Ephesus

The blog is getting a little out of order, but that is ok. On Thursday we went to Ephesus, the ruins of an ancient Greek and then Roman city.

Ephesus has some of the best preserved remains of an ancient city in the world,in fact Ephesus contains the largest collection of Roman ruins in the eastern Mediterranean. Folks say it is second only to Pompeii.
We had a great time exploring Ephesus, but we have to admit, we were most charmed by the pile of puppies sleeping by the gate. There is just something about puppies in a pile that is too cute. Also, the puppies were alive and moving, which was in great contrast to the ruins of an ancient now dead town.

Also, we found the toilet system for the town pretty darn cool. Watch our little movie "advanced stadium pooping" if you would like to know more.

advanced stadium pooping from Kate Bedford on Vimeo.

Pamukkale

On the way up to Hieropolis

Today, Kate and I went to a place so wonderful and so amazingly odd that the fact that neither of us had ever heard of it as of a month ago, is remarkable.

We are staying in the small town of Pamukkale, about 150ish km inland from Selcuk and Ephesus. Pamukkale used to be an agricultural village, but now it seems to mainly support the tourism surrounding the ancient city of Hieropolis and its travertine cliffs. Hieropolis was a spa town - Marc Antony gave Cleopatra the pools of the town as a wedding present - flowing with mineral rich waters. When these waters flow from the plateau on which the city’s ruins sit, they leave deposits, mainly calcium, in their wake. The formations that have resulted from this process are otherworldly, for lack of a better word.

Looks like snow, right?

OK, not so much with the snow...

From a distance, especially at night, the cliffs look like the mountain of a ski resort. Soft white surfaces, lit up at regular intervals, sitting above the small, quiet, village. As you approach them, the similarity to snow fades and you start to notice the pale blue sitting pools of water, the streaks of algae green, sulfur yellow, and something-or-another pink.

Kate, wading up along the path...

To get to Hieropolis from Pamukkale, one can take the North or South entrance roads that skirt around the travertine cliffs, or a walking path that leads up through the middle. Shortly after the ticket office at the base of the path, there are benches where you are instructed to remove your shoes and socks. At first we thought this was to protect the cliffs, but later we realized that bare feet provide a much better purchase on the sometimes slippery surface.

Andrew attempts to determine how this formation was made

Standing up from the bench, you immediately put your feet in a stream of the flowing, warm (comes out of the ground at 36 degrees Celsius) water. Shortly thereafter, you walk through the first bit of mineral mud, then through a warm pool, and then up and up alongside a noisily flowing rivulet. When we weren’t absorbed in the wonderful feelings coming from our feet, we’d look around. Kate said, “This looks like Superman’s home planet.” We continued climbing. There are some spots where shoes would have made for a more comfortable walk over small rocks, but the feeling of recuperating in the mineral muds and warm water always seemed to make up for it.

Our feet! On the travertine!

We finally had to put our shoes on at the top. I was surprised at how wonderful my feet felt. After walking that far, barefoot over rock and mineral formations, I would have expected some degree of soreness or tiredness. But no, my feet, freshly ensconced in their socks and shoes, felt warm and tingly and ready to explore.

The Martyrion of St. Philip

Cool thing #1 in the ruins of Hieropolis: the martyrion of St. Philip, a neat octagonal building that sits a decent distance up the hill from the old city. While exploring this ancient, Christian building in the ruins of a city dedicated to Apollo, we overheard the noontime call-to-prayer. As a Jew, I felt particularly multicultural in the moment.

Cool thing #2 in the ruins of Hieropolis: the temple of Apollo. Eventually, archeologists have come to realize that the temple building was actually an oracle. There’s a plutonium, a crack where noxious gases used to rise and help en-trance the already drugged oracle-girl. Kate and I stood around the crack, breathing deeply and asking each other difficult questions.

Ancient plumbing system for distributing the mineral waters

Cool thing #3 in the ruins of Hieropolis: the ancient pool. Misspelled on the sign post as “Antique Poo”, this is actually a modern facility that, for an additional fee, allows visitors to bathe in the mineral waters. THE SAME WATER THAT CLEOPATRA BATHED IN. Kate and I couldn’t resist. We watched out for small breast-biting snakes, and dove in. Well we didn’t actually dive, which is a good thing, since the pool doesn’t have a regular floor. The ground, at varying depths, is littered with the pieces of the ancient bathhouse. This means that you get to swim, and wade, and float, amongst ancient columns, stones, and marble slabs. The slabs, in particular, make excellent places to sit and relax and enjoy the near body-temperature water.

