Wonders of the world

We woke up in Kuşadası and the weather was, again, stunning.

Kuşadası, fondly known as Ada by its inhabitants, is named for the island we could see from our hotel, which I noticed immediately because of its badass castle. The hotel also offered a view out across the Aegean and the constant in and out of cruise ships.

The island and, through the haze, Samos

Our first stop was to be the House of the Virgin Mary.

"Today is the feast of the assumption of the Virgin Mary," Serina said, when we were on the bus.

"What's that?"

"In the Catholic church, it's the day that Mary was taken up into heaven."

"Does Ahmet know that?"

Ahmet was our tour guide, and he did not. We stopped to get some water and other supplies and he called ahead to a colleague and found out that the road to the House was full of pilgrims, completely cut off.  "So we will go to Ephesus first."

"What do you know about Ephesus?" Serina asked on the bus. "Teach me."

I had, through the visits to Troy and Pergamon, acquired something of a reputation as an insufferable know-it-all. But it was nice that someone would embrace this and ask what I knew.

"Literally nothing," I said. "Except that the Temple of Artemis used to be there."

"What's that?"

"A temple? Dedicated to Artemis."

"What happened to it?"

"Earthquakes. And the Romans."

Always the Romans

Ephesus, as it turned out, was also a little busy. Every tour group which had planned to go to the House had rerouted and converged on the ancient city. Ahmet did his best to stay calm, but he was stunned.

The heat and the crowds made the site uncomfortable, and we pushed through our tour. After a brief wander through the city's prestigious Hercules Gates and along the market street of the agora, we saw the public latrines.

Because everyone loves latrines

"They did not flush, the water was always running," Ahmet said.

"Where are the women's toilets?" somebody asked.

"We don't know. Let's move on to see the library and the brothel."

The library of Celsus

The library reminded me of the Market Gate of Miletus from the Pergamon Museum, but more impressive; the statues and many of the inscriptions could be seen. Ahmet told us that there was a time when this contained 12,000 scrolls. It also served as the tomb of Celsus, the governor who paid for it to be built.

Statues on the library

After the difficulty in getting into and around Ephesus, we were due for a break. We did not get one.

"This is the brothel, or the love house," Ahmet said with a grin. "We are standing above the second agora, the harbour market," there was no water in sight. The brothel, he told us, was advertised by a sign in the agora; a broken heart and a foot with a long middle toe would point potential customers in the right direction.

"I wanted to take you down the Marble Road but I have just noticed that it has been closed so... we might just have to carry on to the amphitheater."

Tough crowd

The amphitheater was... it was huge.

Really very big.

"Will we get to see the Temple of Artemis?" I asked as we passed the baths.

"It is stones in a field and a statue," Ahmet said. "We saw most of it in the Hagia Sophia."

Ah the Romans. Never let anything go to waste.

History served up like cake

Hm. Istanbul. Where to start.

As we left the airport it was different from other places I had been in Europe. The press of cars, sound of horns, the power of the sun. We rounded a corner on the highway and came in view of the old Byzantine sea wall and I had my Toto moment (we're not in Kansas, not the rains in Africa).

Two days of travel had left me pretty wiped. I explored the streets around the hotel (small, unevenly paved, confusing) but it was too hot to venture too far in a new city.

The organised tour I was on started the next day with a walk through the prominent sites in Istanbul's Old City. Our first stop was the Hippodrome.

*Insert your own overcompensating joke*

Ahmet, our guide, explained that this was where they used to race chariots in Byzantine Constantinople.

"Rad," I thought, "I can put the hippodrome in my novel."

Then he told us about the unfortunate outcome of the Nika riots.

"Great," I thought. "I can use the ruined hippodrome in my novel."

Where the hippodrome once stood is now Sultan Ahmet square, and it's still home to three Byzantine columns; the oldest of them, the Egyptian column, looks like it could have been put up last year. All three are dug into the ground, their bases around two meters below street level, because the city was much lower fifteen hundred years ago. Most of what Istanbul is built on is Constantinople, layer upon layer.

Also in the square is the Kaiser Wilhelm Fountain.

Looks German

The fountain was a gift from the Kaiser to the Ottoman Emperor. We were in the city for Ramadan, the one month of the year that the water in the fountain is operational.

Next stop: the Sultan Ahmet Mosque, better known as the Blue Mosque.

Doesn't look blue. Is this a language thing?

Named for the tiles which adorn the walls and ceiling, the Blue Mosque does have a funny language story behind it. Sultan Ahmet, who wanted it built, specified to the architect that he wanted a mosque with gold minarets. But the word for 'gold' and 'six' are very similar and the architect started work soon afterwards on a mosque with six minarets.

