From Athens to Corinth

It is Sunday the 28 April and I am resuming the writing of my blog based on notes made on my I-phone.  As the notes were made on the hop and in varying styles, they are somewhat erratic and incomplete, simply recording in some cases thoughts or phrases captured from time to time.

As we crossed the Corinth Canal across the Isthmus we were told that many great men from Alexander to Nero had the  idea of digging the canal but were thwarted by superstition, cost and absence of technology. Nero, an enthusiast for the Canal, died when it was a scratch on the surface.

We saw the Fountain House of Klufge wife of Jason and added more names based on myth.  The fountain was hewn from local limestone.

“Whoops - there goes Denis”. This was a remark made by our guide when she was explaining why there was a ban, at the museum at Ancient Corinth, on posing with statues for photographs. The ban arose from the tendency of some visitors to strip off their clothes to pose naked next to the naked statues of ancient heroes. I pretended that I was about to remove my shirt causing the remark. It added to my legend.

The large number of missing heads on many of the statues,  was put down to earthquakes as they were fashioned from detachable heads instituted as a cost saving measure at times of fiscal constraint. The heads rolled away and were picked randomly by 18th and 19th century travelers.

Photo of minors showing Jewish presence in ancient Corinth.

We also saw at the Asklepion of Corinth clay or marble representations body parts, including many breasts and genitals, indicating to the doctors the location of illnesses. The  huge number suggests presence of STDs in the region and the explosive mix of sacred prostitutes and sailors and drinking symposia.

Many photos of vases. Dark on light of local yellow clay, geometric. No human figures apart from on an imported vase.

We saw the largest forum of Ancient Corinth, now a ruin where camomile grows wild.  In forum we can imagine St Paul, who stayed in the city for some time, working as a tent maker with leather shops nearby. (the are several references to Corinth in Paul’s letters and in the Acts of the Apostles. In due course, i shall include relevant extracts.

In 146 BC, Ancient Corinth was ruined by Romans but about 100 years later, restored somewhat by Julius Caesar who settled veterans here.  This intervention enabled the city to regain its position in the reported rivalry between the Corinthians and Athens

But it was finally destroyed by barbarians and earthquakes. The city was rediscovered in 19th century.

Here are some more notes which I have yet to decipher properly:

Winged horse or Pegasus

Upper Pyrenee is spring now polluted by bats so only used for gardens.

When did the bats come?

Early Christian church from 5th century AD. Built on top of synagogue. Photo.

Erastus pa ing - photo of carved inscription so this was probably the Erastus mentioned in Acts.

The Historical Jesus

I have tried in these last few days to imagine how I might have reported on the events of 2000 years ago - or  more precisely in the period between 29 and 50 AD the accepted period during which Paul wandered around in these parts - if I had been a foreign diplomat posted in say Jerusalem or Antioch. Remember, I would have been reporting to a skeptical head office disinclined to believe anything it's junior diplomats reported.  I would, no doubt, have had to hedge my account of the reported miracles and especially stories of the resurrection with heavy qualification, sophistry and question. I might have said that I had received first or second hand reports from a large number of people of the astounding events. I would have described the reliability and consistency of the reports, noting the only minor variation between them. If I were eloquent enough in my despatch - blessed with the articulation of the Apostles - my report might have been passed up the ranks.

I also wondered what might others have been reporting at the time, especially the spies and informers of neighbouring powers? The Roman historian, reporting a hundred years later, perhaps would have been my model.

There follows here a gap in my notes which resume after the completion of the tour.   What follows is an account of a trip we made to Naphlion with Hugh and Lynne after the tour to meet with our old friends Evangelos and Judy who have settled for the moment in Greece.

Naphlion

In Naphlion we stayed sf the Grand Sarai, a hotel built with care and studied perfection down to the selection of furniture, the design of a spiral stairwell, and the shuttered windows. Everything worked from the fast Internet connection to the toaster. It is quiet in a back pathway of the town with marbled steps and footpaths. We were told later that the marbled steps can be dangerous and slippery after the rain, a point confirmed by our own experience in climbing up to the Pantheon in Athens, the hard way as reported earlier. 

