Cannakale/Assos/Cunda Drive with Sami

We started the day with breakfast with our downstairs neighbor Lale and her husband, who know Sami quite well, in fact, he was the architect for Sami’s two houses in Rumeli Hisar. We drove by his two houses, both red and somewhat yali modern, and hit the road for the South. It was wonderful once we got out of the city but it seemed forever, as the city seemed to stretch forever, with apartments and little genci kondu going on forever. We got past the airport and things began to widen, though there were an amazing amount of factories as we traveled all through Thrace. We went on a major highway for the first hour, mostly away from the sea, trying to avoid the vacation traffic, finally heading down towards the water after Tekirdag. Sami knows the route well, and we enjoyed the most flat landscape, treeless with many farms, and small villages, as we passed on our way. Outside of Kesan, one of the inland vilages, where we began to head south to the Gallipoli peninsula. We at at a little restaurant, just off the road that Sami knew, one you would easily pass if you did not know it. It was lovely, shaded groves of trees, a nice breeze, and it actually became busy as we were leaving with locals coming to celebrate. The lunch, as usual, was interesting, the most intersting being the satir(an instrument which beats the meat in ground lamb)`` kofte, large rectangular lamb hamburgers, roughly 4” by 6” inches, about a ½ to ¾ inch thick, grilled. They had a wonderful taste and texture, somewhat like the organic burgers we had in Darien, a bit loosely put together. Sami and I put oregano and red pepper(madras) on it and we also had salad, bread, and ayran. A wonderful lunch before heading to the Straits. As we got to the straights, which are now a national park, we were struck by the beauty of the mountains and a canopy like pine tree as we neared Gallipoli. The entire battlefield area is a park, and most of the monuments were on the other side of the peninsula, so we did not see much, as we arrived at the ferry boat harbor, parked an the boat, had a couple of teas as we crossed over, on windy seas, to Cannakale, a fairly modern town, though it still looks like it might have in the 70’s, as there is little if any new building on the waterfront, though quite busy. It was a thrill to be in this area, to know about the battles, the history of the Dardanelles, going back thousands of years, and seeing boats, singular and lonely, plying their cargoes, either towards the Bosphorus or out to the Aegean sea. We worked our way through the busy streets of Cannakale, not much to sea, and began our journey south, staying on the highway for a bit, but spending most of our time driving near the sea. The landscape suddenly seemed to become very medieterran though it might have been just in my mind. Lovely hills, almost mountains, lined the coast either covered with pines or sometimes a kind of scrub. It seems almost uninhabited inland from the coast, but there are also areas around the coast that have little or no development. This was especially true of the southern coast of the Dardanelles that reach out to the Aegean. Gradually, we began to see unattractive sets of cheap apartments, with no charm, landscaping, set out in the middle of an open field, though quite near the sea of actually on it. Much of our journey was through vast olive tree groves, some having been there for 50 years of more, some having been planted a few years ago. Sami drove us past a couple of villages south of Cannakale, he called them his villages, because he had bought near by, planted 1500 pomegranite trees a couple of years ago but because of a drought, he lost them all. The village is very remote, with hardly more than a few buildings, though the chai house has roman column bases, as do some of the other chai houses. He took us on back roads, not quite dirt, to an unbelieveable sight, probably not on any tourist map, where huge mounds of rocks and columns sit, un touched no doubt since Roman days. We speculated that this area, full of granite mines even today, was a prime area for finding the kind of granite need ed for columns. There were at least 8-10 laying around, some as wide as 4 or 5 feet, as tall as 25-30 feet, set among huge builders, some 20 feet high. It was an intersting place to walk, no one with in miles, the seas perhaps ten miles to the West.We speculated how they could have ever cut these columns out of the side of the mountain, shaped them, and then transported them down the mountain to the sea. Amazing. Next we stopped in a village famous for its yogurt callec Excine, a place Sami always passes. We sat down again, in a tree shaded squared, ordered yogurt, thick and almost c utable and helva with cheese, a delicacy of the area. Sami bought two huge containers of yogurt to take with us, and we moved on, about 4:30 in the afternoon We then wound our way through Greek villages, the ones which were abandoned in the 1923 migration East and West, the buildings recognizable for their stone exteriors, one piled on another, shaped so that the outside was smooth, the kind actually that is copied on Hasan’s house…these are 100’s of years old. One village after another, in the late afternoon sun, golden and picturesque, led us to Assos, the sight of Aristotle’s philosophy school.

