Finale

One-half year hence, semi-retired and “back home”, we wonder where the time has gone and why we can’t seem to write the final chapter of this blog, thereby completing the “Ed and Millie in Romania” journal. Of course, this is a rhetorical query to which we well know the answer(s). We are sentimental and don’t want to let go of the adventure. Turns out we are also terrible procrastinators and have fallen behind! What follows are the bits and pieces of our final exhilarating months in that part of the world. As these appear, we thank you for your interest, your curiosity, your comments and the anticipation that you registered as you so kindly stayed connected with us. We have the best of friends, the best of families, and you give us every reason to come home and to go abroad by turn. What a wonderful world!

Travels With My Aunt, the 2008 edition

It came as no surprise when Aunt Betty started making noises about coming to Romania. It’s exactly the kind of thing that Betty would do. By herself. We don’t mind declaring that she’s our favourite. Lively, fun-loving, warm-hearted, confident, direct, outrageous..... the adjectives don’t really cut it. She is a primary model for all 21st century persons (not to mention the females) in terms of jumping in to find out for yourself. She’s always reading books that we haven’t heard of, like Bob Woodward's 'State of Denial'. She volunteers for cool stuff like McNally Robinson's Harry Potter night and teaching three children who were given refuge in a church because of a deportation warning. When she went to Cuba, the “holiday” part was soon supplanted by an earnest study tour that revealed the history and hardship of its people. She serves halopschi at Grey Cup parties, and hates it when people at family reunions sit around and talk only to their own brothers and sisters. Betty quotes Buddha and is not above calling somebody a double-double anus. Without her lips moving, of course. More than anything, Betty and her equally fabulous husband Hank are always jumping in to give their friends high fives whether we need it or not. Family and friends are of the essence and we are only two of the lucky ones in the pack. Since our foray into Romania, Betty and Hank have written 56 times! They always sign off with some upbeat citation like “Continue to love everything!” and “You 2 were born to "live out loud". And “I love you more than all the dogs in Romania.” Of course, Aunt Betty had to come visit!!

We began the “Come to Romania” talks with Aunt Betty during the 2007 Christmas break. Then things got busy and March rolled around and Betty alluded to the notion that maybe we hadn’t been serious. Well!! After much au contraire, she was convinced and within days the flight was booked. To Istanbul, that is. (Earlier we had chatted about joining up in a pre-trip “somewhere in Europe” and because she hadn’t been to Turkey, and because our first trip there had been so brief, it seemed a perfect fit.) For her travel-reading, Betty chose a book by Orhan Patun, memoirs of growing up in Istanbul. She cut the book into three pieces to lighten her carry-on, planning to leave the just-read section wherever she finished it. Betty thinks of these things.

Betty booked rooms for us all at the Antique Hostel in the beautiful Sultanahmet area, just blocks from the Blue Mosque and the Aya Sofia. She spent three days in advance of our arrival in Istanbul getting to know all the nooks and crannies of her surroundings, as only Betty can and would. On Friday, April 15th, our reunion was placed in jeopardy by a very late take-off from Bucharest because, and I quote: "The airport was busy". It didn't help that we couldn't reach Betty's hotel by phone because, and again I quote: "The Spanish guy had been tying up the line all evening." Betty had told the concierge that if we weren't there by midnight, she was going to call the police! Well, that set the tone for the laughs that became customary in our next two weeks together. We finally found her at 11:30 p.m., after battling through the swarm of taxi drivers at the airport, deciding to hang onto our 50 bucks and taking the train. What a reunion it was!

Column Capitals inside the Aya Sofia
Tile mosaic uncovered in the Aya Sofia within the last century. We had visited this landmark once before. It is spine-tingling to stand in the Aya Sofia, also known as the Hagia Sophia that, for over 900 years, was a most important church of the early Christian era. In the 15th century it was converted into a mosque, now a museum.

We spent the following day enjoying the sights of Sultanahmet accompanied by bright sunshine, before boarding the night train bound south toward the Cappadocia area of Turkey.
The Meram Ekspresi to Konya


Mevlana's Museum

Sunday was frittered away in Konya, as after visiting Mevlana’s tomb, we found very little to occupy us except for wandering shilly-shally looking for things to occupy us. Since one doesn’t just plop down for a cool beer on the streets of Konya, we held out hope for happy hour somewhere and were not disappointed to learn that a hotel down the street was known to come to the aid of a thirsty stranger. With the memory of Morocco nowhere in sight, we allowed ourselves to be charmed by Akin, who spoke perfect English, who could name all the features of downtown Toronto, who had in fact been on the scene in the making of our Olympic red-and-whites, who loved Canadians, who sat down and had a drink with us, who had a carpet shop just across the street.......

Monday’s four-hour bus ride to Nevsehir was long, bumpy and dusty as interior Turkey should be, but the Hotel Sofa in Avanos was beyond our wildest imagination. An ancient restored house, it’s connected to others featuring rooms hewn into the rock in which these homes were originally built. This was perfect, being that “cave dwellings” pretty well embody the featured architecture of the area. Pictured here is the lovely Hotel Sofa in Avanos, where we stayed for two lovely nights.


