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We took a brief three day vacation to drive over to a beautiful spot on the northern Aegean coast called Assos (or Behramkale). My parents came as well since they had been meaning to go there for a while. We visited my grandparents' graves on the way to Assos. We went to the main graveyard of the town of Bandirma, where my mother's family settled after they emigrated from Rumania. Bandirma is a large industrial port on the south shore of the Marmara Sea. It is on a flat, featureless, parched plain.The graveyard plots all have their own numbers, like addresses. Everyone gets the same size, about 6 feet of dry Turkish soil. The lower numbers, where the older graves are, have trees growing around quite a few of them. The graveyard becomes as featureless as the plain it is on as the numbers increase, where the graves are newer. Mom had not been there for two years and had forgotten exactly where her parents are. We had to do a little searching to find them and then spent some time pulling out the weeds. My parents prayed a little and then we left. Next time, we will plant some trees over grandma's grave. All along the way, I was struck by similarities and discrepancies: the differences between graves that were tended and those which were not; the similarities between the sunflowers in the fields and the satellite dishes that have sprouted from the apartments behind them; latest model SUV's passing horse carriages along the way. The tunes playing on my iPod (only one ear since Kathy and I were sharing) clashed with the classical Turkish music hissing from a medium wave station over the car's radio. On the narrow winding roads, noveau riche wannabes from Istanbul in their ugly SUVs blare past villagers transporting produce on their donkeys. We visited Troy on the way, the real Troy, move over Brad Pitt! This album will hold all the pictures that we took, as soon as we get a fast Internet connection. Assos was an amazing spot. There is a lot to write and a lot of pictures to upload. See comment above. |
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Copyleft notice: Copyright (C) 1999-2005 Mustafa Ünlü. This information is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. |