Day 5 [May 12, 2010]

Turkey D5

            We woke up early Wednesday to pack up our belongings and head out of Istanbul. Time to see some of the Turkish countryside! We hopped into the bus and rode through the extremely dense suburbs of the city. The horizon had a very thick layer of haze, mostly from pollution but possibly in part from the Icelandic Volcano. We drove through a valley filled with a sea of apartment buildings high-rises and small crowded houses, packed together like canned sardines.

            Ugur had us stop by at a gas station somewhere in the European side of Turkey, known as Thrace. Many roads here have signs pointing to Bulgaria and Greece which have borders with Turkey very close to where we drove. The gas station’s bathrooms, as traditional in Turkey, were very clean but cost 1 lira to use. There was a man sitting in a booth collecting fees in the wall between the men and woman’s rooms, which I thought was very funny.

            We soon crossed the straight of Dardenel to the much larger Asian side of the country. New continent for Marlow! Our first destination was the famed site of Troy. This site was home to almost 10 cities spread over 140 layers, each one directly over the other. In the early 20^th century, when archaeology was a brand new field, an infamous German man by the name of Heinrich Schliemann came and dug a massive trench through the middle of the site. He dug far faster than archaeologists do today and disturbed and destroyed much evidence because of his greedy haste. When the Turkish government asked for Schliemann’s finds to put in museums for preservation, he sold much of it to private collectors, the Russians, and a small amount to the Berlin Museum which was sacked during the end of World War II. 

            Before visiting the site, we went to meet Hadrian (The statue that Regan Barr photographed and Amy cataloged back in the day) It was exciting to hear the story of his discovery. The museum was filled with many artifacts from Troy and the sarcophagus telling a sorrowful sacrificial tale.

            We toured all 9 layers of the site, including many intact walls and a tarp-covered mud wall designed to prevent climbing soldiers as it was slippery when wet. Because Amy and Regan were archeologists, they know the director of excavations at Troy and he he led us on an exclusive tour. His enthusiasm was wonderful, and we got a good sense of how difficult it is to excavate at a site where early excavations by non-archaeologists ruined the strata. (Thank you, Mr. Schliemann)

            Afterwards, we headed to the hotel for a grand assortment of foods and a pool. Sleep.