Hello Pergamum
Day 6
I got a free Turkish vocab lesson at dinner last night. It turned out that sossi, the mystery ingredient in my Funghi pizza, was chopped up hotdog sausage. I used hand gestures to explain my retardation when it came to reading the menu and free of charge I got a replacement without sausage. I’m really struggling to imagine anywere in England when a non English speaker could wave their arms about to explain they didn’t know what their meal was going to be, then have it replaced with a customised version without being charged anything. I think tough would be the usual response.
Today’s bus is meant to be 3.5 to 4 hours and take me to Bergama, or at least take me to the bus station, from where a minibus will take me to Bergama and my pension by the Roman Bridge in the old town. It does sound rather nice. The fact that there aren’t any hostels or places with dorm beds in Bergama reinforces my expectation that it will be rather nice. Bergama used to be known as Pergamum, which may be a more familiar name. It was a wealthy and powerful kingdom for about 400 years around the time that Jesus popped out. The ruins sound impressive and much more together than Troy-they include a theatre, a Temple of Trajan and an Acropolis. It sounds like an excellent stop.
I guess the Asian and European plates are colliding to the South of Canakkale, for we’ve got up and down over some pretty steep windy windy roads. Not as full on as the ones I drove up to reach Belle Plagne earlier in the month, but enough for me to be happy to just be a passenger on this occasion.
When we dropped back down to sea level and a coastal road, I got a text message. Rather than someone loving me, it turned out to be an automatic operator message welcoming me to Greece. If you don’t how provocatively close some of the Greek Islands in the Aegean are to the coast of Turkey, then it really is worth getting a map out. I’m not sure how clear the day even needs to be to see many of them from Turkey. Rhodes is a good size, find that and see the small sliver of water you cross to reach Turkey. There are plenty closer. It helps you understand why they don’t tend to vote for each other in the Eurovision song contest.
Even in January it is a beautiful stretch of coast. From my seat on the bus I can see how clear and cobalt the water is. I suspect once you got in you’d wish you hadn’t been tempted, but a swim does look mighty good from where I’m sat. Looking at the unattractive pile of buildings on my left, this must be a popular holiday spot. I can’t help but feel that’s a shame. I never will understand the appeal of the traditional beach holiday, cooking yourself on a crowded beach and eating in phoney restaurants.
I’m quite stunned at how helpful and friendly people have been tonight
The bus doesn’t go straight to Bergama, you get dropped at a massive Otogar (bus station), from where you get a minibus to take you ythe 7 km into town. The Otogar was pretty deserted, but I got pointed to where the minibus would pick me up. Bergama was rather than I had imagined, so finding the hostel looked as if it might have been a challenge. Instead of which half the bus passed round my piece of paper with the key landmarks and address of my pension. They agreed on where I had to get off and then a lady took me to it! Genius. As it was dark and cold and a bit of a maze, I really lucked out. Again.
It’s low season, so I got a tour of the Athena pension and got to choose my room-it’ll be away from the noisy students arriving tomorrow! My host is top and is also getting me a map and some shortcuts for getting around tomorrow-a real bonus, as LP suggests a 50 Lira taxi tour to get about.
Day 7
Let’s talk about Pergamum, seeing as everything I’m going to see is from antiquity, I think it’s fair enough to ignore Bergama, much of which is so recent. The two key areas are the Acropolis, which I can see a little of from my room and is up a big hill and is supposed to 6km away and the Asclepion, which is 3km away. In the other direction. Both are also quite large sites when you get there. Time to unpack the walking boots then.
Good news for lazy bones from the pension-master, I can cut some of the distance off the Acropolis, which I decide to tackle first. I’ve been told there’s a hole in the fence and since the road wraps right round the hill this should give a shorter, if substantially steeper, way in. In the end I only need to use the short cut on the way back-after half an hour’s walk I’m on the road to the Acropolis and a car screeches to a halt next to me. The gesturing clearly means ‘get in’. In South America that would mean run for your life, here it just means the guys who run one of the stalls up top don’t want to see me wiped out before I start. They don’t even try and sell me anything when we get there.
