We weren't in any big hurry to go anywhere on Saturday morning, so we had a leisurely breakfast on the terrance and chatted to Urdal and Nazmi and the guests. We met Linda again, and saw the Australians briefly. There were also some older British ladies, one a recent widow. We were (are? writing three months later) newlywed enough to hold hands a little tighter when hearing about the loss of a spouse. That thought is too impossible and horrible to contemplate!
The Bella seemed to be a mix of more upscale travellers than we had seen before. Everywhere we'd stayed thus far was a bit more backpacker (except the Canada Hotel, but there we were the only guests and probably were the roughest of their clientele!). The funny thing was that the rates at the Bella were phenomenal, as far as we were concerned: 40L per night including a superlative UTB. If you paid more, keep in mind this was late October and we were staying five nights. Okay?
Today was Saturday -- market day in Selçuk! I was very excited. Steve declared himself terrified. I hoped that this market would be different than the Fethiye market and, struggling with hope and fear, we set off walking down the road. Once again, the LP map indicated the walk would be quite a bit further than it actually ended up being and we were actually at the market in less than ten minutes.
We started off with on a side street where some older men had laid out blankets on the sidewalk with an assortment of interesting junk. There was a beautiful brass samovar, what looked like a beat-up Whisperlite camp stove (probably the Russian prototype), some spoons, jewellery, medals, coins and some little cast iron lamps. Plus a million other interesting and desirable things, much to Steve's dismay. Steve dragged me past the junque, and past the sellers of cheap kitchen ware (even though I wanted a teapot), and then we were in the heart of the veggie sellers. We thought the veggies were vibrant in Fethiye -- they had nothing on Selçuk. We saw stacks of peppers, onions, eggplants... every veggie you can imagine. Barrels of olives shone glossy in the sun. Cheese sat fragrant in bags and hairy skins. Honey sellers had golden combs and samovars dripping with honey. I asked a honey seller for just a küçük jar, and he handed over a tiny perfect jar of dark honey for only a few lira. I really wanted to buy some of everything but given the thoroughness of the cleaning staff, my produce wouldn't last. Besides, it's not like snacks or meals were expensive, bad, or in short supply. Really, what I wanted to do was live in Selçuk so I could buy groceries here every week.
I can't get over how much fun we had at the market. Even Steve enjoyed himself: the produce was photogenic, the people friendly and the touts hilarious. One man was asking people to come look at his "genuine fake watches" -- of course I couldn't resist, and bought a genuine genuine watch (it wasn't trying to be anything it wasn't) for 10L so that I would know what time Steve wanted me to come back from shopping. I bought three long-sleeve cotton t-shirts for 10L and we looked at luggage, since we knew we'd have to get another suitcase to carry our burgeoning purchases back with us.
We decided to take a lunch break and found a döner kebap hole-in-the-wall with a spit of delicious chicken. We asked how much and were told "bir lira" -- sold! How bad could it be for one lira -- some eighty cents!? Not bad at all, in fact: each of us were given a fresh crusty loaf stuffed with tavuk, lettuce, onions and sauce. With a büyük suyu, our total bill would be some 4L. Amazing! Too bad we almost didn't pay... we were so enthralled with our people watching at the little table on the sidewalk in front of the cafe, that when we were done, we just got up and left. We weren't far away when the girl ran up to us and gestured wildly -- we apologized profusely, returned to the cafe and left a good tip.
I picked up a few little things along the way, including a glass of çay which I got from a tea-seller... or a tea-deliverer, I guess. I asked him how much it was as he was flying by, and he handed me one and wouldn't accept money. I assume the novelty of a strange Canadian woman asking for çay was too much for him and he forgot to accept money. I found myself a little puzzled afterwards by what to do with the glass, and eventually abandoned it with a little pile of its friends against a wall. Hopefully the tea-guy found it!
We ran into the Cliftons and their guests again, and had some more pleasant banter. It reminded me of hiking the West Coast Trail when you would hike all day alone and then run into the same people either at rest stops or at camp. It gave us a nice sense of continuity and belonging, which we already had in spades in this little town.
In Selçuk I realized something important about Turkish towns: even with a population of some 25,000, Selçuk felt like a town of 5,000 -- like Gibsons. I think it has to do with population density and multi-use buildings. In Turkey, people with a business usually live in the same building as the business: we noticed this in restaurants with a couch and tv in the corner, or a store with living area in back, or a common room that is also the family's living room. In North America, it's a big waste of land space and resources to have twice the buildings tied up in an individual: one building for business and another for living. Also, in Turkey, a house would look similar in size to one in North America, but some 10 or more people might live there: parents, kids, kids' spouses and kids, maybe a grandparent or other extended family members. Maybe the reason I felt so at home in Turkey is because I like the way they do things better.
