John Kieser

I cannot say much about my mother.  That she loved us, fed us, kept us safe and warm cannot be contested, but my mother was distant, in a childlike way, without much sense of mature responsibility.  If there was a field in which she had an impact on me, it was her passion for archeology, or at least Egyptology. So the result is that I am interested in all fields of archaeology, just not Egyptology.  If I did not meet the love of my life I would possibly have branched into this field.  I was already in contact with an American University that was doing work in South America and would have been part of a team they were putting together for work in Peru.  To view as much history as possible is now part of our wanderings. Jelhi does not really share my enthusiasm in this field but she endures. This trip is a part of the world, a world where prior to the Greeks, Romans and Italians there were others. Lycia has many stories.

It seems as if with the increase in serenity in my life it is having a  diminished effect on my luck.  For the second time, a war is having an impact on our travel plans.   Last time, months of planning to cycle in Primorsky Krai went down the toilet with the war in Ukraine.  We ended up flying with the worst airline to Turkey to cycle Turkey from Kars, all along the Black Sea. The airline left our bicycles in Addis Ababa. The bastards.  This turned out to be not so bad as an unplanned hike turned all along that coast turned out to be such fun.  The Black Sea Coastline is not "touristy" at all so we decided to hike the Mediterranean side as well which is more touristy but also swimming in history. That is if this war in the Middle East does not escalate.   When the Ottoman Empire started to break up in the beginning of the twentieth century by European encroachment, the one thing most Turks, especially Muslim Turks, could not handle was the e...