When I arrive, only 40 mins after opening time the people from the tour bus are heading back to the exit. For the next hour or so, I have the whole place to myself. I think Acropolis means fortified hill or something very close to it. Like Troy, Pergamum has taken a steep hill to provide a sterling defensive position for the city-the walls extended to 4km and in Roman times 150,000 people lived there. Still, I think the view had some influence on the decision to site the city here.
There is some much stone on the site that being a good boy and not stepping on it simply isn’t an option, so it becomes like a childhood flashback, clambering up and down through the ruins and history at times becomes a playground. Obviously a city of this size has a number of buildings and a lot infrastructure, but it’s the big spectacular stuff that draws in the tourists and the theatre and the Temple of Trajan are the real focus. Those Romans were really were the daddy’s of big public building projects-they’d have sorted Wembley out. They didn’t mess about, they looked at what needed to be done, what would achieve it and did it. Take this example-when you build on hills you need terracing so that you have flat areas to work with and they need to be strong enough to support your construction. So when you’re building yourself a nice Temple of Trajan and you need to extend the terrace, you build something like this.
Between each pair of columns is a chamber
None of this space was used for anything, it helped support the platform above, on which the real building sat. No messing about. The Temple itself was destroyed, but some reconstruction has been done to give you an idea of what it was all about.
Rather prosaically, I found myself wondering about the economy needed to support such efforts. Huge blocks of stone and marble, not just dragged by slaves, but shaped by real craftsmen. I may have mentioned, all this was up quite a hill. Of course what goes up must come down and the 200,000 scrolls in the library were taken down (pinched) by Anthony so he could give them to Cleopatra.
My favourite was the 10,000 seater theatre, which looked out across the valley {I have just discovered an awesome remix, just waiting to be done-the Kaiser Chiefs with the call to prayer in the background}. Where was I? Oh yeah, theatre photo time.
One of the bigger crowds I’ve played.
(It was quite windy and cold up there).
It was really from the Asclepion, where you can best see just what a stunning setting it was all in.
It took me an hour and some to scramble my way down, cross the river and find the Asclepion. On the way my photography skills were demanded.
I think they’ve done that before. I say find the Asclepion as if I were finding a Starbucks in a capital city. It wasn’t all that easy. Finding a complex with a large colonnaded approach, a temple and theatre ought to be a piece of you know what. Hmmm. Well it wasn’t well signposted. Well, it wasn’t signposted. That shouldn’t mattered as I had a map. Or I did have until it fell out of my back pocket. I remembered it was right, somewhere off the main street. I knew I was on the right lines when I turned right and saw stairs climbing up and then more stairs after those and then some more. Well you wouldn’t want to build in the valley would you? Roman houses NEVER flooded.
After a vertigo inducing climb I saw a huge military base and remembered that the Asclepion had been behind something military thing. With nothing to go on, I chose to go round it to the left (military types don’t tend to like you wandering across their bases-that’s why they spend a fortune on barbed wire). Having gone up yet another hill, I saw some Roman looking stuff and the Military Police told me they loved England and I was on the right way. Wuhoo.
Then a tour bus roared past in confirmation. It must have been quite an entrance back in the day.
This time the temple was Hadrian’s
If you knew the way it was probably only an hour to the 10,000 seat theatre on the Acropolis, but the Romans were like Aussies for building venues and this one would take 3,500.
I took a seat in the audience this time.
(The tour bus had left, so I had to improvise with the base of a column and my wallet). There was less explanation here, but I thought scrambling around in the underground chambers and archways was about as good as the bits above ground. I really need to get back to reading some Latin and some Roman history. I struggled to remember who wrote the Aeneid yesterday, which is appalling given I read quite a lot of it for A level 15 years ago and nearly read Classics.
Sadly the archaeology museum is shut on Mondays, so I’ll have to go there first thing before getting my bus to Selcuk. I’d been hoping to leave early so I could see the town tomorrow before spending the day in Ephesus (more Roman, more famous) on Wednesday, so guess I’ll just have to work fast with the time I do have in Selcuk. Still, most musea and sights open at 8 or 8.30, so it’s easy to get a pretty long day in. My legs feel as if today was long enough; the Romans built some marvellous things, but they would insist on building them on bloody big hills. Still I did save on hiring a taxi for the day……sleep well tonight.