Eons ago, a series of volcanic eruptions covered central Turkey in a thick layer of volcanic ash, which solidified to form soft material called “tufa” that characterizes the surface strata here. The process of erosion started the work of carving out valleys and gorges and continues to this day. The jaw-dropping formations referred to as “fairy chimneys”, formed when a cap of stone protects the column of softer post-volcanic material beneath it double as a good chuckle, trust me. Anyway, the soft rock lent itself to being excavated into a series of underground chambers that grew to “cities”, some which apparently sheltered up to 1000 citizens in time of turmoil. No one is certain as to the number of underground communities that existed or even by whom they were built. The whole area is now a warren of caves, underground cities, rock churches and chambers and it's almost certain that there are more such sites waiting to be rediscovered. We visited one of these underground “cities” called Derinkuyu, thought to have been excavated by the Hittites when they came under attack from the Phrygians around 1200 BC.

You might recognize “Cappadocians” as having been among the flabbergasted in the account of the first Pentecost. We were told that Cappadocia was one of the most important places in the spreading of early Christianity, as the first Christians could escape from the Romans to this region which was so suitable for hiding. The Apostle Paul’s name came up numerous times on our tour. As did Noah’s, being that Mount Ararat was not far from there. Small wonder this region is called “the cradle of civilization”.

The pictures will tell the rest of the story that unfolded over the next few days.... a compendium of bus rides, taxi trips and walks into this most fascinating ancient world.
The so-called "Fairy Chimneys" of Goreme


Centuries of cave dwellers lived in these abodes until as recently as the 1950's, when earthquake damage prompted the government to make it illegal to live there.The quarters pictured below housed a religious commune.

Various paintings in a range of media and style are preserved on the ceilings and walls of the early Christian churches.




The repeated spades symbol on the photo below represents King David. (The other card-suit symbols do not appear, as they represent Caesar, Alexander and Charlemagne!)



One of our tours involved a remarkably long walk into the area (was it really 6 kms?) and culminated in a lovely lunch beside the river.


Underground at Derinkuyu:
According to Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us, “No one knows how many underground cities lie beneath Cappadocia. Eight have been discovered, and many smaller villages, but there are doubtless more. The biggest, Derinkuyu, wasn’t discovered until 1965, when a resident cleaning the back wall of his cave house broke through a wall and discovered behind it a room that he’d never seen, which led to still another, and another. Eventually, spelunking archeologists found a maze of connecting chambers that descended at least 18 stories and 280 feet beneath the surface, ample enough to hold 30,000 people – and much remains to be excavated. One tunnel, wide enough for three people walking abreast, connects to another underground town six miles away. Other passages suggest that at one time all of Cappadocia, above and below the ground, was linked by a hidden network.”

Getting Around....

Children's Day in Avanos
How to party in Avanos:

Bus schedules!!

Adorable bus companions

Back on that train:

Assessing the damages on the Bosphorus:

Back in Istanbul

One more lunch at the corner cafe:

By Thursday we were ready to return to our familiar Romania, and to enjoy for the last time, our favourite circle tour through Sinaia to Sighisoara, to Sibiu and home again. We decided to skip Peles Castle in favour of discovering other areas of Transylvania together. Our first stop-turned shopping spree was a glass blower’s shop near Ploesti.


Our adventure to parts unknown took us to Miclosoara and the estate of Count Kalnoky, probably the only real count in all of Romania! He appears occasionally to oversee the restoration of his ancestral hunting manor, where his family had lived until communism forced them to flee. Miklósvár, still intensely Hungarian, is the oldest documented settlement of the region, its castle first mentioned in 1211 AD as a border fortress of the Kingdom of Hungary. (Just north of Miclosoara is the cave where the legendary Pied Piper is said to have lured the children of Hamelin.)Our hours spent there were taken up with long walks into the countryside and into the town that suggests the timelessness with which we have become so familiar. The pace is slow as the cows that amble home, cowherd in tow, and disappear by turn behind the gates that they know to be their respective homes. We say “charming”. I wonder what they say.

Our cottage Inside
A perfect fenceline
The gentlefolk of Miclosoara
The cowherd of the day Waiting for mine
Gourmet fare in the shared dining room

Carrying on toward Sighisoara, we stopped to wander through the ruins of a fortress that we had often admired from the bottom of the hill near Rupea. The view from the 500 metre climb was worth it and in the meantime we learned its history. Ranging between the 14th-17th centuries , this fortress echoes the usual torrid stream of events bridging the Roman/Saxon/Hungarian/Austrian/Turkish/Tartar/Communist sieges and eras by turn.

Higher Fortress built before the German colonization, the Middle Fortress built in the 15th century and the Lower Fortress, built in the 13th century.


Farming in Romania A diversion through an impoverished village brought the children streaming toward our posh yellow polo. It’s heart-rending, poignant and hilarious at once, as their fight for goodies alternates between collective effort and personal tight-fistedness. There are always babies in the arms of the young girls.

No luck in the bargaining department today:


It was our fifth and last visit to Sighisoara, what had become Millie’s favourite "haunt”. Ed timed this trip with reading Bram Stoker's Dracula and yes, we stayed in the citadel across from Vlad’s everything….