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\rehead{Barcelona \&\ Turkey, 1999}
\lohead{Edited \today}

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\begin{document}
\title{Barcelona \& Turkey, 1999}
\author{David Pierce}
\date{Last edited, \today}
\publishers{Mathematics Department\\
Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University\\
Istanbul\\
\url{dpierce@msgsu.edu.tr}\\
\url{http://mat.msgsu.edu.tr/~dpierce/}}
\maketitle
\emph{I wrote these notes some time before I left Canada and moved to
  Turkey in the summer of 2000.  I left the notes behind in my
  computer account at McMaster University, only recovering them in
  December, 2005.  I have done little editing since then.
One change has been to remove
  needless instances of the phrase ``of course''; I have decided that
  this phrase is entirely overused.}

On Sunday, 13 June, 1999, I left Hamilton, Ontario.  I was bound for Barcelona,
and would continue to Istanbul after a week.  I returned to Canada on 21
July. If you want to know 
about my trip, then you can read these notes.  I shall be reading them
as well.  I want to aid my memory by
noting some things to remember for future travels.  Rather, I want to
aid my \emph{forgetting,} by noting some things I won't \emph{have} to
remember once they are written down.

Table~\ref{table:calendar} shows when I entered a place, or a mode of
travel, where I would be 
spending at least one night.

I went to Barcelona for a conference, the Joint
Conference of the 5th Barcelona Logic Meeting and the 6th Kurt G\"odel
Colloquium.  This took place on 16 through 19 June.  I reached
Barcelona on the 14th and left on the 21st.  Unfortunately the 20th
was a Sunday,
so I couldn't take the train out of town.  I had wanted to visit Montserrat, 
the location of a Black Virgin and supposedly some nice mountain
trails.  I had thought I might go there on the 15th, but then I didn't
want to take the chance of being too exhausted after just having crossed
five time-zones.

Rather than pay for door-to-door
service to the Toronto airport, I took the ``Go'' bus to Toronto, the
subway to Islington station, then the ``Airport Express'' bus to
the airport.  I saved the return tickets and one subway token
in a little zippered pocket in my knapsack, to use when I got back.

That knapsack---I try to call it a knapsack rather than a backpack, as
to my mind a backpack is for backpacking, and backpacking is hiking in
the woods with everything you need for a week or more.  Even for a ``day-pack,''
my knapsack is pretty small.  It is true that I was taking this
knapsack on a trip of more than five weeks.  However, I wasn't sleeping
outdoors, and I supplemented my luggage anyway
with a stuff-sack and a waist-pack.  The 
clothes I wasn't wearing fit into the stuff-sack, which strapped onto
the bottom of the knapsack.  Possibly I could have dispensed with the
waist-pack.  It would have been better to do without the stuff-sack,
to take weight off my shoulders.  Nonetheless, I did accomplish two
packing goals: to be able to walk easily with all of my stuff, and not
to have to check any baggage on an airplane.  

For clothing, all
I carried was a complete change, with a little bit extra.  Most
articles were synthetic, so they would pack more tightly and dry more
easily.  I thought about bringing a sweater, just in case, but I
didn't want to make room for it.  I was right not to bring 
it, though there was one drizzly day in Istanbul when I would have
worn it if I could.

\begin{table}[ht]
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{l|lllllll} 
1999&Sun.  &Mon.  &Tues.  &Wed.     &Thurs.  &Fri.  &Sat.\\ \hline
June&13    &14    &15     &16       &17      &18    &19\\
    &airplane&\multicolumn{2}{l}{Barcelona}&&&      &  \\ \hline
    &20    &21    &22     &23       &24      &25    &26\\
    &      &\multicolumn{2}{l}{Istanbul}&& &      &Ankara\\ \hline
June/&27   &28    &29     &30       &1       &2     &3 \\
July&      &      &       &         &        &      &  \\ \hline
    &4     &5     &6      &7        &8       &9     &10 \\
    &      &      &bus    &\multicolumn{2}{l}{Alanya}&&Ka\c s\\ \hline
    &11    &12    &13     &14       &15      &16    &17 \\ 
    &      &      &       &         &        &\multicolumn{2}{l}{Ayval\i k} \\ \hline
    &18    &19    &20     &21       &        &      & \\ 
    &      &\multicolumn{2}{l}{Istanbul}&\multicolumn{2}{l}{Hamilton}&&\\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\caption{When I went where.}\label{table:calendar}
\end{table}

