Malý Mehrin Museum

Today's Brno adventure was brunch and then we went to check out the new Malý Mehrin Museum which opened back in February.  Malý Mehrin means "Little Mehrin" and it is the temporary Moravian Jewish Museum which is located in a house until a permanent museum is built.

"Mehrin" is the Yiddish slang word for Moravia.     

There's currently an exhibition of 13 stops focused on stories of Moravian Jews.  

Due to the Nazi occupation and anti-Semetic policies of the post-war Communist government, the vast majority of the information in the exhibits came from outside of the country.

The museum will offer talks, lectures and children's programmes.  It will operate until the new "big Mehrin" gets built.

Back in 2021, it was announced that Brno was going to get a new Moravian Holocaust Documentation Centre.  In 2022, the name was changed to the Mehrin Moravian Jewish Museum.  

The Japanese architect Kengo Kuma won the competition for the design of the new museum.  There were three other firms in the running but the winning design was unanimously selected by a nine-member international jury.  

The building will be in the shape of an endless white ribbon with a tree in the centre.  It should be built in the city centre, between the bus and train stations, where there's currently a parking lot.

There's an endowment fund in place but the total cost of the new museum is expected to run hundreds of millions of Czech Crowns so it's not known when construction will actually begin.

Pamukkale and Hierapolis Tour, Türkiye

On Wednesday we had a tour to Pamukkale and Hierapolis.  It's still a couple of weeks before the tourist season really starts so we got lucky that our group tour ended up just being the two of us so we basically had a private tour.

We were met by our guide Umut and our driver Ali who drove us, from Kuşadasi, on the 200 km (125 miles) to Pamukkale which took about 2,5 hours.

Pamukkale, in southwestern Türkiye, means "cotton castle" and it is famous for the carbonate mineral residue from thermal springs which at a distance looks like snow covered mountains.

The Ancient Greek city of Hierapolis was founded in 2nd century BC.  In 133 BC, Hierapolis became part of the Roman Empire but it and it was destroyed by an earthquake in 17 AD.  The Apostle Philip lived the last years of his life here and he was crucified here in 80 AD.  

There are lots of Greek ruins, a necropolis, theatre, temples, and a museum that are all easy to explore by walking around.

In 1988, Hierapolis and Pamukkale was added as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

There are 17 hot springs in the area and they range in temperature from 35℃ to 100℃ (95℉ - 212℉).  The most famous one is Cleopatra's Pool.  It's said that the waters have curative properties and you get to swim around ancient ruins.  

I'm still not sure why it's called Cleopatra's pool because she never swam here.  The plan was originally to go swimming but Kája was fighting a bit of a cold so we decided to skip the swim here.  Although we did wade out a bit in one of the springs overlooking the valley.

The big draw here is still the travertine terrace formations formed from mineral-rich waters cascading down the mountain side for hundreds of years.

Here's a Rick Steves video I found out on YouTube.

©Rick Steves

One of the cool things to do here is go paragliding.  I am still not a fan of heights but for some reason I had it in my head that I needed to do it.  I have no idea why but I did it.  It was brilliant!!

It was a tandem run and my pilot Gökhan was great.  Here's a bit of the video he took with my iPhone.

Me and Gökhan

Best of Ephesus Tour, Türkiye

We had booked the Best of Ephesus Tour for Monday which was great.  We were the only two who had booked so we actually ended up on a private tour with our guide Mehmet.  

Our first stop was at a big statue of the Virgin Mary. 

After that we headed to Meryemana, the House of the Virgin Mary, which is about 6 km (3.7 miles) from Ephesus and 17 km (11 miles) from Şirince.  The house is surrounded by pine and olive trees.  It's a Catholic shrine and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A bedridden Augustinian nun in Germany, named Anne Catherine Emmerich, had visions, about the Virgin Mary.  One was a description of the house that the Apostle John had built for the Virgin Mary where she lived out the rest of her life.  An author spent five years transcribing the nun's visions, before she passed away, and a book was published in 1852.

Two expeditions completed in 1891, discovering the match between the location and the nun's visions.  While the Roman Catholic Church has never officially proclaimed the validity of the site, multiple popes have given blessings and visited the house.  Each year on 15 August, pilgrims come to celebrate Mary's Assumption.  In 2004, Pope John Paul II beatified Anne Catherine Emmerich.

On the way to the shrine, you pass a key hole-shaped baptismal pool.

Outside of the house is a "wishing wall" where people write their wishes on paper or fabric.

