94 The Balkans....

We hit Thessolonika at about 3pm and drove aroung looking for a suitable hotel. We found a few and Karen stated that she did not want to stay in the Chinese red light district. I of course had no problem with this (actually I did really, it was a mess). We drove out of town slightly and found a large hotel which although very nice was expensive but we thought "what the heck", we had been down market for some time so we decided to spoil ourselves. It was The Makedonia Palace and in the UK would have cost us over £200 but we paid only around £100. We had a sea view and watched the sunset and parrots in the trees opposite. It was very nice. 

View of Thessolonika from our hotel

Our sunset

We walked into town and walked about 6kms all together and stopped for a meal in what looked to be an up market restaurant. We were disapointed. The food was dry and hard to palate. We walked back to our hotel and called it a night.

Monday 21st Nov.

We left Thessolonika and headed North for Macedonia. WE were heading for Skopje (pronounced Skopie) and Karen successfully found a Greek flag sticker in a petrol station near the border. We entered Macedonia with very little fuss except that we needed to buy insurance for Gromit. 50 Euros. Ouch, we only wanted 2 days cover, they gave us 50.  Macedonia is a very pretty place, albeit very dry as is most of the region. The drivers however appear to have passed some sort of test. Unfortunately Skopje was very high and as we approached it we entered cloud (fog by any other name) and could not really get a good idea of the place. We found a hotel, the Hotel Continental. They were very accomodating with Leon. He was not officially allowed in but the girl behind the desk said to keep him out of sight on the way in and out. We ate in the Hotel and had an early night as we were knackered.

Tuesday 22nd Nov.

We went to breakfast at the hotel and were surrounded by the national football team, none of whom we recognised !

We drove into the centre of Skopje and found a parking spot near the centre. We then went on out usual sticky flag and fridge magnet hunt and net some friendly musicians on the way. Whilst I was practicing my banjo, Karen was swapping shopping tips with the locals.

I'm the one on the right.

So where exactly are the best she shops?

The centre of town

On our return to Gromit, it appeared that she had been blinged up too. She was sporting a new yellow bangle on her drivers side front wheel. On top of that some kind person had place some stickes of their own on her windows...nice.

Wew struggled to phone the number on the ticket as we speak zilch Albanian and had te recruit the assistanc eof a bank  security guard who made the necessary phone call for us and 15 minutes later and 1300 Macedonian Dinars later (about £18 - in the UK that would have been £210) we were free to go on our way.

I considered replacing the wheel till I discoveed thatthe fine was only £18. Better to pay than spend the night in jail.

Skopje seems to be in the middle of refurbishment, there are building works going on all around but you can see the potential from all the statues and the buildings.

Refurbishment of a pretty city

We then headed North for Kosovo.

The border controls were very friendly and this time we had to pay only 30 euros for our 50 day insurance. The funny thing was that we had spent our last 50 euros on the Macedonian insurance and had none left. I negociated to be allowed to drive into the adjacent town to get some Euros while they held onto ours and Gromits passports. I then bought the insurance and on production of the certificte I was given our passports back and allowed to go. I have to say the whole affair was very cordial and the officials were extremely helpful, jovial and polite. We had a good feeling about Kosovo.

Kosovo is a politically unstable counrty which broke away from Serbia in 2001 and is currently seeking world recognition as an independant sovereign state with success from western countries but not eastern (i.e. Russia) and as such still has a large contingent of NATO troops in the area to assist in peace keeping duties due to the difficult split from Serbia . There are small makeshift barracks all over the place. We saw Germans, Portugese, Greek and others inidentified in the town of Pristina, the capital.

Pristina itself was a sad but lively place. 

Antrance to the Portugese barracks.

The place had obviously been through a long war and has very little in the way of a national identity. By this I mean that it lacked any formal centre and statues that most capital cities have. It was more like a large town recently thrown together and then ravaged by war. On the other hand, the people were extremely up beat and happy. They were extremely friendly and when we asked if somone spoke English (i.e when shopping) they would go out of their way to find someone who did. 

