Holy Land Trip Day 3: On to Jordan

On Saturday we got up early and rushed to make one touristic stop in Nazareth before boarding a bus to cross the border into Jordan. We wanted to see the interior of the Church of the Annunciation, built on the spot where the angel is supposed to have come to Mary bearing tidings of the birth of Christ. It had been closed both of the previous evenings by the time we go into town, so we took 10 minutes between the time that it opened at 8 am and the time we had to be to our bus at 8:15 to see it.


VIEW OF NAZARETH WITH THE TOWER OF THE BASILICA OF THE ANNUNCIATION

It is a really interesting church. Very modern, but with some elements of old architecture in it. A smaller chapel behind the main church is constructed over what is supposed to be the site of Joseph's carpenter shop. In my opinion, at a certain point all of these associations become a bit ridiculous. How could we possibly know where Joseph's shop was? But there is something to making a pilgrimage to a spot and saying "This is where it happened," and knowing that thousands and thousands of other people thought the same thing on the same spot. I guess that's really the point.




INTERIOR OF THE DOME OF THE BASILICA OF THE ANNUNCIATION

Anyway, we made it to the bus, which was bigger than we expected, and full of Arabs making the border crossing. The border is very close to Nazareth, and we were there in about 30 minutes. It did not take too terribly long to cross, but of course we had to go through security and passport control twice: once to leave Israel, and once to enter Jordan. Plus we had to pay an exit and entry tax for each of the countries. We had purchased our Jordanian visas ahead of time, so we didn't have to mess with that line. The process was a pretty smooth one, and the most interesting part about it was watching the "pit crew" come out and change the license plates on all the buses over from Israeli to Jordanian. They just stack them on top of each other, and pull whichever one they need to the front when they hit the border. I suppose that's legal! We did have to wait about 30-45 minutes on the Israeli side, but we think it was because our bus driver was doing some duty-free shopping. At any rate, we got through without incident, and were able to convince the agents on both sides not to stamp our passports, since either an Israeli stamp or a Jordanian land border stamp would indicate we had been in Israel, and we would be denied entry to some other Arab countries in the future. We had already convinced the passport control gal at the airport not to stamp them, but they are never happy about it. They want to know why, where else you want to go, and what business you have there. It makes for a lot longer and more thorough questioning, but is potentially worth it.

One interesting border note: On the Jordanian side, a member of the Tourist Police boarded the bus and talked to us, then rode the 2 hours or so on into Amman with us, where he made sure we got a reliable taxi to the rental car service. They really really want to make sure that tourists are not treated badly because tourism is the only real source of income they have! (we thought they might have some oil, but we were told that is not the case).

Amman is big and dirty, dirty, dirty. Oh, and did I mention it is an absolute catastrophe in terms of driving? I don't think many tourists take the plunge. I'm basing this on the fact that the rental car place actually had my name written on their wall calendar for that day! We did make it through and out of the city alive, but I don't think Peter's heart will ever quite be the same. Just to illustrate what it was like, here is a sequence of events that took place within a minute of each other. First, an old man stepped into the road directly in front of Peter, who was already trying to negotiate three invisible lanes of traffic. He slammed on the brakes, swerved a little, and went on. Seconds later, some kids did the same thing! Again, the brakes, a swerve, luckily no sideswiping of another vehicle, and another sigh of relief. But literally 30 seconds later, a woman WITH A BABY stepped out! Unbelievable! My job as Navigator was anything but easy, but Peter definitely had the hard job.


YOU DO NOT WANT TO MESS WITH THE JORDANIAN PARKING POLICE!

Seeing the city, we were SO glad we had decided not to stay there in a hotel. Really, it just seemed pretty gross. But we did want to see some of the ancient ruins before heading out, so we drove to the center of town (again, big points for Peter) and miraculously found a parking spot directly in front of the famous Roman theater.



Then we climbed to the ancient acropolis (now called the Citadel). We had a bit of a hard time finding it, winding our way up through some pretty dismal back alleys and climbing stairs covered in broken glass and other trash. But finally we made it.

Amman was the capital of the Ammonite people (hence the name), but he most impressive ruins are, as usual, Roman and later. The massive Temple of Hercules towers over the city.