Oh yeah. That's pretty blue.

Lucky for him, the Sultan was quite taken with the idea.

We crossed back over to Topkapi Palace, the seat of power for the Ottoman Emperors for over 400 years.

Looks like a palace. But does it smell like a palace?

All of the things I wanted to photograph in the palace, like the armoury and the treasury, did not allow photography. But there were some great views outside.

Also, it rained.

Just outside Topkapi some ruins were being excavated; the remains of the Great Palace of Constantinople, the Byzantine palace.

Now the site of a luxury hotel.

We had some lunch and made our way to the Hagia Sophia, just as the sky blackened again. We just made it inside as raindrops the size of golf balls started pelting the city.

Ahmet took a moment to tell us a bit about the history of the church; about how it was rebuilt twice and has been standing in its current form since 537. About the columns inside, taken from the Temple of Artemis. How it was a church, then a mosque, and now a museum.

How it represents the development of Turkey.

It is... impressive

The conversion from cathedral to mosque has left some of the most amazing and beautiful sights. Because the Ottomans plastered over the original mosaics, they were largely preserved and can be seen today, though in many places the plaster remains, making both parts of the building's history are visible.

Each one had six wings...

This was another one of the "I am so glad I went on this trip," moments. How could I have sent Ragnar to Constantinople for almost eight years and not mention the Haiga Sophia once? Not even once? After seeing the stave churches where Christianity was practiced in Norway, this would have blown his tiny viking mind. And I haven't even mentioned it once.

Our last stop wasn't on the 'official' tour route, but Ahmet thought it was important for us to see; the Basilica Cistern.

Coooooooool

Another Byzantine structure, the cisterns all around the city provided Constantinople's water. Without a nearby mountain range to supply fresh water, the Romans built aqueducts (some still standing) to bring water and fill the cisterns (I haven't been able to find out where from - anyone know this?).

Where once it held 100,000 tons of water, it now has a fish pond.

All that took about eight hours and I was exhausted. We had an early start the next morning, heading for Gallipoli.

Szczecin in

The first stop in Poland was Szczecin, a town in the north west.

My first view of scenic Szczecin

This was my first trip to Poland and while I had been told what I could expect I was still taken a little by surprise.

There's a lot of strange juxtaposition; historical sites next to industrial buildings, a group of restaurants surrounded by abandoned buildings falling in on themselves. In Copenhagen I had experienced what I called 'European City Fatigue,' checking the boxes of what to see; the palace, the cathedral, the old town, etc.

Outside the old barracks

Szczecin had all that... kind of. It was fun to walk around and have a look. Oh, and I forgot my camera, so all my photos were taken with my phone. At the hotel they gave me a tourist map which had all sorts of helpful descriptions of things I could see around town. I could just google the items and look them up, but I think it's more fun to use the Polish version.

The monument of Duke Boguslaw and Anna Jagiellonka

The map also provided me with two recommended paths; the City Tourist Trail and the 'Zloty Szlak' or Golden Route. I took the tourist trail because, really, the golden route was just straight up the main street.

The mast from the steamer s/s Kapitan Maciejewicz from 1929

The weather was fantastic, bright skies and warm without being hot. I had heard so much about the terrible Polish weather I was a little surprised. Though the people at the hotel told me it is usually much hotter, 30 degrees or more. I'm going to miss that.

The Royal Gate

It was also not as flat as I was expecting. Obviously it's no Norway, there are no towering mountains. The highest points are all man made. But it wasn't as flat as Sweden, either.

The Fountain with the Eagle Sculpture with the Architectural Basilica under Invocation of St. James

I wandered the old town in the evening, looking for dinner. The place I chose was based on the smell of the meals being eaten out on the front porch.  I got a goulash and a beer. The goulash was incredible, a huge serving of stew on an enormous potato cake.

$12

Way to go, Poland.

Travel days; overnight in Berlin

It was eight hours by train from Copenhagen to Berlin. I was lucky to be seated in a cabin with a family from Melbourne, and passed most of the trip talking with them.

We saw a number of engineering marvels (wind farm in the ocean, intercontinental bridges) but the best of these was a ferry which took our train from Denmark to Germany. Quite astounding.

I took no photos of anything. I was in Berlin only long enough to walk around for some air and get irresponsibly drunk with Germans.

Travel days: things I saw while running in Copenhagen

The little mermaid

Frederik V outside Amalienborg Palace

The moat around the citadel

I think these were barracks? Inside.

Up on the wall of the citadel

Travel days: Gothenburg

I only got about six hours to explore Gothenburg and I wasted many of these eating.

I say wasted. I regret nothing.

