The Miserable Existence of a Small Little Turkish Man

Sunday the traveling entourage from the Legal Pad got out to see the country folk and some of the sites. This is a highly recommended experience.

We started off our day at 5 AM with our driver picking us up (after a blissful two hours of sleep. At this point in my life, I have absolutely no biological time clock) and driving us to the ancient city of Troy.

The typical American College Student knows several things about the historic city of Troy:

(1) Orlando Bloom decided to prove he was straight by stealing some girl from her husband, who had really bad breathe, and taking her back to Troy.
(2) This caused a really cool war that took approximately 3 hours according to Hollywood
(3) Orlando Bloom hit Brad Pitt with an arrow in the ankle when BP was vacationing in the City
(4) Orlando Bloom lived and everyone else died

Much to surprise of everyone I'm sure, Blogger is here to inform you that this is an innaccurate description of Troy.

Here's the short recap:

Paris, played by Orlando Bloom in the Hollywood version, was called upon to settle a dispute. The dispute occurred when a bunch of god's and goddesses were having a dinner and one of the goddesses was annoyed. She threw a golden apple through the window and into the dining room. The apple said on it that the most beautiful woman of the land had the right to possess it. A beauty pageant commenced, and Paris, who as Orlando Bloom would have made a fine female contestant himself, was judged to be the judge.

A short aside. If this is making sense, please excuse me because it's not meant too. Greek legend/history should always be wildly confusing. Only the elite should pretend to understand it. It's much too hard for the common man to go to that much effort over something so trivial. They have work to do.

Back to Paris. The princely Paris. Or whatever.

All the contestants offered him bribes. Examples of the bribes include rulership of his country, rulership of the world, and love of the most beautiful woman in the world.

If Paris would have waited around for a few thousands years Machiavelli would have told him that it is better to be feared and loved, he would have ruled the world with an iron hand and in the tradition of the absolutely powerful, taken for himself whatever he wanted and been been absolutely corrupted.

But he was a little lightheaded from having a bunch of really hot women offering anything he wanted, so he decided on taking the very vague option of the love of some woman that he had never even met and had no idea who she was.

Very rational.

I'm sure that back in the day, Paris had his own daytime soap opera.

Short and sweet, he goes and visits a neighboring country, sees the queen is the bomb, sweeps her off her feet and makes a dash for home, and waits for the impending wrath of the jilted husband and his horde of men.

They came.

The battle went for ten years outside the walls of the magnificent city of Troy (first place with a sewage system. What more can I say?). Paris stayed holed up in the fort with his woman, who most likely looked like Alice, the housekeeper on the Brady Brunch, before the fighting was over.

Hector, Paris' brother, did all of the hard work, bravely fighting off the hired warrior Achilles for a long time, until they finally decided that enough was enough and had a little man to man match that ended badly for Hector, as so often happens when your opponent was blessed by the gods to be played by Brad Pitt in a Hollywood movie. So Hector was dragged behind a horse around the city six times until Achilles had made sure he was good and dead and that his own mother would not recognize him.

The status quo of besiegers and besieged resumed.

Ten years went by. A big wooden horse was given to the city of Troy and Achilles and his merry band of beach bums (oh, did I mention that Troy is near the beach?) apparently decided to call it a day, but instead they waited until night, and when the stupid people of Troy brought the wooden horse inside of their gates because they thought the gods would be made at them for leaving a horse outside, unprotected from the elements, they came charging in and killed everyone.

Darn cool.

Especially because in the real version, the dead included Paris, who started this whole mess anyway and should have died a slow and painful dead as befitting a lech who (1) judges beauty contests, (2) judges beauty contests based on personal favors, (3) stupidly gives up world domination because he is a lech, (4) is a wife stealer, (5) cowardly makes his brother, a stand up guy, do all of his fighting for him, (6) was played by Orlando Bloom in a Hollywood movie.

Oh, some guy got away with his family through a tunnel and started up the civilization of old Rome.

Anyway, that's the story. The ruins were awesome and we visited them and our guide was great. More on that later.

After Troy, we visited Gallipoli. This is where Winston Churchill suffered a great defeat in World War I at the hands of the Turks.

The battlefields were awesome. It was a truly great experience to see the suffering gone through by both sides. The allied forces consisting of the Anzacs (New Zealanders and Australians), French, and English tried to take Gallipoli so that they could attack Istanbul and open up the straits to supply Russia with arms. The turks held them back after fierce fighting.

In retrospect, this may have been good.

Kemal Ataturk was the hero of the Turks at Gallipolli and subsequently led a revolt that ended the Ottoman Empire. He's still the bomb here in Turkey, pictures of him everywhere even though he's ugly, and rightly so.

Turkey is the most liberal muslim nation because Ataturk decided that Turkey needed to westernize. There is a fair amount of freedom here that probably never would have occurred if it was not for Gallipoli. The Turks ended up being crucial allies in NATO during the cold war and it can all be traced back to the western defeat at Gallipoli.

Which leads us to our guide.

He was awesome, a retired navy submarine Captain, Ali was the epitome of Turkish Patriotism. He spent the 1980's in his American-made submarine "playing cat and dog with those _____ Russians in the Black Sea."

He does not do very many tours. His pension takes care of him. So he gave us all individual gifts, bullets that he had picked up on the battlefield of Gallipolli as a boy.

At every stop he would hurry us along as much as possible stating, "I have an engagement this evening. It is my turn to cook dinner in our little kitchen. It is a sad, sad existence of a small turkish man." Then he turned to us and said "If I come back again, it will be as a big man like you. Then I will fight for my rights. Fight for my rights with my wife, and live a little."

All in all, he was quite a character. The trip was memorable. The scenery absolutely beautiful. The company (our Australian friend Charmella was along, as was Teresa), superb.

We arrived home at 11 PM and promptly went upstairs to the roof to finish the night up the way you should in Istanbul; overlooking the Bospheorus Strait with the stars gleaming over head.