The Archive

Blood on the sand

8.30 am and we were boarding a bus bound for Troy. Who said we weren't diligent tourists?

On the way to the location of the ancient city, our guide refreshed our memory of the mythology - how Paris was called upon to judge a beauty contest between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite.

Hera offered a bribe of power, Athena offered a bribe of wisdom, and Athena offered a bribe of beauty.

Paris, being young, chose beauty - which ended up having the hottest chick in the land, Helen, fall in love with him. Unfortunately, at that time she was the wife of the Spartan king Menelaeus, who didn't take too kindly to strange men talking to his bird and kicked off the Trojan war, starring Brad Pitt.

Of course, a lot of people in Sparta thought it was actually all about oil and protested in the streets, but to no avail.

The reason I've gone over all this old ground is that the guide said something that really stuck with me. He claimed he asked all the men on all his tours which they would have chosen.

In general, he said men in their twenties, they choose beauty.

Men in their thirties and forties, they choose power.

In the fifties and sixties, men choose wisdom.

And in their seventies and upwards, they choose beauty again.

What would you choose? (I said beauty, for the record.)

Anwyay, we drove down a surprisingly small road until we came to the site of the legendary Troy.

And there, we learned much.

Apparently, there were 9 cities on the site (2 more than we were taught at school, because they turned up another couple in the eighties, apparently).

The site was discovered by a German amatuer architect/treasure hunter called Schliemann, who hired a bunch of locals to dig a massive trench across the hill.

Apparently this had the advantage of discovering the site of the ancient city, and the disadvantage of destroying it in the process. But Schliemann probably didn't care, because he was searching for gold.

And gold he found.

When he discovered the treasury, realising nobody else had spotted it, he gave all his workers the day off, then snuck in, stuffed all the loot down his pants, and smuggled it back to... you guessed it, Berlin.

Mind you, it's not there now. In World War II, the invading Soviet army decided they quite fancied a share of the treasure and it later popped up in a museum in Moscow.

And there is now some bickering between Berlin and Moscow as to who it belongs to, which is a bit bloody rich, when you think about it.

Anyway, now a bunch of proper archaeologists are on the case and the site is being rather more carefully excavated, revealing some fairly interesting ruins, none of which seem to get the attention of the tourists as much as the big wooden horse which has been built on the site.

There was a bunch of other fascinating stuff, like steep ramps, six cornered stones, a lack of corners on the outer walls, and a sharp turn around which you couldn't get a battering ram, which you can look up on the internet or ask me about, if you're that interested.

And with that, we were back on the bus and to Cannakale.

Crikey, it's only noon and we've done a world quality sight already.

Unwilling to waste an afternoon, the other five headed off to an island some miles away.

I was willing to waste the afternoon. Also, some work had come in that I had to do, so I stayed in the hotel.

Which is why I can only report second hand the fact that at the island, Dump managed to slip whilst in the toilet, gash a fairly large hole in his head and land, face down, worryingly near a Turkish squat toilet.

Leaking a lot of blood, he heads back to the group, who offer a range of home remedies, including spit, salt and the blood of a virgin sacrificed during a full moon.

Also, some lovely helpful passers by provided tissues, wet wipes and sympathy, which is rather more than he would have got from us, so now Dump is, officially, a friend of the Turk.

Finally, the chaps returned, having spend approximately three hours travelling for a twenty minute swim and a headwound.

Good work everyone.

And so to dinner (yep, chicken shish again, becoming something of a staple by now) a couple of beers and another early night.

posted by Peter The Great @ 10:34 AM