A Ride to Santa Clause's Home Last September, the next day I arrived to Turkiye, I jumped on to my Baverian Horse, and started to a promised journey. The path from Capital of Turkey, Ankara, to Santa Clause's house, Demre is marked on to the map below. I stopped at Olympos for a week long holiday. Ankara to Olympos is about 400 miles. Mountain Olympos and my GS Adventure. The night before I go to Demre, I put my digital camera's battery in to charger , cause I didnt want to be bothered with low battery problem. I would shot hundreds of pictures on the wonderfull curvy path at Meditterian coast. I parked my GS at the VIP parking lot of the town, and took my digicam to shot a picture of it. God! I forgot the battery at the hotel in the charger!!! I bought a dispensable camera, and used by the day. So, these are the worst pictures I posted on the net. Who is Santa Clause? Santa Clause or Saint Nicholas was born in the third century, in Patara, a beach by the Beydagi Mountains rising near the Mediterranean sea in Anatolia. This city was only 60 km west of Myra where Santa Clause once lived his life and eventually died. Saint Nicholas Statue at Demre Saint Nicholas was born to a wealthy family and always had in his roots to help the needy. On Christmas Eve every year people and especially the ones with little children found golden apples, little toys, snacks at their doorsteps. Nobody knew who had left these presents. One Christmas Eve the town people caught a man wandering around the homes with a huge sack on his back. The man had a red suit on him and big black boots. They asked the man with the white beard, what he was doing and to reveal his identity. He was Saint Nicholas of Myra and was leaving presents for the Children since it was Jesus' birthday. Thousand year old Santa Clause statue in front of St Nicholas Church. Does he look like the the guys we see on TV? Earlier, sailors of a ship traveling to Jerusalem, believed that Saint Nicholas saved them from a huge storm with his prayers. When they came back to Myra the people told them that their bishop had died and they were going to select the first person entering the church as their bishop. Since Saint Nicholas was the first such person he was elected as the bishop of Myra. From then on Saint Nicholas was always the Saint of Sailors and the town of Myra. People always attributed miracles to him, such as saving them from famine, saving sailors from storms, helping the needy, especially young people and children. I am in front of Santa Clause's bed. According to one such story; whenever wheat was scarce in town, Saint Nicholas borrowed wheat from visiting ships and saved Myra from famine. Another story related to the Christmas tradition is the tale of three Sisters. During those times, girls could not get married unless they had a dowry. There was a poor family in Myra with three beautiful sisters who had not enough money for the dowry. The oldest sister had an idea: she would sell herself as a slave and use the money to get the other two sisters married. Of course, the other two sisters objected. Before reaching an agreement they got tired and fell asleep. It was Christmas Eve and Saint Nicholas had overheard their conversation from the open window. The next mornings when the girls woke up, they found a bag full of gold by the window. This was enough money for the first sister to get married. To their surprise the next year they found another bag of gold by the window on Christmas morning. So the second sister got married. On the third year, Christmas Eve was a very cold night, so the unmarried sister closed all windows. She washed her stockings and hung them by the fireplace to dry and went to sleep. Saint Nicholas, seeing that the windows were closed, decided to climb to the roof and threw the bag of gold from the chimney. The gold went through the chimney and right into the older sister's stockings. So, she got married. Dome of the Church. Mosaic is from 4th Century AC. It is forbidden to shot pictures in this area, but can it be for a guy ticketed at 100mph on NJ Turnpike? During all these years Saint Nicholas was able to hide his identity and secretly help the poor, the needy the young and the children. Finally one Christmas Eve his secret was revealed by the night guard of Myra. He caught the man with the red suit and a sack full of gold, toys, snacks and apples. When the people of Myra learned that the man with the presents was Saint Nicholas, they decided to call him Santa Clause or Father Christmas. The Fatherhood of Saint Nicholas was soon accepted by other Christian Countries and spread outside the borders of Byzantium. Churches were build in his name in Italy, Scandinavian countries and finally in Russia. One such church was built in Istanbul in the sixth century by the Roman Emperor Justinian I.The real transformation of Saint Nicholas to Santa Clause first started in Germany with the emergence of the Protestant churches and then spread to France. There were thousands of Russian tourists around. As usual, lots of people asked me to shot a picture with GS, like the girl and her boyfriend in the picture below. They dont speak any word of Turkish or English. The guy jumped on the bike, with this easy action I realized that he is a biker. After taking a couple pictures, he pointed the GS with his finger, then himself, and hide Adventure label on the fender. Ok, he has a 1150GS, but not Adventure version. Dont let the label "American and Turkish Blend" and camel picture on Camel cigarettes fool you. Those three are the only camels you can find in Turkey. I think they are the ones Ron shot pictures at 2001 . Now this camel couple have a baby. Before turning back to Olympos, For more information and photos about Demre and Saint Nicholas, check the links below. http://www.turkiye-online.com/kaledemre/religion1.html http://www.christmas.com/pe/1375 http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=38 Merry Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year Akif