Here are some of our photos of the ruins at ancient Pergamon. Bergama is a smallish, dusty, agricultural town, a Turkish version of Dubbo or Parkes, except when you look up to the hill above the town and see the remains of an ancient acropolis! Its pretty impressive, however in a country with so many amazıng historic sites, most tourists who visit Bergama come for the day, the ruins aren't consıdered as impressive as others such as Ephesus. Yesterday afternoon we met a young Turkish guy who told us how few jobs there were in Bergama, many young people have to leave to seek jobs in bigger cities and the town ıs attempting all sorts of urban redevelopment projects to tempt tourists to spend more time (and therefore money) in Bergama. No doubt Bergama's tourist attraction rating would be increased if the friezes which originally covered the Temple of Zeus at the Acropolis were still there rather than in the Pergamon Mueseum in Berlin!

See this NY Times article for more on this
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=travel&res=9D02E6DD1030F937A2575AC0A961958260

Everywhere we've been we've been receıved wıth warmth and amazing hospitality. You can barely walk down the street without being offered a glass of çay (tea). Our vocabulary is expanding slowly to include - please, thank you, hello, good bye, how much? and we can count to 10! Everyone is interested in Australia and seems to have a good impression of the country but we were wondering last night how a couple of Turkish tourists with the equivalant of our vocabulary in English would be received in Dubbo or Parkes - not wıth quite the same degree of welcome I imagine.

Also on top of the Acropolis, we met a guy from Swan Hill who stopped us to approve of Simon's "Up yours Howard" t-shirt - we should have had Green Lefts and badges with us!