Antique Poo! We bathed in it!

In the pool, we made friends with an American family of five we had run into earlier in the day near the Martyrion. Mike and Tabitha have three young children, ages 2, 5, and 7. Mike is in the middle of a two year stint at the embassy in Ankara. The family offered us a place to stay if we end up there. We have their number, and worse comes to worse, we can always walk into the embassy and ask for the dude with the three red-headed children. (Kate was quite taken with the red-headedness of the children. Given that neither parent has red hair, she feels that it is unfair: “So many red-headed parents don’t get to have red-headed children.”)

Coming down the path at sunset. (We don't know the walkers. But they look good)

We climbed down the cliffs during the sunset. While none of the foot-tingling experiences were new to us at this point, the view was spectacular. At one point, after making a video in which I proclaimed that “life is pretty fucking amazing”, I said “wouldn’t it be ironic if I now fell off that cliff?” To which Kate replied: “yup.” Needless to say, we both retained our footing the whole way down. Dinner at the hotel was pretty good, so I’m glad that I’m still around…

Kate at the bottom of the path (About to be picked up by the alien spaceship!)

If you'd like to see the rest of our 113 pictures of this crazy lunar landscape, go here: http://picasaweb.google.com/andrewrobbins/Pamukkale?authkey=Gv1sRgCOmkoba9_qLEWA#

Troy

On Tuesday, we went to Troy. We had been warned that it wasn’t much to see and that it took some imagination to get a feeling for the place. I have fond memories of watching the PBS special, “In Search of Troy” as a kid with my family. If memory serves this was mostly my brother’s doing. Andrew read books about the search for Troy when he was little too, so it seemed like we should go, even if it isn’t much to look at.


Just in case you live in a cave, Troy is the city described in Homer’s Iliad. It is also the location of a 2004 Brad Pitt movie where he is really sexy and muscular. Until 1871, Troy was generally thought to have existed in legend (Homer's, not Brad Pitt’s) only. Then Heinrich Schliemann, a wealthy businessman turned amateur archeologist got permission to dig on a site he thought was Troy.


As it turns out businessmen cum amateur archeologists can be a bit dangerous to archeological sites. A lot of our tour of Troy was explanations of the damage that Schliemann did to ancient Troy. We saw his handiwork and the man was not delicate.
After reading the book and watching the TV show of Schliemann's quest to find Troy and prove it was Troy, Andrew and I found it ironic that he also helped destroy the remains of Troy. He was the site's biggest promoter, it is his work that brought us to the ruins, and yet he was also its biggest enemy, damaging the remains with his unprofessional approach.

There are actually remnants from 9 different Troy settlements. Troy 1 dates from 3500 BC and Troy 9 was build during the Roman empire from 300 BC to 300 AD. The best guess is that the Troy Homer was talking about was Troy 6 or 7.

in this picture you can see how parts of new troys were layered onto ruins from old troys

Now onto Brad Pitt. In the 2004 movie he played Achilles (of the heel fame). In Homer’s story Achilles is killed relatively early on in the story (again, that heel) but in the movie he makes it much longer. Apparently if Brad Pitt is in your movie you don’t kill him off early just because Homer did. Also, and this is the big point, according to our tour guide the number of visitors to Troy has doubled since that movie.

pamukkale tomorrow

Tomorrow we go here!

Gallipoli

The Vegemite should have tipped us off. The hotel website declared proudly that they served a proper breakfast, including Vegemite. (for those of you who don’t know, Vegemite is the horrifically gross spread Australians put on toast in the morning). The second hint should have been the name of the hotel, ANZAC. We were a little slow on the up take. For our first foray out of Istanbul we decided to stop in the Dardanelles and visit the WWI battlefield of Gallipoli. (Andrew had heard about Gallipoli before, but eventually he admitted that really he remembered it because he thought Gallipoli was a fun word to say. For those of you who appreciate the movie Elf, Andrew thinks saying the word Gallipoli is even more fun then saying Francisco) We had missed the WWI battlefields in France and thought we should give these a go. The plan was to combine a battle field tour with a tour of Troy and then move on to the next town.
Because marriage and traveling is compromise, we traveled by ferry and then by bus to the Dardanelle town of Canakkale. I would have flown, skipping a bus ride (we all know how much I love my bus rides, and flying doesn‘t cost much more than a bus), Andrew would have taken the bus the 6+ hour trip, anything to avoid an airport. When we discovered we could combine a 2 hour ferry with a reasonable 3 hour bus ride, we found compromise. This meant we took a cab, a ferry, a cab to the bus station, a bus, and then a cab from the bus station to our hotel. We took as many cabs in one day as we have taken during the rest of the trip. It was kinda fun.

