By Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer

Was Homer blind? I hope not. Did he really live in Smyrna in the eighth or ninth century? If indeed he lived in the city now called Izmir, then his view, assuming he was not blind, was of the eastern shoreline of the Aegean Sea, the Gulf of Izmir, the same view my father had when he was growing up here in Turkey, the view I see from my park bench on the promenade overlooking the city.

It makes me feel like a part of history to think of this link: Homer, my father and me. It has a nice symmetry, like the holy Trinity, the three Graces, Aristotle’s three dramatic unities: time, place, action. All those classic patterns that are so satisfying. But my dad probably had no inkling of these connections. What did he know, a poor Sephardic kid who walked barefoot to school? I never mentioned Homer to him, though I did tell him that, according to Herodotus, Smyrna was the name of the Amazon warrior who founded the city. “A woman warrior, eh?” he said. “Women’s lib.” He looked at me craftily as though I was pulling a fast one on him.

I like to think of my father following in Homer’s footsteps, but only literally because I can’t imagine that he learned about the ancient Greeks, having left school at an early age. Let’s say he walked on the same roads or dirt paths as Homer. I do know he studied the French classics at the school founded by the Alliance Israélite Universelle and could quote Racine at the drop of a hat.

My dad’s neighborhood, Karatash, was at the top of the cliffs overlooking the bay, so if he was sent on an errand to the town below, he had to walk down a very steep path. If only he could have distracted himself while making that burdensome trek by reciting some verses from the Iliad, in Greek, which he spoke. Not ancient Greek, but rather the vernacular of his neighbors in multilingual Karatash. In 1907 when my father was eight, the Asansör—an elevator—was built by one of our Sephardic tribesmen to ease the strain of going up to the cliffs from the town below on the coast.

When you reached the top of the cliff, you still had to ascend a steep flight of stairs to get to certain streets. But think of the view of the Aegean, the hills ringing the bay. That hasn’t changed. I would like to call up the spirit of Homer and introduce him to my dad, but I don’t believe in spirits.

Family Lore

My family was very superstitious and I resisted their mad notions. As a child I was helpless against their “cures” for the evil eye, for example, the spells and mumbo jumbo that miraculously seemed to work. A more drastic remedy called for molten lead to be poured into a pot of cold water held firmly over a sheet which hovered (assuming the four corners were being held by steady hands) above the “patient” who lay on a table. The resultant crags and valleys in the pot would be interpreted by a wise woman, usually a neighbor; my mother would never presume to have that knowledge. There were cures for everything: melancholia, unrequited love, queasy stomachs, bad luck with money. There was nothing that couldn’t be cured. But one had to be vigilant because of the devil, or envious neighbors, or evil spirits. A happy occasion was especially dangerous and many precautions had to be taken to avoid stirring up the wrath of those malevolent forces.

If I don’t believe in spirits why am I here in Turkey where my family lived for more than 400 years? Is it the cliché lure of finding one’s roots or do I expect to find something else? Reality check: air fares were way down so how could I resist? I don’t want a tour guide reciting a probably erroneous history of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire. I don’t want to be seen choking up over the sight of decaying synagogues and crumbling rabbinical archives.

Continue to Page 2

Yellowstone, Glacier, the Rockies, wilderness, Native American tribes: those are things which may come to mind when you think of Montana. What might not come first to mind, though, is Ireland.

Montana has a long history of connection with Ireland, through centuries of people who came first as explorers and later to settle, and later still, to work in the mines. In Butte, a center of mining from early days, you will still find hundreds of Irish names listed in the phone book. It is a city which is very proud of its Irish heritage and connections.

Butte has been having a Saint Patrick’s Day Parade for more than a hundred years, and the people there celebrate their Irish American connections in summer, too. Each year in August An Ri Ra, the Montana Irish Festival, comes to the center of Butte.

The name An Ri Ra comes from the Irish words for uproar. Festival organizers make sure this lively sense of fun stays true for all the family. with children’s theater performances, workshops in singing, storytelling, and Irish history, food vendors, loads of Irish dancing, and of course, music. Each year the festival features Irish musicians from the western US as well as internationally known performers.

This year Dublin Gulch, a band named for a Butte neighborhood, will take the stage, as will The Glengarry Boys, Strings of Fire, the Cathie Ryan Band, and others. Festival dates this year are August 12, 13, and 14.

Consider subcribing to Perceptive Travel through email or
RSS feed.

If you put 50 Bangkokians in one room and asked them who whips up the city’s best pad thai, or where the best neighborhood for street food is located, or basically asked them anything related to food with the word “best” somewhere in there, you’d likely get 50 different answers.

In this, one of the world’s premier culinary capitals (there’s no debating that), everybody has their personal favorites and everybody is spoiled for choice regardless of where you live or what your budget is. Unless you go out of your way to pursue comfort foods from home at touristy restaurants in touristy areas, it’s truly difficult to find bad food. I’ve eaten out at least twice a day every day for the past 6 months, and can count the number of disappointing meals I’ve had on one hand.

