We were sad to leave Assos because it was so beautiful but we were excited to get to Izmir. We took he bus to Pergamon (which is a name some of you should recognize from the letters to the seven churches in Revelation). Our first stop in Pergamon was an ancient hospital. They had a theater for performing comedies to lift their patients spirits. And a special method of psychotherapy. First the doctor would lead them to a dark tunnel and tell them to walk through. The only light came from the end of the tunnel and there would be the sound of rushing water. Water would be boiled with opiates and run under the tunnel which had holes in the floor so that the steam could rise up. The doctor would walk overhead and say calming things. then the patient would meet the doctor at the end of the tunnel and walk around in a circular room and talk about his/her problems.
After this we went to lunch.
After lunch we visited the acropolis, which is at the top of yet another hill. Thankfully, we were able to take a gondola up the hill. We saw cisterns, ruins of a temple, a theater, and the base from a stolen temple. The theater was built on the side of this hill and I think they need to put in some ancient hand rails. I can't tell you how many times I almost fell. The construction of the temple is really cool. Or I guess I should say the base is really cool. Because of gravity it is very difficult to build giant stone buildings on hills. So this temple's base is a series of arches that help hold it up and are very sturdy. Turkey has a ton of earthquakes so all the buildings need to be very sturdy or else they fall over. The arches allow the base to be flexible in an earthquake, so the temple won't fall over. The temple of Zeus in Pergamon is what Revelation refers to when it talks about the "seat of Satan." Sadly, only the base of the temple is still in Pergamon because the rest of the temple is in Berlin in the Pergamon museum. Why it's there I don't know. It seems from the way our guide was talking that the German's stole the temple.
On our way down the hill we visited the ruins of the Red Mosque, which is still under excavation.
We are staying the night in Izmir, which is our guide's home town. After dinner we went for a walk to the sea shore because all of the restaurants were closed for the election. There are a lot of stray dogs in Turkey and they are all very friendly and I have noticed that (at least for Istanbul) most of the dogs have tags in their ears. (I don't know why it's just an observation). Anyway we seemed to have picked up a stray on the way to the sea last night. Linh named him Harley, but because he was part pit bull I keep my distance. He walked with us all the way down to the shore and almost gave us a heart attack on several occasions. We were told if you want to know how to cross the street watch the stray cats and dogs because they do it on a daily basis. Well this dog almost got himself killed several times crossing the street. We knew he was following us so we tried to lose him a couple of times so that he wouldn't be in danger. But he would find us again. Several other people tried to get his attention and even give him food but I guess he only wanted us to be his people. We were finally able to leave him at the sea shore when he got momentarily distracted. It was sad to see him looking for us but we all knew that he was safer there and there would be people that would give him scraps. All the stray dogs and cats in Turkey are really well feed. I've seen maybe one that looks too skinny.
Today (June 13) is a free day for us and since there really isn't much to do in Izmir we are taking it as a day to catch up on blogs, sleep, and work.
By the way for those that care AKP won the Turkish election in a landslide (no I don't know what that means for the future of the Turkish government)
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