Santorini and Other Destinations

Dear family and friends,

I wanted to share a few more photos of my NJCU student trip to Greece. Some of these pictures were taken at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, while others were taken during field trips to other destinations in Athens and the south Cycladic Island of Santorini.

A golden lion from the Mycenaean Period

Minoan donkeys

Bronze of a boy horse racer

I think we really covered the main open-air museum sites in Athens well. Below are pictures of columns from the Temple of Zeus and the panorama from Lykavittos, the highest hill in Athens. Lykavittos rises above my old neighborhood in Kolonaki where I was a study-abroad student myself eighteen years ago. It was quite nostalgic to return to that neighborhood for a visit.

We were able to add one destination in Greece that I had not visited before. This was the chain of islands ringing the caldera of the volcano Thira -- aka Santorini. Many of the towns of Santorini are perched precariously on hundreds-meters high cliff sides that were formed after the cataclysmic blast around 1600 BCE. Many archaeologists think that destructive blast hastened the end of Minoan civilization. Some of them have used soil science and geological evidence to show that the blast not only destroyed the island of Thira but also created a tsunami that wreaked havoc in nearby Crete. The ancient Thira blast was one of the largest ever experience in human history, and it was similar in size to the early nineteenth-century eruption of Krakatoa. Some have speculated that ancient Thira might have been the basis for the ancient legend of the lost city of Atlantis.

There is evidence of the volcanic nature of the island all over its surface. We spent a morning at a black sand beach made from volcanic rock, for example. The next day we toured Greece's Pompei, Akrotiri, which had been a prosperous town inhabited by a Cycladic people with ties to the neighboring Minoan and Mycenaean Greek civilizations. The town was covered with many meters of ash and pumice in 1600 BCE, but it seems that the inhabitants had enough forewarning (presumably via earthquakes) to escape the island with their animals in tow.

Although I was glad to have the opportunity to travel, it's good to be back at my home base in Madison with Jim and Bucky. I plan to finish my book typescript and several articles this summer before returning to Jersey City in late August.

Best wishes for the summer,

jkb in Madison

Georgia and (back to) Greece

Dear family and friends,

It's been a tumultuous but rewarding two weeks since I last blogged. I spent five days last week in Tbilisi, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Although I only had one afternoon to tour the city, I learned a lot about the place during my visit. Most of my time was spent listening, moderating, and presenting at a marathon conference about the end of empire in the Caucasus at the turn of the twentieth century. My presentation went well, although I think the laptop on which I placed my Prezi infected my USB thumb drive. I hope that can be fixed when I return to NJCU.

Georgia has been the crossroads of empires for centuries, but the plucky little culture has maintained a distinctive identity of its own throughout the ages. Georgians speak an aboriginal Southwest Caucasian language unrelated to the Indo-European, Semitic, or Turkic language families. The language also has its own alphabet. I found it difficult to say even "hello" and "thank you" as a result. I'd love to visit for a longer period in the future. Georgia has many beautiful and ancient mountain top churches, and its lush west was believed to have been the birthplace of viticulture and wine.

Many Georgians are devout Orthodox Christians despite, or perhaps because of, their collective experience in the Soviet Union. Georgians hand out spare change to the poor as a matter of routine as an act of pious devotion and generosity. The small country of four million looks to Europe and especially the United States to protect it from Russia, with whom it had a brief war in the early 2000s. The Georgians even named the highway from the airport as "George W. Bush" highway. Georgia is one of the few neighboring countries with which Turkey has cordial relations in the recent past.

Despite its relative poverty, Tbilisi was an attractive city with tree-lined streets and Russian imperial architecture prevailing. I did get lost, but I found my way after asking directions in English. Some things were strange there, frankly. For example, there were a million ATMS but no payphones. All the old Soviet-era pay phones had been pulled from their sockets twenty-five years ago and left empty. Fear of big brother?

As my sojourn in Tbilisi ended, a new journey to Athens again. Ah, back to Athens! I had forgotten how marvelous this city could be. I have to confess that I'm visiting more sites in Athens this time around than I did when I spent my junior year abroad here in the mid 1990s. I think it's because I'm trying to give my NJCU students a broader experience than I had at College Year in Athens, which is a program to give technical training to specialists. Anyways, it is marvelous to be back. I am sitting out on my fifth-floor balcony watching a mild, golden sunset as the traffic below whizzes by and I type.

It's hard to believe that it has been eighteen years since I stayed here last. The last couple nights I have had free time to visit my old neighborhood, and so much and so little has changed. The College Year in Athens school building must have moved, because I did not see it where it used to stand. I think I remember hearing that they moved from posh Kolonoki to the less expensive neighborhood of Pangrati. I visited the area of my old apartment on the slopes of Lykovittos, the highest hill in Athens, and it was still there. However, many of the businesses had changed, and some of my classmates' old apartments were no longer residences. 

