How BIG is the WORLD?: 3/2015

Friday, July 10, 2015

3/2015 - BERGAMA

27 – 30 June 2015

BERGAMA & PERGAMUM

Ahh lovely Bergama, so far away from the hustle & bustle and worry & concerns of ANZAC 2015, and onto some lovely travelling. Nice bus ride to Bergama and what a great town – very Turkish as most tourists from the cruise chips are bussed in & out again without their feet ever touching the city streets here.

Still don't know what these carved balls are - butter? cheese?

Tasty Turkish food cooked for locals, quiet windy streets, a wonderful Hamaan (again with the Turkish bath – I’m hooked), no hassles and the weather is warming up.

Got a great room at the Odyssey Guesthouse - a lovely restored traditional house, with a great terrace overlooking the city sights.

Bergama is where you will find the ancient site of Pergamum – the 999^th World Heritage site – and up a very large hill. I wanted to take the chairlift up (installed for the cruise ship passengers) but no, Mal wants to walk the 5km! What a hill, because of course, where else do you build your city but on top of a bloody great hill to survey your enemies before they get to you. But I was rescued by a couple of aussies we met in Canakkale, driving their rental who gave us a lift to the top. Yes, I know it’s all about the views BUT I’m still a little bit special and a whole lot lazy.

Alexander the Great without his head

The Pergamum Acropolis is a HUGE site, and owes it history to my hero Alexander the Great, when Rome was ruling Asia Minor.

Plenty of the structures have survived the ravages of time, but it’s Hellenistic (I’m learning my eras) theatre is very impressive, entered by a tunnel that brings you out to seating for 10,000 built into the side of the hill.

But what makes this site even more enjoyable is the fact that the middle City with its court, great mosaics and large excavated buildings including a gymnasium and palace are too far down the hill for the cruise passengers to find in their allocated time, so once you get through the crowded ‘top’ ruins, we have the rest of the site to ourselves.

We had been told that there was a hole in the fence at the bottom of the hill but when passing it on the way up, couldn’t see that hole. Then later in the day I watched with the site gardener while a tourist searched for that hole and finally squeezed himself along the ground underneath the locked gate. When I got down there, I saw a low 1m fence beside the wire fencing that I stepped over and so that saved me walking back up that bl**dy hill or getting on the ground to go under the fence.

Other sites here in Bergama include a few roman bridges and a cathedral sized Red Hall, built as a giant temple to Egyptian gods in the 2^nd Century. So big, in fact that when the Christians took it over in the 6th century, they built their basilica (dedicated to St John who was rumoured to have travelled here with the Virgin Mary after the death of Christ) with six 96 foot cupolas inside the temple. Squeezed in a visit to the nice archaeology museum here to finish up a great start to travelling Turkey.