Today was a strange day. A day where you see things that are all related to the point where you start to wonder if something is going on. Of course, it could only be a coincidence. Or maybe worse, a worldwide machination in which you are only a puppet! Or if you think like me, you decide it is a simple case of subconscious selectivity in which your subconsciousness starts bringing up to your consciousness, everything it catches along a main theme.

And for today, the theme was War!

It actually kind of started yesterday when I arrived in Camakkale from Istanbul with Stewart (Ausie) and Charlie (American) (We met in Istanbul and are going the same way for a while so we decided to travel together).

In the evening, as we were walking along the shore, we ended in front of a replica of the Trojan Horse that was used for the movie Troy released last year. While known universally as a symbol of treachery and/or ingenuity, the first goal of the Trojan Horse was still to facilitate invasion and the killing of people.

The horse is here because Camakkale is an important tourist base to visit the old site of Troy. There is actually not much to see on the site so I decided to pass and concentrate on the other important tourist site located close to Camakkale: the Galipoli battlefields.

This morning, as I was coming down to the breakfast area, I got stopped by the TV showing images of Beirut airport on fire after Israeli planes had bombed it the night before. Israel has decided to extend the war with Hezbollah on the whole Lebanese territory. I really felt sad as I was watching, because I got quite attached to Beirut and the Lebanese people during my stay there earlier in my trip. I don’t want to get political and the situation is very complex but I do not get the global punishment here or how we went from 3 kidnappings to a full scale army engagement!

My sincere sympathies to all Lebanese and Israeli people that are trapped in this situation.

To tell the truth, I did not feel like doing anything after that. But for today we had planned a tour of the battlefields and memorials of Galipoli. I got interested in this event of WWI after I read the book “Bird Without Wings” that Luc gave me as a gift me before I left for my trip. Thanks Luc! The book gives a full overview of WWI in Turkey including the battles in Galipoli, so I wanted to learn more about it and also why this event is so important to the Ausies and Kiwis.

The tour went very well and was very informative with the guide (TJ, seemingly an expert on the matter) giving us a lot of information about the events in question. The tour is mostly about visiting cemeteries and memorials as well as restored trenches. It turns out the book is very well documented as it accurately covers a large part of what TJ said.

I think it was too much for me and I felt quite saddened by it the whole day.

But as we were crossing the Dardanelles on a ferry back to Camakkale, an apparition really cheered me up. A one in a million chance for it to happen. Crossing in front of the ferry, I noticed a green boat with a rainbow on its side. After a closer look, I was sure it was the Rainbow Warrior.

As the saying goes: After the rain, the rainbow. And what a rainbow it was!

[*Arc-En-Ciel means Rainbow in French]