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From my journal, May 19, 2002: Beautiful
day, clear blue skies, great views of the Dardanelles and the tanker traffic as
we take the ferry across to the Gallipoli peninsula. The main threat now is from forest fire, which has destroyed much
of the wooded area, with unsupervised recovery leaving many places with an
impenetrable, but lower brush and brambles.
So today, the views are broader than would have been the case during the
battles in 1915. In ancient stories, Dardanos was the result
of Zeus being ‘naughty’, and married a local king’s daughter, giving his name
to the area and the straits. At the Gallipoli
museum, busloads of kids on holiday. We met a group from Samsun, exchanged
picture taking, then met them several times later as we toured, each time to
renewed handshakes and smiles and a disruption of the teacher’s plans. Hiked down from Conkbayit, the main Turkish
lines to Lone Pine, where the Aussie assualt made it as far as this ridge on
the first day, but never any farther. We
hiked about 5 km, sometimes in rebuilt trenches, mostly on the road, then down
to Anzac Cove, another 2 km, for a
picnic lunch we’d bought at a supermarket
earlier – 3 kinds of cheese, various breads, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers,
antep ezme (thick, spciy chile paste) and a coos coos – bulgar- mint meze,
ayran (a yogurt drink). Drove down to
the Cove. (3 pm)
Then
back to Canakkale, and brief stop at the German-made cannons dominating the straits. Once able to prevent Allied shipping from traversing to the Black
Sea, now they can’t hold off swarms of kids using them as a playground. Back to hotel just before 6, in time for a
swim – then lay and watched the swallows swooping to skim water from the
pool. Some flyers are quite
accomplished, barely making a ripple, others clumsily hit the surfact breast
first and have to quickly flutter off to avoid a total dunk. At one point, a dozen birds were swooping
and splashing over the pool.
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