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The Crazy Adventures of Wes and Adam in the Middle East -Episode 6 Alright, sorry it has taken so long for the last letter but we were hit with a storm of things to do as soon as we got to Germany and the internet has been difficult to get a hold of. Last time I left off we were in Syria, naked on top of the castle I believe, well not naked but almost. That night we went back to Hamma, which is the city that is known for the 1000 year old metal water wheels that are still turning in the murky river after all these years; the wheels creaked and groaned so loudly you could almost hear them crying, “please let me die.” The next day we went to and explored Aleppo, another citadel, another mosque, another bizarre, another babbling shop keeper yes, another day in the Middle East. Even though much of the Middle East is the same, there is something unique about every city and overall I liked Aleppo. As we were heading home from the bizarre in Aleppo a Muslim guy began talking to Adam, we met hundreds of people in Syria that wanted to help us and find out where we are from. I never felt unique as an American until I came to the Middle East, every where else I have been I find ‘we’ (Americans) are everywhere but not in the Middle East and especially not in Syria. Anyway this man asked us about various things and we asked questions in return, none of which I can remember but the part I do remember came after I gave him an Arabic track about Jesus. As we proceeded to walk away after another goodbye he stopped us and asked what this was. I said it is about Jesus Christ and even though he was a Muslim it would be good for him to read. He said, “come can we discuss these things.” Well, it doesn’t get more blatant than that; even a dimwit (which we fall under) could see that God sent this man to us. So we went and sat against a dusty wall across the street in a patch of shade and spoke to the man for nearly three hours about the things of Christ and the Bible, and he also told us about the Muslim way. I won’t repeat the conversation here but I must tell you he was hungry for the truth. He took the Arabic Bible with much gratitude and he listened and thought intently about what was said. Once again the Lord used both Adam and my unique point of views and we left this man a bit silenced and a bit teary eyed holding his first Arabic bible. I tell you when you know you have been used by God if only for some small part it feels like a fresh wind has blown through you, you feel new and alive. It was wonderful. This man remains in our prayers even though his name has been lost but with the Lord it doesn’t matter.
So that night we decided to eat a nice meal at a restaurant Adam had read about and so we ventured out into Aleppo to find it, it was a city which never seemed to sleep. After asking directions about 35 times we finally found the place down an ally. It turned out to be one of the best meals we had eaten in the Middle East, well not as good as sheep eggs but close. We had what we think was beef soaked in a lemon sauce, lamb kebabs smothered in a rich sour cherry sauce (my mouths watering just thinking about that one) A great vinegar and lemon salad and a unique cheese stuffed pastry found all over the Middle East. After the meal is when I found out that I had lost my wallet for the second time. Adam didn’t have enough money for both of us and we couldn’t get to an ATM, I’m not sure there were any in this town. Eventually the manager who happened to be sitting behind us came to our rescue. He was a jolly fat man with a wonderful personality. We ended up talking with this man for hours as he stuffed us with a special Syrian drink called Arack and home made Ice Cream. He called down two American girls that were staying in the Hotel (which was part of the restaurant). It was such a strange coincidence we met these girls in Damascus and kept running into them in the most random of places. One of the girls was studying Arabic in Syria and so we took the opportunity to give her an Arabic/English bible with the managers’ encouragement, who was also a Christian. So we laughed into the night, mostly at him and I realized losing an object like your wallet doesn’t matter when it can bring irreplaceable fellowship. The next day we began to get real excited about seeing Turkey and since we had seen most of Syria’s highlights we headed out to country number five. Leaving Syria and getting into Turkey was a breeze but there was one small hold up. We took a bus across the border and when you do that you travel with a small group for a while and you wait in all the exit and entrance lines together. Well, one guy in particular befriended us Americans and curiously asked me if I could put his “sugar” in my bag because the police won’t give me a hassle. I said we’ll see, thinking that this guy was smuggling something white over the border but it sure wasn’t sugar. It turned out that he wasn’t the only one on the bus smuggling something over in fact I think we were the only one’s not smuggling things over; well us and a Brazilian man named Daniel whom we had befriended. When it came time for the Police to check all our bags they lined all our stuff up on the side of the bus to be searched for “illegal goods.” In the few moments before the police got there, there was a hurried frenzy you wouldn’t believe. Everyone was shuffling, tucking and repacking these black bags into their suitcases, everyone looked nervous and frantic while we just stood there a bit confused wondering what was happening. The guy who asked me to hide his “sugar” placed his bags next to mine. Before I let him do that I made sure I tasted the product (only on the tip of my tongue, mind you) and found that it tasted like sugar. This man was on the wire, and seeing he wouldn’t take no for an answer we just let the guy place the bags next to ours, ready to deny the ownership if the police gave us any trouble, another Turkish guy next to us also squeezed his bags next to ours. It seems that the police don’t check our bags only the bags of Turkish or Syrian people. They were right; there was no hassle for us they hardly looked our way. We found out later that it actually was sugar they were smuggling; they were also smuggling tea along with hundreds of other kinds of foods. That’s how cheap everything is in Syria, so cheap even the Turkish people will risk jail and fines for tea and sugar. We thought we had a problem in America with crack and cocaine smuggling? Well, it’s nothing compared to Turkey’s tea and sugar problem.
