Phaselis and Arykanda

In all of Lycia, there are only two major ruins that up until now I haven`t seen: Phaselis and Arykanda. For some reason, I`ve missed them time and again. Not this visit. The only problem was that they were quite far apart and I was depending on Turkish buses to get me there and back. It turned out to be no problem at all. Sure, it took all day, but man, was it ever cool. Let`s start with Phaselis:

It`s only about 10 miles north of where I was staying at Olimpos. I`ve been to Olimpos many times, but God knows why I´ve missed this place. It´s fantastic. But don´t take my word for it. The indispensable Blue Guide (otherwise known as the Blue Brick for its heft) waxes poetic about the site thusly:

Visitors to Phaselis often confess themselves deeply moved by the beauty of its situatıon between the mountains and the sea. The sight of fragments of ancient buildings protruding from the lush undergrowth produces a mood of gentle melancholy.

First things first, Greeks were mental for natural harbors. Phaselis doesn´t have one - it has three. Here´s the North Harbor:

Here are other pictures:






Are you feeling the gentle melancholy yet? I sure am. The place is really quite beautiful, all by the shore and stuff. But it was time to go way far up into the mountains to Arykanda. Once again, take it away, Blue Guide:

Arykanda is one of the most beautiful places in Turkey. It has been compared, not unfavourably, with Delphi in Greece.

Really now? How the hell is that possible? I´ve been to a lot of beautiful places in this country and nobody´s said anything about Arykanda, which, in its time, was a minor city in the mountains whose inhabitants were renowned for their laziness.

You know what? The Blue Guide is absolutely right. The city is built on a series of terraces that stretch up the side of a mountain. Things are steep. All exploring is done with the tacit understanding that if you fall, you´re dead. Here are some more compelling shots:








For you fans of masonry, here are two styles that comprise the theater:


The place has been standing for the last 2,000 years, so I think they did something right. Oh, and there were mosaics:



Byzantine, yes, but still very nice.

It was a truly spectacular day. I made it back with tales to tell. Unfortunately, nobody at where I was staying was interested. Oh well. Anyhow, our lesson for today is never doubt The Blue Guide. Never.

Phrasebook Phun

You know, I´ve been been trying to post photos from this wondrous, beautiful place to no avail. I´ve got two of the best minds in Patara working on it (Soner, the hotel owner, and his son, Hassan) and nada. But I was thumbing through my Turkish phrasebook and I came across some really bizarre stuff. Here are a few phrases you might find useful during your next trip to Turkey:

I´d like to learn some of your local dialects: Bu yörelerin şivesini öğrenmek istiyorum. (Yeah, even though I know only a few words of Turkish, teach me how to speak with a southern accent. That oughta go over well.)

Please use a new syringe: Lütfen yeni bir iğne kullanın. (Always useful.)

My child weighs 1000 kilos: Çocuğumun ağırlığı bin kilodur. (But other than that, he´s completely average.)

This is burnt and stale! Bu yanık ve bayat! (So far, everything I´ve gotten that has been burnt has been fresh.)

I like to explore wrecks: Batıklan incelemek istiyorum.

I do scuba wrestling: Ben aletli güreş yaparım.

You´re on your own as far as pronunciation goes. I´ll look for more useful phrases.

One Last Thing About Ukraine

Hey folks, it`s going to be a little while before I can post more Turkey shots (and they`re pretty spectacular), so I figured that I`d have one last parting shot at Ukraine. You know, I left less than a week ago and it`s like I was never there. Yeah, that`s how good of a time I`m having in Turkey. But here is one good thing about Ukraine: nobody has tattoos. In the whole country, I saw one tattoo parlor and it doubled as a shoe repair shop. There`s a stigma that accompanies tattoos over there. Unless you want your fellow convicts to know how many people you stabbed ın the eye, there`s really no point. So that`s a good thing. Here`s what will drive you nuts: the world`s worst ringtones. I swear to God. They`re just terrible. And they`re always at top volume. A lot of them are either Ukrainian hip-hop (unfortunately, it does exist), some lame-ass balladry from American Idol or something far worse. So there you go. The two things cancel each other out. The verdict? Ukraine still sucks.

