Ruined

My trip that night would be tough. My bus to Aydin left at 5, but by the time it would arrive, the dolmuses to Selcuk or Kusadasi, the two towns from which one can visit the ruins of Ephesus, might not be running. Aydin is perhaps the Cleveland of Turkey, reasonably large, but lacking any reason to actually go. So hotels are scarce because nobody goes there. Except me. Indeed, there were no minibuses running anywhere I wanted to go. The Lonely Planet didn't even mention Aydin in passing, so I had no map, no hotels to call, and since tourists don't go there, I could be fairly certain nobody spoke English. Thank fucking God hotel in Turksh is otel. I started wandering, at first led by some kid looking to make a lire or two, which he did, the little shit, but I abandoned him once I realized he had even less of an idea of what I was looking for than I did. I bounced from hotel to hotel praying one of the receptionists would understand the word 'cheap.' I finally managed to find someone who understood, and he pointed me in the right direction.

The dump I found was not equipped with, oh, showers, I would find out, but they did have an infuriatingly complicated and obstinate database program that had to be filled in before anyone could stay there. The young Turk at the reception had about six words of English under his belt, and I had to sit there with him for over an hour, him chain smoking and trying to read what was in my passport, me trying to read the Turkish on the screen figure out what information he was looking for, him waving his fists and cursing violently at the screen in Turkish, me trying to make pictionary a method of communication, and both of us laughing and hitting each other's shoulders in frustration. After a while we both started speaking freely in our own language as if the other understood. It's amazing how hard it is to convey something like 'city of birth.' For some reason they wanted my parents' names, which I wasn't really sure I wanted to give, also somewhat inexplicably, so if Joseph and Esmerelda Ades ever end up in Aydin, someone should let them know they're already on file at the Hotel Marques.

The next day I got lost about four times on my way back to the otogar, but Turks are always willing to point frantically, at least after giving me the 'what are you retarded?' look before they realize I'm not Turkish. I found Kusadasi to be a reasonably sized waterfront resort town that was still empty, the season starting up a week or two afterwards.

After wandering around for about an hour or two, sweating and cursing life, I managed to find the hostel I'd been recommended-these things happen every once in a while- and ended up with a huge dorm room with 20 beds and a spectacular view all to myself. That afternoon I took a minibus to the ancient ruins at Ephesus. AS I walked through the main drag, I started to realize that, for reasons that I'm only beginning to understand, I'm just not all that into ruins. But as far as ruins go, these were pretty cool ones.

The theater was one of the highlights, as it was well preserved and they let you walk into it and sit down anywhere.

As I was about to leave, a woman sort of strolled in playing a flute, standing in the middle of the theater floor. I immediately sat back down, as did everyone else who was on their way out, and when she started in on Amazing Grace I nearly shed a tear.

I continued on, fighting through a few German tour groups, stopping for some time at this library facade.

The biggest problem with the ruins is that all of the information signs, which are scarce anyway, are only in Turkish, so you don't really think much other than, 'well that's old.'

I did, however, find out who the ancient ruin site pee bandit is, as he had apparently followed me all the way from Southeast Asia to India and now to Turkey. I had climbed up on one of the ruined walls of a house or whatever, in order to get this shot of the main street.

The empty square below me was roofless, but the wall was rather high, so the large middle aged Turkish man who poked his head into it didn't see me standing up above. He suspiciously looked left and right, then turned around, facing outwards and did the same. Then, in trots a six year old kid, who drops trow and starts decorating the wall just inside the door while his Dad, presumably, stands guard out front. Poised and ready with the camera, I pointed downward and prepared to catch the culprit in the act, but then thought better of it, because just try explaining that one to the kid's old man if he turns around, plus I wasn't really sure how I would feel about having pictures of a little boy's wee wee on my camera. I did, however, rather pointlessly, take a picture of the empty room after he'd left.

In order to get to the ruins in the first place, I'd had to walk about a kilometer up from the turnoff where the dolmus dropped me. After leaving the ruins, I headed back out and realized once I got there that there was no dolmus stand on the opposite side of the street. Curious. It was a two lane road, but it was the major highway in the area, so cars were flying by at 60 or 70 mph, while I'm standing ont he shoulder praying that I see one of these little white vans coming my way. And I stood...and stood. After maybe twenty minutes I stared to calculate how far 20 kilometers was, and how long it would take me to walk it. After some simple arithmetic, I arrived at a pretty solid estimate of a really long fucking time. Finally I saw a dolmus on the horizon and it slowed when I sort of stood closer to the road to make myself seen. I noticed that Kusadasi wasn't on the sign in the windshield. When the guy opened the door, I said, 'Kusadasi?' He slammed the door and drove away. Guess not. Another twenty minutes later, a dolmus going the other way honked at me and the driver gave me the wait there sign, and sure enough, ten minutes after that, a van pulled up-right in the middle of the road, I might add, while the totally insane Turkish drivers flew by on the other side- and brought me back to Kusadasi. Yet another one of the countless episodes of I have no idea what I'm doing here or how I'll get somewhere I want to be that I've had to get used to, always just hoping that things will work out.

The next morning I got on an early morning ferry to Samos, the nearest Greek Island. Having explored a fair amount of Turkey, that is, crossed a significant portion of its land and sailed some of its waters, visited its most European city, the beach destination of Alanya, Olympos, which is in no way Turkey, and the resort town of Kusadasi, I left Turkey, feeling like I hadn't really seen much of it at all. Once again, I was leaving a place thinking I would definitely have to come back.