Here then is the clothing I travelled with, including what I wore.
Most of it came from Recreational Equipment Incorporated:
\begin{compactitem}
\item
Two nylon long-sleeved shirts, each with a long zippered breast pocket.
Because of these pockets, I didn't bother with a money-belt,
though Barcelona was indeed a place to worry about thieves.
\item
Two synthetic tee-shirts, one with long sleeves; I think the material
is of the ``Cool-Max'' brand.  Had I needed a bit more warmth, I could
have worn one of these under a nylon shirt; I didn't need to do this
in Barcelona. 
\item
Two pairs of long nylon pants, one with removable legs (though I never
removed the legs in Barcelona).
\item
Four pairs of undershorts, two synthetic and two cotton; cotton is
more comfortable in warm weather, but really I need not have
brought it.
\item
Three pairs of ragg wool socks, with three pairs of wool liners.  I
find these most comfortable, even in the heat.  I could have done with
two sets, but I own three of the same age, and wanted to wear them out
evenly.  (That was a silly reason to bring an extra set of socks
though.)
\item
Walking shoes.
\item
A nylon ``shell'' jacket that stuffed into its own pocket; I wore it in
Istanbul on the day when I would have worn the sweater.
\item
Sandals (Teva brand).  Sandals that were stepped into, rather than
strapped on, would have been more convenient for simple things like going to
bathe; they would also have been lighter; but having the straps was sometimes
invaluable.  The straps might
dig into my feet, so just in case, I brought:
\item
A pair of synthetic socks I happened to have.
\end{compactitem}
Once I dressed myself from this collection (and wore the
shoes, not the sandals), the rest fit into a reasonably small sack.

What then went into the knapsack and
the waist-pack?  A good question for my memory.  Some answers:
\begin{compactitem}
\item
  Some books, for me and for gifts.  One was \emph{Walden}.  Perhaps I
  think of Thoreau as travel literature because Robert Pirsig read him
  with his son on the journey recounted in \emph{Zen and the Art of
  Motorcycle Maintenance}.  I did read Thoreau, though it was a bit
  odd to do so in a bustling city like Barcelona.  I also brought a
  Zen book, as a matter of fact: \emph{Zen Flesh, Zen Bones} by Reps
  and Senzaki. 
\item
  A litre
water-bottle; it would be better to have this on a strap or something,
outside the knapsack.  Actually, \emph{two} litre-bottles might be
good, for containing the contents of the litre-and-a-half bottles of
water that one often ends up buying---or for filling from a five-litre
bottle that you leave in your room.
\item
A clothesline, that is, a length of nylon cord.  I think I left it in
  Istanbul.
\item
Toiletries.  That's pretty obvious.  I don't use much.  Nail
clippers.  Without
scissors on my Swiss-Army knife, I should have had to bring scissors to
trim my beard.  A two-in-one shampoo, Pert brand in fact; in French
that's \emph{Pr\^et}; I don't like it though, next time I'll just deal
with two bottles.  Liquid soap (Dr Bronner's), a washcloth and
backpacking towel.  Comb, ponytail-bands, toothbrush and -paste.
  Sunscreen, which I foolishly didn't use on the only
day when it would have mattered: the day I got burnt.  More on that
later, along with the insect repellent that I did not bring.
\item
A plastic knife, fork and spoon.  The spoon is essential for yogurt,
and a table-knife is a lot better at spreading than a pocket-knife.
\item
Toilet paper.  Don't recall needing it, but one never knows.
\item
  Three small mesh bags, to hold the little things.
\item
A couple of bandanas; in lieu of a hat, one of these could
protect the top of my head from the sun, as well as make me (more of) a hippie. 
\item
A necktie,
just in case, because of a suggestion in a very funny book called \emph{The
Drinker's Guide to the Middle East} (which I bought in an anarchist
bookstore in San Francisco).  A tie would be a
simple way to show respect to your host, if somebody should invite you
home.  On the other hand, I have worn one of the nylon shirts,
tie-less, to an American wedding (which I reached by a thirty-mile
bicycle-ride).
\end{compactitem}

After Barcelona, I was to meet Ay\c se in Istanbul, and after some
time there, we were
to go back to Ankara, where I had left some clothing.  I looked
forward to being able to wear this clothing, because it was cotton,
but I \emph{could} have done without it.

There is a Turkish word, \emph{e\c s,} which
means ``one of a pair,'' or ``partner,'' as well as ``spouse.''  I would call
Ay\c se my \emph{e\c s}; but nosy people we met in our
travels in Turkey would ask Ay\c se if I were her \emph{e\c s}, and
she had to say No, I was her \emph{arkada\c s}.  Now, \emph{arka} is
one's back, and the suffix \emph{da\c s} indicates sharing.  That
doesn't mean that an \emph{arkada\c s} is somebody with whom you make
``the beast with two backs''; rather, with your \emph{arkada\c s} you
would fight back-to-back as you made your last stand.  The usual
translation is ``friend.''

Flying 
overnight from Toronto to Barcelona, I didn't sleep much;
still, on the 
day of arrival, I did manage to stay awake until dark, and I did
manage to keep going all day the next day and succeeding days.  Thus I
dealt with the change of time-zones.

Barcelona is a city of Spain or of Catalonia, depending on
your politics.  I wanted to be able to speak a few
words of the local language---but which one, Spanish or Catalan?  Catalonian
nationalists would rather speak Catalan, perhaps, so I decided to know
how to say \emph{Parleu Angles?} rather than \emph{?`Habla Ingles?}---%
and \emph{Si us plau} instead of \emph{Por favor.}  
But all I could find about Catalan was the bit
of information in the the \emph{Barcelona} volume of the Rough Guide
series.  It wasn't much.
I should have brought a small phrase-book for Spanish.

Signs in the Barcelona airport were in the two local languages and
English.  The woman at
Tourist Information spoke English, not surprisingly; she gave me a
city map less bulky than the big Michelin map I had brought with me,
and she pointed me in the direction of the train into the city.   

