Greek village

This evening we went up to a Sirence, a Greek village outside Selçuk whose inhabitants make a meager living bottling fruit wines. And not, you know, the normal fruits like grapes. Pomegranate, cherry, and blueberry are only a small taste of the bizarre wines available. The village, though, was fantastically rustic and peaceful. I absolutely loved walking around the quiet little chute-shaped country lanes.

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It was quite quaint.

Yet all is not as it seems! The city is in no way Greek - the inhabitants speak Turkish, are Muslim, and identify themselves as Turks, not Greeks. The only smidgen of Hellenism in the village is a ruin of an old Greek Orthodox church that the now nonexistent Greek population used to go to.

Nor is it nearly as meager as it may appear. Someone (I forget who) said, in a tone of voice that suggested he knew what he was talking about, that the village is actually one of the most wealthy areas in Turkey - wineries are no longer the province of the poor. The streets and houses may be rustic, but there's undeniable quality in the workmanship.

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That is not the window of the lower class.

We debated for a while about why the Sirencians took such pains to portray themselves as a poor Greek community instead of a prosperous Turkish one. The only conclusion that I came to was Joe Tourist would be more interested in a rustic Greek village selling fine wines than a rebottled Turkish establishment. Ultimately I have to agree with Joe Tourist - I liked the village more when I thought we'd stumbled upon some unknown jewel than when I realized we were yet another round of tourists stopping off to wine and dine. I can't decide whether the false advertising made me feel better or worse.

I guess this post didn't really have a very finely-crafted point.