Miscellaneous stuff I want to remember

 I've learned some things over the last few days that I want to remember, so I'd better write them down. Who knows, it may come in handy for trivia one day. In addition I'm sitting here killing time before I leave to go to the ship.

I had no idea that tulips came to the Netherlands from Turkey.  The flowers grow wild here and they are cultivated too. Süleiman the Great was an ardent plant enthusiast and through a Flemish scientist who had worked at his court, some bulbs arrived in the Netherlands in the 16th century. And the rest, as they say, is history.

                           Tulip and Daisy garden in the Topkapi

The Turkish language, which sounds like nothing I've ever heard, has its origins in the Asian steppes going as far east as Mongolia.  It has similarities to Azerbaijani, Kazahk, and Uzbekh language among others. Sinan told me he can understand some people from those countries.  Interestingly, it has some similarities to Korean and there are a few characteristics of Hungarian and Finnish which are similar.  I wonder how that happened.

Opinions run very high in this part of the world.  The Turks are sorry for the Ukrainians who have been dispossessed but they aren't too sympathetic for the other Europeans who are taking them in and begging for more aid.  I've had a few  Turks tell me that they've been taking care of several million Syrians for about eight years and they sure would like them to go back to Syria since the fighting is  essentially done there.

The video clip of our president turning to shake hands with an invisible person has apparently been making the rounds.  Sinan asked me about it and when we walked past a store with newspapers and Turkish magazines there was a photo from that clip on the front cover.

Turks and Greeks still don't really get along.  That's been going on for a long time and evidently still flares up occasionally. 

Macedonians don't like North Macedonians. North Macedonia became a separate country a few years ago and the other ethnic Macedonians don't like it.  I heard all about it when I struck up a conversation with a Macedonian couple while waiting for our driver to pick us up. The  elderly Macedonian man told me that after all, Macedonia was all one place under Alexander the Great. He was very serious about that.

Turks don't like Kurds and consider them terrorists. I suspect if I encounter a Kurd he will feel the same about Turks.

Turkey has an election next year and every driver/guide I have had since I've been here has told me that they think Erdogan will lose.  Apparently most Turks are used to having a semi-democracy and they don't want to be an Islamic state.

If we think inflation is bad, we "ain"t seen nothing yet." The government's official  position is that inflation is in the 20% range, but two of my drivers have told me it's more like nearly 100% per year.

Those are some things I picked up listening to the people I've encountered. I don't know if it's all correct, but those were their opinions.

And here's one last story about the sultans and their lives.  In the palace we walked through this area which looked like an empty pool with a terrace around it. On nice evenings when the sultan was entertaining guests the pond would be filled with water.  His servants would earlier collect lots of turtles and they would fasten cork floaties to the underside of the turtles so they couldn't go underwater.  On the turtles upper shells, they would affix with wax a single candle. Then the animals would be released in the pool to float around with the lit candles on their backs. It was evidently a great crowd-pleaser, especially with the sultan's favorite wives and concubines.

                                                            The Turtle Pool