SOME RANDOM GUY IN THE TEMPLE OF HERCULES


SOME NOT-SO-RANDOM GUY IN THE TEMPLE OF HERCULES


VIEW OF MODERN AMMAN FROM THE ANCIENT ACROPOLIS

Also well worth seeing is the Umayyad palace (built in 750 AD and only used for 30 years!). The Umayyads were a Muslim dynasty, the second Arab Caliphate established after the death of Mohammad, for those of you who do not know -- and trust me, I didn't know until I moved to Turkey and started living in a building full of historians! It was an important empire though, the fifth largest ever in the history of the world in terms of land size and the percentage of the population of the world that it ruled over. The remains of impressive Umayyad buildings are dotted all over the Middle East, and this is a fine example.



We also planned to visit the Jordan Archaeological Museum on the acropolis. Inside we could have seen some Nabatean artifacts from Petra, among other things. Unfortunately, when we got there we discovered that the reason it had been so difficult to find the Citadel was that we had come in through an illegal back way and so had not purchased a ticket, so we could not get into the Museum. It was only 15 minutes to closing time, too late to go buy a ticket and come back, so we missed out on that.

But we were able to rush out of town (very slowly, in traffic), and make it to Madaba, a small town to the south of Amman.


SUNSET ON THE ROAD FROM AMMAN TO MADABA

Our goal was to get to town before the Church of St. George closed. The Church is built over the ruins of a much earlier church, from the time of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian (ca 527 AD). The main attraction is a mosaic map which shows the area of the Holy Land, including Jerusalem in detail, as it was at that time. We did not in fact get there before the church closed for services, but I pleaded with the caretaker and he let us in for a few short minutes, and rolled back the rug so we could see the map and take photos. It is interesting, but not incredibly impressive. Perhaps the most interesting thing about it is that it was altered later by Muslims. Because the Koran includes a rule against representing living beings in art, medieval Muslims would sometimes alter antique mosaics by rearranging the tesserae so that the figures now appear "pixellated." That way, the beautiful decoration of the floor was retained, but the human and animal forms were no longer present. There are some very good examples of that work here. The guidebook we have says merely that the figures were "gouged out by later iconoclasts" which is clearly not true, and unfortunately glosses over the interesting reasons for the reworking of the art:



THE MOST FAMOUS SECTION OF THE "MADABA MAP": JERUSALEM


THE TWO FISHERMEN ON THE SEA OF GALILEE WHO WERE REWORKED IN THE "MADABA MAP"

Madaba is an interesting town that became somewhat important in the 19th century. It was at this time that a fairly large community of Arab Christians were forced out of nearby Kerak by the greater number of Muslims, and settled here. Today it is a mixed community of Muslims and Christians, but there is certainly a large number of churches for such a small town! The woman and her son who own the hotel we stayed in (The Black Iris, which is actually their family home converted for use as a small hotel) were apparently Christian. We guess this because she did not have her head covered, and because there were several crucifixes hanging on the walls, as well as a Christian fish symbol. The place was a bit drab, but they were incredibly friendly and helpful, and her homemade hummus for breakfast in the mornings was wonderful!

Madaba is a small town, but it is under construction everywhere, and is full of confusing roundabouts and one-way streets. In the two nights we spent there, we never ever really understood how to navigate it. We would set off, map in hand, to find some simple marked destination, and end up completely lost. Very frustrating. But it was still much better than Amman, and we had probably the best meal of the entire trip (cheap too!) in a restaurant there. Traditional middle eastern food, served on low couches in front of a crackling fire. Wonderful!

Bulgarian Border-Run

The picturesque Turkish-Bulgarian border.

As some of you already know, we just returned from spending a night in Bulgaria. We had to leave the country so that Peter could re-enter with a new visa, good for another three months. It was definitely an interesting experience.

We took the bus from Istanbul to Edirne, which is a town that boast 5 borders: two with Bulgaria and three with Greece. We were to cross the border at the point called Kapikule on the Turkish side, passing into the checkpoint known as Capitan Andreevo on the Bulgarian side. Our original plan involved catching a bus from Edirne to the small Bulgarian town of Svilengrad, near the border, where we had booked a hotel room for the night. Things did not go according to plan.

