Trying to find the delicate balance between attending one's fixations of culture, relaxation and adventure is the traveler's ultimate challenge. Then again, many tender just one or two of their favorite themes; content to spending the bulk of their vacation either relaxing on a beach, hands folded behind oneself exploring ruins or perhaps waste deep in a kayak attending to white water adrenaline. I always attempt an easy balance of the three, on avoidance of an overload of museums and churches (as I once suffered on my first tour of Europe) or a burnt, bored guise (the result of too many sun-soaked beach days in Thailand).
Turkey had a bevy of themes to choose from, and I already got a little kayaking in, more than a little hiking and spent a little bit of time on the beach. But I came to this country expecting to overload on antiquity and binge on museums. I left the coast reluctantly, but ready to explore one of the world's most celebrated archeological treasures.
My first stop was the ruins of Hierapolis located around and on top of the Pamukkale hot springs in Western Anatolia. I kept running into Koreans the length of my trip in Turkey, and finally relented in adopting two Korean girls as part of my traveling family. During the daytime explorations, the girls explored on their own while I went off to smear white mud on my face from the milky blue healing waters and walk around the ruins of what used to be the Palm Springs of the ancient world. Warm water eeked out of every crevice, and the geological marvel of the white-Uluru-esque bluff that the city was built upon seemed to leak stories from every marble-strewed corner.
Hierapolis was destroyed by earthquakes twice during the height of its Roman prominence, only to be rebuilt each time by loving titans who refused to see it fall into oblivion. Perhaps they should have stopped deliberately building their temples over fault lines. Maybe the Romans were testing their gods' ability to stop natural phenomenon afflicting temples dedicated to their worship.
Spooky faces adorned the rubble - faces of drama and intrigue from happy years long forgotten in this place.
Nearby, an old sanctuary called "Plutonium" (thanks Wikipedia for reminding me of the name) harbors noxious carbon dioxide gas that ancient priests used to pretend to endure to prove they were divinely appointed (really they just held their breath). They would probably thrive today on K Street.
The whole time I could have been back in Crimea, as sunburnt, Speedo-donned Russians chatted boisterously while walking on top of the ruins, snapping pictures of their bikini-clad wives posing in luscious pin-up girl fashion.
Thinking of Crimea in proximity to the ancient world made me think of the Goths, and how they plundered these settlements in the 3rd century, and would sack Rome soon after.
Next stop on the next day and also a one-time Goth playground was Ephesus, located near the rather nice modern-day town of Selcuk. According to legend, the founder of the famous port metropolis of the classic world had to leave Athens after the death of his father and visited the oracle at Delphi to determine the next course of action at this crossroads in his life (I would have visited Delphi also, but als the oracle there has long since vanished). The oracle told him that he would find and establish his home at the behest of a fish and a boar. That answer must have made him excessively pensive, until one day when he was cooking a fish in a marsh near a fine harbor when the fish jumped out of the fire, causing a brush fire to spread and a boar to run out of the buring brush - to be speared by the now-assured founder of Ephesus. It seems like back then destiny coherently beckoned the life-hero; as clear, categorical and profound as a choir leader.
Unlike Androklos, I haven't heard about my destiny yet, but a little hostel named the Kiwi hostel beckoned me to the check-in desk because the divorced owners boasted a spring-fed swimming pool located in the middle of an orange grove. Swimming in pure spring water - there's nothing quite like it.
While the harbor has long been filled with silt and the sea is now invisible from the present day vantage, the ruins at Ephesus were definitely among the most impressive I had seen yet - save the mind wrenching archway I saw in the forest near Olympos. Is it ironic that the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World did not survive intact but the Library of Celsus (pictured behind me)did?
Meanwhile, I sat down at the theater at Ephesus, like I had the day before at the one at Hierapolis, and it made me contemplate what life had been like before squawking television hosts, endless movie star scandals and noisy, annoying commercials. I came to the conclusion that I like devouring the mass media vomit of the 21st century, and continually crave its devices. Still, what would it be like to be here on a starry night? My belly would be filled with wine and mutton, my eyes fixed on a stage illuminated by oil-lit torchfires, with only the bellowing echo of actors voicing the simple scripts of ancient myths and metaphors... ...what kind of comfort would that have been?
There amongst those magnificent stages of man, I felt at ease in introspection. The contemplative forces soaked the soil and the marble pillars - there, and in the library... ...and even in the ancient stone-slabbed public toilets nearby.
Where does one find a wild boar?
