I really wanted to get moving. Having been to Istanbul twice before I didn't want to hang around there too long. I didn't meet anyone at all while I was there which made the place a little less interesting. Furthermore there was very little time to waste if I was going to fit in everything I planned to see in Turkey. As it happens the next day it was raining so I went down to the docks and bought a ticket for a ferry to Izmir. Departure was 14.00.
Now this was an experience I can recommend. The ferry was very comfortable indeed. What's more, I immediately met somebody I knew. I bumped into a girl called Louise with whom I had been to 6th Form College. As a matter of fact I'm sure that at one time she had been my mate Brendan's girlfriend. A respectable time after they had finished with eachother I recall that she and I had an encounter in a bedroom in Dave "Bunny" Warren's house. Many years later while I was waiting for my Law Society finals results I recall we had a brief dalliance too. I remember her letting me get her completely naked only to find there wasn't much further we could go at that particular time. So it was a little strange to bump into her and her new husband, Peter, on this ferry.
I also got into conversation, or tried to get into conversation with a man called Baghban Bashi. I had noticed him sitting with his children behind me. What caught my attention was that he had discovered the flash unit for his camera was not working. I watched him unfold a hankerchief and then painstakingly take apart the flash unit laying each tiny component on the handkerchief. He then carefully put it all back together again after repairing whatever it was that had broken and it worked again. This impressed me at the time and has remained with me. There is no way I could even have contemplated such a task then nor now. Things like flash units when they stop working are not considered worth repairing. Unless you knew what you were doing it would be pointless to try and the cost of having anyone else do it for you would far outweigh the cost of simply buying a new one. So it sort of amazed me that he had the patience and skill to take the thing apart and then reassemble it in the way he did.
I managed to get to speak with Baghban at the ferry's bar. I discovered he was from Tehran, Iran. He told me was travelling back to Iran overland from Greece where his brother was studying. He said he was driving a white Land Rover which he had collected from his brother. He had his wife and children with him. They had their own cay (tea), almonds and pistachio nuts taken from Iran to Greece and back. He was fascinated by the SW radio Robin and Donna had given me and offered me $150 for it. He had a couple of Efes Pilsens and opened up a bit. I discovered he had been an F14 Fighter pilot during the Iran/Iraq war. He didn't say much but was quite gloomy about life under the Mullahs in Iran. He was a good guy, you could tell.
The Ferry was an overnight sailing from Istanbul along the Golden Horn into the sea of Marmara and into the Aegean Sea. One of the bulkier items that I'd packed was a sleeping bag. It was a very thin one. I think it was called a moon bag. The selling point, apart from it's small size when rolled up, was the fact it had some kind of metallic thermal lining that was supposed to have been a bi-product of the Space Program. Now that I think about it I recall that I also had a sleeping bag liner (I was really well equipped). So at some stage I was able to stretch out between the seats and get a good night's sleep. The ferry docked in Izmir the following morning shortly before 9.00.
My destination was Selcuk being the closest place to Efes. I was not going there for the Pilsen but to visit the ruins of Ephesus.