A garden and walls, some unfortunately daubed with graffiti the ubiquitous expression of frustration of a people puzzled by their country's sudden fall from economic grace. A sort of public Facebook page.

We could glimpse the Aegean  from our window and breathe the fresh country air.

Civilized is probably the word to describe the town with its history of Ancient Greece, Venetian and Genoese DNA, a relatively brief 100 year exposure to Ottoman colonization, to its neat taxi queue and transparent price signage; a round trip to Mycaenae and Widaurus for 39 Euros,

Only one horrible block building in town that we could see but a goodly number of older ones ready for renovation: we saw one for 200,000 Euros (and the same again for renovation).

On the road back from Naphlion we saw: Tyrens, a strong limestone wall; and smelt the perfume of the orange blossoms through the opened skylight on the coach; another citadel on top of a commanding mountain top; was this near Argos?; reached within half an hour.

At midday we turned right to join the motorway (the A7)  to Athens shown as 107 kilometres away . Hugh told me that in his day the road was "pretty ordinary" thus making the journey to Naphlion much longer. We pass through a toll booth with its familiar beep to signal the toll had been paid.

At some 95 kilometres before Athens, we pass by a massive fort that stretches across true entire flat top of a  huge mountain. We will check later on its origins.

We cross the Corinth Canal and call in briefly at a roadhouse on the edge of modern Corinth where a grandfather on board makes use of the toilets and comes back on the coach looking smug. We can see the Aegean to the right and the Adriatic to the left as we push north.

Last night in Athens

We went with Hugh and Lynne to dinner at a restaurant with a view of the Pantheon for our last night in Athens. We sat on the top floor garden in the clear night air with an excellent view of the timeless Pantheon and one last glimpse of this Ancient Greek citadel first as the sun set and then by moon and floodlight.

Service was first class, the meal (our first baked lamb, baked that is in the Greek style in water), was passable, the wine very good.

Next day, out to the airport by taxi and a long but orderly queue for boarding passes and emigration. Then coffee in the public lounge, airside.

Sunday 21 April or thereabouts

We have now been in Greece for a week and I fear, dear reader(s), that I have published nothing!  I have, however, made extensive if somewhat erratic and disordered notes on our 7 days here.

My new nickname, given to me by a Bishop, is Titus on the grounds that Saint Paul used him for diplomatic purposes in his own missions abroad and that I, dubiously, have the semblance of diplomatic qualities. Some people in our group still can't tell one diplomat from another and confuse me with my fellow traveller and ex diplomatic colleague Hugh. So, Titus will have to do.

Greece can be confusing. Carefully demarcated tales of legend and history blur and blend in the inattentive mind.  Each touches the other through custom and behaviour. People here respect old idols and traditions but pray to the "unknown God", as Saint Paul characterised the Christian god some 2000 years ago, a God that needed no man-made icons, and obey the Christian laws.  Still, monuments built with human hands ad sweat, celebrate the old gods and walls or battlements protect their treasures. We saw plenty of them.

   Such as this one, chosen at random from the 100s of photographs taken by Sharon. It is I think of the ramp leading up to a gallery on the Acropolis in Athens.  There was a different god for each cave around or under the Acropolis even before this mighty structure was built.

On Friday the 19th we started a bus tour of Athens early due to a warning from the police that a demonstration or protest of some sort would close the city centre. Our quick tour took in Hadrian's Arch (how many Arches does one man need?); St Paul's Anglican Church to underline the liberal attitude of the Orthodox Church, the Botanic Gardens, Constitution Square and House of Parliament; the Grande Britannia Hotel chosen as the residence by King Otto of Bavaria - who turned out not to be a very satisfactory choice of King imposed on Greece by the European Powers; the Roman CAtholic Church of Saint Denis; the Academy of Greece with statues of Plato and Aristotle; another statue of Apollo; the first Olympic Stadium of 30 BC, marbled in the first century AD.

We climbed the hill of Mars across the slippery pinkish grey marble. I nearly lost my footing several times leading to a loss of confidence that I could retain my balance and fearful that I would come a cropper I moved ever more cautiously across the way.

I think this is me in the background trying to keep upright but there is a better photograph somewhere!   

