Chapter One, Robert College and Istanbul

Page Six

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Sunday, July 3, 1977 / Sinop

Saturday morning I woke at 7:00, walking around sort of tentatively to see how I was feeling. Ate a peach standing over the sink, and then finished my packing, making a few hasty decisons about what I would take along and what, to make traveling easier, I would have to leave behind. One of the things I decided I'd have to leave behind were the 2 books I'd planned on bringing, which I think now might have been a mistake, and another was my sleeping bag, which I really suspect I won't need.

Dennis came over around 10 to 8 to say goodbye, I told him about a few of the additiional things I'd left for him, now including my sleeping bag, which I wished I'd have sent home with my shipment.

At 8 I called for a taxi and moved my 3 bags out to the big door onto the back porch by the driveway, suitcase, camera bag, flight bag, and brief case. It was raining very hard, and apparently had rained a good part of the night. The taxi didn't come, so around 8:40 Don Barry called another company and their man came.

Right then I got pretty excited, knowing that finally I was leaving, said goodbye quickly to the Barry's and Dennis, and ran out to the taxi. Before I got to the dock at Karaköy I was having serious doubts about whether or not I'd make it on time. Big sections of the road were so deep underwater from the rain that buildings on the deep side of the road were being flooded. Traffic was very slow, because of stalled cars, and everyone else being afraid of getting their motors wet and stalling themselves. The driver seemed quite assured "vakit var", I got to the boat before 10, found my cabin, and then the boat didn't actually leave until 12:30. Too bad I hadn't realized, I'd wanted to go ashore and buy some film.

The call for lunch came at 12:30, just as the boat was leaving, and I was hungry, so I went down to the salon and was treated to the sight of the Bosporus sliding by through the portholes while I ate beef and potatoes and excellent pilaf. The dining room is a bit unusual, quietly furnished, simple, with good food and excellent service, dignified old ladies with their heads wrapped in shawls, yalıs and and forest and palaces sliding by behind them. I did get up on deck quick enough after lunch to see finally what the upper end of the Bosporus looks like - wild and hilly, with some evident signs of fortification, including 2 splendid little 19th century style forts on either side right at the mouth, a little mossy-looking by now.

A good selection of shipboard characters:

• a German-speaking Turkish kid who hung about gravely telling me that Tarabaya was Bebek, until his friend pointed out that it was actually Istinye; and that what must have been Anadolu Kavaği was Beykoz.
• a crew of nice, innocent young Turkish kids, returning from university entrance exams, who sang me a socialist anthem, and invited me to stop and visit them in Zonguldak. Already now that I'm out of Istanbul I'm starting to draw distinctions between what is of Istanbul, and what is "Anatolian", much preferring the Anatolian. The first kid struck me as being very Istanbul-ite,the group from Zonguldak as very eager and unaffected.
• 5 young kids in 1st class, who eat at my table, 2 of the 3 girls very pretty and giggly.
• a whole clutch of very bourgeoisie Anatolian family groups
• an Austrian couple who are travelling through Turkey for the 4th time, and who very politely introduced themselves to me the 1st afternoon.
• two gone-to-fat old Turkish women, somewhat hard-looking and traveling together, who were greeted with affability and surprise by an old Anatolian businessman who got on at Sinop.
• a pair of French ladies traveling together, a young one, private-secretary style who will acknowledge a few words in Turkish, and an older one who looks like Loretta Young.

Monday, July 4, 1977 / Trabzon

As we went from port to port along the coast, farther and farther away from Istanbul, more and more people left the ship because they'd come to their destinatons. About 600 soldiers boarded in the rain at Zonguldak, and they've been marched off the boat in little groups at each stop, apparently finished with their military service.

Map - Istanbul to Trabzon

Yesterday evening after dinner they tried to show a movie on the after deck, Bob Hope and Phyllis Diller in the South Seas, but just at the beginning of the 2nd reel the wind came up and a gust broke the film. I'm puzzled by what the reaction of the Turks is to films like that. So much of the humor is completely American.

We got into Trabzon early, around 11:00 instead of 3 in the afternoon, apparently because they skipped the stop at Ordu during the night. I woke up at 5AM, just as the 2 kids in my cabin were leaving, to get up and have a look at Giresun. Trabzon should be a 2 or 3 day stop, before I take the bus to Erzerum, Doğubeyazit, and Teheran.

Said goodbye to Richter and Ilse, the Austrian couple, got off and carried my bags up the hill through the old part of town to the Hotel Horon. Got a room w/o bath for 82.50 a night.

I went exploring around the town right away, because there are a number of things I need to get here before the trip really begins: film, some more drugs, and a fingernail scissors and pocket knife to replace the ones my maid, Gül, got when she looted my kitchen for goodies on Friday.

It's a pleasant enough town, and the people are very friendly. I saw in the newspaper while I was sitting in a tea garden that Istanbul was really flooded by all of that rain. Must of kept right on after the ship left.

Got a few pictures out at an old Byzantine church on the edge of town - St. Sophia; and found out how to get out to the monastery at Sümela, which I'd like to do tomorrow.