Antalya

OK, I admit it. I've warmed up to Antalya. This is due for the most part to the place I stayed in the old city. Everybody there was so extremely nice. God, what a change from Ukraine! I'm afraid I don't have any proper pictures from the city, but I did visit the museum and I took pictures of heads and assorted other stuff. Check them out:










So Antalya isn't such a bad place after all. But I'm off to other places. Will report shortly.

The Old Country 4

Today is the day I leave. I have a flight from Odessa tomorrow. Nobody has figured out when or how I'm going to get there, but I'm not concerned. We have more visiting to do before that. There's Cousin Gennik in the afternoon and Cousin Roman in the evening. I assumed that some sort of train from somewhere would whisk me away after that. Around noonish, Cousin Bogdan came and got us. He drives a new Lada. I looks like a Hyundai. Bogdan works in a bank in Ternopil and his wife just had a baby. I mean, like the day before. It's so new to the world that it doesn't even have a name. That makes Cousins Gennik and Lyuba grandparents. Golly. Anyhow, we again found ourselves in Karashintsy. Here is a picture of our hosts:

Those are Cousins Bogdan, Lyuba, Andriy (he's pathologically shy) and Gennik. Cousin Gennik is a legendarily laconic fellow. He makes a confirmed stoic like Cousin Arsen look positively chatty. He is also an extremely no-nonsense guy. In the past, he's said stuff to me like, "Why the fuck are you asking that? It's a stupid question" and other bits of encouragement. He also mumbles. But today, Cousin Gennik was in an expansive mood. He poured round after round for us and actually made conversation. A bit later on, he took us for a walk and showed us the neighboring buildings he'd recently acquired. Here he is in front of one of his tractors:

I've never seen the guy so in the mood to receive visitors. Maybe it was the birth of his first grandchild. Maybe it's just that life is getting better, but it's nice to see that things are going his way.

After all that good and booze, I was ready to take on Cousin Roman. But once we got back to Cousin Arsen's, he declared that we absolutely, positively had to leave immediately and drive really fast to Ternopil. We, drat. No Cousin Roman this time around. Good thing that Roman was there waiting for us. I made my apologies and sent Kathy and Tim along with him. Luckily for them, he had invited some woman who spoke some English to dinner, so I'm guessing that they were able to communicate. Meanwhile, Bogdan, Arsen and I were tearing toward Ternopil in Bogdan's new Lada. This led to an impromptu adventure. See, we got there at around 6:00 only to discover that the train didn't leave till 10:00. So we walked around town. I've always found Ternopil completely charmless. This is due to the fact that it was first bombed to rubble during the Soviet advance, then that rubble was ground to dust by armored divisions meeting on the same spot. But the day was exceedingly nice. Here's what things looked like:



OK, that last one is just Yanukovich's party headquarters. We also met up with Igor, Galya and Volodya's (from Lviv) son. He runs the ride concession in Ternopil's lakeside park. He's not just a carny - he's chief carny. Here he is with his surprisingly hot wife + Cousin Arsen:

We hung out in their trailer for a while, then it was time to get back to the station. I took one last photo of Arsen and Bogdan before they left:

Ain't that sweet?

Anyhow, the only tickets they had left for this train to Odessa were third class, or platskart as they're known. The train arrived. I boarded it. I immediately knew that things were not right. The car was far too hot, humid and stinking. For the next ten hours, I had to exist in this environment. Although the outside temperature was in the comfrotable fifties, the inside of the car was at least 100. You couldn't look outside, because the windows were steamed over. Hot and close as it was, it was even hotter in top=bunk land where I was situated. There was nothing to be done about it. It's not like there was anyone to complain to. I just had to tell myself that I'd be out of the country in mere hours and that I could tolerate the indignity of it all till then. Well, despite the fact that it was the absolute worst train trip I've ever had, I managed to survive. I even slept six hours. It wasn't a good six hours, but it was six hours. Getting out of that stupid airtight car was a true gift from God. If I can avoid it, I will never ride third class again. It's not an adventure. It's a test for the soul. I nearly failed.

OK, I had arrived in Odessa. Uh, big deal. I've never liked the town. The best thing about it is that everybody speaks Russian. Other than that, it sucks. It's just a big, conceited, empty post-Soviet nowhere. The only cool thing that happened is that in the taxi on the way to the airport, the Vysotsky tune about Odessa came on the radio. That was neat. Otherwise, I hate that city with a passion.

