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Sunday thru Tuesday, October 16 thru 18, 2005 - Staying at Alison’s Place, Shiffy and Yenge Cutting Quince, Eggeplant Jam Receipe, Finding a Jewish Synagogue in Sardis, Ephesus Here we Come, Exploring Ephesus


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Seljuk, October 16-18

It is quiet in the morning. No roosters, no dogs, just soft chirping of birds. There is a school across the street, we hear the school bell, we knew that we overstepped today. The school bell sounds like the ice-cream truck. There is no school today as there were three earthquakes here yesterday; one of them 5.9 and 48 people were injured. We felt the earthquakes in Seljuk, but it was not severe over here.

It was cold during the night. Even though Alison’s Place has good heavy blanket I slept fully clothed and even Benny, who is used to sleep in Adam’s outfit, got up in the middle of the night to put his sweats on.

Alison has a full house for breakfast. Tourist season is over, but when you are good, you are full also after season.

She calls her helper “Yenge”, Alison is not sure what “Yenge’s” real name is, but the local custom is to call older people in a respectful way that make them part of the family and Yenge means mother or sister in law.

Between serving breakfast to the guests, advising guests with traveling tips and taking care of her three kids who do not have school today, Alison and Yenge are cutting quince (havushim, in Hebrew), for making jam.

We start talking about jams because I love making jams. Alison says, “try this”, and she put in front of me light greenish pieces. Delicious, what is it?

And Alison says, “you guess”.

OK, so now we have a challenge. Both Benny and I try: squash, melon, something tropical, does not taste like anything familiar.

EGGPLANT. We were eating eggplant jam and it was delicious. So here is the recipe and I will try it whenever we are back home: Start with the long thin eggplant, the kind that does not have seeds. Peel and soak in water for three hours. Pour water out.

Add sugar and water and boil for a few hours.

I joined the women in cutting the havushim. I am at my element now! Alison serves breakfast, and after that the kitchen is available for the use of the guests. We love it. We love cooking at home and we miss having our own kitchen. Last night, beside our large salad, Benny made a dish with pieces of chicken thigh, potato, zucchini, onion, parsley curry, salt and black pepper. An hour later, we had a dessert of the local yogurt with honey and dry fruit and a big cup of hot tea.

The three women from Fortworth Texas who came to Turkey to look for the Seven Churches and found a Synagogue for me.

Three lovely ladies, very devout Christians, who came to Turkey on a mission to visit the seven churches and are also staying at the Kiwi Pension, better known as Alison’s Place.

We Exchanged experiences, I told them about my discovery of Jewish life in Izmir. They told me about the Seven Churches of Revelation, which are very important places for Christians. They already visited one of the churches; it is here, in Seljuk. The others are around Izmir area. The next day they hired a driver to take them to explore the other churches.

When they came back at the night, what did they tell me? They found me a magnificent Jewish Synagogue in Sardis, close to Izmir. I looked at their guidebook. The synagogue was built in the second century AD and was abandoned after the Sassanian invasion in 616 AD. It was called Havra, had beautiful decoration, fine geometric mosaic paving and colored stones on the walls. Today there are row of Byzantine shops, which once belonged to Jewish merchants. Some of the buildings were identified from the inscriptions: a restaurant, Jacob’s paint shop, an Office, a hardware shop, a shop belonging to Sabbatios and Jacob, the elders of the synagogue.

Ephesus, here we come

Ephesus or Efes, is a must on the tourists map. It is the best-preserved classical city in the Eastern Mediterranean, and only 30% have been excavated so far. Ancient Ephesus was established on the shore of the bay at the point where Cayster River falls into the sea and on the slopes of Mt. Pion. However, over the years, the alluviums that were carried by the river, filled the bay, and today Ephesus is six km away from the sea, and where once was a harbor, is a flat valley with cotton fields. Ephesus lost its place as a trading city and was completely deserted at the 14th century.

The high days of Ephesus were during the Roman Empire (1st-2nd ad), when Ephesus became the capital of Asia Minor. It had 250,000 inhabitants, beautiful homes, grand theatre, large library, nice streets and much more that we will explore soon.

As the harbor continue to silt up, the importance of the city declined, however some development continue during the early Christian and Byzantine period. The Byzantine castle was built from fine stones from earlier periods. ‘Quarring’, using pre-cut stones from older periods, mostly stones from buildings that were ruined by earthquakes, is a constant feature of Ephesian history.

We are starting our exploration of Ephesus, guidebook on hand, and you can follow with the photos that we took: Long marbled paved streets lead to the library, to the grand theatre and to the old harbor. Under the streets, there were large clay pipes that served to bring water into the houses and bathhouse. Another pipe system served to remove sewage from the city. Along the streets were 50 streetlights; you can see where the poles were installed. The marble that lined the streets is grooved, to avoid slippery. On both sides were shops, official building and the home of the wealthy. Most of the people live up the hills or on the outskirts of the city.