I guess you can
now official call us smugglers since we assisted, (though ignorantly) in a
secret sugar infiltration operation. Our bus took us from the Syrian
border to Antakya better known to you as Antioch. We stayed long enough
to see the oldest church in the world. This was the place where Peter
secretly met with believers, it was basically a cave in the side of the
mountain, and it even had an ‘escape from the Romans’ tunnel. It still
amazed me, we were actually walking in these places I have only read about
in larger than life books like the Bible, re-picturing in our minds the
story that unfolded there thousands of years ago brought color to my
knowledge that had up to that point only remained black and white.
After Antioch we took another lovely 12 hour bus ride through the night to Cappadocia a large area that is well known amongst backpackers, we ended in the town of Göreme, next to Nevsehir basically in the dead center of Turkey. We were still traveling with Danielle Conrado our friend from Brazil who also wanted to see Cappadocia. The next morning we awoke to a natural marvel, there were hundreds of pointy tee pee looking rock formations everywhere one looked and the amazing part was that most were carved into homes. Our very hotel was made into these rocks. We sat there half expecting smurfs or gnomes to come walking out, it was really out of another world. It turns out there are hundreds of fields with these rock formations that were once ancient communities. We went exploring in one of the best preserved of these communities where they carved churches as well as homes. The homes included tables and chairs carved out of the sandstone straight from the ground. Oh, and you couldn’t help but love the church of the hermaphrodite saint. The story goes; there was a woman who was strongly desired after by many men because of her great beauty. But because of their attraction to her it brought her great turmoil and so in her tears she prayed to God to be changed and so when she woke she found she had grown a long grey beard and grey hair, keeping the same body but now with the face of an old man. Yeah I know, it has nothing to do with anything in the Bible but there is still a church for her or should I say, It. But you have to know that this story is coming from a place that has a valley nicknamed, Penis valley. You read it right; there were hundreds of rock formations carved to look like giant replicas of the male organ. Apparently they worshipped the Penis here just as Egypt once did, I guess it was contagious worship. Enough of that stuff, there are far more interesting things we were about to see on our journey. The next day we (Wes, Adam and Daniel) rented mopeds and decided to cruise all around Cappadocia which was nearly 300 kilometers. That’s saying a lot since we were on mopeds that maxed at 60 km an hour (about 40/45 mph). I had the slow moped but it did its part. We raced, I mean cruised around stopping at various sites. There were several underground cities in the area, since Christians were so heavily persecuted they were forced to dwell underground. These cities were amazing it looked like giant civilized worms had built a home there. A scene from Star Wars was actually filmed here as well; it is Yoda’s hut scene in the second film. One city was built 30 m under ground which is about 10 stories. They were so intelligently built; they had air shafts that ventilated the place perfectly, they had ingenious methods of storing water and they had built it in a way that prevented flooding. These cities were a labyrinth of rooms and tunnels (that we got to explore unhindered… oh yeah). A lesser miracle occurred after that and that is that within 2 hours everything was settled with the police and the bike shop and we caught our bus to Olympus. Another wonderfully enchanted 10 hour trip but we were getting used to buses by now. So we arrived in Olympus, bright and early the next morning. When we stepped off the bus we stepped into a tropical paradise, we were deafened at first by the sounds of millions of cricket like chirps coming from all over the hills and woods. It was mating season for this cricket like bug, and man was it mating season…LOUD. So we took a smaller bus down to the coast where Olympus actually was and found our way into a tree house community. For anyone who has seen the movie, The Beach, one it’s not a great movie, so don’t see it again if you don’t remember and two it felt like we had stepped into this very movie. We were in a community of backpackers from all over the world, it was built by backpackers, run by back packers who had decided to stay and supported by backpackers traveling through. There were few Americans but a lot of Aussies. We went to the beach that same day and so walked through the ruins of the ancient city Olympus following a fresh water spring to the coast. There were ships anchored off shore in the crystal clear, bright blue Mediterranean water. Hundreds of people of all ages and nationality were strewn across this giant isolated beach. Overlooking the beach were the skeletons of a once great city built upon the cliffs. This place to me, embodied all the adventure and wonder that man looks for here on earth. That night we went with a group of Aussies to the top of this high hill that could be seen from the ocean to the eternal flames. These were flames that burned on a unique natural gas that science has yet to explain. These flames stay lit at all times night and were once used in ancient days as a natural light house for ships coming in. Siegfried had an accident in the flames that left a few scars but I take full responsibility. This fire is where the first Olympic flame was lit, appropriate time to see it, I think. The next day we went with a group of Aussies canyoning in the local canyons. Canyoning if you don’t know what canyoning is, it is a bit of everything; Hiking, swimming, rock climbing up waterfalls and cliff jumping (though, not too high) The canyons went up forever and the river which touched both sides of the canyon was fed by crystal clear spring water coming from many different places above and below the cliff walls. I felt alive (like Spiderman) in those canyons, Adam and I had a terribly fun time. So after hanging out with the Aussies a bit more, we got our next bus to Kaß, which is pronounced cash. This was another coast town, which was well known for scuba diving. So guess what we did again. We went scuba diving to a wreck dive but after diving in the Red Sea we weren’t that impressed and decided that once was enough, the water was still great however and the currents were crazy. I really liked this town, you could see the first island of Greece just off the coast. Our hotel manager said he swam there all the time illegally and would pay the fines when he got caught, it was like a game to him seeing how many times he could do it without getting caught.