A typical house. Half finished.

All the Serbian spellings on the road signs have been obliterated. They are not liked apparently.

We found a reasonable Hotel just outside town, the Hotel De-Lux. We later found out that it was the local bonking hotel. I will not go into that any further. 

House of love.

The room however was nice aside from the leaking shower and we decided to stay a couple of days in order to get some washing done. The weather was still awful and the fog had started to turn to rain when we drove back into town but we found a Pizza restaurant and made the mistake of asking for it to be spicy. The chef obviously though "I will teach those Limeys" and the Pizza was covered in chilli powder. Still it kept us warm when we left. 

We then had a wander around in the wet fog and when back to the hotel to listen to the funny noises coming through the walls. 

Wednesday 23rd Nov.

We popped back into town and found a launderette. We managed to get 2 piles of washing/drying done using sign language only. Whilst this was being done we strolled around town again, visited lots of shoe shops and went for some grub. One thing we did find funny was that in all the bars we went in, we were the only ones drinking beer. All the locals drink is coffee and water. We stood out just by the beer bottles!

Not bad for £8 all in.

Sad, wet and happy.

Bill with his willy hidden from sight.

This was wierd. Individual TVs per table.

The estate where we found the launderette.

Then it was back to the love hotel to chill out, read our books and listen to the screams from the neighbouring rooms.

Thursday 24th Nov.

We set off for Albania.

Soldiers invertigating one of their own accidents.

We arrived at the border and on seeing the outside of our passports, we were waved through the exit gate and only a cursory look at them was made at the Albanian side. We were through in about a minute. Albania was also covered in low cloud and we did not get to see much of the scenery which was obviously present. 

Albanian mountains. Shame about the haze but it was clearing.

We arrived in Tirana, the capital, and were treated to the usual chaos of a city where a driving licence was not mandatory (apparently). 

A book stall in Tirana

Bad photo, but today is Albanian National day.

We found a cheap but new hotel and settled in. We had to negociate the room for Leon though. When they saw how cute he was they let him in.

93 Troy and Galipoli

Thursday 17^th Nov

We were again, woken by the bloody cockerel, this time for some reason, in her sleepy state, Karen managed to turn it off. I still don’t know how she did it. Looking out of the door (there are no windows!) we knew straight away that we wouldn’t get our balloon trip today either, it was still foggy, but we went along for some more coffee and then decided that we would hit the road on our long journey back up towards Troy and Gallipoli.  We had one more thing we wanted to see as we left the region and that was to visit the largest lake in Turkey.  It is completely salt, and you can walk on it. 

Its.....er.....Salt

We got to the side of the lake and there was the usual hawkers selling stuff by the only access point. Karen decided to buy some .....    er....   salt!

 It was mixed with lots of good stuff that makes people beautiful and was very cheap at only half a king’s ransom per tub – she bought 2. We had a wander onto the salt lake and after kicking wet salt about in the freezing cold wind we pulled the plug on it, jumped back into a warm Gromit and set off for Troy.

This was a typical roadside scene. Old men and old animals.

We were driving for a place called Eskisehir but on reaching it decided to press on a bit more. It was dark when we reached Bursa, about 100km further on and when we went looking for a suitable hotel we were disappointed.  Some would not take the cat, others had no parking or were visually unappealing. So, we pressed on some more and ended up around midnight at a place called Balikisir. Here we found a nice place, Hotel Basli, who had no problem with the cat and a large car park at the rear. We both slept the sleep of the dead and awoke in the morning, comfortable in the knowledge that we only had 200km to go to Troy the next day.

Friday 18^th Nov.

We woke up full of the joys of spring despite winter now biting hard, we ate breakfast, ‘borrowed’ a few hard boiled eggs for later (this is becoming a habit) and then showered and set off at about 10:15am.  Karen is well rested and happy to be through the worst of my cold. We had intended to stay in a campsite near Troy but realised that it had closed for the winter a week or so ago.