I was soon gone and thank God for that. I might return to Ukraine for Cousin Ivas' wedding in October. Ukraine, you rotten place, why do you keep pulling me back?

The Old Country 3

I knew two things about today and they were both about the same thing: 1. We were having a birthday party for Tim, and: 2. It would involve a barbecue. That was all. But first we had some business. It wasn't something I was looking forward to, but it needed to be done. I told Cousin Arsen about it at breakfast. And then we had a few shots of vodka. Yeah, vodka for breakfast. Welcome to Ukraine. Thus fortified, we set out, Kathy, Tim, Cousin Arsen and me. It was a very nice day. We reached our destination in no time. Out of all, I was primarily interested in this one:

My aunt Zosya is buried here. Actually, she's my half-great aunt, but that's hardly an important distinction. She was a simple, strong woman who lived life the best she could under the circumstances - and there were circumstances. After the Soviets annexed this territory (it had belonged to Poland; after WWII, she and her sister Yustina spent 10 years in a Siberian prison camp. The charge was private ownership of state property or some such Communist dickery. Upon her release in 1959, she and her sister had to connive their best just to get back to their hometown. When they finally returned, they found out, much to their shock and disappointment, that their father - my great grandfather - had died the year before they were released. From that point on, things didn't get much easier. She got married, but her husband was an incorrigible drunk. He was staggering home one night when he tripped, fell and died. Eventually, she met and married Volodymir Mazur (who passed away in 2000), veteran of WWII who also happened to be a good man. Their union yielded my Cousin Arsen. And so the years went by. Aunt Zosya developed glaucoma and heart trouble, but it never seemed to slow her down. I'm not sure, but I'm fairly certain that she couldn't read. She told me that all she needed to see were the chickens and the ducks. Back in 2002, she got a telephone, a simple rotary-dial set-up. When I was last there, she hadn't quite mastered it. She thought that by dialing and picking up the receiver, she was making a call. When that didn't work, her strategy was to dial and then hang up, believing that the party on the other end would call her back. And so it went.

This winter, she contracted pneumonia and had to go to the hospital. She died there after much discomfort. Cousin Arsen believes blames her death on bad doctors. All I can do is lament her passing and regret the fact that I stayed away for 8 years.

As we were standing there at Aunt Zosya's grave, something happened that I didn't expect; Cousin Arsen began to cry. Normally, he is about the most stoic guy I've met. But not today. He loved his mother.


This is my great grandfather, Ignat Tuchapski, a man who so disliked the US (and Canada, I might add) that he felt compelled (along with his brothers) to return to his beginnings. How's that for Slavic contrariness? That's also why all of my Ukrainian aunts, Zosya, Yustina and Anastasiya, were half-great aunts. Ignat left my great grandmother in the US and married another woman in Peremyliv. Things went smoothly until the Soviet annexation in 1949. He was sent to the prison in downtown Lviv, where he was used as a punching bag by some dick Communists and eventually released in 1956. He came back to Peremyliv, lived with my aunt Anastasiya and died in 1958. Incidentally, he is buried next to his grandfather and grandmother. He went all the way to Ellensburg, only to realize that he shouldn't have left home in the first place. Of course, if he hadn't left, I wouldn't be writing this.

The last monument of interest is this one:

This belongs to my Cousin Igor. Even his headstone can't make him look reputable. He was quite the colorful character, a hard-drinking ne'er-do-well who alienated all those around him until there was no one. But without him, I would never have made contact wih the family, as he was the one who answered the first letter I sent to the village in 1993. I met him later that year. He simply oozed disrepute. He got me drunk at 6:00 in the morning in frozen Ternopil and he almost got us lynched on the elektrichka to Peremyliv. Yeah, good times. I really wondered why so many relatives were so neutral towards meeting me that first time. It's because I was being squired around by Cousin Igor, the blackest of black sheep. After all those experiences with him, I was looking forward to having him as a thorn in my side for years to come, but alas, it was not to be. He died a mysterious death in 1995. Either he fell or was pushed. Incidentally, his sister, Slava, with whom I stayed back in 1993 died at the end of last year. That was something of a surprise. Slava was a short, stout woman with a very loud voice and the family eyebrows. I'm sad that she's gone

I reflected on these three very different, very important people on the way back. But shortly afterward, the relatives began arriving for Tim's birthday, much to his continuing chagrin.