On the edge of the market, heading back to the Bella, we were gently accosted by a strangely dressed man with a basket full of boxes. After getting his picture taken, and then getting his picture taken with his friend, he gave us samples of a deeply strange candy: it was spicy and peppery and hot and sweet and very, very chewy. We bought two boxes to take home -- no-one would believe this stuff existed if we didn't bring back proof! All the attention brought out other locals who wanted their picture taken, including a bunch of kids who wanted their picture taken by Steve and then asked for money, which he didn't provide (mostly because I was spending it all on trinkets).
Back at the Hotel Bella, we decided to bite the bullet and look at carpets. The Hotel Bella conveniently has a carpet shop on the lower floors and we thought that was as good a place as any to start.
Urdal, looking harried as usual (though the nicest harried man I ever saw), asked us to wait upstairs as Nazmi was busy downstairs with some guests. Waiting in the upper shop was not what I'd call a hardship; I went through a stack of kilim pillow covers almost as tall as myself (that's a lot of pillow covers) and picked out a dozen to bring back to Canada for Christmas presents. We planned to do all our Christmas shopping in Turkey, which satisfied both our gift-giving and my urge to shop, and the carpet shop was a great place to start. We also looked at all the photos on the wall of happy customers with their carpets back at their homes.
After not too long, Nazmi came upstairs and brought us downstairs, which was a wondrously lit cave of rolls and rolls of carpets. We were brought çay, which is part of the ritual. Nazmi told us that he would bring out a few carpets to show us what the symbols and colours meant to give us a bit of a carpet education, as it were. He picked up a tube and said it was from his village, and he liked using the ones from his village as examples.
He unrolled the carpet with a practiced flick in that indescribably elegant way carpet-sellers have and let it settle on the floor. Steve and I gasped in unison -- this was the most lovely carpet we had seen so far. We told Nazmi we liked that carpet and he just smiled, and pointed out the evil eyes, scorpions (a symbol of pride, because the scorpion will sting himself rather than perish by fire) and Cybele or fertility goddess figures. It was in muted reds and blues and was very, very lovely. He pulled a few more from his village out, showing us different things, and they were all very nice.
He told us about the parts of the sheep which have the best wool because they have the most lanolin (the back is best), what kind of carpet is the best (the 'dowry' carpet, called thus because a young woman, who had been making 'practice' carpets since she was a girl would make the best one she could to show to her mum to prove she was a woman and ready to marry. She would then sell that carpet to raise money for her dowry when she was married.), and told us lots of interesting things about carpets.
For instance, all carpets made by the same family will always be the same size, and that's because they string their loom between posts in the family's living room, and those posts are always the same distance apart. Huh! His village is in the mountains above Antalya, and all the carpets are similar in style and colour because everyone is related.
He showed us carpet after carpet, some larger and some smaller, showing us the features and differences in styles, all without applying even the tiniest iota of pressure to purchase.
All in all, he must have laid 30 or more carpets onto the floor but, when he asked which ones we liked the best, we kept coming back to the first ones he had laid down. The first two, which were the ones from Nazmi's village, were the first carpets that both Steve and I had seen during our entire trip that we both loved at first sight. We eventually settled between the two on the very first carpet Nazmi had laid down -- apparently his aunt made it!
The scariest part, of course, was talking about price. We had been given wedding presents of money by several people with the caveat that we get something nice in Turkey, and with our savings, had decided on a budget of $1,000CA that we were comfortable paying for a carpet, and that budget had almost been laughed at by the carpet "co-op" near Tlos, so we weren't optimistic. It's all very well for carpet sellers to say "price is no object" but price IS an object, at least if you're not willing to pay on installments or credit (both of which Nazmi was fine with).
Imagine our delight when the quoted price was some 800L! We knew, however, that there was some more bargaining expected, and we were determined not to disappoint. We were able to negotiate more on the pillow covers, a real leather & carpet saddlebag (that smelled faintly of horse), a 'virgin belt' (heehee), and some little cute things for about 1100L. If you considered the value of the other things we purchased, which we would have done anyway, the carpet cost went down to about 600L, which is comfortably under $500 at $.80CA to the lira. Mind you, we also paid a little less because we (stupidly, it turns out) decided to haul the carpet with us personally, rather than having it shipped.
