It´s almost like Leavenworth...

We haven't been able to tear ourselves away from the great food and company here in Germany long enough to collect our thoughts and blog. Our dear friends and hosts Rollo-- "the black goat" Dutchman, Marga-- the "Spanish queen of Ruston", and Adrianna their little baby girl are taking such good care of us.


We're enjoying a fusion holiday. Every day in the house we speak a mix of English, Spanish, baby babble and the kernel of all languages Dutch. As dense as we are, they're even trying to teach us some German. We stay up late like Spaniards, eat a European breakfast of sliced meat, cheese, and bread like a good Dutch family at the crack of Spanish morning, 10:00am. Lunch is a big affair around 4:00pm, complete with wine, Spanish delicacies cooked up by Marga or American fare rustled together by Canuche and me.

Rollo has been the champion of our dinner time, turning out mashed potatoes & cabbage with sausages and Dutch crepes at the Spanish dinner time of 9:00 or 10:00. We pause our eating to take siestas, play ping pong, or stroll through the grape vineyards and fruit orchards of Germany in sub 0 (Celsius) temperatures.

I am not sure what you would call this cultural and culinary fusion, with Paella, brisket, apple pie, Dutch crepes, and German beer consumed one after another, maybe Sputch-Germican fusion. No matter what you call, it we're having a damn good time.

The problem is we don't want to leave. Much to the dismay of Rollo, Marga and Adrianna we're really cozy here. We're struggling to muster excitement about our imminent departure to India. If any of you have traveled in that part of the world and can supply us with advice on Tamil Nadu, Kerala or Mumbai, we could use some inspirational Details. We'll be eternally grateful. We're also leaning toward including Cambodia, Laos & Vietnam in our plans from late February through April, so if you have advice for us, send it over.

Now for the drama of our German Holiday, as if the fusion stuff wasn't enough, the grocery store across the street from R & M's house burst into flames last night. It was 3:00 in the morning when Marga called the fire department and woke us up. For 20 minutes we watched in horror as the flames devoured the building, finally the fire department showed up and spent the next 14 hours putting out the flames and investigating the scene. It was an intense reminder of how tenuous our security actually is. Check your alarms and fire extinguishers for us!

The fire was a surprising and heart wrenching spectacle in an otherwise placid and lovely holiday. We hope you're holidays are treating you well and that you have been as utterly stuffed with good food and surrounded by good company as we have.
Happy New Year!

Egypt - Salty or Sweet?

All-in-all we have enjoyed Egypt. Our visit started with a great few days in Cairo with our buddy Heidi. We visited with great people there, including our Egyptian friend Ahmad who we met in Damascus, a laughter filled group of card players in the Muslim Quarter who invited us to hang out for a few rounds, and a host of other friendly folks at nearly every turn.

We adored the food in Cairo, from the delightful sweets at Al Abd bakery and ice cream shop, to the Koshary addiction we developed--our bellies were always full of good food. Koshary is a mix of noodles, rice, lentils and garbanzos that are served in a bowl (small for 50 cents, large for 1 dollar) with a pitcher of chunky tomato sauce and a carafe of spicy sauce alongside for each customer to doctor to their own liking. Along with Felafel, koshary is one of the beauties of cheap fast food in the Middle East.

From Cairo we visited pyramids at Giza, Saqqara and Dashur. We climbed down 50 meters to the burial chamber in the Red Pyramid at Saqqara. Our thighs were yelling at us for days. We joined the crowds of Polish tourists clad in short-shorts and muscle shirts to gaze at the Sphynx and took goofy shots of us petting the Pyramids.

Next we lurched down to Luxor on the night sleeper train. . . not nearly as romantic as I'd hoped. Luxor was a real mixed bag. The amazing history along the fertile banks of the Nile was sometimes difficult to appreciate due to the intense salesmanship of the locals. We were warned about the Egyptian hawkers and touts before entering Egypt. We'd steeled ourselves for the experience, but Cairo was so easy on us that I thought "ha, this is nothing." But I hadn't been to Luxor yet.

Luxor's economy is pinned on tourism and was hit hardest by the drop in tourism after the recent terrorist attacks targeting foreigners. Now there are many times more taxis, horse carts, tourist boats, and papyrus shops in Luxor than the tourism can support. Each day was filled with a host of interactions with the struggling people of the industry, including:
Carriage Hawkers - cajoling us into their horse drawn carriage. Fun and affordable transport, but with 20 empty carriages for every full one, the hawkers were incessant.
Commission Loiterers - on the streets or ferry trying to convince us to rent a bike, donkey, taxi, horse, camel, felucca boat, or... from their brother / cousin / uncle / father... in the hope of collecting a commission .
Helper Loiterers - who attach themselves to you on the street and follow you (they say they're leading you) to your destination and then try to badger a tip out of you for the "service".
Guard Loiterers - who sit at the entrance to temples and tombs to collect a tip (baksheesh) from you when you leave, no matter that you've already paid for your ticket and the guy did nothing but sit at the entrance.
Guide Loiterers - (can also be cop loiterers armed with guns) who sit inside the temple or tomb and pop up when you enter to shadow you pointing out the obvious, explaining the incorrect, and generally turning pacifists to violence. Oh and of course they want baksheesh for that service.
Children Trainees - who follow their father's lead and pursue tourists asking for pens, caramels and bon-bons

Throw in the joy of negotiating every purchase and you've got a vacation to make you pull your hair out. The saving graces were great companionship, astounding sights, an excellent museum and a serene hotel. After 3 days our patience was simply wrung dry. Heidi headed for Cairo and Nuche and I booked an emergency mental health plane trip to Sharm El-sheikh in search of some much needed chill time in Dahab on the Sinai peninsula. 5 days of relaxing, strolling the Cornish, and diving have returned us to a state of well being.

Chek out our pics

Aqaba marathon and the two border day...