There's most of the gang. We've got Cousin Ivas, Cousin Ivan, Cousin Marika and her husband Roman (who totally looks like Jonathan Togo), Cousin Vasily, Lesa and Cousin Arsen, Oksana, Kristina and Cousin Volodya, Cousin Roman, Cousin Tim, and Cousins Olya and Darya are out of the picture. I'm not gonna go into detail here, but I came upon one essential truth during the six-some hours that we were together. It's this: If you feel bad when you're drinking vodka, YOU'RE NOT DRINKING ENOUGH. There, now you know.

They came, we ate, we drank, we had tons of laughs. You know what? Drinking a lot improves my Russian. Swear to God. This was the best way to celebrate anybody's birthday.

This is Ivas and myself after more than several rounds. Is there any family resemblence? If anything, Ivas looks something like Ignat Tuchapski and I look like some ordinary Slavic schlub. Here is a picture of men and fire:

They're just standin' around, waitin' for the meat to cook. Once that was done, we ate it. It was followed by a swimming pool's worth of vodka. And then all was well. And then I chatted with Cousin Vasily. And then my Russian got really good. And then everybody left. And they we watched this crazy show about the Red Army. And then we went to bed.

The Old Country 2

Cousin Arsen painted this sign, which stands at the edge of the village. It claims that tiny, insignificant, miniscule Peremyliv is 441 years old - older even than Jamestown. Man, that Cousin Arsen can do it all: carve wood, build bathrooms, play saxophone at weddings, make sons who stare and paint signs that make true but hard-to-believe claims.

I got up and walked around this morning. Peremyliv has changed very little since I was here last. OK, maybe people have slightly better cars. That's about it. I mean, Peremyliv is 441 years old. It's pretty much obligated not to change. For example, here is the main drag:

It's exactly the same. The only difference is that some genius has filled in the really deep ruts with tile scraps. Otherwise, it looks exactly the same as the first time I visited with Cousin Igor 17 years ago. Here's the WWII memorial:

Every town has one, but this one is unique in that it bears the name of my Cousin Grigori on it. He was killed at the Oder River crossing in 1945. Cousin Arsen said that he was gonna slap a fresh coat of paint on it before Victory Day, which all relatives say that nobody celebrates.

Here's the church:

OK, not a great picture.. The sun was totally in the wrong place, lousy minor-class star. When I first visited, the church was being used as a seed warehouse by the local collective farm. Since then, they've restored it (thanks in no small part to Cousin Arsen, who did much of the carving and painting) and now it's once again in the Jesus business. The regional religion is Uniate. They also call it Greek Catholic. From my casual contact with it, I can say that it seems exactly like Orthodox rite, except that the Uniate Church pays allegiance to the pope. Wrap your heads around that, sweet people. There may be other technical differences, but it's way more Orthodox than it is Catholic.

Oh, and by the way, all around Peremyliv, the cherry trees are in bloom thusly:


And here's the soccer "stadium:"

It's just an open field with collapsing goal posts. Chickens seem to favor it. It's always been in terrible shape. I can't imagine anybody playing on it, but I don't have much of an imagination.

So much for the assessment of Peremyliv. I never expect it to change. I feel the same way about Ukraine. Anyhow, soon after I finished my tour, my Cousin Ivas, Cousin Ivan's son, showed up in the family's classic Lada and whisked us away to Khorostkiv, the nearby market town. What's there to do at a market town? Go to the market. Here's Kathy, Tim and Ivas in the middle of it:

As you can see, Ivas is a handsome customer. It runs in the family. Here's an unobstructed view of the market:

They're selling washing machines and shoes and seeds and power tools. Oh, and ducklings:

What's better than a box of ducklings? Another box of ducklings!

After that, we visited this really cool overgrown/neglected park on the edge of Khorostkiv and this earthen dam where Ivas claims the fishing is exceptional.