The next day we took a ferry to Eceabet and then met our tour group for the Gallipoli tour. Everyone else on the tour was Australian. The tour guide was sad there were no Kiwis. As the tour began it started to hit us, we were tagging along for a national pilgrimage of Aussies and we had no idea what anyone was talking about. To start, the tour guide wanted to quickly dispel some myths about Gallipoli. Since we didn’t know any myths about Gallipoli this was a strange experience. Also, since the guide had what I guessed was a Turkish/Australian accent, I really struggled at first to follow along. I finally wrote myself a little guide to help myself:
When I heard…….he meant
Cows chaos
Roving rowing
Sucked shocked
Cruise lander Queenslander (Andrew thought he was saying Kiwi-lander)
Eventually I pretended that I was in Scotland, and that helped me follow along.

In case you didn’t know, Gallipoli was a very important place for Australians and New Zealanders. It is part of their national story and the development of their national identity. ANZAC stands for Australian New Zealand Army Corp. During World War I the Allies tried to take control of the Dardanelles and thus the water route to the Black Sea and Istanbul by using British, Australian and New Zealand troupes. This was the first major battle undertaken by ANZAC and apparently it marks the birth of national consciousness in both of these countries. Gallipoli created what became known as an "Anzac legend" which includes endurance, courage, ingenuity, good humour, larrikinism, and mateship. That last little bit is from Wikipedia, I don’t know what larrikinism, and mateship means, but I am sure they are good and that ANZAC soldiers had them. They were defeated, but that is not the point. Australians come here to honor their ancestors and learn about this formative part of their history. The hotel serves vegemite because that is good business. We seemed to have tagged a long for another school’s pep rally.

War is horrid, particularly trench warfare and the battle fields of Galipoli are full of horrifying stories of pain and misery. People are also remarkable and good, and the battlefields have those stories as well. This campaign became known as the Gentleman’s war because apparently when they were not killing each other, they were shockingly human to each other. The other members of our tour were solemn and interested and the tour guide comforted them that the Turks were taking good care of their ancestors. There is a famous quote from Ataturk on display at one of the memorials:
"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives…
You are now living in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours…
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace, after having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."
We visited graves and memorials, the beaches where the soldiers landed and a trench not yet filled in by erosion. It was cold and windy on the ridge and that night it rained like crazy and I was very glad I was not stuck in a trench up there for months.

Pergamon video part 2

One more silly little movie on the theme of scampering. Watch the first pergamom one first, it is better. This is mostly just silly.

Pergamom part II: The big deep hole from Kate Bedford on Vimeo.

Pergamon

Yesterday was a day of spontaneity and surprise. We ended up on an previously unplanned side trip to Pergamon with some Australian college students. We will write more about it later, but for now, just in case you need some sites from Turkey before you prepare your Turkey, here is a short video that gets some of the highlights

Scampering in Pergamon from Kate Bedford on Vimeo.

Another Istanbul Video

Istanbul: view from Topkapi palace from Kate Bedford on Vimeo.

Video: Galata Tower at night

Video is back-- not sure what happened, but now i can use my Vimeo account, so here is a quick shot.

Galata Tower at Night from Kate Bedford on Vimeo.

This tower is pretty darn close to our apartment. We took this one of our first days in Istanbul.

-Kate

A week in Istanbul

Sunday 14 Nov

We woke up Sunday morning to a pleasant surprise: church music wafting into our windows from nearby Christ Church. This was a nice change from the ever present call to prayer.

(Kate writing)

After our wall-climbing adventure on Saturday we were beat. Andrew asked me Sunday morning what I wanted to do that day and my answer was clear: play backgammon and take a bath. So we played backgammon at a tea café and then I took the bus across town to the Cemberlitas Hamam, and was washed, massaged and exfoliated by a Turkish woman.