Fellow professor Tim White and I have planned some excellent field trips for our students during this eleven-day odyssey. These students will not suffer due to the last minute switch from Istanbul to Athens. Yesterday, we visited the misty sanctuary of Delphi in western Greece. One of my students said that it was the most beautiful place he had ever visited, and another face-booked a Wordsworth quote. Pink and white oleander is blooming everywhere in the countryside.

The ancient Greeks considered Delphi to be the center of the world, the omphalos. I can see why they would see it as a mystical place. The site, full of treasuries, temples, theaters, and stadia, runs hardscrabble along a cliff side spring nestled between two red-gray monoliths. In the other direction, Delphi towers over a pleasant valley of olive orchards below that terminate in a seaside villa and the gulf of Corinth on the Ionian Sea. Breathtaking!

Co-Worker and Co-Organizer Tim White

My favorite works of art in the magnificently redone museum were the sphinx and charioteer shown above.

I hope to send one last entry from the trip after our visit to Santorini (Thira) early next week.

jkb in Greece

Of Tokat and Taksim

Dear friends and family,

This weekend in Turkey was an adventure. Last Wednesday, I flew to Tokat, checked into a hotel, and began follow-up research for my book. I stayed until Sunday morning.

A view of Tokat castle from the seventeenth-century Voyvoda Han

The all-marble entry way to Tokat's Meydan Mosque

I had low expectations for this trip to Tokat, since I had little time to prepare ahead of time for in-depth research. However, it turned into a very productive venture. I met with a professor at Gaziosmanpaşa University the first full day I was there. He agreed to read my book draft and send comments. It's important to have other local historians do this type of review, because there are some important errors that they alone might catch initially.

The early crop of kiraz cherries

On the second full day on Friday, I reconnected with my grad school friend Zekeriya, who has become a well known and respected professor in Tokat. He's moving to a lucrative new position in the capital Ankara in the fall. They'll be sore here to lose him.

Cattle in a mountain meadow opposite Tokat

Although Zekeriya had to go to his hometown on Saturday to see his ailing father, he connected me with a group of his friends, and these friends made it their mission to give me a good tour. On Saturday morning, a local renaissance man and history aficionado named Hasan shared his research with me about his hometown of Tokat and passed along a lot of useful computer files. He's a twenty-first-century version of the nineteenth-century Tokati mover and shakers I study in my research. Another new friend, Ekrem, was the director of the local museum, and he gave me an expert tour of Tokat's major monuments.

That evening a group of ten of us crossed the bucolic Kazova plain below Tokat and ascended to the high mountain meadows south of town. The gravel roads up were rocky and treacherous. When we reached the mountain top meadows, surrounded by groves of oak, we walked to a brick cottage for the shepherds and made a barbecue of roasted lamb, eggplant, tomato, peppers, and onion. I refused some of the more "delectable" cuts of meat on offer.

Apart from the hearty companionship of the company, I really enjoyed getting to taste the sour cherries in the village below the mountain meadow. I also liked the ever patient Anatolian shepherd dogs that rested around us. These dogs are working dogs; they are fixed with sharp metal collars to protect them from the wolves they may have to battle in the high country.

An Anatolian Shepherd doggie hard at work

Grilling out (Ekrem Bey standing with staff; Hasan Erdem preparing peppers)

A feast of lamb and stew inside the cabin; Hasan -- a local history buff -- in red

So, I had a very full and eventful visit to Tokat. However, my adventure was to continue on my return to Istanbul. While I was gone in Tokat, protests had irrupted in the city center of Taksim Square. The trigger for the protests was the proposed destruction of the last major green space in the center city for a commercial development. The true underlying cause of the protest is the fear of left-leaning, secular-minded Turks that the current president, a center-right Islamist named Tayyıb Erdoğan, is "drunk" with ten years of unchallenged power. Erdoğan denies strenuously that he is any kind of king or dictator and points out that his party was democratically elected.

It reads "Freedom without Restraint"

Although Erdoğan has presided over a period of prolonged economic growth, average Turks are frustrated with their prospects. As in many market societies, wealth tends to accumulate to the wealthy here. Out of thirty some OECD nations, Turks rank themselves the least content with their lot. Erdoğan and his AK Party have unleashed a series of stodgy sumptory laws that have upset many secular-minded Turks who don't want the state to legislate religious morality.

The most famous police relic in the square

On Saturday, police tried to chase out protesters from Taksim Square with rubber bullets and tear gas. The police failed. I went up and took these pictures from the Square this cloudy afternoon. Hundreds of thousands of people were crowding into Taksim Square or its nearby promenade Istiklal Street. Something like 1,800 people have been arrested.

Reminiscent of the state capitol in Madison?

I'm a comfortable distance away from the protests, but many of my neighbors started banging on pots and pans and switching lights on and off at 9 pm sharp. That mass domestic protest lasted for about half-an-hour of continuous din.

Don't worry. I'll stay alert and out of trouble. I think these protests need not affect this upcoming NJCU student trip abroad.

jkbinturkey