The Oldest City in the World

Although the name “Turkey” is relatively new the land which became this modern nation was the birthplace of civilization itself. The discovery of the ancient city of Catal Hoyuk (near modern Konyan) has confirmed that an organised settlement existed for 7000 years between 7500BC to 500BC where they had mastered the art of weaving while the rest of the world were still living an Aboriginal life. This area is prehistoric Anatolia where we have just booked a last minute holiday for two weeks. We are staying in the modern city of Marmaris which is much younger. However, in the 6th century BC the city was known as Physkos and considered part of Caria. Although there is thought to have been a castle there since 3000BC until Alexander the Great besieged it. The occupants burned their valuables and the castle before running to the hills whilst the invaders were aware of the importance of the castle and rebuilt it. The castle was rebuilt from scratch again in 1522 by the Ottoman sultan Suleyman the Magnificent.

The town of Sardis about 60km from Izmir was the Lydian town where gold purification was invented. This led to the world’s first minted coins, closely followed by the development of banks and money lenders. A close neighbour of King Croesus of Lydia was King Midas of Phrygia who obviously benefited from this new found technology with his “touch”. Sounds like a good place to take a metal detector.

The whole of modern day Turkey was taken over by the Romans and lots of remains are spread all along the coastline. When we were here last year we saw lots of Roman ruins if you were following our blog at that time. There seemed to be an Amphitheatre around every corner. I guess that in this dry dusty heat things don’t deteriate as quickly as back in rainy, frosty, foggy England.

Today Marmaris is the Turkish equivalent of San Antonio in Ibiza so I’m not quite sure how we will like it but I couldn’t resist the price at £120 which included flights and accommodation for 2 weeks with Turkish breakfast. We have only been to mainland Turkey twice but never in this area so I will be interested to explore it anyway. The settlement is between two mountain ranges with a naturally protected bay. I hope we can find a motorbike at a reasonable price so we can explore a little further than on foot but my early research has shown it to be quite expensive. I don’t have to worry about local speed limits on a bike as I have my own speed limiter on the back called Claire. Also, I have only been to one Greek Island before so I’m hoping that trips to Symi and Rhodes are inexpensive so we can have a look around those as well.

The Turkish Lira is used exclusively in Turkey and the Republic of Northern Cyprus which we know well from several years ago. The Lira was introduced in 1844 and replaced the “Kurus” which has now become a fraction of a Lira; 100 Kurus = 1 Lira. Like most early currencies, the Lira was represented by precious metal. However unusually, the Lira was on a Bimetallic standard where 1 lira = 6.61519 grams pure gold = 99.8292 grams pure silver. Between 1970 and the 1990’s the Lira suffered chronic inflation where it became relatively worthless. In 1966 1 US Dollar was worth 9 Lira but by 2001 the same US Dollar was worth 1,650,000 Lira. As a result in 2005 the last 6 zero’s were dropped off and the Lira was effectively devalued by 1 million to become the “Yeni (New) Turkish Lira”. This has now been dropped and we are back to the Lira again where I got an exchange rate on Friday of 2.256 Lira to the £1.

Marmaris is a port with lots of boat trips so I’m sure we will be taking one at some point in our trip. In fact the Greek islands of Rhodes and Symi are only about an hour’s boat ride away. Trouble is, the prices seem to rise on 7th July ready for their summer season, that’s why the prices of holidays after this date are so much higher than before. Anyway, we are hoping to do lots of walking and relaxing while we are away. From our experience, at this time of year the temperatures are usually in the 40’s which are almost unbearable when there is no breeze.

I had an email from Mick and Lynn on Saturday saying that they are in Kas in Turkey at the moment. I couldn’t believe it! We originally met them in Goa 3 years ago and stayed with them twice in Byron Bay when we were in Australia last year. Not sure yet how long they are there for but maybe we will get lucky and cross paths while we are away again. The first picture is of Narelle and Ray that we met in South West Rocks and are over in England at the moment. Claire has put a link to their blog on the side of ours, it’s called, “Adventure before dementia”; take a look. We are also hoping that we have chance to catch up with those guys before they go home.
It was great to see Steve again on Wednesday after quite a long time. While we were walking to the pub a hedgehog started to cross the road; why did the hedgehog cross the road? Usually they don’t come out until darkness so it was a little unusual. The next day I was watering the bamboo plants when this little frog jumped out but unfortunately it was too dark to get a decent picture. I think it was too dark for the camera to focus so when the flash went off the focus was in the normal position expecting a shot a few yards away. I think it must have been a Chinese Bamboo tree frog. Talking of animals; about a month ago, I was awoken by two squirrels digging holes in the lawn so ran downstairs and set the hose on them. I inspected the holes and to fill them and there was a grub in each hole so I guess that they had dug for them. This is odd as for most of the last 4 years we have had squirrels in our back garden regularly and this was the first time that they had done this. Squirrels naturally dig to bury their spare acorns ready for the winter so I guess it’s not a big deal to learn to do this to find food; after all, they have to find and dig up their acorns again. I think they have learned a new trick which started a few weeks ago when, each morning, I would dig out all the dandelions that had appeared on the lawn overnight and many times there was a grub or worm in the whole that I had made. I guess that the squirrels would have came along afterwards and eaten the grubs but when I finally stopped digging up the dandelions they carried on by making their own holes to find the grubs. I wouldn’t be surprised if this new behavior spread throughout the whole street/estate/town/county/country and it will be my fault.

The last few pictures are of our house in North Cyprus. The first one I took from a hill which was a real scramble to get to the top of and used to advertise the site; you can just see the top of our house which is between the gap between the front houses leaving us a sea view. The photographs were taken sometime before the roads went in. It was supposed to be a 5 bed, 3 bathroom villa but we had the top two bedrooms converted into one with a bathroom so we ended up with a very substantial 4 large double bedroom house by the Mediterranean Sea. Unfortunately the builder was a crook and we were lucky to get our money back after a couple of years of sleepless nights and worry. This experience left a bad feeling with us and we are unlikely to ever return which is a shame as we met such lovely local people there. The last picture is of my best friend “Raphet” who has a heart of gold and would have done anything for us at the drop of a hat, or at least after he had finished his beer. He was very proud to have fought in the British army during the Second World War. In his early life he was the bodyguard for the President of North Cyprus (Rauf Denktash) and used his body to take bullets and save him twice while in his service. This has left him with only a partial stomach and even though he was in his 80’s in this photo, he could still dance like an angel and would have given Fred a run for his money. Raphet was still a lady’s man and was a huge fan of Viagra. By some strange coincidence, Raphet spent 10 years of his life here in Milton Keynes but we didn’t find this out until the last time we ever met him when my Dad took him a rhubarb plant and a gooseberry plant to grow in his garden. I am very proud to have been one of Raphet’s friends and I often think about him.