(Kate done writing)

That evening we went to a performance of whirling dervishes at a theatre space. The performers are all members of the Sufi monastery that is being rebuilt next to the theatre. We like to think that the money we spent for the performance is contributing to the reconstruction. Otherwise, paying to watch people perform what is supposed to be a religious ceremony feels somewhat complicated. We came away with all sorts of questions: (1) Are the performers pleased that they get to perform? Or, do they feel pressured into it by the monastery? (2) If they are actually observing a religious ceremony, and the audience is watching it, isn’t that a tad voyeuristic? The same can be said whenever we watch someone else pray when it isn’t part of our belief system. (3) Why did we feel so uncomfortable when members of the audience spent the first fifteen minutes of the whirling snapping up photos (flash on)? While they paid good money to see the performance, it still felt so rude and inconsiderate.

Monday 15 Nov

We felt our way through the small streets behind the Egyption Spice Bazaar up to the Grand Bazaar. Our first stop was the www.istanbuleats.com recommended Aynen Durum. A tiny storefront kebap shop with ten stools around a narrow counter with communal pickles, parsely and roasted peppers in a center trough. The options for your meal? Beef or lamb, lavash type 1 or lavash type 2. We had one wrap each of the beef and lamb, and I have no idea which lavash the grillmeister used. It was heaven.

The food was delicious and the atmosphere, across a narrow lane from the money-exchangers alley was alive and frenetic. These guys all carry multiple cell phones and stand in gaggles actually yelling buy and sell requests for currency. All those “Learn Forex” banner ads that you see on the web? Useless, just come to Istanbul, buy a few cell phones, and hang out in the money-exchangers alley in the Grand Bazaar.

The Grand Bazaar itself is a gorgeous structure, filled with mostly annoying hawkers and mostly tacky goods. I think you have to know what you’re doing to really find it useful, and I will admit that we skirted around the carpet shops to avoid the omnipresent: “You don’t have to buy. Just come look.” So there may have been incredible carpets, but, someone else will have to look at them.

We took a break in a park near the Blue Mosque. We ate some baklava and drank some tea. We listened to the call to prayers and then waited a reasonable amount of time before approaching the mosque. We were approached by a man employing one of the standard lines: “The mosque is closed for prayer. But, no problem, it opens in one hour. While you wait, come look at my shop.” We had heard it before, we brushed past the man. We found the visitor’s entrance. Kate managed to fit all of her gorgeous hair under a scarf, we took off our shoes, and we went inside. It is a magnificent, beautiful building. The dome is tall, the calligraphy is intricate, the tiles are a pretty light shade of blue. We stood around with the other throngs of tourists looking at the few folk still praying beyond the railing. As I commented with watching the whirling dervishes, I felt very uncomfortable watching other people pray. It was as if the presence of the tourist throng made them unwitting performers; or, animals in a zoo or a game park, trying to get on with their lives while we stare and take pictures while kept at a safe distance.

(Kate writing)

Kate, after working hard to get all her hair covered before going into the mosque was horrified by the numerous women who pulled their head scarf off the minute they got passed the entrance. It was like the girls who roll their skirt up the minute mom is not looking, only worse, and culturally disrespectful. At least it wasn’t American tourists doing it, that we saw.

(Kate done writing)

Tuesday 16 Nov

The city was really quiet this morning. This was the first day of Kurban Bayram, the Muslim holiday that commemorates the day when Abraham sacrificed a lamb instead of his originally intended sacrifice of Isaac. When it comes down to it, God’s giving of the lamb is a pretty great thing to celebrate. That is, if you don’t feel that God’s original command to sacrifice Isaac cancels out this later act. Given the change that took over this city, I would imagine that most folk here think that it’s a good thing to celebrate.

Our host’s sister invited us to her house for a Kurban Bayram dinner. Her house is on the Asian side on a hill next to the second Bosphorous bridge. Namik picked us up at the apartment. As he is driving, a little tentatively, through Istanbul, he is getting engrossed in conversation. At one point he tells us that he doesn’t drive very often. This becomes clear as he realizes he made a wrong turn and we are now on our way to the airport. Turning around is a minor adventure in and of itself and by the time we finally get to his sister’s house everyone else is starving and chomping at the bit to start the meal. Namik’s sister is a wonderful cook. She prepared every dish from scratch and they were all delicious: pilav with meat, borek, dolma, a leek salad, a potato and celery root salad, and more that I can’t now remember. If it sounds like a lot of food, well, it was. And long before the meal ended, Kate and I were eating out of pride, and out of a need to please our hostess. Everyone else politely turned down the later courses.