The Aqaba marathon was...small. At the start there were about thirty westerners, a dozen Jordanians, and 100 half marathoners toeing the line. We all charged out of the parched mountains together then the marathoners turned out to the desert: A long and lonely sand filled stretch to the airport...without a fan, a farmer or even a tree for miles and miles. Surprisingly, it led to one of my fastest finish times. Even more surprising were the intestinal events that made me thankful for the solitude. But no need to go into that here. An 8th place 3:08 finish made me feel better about my battle with the bowels in the desert.

Mercy and I went for an Ultra Marathon day; the first leg - a 42 Kilometer race in Jordan, the second leg - a couple of border crossings into Israel and Egypt and the final leg - a 6 hour bus to Cairo.

The transition from Aqaba to Israel is stark. The red sands and palm trees were consistent across the border but the anthropological world changed entirely.
Our last moments in Jordan we exchanged money and shared dry dates with an office full of men smoking and joking with us in Arabic. We left Jordan's white-washed concrete bunker and hefted our packs past the barbed wire into the no man's land between the borders. Within 200 yards an Israeli guard came into view wearing chinos, short sleeves, and an Uzi slung casually from his shoulder. Passing him we were greeted by a smiling women in a similar uniform welcoming us to Israel in perfect English. She led us through metal detectors and into a new pavilion where other women worked the x-ray machines and stood guard with big weapons. After spending the last two months almost completely surrounded by men in these roles it was refreshing to see women in playing the same parts. Even though they had guns, we found them oddly comforting.
After about two hours of questioning and security checks we left the serene environs, functioning plumbing, music, and garden art of the Israeli check post. We crossed the resort city of Eliat, Israel, before plunging back into the Islamic man's world of Egypt.

We loved Cairo, enjoyed Luxor and we're now in sunny cool Dahab doing a bit of diving. Hopefully we'll be able to tell you of all of our mis-adventures in Cairo and Luxor soon.

Marathons: Beirut and Aqaba

The Beirut Marathon was an event that seemed destined to failure. Between the pending civil war, martial law, absence of tourism, Hezbollah bombings, and power outages this race had a lot going against it. Entering the marathon offices, I witnessed near religious fervor. The office was loud, crowded, chaotic and convinced that despite the odds the world would be a better place if the marathon happened. I talked with a documentary film maker, the general manager, and the secretary; they were all equally excited to make it happen and they signed me up.

The next day the Cornish (the sea wall pedestrian walk) was crowded with men and women in jogging suits out for an early morning walk or run. The fishermen were there too, with 15 foot long poles, angling for tiny fish off the rocks below. The feeling was optimistic despite the occaisional armored personel carrier and soldier on the sidewalk. We enjoyed the fine food and friendly people throughout our stay in Lebanon. The indifference to the military presence displayed on the Corniche that morning was similar to what we found over and over again as we talked to taxi drivers, shop keepers, and people on the street. Life goes on despite difficult political situations and stormy horizons.

The pre-race organization was superb; as I jogged away from the meeting place at 5 AM on race day I ran into the race founder and her cohorts who turned me around and drove me to the start. They were excited and energetic for the race. British, Lebanese, and Gulf states runners were milling around and sipping gatorade before the gun went off and the crowd, all 300 of us, surged forward. The start of the race looped around the Maazraa area of Beirut passed a marching band complete with baton twirlers twirling. On the next block coils of razor wire bound a very bombed out building. Contrasts. The race and the city and the country are filled them.

Running through Beirut entertained me greatly. I finished the race in about 3:15 and enjoyed the post race show that included 5 men doing their aerobics competition routine on stage. Very hip.

Pouty done up gals posing alongside hunks of hanging flesh, I can't get enough of this country!

After the race, back at the hostel I met a Japenese man about two-thirds of the way through his second bottle of Arak. He had the "post race glow" about him. He'd finished the marathon just a couple minutes before I did. As we talked he told me about his plan of running marathons around the world during his year of travel...who knew there'd be somebody else doing it too? He told me about the Aqaba Marathon and now we're here. Tomorrow's the race and I hear there are at least 30 people entered. This might be my big chance to place! And what better place to do it than a country that advertises that it has an Established Rule of Law?

We did a whirlwind tour of Jordan that we'll tell you about soon. Petra, Dana Nature Reserve, teh Dead Sea...so many beautiful places. We send hugs and love to all of you. There are pics of Jordan up on Flickr now.

Beirut a Study in Contrasts

After much nail biting and web news reading we left Damascus with excitement and anxiety to cross the border into Lebanon. Politics, always tenuous in this country, were relatively stable so far as Al Jazeerah and the International Herald Tribune could tell. The Lebanese family in Kab Elias was welcoming, and the marathon was Sunday--all systems were go--so we bought bus tickets and left town.

The bus ride and the border crossing offered their own challenges that found us hauling our bags out of the bus and returning to the Syrian border in an expensive old Mercedes taxi. Two hours later, when the taxi brought us through the Lebanese border unscathed and descended the twisting mountain pass onto a breathtaking, albeit hazy, sunset view over the concrete high rises and sprawling city of Beirut, I felt only excitement. As the sunset we gratefully threw our bags down in our hostel, amazed that after so much vacillation, we were finally in Beirut!!!

We kicked off our stay with what Mercy fondly termed the "5 antacid walk across the war zone". We've never seen a city in this state, honestly, we were pretty jumpy. Armed with Mercy’s trusty roll of TUMS we walked into the beautiful and eerily deserted Beirut city center. French Mandate buildings with wide sidewalks and brightly lit luxury stores selling everything from Porches to baby clothes lined perfect, but empty, pedestrian streets. The Beirut city center was the scene of the worst fighting of the civil war of the 70s and 80s. The neighborhood was destroyed. In a bid for a brighter future, it has been almost completely rebuilt and renovated. We walked the upscale and empty streets past armored personnel carriers parked nonchalantly at major intersections, alongside razor wire spooled around the buildings and through check points manned by soldiers wielding machine guns. The scene was surreal, like walking around Disney Land moments before the gates open but for Beirut no one knows if or when the gate will open.