The train had a terminus at the airport.  There was a short queue at a
machine dispensing tickets, and a long queue at the ticket window.  An
American student told me that the machine required exact change.  The
line at the window did not take forever; nor did the attendent object
to my paying with a large bill.  I got my ticket, entered the
platform, and walked down to the far end, the end in the sunshine,
where I marvelled that I was in Spain.

I had
changed a traveller's cheque in the airport.  (American Express
pretentiously uses the
spelling ``cheque'' for their product, but Canadians use it as a matter
of course, and for 
now I am a Canadian.)  On the Saturday before leaving Hamilton, I had
realized that there was a change office in the downtown mall, and it
was actually open that day; however, they were out of pesetas, and I
was disappointed.  I didn't want to have to depend on the change
office at the Barcelona airport, which I thought was bound to give me a bad
rate.  In the event though, they gave me a good rate, much better than
the office in town that I used a few days later.  (Actually the rate
in town was better, but the commission was confiscatory.)  Note then:
\$200 US
ended up
covering seven days of Barcelona expenses, except the hotel bill.  (In
Barcelona, I could have changed cheques in Canadian dollars, but it
would have been more difficult in Turkey.)

As the Rough Guide had predicted, when I got off the train at Pla\c ca
de Catalunya, I did not know which way to go.  I was in a big busy city,
where plenty of people were walking around with somewhere to go.  There were
also
plenty of young people, with various ``alternative'' styles of hair and
jewelry, hanging out about the \emph{pla\c ca}.  After wandering a bit, I
could orient the map to the place; then I saw a couple of folks trying
to do the same thing.  I guessed that they were not locals and
would speak English.  They may in fact have been from eastern Europe; in any case,
they didn't know much English, but I pointed them to where
they wanted to go, which was the station I had just come out of.

Where I wanted to go was the Ramblas.  I had seen it from the plane: a
strip of green heading down to the harbor.  Strictly I should say I
saw \emph{them}, a sequence of streets lying end to end, each called
``Rambla'' (as in Rambla de Canalettes, Rambla dels Estudis and so
forth).  They reversed the pattern familiar in the New World: on the
Ramblas, \emph{humans} took up the broad center of a road lined with
plane trees, while cars were pushed into narrow lanes on either side.
Some of the  streets feeding onto the Ramblas were too narrow for cars at
all.

It was a thrill to walk down that green way.  Many of my
fellow pedestrians were tourists.  But tourists could not have been the
customers for the stalls selling birds or houseplants.  I could believe the
statement of the Rough Guide that the street was as popular with
locals as with outsiders.

What is the purpose of this life-sized statue, covered with copper
paint?  And there is one painted with aluminum paint!
The figures on the pedestals turned out to be alive.  They held a pose
until somebody dropped a coin in their 
hat; then they allowed themselves to move mechanically to another
pose.  Sometimes a child would drop coin after coin into the hat of a
Roman warrior or a Wild West gunslinger, squealing as the
statue reached for his pistol or adjusted his spear and his grimace.
I felt sorry for the figures not 
destined to delight the youngsters, like the woman painted white and
black with head bowed contemplatively towards the red rose in her
raised hands.  She didn't get to move much.  I left her some coins
towards the end of my stay.

I found my hotel a couple of streets west of the Ramblas.  The notion of a
block doesn't mean much in the old city of Barcelona, where streets
run every which way.  The man at reception didn't know English, but
my Spanish colleague Ana had made my reservation, so everything was
fine.  I was
staying at Hostal La Terrassa, 
the cheap one on the list of suggested accommodations for conference
participants.  According to the Rough Guide, the hotel was in the red
light district.  It did have a terrace, and my room was
one of the four on the far side of the terrace, in the building
otherwise accessed 
from the next street over.  My room had a single bed, a bedside
table, a wardrobe, a sink, and a window onto the terrace.  It looked
at first like a prison cell, but in fact it was no more or less than I
needed.  There was
a toilet stall, the size of an airplane's, back on the other side of
the terrace.  To sit down in there, you had to fit your knees under the
sink, and the door was right next to somebody's window.  There was a full
bathroom inside the main building.  Out on the terrace were several
tables.

Had I arranged for my room earlier, I could have had one with a bath.
Not only would a bath have been unnecessary, but I would not have
reached my room by crossing the terrace, and so would not have had
such an easy way of meeting fellow travellers.  An Australian was sitting on
the terrace when I arrived; she gamely answered my newcomer's questions.  I
can't remember what they were though, except ``Can you drink the
water?''  (Yes, but it is salty.)  I did not bother to ask her
about vegetarian restaurants, since
she was eating some meat out of a tin.

Fortunately, the Rough Guide gave me a list of vegetarian
restaurants.  I found the first one that Monday afternoon: Self Naturista, a
cafeteria.  Their \emph{menu} left me with enough food to serve for
dinner as well.  I would be going back there several times---for
paella or quiche perhaps, with a glass of carrot-juice.

