The only visit we did today was to Gallipoli and that was enough. It was quite a sombre experience. It was a short drive to the ferry where a car with a flat battery caused a major traffic mess making Erol do magic things with our coach to get us on board. It was a half hour trip across the water to the peninsula on the European side of Turkey. Cruise ships come through here. We enjoyed the windy crossing.
We started at Anzac Cove, where we saw the extremely difficult task our soldiers had of climbing the steep bank up to the Turkish bunkers at the top. We had this spot to ourselves.
These soldiers had been training in Europe so they quickly named this feature the Sphinx.
As we travelled around the various battle sites, Burhan kept us informed with his stories and facts, making it specific to Australia. We had no relatives with army service but we thought a lot about our grandson in the army and another one in the Reserve. One of our party found the grave of her nana's uncle. There were a number of cemeteries and long lists of names.
A pine tree has been planted where the original Lone Pine was and there was a story about that name.
We went to a Turkish cemetery and we felt grateful that this country has been so helpful in allowing Australia and New Zealand to have these spaces honoured.
The centenary of the August Offensive will take place on the 6th to the 10th and there were Australians in our hotel preparing for that. At the New Zealand memorial there was a tower which would funnel the rising sun on the 8th to remember the NZ assault. Two Kiwis told us that the Governors-General of New Zealand and Australia will be there on that day.
We wandered around the top of the hill where hand to hand combat took place in the Turkish trenches and possession of the summit changed back and forth.
Some trenches have been shored up to preserve the scale of them. Skulls, femurs and other bones are still being found around here and the scale of the deaths was hard to comprehend. One archeology worker found it tempting to nap in the trench.
The Turks featured a statue of a Turkish soldier carrying a wounded ANZAC. A truce was called in May to allow retrieval of bodies which were thick on the ground and rotting nauseatingly.
We called in at a beach on the way to Istanbul.
We called in at a beach on the way to Istanbul.
It took Erol till 5:45pm to get us back to the Titanic Hotel and we applauded him for the sterling and skilful way he thread his way through the heavy traffic. He is "a cool dude".
There was just time to say goodbye to our fellow travellers and have a shower in our room before a driver from Global Tours turned up in a minibus and dropped us at the Train Station. We showed our Eurail Pass to the ticket seller and he said there was no charge, just wait for the bus at the side of the station which would leave at 10pm. Given our experience with the difficulty of finding out about the trip back to Bulgaria and booking in advance, we were surprised to see the bus was almost full when it took off. We could have spent the night in the five star Titanic Hotel, but because of our apprehensions about this section of our tour, we had decided to get to Bucharest a day earlier, which would avoid trying to make a very unlikely transition at Bucharest station in 10 minutes. We had booked a hotel near the station for Sunday night, so we will have some time on Tuesday to recover and prepare for the overnight train to Budapest.
No comments:
Post a Comment