We arrived in Edirne without incident, then asked for a bus to Bulgaria. We were told to take a dolmus -- a van that is sort of a shared taxi that runs on a regular schedule -- into the center of Edirne and that we would be able to get a bus from there. When we got to the city center we asked for a bus to Bulgaria and were quickly herded onto yet another dolmus which took us to the border and put us out. Rather than waiting for a dolmus to take us back into town and attempting to find an actual bus into Bulgaria, we decided to make the crossing on foot.

From the moment we passed the first Turkish checkpoint, things began to look a little like the movie "Mad Max." The area between the borders is barren and desolate, with run-down, empty buildings on either side and a lot of construction. Apparently there will be, at some point, some very nice parking and shopping facilities, and multiple high-tech booths for cars to pass through customs and visa control. But for now there is only a lot of scrap metal, mud, and a series of small shacks staffed by Turkish border patrol who seem to have very little to do. There are no pedestrian lanes. Actually, there are no lanes at all, just a big open area that cars and buses occasionally pass through, so we had to watch our backs and be on the lookout for vehicles while we walked. We thought it was probably best not to be strolling through snapping lots of pictures of the border area, but Peter snuck a couple that give some idea of what it is like:


Empty checkpoints on the Turkish side of the border.

There was not really much to see on the Turkish side, other than a burning trash dumpster (see picture at top).
There is a duty-free shop, but the prices are as high or higher even than in regular stores in Turkey, so there seems to be no point to it.

After walking about a mile we reached the last Turkish checkpoint, only to be told that we had somehow missed an important earlier checkpoint and had to go halfway back to get our exit stamps from one of the little border patrol shacks. We finally made it to the first Bulgarian checkpoint, where the border guard did not want to give Candace an entry stamp because he did not recognize the additional visa pages that had been added to her passport. Luckily he was able to find a bare spot large enough for his stamp on one of the pages that had already been technically filled, or otherwise we might have had a problem! We are a bit nervous now that that might be an issue again in the future, but we don't really know what to do about it -- when your passport is full but not expired, the US government just adds the official additional visa pages, so what do you do if you travel so much? Maybe it was just that this particular border is not one where American citizens pass much so they did not recognize what they were seeing. We hope!
(We'll get back with you on this when we go to Cyprus in two weeks).

Once we made it through the Bulgarian checkpoints we were not sure how we would get the last 18 km to the town of Svilengrad. But there were several local men hanging out just inside the border, asking if we needed a "taxi" into town. Of course they were not really taxis, but we took one of them up on the offer since there were no marked taxis around. Our Bulgarian friend Rossitsa had told us that this might be a problem since very few people make the crossing on foot (we certainly didn't see anyone else doing it), and that the people waiting with cars at the border would try to charge the "stupid tourists" much more than a taxi would for the same ride. We are sure that this man did. We ended up paying 20 Bulgarian leva (about $13). However, in a country in which the average monthly income is about $400 U.S. dollars, we did not mind, for once, playing the role of "stupid tourist" and giving what was for us a small amount of money to someone who needed it much more than we do.

We made it into Svilengrad earlier than we had thought we would, since we made the crossing faster as two weirdos on foot than we would have as two of thirty people on a bus who all had to have their papers checked. This meant that we had plenty of time to stroll around the town and see what there is to see. That would be pretty much nothing.



The nicest building we saw in Svilengrad.

Svilengrad seems to be a dying city. There were few people walking around. Many buildings are derelict. There is quite a bit of new construction, mostly of cheap apartment complexes, but the overall feeling of the city is such that the buildings that are half-built seem less like they are being constructed than that they have decayed to that point. The general depressed air of the the town is greatly heightened by the tradition of hanging black and white posters all over town with the names and pictures of people who have recently died. They were tacked to houses, trees and telephone poles, and taped to fences. There were dozens and dozens of them, everywhere. Other examples of what make the town so strange and slightly creepy must be accidental. We can only assume that the name of this building is a mistranslation of "hostel":



The hotel that we had booked a room in turned out, on inspection, to be of questionable character. It's not just that it was not clean, but that it seemed to be a place where certain unsavory business transactions probably take place. We declined the room and found a vacancy in what is surely the nicest hotel in town. It set us back a mere $35 or so. That was the one good thing about Svilengrad -- everything is ridiculously cheap. Our meals cost about $7 for the two of us. A beer was $1. Candace even bought Lindt chocolate bars for about $.75, and socks for the same price. Yes, it is a little weird that we went sock-shopping, but clothes were SO cheap but yet we were going to have to carry everything we bought for the next 24 hours, so socks seemed like a good thing to pick up.

