Author: Eric Farber

Ballooning in Cappadocia

Ürgüp, Cappadocia—September 17, 2010.

Kay and I got our wake-up call at 4:30 am, early enough to join our friends Jenny and Ralph and catch the bus from Kapadokia Balloons at 5:30. Thus began a hot-air balloon adventure, a new experience for the four of us. It was Jenny who had instigated this. Kay and I had seen the balloons in the air during previous visits to the area, but, in view of the expense, we had passed on the attraction. Now, sparked by the enthusiasm of our friends, it seemed like a good idea.

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American Summer 2010

These are crazy days! Russia’s on fire and Pakistan is drowning. This past month of August heat has been hard on many of us. Are these the effects of the dreaded climate change? Nobody knows, but it seems that nature’s shocks simply mirror those that are more clearly man-made. Seems like no one is having a good year except maybe the Chinese, and even they may be exaggerating.

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Walking the Lycian Way

April — May, 2010

For me, the Lycian Way, so named because it traverses a region along southern Turkey’s Mediterranean Coast that was once ancient Lycia, was a rugged, 500-kilometer, trekking challenge that Britain’s Sunday Times rates as one of the world’s ten best walks.

Could I do it? Were my spirit and 67-year-old body up to this kind of an adventure? My only previous long-distance walk had been a week in Scotland, and that walk had been supported. Others had transported my luggage from one B & B to the next, and I always ate in fine restaurants and slept warmly between clean sheets. I also had the companionship of Kay and our American friends Mike and Judy.

The Lycian Way would be different. I would be alone and carrying everything I needed on my back. I had to be prepared to camp at those times when no other refuge could be found. I gave myself a month this past April to walk as far I could, and in fact I stopped after 24 days. During that time I covered 15 of the Lycian Way’s 28 routes or segments for a total of about 240 kilometers. I had some uncomfortable moments, but, on balance, it was a positive and memorable experience. What follows are some excerpts from the journal I kept while walking. They give a pretty good sense of what my days were like.

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Maltese Moments

November, 2009

The best thing about the British Hotel, the oldest in Valletta, is its location half way up the cliff that is the southern edge of the city. Our funky room, the only one located on the top floor of the hotel, wasn’t very large or comfortable. In addition, when leaving the room in the morning, we had to step gingerly around the piles of soiled sheets and towels the maids were sorting in front of our door. However, at the cocktail hour, we would take our plastic cups of scotch onto the large, adjacent terrace and enjoy a sunset view over the Grand Harbor that was second to none. We treated the terrace as our own private domain as no other guests ever seemed to come up there.

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Sicily: It’s All Good

 

October 30, 2009

On a recent Sunday evening in Agrigento on Sicily’s South Coast, Kay and I left our hotel to walk along the single narrow street of the city’s medieval quarter. Traffic there was at a standstill, and we noticed that the stuck cars had the air of having been sitting for some time. Most of their drivers had shut off their engines and were reading, chatting with other drivers, or dreaming idly. The scene was calm; there was no horn blowing. Kay and I kept walking and eventually got to the cause of the jam. A city bus was wedged between a building and an illegally parked car’s rear fender. The bus driver and a group of men stood discussing the matter loudly as they do in Sicily. We kept walking and a short time later the bus roared past us followed by the rest of the traffic. Did the driver of the parked car show up and move it? Did a group of men physically pick up the car, move it a bit sideways, and give the bus clearance? Or did the bus finally just plough ahead and crush the rear of the parked car? We don’t know. It’s just one of many mysteries we encountered on our trip to this fabled island.

Others included the seemingly random store opening hours. In Turkey, as in the U.S., stores are open all day and often late into the evening. This kind of convenience is the norm. By contrast, in Sicily storeowners seem to measure success by the least number of hours they can stay open and still remain in business. And on the subject of stores, how can there be so many selling clothing, shoes, jewelry and watches? These merchants outnumber others ten to one. ‘Looking good’ must be preeminent.

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We Love England

July, 2009

Kay and I both love England. In my case, the country figures in some of my earliest memories. Both my mother and my aunt Sigrid were fans of the British Royals. On a fishing trip to Canada with my father, circa 1953, I recall seeing objects – plates, toffee and biscuit tins, etc. – commemorating the young Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. Because of a correspondence he had with a British friend, an uncle of mine would regularly receive copies of Punch, The Illustrated London News and Country Life. These he would circulate among the relatives. I remember being fascinated by the real estate ads in Country Life, which listed large residential properties with multiple bed and bathrooms, libraries, conservatories, and other rooms curiously listed as “offices”. It was later that I learned these to be rooms such as the kitchen, pantry, laundry, etc. devoted to household work. For a boy living in a five-room bungalow on Chicago’s South Side, England was a world away.

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Mesopotamia

May, 2009

I know a neat excavation . . .

There’s a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia . . .

Mesopotamia’s where I want to go

Oh Oh, Oh Oh . . .

From Mesopotamia by the B-52’s

 

Mesopotamia – the land between the rivers – was the subject of one of my earliest geography lessons. As a young scholar at Chicago’s Clissold Elementary, I learned that Mesopotamia was “the land where civilization began.” Over simplified that lesson may have been, yet the towns and archeological sites between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Turkish Mesopotamia are, if not the oldest on the planet, not much younger.

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India on My Mind

“(M)ore than a religion or a social system; it is the core of Indian civilization.”  Fernand Braudel, On History, pg.226

The subject is Hinduism.

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If you plan to go to India, it’s probably a good idea to learn as much as you can about the beliefs and practices of the Hindus before you leave. Otherwise, you risk feeling as clueless and confused as I was when confronted with that country’s ubiquitous and fantastic array of Hindu gods, goddesses, mythological figures, temples, shrines, mantras, processions and festivals.

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