As we walked and wondered what we'd gotten ourselves into, we started keying into the contradictions of this city; between the noise of un-muffled scooters, the constant honking, cars spewing exhaust and the emblems of an impending civil war, there are posh store fronts, women strutting in mini-skirts and high heels and slick Lebanese sporting Audis, Mercedes and BMWs. A forest of cranes work incessantly building luxury towers across the street from hulking bombed out concrete shells, yesterdays luxury towers, now relics of the last civil war.

Across the street from this, in the newly hip Gemmayzeh neighborhood, life goes on "normally." The bars and restaurants are full late at night, the city seems vibrant though the locals claim it is quiet. We've met with several ex-pats working here and are doing our best to decipher the politics of the current crisis.

The short story is the president's term is up on the 24th of November and the parliament must choose, by consensus vote, a new president before that date. Constitutionally the president must be a Maronite Christian. The other 15 religious sects in the government demand their interests be met and struggle to find common ground. The parliamentarians are further influenced by other international players: Syria, Hezbollah, Iran, France, and the US. No one is willing to hypothesize what happens on Sunday if they don't figure out a solution. The journalists in town all are waiting and wondering, the locals are carrying on but using the suffix "...if we're still here" after making plans. It's a strange time.

After a week here we are fascinated and feel suprisingly safe walking the streets. The political situation is chaotic but the biggest danger on the street is still the traffic. We're planning on leaving for Amman, Jordan on Friday but will leave sooner if the political situation changes.

Homecoming to Kab Elias

Visiting the family home in Kab Elias was the highlight of my travels. It seemed impossible to make connection with family we lost contact with, in a town tough to find even on Google Earth, in a language I am embarrassingly moronic with, but read on.
My, great, Great Aunt Patsy came to the rescue by tracking down the contact info through international emails, phone calls, and online family data bases to make the connection for me. But when Patsy (the Lebanese Patsy, named after the American Patsy) and David, her twelve year old English speaking nephew, swooped us up from the dusty roadside bus stop I was overwhelmed. We were linking a whole branch of the American family with the Lebanese family that stayed behind.
Patsy drove defensively but with haste through town provisioning at the "family bakery" and the mill store before delivering us to her home. Her one story two bedroom home was beautiful and welcoming. The marble tile warmed by area rugs, and the rooms colorfully painted and covered with kitsch like I remember from my grandmother's house. In the kitchen we met Patsy's 70 year old father...he was emphatic with his welcome and surprised me with many kisses as is his custom.

Patsy and her cousin Jony (Jony and her family live in another unit of the family compound) set the table with homemade Tahbouli, Kebbeh, and loads of pastries. Dinner lasted from about 3 until 6 with more family arriving every few minutes. Jony's husband, Nassr speaks perfect english and relieved translation duties from his son David. We played with the boys; David, 12, Souhail 9 and Danny, 5, for much of the evening before Nassr swept us up to go visit a nearby Christian town of Zahle.
We arrived after dark and strolled through the shopping district of the University town of 40,000. Nassr shared his plans and the news of his family migration to Canada. The more we discussed his perspectives on work and raising children in Lebanon the more lamentable the situation seemed. Such a beautiful country, the people are educated, adept with many languages, and struggling to find work that can keep the family in the country. He wants to stay in Kab Elias until his boys are all early teens, so they will remember they are Lebanese. Then he plans to follow his other brothers and take the family to Manitoba for more opportunity if, perhaps, less culture and beauty.
We went to sleep struggling with the choice that Nassr is faced with, frustrated that there isn’t a brighter future for the family right here in Lebanon. The day dawned bright and hopeful and we toured the town with David as our guide. The town sits in the eastern foothills of the Mt Lebanon Range in the center of the country. Their home perches on the steep hillside west of town overlooking many flat roofs, nestled in amongst the town’s many churches and looking out over the mosques and markets of Kab Elias below. The hazy Bekaa valley stretching out toward the Anti-Lebanon Range demarking the Syrian border in the distance. As we stretched our legs up, up, and up the narrow alleyways of very steep streets between whitewashed walls we greeted old women with shopping bags and stooped backs with the friendly Arabic hello, marhaba. The top of the hill supports the one remaining wall of a Roman lookout and provides views down into a beautiful deep canyon and river that supply the water to town.

Back at Patsy’s house we breakfasted on yogurt soup with chunks of kebbeh and torn pita to give us power. Then we headed to the childhood home of my grandmother, Josefina, and her sisters. A trio of J's first cousins still live together in the house and were eager for our visit.
The house is one of the oldest in town as Josafine's father was born there (late 19th C). Solid stone walls give way to three 10 foot tall Gothic windows looking out over the Bekaa valley. There is a porch that runs the length of the house and provides the same fantastic view and would be the place to avoid the heat of summer. Beyond the porch rail peach, olive, and apple trees cling to the steep yard. In the front entry a thick grape vine shades the stone patio. There is a cave cellar dug out of the hillside next to the house. Inside the house the 18 foot ceilings gave a castle like feel. Over the door of the living room hangs a framed sepia portrait of Josafine's grandparents. The room was heated by an oil stove with a snaking chimney in the middle of the room.
The sisters were gracious hosts; after lots of hugging and kisses Nassr, Mercy, Danny and I were all arranged around the living room couches and served two bananas each, coffee and chocolates. Nassr translated the sisters stories for us; we learned they were all born in Senegal, never married, and came to the Kab Elias family home 35 years ago. They remembered Josafine from pictures and letters and knew of some of the family from Dallas. The sisters would not let us leave without promises to return with more family and to stay with them next time.
The family was ready with engines idling when we left grandma’s and we were off to the number one tourist sight in Lebanon, the ancient Roman ruins of Baalbek. The drive north through the Bekaa valley showed red earth and hard working people. The ruins, impressive in their scale, dwarfed anything else we'd seen in Lebanon and to visit them with the boys was a special treat.
Leaving the family in the evening was hard. Our visit was short but was an opportunity for me to begin to understand what it means to Lebanese. Experiencing the culture first hand was an incredible gift. I look forward to trying to convince the rest of the family to come back with me for a visit… start thinking ‘bout it.

