So I was right. Fatih did tell me what those little meatballs are called, but of course, I forgot again. Today was a great day. A play day. Our friend Mehmet took us to Pamukkale finally which is incredible. Giant hillside of white travertine. Truly unlike anything you have ever seen. As the water evaporates it leaves a thin film of calcium carbonate. Over many millions of years it eventually creates more travertine.
In some areas you can even walk out on the stone and into the pools. The water is just slightly cooler than your typical bath water by the time it flows down to this part.
They say the waters are good for heart disease, high blood pressure, and many other ailments. Its the mixture of minerals in the springs that apparently has this effect. The water make up is as follows:
Potassium 23.5 mg
Sodium 32.5 mg
calcium 464.5 mg
Magnesium 91.1 mg
Iron 0.036 mg
Aluminum 2.34 mg
Chlorine 53 mg
Sulphate 675.5 mg
Nitrophosphate 1.08 mg
Hydrocarbon 1045.3-1774.88 mg
Metasilicate Acid 18 mg
Carbon dioxide 1144 mg
And that is officially more than you wanted to know about the waters at Pamukkale!
Had a great night tonight watching and learning to belly dance. I was even pulled out on stage. Hows that for an image you didnt need? And for those keeping score I fell in love a few more times with several of the pretty girls of Denizli.
Hey again, some more personal notes from today and a few I forgot to mention yesterday. First off, I am going to mention this for my friend Fatih as I know he is reading this. He commented on my tea talk and tost from yesterday’s blog this morning. So Fatih, Hello! Less tea today. Maybe only 5 or 6 cups and a few cups of coffee. Love, Love, LOVE the Turkish coffee. Another great lunch consisting of kabob, grilled hot peppers, roasted whole tomato, bread, salad of chopped tomato, cucumber and onion, and some delicious Turkish meatballs. I can’t remember the name, but since I know Fatih is reading, maybe he will comment below or refresh my memory tomorrow.
At the shopping center, I noticed the food court could have been in any mall in North America. McDonald’s, Burger King, SBarro, and all that jazz. For possibly the first time in my life I am going to say this, skip McDonald’s and find a small little sit down restaurant. The food here is fantastic! With a few exceptions. If someone offers you Salgam Suyu,skip it. It translates into Turnip Juice but apparently it is actually the juice of yellow carrot pickles salted and spiced. Six kinds of nasty. It looks like beet juice and tastes like feet. On a short side note, I was pretty sure I saw my future wife at the mall here yesterday, and then another one and another one. Its nice. I like.
Ok, and on a more serious note one of the things I learned yesterday was about Cumhuriyet Bayrami. It is the Turkish version of Independence Day celebrating the day one of the Turkish people’s most beloved citizens, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk gave the country back to the people. His military campaigns led to the liberation of the country and the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. For more details on Ataturk, see the Wikipedia page. There is more info there than you could ever require. The reason I mention this is that it was yesterday, October 29. Almost every building has huge banners with his image and Turkish flags hanging. They were EVERYWHERE!
So with that, to my Turkish friends here and abroad (that’s you Sukru) Happy Belated Independence/Freedom/Republic Day to you.
Ok folks, here is a blow by blow explanation as to how travertine is quarried. We begin with the quarry walls as you can see in these pictures. This particular quarry has 2 levels. The lower level is a beige travertine, while the upper level is a light travertine.
Great, now we know what the inside of a travertine quarry looks like, but how do they actually get this out? Good question. Essentially, what they do is from the top of the quarry level a few meters back, they drill down to the bottom. From the front of the wall, at the bottom, they drill towards the back. The intention is that these two holes meet at the back bottom. From there, they insert a diamond cable and attach it to their saw.
Notice below the lines in the stone. This is where the diamond cable has cut through. Once cut loose from the wall a backhoe will be used to fall the rock from the face of the quarry. The second photo below shows a freshly fallen block.
So from here, the fallen blocks are cut down with the diamond cable cutter again into sizes that can be managed by a tractor to haul them up to the storage area or the cutter. The storage area holds many blocks that are all catalogued by the expected color they will produce. Because, however, this is a natural stone, you don’t actually know what you are going to get until it is cut.
For heavy machinery fans, the saws that cut the blocks down to size are pretty much awesome. Water splashing everywhere, super loud, and just generally fantastic. These things do some pretty heavy duty cutting throughout the days.
At the end, what you are left with are rough cut raw slabs. The size of the rough cut varies depending on the size of tile it may be suitable to manufacture from it. They come out in 3cm thickness which is then split in half creating 2 tiles from one rough slab. See the rough cut chunks below. More on the manufacturing process, including video of all the machines later from Rob.