Back at the hotel, I could have had trouble with noise, but I didn't.
On Monday
night, people were talking on the terrace, 
but I was too sleepy to be disturbed.  Seagulls would wake me in the
pre-dawn for a few days.  On Thursday night, \emph{I} was
one of the people on the terrace doing the disturbing---not me
individually, but I was with a group of people, not all of
whom knew how to keep their voices down.  There were a young \emph{Quebecoise}
and a young man from New Jersey who were living together in
London---living in squalor, by their own account, while working in
pubs.  The woman seemed amazed 
and delighted to learn that I was in town for a math conference; she
gushed about how she \emph{loved} math.  I wasn't sure at first, but she
seemed genuine.  She had not yet been to university though; likewise the
man
(who had no interest in math).  Presently we were joined by two
Italian men---students who were attending the conference.  One of them spoke
little English, but could communicate with the Canadian in
French.  The other Italian spoke some Spanish, because he had a
Spanish girlfriend.  So when a woman yelled out of a window, in
Spanish, ``Some of us have to work tomorrow!''\ he could answer ``So do
we!''  (This was true for three of us, since we had lectures to attend
at 9 a.m.)

The two North Americans had been drinking a bottle of cheap wine,
getting ready to go out on the town.  When the bottle was finished, 
the man went across the street for another, 
which he bought for the equivalent of a US dollar.
The wine helped him forget to keep his voice down.  The woman said he
had made them go on this trip, although they could barely
afford it.  She said she didn't really want to go out that night either,
since they hadn't been getting much sleep.  He said they didn't need
sleep.  ``Come on, you love it!'' he said.  So off they went.  She had
written down the location of the 
conference, seemingly hoping to attend, but we never saw her again.

Other people I met on the terrace:
\begin{compactitem}
\item
A Spanish man with whom I could exchange only smiles; I could not give
him a \emph{fuego} for his cigarette, but he showed me the switch near my
window that controlled a light on the terrace.
\item
Two Australian women (different from the one I met the first day) who
were sharing an apartment in Dublin.  I saw one or other of them
frequently, once with a bottle of gin.
\item
Three Danish men who wanted to live in Barcelona for a month or two,
though they were having trouble finding a place.  One of them had his
passport stolen.
\item
Some French people in town for a music festival
that happened to be taking place right next to the site of our
conference, so that
the music could be heard through the walls; I just talked to one of
them briefly in the little French I knew, since he didn't know
English.
\item
Three Arab men; one was Lebanese and two were Palestinian.  One of
the latter allowed that in fact he was an Israeli citizen, though the
other one wasn't; they were all students in Valencia, in town for some
exams, so they were sorry I would be gone before it was time for their
math exam.
\end{compactitem}
Perhaps I had at least ten years on all of these folks, I don't know.  I didn't
see many people from the conference on the terrace; if I did, they were
often working.  One of them, from Austria, said he would have liked to do some
sightseeing, but he just didn't have time.  Well, I did some math on
the terrace as well, but I certainly was not going to ignore the place
where I was.

Some weeks back, I had bought (at a discount) a Rough Guide ``Special'' called
\emph{First Time Europe}, though
I had already made three trans-Atlantic trips.
The book strengthened my resolve to travel light, though I disagreed
with the author's claim that a money-belt was indispensible; I also
didn't agree that you needed five pairs of underwear and seven pairs
of socks, or that those little synthetic backpacking towels were no
good.  On the cover of the book were several photographs: of tourists
puzzling over a map, of tourists kicking back with their
water-bottles, of gondolas in Venice.  A fourth picture was
of some bizarre and rather hideous brown towers topped by
red and yellow decoration; they looked like plaster chickens
advertising a restaurant with down-home cooking.  Now I know where the
towers are. 
They are in Barcelona, at the Temple de la Sagrada Fam\'\i lia.

On Tuesday, I walked to the Sagrada Fam\'\i lia, Gaudi's masterpiece.
It 
is some distance outside the old city, surrounded now by regular
city blocks.
I had to agree with 
Orwell: the Anarchists showed bad taste by saving it.
Hell, I wish they had blown up the gothic
\emph{catedral} in the old city too.  Well no, not really; that cathedral is
a fine building, but I just wish people weren't
lighting candles and genuflecting inside.  Over in Istanbul, it's just as
well that the Ayasofya lost its Christian function 500 years ago.  (Now
the Muslims need to leave the Blue Mosque.)
  As for Sagrada Fam\'\i lia,
it is unfinished and unequipped for congregational use, so
that's good; but the construction continues.  Climbing up into the towers
was wonderful, and I spent a
long time up there, chatting with other tourists, and taking in the
breeze and the view.  As far as stone
buildings are concerned though, I prefer the lines to be
straight, unless they are the curves of Gothic arches.  Leave the
organic forms to organisms.  Plant trees and vines next to your
stone edifice; don't carve your stone edifice to look like trees and
vines.  The funny thing is, in a place where Gaudi did put some
straight columns, they are not vertical, but slanted.  I would have
expected them to arch. 

