Backlog of Photos from Istanbul and then onwards with the journey

Date: 05 December 2006 10:39:16

Here are some of the photos from my first few days in Istanbul:

Pictured above is the Sultan's mothers room in the Harem of the Topkapi Palace

This is the door that leads into the Circumcision Room. Thankfully there were no re-enacments!

That same day I went to the Grand Bazaar for the first time (this picture was from my third excursion there):

Two days later and I was off to the Spice Markets. I found that I was hassled here more than anywhere else ("be my darling"... "do you want to marry me" etc, etc.). It did allow for great photo opportunities though:

The day after that I had gone to the Hagia Sophia. You can't quite grasp the expanse of this Church/Mosque in one photo so instead I have posted a photo of one of the gold mosaics:

and also the colour and decoration of the Upper Gallery:

As the arrival of the Pope drew ever nearer, this was the prominent sight around the Hagia Sophia:

I didn't get any good photos from inside the Blue Mosque so here is the generic one from the outside:

The day after that I was picked up and taken to Canakkale for my day trip of Gallipoli. On my tour was a V8 Supercar Driver named Jason Bargwanna who had just been racing in Bahrain (he and his wife were absolutely lovely and Jason even shouted the bus a round of beer on the way back to Istanbul). When we arrived in Canakkale I was informed that the Trojan Horse that was in the Brad Pitt version of Troy was down on the Harbour so I walked down there to have a look (this also saved me an early morning rise to be taken to the archaeological site of Troy to see the other version):

The next morning at about 11am we set off for Gallipoli. This was a terribly sobering experience but I am glad that I did it. I felt apologetic as we heard more and more stories about the horror that went on there. It was absolutely freezing so we definately sympathised with the stories about soldiers being evacuated due to frostbite. On the first stop our guide found a bullet (or piece of shrapnel) and said that it is not an uncommon thing because in the space of 1 metre squared, historians found over 6,000 pieces of shrapnel!

This is the speech that Ataturk made in 1934 that stands on a large memorial at Gallipoli:

"Those heroes that shed their blood
and lost their lives...
you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country
therefore rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
and the Mermets to us where they lie side by side
here in this country of ours...
You, the mothers,
who sent their sons from far away countries
wipe away your tears;
your sons are now lying in our bosom
and are in peace.
After having lost their lives on this land they have
become our sons as well"

This is the look around Anzac Cove and you can certainly grasp the reality of the climb they faced when they landed on this beach (apparently the controversial road works have shortened the width of the beach because they dumped the soil on it):

This is the Lone Pine Memorial. The story behind this tree is that a soldier had been killed and his friend found a pine cone on his body which he then sent back to the dead soldier's mother. She planted it in her garden and it grew. When they were building the Memorial here they asked her to send a pine cone over which she did and now it has grown into this tree (this is also where the plaque is of the youngest serving Allied soldier at just 14 years old):

In one place the trenches were only about 8 metres apart so we were driving along the road and literally on one side were the Turkish trenches and on the other side were the Allied trenches. Here is one of the Turkish trenches:

It is just really hard to comprehend how close they were living (and the stories such as one grenade went back and forth between the trenches a few times before going off). Even harder to comprehend the amount of people that lost their lives. Including those who were killed in battle, in hospitals and as a result of injuries after this battle, approximately 500,000 soldiers lost their life because of Gallipoli.

The other thing that tugged on my heart strings were the stories of compassion. There is a statue of a Turkish man carrying a British soldier and the story behind it is that after a cease fire a British soldier could be heard screaming from no mans land. The Turkish officers could have shot him and the Allied soldiers couldn't have retrieved him without risking their own lives. Then from the Turkish trenches, a white flag was raised by a Turkish soldier and he got out of the trench, went over to the British soldier, lifted him up and carried him over to the Allied trenches and placed him on the sandbags before going back to his own trench. There seem to be many stories like that from Gallipoli.

I am now back in Den Haag (minus my luggage that went missing between Istanbul and Amsterdam). I have moved into a studio apartment for the next month while the lady goes on holidays. This afternoon I am off to the New Zealand Embassy to pick up 20 hours worth of data entry work.

I think that is about it for now.