We stopped at Khorostkiv's only pizzeria following this jaunt around town. The pizza actually looked edible, but I didn't have any. I drank beer instead. When we got back to Cousin Arsen's, there was all kinds of food waiting for us. We also drank a fair amount of vodka. That evening, we were heading over to neighboring Karashintsy to Cousin Ivan's house. He had come all the way from Kiev to see us. He works there in construction, building this very exclusive residential community 30km outside of town. The starting price for the least expensive house is $400,000. They go up way past $1,000,000. Does Ivan see any of that loot? He does not. He's just a framer who can't support his family working the land. He's been at this job for three years now. It really helps that he's such a jolly soul, otherwise, being away from his family for sometimes several months at a go would probably really get to him.

It seemed that we had finished all this food and booze when Ivas showed up once again to take us to the family khata in Karashinsty. By the time we got there, I was feeling positively green around the gills. Of course, as soon as we got out of the car, they were upon us. I had to translate about five different conversations at once and say hello myself. Here's the cast of characters:


From left, we have Cousin Ivan, Cousin Olya (Ivan's hilarious wife), Cousin Tim, Cousin Olya's mom, Cousin Kathy, Cousin Ivas, Ivas' finacee, Oksana, Cousin Marika and her husband Roman. I swear to the Jesus himself that Roman looks exactly like the guy who plays Mr Wolf on CSI: Miami. What's his name? Ah yes, Jonathan Togo. Looks just like him. Exact. Ly. Anyhow, so the conversations are swirling around me and I'm feeling awful, but trying to hold my own and be a good guest. We sat at the table (pictured above), start eating and making toasts. Marika, who is six months pregnant, only has a shot of vodka and a glass of champagne. Hey, we've come all the way from America! Na zdorovye, unborn cousin!

OK, you know, I really like visiting my relatives. They're, for the most part, a kick in the drawers. But sometimes things happen that can present true challenges for the visiting foreign relative. I'm talking about traps. If you're in Ukraine and somebody says, "Hey, do you guys want to watch my wedding video?" IT'S A TRAP!! You absolutely can't say no, because that would be rude, but by saying yes, you open the door to hours of agony. This has happened in the past. When I was visiting with my mom and Cousins Kathy and Marianne in 1998, we were getting ready to go to bed one night when Cousin Arsen comes in and asks, "Hey, do you guys want to watch my wedding video?" (This, I should mention, was with his first wife, Zoriana.) Sure, we said, thinking it would be a 15-minute highlight reel. Instead, it was a four-and-a-half-hour slog through every stage of the ceremony in complete and utter detail, followed by long, long sequences of people dancing at the reception. Most of the time, Cousin Arsen and Zoriana looked completely bummed out. To top things off, at 2:30 in the morning when it ended, we had to commit to watching day two of the wedding. It was a two-day affair - day one, the reception's at the bride's house; day two, at the groom's. All in all, they had about 300 guests, which I'm told was a fairly small wedding. Anyhow, this day two video was three hours long and was featured people dancing almost the entire time. Once again, Cousin Arsen and Zoriana looked very grouchy.

All right, the choice was there in front of us. What could we do?? What indeed. We watched it. OK, it was under four hours long and it was much slicker than Arsen's, but still. There was just no escaping. Did I also mention that it was exceedingly corny? Yeah, at the beginning, they get to reenact their first date, so they fake-talk on cell phones, then meet and instantly fall in love. Like Arsen's, there was no highlight reel. There was all the bowing and kissing of hands and feet and parents tossing around water and salt and wedding crowns and such. Time passed. Luckily, they were wise enough to employ the fast forward button on occasion. It was weird watching the family watch this. In addition to participating in the ceremony, I'm pretty sure they've seen it at least a dozen times. But there was this friend of Marika's, a member of the bridal party (not a bridesmaid; they don't have them), who was very tall - at least 6'4". Every time they had a shot of her, somebody woud say "Wow, she's really tall." This happened many times. What could I say? The trap had been sprung. I was in it. I was powerless.