I lunched at a nearby vegetarian restaurant. At one o'clock, I was
just about the only customer, but by and by, another man had to sit
with me, because there was no other space.  Other vegetarian
restaurants were to prove similarly popular, at hours later than I
would expect.  I
ordered the \emph{menu}, but rather than select one appetizer, one
vegetable, one
main dish and one dessert, I left the decision to the old man
bringing the food.  I found a metal shaving in one dish, and a woman
took it back to show the cook.  When I found another contaminant in
the dessert, the woman went around the restaurant, looking for
somebody who could explain in English that it was only a piece of
almond.  It seemed more like a shell to me.  Despite the
contaminants, I \emph{did} enjoy the food.

After lunch, I continued walking away from the old city, over to the
Parc Gu\"ell, also designed by Gaudi.  There were arcades lined with
slanting pillars that looked like cobblestones cemented together.
The pillars \emph{were} that, but underneath the stones, there must have been
steel to do the pillars' \emph{job}---unless the roof above was
self-supporting.  In any
case, the Gaudi architecture was dishonest.  But OK, it represented
his fantasy, and the park was nice to walk around in anyway.  

From the top of the hill in the park, there was a grand view; I sat there for
quite a while---wondering, in part, whether I could stay awake until
dark.  As I was coming down, a woman going the other way
stopped to talk to me.  She was Mexican, but living in 
New York City.  In Barcelona, she was staying in the old city with a
friend, whose shared toilet was like the one on the terrace at my hotel:
when the friend 
was suffering from hemorrhoids, everyone in
her building knew about it.  Yes, and now \emph{I}
knew about it.  The conversation did revive me though.

The conference began the next day in Casa de Caritat, which had a
lovely old courtyard.  Like the mathematicians we were, we early
arrivals got our conference materials, and quietly and solitarily
studied them.  There was nobody I recognized for a while.  I did start
talking to \emph{somebody}; he turned out to be Croatian, studying in
Scotland under Angus Macintyre.  Angus,
I particularly wanted to see.

For lunch that day, I went by myself to yet another veggie restaurant,
Biocenter.
You asked 
at the kitchen for your hot food, and could make yourself a salad if
you wanted.  The chef didn't speak English, but I managed to ask for
whatever the people in front of me
got.  In the dining room were two other unilingual tourists, Katherine
and Phil. Her accent was
Irish, and his was Australian; their passports were British, and
they were living together in Belfast.  They were 
vegetarians, had been in town a couple of days, and had been having
trouble finding good food.  I was
delighted to show them the list in the Rough Guide.

Phil suggested meeting for dinner, and we arranged that he and
Katherine would
fetch me at my hotel.  After
the afternoon's math talks, a fellow named Byunghan ended up hanging
out with me.  He might have wanted to eat dinner with somebody, but
everybody else had drifted off.  I indicated that I was going to eat
at a vegetarian restaurant with some people I had met.  I knew he
thought vegetarianism was weird, but he said, ``OK,
I will join you!''  He was surprised later to learn that these people I
had met were total strangers, and \emph{not} mathematicians.  He
thought \emph{this} was weird too.

At a cafe on the street, Phil asked whether we had ever been looked down on
for our nationalities, as he had for being a Brit; Byunghan mentioned
the attitude of African-Americans towards Koreans such as himself.
At the restaurant later, Phil did get louder with each organic beer he
ordered from the good-natured waitress.  He seemed like a decent chap,
though he had become a vegetarian only because Katherine was
doing the cooking.  Katherine wondered whether she wanted
to spend her life keeping house for a man; she indicated that Phil
showed tendencies of being the ``lager lout'' that he didn't want people
to assume that he was.

Meanwhile, Byunghan had grown nervous and left the dinner, in order to
work more 
on the talk he would give the next day.
I gave a talk then as well, but I had not expected
to.  On Thursday morning, one of the organizers of the conference said it
was too bad I was 
not speaking.  He said that if I wanted to speak, they could find
time.  In fact, because somebody had not shown up, there was a slot
that afternoon.  I took the chance.  After a quick lunch, I
worked on my talk in the 
courtyard of the old hospital.  Old here means centuries old;
it's not a hospital now, it is a library and arts center.  You can't
tell about the courtyard from the outside; you just have to know
that the little opening in the stone wall leads to a delightful green
place within.  I worked there, while nearby, young people played
music on their guitar and drums; it wasn't distracting, but very
pleasant.

The talk went fine, so I was glad that I had had only a few hours to
prepare and hence to worry.

I dined that night with Angus and other mathematicians, so I just
followed them to the restaurant of their choice.  I don't remember
what I ate, but it wasn't much.  Same thing the next night; I went out
with meat-eaters, and had to settle for a salad and
some asparagus that was not very good. 
Had I not known where to find vegetarian restaurants for my other meals, I
would not have been happy.

Friday afternoon was free---no talks.  I relaxed for a long time under the orange
trees in the courtyard of what is now the Mares Museum.  Mares was a dead
person.  I went in to see his collection of crucifixes and such; also,
upstairs, his room-after-room of stuff, odds and ends, all neatly
displayed: cigar labels, straight razors, whatever; also,
pictures of the Black Virgin.

A sufficient reason to visit that and other museums in the old city was
to see from the inside the old buildings that housed them.  This was
especially true of 
the Picasso museum, which I visited on Saturday afternoon.  It was in
two adjacent mansions.  A mansion had no yard around it, in this case;
the yard was the courtyard inside.