We drove to Troy and arrived there at about 2 pm. We were not sure what to expect except for a large wooden horse that has a 3D image on Google earth. 

This is the original hose as used over 3000 years ago. They had some awesome creosote in those days.

What we found was far more profound. Apparently there had been some sort of fort on this site for nearly 5000 years. It had undergone about 9 rebuilds after numerous battles, sackings and pillages, eventually ending up as a Roman fort.

At first sight Karen would appear to be correct - a pile of stones

But later it was apparent they used mud and straw as well.

The preservation of the first, 5000 year old phase, was incredible.

A later Roman phase, about 2000 years old.

The plaque number indicate the phses of construction

In one photo there are numbered plaques on the wall showing the different era’s of fortification. The thing that really blew us away was that Troy had been completely lost and was found by a German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann who, in 1870, worked out the location by reading poems written by a Greek guy named Homer who lived about 800 years Before Christ.  There are some damned clever people in this world and I’m not one of them.

Everyone knows the basic fame of Troy. But here is a bit more detail: around 12-1300 years BC, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The moral being, do not nick someone else’s wife or you will start a war.

Anyway, the Greek raiders, having failed to take the city, decided to build a huge wooden horse, placed a load of soldiers inside and the remainder sailed away as though they had failed in their raid. They said that they had left the horse as a present. The people of Troy who obviously liked presents, (Christmas hadn’t been invented yet,) then wheeled the horse into the fort and hey presto, out popped a lot of nasty Greek men who promptly set fire to the city. The Greek raiders, seeing the smoke from their boats, turned round (as per their dastardly plan,) and finished the city off. We understand that the horse in our photographs is the original one that was used. ;-)

In the end, to use one of Karen’s favourite terms, “it’s just another pile of stones” (along with a big wooden horse,) so we decided to move on the 30km drive to Cannalakke and then the ferry over to Gallipoli. There we immediately found a cheap, comfortable hotel, the Crowded House Hotel, and chilled for the night.

We saw lots of this at the side of the road. It is cotton plants strayed off the fields. First time I have seen cotton growing.

Looking over the Dandiellas Strait. Gallipoli in the back ground.

Saturday 19^th Nov.

We set off today (after our egg liberation routine) and went to seek out some of the Galipoli war cemeteries and battle sites.

This was the back of our hotel. A woman collecting olives ! The woman IN the tree is out of camera shot.

The Galipoli campaign was a sad time for the British Empire. An 11  month battle with many thousands of lost lives for no gain whatsoever. 

When the Turks decided to enter the Great War (WW1) they opted to join the wrong side. (i.e. the losing side – eventually).

In February 1915, with the war raging in Europe, Sir Winston Churchill, along with the French, decided to try to open up a warm water link to Russia in order to help resupply them, the North of Russia being a frozen sea in winter. The only route to do this was through the centre of Constantinople (Istanbul) and the Dardanelles straight (the stretch of water beside Galipoli). He set about attacking the bottom of the Galipili peninsula, along with French and Indian troops,  and met a lot more resistance than he anticipated.  The battle raged on against the Turks and on the 25^th of April another allied force of commonwealth soldiers from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) attacked the peninsular from a bay on the West side, now officially called Anzac Bay. This day has gone down as one of Australia and New Zealand’s history as one of the most specific and is remembered every year as ANZAC day.  

The whole episode lasted until almost Christmas when a covert withdrawal was made and the peninsular given back to Turkey. 

As I said earlier, it was a complete and sad waste of humanity. It total about 87,000 Turks died with around 200,000 wounded. On the allied side, 44,000 died with around 97,000 wounded. A breakdown of these is: British 21,000, French 10,000, Australians 8,700, New Zealanders 2,700, Indians 1,350 and Newfoundlanders’ (Canadians) 49.   

The memorial at the ferry terminal, it includes a Brit, an Auzzie, a Kiwi, a Frog, an Indian and 5 Turks.

