Greeks in turkey

I stumbled upon this old town which I have to tell you about; and I stumbled upon this (presumably) 2000 year old turtle which I have to show you.

So, after Troy, these greeks being such vehement builders, I went to Assos, which isn’t too far away from the campsite I stayed at. Assos was a major city, founded 1000 to 900 bc, and Aristotle also lived there after moving from Athens. The remains aren’t as big as ephesus (apparently, I will see) but many things have been recovered. What’s amazing about it, is that you start all the way at the top of the city, and go down towards the sea where the entire city used to be laid out. I can tell you, that’s really quite steep, and big, but also quite a feat: they cut out parts of the mountain to build certain buildings, like the market.

The town itself nowadays is really dependent on tourism, but it’s nice enough to walk to the archeological site.

A bit further up down the road, towards the sea, you come upon very small towns with lots of mini markets that don’t sell anything — there is so much produce here, olives, pomegranates, fruit, but nothing is sold in the useless shops — thousands of shady uninviting restaurants, “glamping” sites, and bungalow campings. Just only tourism there, and where there was nothing to being with, tourism cannot bring anything. It’s a dull street devoid of any identity, and all campings are now closed or asked way too much to sleep in the tent — one didn’t even understand I wanted to sleep in my tent. In the end, I just slept on a seemingly abandoned plot of land with olive trees. There was a guy in a car who went fishing there, though — who spoke perfect english (how nice that change was)— who said that there were a lot of Pakistani etc immigrants that tried to come ashore in the middle of the night there.

Oh, it turned out it wasn’t that abandoned, as just as I was packing, a group of 20 people came to work on the place. I wanted to disappear.

No worries though, I either did or they couldn’t care less, and 80 km further I sort of stumbled upon this small city Ayvalık: this city is not Turkish, it is a greek city inside Turkey. Small cobbled streets, lots of restaurants and bars (with alcohol, which you don’t see that often), and Synagogues that were converted to mosques. Really bizarre. The reason? https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/turkey-a… The population exchange after the fight for Turkish independence and the establishment of Turkey. It was all religious, and it has very weird consequences.

Im in a hotel again btw. I like the balance between no comfort, and comfort 😅Read more