On Sunday, I walked up to Montjuic, so called as the hill where Jews lived
until their expulsion from Spain.  There were the Romanesque and
Gothic collections of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya,
housed in the Palau Nacional.  In the Romanesque section, 
the museum had recreated a number of churches from the surrounding mountains, 
installing what remained of their frescoes.

There were several other sites on Montjuic, 
some left over from the 1992 Olympic Games.  
Behind the Palace, I was trying 
to get into a garden, but the gate was locked unaccountably.  A girl
came along, also hoping to get in, and she was pleased to find that I
spoke English.  She was Russian.  We
found another way into the 
garden, then walked up to the peak of Montjuic, where there was an old
fortress with a military museum and spectacular views of the city and
the sea.

In time I learned that the girl was sixteen, and her name was
Olga.  She had come to Barcelona with her mother, but her mother had
left.  Olga was to start taking Spanish lessons the next day; I didn't
learn exactly why, except that her mother thought it was a good idea.
Olga herself didn't seem so sure.  She was nervous about being
on her own.

After we had explored the fortress, I announced my inclination to go
back to the old city and eat in a vegetarian restaurant; Olga was
inclined to come along.  I had intended just to walk down the hill,
not wanting to trust my nerves to the cable-car.  But I
could see that Olga really wanted to take the cable-car, so I went
along; in fact the ride was no big deal.  The car only went
halfway down the hill; then we took the funicular railway,
like the T\"unel in Istanbul.

Olga had not been in the old city; her hotel was somewhere else.  I am
not sure what impression it made on her.  We
wandered those narrow streets a while and sat at a cafe.  Then Olga
decided not to eat with me, but just to go back to her hotel.  I don't
know what considerations went into her decision, unless she got
nervous about spending so much time with this strange man more than
twice her age.  Or maybe she just got bored.  I found the restaurant
(Comme Bio),
ate my meal and filled out 
some postcards.

On the next day, Monday, 21 June, I flew to Istanbul via Munich.  In
Munich I filled out a survey concerning the airport.  It was amusing
to be sitting there and have a young woman walk up to me and utter
several sentences in German.  When I explained that I didn't speak
German, then she switched effortlessly to English and brought out a
different copy of the form.  I reported that everything in the airport
was fine, remembering only later that this was not true: the bathroom
was inconvenient, being downstairs and reached through two doors, and
having only one sink.

On the flight to Istanbul were many Turkish families with
children, and there was some rambunctiousness.  When we landed, many
people got up before they were supposed to.  They ignored repeated
warnings; finally the flight attendant gave up and said ``Fine, it is your
own responsibility; you are not insured!''  My neighbor had
been a pleasant Turkish businessman; he had not been assigned the seat
next to me, but had moved to accommodate a family with children.  For
this, the flight-attendants had given him a  
bottle of wine; as we left, he complimented them
for their excellent service in the midst of troublesome passengers.  

I made my fourth entrance to Istanbul, but only the first one by air.  The
passport control people seemed pleased that I could speak the Turkish
pleasantries.  I had my reunion with Ay\c se, an event whose sweetness
made up for the time spent waiting for it.

We stayed five nights in Istanbul, at the Hotel Bristol.  This was
in Beyo\u glu, across from the American Consulate; it was
down the street from Hotel Monopol, where I had stayed on all other
visits.  Monopol had not quoted Ay\c se a good rate this time.  The Bristol
was like the Monopol: probably quite impressive when new, but now
somewhat run down.  Perfectly comfortable, except that the cold water
ran hot for so long that we thought it really \emph{was} the hot water.

What did we do in Istanbul?  We spent a certain amount of time just
hanging out.  Ay\c se had discovered a \emph{pasaj} with several small
cafes; one we took to frequenting was the Cep
Sanat Galerisi---the Pocket Art Gallery.  It really was tiny.  The two
or three tables inside 
were the stands for old sewing machines, complete with treadle.
The tables outside were old blocks of masonry.

Tuesday was hot and
sunny.  We crossed the Bosphorus to visit Ay\c se's friend Deniz in her
hospital room.  That night, we ate in Safran, a restaurant listed as
vegetarian in the Rough Guide.  With Elisabeth and Stewart (my sister
and brother-in-law) the
previous summer, I had been unable to find the restaurant; 
that was because it was on the second floor of a building, 
and it had no sign on the door.
Ay\c se and I were the only customers.  We noted that the menu
featured plenty of meat, and the waiter explained that they had not
been getting enough customers as an exclusively vegetarian place.  
What about the missing sign on the door?  
Well, there used to be one, but it fell off.

I drank lots of the water that the waiter poured into our glasses; 
I did not get sick.

On Wednesday, we took the ferry to Ey\"up, the tomb of the Prophet's
standard-bearer, where he fell in battle at the wall of
Constantinople.  Many little boys were running about 
in the white uniforms that signified their imminent circumcisions.
Some rich fundamentalist was paying for the ceremony.
Creepy.  Through the cemetery on the slope above the Golden Horn, we
made our way up to the Pierre Loti Cafe.  The view was great, but would
be better without the highway crossing the Horn.

