I decided to take the kids downtown to Cimenlik Kalesi yesterday. The castle is at the narrowest point of the Dardanelles and has a lovely park outside with various remnants from WWI dotted about the grass. We went because there was an exhibition of sculptures by
Erdinc Bakla on show.
The Hittite portion was out on the grass. The pieces were mainly marble and bronze. I liked the one above most of all, but it seemed very familiar somehow.
The fertility goddess seemed a little vulnerable standing in the centre of a military establishment without a stitch on her. The castle is run by the navy and even the tours are conducted with proper military precision.
So that was the Hittites where were the Trojans hiding? They were in the exhibition hall and didn't make the impression they should have as pale marble against white walls didn't stand out.
This was the nicest piece, I really like the way he thinned the marble to make the soldiers inside the horse. The mane was made of stone, and made it all a little top heavy.
Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships, possibly trying to escape her hair! The Brown-eyed Girl got a great kick out of recognising the characters, having spent the last year doing a project on Troy in preschool. She took over the camera too.
Homer, the man behind the legend. All the pieces compliment Bakla's piece on the Kordon next to the Trojan Horse (the one from the movie!). It shows the walls of Troy with the horse inside being stormed by the Greeks all contained in a glass pyramid. The opposing soldiers are all blocks of white marble against black/green serpentinite.
This was the most spectacular piece, the head and mane of the horse is glass (sorry the photo's not better). Little Boy Blue was wandering around having gotten a little bored. And as the Brown-eyed Girl and I were looking at this he made a run for me, missed my legs which is what he was grabbing for, slipped, knocked over the guide rope and slid to the base of the sculpture. Thankfully he didn't hit it but I had flashes of it falling and smashing into thousands of pieces over his head for the rest of the afternoon. Took icecreams for all of us on the seafront before I was calm again.
When I wrote a month or so ago about visiting the sculpture exhibition in Cimenlik Castle I really didn't imagine the next exhibition there would be my daughters! We got a phone call last week to invite us to the opening of the Cocuklar Evi Troy Project in the Muavenet-i Milliye Exhibition Hall in the castle grounds. The mayor strolled around a walking tour of Canakkale opening exhibitions as he went.
The Troy Festival in Canakkale this year is mainly centred on several exhibitions like this in various locations around town. Previous years involved a lot of folk dancing from Eastern Europe but a reduction in funding meant that there isn't so much dancing at the crossroads this year. 
For the last year the whole preschool has been involved in this project, learning about Troy and its myths. The story was watered down a little, the gods were sidelined, the violence reduced and the sex left out completely. We had to read a book where the site as it is was explained from the point of view of two hedgehogs. Then we visited Troy with the author. The trip mainly involved a huge queue to get into the reconstructed horse by the gate and some of the outspoken kids told the story from the stage of the theatre. Then we sat, ate our lunch and the kids drew pictures. Back at the school they constructed a horse from their artwork and drew or constructed lots of little projects to do with Troy. The end-of-year show was a play of the story by the 5/6 year olds, with the 4/5 year olds on darbuka and the 3/4 year olds with bells on their wrists, held in the Korfmann Library downtown.