Next to the memorial is an outdoor relief map. The Turks are serious about their history (and victory)

On our arrival at the first memorial, we were overtaken at the entrance by a Gendarmarie (Military style Police) van and a black Megane with a red plaque and 2 stars on it indicating a 2 star General was inside. They stopped at the memorial and we pulled in after. The Gendarmarie ushered us to park to one side as we duly did at the wrong end of a machine gun. 

This is becoming a theme throughout our travels in this part of the world. I stayed in the car for a bit longer and when Ray was not dragged off in handcuffs I got out and joined him.

I got out as did the General and went to view the memorial. Then 2 busses of soldiers turned up and it turns out that they were giving their recruits a history lesson.

Whilst wandering around the General nodded to me in acknowledgement and said “hello”. We then entered into a conversation about the size of the Turkish army, the history lesson being given to his recruits and the fact that British soldiers were not taught military history, and of course our travels. You couldn’t make it up. There was no one else at the Australian memorial except two Brits and a section of the Turkish army. (And one cat)!

The Generals aide, Me, the General and Karen.

They followed us along the various memorials including the main Turkish one. It was quite surreal.

South of ANZAC cove

The Turkish roll of honour

Gromit paying her respects

A quotre from Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. It is profound.

The ANZAC memorial on the cove.

After our own history lesson gleaned from the many plaques and information boards at the sites we set off for Greece.

Allah and his influence on Turkish driving.

I thought it appropriate to mention the effects of religion on turkish driving. There is a much used phrase in the Turkish language, "Insh Allah" (or something like that), it means "The will of God". When they drive they expect Allah to look after them. This is all very well but unlike us Cristians, they do not give him a hand. Their driving is incredibly bad. We have seen hundreds of overtakes on blind bends, we saw overtakes on thick fog and mad speeds. We saw 2 lorries overtake a stream of other lorries in a contraflow using the lane for oncoming traffic. On return to the corrrect lane they took out a stream of cones.

I on the other hand have changed my opinion of Turkey completely.  It is not a place I would have considered visiting before, it held absolutely no interest to me at all.  I have revised that opinion in the last 3 weeks.  As Ray says yes the driving is awful, and they do rely on faith, but we have witnessed one quite serious road accident, and the number of drivers who stopped to help was quite amazing, but we have also experienced it first hand, when they thought we had broken down in the snow.  The people are lovely and always willing to help with a smile.  Apart from a couple of pushy sales persons, we have not had a bad experience.  The difference from the towns to the countryside, is again very marked and on leaving the towns, you again feel that you have taken a step back in time.  We have been waved at by pensioners and children alike, and they actually stop and stare as we go past. The scenery is beautiful and again it is not something I had ever given any thought too.  We have not even covered half of the country and have literally been through all 4 seasons of the year.  The only reason we knew there had been a couple of earth quakes was via texts from home.  I would come back again.

We arrived at the border about 3 hours later and the journey through the border was completely painless with the Greeks not even checking our passports. We drove another half hour and found a small hotel in Alexandroupoli.  A short trip out for grub and so to bed.

Sunday 20^th Nov.

We rose slowly and then set off for the 300km motorway ride to Thessolonika which is probably Greece’s second city. We found a very nice hotel which was for a change was expensive but we were short on options. The cheap ones were in the slum areas and we did not want to leave Gromit parked on the street in that area. A long walk along a very lively coast road which was lined with bars and restaurants and...... Motorcycles....bliss.  At the end we stopped for grub in a very nice restaurant where unfortunately the food did not match up to the decor.

We have one very crucial problem here we cannot find a Greek flag sticker for the side of Gromit. Oh well.  

92 Goreme - Capadokia

Wednesday 16^th Nov.

At 5am we were rudely awaken by the sound of Karen’s mobile phone making the sound of a cockerel. ...Very Very loudly. This was in itself not a problem. The problem was that we could not turn it off. Having never had to do it, we did not have clue how to work the damn thing. It was so bad that in the end that in our rattled slumber, I ended up taking the battery out. That did it.