A local porter

The food was fantastic; a salad sandwich and coffee for lunch, a vegetable stew and local beer for dinner. And after paying Norwegian prices for a couple of weeks, the cost was very low.

Also, all you can eat

Gothenburg itself was very nice, a lot of brick buildings, cobbled streets, canals and bicycle lanes. I forgot my camera on my first outing, so all my photos come from the evening and are of the old town, where I went for dinner. It's also why I don't have a photo of the enormous cookie I had after lunch. Thank goodness.

Stone!

And of course, all of this in the shadow of a castle.

Oh ship!

Okay. This one has been a little while coming.

I went to Oslo to see the viking ships. There are three in the astutely named Viking Ship Museum (not to be confused with the museum of the same name and subject matter in Roskilde). The museum is a fjord away from the city center, where I was staying. There's a bus which goes (very) regularly but the best way to get across is by ferry.

It offers great views of the fortress.

It was good museum weather the morning I went over, and a lot of people seemed to have the same idea as me - even at 9am the ferry was full. The area it goes to has the Ship museum, the Cultural History Museum, the Maritime Museum, the Kon Tiki museum and the Fram museum all within a couple of kilometers.

Forward!

I got to the Fram museum later in the day, but I'm covering that in a separate post.

So. The ships. I fought through the eight (8!) bus loads of Spanish and Russian tourists (my first boganskiis!) and got my first look at the most famous item in the collection, the Osberg ship.

Click for the full size photo, have a look at the carving.

The Osberg ship is important for a bunch of reasons. It was the burial ship for a woman of importance (women were respected, respected women were buried like men). It is the most complete ship found to date, and there was a lot of stuff on board. All the gold and silver had been removed by grave robbers and, if there were any weapons originally buried, these were taken too. What was left was still fascinating; animals, a functioning cart, a few sleds, tools for food preparation and textile manufacture, all things to make life easier in the next world.

View from the stern; note the small rudder

The shape of the ship is also interesting. It sits low, only three or four boards above the water line. This, combined with the intricate carvings at the bow and stern leads people who know stuff about boats to think it was a pleasure craft, used for 'royal' days on the water. That this person was rich enough to have a leisure craft is fascinating as well. What interested me is that there is clearly a deck, with removable planks. I've since read that these could be lifted to bail the ship.

Next was the Gokstad Ship. Of the three, this was my pick.

Note the oar holes, the difference in the depth of the keel

Like the Osberg, this was a burial ship and like the Osberg, all the pretty stuff had been nicked by grave robbers. None of that matters though, because the boat itself is fascinating.

The rudder is huge, especially compared to the Osberg; even the tiller is much larger. But most interesting; it's removable. It could be lifted to allow this ship, which has a much deeper draft than the pleasure-boat above, to move through shallow waters without damaging the steering.

Also cool were the oar holes, which could be covered with wooden flaps to stop water coming in when the oars were shipped. The Gokstad ship is easily the largest clinker I've seen (it would have had 32 Oarsmen) and was reinforced with ribs. Much larger than this and the ship can't be clinker built.

What remains of the Tune Ship

The Tune Ship is the worst preserved of the three. It's also built of clinkered oak and would have been smaller than the others (around 24 oars).

Burial tent

Along with the Tune Ship were a number of larger items taken from the other burials; a tent, where the human remains and personal belongings were found in the Gokstad burial, and the Gokstad boats.

Smaller clinker boats from the Gokstad

The burial items reinforced both the intricacy and beauty of Viking era woodwork and the extended trading network that the Scandinavians possessed.

Wagon from the Osberg

I found it interesting that while the wagon would have been used only for special occasions, the sleighs would have been in common use. Dogs to pull the sleighs and horses for the wagon were also found in the Osberg grave.

Sleigh bar from the Osberg

And while robbers took all the silver and gold pieces from the burials, they did not take every item of bronze or iron, leaving behind some fascinating jewelry.

Smaller pieces, from all over the world

A lot of these decorate other simple items; the sheath of a knife or a belt or the like.

More shiny stuff

Upstairs they had the human remains from the graves on display. For all the talk of giant viking warriors, I need to remember that these people lived a thousand years ago. Tall meant something different then. One of them, a king in his prime, had legs which were not even as long as my arm. They might have been tall for their time, but we would tower over them today.

Keep that in mind when looking at the photos of the ships. What looks impressive to us would have been enormous to these tiny vikings.

And before I knew it, it was lunch time. I stepped out into the sunlight (it had become a beautiful day - see the photos from that afternoon, below) and went in search of a sandwich, a cup of coffee and the Fram.

Forward!

Some things I saw while running in Oslo

Parliament

Royal palace

Carl Johan

Sculpture park

Nobel peace center (threatening rain but it passed)