I got a free Turkish vocab lesson at dinner last night. It turned out that sossi, the mystery ingredient in my Funghi pizza, was chopped up hotdog sausage. I used hand gestures to explain my retardation when it came to reading the menu and free of charge I got a replacement without sausage. I’m really struggling to imagine anywere in England when a non English speaker could wave their arms about to explain they didn’t know what their meal was going to be, then have it replaced with a customised version without being charged anything. I think tough would be the usual response.
Today’s bus is meant to be 3.5 to 4 hours and take me to Bergama, or at least take me to the bus station, from where a minibus will take me to Bergama and my pension by the Roman Bridge in the old town. It does sound rather nice. The fact that there aren’t any hostels or places with dorm beds in Bergama reinforces my expectation that it will be rather nice. Bergama used to be known as Pergamum, which may be a more familiar name. It was a wealthy and powerful kingdom for about 400 years around the time that Jesus popped out. The ruins sound impressive and much more together than Troy-they include a theatre, a Temple of Trajan and an Acropolis. It sounds like an excellent stop.
I guess the Asian and European plates are colliding to the South of Canakkale, for we’ve got up and down over some pretty steep windy windy roads. Not as full on as the ones I drove up to reach Belle Plagne earlier in the month, but enough for me to be happy to just be a passenger on this occasion.
When we dropped back down to sea level and a coastal road, I got a text message. Rather than someone loving me, it turned out to be an automatic operator message welcoming me to Greece. If you don’t how provocatively close some of the Greek Islands in the Aegean are to the coast of Turkey, then it really is worth getting a map out. I’m not sure how clear the day even needs to be to see many of them from Turkey. Rhodes is a good size, find that and see the small sliver of water you cross to reach Turkey. There are plenty closer. It helps you understand why they don’t tend to vote for each other in the Eurovision song contest.
Even in January it is a beautiful stretch of coast. From my seat on the bus I can see how clear and cobalt the water is. I suspect once you got in you’d wish you hadn’t been tempted, but a swim does look mighty good from where I’m sat. Looking at the unattractive pile of buildings on my left, this must be a popular holiday spot. I can’t help but feel that’s a shame. I never will understand the appeal of the traditional beach holiday, cooking yourself on a crowded beach and eating in phoney restaurants.
I’m quite stunned at how helpful and friendly people have been tonight
The bus doesn’t go straight to Bergama, you get dropped at a massive Otogar (bus station), from where you get a minibus to take you ythe 7 km into town. The Otogar was pretty deserted, but I got pointed to where the minibus would pick me up. Bergama was rather than I had imagined, so finding the hostel looked as if it might have been a challenge. Instead of which half the bus passed round my piece of paper with the key landmarks and address of my pension. They agreed on where I had to get off and then a lady took me to it! Genius. As it was dark and cold and a bit of a maze, I really lucked out. Again.
It’s low season, so I got a tour of the Athena pension and got to choose my room-it’ll be away from the noisy students arriving tomorrow! My host is top and is also getting me a map and some shortcuts for getting around tomorrow-a real bonus, as LP suggests a 50 Lira taxi tour to get about.
Day 7
Let’s talk about Pergamum, seeing as everything I’m going to see is from antiquity, I think it’s fair enough to ignore Bergama, much of which is so recent. The two key areas are the Acropolis, which I can see a little of from my room and is up a big hill and is supposed to 6km away and the Asclepion, which is 3km away. In the other direction. Both are also quite large sites when you get there. Time to unpack the walking boots then.
Good news for lazy bones from the pension-master, I can cut some of the distance off the Acropolis, which I decide to tackle first. I’ve been told there’s a hole in the fence and since the road wraps right round the hill this should give a shorter, if substantially steeper, way in. In the end I only need to use the short cut on the way back-after half an hour’s walk I’m on the road to the Acropolis and a car screeches to a halt next to me. The gesturing clearly means ‘get in’. In South America that would mean run for your life, here it just means the guys who run one of the stalls up top don’t want to see me wiped out before I start. They don’t even try and sell me anything when we get there.