We roused and opened the door only to find that the previous nights clear sky had turned to a complete white out with the fog/cloud layer only about 30m above us and about 1” of snow on the ground with it still gently snowing. Not a good recipe for ballooning.

It was darker than this photo suggests...and cold too

We had to laugh at the situation

Ever optimistic we dressed etc and then walked the 100m to the balloon office and swallowed 2 cups of their coffee whilst the pilot, that we had been in the bar with last night, drove around the potential take off sights to see if it was feasible to fly. The result was not good. We waited about an hour and there was still no improvement so it was called off for the day. We booked in for the next day and went back to crawl under our rock and back to bed for an hour or so.

One thing we did find out was that the place we were looking for yesterday morning , Pasaberg, has two locations and guess what; we went to the wrong one. There is another one near Goreme. Hopefully we will find it today.

The geology of Capadocia is purely volcanic. This can even be seen inside our hotelroom/church where the larger nodules of ash can plainly be seen in the carved out walls and ceiling.

This was gleened from a website:

Cappadocia is a small area in Central Turkey covering around 300 square kilometers which has a unique, almost surreal, landscape. Volcanic activity formed a plateau of ash and the strange, rugged rock formations were created by the forces of erosion. The unusual structures were formed by the softer ash layers eroding faster than the harder layers of basalt and andesite which remained on top making the capped cone shapes.

These formations are known as "fairy chimneys" as the early inhabitants of the region believed that humans could not have built them, and as fairies lived under ground, they must be the chimneys sticking out.

The tufa ash was easy to work with primitive tools and countless cave dwellings and churches were cut into the cones and valley walls. Underground cities were also built, some believe they date back 4000 years, and these were extended and made more complex over the generations.

With the cancellation of thr balloon we went out shopping, mainly for Leon as we cannot get cat food locally. This is likely as most of the cats are fed from scraps and do not need shop bought food. Anyway, then we decided to go visit an underground city about 20km South at Kamaki. There are many of these cities in the region. 

Apparently, the Kaymakli people carved their homes in the underground city tunnels for security reasons. The city has 8 storeys and 5000 people can live in it, 4 storeys are still open now and the deepest point currently is 20 meters below the surface. 

The city was built around a main ventilation chimney. Ventilation system was so successful that even now it is not a problem 4 floors down. The city contains all housing conditions for temporary housing. There are living rooms, bed rooms and halls connected to each other with narrow corridors, wine tanks, water cistern, kitchen and food stores, ventilation chimneys, water wells, churches and large lock stones for protection from danger outside.

The first floor was used as an animal shelter. This was the norm for the underground cities due to the difficulties in getting animalas down. The second floor has a church with two abscissa and baptism stones front of the abscissas and a cemetery for important persons near the church. Moreover this floor has a big lock stone for close passing. Lock stones are circular with a hole in the middle and can wigh up to 500kg. The labyrinths have secret exit tunnels for escape.

Entrance to the underground city

One of the many many similar chambers

Easy to get lost if you do not foillow the arrrows.

We spent about half an hour in the city but as the view was so limited and photography difficult we cut short our visit.

On exiting the city we were accosted by pushy carpet salesman who saw our landrover and told us we could put one of his silk persian rugs in the back of Gromit - I think not ! He gave us some tourist advice and as a result we decided to visit a local canyon about 40km away.

Above ground was not too dissimilar to underneath.

There were 5 people on this tractor. The driver, 3 wives and a sprog. Sandy will be impressed.

Above ground was a bit like a war zone.

On the way to the canyon the fog came down again and visibility dropped to about 50m so we abandoned the idea and headed back to Goreme to seek out the elusive Pasaberg. On the way back we saw this lonley fellow crossing the road.

An old, slow, lonely donkey

Our room is the brown door, top left. Or should I say the rock we crawled out from under.

We found Pasaberg (as least the one we wanted), about 300km from where we thought is was. It was amazing. The pictures speak for themselves.

Inside andother Christian church.

Gromit going exploring.