Our next stop was Pamukkali or also called the old and better name,
Heiriopolis. Natural wonder number 50 in Turkey, this can’t
really be explained. It looks like a giant glacier formation on the
side of this giant hill. What it really is, is calcium deposits from
a giant mineral spring that has been going for thousands of years.
It’s one of those places you have to see to believe, the calcium deposits
had formed perfect pool shelves down the side of this steep cliff.
The mineral water that still flowed down this mountain was feed into a
sort of aqueduct that led into the town below. So after a few
thousand people soak their feet in this
water it is fed into all of the pools down in the town. The first
pool to receive it passes its overflow to the next pool and so on until it
gets t After Pamukkale we journeyed on to Ephesus, considered the greatest ruins in Turkey. “To the angel of the church of Ephesus write, “These things says He who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lamp stands: I know your works, your labor, your patience and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lamp stand from its place- unless you repent.” Rev. 2: 1-5 A message to us all directed to the Ephesians one of the seven churches in Revelation. We only went to this church, because it was the biggest and most well preserved but we drove by most of the others. Ephesus was great, it wasn’t far from the beach so we spent some time there and then went to the ancient ruins of the historic city that was visited so many times by the apostles in the Bible. There was an entire marble street with columns and buildings still erect, you could really picture the ancient city life of that city, there was even what many call the worlds first advertisement there, I think it was selling the love of a woman. While we were in Ephesus Adam and I got a shave for about 3 dollars. This was a unique experience, the old fashioned barber experience where they leaned us back lathered us up and took a single blade razor across our face. They pinched our skin (not hard) to move our skin under the razor rather than the razor over our skin. After receiving the most perfect shave that I have ever had they lit this cotton ball at the end of a stick on fire and tapped it on our ears, to singe our ear hair I am guessing. It was a masterpiece in motion watching them work on us and they topped it off with an incredible message that made me melt in my very seat. So we left Ephesus that night, after saying goodbye to Mili the watch dog of our hostel who had a broken jaw that always stuck out sideways, causing us to laugh every time we saw her, this was goofy googely eyed dog that you couldn’t help but make fun of, but we were reminded by the owner that dogs have feelings too.
So we headed up on another night bus up to Troy, where the story in Homers Iliad was said to have originally taken place. It looked similar to the geography in the movie but of course the city in the movie was much bigger. Adam and I were able to climb in the Trojan horse that was used to win the war, this tricky contraption had a ladder, a window and a nice thatched roof, I can see how the Trojans were fooled. We had signed up for a tour which included Troy and Gallipoli. Gallipoli was our next stop; if you don’t know what Gallipoli is don’t worry your not expected to if you’re not a Turk, Aussie or Kiwi (New Zealander), or unless you have seen the Mel Gibson movie titled the same. Gallipoli was a battle that took place during World War I in this battle Australia and New Zealand suffered more loss of life than in any other battle it was the only time Turkey’s home land was invaded, making this place very significant for all the Turkish people as well. It was really interesting hearing about this place and actually seeing it. This battle had a number of amazing stories. We of course were the only Americans on a bus full of Kiwis and Aussies and after a while we began to get sentimental with them.
