Ramblings

I went on a tour of Gallipoli on the western shore of Turkey when I was visiting that country.  I honestly thought Gallipoli was an ancient battlefield somehow related to the Iliad or something like that.  When I got there I realized how completely wrong I was.  I guess I didn’t pay much attention in my 9th grade world history class.  I’m not even sure if I could locate the US on a world map.

No, Gallipoli is actually a World War I battlefield, especially important to Australians and New Zealanders.  Who knew?  Well, a lot of people know this, but probably not very many Americans.  Americans tend to have a terrible sense of world history.

I was the only American at Gallipoli that day, lost in a pack of Austral Asians.  Our Turkish guide hadn’t met an American on his tour in several years.

“What are you doing here?” he asked me after he asked everyone where we were all from.  I had thought about lying and saying that I was actually from Perth or the Outback or something, but I’m sure my accent and complete ignorance about all things Australian would have given me away as a Yank.  I hadn’t even seen Crocodile Dundee in years.

We spent the afternoon walking around on the beach and climbing up the cliffs, hearing stories about how Gallipoli still remains as one of the of the quintessential military catastrophes of all time, a hallmark of incompetence where nothing was accomplished.  In the end there were an estimated 300,000 casualties, if that counts as much of an accomplishment.  A couple of months later I toured Auschwitz on my 23rd birthday.  Both were kind of depressing in their own ways.

Our guide told us about the Christmas Truce of 1914, where a ceasefire was called and all the killing and artillery and bloodshed stopped for a day.  Turkish soldiers threw dates and other sweets over to the Allied soldiers; the Allied soldiers threw canned beef and cigarettes over to the Turks.  Both sides hung their laundry on the barbed wire that day with an understanding that they wouldn’t get repeatedly shot in the chest when they went to go retrieve it.

We went to the museum after climbing around on all of the rocks and trenches.  Gallipoli is famous for its large collection of bullets that hit each other in mid-air, melding into single, albeit very deformed, bullet in the process.  This is because most of the time the soldiers were less than twenty feet apart when they were shooting at each other.  Next to the exit there was a macabre shrine to a forest ranger who had died during a flash fire at the battle site a few years back.  In the case were a few personal effects that he had been carrying at the time that he had died—a mangled pair of glasses, a charred pair of shoes with the rubber soles melted off, a flashlight that would never work again.  It was really weird.

We saw everything and went to a nearby bar, and those Australians sure could drink.  One guy would order a pint and just let it sit on the table for a couple of minutes, and would then pick it up and just pour the whole glass down his throat.  I mean, he really poured it.  The glass wouldn’t even touch his lips since he poured the beer from at least a height of six inches above his mouth.  It was a really odd way to drink a beer if you ask me.  Some Australians can be really strange.  He out drank everyone that night.  I think he must have had at least 40 beers.  He didn’t even call them beers, he called them schooners.  Later we drank more beer while eating doner kababs.

One of the Australian guys was studying Turkish, and despite the amount of studying and practice he devoted to the language, he just wasn’t very good at it.  I guess it’s a pretty complicated language, especially if you’re from Australia.  He tried to get the bartender to bring him an ashtray, which only brought a shake of the head and a look of disgust, odd in country where it seems that every man is constantly breathing through a clove cigarette without a filter.  He tried to clarify his request by making a hand gesture, with all of his fingers and thumbs touching to make a circle, but the bartender just walked away.

A young Turkish man was sitting next to us, laughing at him.  He told us in English what he had done wrong.

“I know you were trying to ask the bartender for an ashtray, but you actually asked him for a small child’s penis.  Those words sound very similar in my language.”

He then told us that in Turkey there are a lot of hand gestures that are often used in place of speaking, and the hand gesture he used to describe the shape of an ashtray was actually the sign you use to call someone an asshole.

“Yes,” our new Turkish friend told us in between laughs, “after he refused your odd request for any small child’s penises that you could use, you called him an asshole.”

“I guess I messed another one up,” said my Australian companion.  The young Turkish guy laughed at us some more, but then he bought the next round of beers.  He seemed like an alright guy.

The conversation amongst the Aussies eventually turned toward Australian rules football, a conversation that might as well have taken place in Turkish.  I had no idea what these guys were saying.

“After the clanger they balled-up and the ruckman tries to go for a specky, but he gets bleeding coathanged by the back pocket. But, see, that’s when Bixton from the Magpies jolly footed it and he damn near lost his castle!”

“That’s the Magpies for you. Brilliant!”

I give people from Austral Asia a score of 88,382 out of 100,000.