We took the ferry back to the Balat stop and made our way up to the
Kariye Camii, which once was in the countryside, though just within
the city wall. We passed a certain amount of squalor to get there.
When we did get there, we found that this former Church of the Holy
Saviour in Chora was closed; we had to return on Thursday to see its
fabulous mosaics and frescoes.  Perhaps a book that I have read
since was right: you should see Kariye \emph{before} Ayasofya, so
that from memories of Kariye you can get a sense of what Ayasofya was
like in all its glory.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday afternoon, we walked from Kariye back to the
Galata Bridge.  We stopped by the Beyazit Mosque, but it was prayer
time.  A couple of English-speaking tourists were sitting outside, but
they seemed disinclined to talk.  We walked through the Egyptian
Bazaar, housed in a gorgeous old building.  We were not shopping for
anything.  The tendency to sell spices in such a place is odd, since
Turkish cooking itself has not much use for them; but tourists must
buy them.

After returning to Kariye on Thursday, and visiting Deniz---at home
this time, on the European side---we met Ay\c se's friend Mustafa and
his German cousin Salma in a tea garden on the Bosphorus, in Be\c
sikta\c s.  Salma and I
spoke English, while Ay\c se and Mustafa spoke Turkish.  Salma was
just learning Turkish, so that, like me, she habitually replaced ``I
beg your pardon?'' with \emph{Efendim?} 

Istanbul had become cool and rainy---strangely so, according to
Ay\c se.  Friday was especially overcast, but we took the ferry to the Princes'
Islands anyway.  Nominally within the city, they are another world.  We
walked, and pedalled rented bicycles, past the cottages on the
hillsides.  The former house of Sait Faik 
was unaccountably closed.  (He is the ``Turkish Mark Twain,'' according
to some; the Rough Guide has an excerpt of his work.)  For dinner, we
faced the vegetarian's dilemma: how to eat in a place that gets its
food from the sea?  We
were able to stick to our principles nonetheless, eating vegetable
\emph{meze} and drinking a bottle of \emph{rak\i} as we sat by the water.

On Saturday, 26 June, we had lunch at Nuh'un Ambar\i---that's Noah's
Granary, a vegetarian establishment associated with Bu\u gday in
Bodrum.  The storefront and inside walls were adobe; it looked very
nice---\emph{groovy,} I would say---, and I hoped that they could at
least break even, selling basic 
whole foods, and handicrafts like wooden spoons.  We discovered
\emph{Istanbullshit,} a monthly magazine in English; it gave us
some ideas of places to check out when we came back.  For now though,
we had a bus to catch to Ankara.


We stayed in Ankara for ten
days.  It was good to be at home for a while.  Some days, we went to
METU---that's Ay\c se's university.  Some nights, we accepted G\"ulden
\emph{Teyze}'s invitations to dinner; it is always nice eat with Ay\c
se's parents, except that
one is embarrassed by being treated to such good food.

We also ate with a colleague of Ay\c se's and his wife at their
apartment on campus.  Andreas was
German; Elizabeth, Austrian; but they had decided to
learn Turkish and come to Turkey to live.  I was impressed, and they
seemed like good people.  They had
three young children.  Andreas composed music, and he demonstrated a computer
program that would play his compositions.  I was
inspired afterwards to spend some time studying musical scales:
specifically, the
imperfections with which the ideal musical intervals are fit together
to form a scale.  The best that I could figure (with the help of a web
search on Ay\c se's computer) was to assign frequencies this way:
%\newcommand{\ratio}[2]{#1/#2}
\newcommand{\ratio}[2]{\displaystyle\frac{#1}{#2}}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c}
$F^\sharp$&$G$&$G^\sharp$&$A$&$A^\sharp$&$B$&$C$&
             $C^\sharp$&$D$&$D^\sharp$&$E$&$F$&$F^\sharp$\\ \hline\rule{0ex}{4ex}
$\ratio1{\surd2}$&$\ratio34$&$\ratio45$&$\ratio56$&$\ratio89$&$\ratio{15}{16}$&1&
$\ratio{16}{15}$&$\ratio98$&$\ratio65$&$\ratio54$&$\ratio43$&$\surd2$
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
(One would never actually play $F^\sharp$, because with $C$ it would
make a tritone, the Devil in Music.  So I thought that the true
interval should be irrational.)

On Friday, Ay\c se went to a demonstration in which her union was
participating; the government was planning to change the pension
scheme, to the detriment of the workers.  On the following Sunday (4
July), Ay\c se's 
father, Necip \emph{Amca}, took G\"ulden \emph{Teyze} and us to the
Bolu region, specifically to a couple of mountain lakes.  The scenery
was gorgeous, but on the way back, we all seemed to agree that the
drive was too long for one day.  Indeed, G\"ulden \emph{Teyze} started
to develop a headache.  (She is subject to migraines.)

On Monday, at METU, we attended a colloquium by a Canadian geometer who was
visiting Bosphorus University; his talk was ultimately helpful to my
own work.  As the day wore on though, \emph{I} got a headache.  First
I thought it was from not having the \emph{T\"urk kahvesi} I had grown
accustomed to every morning.  We went
to Ay\c se's parents' for dinner as planned, but I couldn't eat, and I
vomited what I \emph{had} been able to swallow.  Eventually I was able
to sleep, and recover, and eat.

