I should, however, clear up a couple of things. First, a number of you were kind enough to comment on the y characters that infiltrated my last email. It seems the Turks use two forms of the letter i. One has a dot over it (like normal) and one doesn't. On the computer I was using, the i without the dot was in the position of the normal i on the keyboard. Somehow it was transformed into a y for all of you. I hope there was no confusion.
Second, I would like to elaborate on the carpet experience, for it was a once-in-a-lifetime day. My sister has a contact in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul that owns a number of carpet shops. She had gotten his name through the American embassy in Skopje, and we made our way over there at 9:30 on Monday morning. Kurt, her husband, had prepared me for an experience that would last 2-3 hours.
See, the Turks are a very friendly people. The normal routine is to invite the customer into the shop, provide tea, coffee, water, whatever to them at no charge, and proceed to teach them about the art of carpet weaving. This entails a number of different types of carpet from different areas of the world (can you tell that I did this for way too long?). As the buyer comments on each of the carpets, the seller will produce (or at least the boys working in the shops folding and unfolding carpets and throwing them on the floor for presentation will) more carpets that correspond with the tastes of the buyer. Once that special carpet appears, the seller will suggest that it be set aside to decide on later. After a couple of hours of this a nice little pile of beautiful carpets is left sitting, ready for the moment of the actual sale.
Anyway, this carpet dealer was recommended by the embassy, and Paige and Kurt had been to his shop before. So the six of us went down the shop and sat down. Lining the walls were pictures of the dealer with Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George and Barbara Bush, and so forth. He came in and began the long process of educating the unknowing.
After about three hours, we asked if we could break for lunch. There were a number of carpets set aside, and the dealer sent out for a delicious lunch that we could enjoy without ever leaving the store. The conversation moved from carpets to other things, and the atmospere was relaxed and pressure-free. He did make one thing clear. His reputation with the embassies was earned. He would quote a very reasonable price with the stipulation that he wouldn't haggle. He spent a great deal of time telling us just how much he would quote for a particular carpet to someone just walking through the bazaar, and our price was only a fraction.
At the end of the day, after my plans of running around the city and seeing three mosques and various other historical buildings, we walked out of the shop with a great deal of carpets and the promise that he was taking us out to dinner on Thursday night. More on that later.
What has happened since the last email?
We woke up Wednesday morning in Canakkale, and I spent a wonderful half-hour sitting on the balcony of our fifth-story room overlooking the Dardanelles. The hustle and bustle of the dock area was just starting, everyone had glasses of tea in their hands, and the fishermen were pulling their small boats out of the harbor. It was a rare peaceful moment the like of which I did not have in the busy environs of downtown Istanbul.
Let me say one thing here about breakfast. At our hotel in Istanbul, breakfast was provided every day. It consisted of trays laid out on a buffet table laden with hard-boiled eggs, cheese slices, bread, some mystery meat portions, olives (2 types), cucumbers, and tomatoes. That's it. Every morning. But it was free, so we were there every morning. We were looking forward to something different in Canakkale, but the layout was exactly the same.
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