The next morning we got a real taxi back to the border. We noticed that the meter had only reached about 7 leva just shy of the border, when the driver suddenly turned the meter off, but again we did not balk when he asked us for 12 leva. "Stupid tourists" once again, we even tipped him an extra 2.

Then it was back across the border on foot. There was much more traffic passing from Bulgaria into Turkey, probably because Friday was the first day of the Bayram weekend. We will write more about the Kurban Bayram holiday after we really experience it this coming week, but it is a HUGE travel time for Turks, and there are many Turks living and working in Bulgaria and elsewhere in eastern Europe, who make their way back to family in Turkey for the week of Bayram. Whereas we had seen one or two cars the day before, there were 15 or 20 now waiting in the various lines at the border. Because there are no lanes dedicated to pedestrians, we had to stand in line between vehicles, just as if we were a car. Some drivers were happy to wave us in front of them, but others would have cheerfully run us down to keep their place in line, so we had to be very cautious.

So it was back across the border in reverse. Bulgarian exit stamp: check. Duty-free shop: check. Burning dumpster: check (yes, still burning). New Turkish visa for Peter: check. On the Turkish side it was easy to catch the same dolmus that had dropped us at the border the day before and make our way back into Edirene.

We made it back into the city by mid-morning and had plenty of time to look around. Edirne is a very pretty and interesting city, and well worth spending a day (or two). It was the capital of the Ottoman empire until the Turks captured Constantinople and moved their capital there, and many of the Sultans continued to spend time in Edirne even after the capital was moved. There are several very important and beautiful buildings there. In ancient times this area of Turkey, and into the southern Balkans, was known as Thrace. The men were world-renowned as expert horsemen. The Thracians were also highly prized fighters, and slaves taken here by the Romans were often trained as gladiators for the arena. The "Thracian" was even the name of a type of gladiator who fought with a curved sword or dagger and a small shield, whether they were actually from the geographical area or not. Spartacus, the gladiator who led the somewhat successful slave revolt against the Romans in 73 BC, proving that the Roman army was not invincible, was most likely a Thracian.

Ancient Edirne was founded by the Roman emperor Hadrian and named for himself -- Hadrianopolis. The only remains of the ancient city are part of the Roman wall, including a defensive tower:


Part of Hadrian's city wall. The top section of the tower is an Ottoman addition.

The area is technically an archaeological park, but is not frequently visited and was locked up when we arrived. We were peering through the gate when the caretaker showed up, let us in, and gave us a tour. There is really not much left to see, and what is there was built over in the Byzantine and modern periods, but there are the foundations of a church and a couple of Byzantine pottery kilns. After showing us around the small site, our guide took us to the mosque next door, which is called Üç Şerefeli Camii, or "Mosque of the three balconies" because one of the minarets has three separate balconies with three separate stairways so that three muezzins can stand on them at the same time and harmonize the call to prayer (although this is no longer done). You can see the tower with the three balconies behind the Roman tower in the picture above. The mosque was built in 1447 and is quite pretty on the inside, though heavily restored:




Interior of the Üç Serefeli Mosque

Our guide spent quite a bit of time telling us the history of the mosque, and we thought for sure he was going to expect some money for his trouble, but it turns out that it is the mosque where he and his family worship, and he just wanted to make sure that we saw it. After showing us around he happily went back to guarding the Roman ruins.

We visited two more mosques next. The Eski Camii (Old Mosque) was the first mosque of the city (built from 1403 to 1414). The decoration includes large calligraphic renderings of the names of the Mohammed and his followers. It was Peter's favorite:


Calligraphic decoration in the Eski Mosque.


The Dome of the Eski Mosque.

There is also restoration work going on on this mosque. The men were busily at work:



Next we visited the Selimiye Mosque. This is an extremely important building because it was built by the greatest of all Ottoman architects, Sinan, who also designed the Suleimaniye Mosque in Istanbul, as well as dozens of other buildings and bridges throughout the Ottoman empire. He considered the Selimiye his masterpiece, having designed it towards the end of his career when he was 80 years old (he lived to be 98). Although it is nowhere near as large as Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Sinan was able to make the dome a few centimeters greater in diameter than the dome of that famous building, an accomplishment of which he was justifiably proud. It is an impressive building. The other buildings in the complex house two museums with collections of Turkish calligraphy, metalwork, etc.