The following night, we took a bus to Alanya, on the Mediterranean
coast.  We had wanted to take the trip during the day, to see the
countryside, but such a trip would have taken longer (because it would
have taken a longer route, or the bus would have stopped more often).
In the Wednesday-morning twilight, I woke from a doze and saw that we were on a
gravel road in the mountains.  Spectacular scenery, and I figured that
the sea was just on the other side.  No, we had a long way to go.

When we did reach the sea, I got my first glimpse of banana trees
grown for a crop.  The climate certainly seemed tropical, once we alit
in Alanya; it was as hot a place as I had ever been.  The heat was not
unbearable, but the water was too warm to be very refreshing.  The
main discomfort that I was to feel was self-inflicted.  On our first
afternoon on the beach, we rented chairs and an umbrella, but I forgot
to consider that the sun's
rays could penetrate the fabric of the umbrella.  I didn't use
the sunscreen I had brought, and I was burnt.

Mosquitos were Ay\c se's persecution.  She had to stay covered up at
night, despite the heat.  That's why I should have brought repellent.

Our \emph{pansiyon} was convenient for having a kitchen on each
floor; this partially made up for the inconvenience of not having
breakfast included in the price.  The towels were grey, and sand made its
way to our fourth-floor room and stayed there underfoot.  The main
unpleasantness was moral, so to speak: the women of the establishment
wore headscarves, and the owner himself was a \emph{hac\i}, a pilgrim
to Mecca.

The old citadel of Alanya is on an enormous rock jutting out into the
water.  I convinced Ay\c se to \emph{walk} up there, rather than take
the bus, and she was not ultimately unhappy that I did.  One looks down on the
new city; one sees old Ottoman houses on the slopes; one passes
through the old Sel\c cuk walls of the fortress.  Being on top is like
attaining a
higher plane of existence.  Later, swimming in the water below, I
would gaze up at the citadel, as if to a sacred place.
It could almost be worthwhile to stay in
the hotel up there---except that we would not be near a good
\emph{lokanta} where we could eat meatless meals.  As we
headed back down the hill, we did stop to eat \emph{g\"ozleme} and drink
\emph{ayran} while
seated on cushions at a low table underneath grape-vines.  Heaven, but
for the tour-buses passing from time to time.

Alanya was equipped to receive tourists from Northern Europe:
German, Dutch, and Scandinavian.  An English-speaking tourist was an
oddity---correction, a tourist whose \emph{mother-}tongue was English
was an oddity.

An attraction besides the citadel itself was the K\i z\i l Kale, 
a red-brick tower at the base of the hill, built to defend the eastern harbour.
Back over on the western side, where we were staying, were the museum
and Damlata\c s, the latter a cave whose air was supposed to be good
for the respiration.  In the museum, what caught Ay\c se's eye
especially was a tablet with a Turkish inscription in Greek letters;
it was from a nineteenth-century Anatolian church.

The Vitamin Station was a great place to have a fresh orange juice
while sitting in the shade of vine leaves.  One sat on logs, at a
table made from one enormous split log.

  We exhausted the attractions that Alanya held
for us; on Saturday morning, we caught a bus to Antalya, continuing
west from there to Ka\c s in a smaller bus.  Beyond Antalya, the road
is not very old; before the road, the only access was by boat.  You can
imagine that the scenery must be something.  Maybe the road should
\emph{not} have been built, like California's Pacific Coast Highway.
At least the road on Turkey's Turquoise Coast is built on solid rock,
and won't be washing away.

A couple of tourists flagged down our bus some ways beyond Antalya.
At a rest stop, I tried to catch the man's eye, but he just kept
walking by.  Perhaps he was shy because he didn't know English, and
assumed I knew nothing but.  His wife talked to me.  She didn't pay
much attention to Ay\c se though!  She was German, as I recall, and he
was Croatian; they had met in Greece, and the language in which they
could communicate most easily was French.

Ka\c s.  We stayed at Nur \emph{Pansiyon}.  My goodness.  From one's
balcony, one sees: the mountains along the shore; the sea; the Greek
island of Meis in the distance.  Tables are beneath the trees of the patio
below, for breakfast and just hanging out.  Our floor did not get
sandy.  We stayed six nights. 
\$100 US.  It will be more when tourists stop fearing terrorism.

One complaint.  I don't know how many times I hit my head on the
lintel of the balcony door.

The Rough Guide had described the \emph{pansiyon} as ``out of town.''
Sure, along with all of the other pensions and hotels along the
shore.  It was a short walk from town centre.  The Rough Guide had
also suggested that there was a beach, but not much of one.  There was
not a beach.  Each establishment had its terraces built on the rocks,
with ladders into the water.  After Alanya, the water seemed quite
cold.  It \emph{was} cold, I thought from currents bringing waters up
from the deep; but Ay\c se heard that the coldness was from springs.
The coldest water was in a layer on the surface.  Such
water was good to bathe in when the temperature of the air was like that
of one's body.

\emph{I left the story there, writing ``To be continued''
  although it never was.}
\end{document}