Gallipoli - Saturday 13 April

Reflecting on the Turkey of 40 years ago and today, one thing illustrates the changes wrought in the country, for which Australia can claim some responsibility: the changed attitudes to Gallipoli. The Turks now celebrate it as much as we do.

Some forty years ago, we struggled to get more than a handful of Australians and a few Turks, to join us on 25 April on the Gallipoli peninsular.  In those days very few Turks recalled the events of 1915 with the same reverence that we showed to the battle on the peninsular - only the very old and some military historians  

Now, thousands of Australians crowd onto this thin strip of European Turkey stretching out into the Aegean Sea. Such has been the impact in Turkey of our massive, and now fairly ordered and sober, celebrations, that the Turks have adopted the event as their own, inspired at least in part by the way we conduct them.  They now describe their defense of the peninsular, including their successful blockade of the Dardanelles that preceded it, as a ‘turning point’ in their short history as an independent nation. A young school boy we met at the markets in a remote Turkish town in Anatolia, responded with a cry of 'ANZAC!' when we told him we were from Australia.  The Attaturk Mausoleum in Ankara now features the Gallipoli defense in a diorama that is the exact counterpoint of one in the national war memorial in Canberra - viewed from the heights rather than the beaches. 

The defense of the straits and the peninsular was certainly the basis upon which Mustafa Kemal [Attaturk] built a reputation for heroism and which formed a springboard for his campaign in the 1920’s for Turkish independence and recovery of territories.  There is, in this sense, a curious parallel between Turkish and Australian history: Gallipoli was a glorious lost battle for the ANZACs and a victory for the Turks; but Australia and its allies won the war. The Turks lost every other battle of the First World War in which they were engaged and went down with their German allies in the overall conflagration.  But we both celebrate the battle: the Turks as a turning point as I said and we as the coming of age of a nation federated just 14 years before the landings at ANZAC Cove. Sharon and I posed for this photograph identifying the Cove with the beaches in the background. The landscape and the memorials are as memorable and moving as ever.

Into Greece

After Gallipoli we travelled north up the peninsular into European Turkey and then crossed the border into Greece.

We stayed for two nights in Kavala, which is nearby to the ancient town of Philippi.  We were picking up the footsteps of Saint Paul who has crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Thrace.  Here, Paul delivered his first sermon in Europe and converted his first European, a fairly well off woman by the name of Lidia, a 'god-fearer'.

Kavala is in the most Moslem part of Greece due to its 400 years or so as part of the Ottoman Empire. villages in teh country side seem to feature as many mosques as churches and I heard Turkish being spoken in the town.

Whilst we were in Istanbul, we visited Topkapi Palace but I was not able to publish a brief summary. Here it is:

Topkapi Palace.

We have visited this palace before but never well-briefed. This time I read the accounts of it relayed in a guide to Istanbul. It is the largest in Istanbul comprising three Courts: the first, the court of the Janisseries, contains the Imperial Mint and the Church of Hagia Irene which survived as a storehouses  and armory; the second court, used by the Sultan to hold audiences and to dispense justice. On the left are the chambers of the Divan or Council with a golden grill or eye of the sultan; the inner treasury containing inter alia the sword of M the C; the palace of kitchens;  and the entrance to the Harem - family, concubines and various numbers of eunuchs. Famous occupants include Ibrahim the Mad, corrupt, misruling, and sexual excesses - he was eventually murdered and replaced by his son.

The third courtyard or inner palace, entered through the Gate of Felicity, contains the throne room  or audience chamber the sultan on a canopied throne  received viziers, officials and foreign ambassadors. 

The most overwhelming impact and one that cannot be recorded olefactorily here is the aroma of hyacinths that hits you on entry to the palace. So whilst I have plenty of photographs of the palace itself, this one of the gardens is included so at east I can share the visual impact with my readers.

From Pamukkale, Friday

The remarkable change that we observed in Ankara, Capadoccia and Istanbul was also evident in the south west of Turkey.

Perhaps the most obvious aspect of change concerns infrastructure and housing: there is a lot more of both. Izmir now stretches around the entire bay and inland for miles as offices, industry and homes extend along the beaches and over the hilly hinterland.  