More Pics available at Flickr

Syria- Rogue nation or tourist destination du jour?

Hello to all from Damascus. As we planned our trip, we had a tough time explaining to people why we were heading to Syria at all. We wanted to travel overland from Turkey to Lebanon, to "thread" our travel from Europe to the Middle East but we had little else to justify our stay in Syria. We planned six or seven days to cruise through Syria; it's now been twelve days in Syria and we've barely scratched the surface.

Though we have not had the Servas contacts to draw us past the tourist sights and into the lives of the people, the sights of Syria flood our heads with Roman and Persian history and max out our camera with beautiful desert ruins. Head coverings are common on women and men here. The hijab is worn on nearly all of the women in Northern Syria and a bit less here in Damascus. The streets are crowded with people and litter, the roads swarming with honking yellow taxis.

Honking in Syria deserves a digression. The horn in the US is reserved for emergencies or at least urgency, but in the Middle East it is used liberally. The honk is a blinker when passing another vehicle on the left, it can be used in place of the brakes at a stop sign, or as a greeting to a friend on the street. Honks at a pedestrian could be a warning to stay back, or as an encouragement to cross in front of the giant goat truck. A taxi's honk at a tourist is encouragement to get in and take a ride. Honking in gridlock seems to signal solidarity or perhaps love for the president. A bike might try to live up to the others on the road with a siren/horn combo of Chinese origin or at least a bicyclist whistling his heart out, but inevitably it'll be overwhelmed by the onslaught of car horns.

The food of Syria deserves its own posting but I hope these pictures and words cover for now. After Turkey, which had some incredible culinary moments in a sea of less than exciting grilled chicken shish kebap and greasy cheese borek, the freshness and spice of Syrian food keeps us smiling. Fresh juice smoothies of orange, persimmon, mandarin, pomegranate, banana, honey, and plum are a breakfast staple. Fresh hot falafel wraps are about 30 cents and available on every corner. Tea in Syria is served sweetened and plentifully--coffee is roasted with cardamom and served Turkish style. Dinners are our favorite--Mezze are the mostly cold appetizers we associate with Middle Eastern food. Dishes like hummus, moutabal (what we call babaganoush state side), babaganoush (a chunky medley of roasted eggplant diced roasted tomatoes and peppers), tabbouleh, mouhmara (a new favorite of roasted red pepper blended with walnuts), stuffed grape leaves, and fatoush salad drizzled with pomegranate syrup and speckled with perfectly crisped pita. A selection of these mezze are served with piles of pita bread (often still steaming from the oven) and shared from common dishes. Mercy and I often barely finish the spread and leave the table groaning but so happy!

The "pudding shop" is another uniquely Syrian experience that I hope could spread to the rest of the world. Shops are the size of a Starbucks but dedicated to the perfection of pudding instead of coffee. They have only three or maybe four options for sweet milky snacks but they are plentiful and cheap in the stainless steel, fluorescent lit cafes. You can sit down and enjoy pistachio covered creaminess or take one for the road complete with a little plastic spoon. I make a point of trying the offerings of as many of these establishments as possible.

We head to Lebanon tomorrow (November 13) and I plan to run the Beirut marathon on Sunday November 18. The food is supposed to be the best in the M.E. I can't wait to be the judge of that! We've made contacts with a number of locals in Beirut to meet up with while we're there and I'm armed with great information about family still living in Kab Elias. The adventure continues.

The connections here in Damascus are not so good so we can't get pictures in here, but all of our Syria pictures are labeled and in flickr, check them out here

Ode to the People of Turkey

Although we left Turkey 10 days ago we can't stop talking about the wonderful people that we met there. Turks, Kurds, and a Kiwi transplant all made us feel like family coming home to Turkey. In Istanbul we had the good fortune to stay with two sets of great Servas hosts and hang out with new friends who we'd met earlier in our travels. It was a cool experience to get to know these great locals. Our hosts in Istanbul encouraged us to visit southeastern Turkey to see a completely different slice of Turkish life, despite the news of PKK activity in that region we flew from Istanbul to Mardin to see how Kurdish Turkey felt. In Mardin and two neighboring towns we were taken care of in the most complete way by two other Servas hosts and their friends and family.

Over and over again we were dumbfounded by how warm people were and how much people went out of their way to help us and smooth the traveling path for us. When we asked people on the street to help locate ourselves on the map or direct us from here to there they inevitably started by saying "no english" and then they'd dive right in to pantomiming with us to get us squared away. We stopped one guy in the middle of Istanbul while we were searching for the marathon office and he grabbed our map and went around to a few taxi drivers to get their input on where we needed to go. It was striking how people went way out of their way to help us.

Even when the language barrier seemed impenetrable, folks had creative ways of getting around it. Our host in Mardin, Resat, collected us "virtually" from the airport via the command center of his cell phone. For about an hour, we checked in with each other and he had us hand our cell phone to various strangers so that he could explain to them what bus he wanted us to get on and where he wanted us to get off, then these strangers would shepherd us along to the next point of hand off where we'd call Resat again and find another helpful stranger. When we finally reached Resat he told us that he could not host us at his house because he had family in town, but he had found a special place for us to stay in a government hotel that was not open to the public. We were absolutely drop-jawed, Resat could have so easily just said "no, I'm too busy to host you," (his sister was in the hospital having a baby and he was hosting all the out of town family) but instead he gave us royal treatment and introduced us to so many wonderful people. Our visit to Mardin was one of our richest cultural experiences and it was all because of Resat and his friend's hospitality.

