A morning drive to Bergama and we met up with our guide from Ephesus for a tour of Pergammon. Unfortunately, the rain came just as we started our tour and it was a fairly abbreviated view of an impressive ruin.
On our way out of town, we passed the local BP gas station/restaurant and saw a huge group of men surrounding a young boy sitting on a camel- our first circumcision party! On Sundays, Moslem boys between 8-10 years old are circumcised.
To celebrate the big event, the boy is dressed in a white satin suit and plumed hat and parades through the town on a camel visiting friends and relatives. He’s then taken to the local clinic for the operation and the party begins. The town gathers to celebrate his entry into manhood- while the young “victim” relaxed and receives gifts and congratulations.
Since we were feeling fairly western Turkey’ed out, we decided to head towards the ferryboat port and find a place to spend the night. The Blue Guide mentioned Erdek as a beautiful little town for local Turkish tourists. We drove the “pig” into town and tried to find a hotel- but there were no hotels in the center of town. We finally established that the hotels were outside town and started our search. This was definitely a lower class Turkish resort- filled with families with children on one end and Turkish “X’ers” looking for “love” on the other end. We checked into what we thought would be a quiet hotel and walked into town for dinner. When we got back to the room, we fell asleep almost immediately, after our previous sleepless night. All was well until the hotel’s disco went into action about 9:00 with blaring live music. John finally went to the hotel reception at 12:30 to complain—and was told that it would go on until 2:00 am…. So much for sleep.
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