Nowhere was this aspect of change more obvious than in the town of Salihili, a place we inadvertently visited in 1972. In my memo written at the time I said of our visit:

"It was an unscheduled [stop] due to a car breakdown some 50 kilometres east of Izmir.  [It] was somewhat too large to qualify as a village [but too small for a town]  and it had block shaped two or three story buildings.  The one that interested us was the only Inn in town where we stopped for the night.  It was cheap, dirty and squalid.  The mattresses were dirty, lumpy and did not boast of bed covers.  The bathroom was locked; when opened it revealed a casual tenant.  It was, in any case, unusable with the bath plug hole blocked by hair and dirt.  Out side our windows the shrill cry of the muezzin at one was matched by the noise of a blood and thunder Indian-made movie at the other. Jenny Williams swears tha she still bears the scars of bed bugs from the evening.  Terrazzo and heat - no need  for bed covers. It cost us about half a lira."

Now Salihi is a big down equipped with industry (ubiquitous brick factories), shops and extensive housing. We lunched at a newly opened restaurant with an excellent menu, high quality service and air-conditioning.

Another remark in my memmoire also resonates.  In 1972, I wrote  [about Pamukkale] that

"Our fascination with it, probably deprived us of the opportunity to visit the many other places in Turkey that we missed."

We were to make up for the omissions in 2013.

Aphrodisias, Miletus and Kusadasi

We were making up for lost time in Aphrodisias on 7 April with a visit to Aphrodisias on our way to Kusadasi.  This city was built near a marble quarry extensively mined in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Its sculptures were to become famous in the Roman world and were of course laid before us on our visit - both at the extended site of the city and in the museum.

A freed slave of the Emperor Augustus became governor of this city. Apparently he was a good administrator.

Our eyes were agog at the beauty and extensiveness of this site and we wondered why we had not visited it before, either in our two years in Turkey in the early 70s or even later in our 2011 Mediterranean Cruise. In the first instance, the answer lies in the fact that it was not excavated until later in the century so there was not much to see in our earlier stay; and in the second instance it is still outshone by Ephesus so that in the limited time allowed by the Cruise, and our fond memories of many trips to Ephesus meant that we had not taken the opportunity.

The only notes I have taken refer to a classical freshwater well with a basin dug on the side by hand - a practice that continues today; a classical gymnasium with a teaching auditorium and sports arena; a Greek Theatre with Roman additions such as the building of a raised platform for the actors. The Theatre faces East to avoid the wind.

The Temple of Aphrodite is the highlight and we took photographs of this largest temple to this cult with snow covered mountains in the background. The Temple features a features a sculpture of Aphrodite on the back of a wild boar with a fish in her hand.

For a period, the city was known as Stavropoulis or city of crosses arisong from the Christian era circa 4th century AD. The Roman theatre is built against 36 man-made structures to replicate the slope of land used by the Greeks who were less competent in the building of free-standing theatres and thus had to build them into the slope of a hill or mountain. It is said to have sat 30,000 suggesting a population for the city in the region of 300,000.

I think that Aphrodite competes well with Ephesus in its magnificence.

We drove on from Aphrodite to Miletos which features in a letter from Paul which is said to be sad in tone. It also has a Graeco-Roman theater (that seats 15,000), topped by a Byzantium citadel. 

Istanbul

We flew back to Ankara and then on to Istanbul to catch our flight to Kayseri, as part of our tour to Cappadocia. Once that tour was completed we flew again to Istanbul where we met up with the the few tour members who had not joined the Capadoccia trip and moved by coach to our hotel in Istanbul: the Kent Hotel in the Beyazit area.

For the afternoon, Sharon and I walked to the Sultanahmet area and then a little further on to find the Eresin Crown Hotel, where we are to stay later after the Greek leg of the tour so as to meet up with my sister Patricia. We were 'guided', if that is the right term, by a pleasant young man who claimed to have spent some time in Australia. He insisted that we visit his shop but we put him off and went on to the hotel instead.