Much to our pleasant surprise, carpet buying ended up being much easier than we anticipated. We had been worried that we wouldn't find a carpet that both of us loved, though we knew we'd find one that we both liked. It had been a tiny bit concerning that one of us would have to compromise, or that we would have felt pressured into buying, or that the experience would leave a bad taste in our mouth, but none of those things happened.
We watched Urdal and Nazmi do the impossible: squish all those things into our complimentary black duffle bag. It too them quite a while, but they succeeded in the end. We had to go to the ATM and get a bunch of money out but Urdal and Nazmi said they weren't in any hurry... so long as we paid by the time we left... or we could send money when we got back to Canada. Crazy!
One of the things I found so funny was that in a country where electricity is expensive and Not Wasted (some of the hallways in the hotels had motion detector lights that wouldn't turn on unless the hall was occupied, hardly any hotel rooms had a bedside light, and even the Bella had light switches that wouldn't stay on unless the room key fob was stuffed into the holder), the carpet rooms were filled with luscious, warm halogen light. Their power bills must have been brutal.
It was now later in the evening but we weren't quite ready for dinner. Steve decided to walk across the street (across the street!) to the St. John's basilica, which, if it hadn't been a ruin, would have been the seventh largest cathedral in the world. I contemplated letting him go on his own and having a nap, but dammit! we came too far to lame out for a nap. Again, I mean, since I napped quite a bit in Çirali.
On the other side of the road and across a little parking lot were two huge wooden doors set into a high stone wall. We went in, paid our five lira each and walked up the marble road to the ruins of the Basilica, escorted by several köpekler. The Basilica was built in the 6th century by the Emporer Justinian -- the same guy who built the Hagia Sofya. It was built over the supposed site of John the Evangelist's burial site, and over a little shrine that had been built to him.
One of the surprising things about this part of Turkey is how Biblical everything is. We were walking on the place where St. John is alleged to have written his gospel and later died and was buried, only a few kilometres from Maryemana Evi, the last house of the Virgin Mary. Ephesus, the big attraction, is in fact the Ephesus which contained the Ephesians who Paul wrote his letter to! How strange to walk in antiquity...
As we walked around the graceful and huge footprint of the ruins, much of which were still standing (at least partially), a man discreetly approached Steve and offered to sell him some Roman coins. Having read about this particular scam, he knew that they would have been new coins, probably passed through a goat to make them look a little... aged, and refused. Not only that, but of course you cannot take antiquities out of Turkey so it would have been pointless.
The setting sun made large shadows over the ruins, and we wandered between the standing arches and columns, looked at the (murky) water of the baptistry, and walked up as close to the Fortress as we could (which wasn't very close at all). The Fortress itself was closed when we were there due to the collapse of part of the walls and a subsequent lack of funds to repair it. The plan was eventually to do the repairs and reopen it, but it hadn't happened yet. At the upper end of the Basilica area was a little model of how it would have looked when it was complete and it would have been incredible.
We walked back down to the edge of the cliff to watch the sun set. The view was absolutely beautiful: immediately below us, the walled courtyard of the Isa Bey Camii looked mysterious and serene; further along, the lone standing pillar from the Temple of Artemis stood up in a brave and lonely fashion; in the distance, ribbons of hills purpled in the twilight. Flocks of wheeling crows gathered in one big, sky-darkening murder: it was probably all the crows in Selçuk having their evening crow-moot, much like the Greater Vancouver crows all gather in Burnaby.
It was hard to immediately tell (given the bird song and crow shouts) that the man at the front gate was nicely but impatiently calling us to come away as the place was now closed. We took a last look at the darkening hills and walked down and out the large wooden doors, which immediately crashed shut behind us.
Fortunately the hotel was very close, and we decided to take advantage of the prix fixe menu, since it had looked so darn good the day before. We availed ourselves of another spread of mezes, served with amazing bread. Steve had an adana kebap, which was a spicy meatball dish and a new favourite. I had (not surprisingly) my usual kuzu şiş. Mmmm... lamb on a stick! By the time we had wolfed all that good stuff down, we could barely eat the fresh fruit they provided for dessert.
Chatting with Urdal, we asked if it would be possible to be taken to Ephesus early in the morning -- early as in could we get there just as it opened in the morning? He assured us that would be no problem, and we were struck by how amazing it was to have a guesthouse that made a point of taking you wherever you wanted to go, when you wanted to go there, for FREE. What a wonderful place.
We had a great evening of visiting with the owners and other guests on the terrace but headed to bed relatively early in order to make an early start the next day.
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