Our next host, Selcuk, gave stiff competition to Resat's hospitality. We had an almost complete language barrier, so our pre-meeting communication was all through text messages. We texted our bus arrival time to him and he texted that he would pick us up. A bus station pick up? What a treat! We had no idea how special it was. After our bus arrived 20 minutes late, Selcuk and his friend hurried us into his friend's car, and sped off through the dark Gaziantep streets. Through a halting conversation we discovered that Selcuk is a DJ and he was on the air at that very moment. Before leaving the station to fetch us he started a set of music to bridge the time but the set was almost up. We pulled up to the station and Selcuk ran the 6 flights to the broadcasting room, he took the helm just in time to switch from music to the live guest he had in the sound booth!!!! What? It was absolutely crazy. Before this trip I could never have imagined anyone going out of their way so completely for absolute strangers. But that wasn't all. After the live guest was done and after a good bit of sitting around smiling at each other through the glass wall of language barrier, in walked a super hip friend of Selcuk's. He spoke beautiful english and whisked us off to dine at a posh restaurant and later to a coffee shop for a nightcap espresso. Such a treat!

Through our friends in Turkey we were able to experience so many sides of the life there, the work-a-day world in Istanbul (or at least the commute to and from work), family life, conversations about religion, politics and history, an amazing 14 person family dinner / folk music jam session with everyone, including us, wielding an instrument, a great lunch and shopping exploration through our friend's quiet Istanbul neighborhood, participating in an English class for 9 year-olds in the school where Resat was principal, seeing a Christian Monastery in the fabulous care of a couple of young Kurdish guys who spoke no english but were some of the warmest people we met, being treated to dinner at a lovely restaurant in Gaziantep with some of the world's best baklava... the experiences go on and on, so I will leave you with that sample.

The bottom line is that the people we met in Turkey set a new standard for hospitality and kindness. We were inspired by the active conscientious Servas hosts we stayed with, we adored the engaging friends we met and we fell completely in love with the warm laughter filled Kurds that enveloped us into their lives. Turkey taught us to release our sense of control for the course of our days and instead give ourselves over completely to the kindness of the people around us and the bends in the stream of our journey. We learned fast and were well rewarded with incredible friendship and care. Thank you Turkey!


More pics here

Cappadocia and the Istambul marathon

Spires of lımestone carved by wınd, raın, and snow ınto a boggling array of towerıng shapes. . .


Floatıng above the rough terraın ın a balloon ınspıred enough awe to almost make us feel guılty about thıs splurge of the adventure, almost.



Hıkıng and runnıng through the rocky dessert, pausıng to forage on the remnant grapes from an overgrown vıne and on tıny apples terraced ınto the canyons. Bumbling our way to an almost constructed hotel wıth rooms carved from the rock outfıtted wıth real sheets, a marble bathroom, and a workıng fıreplace for about 8 dollars more per nıght than we payed for a busted mosquıto net ın a tree house on the coast. We enjoyed the heck out of the place and ıt was hard to leave. The pıctures speak better for the place than my words so do check them out. Better yet, go there and see ıt for yourself.

After fıve days ın heavenly Cappadocıa we pulled ourselves away vıa nıght bus to Istanbul. Our fırst two nıghts we stayed on the Asıan sıde of the 20,000,000 strong metropolıs. Our hosts were a young famıly who commuted ınto the cıty on a shuttle bus provıded by theır employer, HSBC. We made the hour long commute wıth them each day before and after work, enjoyed the perspectıve on real lıfe workıng ın the Gateway cıty. Long conversatıons around the PKK bombıngs, polıtıcs, the future Mıddle East, and travel kept us entertaıned ın theır modern hıghrıse flat.



On Saturday we transfered from the Asıan sıde of Istambul to the older European sıde. We dropped our bags wıth our new hosts, Ozge & Tugrul, ın an old flat ın Şışle before runnıng out to regıster for the marathon, and catch up wıth our friends, Selin and Gregory, from the coast. After trıppıng around the cıty to fınd the marathon offıces, catchıng up wıth our frıends for lunch, and shoppıng the "seconds" markets, we made ıt back to our hosts home. We arrıved to a party just gettıng started. Mom was ın her 4th hour preparıng food ın the kıtchen, about a dozen famıly members were around the apartment and the table was set. Dınner was authentıc Turkısh: tıny frıed fısh, fantastıc frıed veggıe pancakes, great frıed borek rolls, spıcy salads of onıons, cucumbers, and tomato, and of course, plenty of turkısh delıght and çay (tea) to fınısh. After a great dınner around the long table (the local of feasts by nıght and a classroom by day) we leaned back ın our chaırs as our hosts brought out a musıcal ınstrument for each of us. Once the musıc started the ıntensıty buılt... sıtar, bongos, and guıtar led the nıght, the percussıon support provıded by the musıcally challenged Amerıcans was luckıly pretty much drowned out by the talented Turks. Song after song we enjoyed late ınto the evenıng. When the famıly fınally left we bedded down and set our alarms early for Sunday's race.
The Istambul Iternatıonal Marathon was a trıp, only about two thousand mostly foreıgn runners sıgned up for the marathon and half marathon whıle about 60,000 turned out for the 8k fun run. All the races started on the Asıan sıde of the Boshporous and crossed to the European sıde ın the fırst few mıles. The crowds were thıck on the buses to the start and I would have never have made ıt near the startıng lıne ıf not for a thoughtful Turk who grabbed me by the arm and drug me through the crowds of fun runners. After the start the race treated me roughly. Between the party nıght, the warm temps, and a dıffernt level of support than I am accustomed to, I struggled through the late mıles and fınıshed ın 3 hours 23 mınutes Mercy was my greatest fan and managed to fınd me twıce and hand off much needed snacks. Istambul's rampant natıonalısm fılled the streets wıth the red star and crescent makıng the marathon a great cultural experıence ınspıte of the slower performance.