From Gallipoli we took a bus to our final stop, the beautiful Istanbul. There were some amazing things we saw here but I think we were a bit desensitized to many of the cultural wonders after such a long trip through the Muslim world. During this last part of our trip we had only been following leads from one hostel to another and for our final stop we ended up at the Istanbul hostel. There was no room available here so we ended up sleeping on a roof where the bar was. The problem was the bar didn’t close until 2 or 3 in the morning, so we had to busy ourselves until then or just try and sleep through it. We ended up making a number of friends on that roof, which overlooked the canal that cut Istanbul in half. At this point I was tired of being a tourist but never the less I saddled up and hit the sites.
We saw many things that were wonderful and also much that gave us the, ‘been there done that,’ impression. I think for me the place that was most memorable was the underground cavern. It looked like something out the Phantom of the Opera. There were rows and rows and rows of giant columns all carved in intricacy and were surrounded by water that was teaming with fish. Each column was lit up dramatically in a way similar to what they once did, though with electric lights instead of flame. The ceiling was dripping with water coming from who knows where but each drop echoed through the cavern creating a natural symphony. I like to say this place was dripping with mystery. At the base of two of the columns were two giant green stained stone heads of the mythical creature Medusa, a bit Eerie. We explored a lot in the two days we had in Istanbul. One night we met some Turkish men who owned a carpet shop. They played us some Turkish music on there instrument, the name of which I won’t try to remember, He even knew ‘Hotel California’, sort of. We had a real interesting visit in a palace that was turned into a museum. In this museum they had Moses’ wooden staff, another one of John the Baptist’s heads along with his right arm both cast half in gold, they also had Josephs’ turban (I didn’t know he wore one). However, I think the best thing we saw there were the artifacts belonging to Mohammed, they had had all his personal stuff like combs, clothes, his hats, his sword and other weapons, and I loved that they had his beard hair and teeth on display in little vials. They also had a hand written letter from Mohammed there and we took a picture, here is what it said.
‘From Muhammed, the servant and Prophet of Allah to Muqavqas, leader of the Coptic (Christians) tribe,
There is safety and security for those believers who follow
the correct path. Therefore I invite you to accept Islam, If you refuse
this invitation, let the sin be upon you for the calamity which awaits
your followers, You too are people of the Book. Therefore let us join
hands in a common word, that we worship none but Allah and shall not hold
anything equal to him. Let us not abandon Allah and take any for Lords
other than Him. If you do not consent to this invitation, bear witness
that we are Muslims.”
I’d like to know what that last statement is supposed to mean, Is Muhammed threatening, that can’t be because all the Muslims keep saying theirs is a religion of peace. Anyway we got a kick out of that room, it was little nerve racking as well, I couldn’t help but think what kind of radical Muslims a place like that might attract.
Overall Turkey was an amazing country it carried more natural wonders than the rest of the middle east combined. It wasn’t as shocking culturally as the rest of the Middle East, it actually seemed like Europe though more poor and more Muslim. So on our 3rd day August 9 we boarded our flight to Frankfurt, Germany, we had survived. At the end we realized that what at first seemed to be a risky or even dangerous trip, especially as our parents were concerned, turned out to be like a trip to Las Vegas compared with what other travelers were doing. It definitely came with its share of risks but it was really safe, safer than most would realize, though I know I will not convince many of you back at home. It was an amazing trip, one that has grown in me certain foundational changes that I’ll carry with me the rest of my life. Christ spoke to us on this trip and by His grace alone He used us to do what little we could in sharing the truth and life that we carried in side of us. This was a trip riddled with beauty, darkness, wonder, temptation, discovery and victory, all the elements of a great story. Thank you all once again for your love and prayers we send you ours in return. –Wes (Adam) Well, I was supposed to write that letter, but I was burnt out, and I admit that Wes is gooder at writing word things… Germany is awesome; we are in our dorms at Tübingen, and like them very much. Actually Wes and I are the only cal state students that are in this “Protestant” supported dorm. Not only is it cheaper, but we have bigger rooms, and are the only dorm that is in the center of town and doesn’t need to take a bus everywhere. It’s great. We just spent six weeks living in a little German town, Horb, were we lived with German families and went to school for all German all day. It was really cool, except that I tore my ACL and Meniscus playing soccer, and need surgery scheduled for Jan. 24…Lots of ‘just studying’ for me this year. We have a guest room at our dorms and I have an extra air sofa/bed, so everyone is invited! We both have cell phones to, so email us if you can come and we’ll give you our number. Ok, if you’re still reading, wow, but I think that about does it, if you skipped to the end, shame on you. Till we see you again…. Chow. …wait , yet another week has goon by, randomly I got a call last Monday, to see if I could come in for surgery Wednesday, and I did. So now I can barely walk for a month. –Adam and Wes |