Ok that is all the education from me today. After dinner, a post about travel and personal interest from today.
Ok, so as to not make this completely work related and to add a bit of information for you guys that have never been to Turkey, I am going to add some personal notes each day as well. Hopefully some personal, travel related video as well. Tomorrow I will give you a tour of my hotelLycus Riverand its thermal springs, but for today, just a few photos and notes.
First thing I noticed today is that Turks LOVE tea. I must have had 10 or 15 small cups of tea today. It seems every desk in every office and every table everywhere has a bowl full ofABC sugar cubeson it. This picture shows a couple of teas. Mine is the dark, the others are steeped thyme. The Turks swear their tea is better than English tea because of the preparation. Here they boil the water with the tea in it already as opposed to simply dipping the tea bag into already hot or boiling water. My friends Mehmet and Fatih tell me that the steeped thyme is something they drink to help fight off a cold.
The next thing I have to tell you about is Tost. If you get a chance, you MUST try it! It is basically a grilled sandwich like a panini, kind of sort of, filled with sliced hard boiled eggs, cheese, salami, and a tomato paste. It is also served with a bowl of grilled hot peppers and pickles. This wasn’t ours, ours wasn’t this fancy and was probably better as a result. Notice, of course, the tea.
We got this in a small town by the quarry called Kocabas. My friend Sukru tells me, literally translated into English it means “Huge Head”. So if you happen to find yourself in Huge Head (Kocabas) in the Denizli region of Turkey and see this sign, stop and have a Tost. You wont regret it.
And on a final note, I ended last night watchingMean Girls. It turns out, you can enjoy falling asleep to Lindsay Lohan in any language!
Quick update. After a very, very long day of travel I arrived to my hotel in Denizli at 1230am local time. In the end it was over 24 hours of travel time, and NO SLEEP! Sorry to report to anyone who is planning on travelling Lufthansa from Vancouver to Frankfurt, NO entertainment systems in the seats!!!
Also, unfortunately you will have to wait for Istanbul video. Turns out flying into Istanbul is much like flying into Los Angeles or San Diego. You come in over the water and see very little of the city. I will spend Saturday afternoon there and Sunday so I will get some then. We should also be visiting Pamukkale tomorrow. Here is a picture so you will know what you have in store. It is pretty amazing to see.
Today I was at the factory and Rob will add some video from that. There isn’t any commentary as the machines were very loud. But I will fill you with words. I also visited our quarry, a textile factory, and the local bazaar.
Rob Jones here - I work with Marc here at BuildDirect.
Since Marc is on the road, I thought I’d post his first video blog which he shot yesterday. It explains what he’ll be doing in Turkey over the next little while. This is the first in a series, where Marc will show you something of how we work with the factories to get product into the North American market. But, Marc will also be showing you what it’s like in Turkey. Here’s Marc on his way to Vancouver Airport:
When ordering container loads direct from factories, and sometimes when ordering from your local tile shop, you may see some different methods of packaging travertine tiles.
Often, when product is being shipped directly to construction or job sites, the tiles are packed “loose” within the pallet. This is a bit of a misnomer as they are packaged tightly, but with no more packaging other than the wooden crate as seen below.
When product is being packaged to send to a retail, wholesale or distribution environment, the pieces are often packaged within the wooden crate. This offers these outlets opportunities to sell partial pallet quantities much more easily. Some of the options are shrink wrapped, cardboard boxed, and Styrofoam packed, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
Shrink wrapped travertine is probably the most cost effective. It allows a factory to group tiles in bunches for easier handling and resale. Shrink can be versatile because the size of the plastic is not fixed, meaning the contents can be changed to suit the customers requirements. One of the things to keep in mind about shrink wrapping for travertine is that tiles come off the production line wet and due to the porous nature of the stone, maintain that wetness for some time inside the tiles. Once unwrapped, the end customer may need to let the tiles dry out for a day or two prior to working with them.
Cardboard boxes are another method of packaging tiles. The biggest issue with the cardboard comes from the aforementioned issue of moisture retention and water ingress into containers during ocean shipping. Both of these issues can sometimes leave the boxes weak, warped and generally kind of ugly. They are also a static size so the same amount of tiles have to be packaged in each box.
One final option for packaging is the Styrofoam box. Styrofoam is actually the trademark by Dow Chemical Company for polystyrene thermal insulation. This type of packaging offers the best protection during transport and on shelves as it does have some impact absorbing qualities. The biggest issues with polystyrene are the environmental impacts as it is a type of thermoplastic manufactured from petroleum. For more information on polystyrene, its production, uses and impacts, check out the Wikipedia post HERE.
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