You can check out the flıckr websıte for more photos of the adventures so far.

Lycian Way and the blister brigade

Tearing ourselves away from Oasis, assembling a collection of "camping gear", choosing a route and surviving the hike, whew, what a full week.

At 6:00pm on Thursday October 11th we tossed Oasis' lines to Catharine and Garnet. Cliff waved from the pilot house and Marina popped her head over the rail of the boat for one last golden retreiver goodbye and then poof Oasis and the gang were gone. All of the certainty of the last weeks, all of the comforts, all of the routines were backing out and heading to Israel. . . without us!

We looked at the bags at our feet, all the heavier for the motley camping gear we pulled together in Finike: a thick blanket, 1 meter each of foam bath mat for ground pads, a thin aluminum pot to cook in, a thermos for tea, a metal mug for coffee, two tiny spoons, a spool of rough twine rope and a thread of hope and a predilection for adventure.

We hefted our bags and walked out of the marina with a mixture of trepidation and anticipation. Thanks to the kindness of the Turkish people, we found the Dolmuş (small bus) to Çiralı a little beach town an hour northeast of Finike. We used the cell phone that Sara and Niklas gave us with its new Turkish SIM card and called ahead to a pension in Çiralı to see if they could fetch us from the highway. Thank goodness for modern technology. By 7:30 we were sitting on the dark highway side hoping that the kindness of the Turks would not fail us. Thankfully it didn't. Within 20 minutes a car pulled up and took us 7 km down the road and deposited in the welcoming arms of Aynur Kurt, the proprietress of Sima Peace. From the moment we stepped out of the car, Aynur had us in her hands. She hugged us like old family and pulled us into her courtyard. Within moments we were seated at the long table with a steaming plates of food, Efes beers in hand and trepidation caste aside. It may not be Oasis, but it'll do.

It turned out that we were 2 of 3 non-Turks at the Pension. It was the first night of Bayram, the holiday to end Ramadan, and Aynur's whole family was visiting the pension. By the time dinner was over our proprietress and her family were three sheets to the wind and the women were singing beautiful Turkish songs and everyone was clapping and laughing... could it really be just hours from our dejection on the dock?

The next day, October 12th, we selected our route on the Lycian Way. We chose a long loop, approximately 90 kilometers. The plans took us from Çiralı up and down headlands along the coast for 7 hours to the package tour mecca of Tekirova, turned inland and climbed the flank of Mount Olympos through the Kemer Canyon, to the town of Ovacik and then through high-mountain-goat-grazing-villages to the pass over Mount Olympos and finally down to Çiralı once again. We spent the day provisioning ourselves with food and enjoying the delicacies on offer in Çiralı, namely their fruit juice. We ordered huge mugs of everything juice. It was a luscious blend of melon, plums, oranges, pomegranate juice and who knows what else. We sat in the shade of a tree chatting with new German friends and relishing the bounty of Turkey.

By 3:00 we shouldered our packs and headed for the trail. What an astoundingly beautiful trek, we can't recommend it highly enough. We hiked right on the edge of the sea, climbing over headlands, skirting along rocky inlets and hiking over beaches. The route from sea level to alpine wound casually through ruins of Greek, Lycian, Roman and Ottoman eras. We wandered into towns most days where we could re-provision or be served a hot lunch in a restaurant. The combination of wilderness, history, culture, and physical challenge was spectacular.

Our camping set up left a couple things to be desired, namely comfort and warmth. But we loved cooking over campfires with our little pot and waking up to beautiful sunrises and gorgeous vistas. The lack luster sleeping arrangement made it quite easy for both of us to get up and get moving. We tried to ease ourselves into the trek by hiking three hours on the 12th and 4 hours on the 13th. Oh I forgot to mention our fabulous footwear. I made the dumb, dumb, dumb choice to leave my favorite Chacos at home and bring just my running shoes and some Chaco slides. So my only trekking shoe option were my running shoes. Canuche fared better in his fabulous Chacos (which I lusted after every day of the trek). By the 3rd day, October 14, we put in a longer 8.5 hour day complete with two hours spent cowering under a tree as the sky erupted around us in lighting followed less than two seconds later by thunder and torrential rain. Oh how we longed for pack covers or ponchos or a tent. Instead we tied our rain coats around our packs to protect them and wrapped our bath mat ground pads around our shoulders to stay warm. When the lightning passed and our shivering grew intolerable, we launched into the rain and continued our hike. The afternoon dried up and the trail deposited us in a pomegranate and orange orchard where we munched on split pomegranates while we urged our aching bodies along. Our campsite the third night was in a glorious deep canyon near a spring dripping down the rock wall and pooling in the otherwise dry creek bed. It afforded us cold water for soaking our feet and a seemingly soft sand patch for pitching our...bath mats.
By the fourth day my body was in full revolt. My feet could barely deal with the rough stony path and the landslides that kept us scrambling over boulders and scree for the first hours of the day. Once I remembered my advil bottle, and started the Ibu drip, everything got better fast. We climbed out of the canyon and over a ridge into a high mountain valley that tumbled steeply to the sea miles below. The end of our route was a high mountain village at the end of the road before the pass. The temperature was dropping the higher we climbed and fretted over our meager camping set up.
We decided that we should sleep inside if opportunity knocked. With darkness encroaching we limped into the 12 buliding town where a nice villager with a few words of English told us that there was a pension up the road, hallelujah! After some wandering we found the pension, but alas the one room was taken by a Dutch couple hiking the trail! Dammit! We hadn't seen another hiker in four days but the one time there was a warm bed at stake the Dutch swoop in and take it! Rollo, we hold you personally responsible for the presence of your people in that pension!