We stopped at the bathhouse and the latrine. The Hamams, the Turkish bathhouses, which are very popular in Turkey, originated from the Roman bathhouses. There are a dressing room, a cold-water room, a hot water room, a lukewarm water room and steam rooms. It was a place for people to gather and talk.

The public latrine is very interesting. Holes are carved in the marble and fifty people could sit one next to the other, with no privacy. There was a pool in the center with noisy ducks. No ceiling, for fresh air. Channel with fresh water was in front of the seats, so that people can clean themselves. When the weather was cold and the marble seats got very cold, the aristocrats used to sent their servants to sit and warm up the marble for them.

There were two famous schools in Ephesus, a medical school and a philosophy school. Two very famous doctors, who wrote important medical books, lived here: Rufus and Soranos. Rufus wrote on topics such as vascular, renal bladder illness, gout, cardiac system, treatment of wounds and diet. He invented medications and was also interested in psychiatry. He saw a connection between the psychic and physical health. Soranos wrote important books in the field of gynecology. He wrote about gynecological illnesses, obstetrics and the care of infants. He also wrote about fever, hygiene, medication, broken bones and dislocations. We saw the remnants of the medical schools with a relief of snake and a scale. Here they also originated some medical instruments, such as an ancient instrument to extract arrowheads. We saw surgeon’s drills, spoons, spatulas, pliers, hooks and needles, bottles and tray for mixing medications.

We passed the Odeum, where town meetings were held. It is a small amphitheatre with only 1500 seats. We passed the Municipality Palace where the sacred fire was kept by women, who came from good families, and who had to stay virgin in order to have the honor of keeping the fire.

We came to the large library. At one time it had 12,000 books. They were getting the paper from Egypt, until the Egyptian were worried that the library of Ephesus will be larger than the library of Alexandria and stopped the shipping of papyrus. The Ephesusians replaced the papyrus with parchment made by the people in Pergamon, who had the technology to make parchment out of goatskins.

We watched a large foot, stepping on a round ball. This mythology figure had the world under his foot, which indicated that in the second century there was the knowledge that the world was round, many years before Galileo.

We saw the relief of the goddess of victory, Nike. Please take a look at the photo, they claim that the name Nike (the sport good company) originated from the goddess of victory and you can see the swoosh next to her, which is the trademark of Nike. Nike was a winged Messenger of the gods that delegated her to gain victory everywhere she goes.

We admired a relief of Heracles who was wrapping himself with lion skin, a lion that he killed with his bare hands. We saw beautiful mosaic from the homes of the wealthy and the ruling classes. The homes were 2-3 stories high, with central heating and hot and cold water. Homes had expensive decorated fountains, mosaic on the floor; frescoes covered the walls with scenery from the mythology, theatre show and designs of figures. Statues of Socrates and Plato were found in homes. We looked at a relief of the goddess Medusa, who keeps out the evil spirits. In Hadrianus Temple we saw a relief of the amazons, powerful women who wanted to get rid of men.

Some of the original relieves are in the museum in Vienna, Ephesus received plastic duplications.

At the grand theatre, we stopped to listen to performances by various tourist groups. The acoustic is fantastic for this 25,000 seats theatre, and tours stop here and some brave tourists went on stage and sang. We enjoyed the Spanish and the Japanese groups.

In the Ephesus museum I later saw huge remnants of the statue of Emperor Augustus and his wife Livia from the beginning of the first century AD. Both statues were badly broken. Augustus arm was about one meter long. Both faces had crosses on the forehead. The Christians who came to the area baptized the statues later, but somebody over the years broke them pretty bad.

The Grand Theatre used to face the harbor. There is a road, the Harbor Street that is also paved with marble. However, where once was a harbor, there is a rich farming valley today.

On the way home I was watching the cotton harvest and admired the streetlights that resemble some of the columns in Ephesus.

Sunday, October 16
Today is recuperating day. We are reading, writing our journal, laundry and walking around town. Tomorrow we will start exploring the wonders of Ephesus.

We are at Kiwi Pension, or as it is called by the locals, Alison Place. It is owned by an English woman, Alison and her Turkish husband. She came to Seljuk 21 years ago and fell in love with the place. They have three blond-blue eyes adorable kids. They also have a carpet shop, a restaurant and a mandarin orchard with a large swimming pool. She is beautiful and very pleasant and we enjoyed a long conversation with her today after breakfast. We can use the kitchen here. Benny went shopping while I am writing and we are going to have a special dinner tonight.

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