It was early in the wedding video that another difficult situation presented itself. Cousin Ivan had been talking about making wine. I thought he was joking, because, y'know, he basically lives outside of Kiev most of the year. The he asks, "Who wants some homemade wine?" Guess what? IT'S ALSO A TRAP!! Lord. I totally didn't want to hurt his feelings, but the stuff looked really vile. It was fermenting in this jumbo plastic water bottle. I said yes. He poured me a glass. It was pretty thick. "The recipe is so simple," he said. "It's just local grapes, some sugar, then mix it all together, then give it some time and you've got this great wine." I took a sip. It tasted like slightly boozy grape juice. If it contained more than one percent alcohol, I'd be surprised. It was completely harmless. I drank that for the rest of the night and it actually made me feel much better.

I don't want the evening to seem like a total wash. We all had a great time. Cousin Olya was as usual her wonderful sparkling self, despite the fact that she had a heart attack a year and a half ago. So the moral of the evening is that you can fall into at least two traps and still call the evening a success.

Ivas ferried us back to Peremyliv in the classic Lada at around 11:30. It had been a full day.

The Old Country 1

Oh happy day, I've found a computer that "really understands" my camera. And so here is the post with pictures.

Well, when I last left you, I was on my way to the sticks - or the true Old Country. Cousins Kathy and Tim and I were met in Lviv by Cousin Arsen and his friend Pavlo, who is actually a relative. I believe that his grandmother was my great-grandfather's cousin, but don't quote me on that. But Pavlo is one hell of a nice guy. He was nice enough to drive us all the way back to the village from Lviv in his new (to him) Subaru that he bought from some gangster in Donetsk. Before we hit the road, we stopped in at Galya's for food and booze. Volodya was there, but he was quite antisocial. That's OK. I still like the guy.

(From left: Cousin Tim, Galya, Cousin Kathy, Cousin Arsen, Pavlo)
And then we were off! And then I remembered that I left my back pack with all my money in it at Galya's. And then we went back! And then we were off! And five bone-jarring hours later we pulled into Peremyliv. I tell you what, it was a very tough drive. The roads in Lviv Oblast (the Ukrainian equivalent of a state) are horrible. They're all uneven and there are potholes everywhere. When you get to Ternopol Oblast things improve, but by comparison with roads in the U.S., they still suck mightily.

So we pulled into Arsen's place (formerly my Aunt Zosya's house) at around six. Thanks to the fact that Arsen is a genius workman, he has a modern house. By that, I mean he's got indoor plumbing. I believe he's the only house in the village to have that. Everybody else has outhouses. So running water and a real toilet - we lived like kings! Anyhow, we got settled and I went around back to take a look at the river.

You'll also notice that this waterway is suspiciously straight. That's because the Communists deemed it too meandering, so they had it straightened. Not only are they dicks, but they're also laughably petty.

OK, so we sat down to evening food-and-booze. Arsen's wife Lesa went quite heavy on the pork products. She said that was because just the day before, they had four pigs and now they have two. Yeah, so just the previous day, our dinner had been oinking and wallowing in its own filth and enjoying life as much as a pig can manage, but now it was one of the entrees. Although it's bit tragic, the pork was very tasty.

I guess I should introduce Arsen and family. The last time I was there, his first marriage was coming to an end. Since then, he's gotten married to a nice country girl and had three kids: two twin boys, Volodya and Andriy:

And his youngest is Orest:


The twin boys are slightly strange. They do a lot of staring. After we arrived, they would, say, be in a room playing and somebody, say, me, would walk in that room. They'd stop playing and just stare, stare, stare. It happened again and again. I'd cobble something together in Ukrainian like: "Hey, what are you guys doing?" Stare, stare, stare. They had a friend come over, a very boisterous kid named Artur. They made Lego things. I came in and asked them what they were building. Stare, stare, stare. It wasn't until a few days later that I was able to have actual fun with them after I invented a game called "Give Me Your Face." As for Orest, he's a very active baby, very friendly, very good-natured. I don't know whether it's because we're in the middle of freakin' nowhere or in a simpler part of the world or what, but playing with this kid is more fun than a video game. He likes to jump, so you just hold him up and he starts jumping. It's fun all the time, every time.

Well, most improtant of all is that we arrived. Tomorrow, the hard visiting (and drinking) will begin. My Cousin Ivan is coming in from Kiev to see us. He's a jolly fellow, always good for a larf and then some.

So I'll close with these two cow's eye views of Peremyliv:

And here's neighboring Karashintsy:

There's nothing out-of-the-ordinary with either of these places. They're just Ukrainian villages.