With that in mind, settling on who serves the city’s best som tam, is a particularly unenviable, somewhat impossible task. If Bangkok had a food flag, the emblem would be a plate of som tam next to a small bamboo basket with sticky rice: it’s the unofficial city-wide dish of choice. Everybody eats it regularly or even daily, and again, everybody has their favorite go-to vendor or restaurant. Mine is served at Jae On.

Som Tam Nua, located on Siam Square Soi 5, has racked up the accolades for its som tam for some time now, and is often one of the first places that comes up in “Best Som Tam” discussions; CNNGo Bangkok, whom I write for on occasion, named it a winner its “Best Eats 2010″ competition. Locals, especially students from nearby Chulalongkorn University, keep it packed at all hours, always a good sign. I’ve eaten there a few times, and the som tam is definitely tasty; so are the larb salads.

I won’t be going back anytime soon, though. Why?

Because it’s so difficult, and to me somewhat random, to single anybody out in Bangkok for having the best som tam (or pad thai, or…), I think Som Tam Nua’s long list of positive write-ups and reviews have become a self-perpetuating hype machine; in other words, I think it’s become somewhat of a “by-default pick”. Somebody has to have the title, so, well… Som Tam Nua. Okay, let’s move on.

Of course, I’m not discrediting anybody’s personal opinion, nor implying this is the actual decision-making process for anybody covering Som Tam Nua. Again, this place is insanely popular and has been for a long time, and that doesn’t happen in Bangkok unless they’re doing something right. I’m also no expert on what constitutes a perfect balance of acidity or spice, or what makes one papaya’s ripeness better than another’s, etc. I know a som tam is really good or just okay when I taste it.

I just don’t get what makes Som Tam Nua so special, aside from its convenient location for Siam Square shoppers and Chula students. Oh, the som tam is perfectly fine, even delicious, but I can find just-as-delicious som tams elsewhere… and not have to wait nearly an hour to get it. Because of its undying popularity, the queue for a table at this two-floor restaurant usually ranges anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes; on top of that, once you’re sat it takes awhile for all the food to come out. For example, nt recent wait for a one-person table on an early Sunday afternoon was about 25 minutes for the table, then another 30 for the som tam to arrive. Servers always tend to be somewhat inattentive.

Put 50 Bangkokians in the same room who’ve dined at Som Tam Nua, ask them if it lives up to the hype, and you’ll get a range of responses and rationale. For me, the interminably long wait, so-so service, and som tams on par with other delicious som tams available from hundreds of other street vendors and restaurants make it one of the most overrated restaurants in Bangkok.

Som Tam Nua, 392/14 Soi 5, Siam Square, +66 2 251 4880

_{Photos credit and copyright Brian Spencer}

Sometimes it’s hard to peer through the “vlog” (volcano fog) and the eye becomes numb after seeing miles of the same endless black lava, but there is still something strikingly beautiful about walking across some of the newest earth on Earth in Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawai’i.

I was going to post about 23 seconds of video that demonstrates the weird sound you hear when walking across a lava field;  the crackling, crunchy sound of cinder-like hardened magma blobs that were born miles below your feet.  There were a couple of photos that had to get thrown in there, though, and a bit of music seemed appropriate, but the video below is still only about a minute.

It’s otherworldly, this new world being created as we watch it….but never remove any of the lava rocks, or goddess of fire Madame Pele will be very angry….

Direct link to the lava video on YouTube.

(Disclosure: I was on the Big Island courtesy of a Hawai’i Tourism Authority press trip. The guide they provided our group was Warren Costa of Native Guide Hawai’i – he was a treasure trove of history and stories.)

If you like this post, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS feed or by email – the email signup link is at the top of the right sidebar near the Search box. Thanks!)

One of the rather subtle things I enjoy about being in Ireland is that all of the euro coins minted in the republic carry the design of the ancient Irish harp. For me, music is always present in Ireland, so I think it only right that this design was chosen to appear on all Irish euro some ten years ago when euro coin usage began in the country. The design is of an ancient wire strung harp, based on the one that stands in the long room of Trinity College Dublin. That instrument is sometimes called Brian Boru’s harp, though it actually dates from the fourteenth century, a good few hundred years after the historic ruler of the south of Ireland died.

In any case, music and history and a beautiful design — what could represent Ireland better? I enjoy the look of my Irish coins.

That said, I like to sort through now and again to see what other euro zone coins have turned up in my pocket, and see if I can figure out where they have come from. Ireland being on the western edge of Europe, I often see the Brandenburg Gate design and the stylized eagle from Germany, the Leonardo da Vinci design from Italy, the geometry of flowers from France, and images of poet Miguel de Cervantes on coins from Spain.

There are always a few that puzzle me, too. Commemerative issues, sometimes or just designs I have not come across — most from recently Greece, Belgium, and the Vatican. It’s fun to figure them out, though, and think about where they have come from. And to picture someone in Greece or Germany wondering about this harp design on the coin in hand.

How about you? Do you ever look at the designs of the coins in your hand and think about how far they have travelled?

To hear what the Irish wire strung harp sounds like, take a listen to the second track, especially, on this page