Lest We Forget
It was so nice to wake up in the picturesque little village of Kavala, the gentle waves lapping on the shore. It’s such a great hotel, I think we all would have been happy to stay a day or two longer. Our shower pressure was next level - almost like washing your hair with a Karcher!
The breakfast room in our hotel had a wall of glass overlooking the Aegean Sea and we got to watch the sunrise, with seagulls that looked like they were on steroids, winging across the sky, all while we munched on our ‘boofay’ brekky. Not a bad way to start the day!
We had two walking wounded in our group today. Poor Michelle had woken up feeling under the weather and Nic had jammed her fingers in the door. Hopefully they’ll be on the mend soon. It was our last day in Greece so we had to move with military precision.
With passports at the ready, we boarded Dimitris’ bus one last time and enjoyed Marianna’s last impassioned Greek commentary as we made our way past farmland and wind turbines. Marianna has been an awesome guide and we thanked her with a card and little present, for the ocean of knowledge about all things Greek that she has imparted to us over the past week. We’ll miss her!
Everyone was instructed to disembark the bus and dutifully queue for passport inspection at the Greek border. It was very serious business. Denise gave us the heads-up that we’d have to place 4 fingers down flat on the glass and do exactly as they asked. They snapped a photo of us but I wasn’t sure whether or not to smile. (No one said to say cheese).
There was a big duty free store just by the side of the road which looked so out of place not tucked inside an airport terminal. After a mandatory squirt of French perfume (the tester of course) I got back on the bus to wait for everyone to be cleared. Given the green light, we drove a little further to cross the bridge that divides the 2 nations. Turkey’s border was a lot more modern and clean than Greece’s. Once again we had to flash our passports and proceed through the duty free shop, resisting the urge to stock up on designer jewellery and Toblerones, to get back on the bus.
Dean had the unenviable task of having to return the collected passports to their rightful owners - a job made considerably harder by the fact that all passport photos seem specifically designed to ensure nobody looks remotely like themselves. Armed with a stack of grainy headshots in which the perfectly normal people in our group had been transformed into suspicious-looking fugitives wanted for murder in several countries, he somehow had to work out which one belonged to whom. He may or may not have slipped up and given Doug’s passport to Heather (I’m sure it was dark in that tunnel).
With a bus changeover that would make a Formula One pit crew look tardy, our luggage was swapped from one bus to the other at record speed. Next it was time we became acquainted with our new guide and driver. Our guide’s name, a hybrid of Shannon and Noll - Shenol - seems lovely. Once onboard, he whipped out a map of Turkey (or should I say ‘Türkiye’) and gave us a quick overview of his land. Someone asked him why they changed the name from Turkey to Türkiye. He gave a chuckle and said he had absolutely no idea. Maybe they don’t like the bird?
Shenol explained that Turkey is like the bridge between Europe and Asia. If you ask an Asian whether Turkey is in Asia they’ll say no. If you ask a European if it’s in Europe they’ll say no. Ask a Turk where it is and their answer will change depending on their mood. Today apparently, we were in Europe.
After a lunch stop at a roadside diner, our next destination was the Gallipoli Peninsula. The day was quite cool and overcast with heavy grey clouds threatening to dump on us. The skies matched our mood as we hopped off the bus and wandered along the shore of ANZAC Cove. The quiet and peaceful little cove betrayed the bloodshed and carnage that took place here during the harrowing battle of 1915 that it’s sadly famous for.
We also made a stop at Lone Pine cemetery to see rows and rows of Australian and New Zealander headstones. Too many graves and soldiers way too young. A few were inscribed with: “their glory shall not be blotted out” and it occurred to me just how important it is to keep their memory alive. I felt quite overcome with emotion, especially seeing the lists of names in battalions that died senselessly, some of them teenagers, at the mercy of bad decision makers in this horrible war.
The peninsula is now more or less a national park, with 128 memorials/cemeteries along the 48km stretch of coast - a Turkish, Australian or New Zealand graveyard every kilometre or so. Lots of trenches were still present and it was sobering to see them up close. Bob, from our group, had a grandfather that ran up the beach at ANZAC Cove in 1915 and shared with us some of his grandfather’s diary entries from WWI. There was barely a dry eye as ‘Handsome Jim’ read the entries aloud.
Sun 25 April 1915: ‘We rowed ashore. Bullets were flying over in the thousands.’
He took a bullet in his hand that day that he had to leave there for months until they got back to the UK and he could get it removed. He also sustained a bad shrapnel wound in his leg..
Monday 26th April: ‘We were covered in mud and dirt with no pack. It’s been raining. I lay in the trench and had a breakfast of bully beef, biscuit and water as bullets were whistling all around. Every available man was called to firing line. It was a heavy day of fighting. I’ve now been wounded in both hands.’
He walked to the beach with shells lobbing in the water and on the boats and slept the night on the boat deck.
What an amazing insight these diary entries were!
After paying our respects and vowing never to forget, we, along with our bus, were going for a ferry ride across the Dardonelles, to our destination for the night: Cannakale (pronounced Channa-karlay).
Just as an aside, the Turkish stop signs here don’t need to say much. ‘Do we stop here?’ we wonder when we see one. Oh Dur.
Shenol explained this is a crowded seaside resort at the height of summer when locals with summer houses pile into town with their buckets and spades, vying for sand space. The season officially ended only a couple of days ago but we’ve arrived post mass-exodus to a quiet little ghost town, its pretty, dark grey sandy beach empty, bar a couple of old fishermen. Off-season means the pool is closed, the spa is empty and the lawn could serously do with a mow. We heard the echo of the Muslim call to prayer off in the distance as we headed in for a dinner of Turkish delights. What a privilege it is to experience different cultures!
