PROLOGUE
Thursday, May 15, 2008.
This has been planned for many, many months: 3 philosophers/logicians will travel to Turkey with their spouses, giving talks and attending conferences in Istanbul and Ankara, and seeing as much as possible of Turkey in between. Oswaldo and I come from Rio de Janeiro, whereas the other two couples are based in Tucson, Arizona, albeit one with a Brazilian wife, who with the experience of previous travel to Turkey, has taken on the task of pre-organizing the trip. Unused to such planning, Oswaldo and I have been slow to get involved. Recently, however, we been stunned by the news that due to serious health issues, our friends, the Brazilian/US couple, will not be able to travel with us. This blog is for Lilian and John - and for whoever else wants to travel along. PREPARING FOR THE UNKNOWN
I am unusually excited about this trip. I have traveled a fair amount in my life, but always to places in Western Europe, North and South America. This is the furthest East I have ever gone, to a civilization as different from what I am used to. In preparation I am looking through several guidebooks, as well as trawling the internet, so as to prepare a mini-guide of our specific itinerary. For background I am reading BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS by Louis de Bernières, as well as Orham Pamuk’s Istanbul memoirs.
I have been slaving over Google maps in order to create a an itinerary for our trip. A slow and frustrating learning process. Trial - error - trial - error until maybe OK... This is how it is for the older IT enthusiast who approaches the computer curious, but afraid to mess up the machine for ever!
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