Crestfallen we made our way further up the mountain trail looking for a sound place to make camp as the day turned to dusk and the wind began to blow. We found a good spot under a bunch of pine trees and gathered enough pine needles to make a 6 inch thick bed. We got a big campfire blazing and practically sat on top of it to get warm. We went to bed wearing all of our clothes and managed to stay warm under a starry sky worthy of an Oscar.

The next day October 16, our 5th day of hiking, we climbed to the pass amid glorious views and much appreciated shade of Mt. Olympos. Afternoon, we descended the other side with breathtaking views out to the Mediterranean. With dwindling food supplies in our packs we kept hiking on in search of a town for resupply. After 10 hours of hiking we came to what should have been the town of Ulupinar, but was just a number of restaurants clustered around a creek bed. It was 5:30 and although we were hungry we needed to find a store and hike on to a place where we could collect the pine needles needed to make our bathmats into beds. One of the guys at the last trout restaurant took pity on us and invited us to sleep on the deck of their store room and eat dinner in the restaurant. Without a moment of hesitation we threw down our backpacks and shook on the deal. We barely had time to take off our shoes and change into warm dry clothes before a feast was set before us.

We spent the next hour marveling at the turn of our fate, from the two worst case scenarios of A: pressing past the trout restaurants to a campsite and eating peanuts for dinner or B: hiking down the highway in search of town and a grocery store and then retracing our steps back up the mountain with headlamps before finding our campsite to this unimaginable options C: drinking beer by a blazing fire and eating lovely grilled trout served to us by a whole cadre of attentive servers. How on earth did we score this? Despite the cool weather and the hard deck we slept happily and deeply, snuggled in with the restaurant's little white kitten.

The 6th and final day of our hike, we woke early eager to get off the deck and start moving and without coffee or tea began our last segment down to Çiralı. Just before Canuche went into a full caffeine withdrawal, we came upon the flames of Chimaera; natural gas flares rising continuously out of the earth in small flaming geysers. We pulled out our pot and used the last of the tea from Oasis to make a steaming pot of goodness to curb the headache (would you believe that Canuche ran out of coffee on the last day of the trip, horror of horrors). We continued our hike back into Çiralı and found Aynur at Sima Peace eager to take us in with open arms.

Today October 19th my feet are just beginning to heal and the blisters on my toes are no longer making me walk like an invalid. I am sorry to say that my relationship with my running shoes may have been the major casualty of the hike, I can't bear to look at them, much less put them on. Canuche and I are in Antalya now, the biggest city in this region of Mediterranean coast. We will board a night bus headed for Cappadocia at 9:00 tonight and plan to spend the next 5 days exploring the fairy chimneys and rock cities of the interior. I have bought new trail running shoes so that my feet can face the prospect of many more days of hiking. We will hopefully sleep in hostels every night and enjoy thick mattresses and ample coziness. But Canuche is not quite ready to give up on the bath mats yet...

We send our love to all of you and wish for you thick mattresses and ample coziness as well. For all our pics click on this link

Greece and Turkey: boats, blue skys, blue water....not bad!

Greece could not have come sooner. We escaped encroaching autumn in Scandinavia to sunny Greece just as the ultra hip Copenhagenites donned fox fur coats.
First stop: cacauphonous, crowded, Athens--with history at every step. The summer Olympics of ‘06 drove massive capital improvements in the city. A new metro system swept us into the city from the airport and deposited us in a metro station cum archaeology museum with discoveries from the excavation of the Acopolis Station. One whirlwind day and a half in Athens yielded sunset at the Acropolis, our first taste of kebab, incredible statuary in the National Archeology Museum and huge scoops of yoghurt honey peach ice cream. Then we were off to meet Uncle Cliff and the boat, Oasis, on Paros Island in the Aegean Sea.
Paros is part of the Cycladic islands. They earn there name from the winds that attack the sea and whip up waves with little notice. Cliff and Oasis had been stuck at anchor in Paros for 8 days with consistent 40 knot winds and 6-9 foot seas in the harbor! We arrived to nearly flat calm beautiful weather.

As the sun set over the glassy harbor , we dined on roasted pork loin on the back deck by candle light. Mercy and I were in heaven when we collapsed into our devilishly comfortable queen sized bed below decks in our stateroom.

Cliff cruises like it’s his job--and he’s very good at it. The boat is kept in a “better than new” condition. The 14 years and 100,000 plus sea miles since it came out of the ship yard seem to have worked out the kinks of him and the boat. His attention to detail and fanatical upkeep pay off. Our first hours of cruising he spent pressure washing the dust and sand from every inch of the exterior. The windstorm seemed to have delivered a significant part of a Saharan sand dune onto the vertical surfaces of the boat. Cliff let me join in after the boat was dry and soon Mercy and I were “polishing the stainless”, a task that would take about 30 man hours, needs to be repeated on a monthly basis, and at times involved tools I had previously reserved for oral hygiene. We were happy to help and to have an excuse to absorb some sun rays on deck. After 14 hours cruising we docked on a tiny volcanic island, Nysiros. I immediately ran off for a race against the darkness while Mercy, Cliff, Catherine, and Marina went off to explore town. The tiny port town offered a cliff mounted monastery complete with neon sign, a few open air bars, and great rocky beach for a full moon swim.

Our traveling companions on the boat include Catherine, a friend of Cliff’s who works as a firefighter in Miami. She’s a Jamaican, world traveler, animal lover, adventurer, and seems ready for just about anything. Garnet is the cook/steward/deckhand crew who has worked for Cliff for the last 2 years. A Philippina by birth, she has worked in Italy and on boats for all of her adult life. Marina II, a well loved golden retriever thankfully requires that we make daily shore runs to stretch legs and enjoy the scenery.

Our first port of call was the eastern most Greek island, Rodos (Rhodes). This is the second biggest tourist area of Greece. An old walled city cram packed with tiny winding cobblestone streets, a Crusader era castle built by the Knights of St. John, medieval moat, and about 4000 little trinket shops. The crystalline blue water and rocky beaches complemented the thousands of beach umbrellas and beer bellies shoulder to shoulder on the shore.

