Turkey & Eastern Europe August 1999

Welcome to the slightly expanded version of Dave and Ray's Christmas letter of December 1999.

In August 1999, we went on a trip to Turkey and Eastern Europe. The main purpose was to see the total solar eclipse of August 11, 1999. Jay Anderson, of NASA, judged the weather and political prospects to be best in Turkey, a convenient distance between the clouds that often cover central Europe in the summer and the vigorous political activism of neighboring Iran, Iraq, and Kurdistan which can interfere with orderly tourism.	eclipse path our path
We flew from San Francisco to Istanbul, arriving on the 4th of August, and spent several days there respecting the heritage of the millennium or so that Constantinople was the center of the civilized world.	Aga Sophia Suleymaniya mosque
One of the prettiest mosques was the Rustem Pasha, which had wonderful tiles.	minbar in the Rustem Pasha mosque tiles
On the morning of August 9th, two days before the Main Event, we rented a car and drove out of Istanbul (whose traffic is not really any worse than, say, Boston's, despite the dire warnings on the State Department's web page), and drove across the Ataturk bridge on a modern freeway to Ankara, and beyond to the village of Bogazkale.	street scene in Bogazkale
Bogazkale is all that remains of the Hittite capital of Hattusas, which flourished between 1900 and 1200 BC. Herds of goats graze the ramparts. The foundations have been in many cases reconstructed to facilitate understanding of the layout of the city.	Hattusas
We drove that afternoon to Amasya, where we met two friends of Dave's from Stanford and strolled around the town, reveling in the familiar excitement of the day before a major tourist event. As you can see from this picture, the villagers were almost unaware of Western traditions and culture.	Amasya natives
It had been sunny every day in the week since we had landed in Istanbul, sunny on the drive across Anatolia, and sunny the day before in Hattusas, but when we awoke on the morning of the eclipse, we found the sky completely overcast. No one was assuring us it was a daily pattern, as had been the case in Curaçao last year. The man down at the town square had a satellite truck prepared to do a live feed to the world at the moment of totality, but for all that he didn't have an Internet connection (nor was there a public one in town) so he couldn't even get to http://weather.yahoo.com, and he was pacing nervously, same as us. I called home and asked Boris to tell me what the satellite image showed. The image had insufficient resolution. The clouds were moving to the west. Bowditch's "American Practical Navigator", which antedates Yahoo! and indeed radio, suggests that clouds moving in that direction in the northern hemisphere are the sign of an anti-cyclone to the south, whose presence would imply that we should try to outrun them by heading back toward Kastamonu. But Kent, who had lived in Turkey during the 1950's, said that in summer that pattern simply didn't occur, and that this must be humidity connected with the Black Sea, so we should head south. We did. By the time we got to Tokat, the skies were entirely clear, and in a small unnamed village south of there on the center line, we saw a very pretty eclipse, whose corona was scattered like Laurie Anderson's hair.	eclipse viewing site
Ray didn't take any pictures of the eclipse. preferring to watch one for a change; but tons of other people did, and the results may be found on the Internet, e.g. http://www.comet-track.com/eclipse/secl99/secl99_n.html.
Being so far south already, we decided to continue south to Malatya and to one of the near-wonders of the world (and a UNESCO World Heritage Site), the mausoleum of Antiochus I atop Nemrut Dagi. Antiochus was a Commagene king who stumbled into strategic importance as leader of a buffer state between the Romans and the Parthians in the middle of the 1st century BC, which he attributed to his own genius. There are two parts of the monument, one which is said to be facing the sunset and one which is said to be facing the sunrise. In fact they don't, but it's like Ecclesiastical East, the tour guides all say it. Each part has massive statues of Antiochus and his relatives Zeus, Apollo, Hercules, etc. There is a huge tumulus between the two parts, never excavated, possibly covering his grave.	Nemrut Dagi
After following a truck full of children down the mountain (the man riding shotgun carried automatic weapons; Malatya is near the border of Kurdistan) we headed east to the Göreme Valley, where people have for centuries lived in caves carved from the soft tufa.	Uchisar kale
In addition to the caves, there are underground cities, which go down hundreds of feet. At various times in history they are thought to have supported populations as large as 10,000 people.	Kent in a Nevsehir storage locker
We returned to Ankara where we were awakened at 3 AM by a long rolling earthquake. Being from California, we went back to sleep, thinking we'd just experienced a 4.0 earthquake in Ankara. But Kent, who had lived in Ankara, said that Ankara did not have earthquakes, and that whatever earthquake had awakened us must have been at a considerable distance, and very large. In the morning, the power was mostly out, and nobody at the hotel volunteered any information, so we continued driving north toward Istanbul. When we got near Adapazari, we came upon a huge traffic jam and saw the complete destruction in the town.	Adapazari in ruins, August 17 1999
We were forced to turn back and detour back toward Ankara, avoiding the freeways, but passing through pretty countryside which would remind you of the Gold Country in California or parts of southern France. At sundown we found a room in the town of Bursa, and the following day we were able to book passage on a modern Australian-built ferry across the Sea of Marmara back to Istanbul. We stayed at the same hotel as before, the Pierre Loti. There were cracks in the walls but no other damage. However, thousands of residents of Istanbul were sleeping in the streets due to the destruction in some neighborhoods, or the fear of aftershocks. The next day we left for Romania on an overnight bus. The wheels had to be tightened at every stop. n.b. Lonely Planet, this is not worth it. The real problem with the bus concept is that you spend 3 hours at customs entering Bulgaria and 3 more hours entering Romania. The passengers were mostly guest workers from Romania who are working in Turkey to replace the guest workers from Turkey who have gone to Germany.	maintenance The Romanian landscape is much after the Soviet model.
We ended our trip by traveling by train from Bucharest to Brazov, Brazov to Budapest, Budapest to Prague, and Prague to Munich. Our return flight was from Munich.	fellow travelers to Brazov public sculpture in Budapest ginger soup in Prague public sculpture in Prague Castle
When you fly from SFO to London during the summer, don't forget to look down over Greenland. There is some fascinating glaciation to be seen from the air.	Any idea what these formations are? east coast of Greenland