Assos is actually a Greek temple set up on a spectaculary promontory, perhaps a quarter to a half mile above its harbor, comprised of the ruins of Athena’s temple, various buildings including a Greek church, and at one time, it must have also been a small village, because the area is quite large, with stone walls, and lots of ruins indicating a much larger areas of living than I thought. The view from the top, with three columns now having been resurrected, in all directions, especially at this hour as the son was setting, was amazing, a word I am starting to use too much. Evie took mega pictures of the sun set, and we scrammbled around the ruins, enjoying mostly the view. There is a village just below the sight, quite picturesque, with tea shops, restaurants and shops, with a cobblestone road that leads from the village up to the ruins. Clearly, most of the villagers leave on this promontory, in old stone houses and probably have since the 1920’s, or their families had. There was also a wedding going on in the village, and when we arrived, a group of 8-9 men were sitting in the middle of the road, of the village, banging on the ground and playing ethic music to celebrate the marriage. Sami said he had never seen anything like this nor had we. And we heard music being played as we walked the ruins, and as we left, we looked down the village, and the courtyard was filled with 50-75 people, all dressed up celebrating the day. Assos was our last stop before heading to Avalik or Cunde, the island off of Avalik where Sami has a house being renovated. The ride was long, along the shore, mostly homes and some hotels, that seemed to go on forever, and it took us close to an hour an a half to get to our hotel, around 8:30 at night, after having started around 9:30 in the morning. We stayed in the Panorama Hotel, not much inside, but with a lovely swimming pool and terrace overlooking the harbor, looking across the water towards Avalik.
I am now sitting down by the pool, looking bac toward Cunda, as the sun lits it up ealry in the morning. Evie is up showering, though the electricity has gone off. Getting back to yesterday evening, about 9:00 we walked into the old part of Cunda, seeingly quiet until we rounded the corner to the harbor to find it filled with waterside restaurants, one after anotherr, with awnings over them and on the other side of the walkway, were the actual restaurants, many in amazing stone buildings, built who knows how long ago. For me, this is as close to a Greek village as I have ever seen in Turkey; narrow streets, unique and classic stone builds, with an actual plan to it in some ways. We sat down at a restaurant. Nero’s, Sami knew and enjoyed the evening, after going in the restaurant, picking out our mezze, our fish, which we decided to have in a fish stew, with tomatoes, garlic, and mushrooms. It was lovely. They did not seem to have their wine chilled, so we wait for it, as we ate a mezze of boreks, potato and cheese croquets, rocket, tomato and onion salad, eggplant salad, green means, a bitter tasting almost sea weed like green unique to the area, green beans, and toasted brown bread. We talked quite a while as the stew took a long time, as the fishing boats rocked in the night, a couple went out with their chug chug chug into the dark.
We talked about relgion, guilt, the catholic church, how we both don’t like ‘progress’ or ‘modernization’ or ‘development’ of any kind. Sami dislikes anything which means an increase in population of an area. Chautauqua should pay attention to this, especially North Harmony. We talked about books we liked and one of Sami’s is Zorba, like me. He reads quite a bit, almost one a week, in either Turkish or English an he feels very comfortable in English. I mentioned both Compications and Outliers as two good reads. He is a very thoughtful guy, no doubt a good businessman, who sees the uncertainty and chaos in the world and markets and has experienced much of the decline personally, as he was forced to close down his business in China because of quotas in Europe didn’t allow him to make any money. He seems happy sort of retired, though he owns a media company but lets his partner run it. He keeps his hand in developing, buying homes here or there, as well as property, which was a good strategy: when he made money, he put it into real estate which has paid off, whereas many of his friends didn’t’, and they are distressed now because of the economy’s collapse a year ago. We both wonder how people survive, with their enormous debts out there, and neither of us is sanguine about the future; we think it’s going to be a changed world economically, and not for the better. The wealth and money that was accumulated over the years was mostly a result of huge debts, mostly government or business, and now they are being forced to pay it back. We agree that most of capitalism is a form of a ponzi scheem.
The fish stew arrived and it was lovely, tomatoey and garlicy, with large hunks of white fish and mushrooms. We ate it quickly with bread doused in the broth. For desssert, with had figs and a special cheese that is covered with syrup and I think baked, served in a small round cake( Lor cheese, flour, baked with syrup.. It was really good, something we had never had before, a speciality of the area. We then walked back through the pictuesque old town, wonderfully narrow streets, cobblestones, tavernas and eaterys made of stone, very ethinic and pictuesque, reminding me the most of Greece. There were many tavernas around, playing Greek music, which made it even more like Greece. We returned to the hotel around 12:30, exhuasted with such a full day.