you pass a car in Turkey is a polite way of letting the other driver know you are there. This guy was honking at everyone he passed on I-80 and wondering why he was getting such funny looks from the other motorists. He quickly figured out he didn't really need to honk, just as we eventually discovered that - over here - we need to keep the car horn at the ready. Just a nice little chirp to make sure everyone sees you. Alas, all these friendly Turks turn out to have a carpet shop down the street. Perhaps we'd like to come take a look before we leave town. It's become a joke among the three of us. "Say, you don't know where we could find a carpet shop, do you?" It's August 25, 14 days since we watched the total eclipse of the sun at the Black Sea. So there was a full moon rising this evening as we dined at an outside table at a restaurant in Gelibolu - back on the European side of Turkey. Judy was trying to figure out the other day how many dinners we HAVEN'T eaten outside since we got to Turkey. She came up with two. I'm not sure which ones they were. We accomplished a lot today. We visited Troy and Gallipoli - the sites of two serious and historic wars. Troy is mostly just walls now, not much in comparison with Ephesus or Pergamum and other famous ruins in Turkey. I read Homer's Iliad over here in high school and first visited Troy with my family in 1964. It wasn't much then, either. But I have this 35-year-old picture in my mind of a scene from a high wall in Troy, looking out across flat farmlands to the waters beyond. I tried to imagine thousands of soldiers in battle on that flat battlefield. And, in my 17-year-old mind, I was almost able to do it. Today, I stood on the same wall and looked at the same scene. This time, I borrowed Susie's camera and took an actual photo of it. The city of Troy goes back to about 3,000 B.C. but the famous war dates to 1275 B.C. Homer wrote about it some 500 years later. The informational signs tells us that there are nine levels of Troy. Troy I was around 3,000 B.C. Troy VI was the most famous. Helen of Troy and the Trojan Horse were part of Troy VI. There were those who thought the whole Trojan War tale was just a myth. But in 1971, a German archeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, carefully studied Homer's works to find the actual location of Troy. He started digging, and there it was. There's a lot of digging still to be done. There isn't that much to see right now. But, as Judy said, it's nice to be able to say you've been there. Much of Troy is cordoned off so you can't just run around and play, like you can at EphesusEphesus and other historic places. But I imagine they'll all be cordoned off before long. Earthquakes and the passage of time obscure findings, but a bunch of people running amok do a much better job of messing things up.

Susie was champing at the bit to stop somewhere for an hour or two at the beach, but we wanted to get across the Dardanells from Asia to Europe. That was going to involve a ferry boat ride (ferribot) out of Canakkale which we weren't real sure about, so we pressed on with promises of a stop at the beach tomorrow. As it turned out, we got across the water to Europe in time to check out a couple cemeteries from the Gallipoli campaign. As part of our Turkey trip preparation, Judy started gathering Turkey movies for us to watch before we left. Topkapi is a great one. From Russia With Love we borrowed from Steve Preston, Class of 1967 and my left-handed golf buddy. I'm not sure where we got Gallipoli but it was a good one. Talk about the senselessness of war. Today we probably saw 1,000 tombstones of young Australian men who died in 1915. The oldest soldier was about 39 when he died. The youngest, 17. Most were 18-22. In all, the British Commonwealth lost about 36,000 young lives that year. Somebody came up with some nutso plan to invade Turkey from its southernmost European lands, then march north and take Istanbul. Judy says it was Winston Churchill. I'm not sure why the invasion. It had something to do with opening up an ice-free supply route to Russia, opening up another front to World War I and keeping Turkey out of the war. Turkey was hitting the skids at the time so someone probably figured they'd be easy pickings. Wrong. These amazing Turks will never be easy pickings. Led by a young lieutenant colonel named Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), the Turks kept the invaders from ever getting more than one kilometer into their country. One inscription at a memorial we saw today, written by the British side, described the Gallipoli Campaign as consisting of five parts. The first had to do with some naval action, then came a ground invasion and other stuff. The last was a withdrawal. The text seem to proudly proclaim that "not a single life was lost" during the withdrawal. Plenty were lost during the rest of the campaign. The Turkish loss was awful, too. One in two of the soldiers involved was either killed or wounded. Ataturk himself took a hunk of shrapnel to the chest. Fortunately, it hit his pocket watch. The watch is on display at some museum. Three years after the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign, Commonwealth soldiers were allowed to return to the beach battlefield and bury what remained of their dead. Today, many monuments to the dead stand proudly across the area. There are 31 well-tended cemeteries. The tombstones are chiseled with noble words of young men dying for their country, doing their duty, fighting for what they believed in. Of sons and brothers who died young and brave. I even found a tree planted in their memory in 1990, the 75th anniversary of the great battle. And for what? I'm no historian, but trying to conquer Istanbul sounds like a crackpot scheme to me. All I saw were monuments to young men who died long before they had a chance to live. Susie brings up the point well taken that nobody could understand why she was coming to Turkey. Greece is maybe an acceptable vacation destination, but Turkey? Yet, it all happened here, going back to the Bronze Age. As a wise carpet salesman said the other day, people need to be educated about Turkey.