There we had an encounter with the receptionist who assured us that we had booked and paid for only 7 nights accommodation. We knew this to be wrong and had the receipts from our travel agent to prove it. We showed them to her. This did not seem to convince her so I threw a little tantrum. This had the effect of encouraging her to enquire further and she told us to wait a while whilst she checked with er travel agent who would check with the Turkish agency that represented ours in Istanbul. In the meantime she suggested we have a coffee or tea. As we waited and before the coffee arrived she told us that in fact we were right. We enjoyed the coffee anyway and as we were about to leave I asked her whether it could be put on our bill or whether we should pay it straight away. She demurred at the idea of putting it on our bill but checked with the head waiter. He arrived to say that the coffee was complimentary. This improved my mood considerably and we parted on the best of terms.

We decided to walk back a different way and go a glimpse of the sort of sites we hope to see more of in our later 8 day visit to Istanbul.

Turkey and the Crawford Fund

Turkey and the Crawford Fund

DG Blight

I visited the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock’s General Directorate of Agricultural Research and Policies on 28 March meeting with Dr Masum Burak, Director General.

I also met Dr Emin Donmez, Wheat Breeder in the Wheat Breeding Unit of CRIFT; and Namuk Ergun, Barley Breeder of the Barley Breeding Unit of CRIFT.  Donmez and Ergun were both Crawford Fund trainees. We were accompanied throughout by Akin Aras and Canan Yagci both of the Turkish Seed Gene Bank.

The Director General formally welcomed me to the General Directorate. He is well informed on the work of the CGIAR and CABI in general and is a Board member of ICARDA.  

He has not yet visited Australia but wishes to do so in the context of Turkey’s decision to establish a national botanic garden, described briefly below. He has recently visited Kew Gardens, which he admired greatly, but would also like to see the Botanic Gardens of Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra and - at my suggestion - CSIRO and its 

Cyclotron.  

CRIFC has a broad range of programs set out in a promotional booklet that I will place in the Crawford Fund library and which may also be available at www.tarim.gov.tr or www.tagem.gov.tr.  It covers all the usual fields in plant and animal science.  Its budget has grown steadily from around 7 million liras in 2002 to 85 million in 2012.  Turkey aims to increase the ratio of R&D investment to GDP from its current level of 0.9 per cent to 2.5 per cent by 2020.  Its R&D programs include a private sector support program, an Institutes-Private Sector Collaboration Program, and an international collaboration program embracing the CGIAR and education and infrastructure program with the Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency TIKA).

We agreed that the Fund and CRIFC might be able to cooperate in the following contexts: in areas of national interest of both Turkey and Australia, where the Fund could provide minimal support to introduce the parties to each other but where financing of cooperative activities would be the responsibility of the relevant Turkish and Australian research centres and agencies; and activities in poorer neigbouring countries in West Asia and North Africa. 

The Master Class in Soil Borne Pathogens, which took place in Turkey in 2011 is an example but there will be other opportunities. There may be opportunities for funding from TIKA, although I did not explore this with CRIFC.

The newly established Turkish Seed Bank was the main focus of our discussion. We were given presentation on it by Canan Yagci, representing   Kursad Ozbek (ozbekkursad@yahoo.com) who has recently visited Australia under Crawford Fund auspices but was absent in Izmir. She is pictured here with me and Akin Aras. She has undertaken to send me a copy of her power point presentation.

It appears to me to be an excellent facility.  It is described in its promotional document as the ‘third largest Seed Gene Bank of the world’ and was opened at CRIFC in Ankara in 2010. It is said to have the conservation capacity for 250,000 seed samples and 60,000 herbarium specimen samples. 

The following day, in company with the former Turkish Ambassador to Australia, Mr Murat Ersavci and Mrs Ersavci, we drove out to the site of the planned National Botanic Garden. Some 220 hectares of land have been set aside near the campus of the Ministry in greater Ankara on the Eskisehir road between Bilkent (private) and Haceteppe Universities. Already there is evidence of plantings for an aboretum.

Perhaps of particular interest is the International Agricultural Research and Training Centre 

established in Izmir in 2009.  It has organised training activities in cooperation with TIKA, ISEDAK, ICARDA and FAO.

Team Australia might think of mounting an activity of some sort to coincide with the celebrations planned throughout 2015 to mark 100 years since the first landing of ANZAC troops at Gallipoli. It is the wish of both countries that these celebrations should be about more than a savage but noble conflict of long ago.  I have suggested elsewhere that consideration be given to a major Australian educational exhibition in Turkey in 2015.