Marti, Bacardi, and Gaudi 2007

Kusadasi continued

It is pronounced Kushadawsee.
I was wrong. Today is the 28th not 27th. Apparently it has been all day.
We went back to town this afternoon. Surprise! The great bazaar is not 3 or 4 blocks but 20 times that. It is amazing and the sellers and traders are not simply persistent. They are aggressively so, but in a fashion that is not repellent: just the right combination of pushiness, pleading, obsequiesness, and demand honed over about two thousand years of trading. Fascinating.
Naturally we bought more stuff.
It is hard to overstate the influence of the U.S. on every part of the world I have visited. In Venice, Dubrovnik, Athens, and now in Asia Minor on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean at the Aegean, signs, ads, almolst everything is in English as well as the native tongue and many, many people speak passable English. A surprising number of business people are fluent. Today as we walked down the street a middle aged fellow who looked very Turkish passed by going the other way singing "Only You", the old doo wop song----in English. Stunning. It was more surprising than the young Spaniard. We hear a lot of broadcast music of American classic rock and roll, too, as well as some Turkish pop, and once, in a symphony of ailing cats, some kind of Turkish rap.
We both like this place. Ron and Sharon Wedeking, who are the third couple in our group and long standing friends of Jean Sparks, have had enough of Kusadasi. The traders are offensive to them.
Tomorrow we tour the ruins and will probably make one more foray into the great sea of Turkish sharks, drawn by the bait of leather, cashmere, and jewelry, before we shove off.
There is a football player for the Cincinnati Bengals named T.J. Hushmanjah. Jane calls him T. J. Whoseyomama and now she has begun calling this city Whoseyomama. Last night the walls of the fortress were illuminated from their baseand the city lights climbed the hillside above the harbor. Jane took photos of both. Maybe she will post them.
Hasta la vista, baby.