When I arrive, only 40 mins after opening time the people from the tour bus are heading back to the exit. For the next hour or so, I have the whole place to myself. I think Acropolis means fortified hill or something very close to it. Like Troy, Pergamum has taken a steep hill to provide a sterling defensive position for the city-the walls extended to 4km and in Roman times 150,000 people lived there. Still, I think the view had some influence on the decision to site the city here.
There is some much stone on the site that being a good boy and not stepping on it simply isn’t an option, so it becomes like a childhood flashback, clambering up and down through the ruins and history at times becomes a playground. Obviously a city of this size has a number of buildings and a lot infrastructure, but it’s the big spectacular stuff that draws in the tourists and the theatre and the Temple of Trajan are the real focus. Those Romans were really were the daddy’s of big public building projects-they’d have sorted Wembley out. They didn’t mess about, they looked at what needed to be done, what would achieve it and did it. Take this example-when you build on hills you need terracing so that you have flat areas to work with and they need to be strong enough to support your construction. So when you’re building yourself a nice Temple of Trajan and you need to extend the terrace, you build something like this.
Between each pair of columns is a chamber
None of this space was used for anything, it helped support the platform above, on which the real building sat. No messing about. The Temple itself was destroyed, but some reconstruction has been done to give you an idea of what it was all about.
Rather prosaically, I found myself wondering about the economy needed to support such efforts. Huge blocks of stone and marble, not just dragged by slaves, but shaped by real craftsmen. I may have mentioned, all this was up quite a hill. Of course what goes up must come down and the 200,000 scrolls in the library were taken down (pinched) by Anthony so he could give them to Cleopatra.
My favourite was the 10,000 seater theatre, which looked out across the valley {I have just discovered an awesome remix, just waiting to be done-the Kaiser Chiefs with the call to prayer in the background}. Where was I? Oh yeah, theatre photo time.
One of the bigger crowds I’ve played.
(It was quite windy and cold up there).
It was really from the Asclepion, where you can best see just what a stunning setting it was all in.
It took me an hour and some to scramble my way down, cross the river and find the Asclepion. On the way my photography skills were demanded.
I think they’ve done that before. I say find the Asclepion as if I were finding a Starbucks in a capital city. It wasn’t all that easy. Finding a complex with a large colonnaded approach, a temple and theatre ought to be a piece of you know what. Hmmm. Well it wasn’t well signposted. Well, it wasn’t signposted. That shouldn’t mattered as I had a map. Or I did have until it fell out of my back pocket. I remembered it was right, somewhere off the main street. I knew I was on the right lines when I turned right and saw stairs climbing up and then more stairs after those and then some more. Well you wouldn’t want to build in the valley would you? Roman houses NEVER flooded.
After a vertigo inducing climb I saw a huge military base and remembered that the Asclepion had been behind something military thing. With nothing to go on, I chose to go round it to the left (military types don’t tend to like you wandering across their bases-that’s why they spend a fortune on barbed wire). Having gone up yet another hill, I saw some Roman looking stuff and the Military Police told me they loved England and I was on the right way. Wuhoo.
Then a tour bus roared past in confirmation. It must have been quite an entrance back in the day.
This time the temple was Hadrian’s
If you knew the way it was probably only an hour to the 10,000 seat theatre on the Acropolis, but the Romans were like Aussies for building venues and this one would take 3,500.
I took a seat in the audience this time.
(The tour bus had left, so I had to improvise with the base of a column and my wallet). There was less explanation here, but I thought scrambling around in the underground chambers and archways was about as good as the bits above ground. I really need to get back to reading some Latin and some Roman history. I struggled to remember who wrote the Aeneid yesterday, which is appalling given I read quite a lot of it for A level 15 years ago and nearly read Classics.
Sadly the archaeology museum is shut on Mondays, so I’ll have to go there first thing before getting my bus to Selcuk. I’d been hoping to leave early so I could see the town tomorrow before spending the day in Ephesus (more Roman, more famous) on Wednesday, so guess I’ll just have to work fast with the time I do have in Selcuk. Still, most musea and sights open at 8 or 8.30, so it’s easy to get a pretty long day in. My legs feel as if today was long enough; the Romans built some marvellous things, but they would insist on building them on bloody big hills. Still I did save on hiring a taxi for the day……sleep well tonight.
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did you know that when you Google 'John Van de Poll blogspot', the third entry is www.keepswinging.com
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