Our days on the boat have a regular routine: A few days in a marina where we spend about half of each day working to upkeep the boat, (washing and polishing are non-stop) followed by a walk through town, a run for me, and a great evening meal on the back deck. Catherine, Mercy, and I sometimes rent a car and explore the hiking opportunities or nearby ruins to get a feel for more than just the marina. The life is too good. So good we boarded the boat on September 25 and we’re just tearing ourselves away today October 11. We reached Turkey on September 30 and we’ve explored the Mediterranean coast from Marmaris to Finike.

Mercy and I will leave the boat today and head to Cirali a few miles East of Finike to begin an 8 day trek on the Lycian way, a coastal trail that heads 500km village to village through mountains, beaches and ruins. Our route will start in Cirali, head along the coast for a couple days of hiking and then up into the mountains to sramble up Mount Olympos. We should be off the trail by October 19th and head over to the Aegean sea to visit Ephesus and then back up the coast to Istanbul over the next two weeks to make the Istanbul marathon on the 28th.
After the race we’re heading for Capadoccia in central Turkey, then south to Syria by the 14th of November Lebanon does not look likely due to the current political situation. After a week or so in Syria we plan to head to Jordan. Our tentative schedule puts us in Egypt by the beginning of December and then a week in Israel just before our flight to Germany to catch up with Rollo & Marga around the 21st of December.

We are in a lovely little town Çirali with fabulous juice stands and lovely people, but painfully slow internet so we apologize that our flickr pıcs aren't named and oriented correctly. If you want to see them they are here. If you want to see them spiffed up and named, we'll do that in a week or so. Love to all.

Odense-- Marathon and Labor talks

One aspect of our trip I am excited about is the marathoning opportunity. I love to run and am always happier when I keep up a training schedule but the variability of the vagabonding lifestyle makes it easy to lose track of training. Marathons will, I hope, motivate me to keep up. Sunday the 24th I ran with about 3000 other people in the Odense Marathon. It was a communal experience, everyone working against the same challenge. The common language was Danish and there were a lot more hot pants (the Scandinavians are ever practical in this regard, lots of spandex shorts) and Danish flag running jerseys but otherwise it felt much like the Seattle Marathon. The weather was 15 C and cloudy at the start of the race and as I made conversation with the only other short guy in the starting area the universal smell and feel of the pre-race was upon us.
Mercy and I arrived in Odense on Friday night after an adventures day finding her family village that she’ll tell you about in another post. We found our Servas hosts, Bo and Eleonara, waiting for us with pasta and many beers for the pre-pre-race dinner. Bo, a solidly built union activist machinist (he works for the Danish company Maersk building the biggest ships in the world) is a beer connoisseur and labor/socialist liberal. Elenoara,(Elu) a tall blond Venus d’Milo lookalike, is a Russian emigrant studying pharmaceutical chemistry at university and raising their two daughters Susan, and Emilia. Their seven and four year old girls kept everyone entertained and fell in love with Mercy even through the language barrier.
Our evening of political discussion, good food, and good beer (I didn’t want to OVER purify before the race) ended early in their little apartment and we went to bed in the girl’s vacated room. The next day Elu guided us across town to the University on the family bikes where she showed us the chemistry department at the university and I retrieved my race number. It was a window into the family’s daily commute. Elu peddles about 5k to the University with the smaller girl on the seat behind her while Bo peddles with Susan on the half bike behind him to Susan’s school and then rides on to his co-workers house to carpool to work about 20k away.
After a ride back to the apartment Elu handed us off to Bo who drove us to the farmer’s market for 4 kilos of organic leeks, great cheese, and more pastries for me. We did a bit more provisioning at the BAZAAR (an indoor Middle Eastern market in an old industrial building where about a hundred merchants sell all the necessary viddles) before returning to the apartment for our attempt at cooking for them. The evening highlight was a walk to their allotment garden (allotment gardens are a throwback of the industrial revolution kept alive in much of Northern Europe. They are surprisingly large tracts of land where urban families living densely in high rise or midrise apartment buildings can have their own garden space to grow their own food and/or to sit sipping tea with friends). Only 600 meters from Bo & Elu’s apartment building we entered an almost rural enclave of about 100 small “city lots” delineated by shrubs and low fences. Many yards had small lawns, patios, fruit trees, some had gardens, grape arbors, or animal pens. It was like a neighborhood made up only of back yards with all the beautiful things people do in the best yards but without the junk piles that end up all over ours. There’s a rule that the hedges and fences cannot be taller than the table so neighbors can always see each other and socialize. There’s also a rule that it must be quiet in the garden between noon and two so one can nap, but I digress. Many allotments had little buildings in the yard where tenants had small kitchens for making snack and tea and a bed for taking afternoon naps. There was even a section of the allotment garden for keeping animals and those yards were full of chickens, passenger pigeons, and ducks. It was a great community space that was part p-patch garden, part country farm, and part picnic in the park.





Sunday brought our lovely stay with Bo, Elu and the girls to a close. Mercy had to tear herself away from her new playmates Susan & Emilie. It was sad to go and we were glad to have the marathon to distract us. My goal for this race was to run the first half of the race under control and to run each 10k of the race faster than the previous 10k. Running negative splits requires self control and pacing through the exhilaration of the start, motivation to push past others in the doldrums of the middle miles, but provides a great boost when you get to pass many at the finish. As most of you know, self control is not my primary virtue (hide the cookies, please) and I am often swept away by the early fervor of the race. This time I ran a controlled race and felt better at the finish than I had in any other marathon. I finished in 3 hours and 13 minutes and in the recovery area was greeted by the my favorite element of a European marathon, a hydration table full of cold beer!

The first marathon of the year was great fun. But now I am looking forward to the Istanbul Marathon on October 28Th!