Having been here for two weeks now, I am beginning to think I was wrong. It looks to me that Turkey is 99% European with just a thin smear of middle eastern slathered over the top.

At first glance we noticed all the familiar elements we've seen throughout Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. There are the mosques, tons of them. Even the smallest Turkish towns have more mosques than Wisconsin towns of equivalent size have bars. There are the same menus we've seen for the last three months: lamb kebab, lentil soup, tomatoes, cucumber. There are the crowded sidewalks full of life. The markets and the touts and the small glasses of sweet tea.

Yet something tells me the differences here run much deeper than the similarities. When Ataturk (a man whose photo is in every store and home and whose statue is on every street-corner) led the country to independence in 1923, he forced through an unprecedented social reinvention that penetrated all aspects of Turkish life. He strictly separated church and state, not just outlawing Islam as the state religion but forbidding all political parties based on religion. He went so far as to outlaw the Fez and other traditional outfits reminiscent of the Muslim, Ottoman, and Arab past. He threw out the Arabic script and invented an entirely new form of written Turkish based on the Roman alphabet. It is unbelievable that a whole country could undergo such a radical transformation in such a short period of time (roughly the 10 years between the founding of Turkey and the death of Ataturk in the early 30's).

So although when the sun sets and you look across the Istanbul skyline to the silhouette of the mosques and you hear the blare of the evening prayers echoing across the buildings, although it looks just then like a thoroughly Arab country, you are snapped back to the european nature of today's Istanbul by the clink of beer mugs one table over or by the ruckus from the rock band in the next building. Turkey doesn't even have any U.B.O.'s (Unidentified Black Objects), the women completely covered from head to toe in black, including over their face and eyes, that were such a common site in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

Another difference between Turkey and the rest of the Middle East is in the number of travelers. Turkey attracts hordes of tourists of all shapes and sizes; from pasty Englishman flying down for a week on the beach to large packs of Japanese tourists cruising the sites in their big coach buses. There are fat crew-cut Russian men with their skinny tarty wives, and unlike any country we have been in before there are Americans here, heaps of them. I was beginning to think that George Dub-yuh passed a law forbidding Americans to leave the country, but Turkey has proven me wrong.

Turkey also caters to the backpacker crowd. For some travelers more hip than myself this popularity means an automatic check in the "Negative" column, but having been off the beaten path a time or two in the last year I have come to learn there are advantages as well. Lots of backpackers usually means the infrastructure is better developed with superior food, lodging, and transportation options. The pensions (or guest-houses, or hotels, or whatever you want to call them) here try to capture all your dollars, so they offer cheap meals and cheap beer and free breakfasts, and as a result you spend a lot of your time hanging out in the shaded courtyards or sunny rooftops of your hotels swapping stories with fellow travelers. Turkey has plenty of the young 20's party crowd from Australia, England, and South Africa, but one night in Olimpos we found ourselves sipping tea with Simone, one of the many older travelers that also hit the backpacker circuit.

Simone was a 75 year-old Belgian woman who was traveling alone. She had just driven over-land all the way from India (via Pakistan, Iran, and eastern Turkey) with three other people. Simone had been a commercial photographer in Belgium, then a gem merchant in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Columbia, and now she was primarily a traveler and chain-smoker.

Simone was heading the same direction as us so the next morning we traveled together on a local bus further along the coast to Kas (pronounced "kahsh"), a small fishing and yachting town. When we arrived in Kas we left Sarah to guard the bags and Simone and I set out to bargain for hotel rooms. I must say we got some funny looks when the two of us went looking for rooms. At first the hotel owners assumed I was Simone's son, but when they referred to me as such Simone would pull the cigarette out of her mouth and say in her Belgian accent, "Oh, zis man is not my son," without further elaboration.

We stayed in Kas for a few relaxing days. Sarah and I had a gorgeous room with a balcony that hung right out over the Mediterranean ($12 including breakfast, beat that!). Simone was one room over and we joined her for dinners, which became long monologues with three recurrent themes: 1) All French people are idiots; 2) All Turks are idiots; 3) The three Frenchmen she drove from India with are complete and total idiots. She said that one of her driving partners was trying to live extremely cheaply, spending no more than 25 cents per meal. Predictably, he got sick, and one day while the poor guy was squatting by the roadside expelling massive quantities diarrhea and vomit, Simone walked up to him, looked down, and spat out these words of comfort: "You eat like a pig, you shit like a pig."

I can't say Simone was an exceedingly pleasant person to spend a lot of time with, but taken in small doses she was somewhat entertaining. I certainly can't imagine driving all the way across India, Pakistan, and Iran with her. I began to think of her former travel companions as saints for not sneaking back into their Land Cruiser and screeching off at top speed in the middle of the Pakistani desert while Simone was crouched nearby taking a bathroom break.

A sort of eerie silence had hung over Turkey ever since our arrival. The tourist season was due to hit full-force within a few weeks. Pension owners were painting walls and fixing chairs and getting everything ship-shape for the imminent arrival of the european throngs. Restaraunt owners stood in front of their mostly-empty restaraunts, sipping tea and staring distractedly into the distance, as if they expected the hordes to arrive en masse on horseback from just over the horizon.

Although Sarah and I knew we would be leaving Turkey before the crowds got too bad with the start of the summer holiday in June, those of us traveling in Turkey in early May knew of a more immediate threat -- the Aussie Anzac'ers.