There is a spring under the house which pilgrims believe to have healing properties.  There are fountains that people can drink from. 

I had to make sure to light a candle for my grandmother.  She would have loved that I came here. 

It was then on to Ephesus which was a city in Ancient Greece located 3 km (2 miles) southwest of Selçuk, 8 km from Şirince, 20 km (12.5 miles) north of Kuşadasi, and 70 km (44 miles) south of Izmir.

Ephesus was built in the 10th century BC.  It was one of the 12-member cities of the Ionian League and became part of the Roman Republic in 129 BC.  It's believed that the Gospel of St. John may have been written here.  

The city was conquered by numerous empires over the centuries and it was completely abandoned by the 15th century.  Ephesus is home to one of the largest Roman archaeological sites in the Eastern Mediterranean and the ruins were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015.

The most impressive ruin has to be the Library of Celsius.  It was built in around 125 AD in memory of Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus who served as governor of Roman Asia.  He paid for the library from his own money and he is buried in a sarcophagus beneath it.  The library was the third-largest in the Greco-Roman world and was home to 12.000 scrolls.  

The library was no longer in use after 400 AD.  The facade was damaged by an earthquake in the 10th or 11th century but archaeologists re-erected it from 1970 to 1978.

The Great Theatre could hold an estimated 25.000 spectators and dates back to the Hellenistic period (3rd-1st century BC) with extensive renovation during the Roman period.  It's believed to have been the the largest theatre in the in the ancient world.

As it was just the two of us, our guide Mehmet used the opportunity to show us everything in great detail.  It would never have been possible with a larger group.

Ephesus was famous for the Temple of Artemis which was nearby.  The temple was completed around 550 BC and it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  The temple was destroyed by 401 AD.  The only thing left of the temple is a single pillar.

The Basilica of St. John, or rather what's left of it, sits on the slope of Ayasluğ Hill, in Selçuk, about 3,5 km (2.2 miles) from Ephesus.  It was built in the 6th century but was damaged when Turks invaded in 1090.

Many believe that the basilica was built on the tomb of the apostle.  

There's a fortress on the hill above the cathedral but we didn't visit it.

From the basilica you can see the İsa Bey Mosque.  The mosque was built from 1374-1375.  Unfortunately it is currently closed for renovation so we only got to view it at a distance.

Temple, mosque, basilica, and fortress

Şirince, Türkiye

Saturday was a full travel day to Kuşadasi, Türkiye.  On Sunday we set out to explore the city.  While checking out the sites, we hired a local taxi driver to take show us around his home village of Şirince.

Şirince is a small hillside village of about 600 people.  It's about 8 km (5 miles) from Ephesus, and 26 km (16 miles) northeast from Kuşadasi.  It used to be a Greek village and the local area dates back to the Hellenistic period from 323-31 BC.  

In 1923, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the end of the Turkish War of Independence, Greece and Türkiye agreed on a population exchange.  The Greeks living in Türkiye went to Greece and the Turks in Greece went to Turkey.  Şirince was populated by the Turks who were living in northern Greece.    

Şirince means "pleasant" in Turkish.  Prior to 1926, it was known as Çirkince which means "ugly."  The story goes that the village had been settled by freed Greek slaves who wanted to deter others from coming here.  I guess it's the same as how Iceland is nice while Greenland is cold.  Regardless, it's a nice little tourist village. 

The Church of St. Dimitrios was built in the 19th century.  There's been some restoration but quite a bit more is needed.  There are a number of frescoes inside worth seeing.  Outside of the church are nice views of the area.

The Church of St. John the Baptist was built in 1805.  This church has has undergone more restoration than St. Dimitrios.  There was a photography exhibit going on when we visited.

Besides olive oil, the village known for its fruit wine.  Almost every flavour is available - apple, apricot, blackberry, mulberry, melon, orange, peach, quince, cherry, strawberry.  Some were just too sweet for me but the pomegranate wine was nice.

In front of a cafe is a wishing well topped with a statue of the Virgin Mary.  You're supposed to drop a coin in the water and hope that it falls in a certain spot in order to get your wish. 

Our guide Mesut used to work at the cafe, where his brother and cousin work, and introduced us to some good Turkish coffee.  The coffee was prepared in hot sand and served with lokum which is Turkish delight.  The coffee was good and here's a short video I took.

We enjoyed our visit to Şirince and then headed back to Kuşadasi to check out some more of the local sights.