Turkey in spring

Springtime turned out to be a great time of year for touring Turkey. As we drove through central Anatolia in April-May several years ago, the wheat fields, stretching to the horizon, were just greening up. Farther south, near the Mediterranean coast, fruit trees were blooming and brilliant red poppies were a splash of scarlet along the roads and in the pastures. Tomatoes were being harvested in the acres and acres of greenhouses.

We had heard that Turkey had more classical sites (Greek and Roman) than Italy or Greece, but we did not realize how much of the early Christian church history was sited in Turkey.

Touring at this time of the year also meant that many of the sites were nearly deserted. At the wonderful Hittite ruins at Hattusas, near Bogazköy and Ankara, for example, we were the only visitors at what had been a city of 30,000 in the second century B.C.

What would we do differently next time? Take a New Testament to better understand the history of the early Christian church; take the “Blue Guide Turkey” (2001, W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0393321371 — 704 pp., $29.95 paperback), and spend an extra day (or two) in Istanbul at the end of the trip.

ALBERT A. SCHAUFELBERGER
Fripp Island, SC