Anzac Day is a holiday unknown to most Americans, but in Australia and New Zealand it is one of the most important days of the year. The holiday commemorates the slaughter of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corpes (Anzac) in Turkey during World War I. The British High Command sent the Anzac troops in to capture the Gallipoli peninsula, which controlled the entrance to the Dardanelles -- the narrow waterway that leads to the Black Sea. The Anzacs were pinned down on the beach and lived under constant fire for the next 8 months. Despite the more than 250,000 casualties, they never penetrated more than one mile inland.

Anzac Day is like Pearl Harbor Day, the Vietnam War, D-Day, and Memorial Day rolled into one. It is observed with solemnity by every Aussie and Kiwi. Gallipoli has become a place of pilgrimage, almost a Mecca, for the Aussies. Each year thousands come to see the battlefields and many plan their visit to coincide with Anzac Day itself in late April. Throughout our visit to the Middle East we've met Aussies and Kiwis rushing to Turkey to make it on time for the ceremonies. As many as 25,000 Aussies (and even more Turks and Kiwis) were estimated to be attending this year.

During our first week in Turkey we hadn't seen a single Australian, not a one. They were all in western Turkey at Gallipoli. All the travelers and all the guest-house owners knew that as soon as Anzac Day was over a flood of Aussies would be headed our way. Talk each night kept turning back to the oncoming invasion. Have you seen one yet? Where are they now? Is every hotel in western Turkey booked?

When we arrived in Olimpos there was one Aussie who had headed straight there from Gallipoli. He was ahead of the tide and reveled in the attention showered upon him by the rest of us travelers who wanted information about what to expect. "Oh they're coming. . . " he said, and then launched into his own battle stories about the 200 tour buses thronging Gallipoli and the nightmare crush of the crowds.

We moved from Olimpos on the Kas, where it was still quiet, and then after bidding Simone a not-too-tearful goodbye we headed further along the coast to Fethiye. Here we finally met Australian invasion, but like so many other things we had worried about on this trip it turned out to be not so big a problem. Many of the pensions were full, but the town still had plenty of rooms available. Aussies were everywhere, but if you're going to be swamped by a nation of people you could do a whole lot worse than Aussies. Within a few days the wave passed; they headed east toward Cappadocia and we headed the other way. No worries, mate.

From Fethiye Sarah and I embarked on one of our most ambitious travel days yet. We woke up early and took a five hour bus-ride north over the mountains to Pammukale, an area of mineral springs and unusual "cotton waterfalls" -- huge calcium formations cascading down the hillsides. We took a dip in a fizzy-watered hot springs that was littered with Roman ruins: parts of old marble columns, statues, that sort of thing. It was a neat place for a swim, but we arrived at the same time as a Russian tour group and the sight of all that taut Speedo-spandex stretched across those white vodka bellies detracted a bit from the experience.

After a few hours in Pamukkale (and still wet from our swim) we tried to catch a train, missed it by 10 minutes, and ended up on yet another overnight bus ride. By the time we arrived the next morning in Istanbul I had developed some fairly definite opinions about bus travel, so we marched straight to a travel agency and booked airplane tickets for a cross-country journey that we know we have to make in 2 weeks and had until now been considering making by bus.

We had a short layover in Istanbul (neat city, and we'll be returning here two more times before leaving Turkey) then took yet another bus ride to the small mountain town of Safranbolu in north-central Turkey. We had come across a reference to Safranbolu in our guidebooks and saw that the small village had been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, the same as Lijiang, one of our favorite towns in China. It was supposed to be a living, working town with an impressive collection of centuries-old Ottoman houses. The real deal: old wooden houses, twisty cobblestone streets, gruff old villagers, and all the rest.

The bus ride took forever and we arrived in a cold and windy rainstorm, but the charm of the place was apparent immediately. The big old houses and -- yes -- twisty cobblestone streets wrap around a few low hills. A deep but narrow gorge cuts through town. It is quiet and sleepy and although it is a tourist town the only other tourist in town besides ourselves is a young Japanese girl who we occasionally pass on our walks. There are a few shops and restaurants and plenty of pensions, but they are all empty. There is a street of blacksmiths, and sometimes as we walk by they wave us inside and we sit and watch them work. We came here for peace and quiet and peace and quiet is what we got.

Well, almost. We have this gorgeous room at the top floor of a three story traditional Ottoman home. It is a huge room that could probably sleep 15 people . We are in a corner room and have great views out of Safranbolu, and as the sun set we watched the silhouettes of the town's mosques fading into darkness. It is cold here, great sleeping weather, and we fell sound asleep in the stillness of our remote village.

But this is Muslim country so at 4:30 a.m. it was time for the morning prayer call; and those mosques that looked so peaceful in silhouette last night were awfully close. Like everywhere else in the Middle East the prayer calls these days are just tape recordings blasted over loudspeakers anchored to the minarettes, and our position on the third floor and just up a hillside put us right at the level of the loudspeakers. We soon learned our pension was strategically positioned in the middle of three mosques.

I've gotton used to the prayer calls over the last three months. I have often woken up for the morning call, but I mainly remember them in my dreams. This was different. It is like those cliche army movies where the middle-aged black Sargent (yeah he's a tough old bugger, but he'll gladly take a bullet for you near the end of the movie) wakes up the new recruit in bootcamp by shouting in his ear with a megaphone. This was like that, except there were three drill Sargents. And they were all screaming in Arabic.