The Selimiye Mosque built by Sinan


The interior and dome of the Selimiye Mosque.

After that mosque we visited the archaeological museum. It was interesting, but nothing was particularly spectacular, compared with other archaeological museums in Turkey. After viewing it, we took a dolmus out to another neighorhood to visit the mosque complex of Beyazit II, built between 1484 and 1488. The mosque itself was empty and we had it all to ourselves. More interesting than the mosque, though, is the rest of the complex. It was constructed as a hospital and medical school, and it is now a Museum of Health. The rooms are filled with dioramas showing the original usages of the spaces. The tableaux are based on illustrations in Ottoman medical textbooks from the 15th century. Here are a couple of examples:


An Ottoman doctor operates on the head of a boy who has encephalitis.


Making a viper bite a rooster, which will then become the test case for perfecting an anti-venom.

It is really cool! The most interesting space is a large centralized hospital for the insane and depressed. It was the first centrally-planned hospital in the world, a design that allowed for greater efficiency on the part of the staff. It also meant that the central area could be filled with a fountain and an area for musicians to play, because the doctors thought that the sounds of water and music would soothe the "lunatic" patients. They were probably right, at least in some cases. Here are a couple of pictures of the crazies:


An insane patient.


A "lunatic" patient.

We highly recommend the museum to anyone who goes to Edirne, although it is a bit off the beaten path.

After taking a dolmus back to the city center, we traded it for yet another dolmus that took us outside of town in a different direction to Thracian University's campus, where there is a memorial commemorating the Turkish soldiers and civilians killed in and near Edirne during the Balkan Wars in 1912-13. It is particularly meant to commemorate 20,000 soldiers who were left to starve in nearby Sarayiçı:



The memorial is interesting, and the main building of Thracian University is the old Edirne train station, which is worth seeing:




An old Turkish train in the station. Can you find Candace in the picture?

After looking around, rather than catching a dolmus back to town we took advantage of the pleasant weather to walk about a mile and a half back, down a tree-lined street with farmland on either side. We stopped at the river and had tea overlooking a bridge built by Sinan, then caught a dolmus the remaining half-mile back into town. We made a quick stop in the covered bazaar (also designed by Sinan) to buy a local trinket -- a broom with a mirror and evil eyes on it. Edirne is still the nation's center for traditional broommaking and they attach mirrors to decorative brooms to further ward off evil. Here is a statue in the city center of a man performing traditional broom making, which apparently requires so much strength that the artisans must chain themselves to a fixed point in order to exert enough force to bind the brooms!



It was also in Edirne that we finally learned why it takes packages to and from Turkey so long to get to us. Check out the Turkish UPS truck:



After a quick dinner we got on yet another dolmus to ride out to the otogar and catch our bus back to Istanbul. All in all, we rode 9 different buses that day, which must be some kind of record! But we could leave saying that we really felt like we had seen Edirne. It would be worth going back to though.

What we were NOT expecting came at the end of the trip. Our bus to Istanbul was about 45 minutes late. Anyone who has done bus travel in Turkey knows that this is highly irregular. Usually the buses run like clockwork and if you are only halfway in when the bus is scheduled to leave, the driver will take off with you trailing out the door. But this time it was very late. When we arrived back in Istanbul a couple of hours later, we saw why. There were literally thousands of people at the bus station taking buses to visit their families for Bayram. We sat in lines and lines of buses, creeping towards the station, for hours. When we finally got to the main bus station we had to get on yet another bus to go to a smaller bus station to catch a dolmus to get back to our apartment. This is a process that normally takes 30 minutes, 45 at most. This time it took almost 3 hours. You just can't imagine the people! And of course everyone was making it worse by wandering all over the road on foot, or driving on the wrong side of the road to get ahead of traffic. It was a nightmare. We highly suggest that anyone traveling in Turkey try to avoid traveling on the first day of a Bayram. We certainly learned our lesson!

But we did make the trip successfully, and got Peter's new visa, which was the important thing. Now we have two weeks to rest before our next trip, to Cyprus.