Later in the evening, after most folk had left, Namik and his sister took us up to a fancy café overlooking the Bosphorous and the bridge. The view was dampened by the fog, but it was still lovely and relaxing. The traffic had become something of a mess (like the 405 through the Sepulveda pass, but worse and for a longer distance) so Namik’s sister drove us to the ferry terminal instead of back to the apartment. We were all spared a few hours of exhaust inhaling fun.

A quick taxi ride up the hill, and our first day of Kurban Bayram was over.

Wednesday 17 Nov

We went to Asia for lunch today. Our friends Sam and Cara had heavily recommended the restaurant Ciya in Kadikoy. We took the ferry from Karakoy, passed the Haydarapasa train station, and alighted in bustling Kadikoy. We had lunch; the food was excellent. We explored and found a temporary fair set up next to a different ferry landing. We went in. The most interesting thing we found was the costume photo booth, where a lineup of Turkish children and teenagers were dressing in Ottoman costumes and squealing with delight as their photos were taken. The discovery of schlock that isn’t for tourists always delights us.

For dinner we met up with my friend Caroline, who was one of my freshman back at Stanford when I was an RA. She had seen from one of my Facebook status updates that I was in Istanbul, she let me know of her upcoming trip, and we found that our stays here overlapped. She was traveling with her fiance and four other friends. I got reservations at a guidebook recommended meyhane (Turkish festive restaurant: lots of flowing Raki and never-ending food). We met there and had a fun evening, with perhaps too much of the Raki (Turkish anise based liquor). In a not-so-much-a-small-world moment, it turns out that one of her good friends, who she’s traveling with, lived in Phi Sig with Kramer and John Chase. He, as he says, “watched my ankle blow up.” He’s on the tail end of a long trip around the world, and he gave us a set of Africa tips that should prove quite useful.

It was great fun having an evening with friends and speaking English in full conversations with other people.

Thursday 18 Nov

Ugh… Raki hangover. The world didn’t stop spinning until a large cup of orange juice, a few cups of coffee, some tea, and some backgammon. We decided to see a movie after lunch. We ended up seeing a double-header of Skyline, quite possibly the worst distributed movie we have ever seen, and Harry Potter Part 7 Part 1, which, after our dismal first movie, seemed the height of all of the Hollywood arts, Oscars all around.

Friday 19 Nov

Back to Tourism with a capital T. We went to the Archaeology museum today. The museum has a nice set of classical sculpture: lots of Greek and Roman pieces from around the Aegean coast. After all of the Jesi and Marys we’ve seen, some good ole gods of mythology were quite nice. There’s a cool section, “Istanbul Through the Ages,” that documents the site from the Paleolithic settlements to the Greek colony of Byzantion (sp?) to Constantinople to Istamboul. Accompanying notes document which ruins in the city belong to which period and it was fun comparing those notes to what we’ve seen.

By turning right at the entrance, instead of left, we ended up leaving the star pieces of the museum till the end. We most likely gave them short shrift due to our hunger. Oh well. The museum was built in the second half of the 19th century to house this collection of tombs that were discovered in Sidon. Included is the “Alexander” tomb, so called not due to it containing the remains of Alexander the great, but rather due to the unbelievable reliefs on all four sides that document battles between Alexander’s Macedonians and the Persians.

For lunch we went back to our first lunch spot, next to the Hagia Sophia. To give you an idea of how crowded the city is with all of the internal Turkish tourism that happens during the Kurban Bayram week: when we ate at the restaurant on Monday the 8th, we felt it was a hopping restaurant, not too many tables were open. Today, we were led up to the third floor (who knew that there were upstairs dining rooms?), every single table was used, and there was a 20 person line out the door when we left.

We made our way into the less visited parts of the city in order to explore the Valens aqueduct. This was part of the 4th century Roman system that provided water into the heart of Byzantium. The aqueduct is imposing, rising 50 meters high over one of the major roadways of the city, that squeezes through 6 of the aqueduct’s arches.

We found ourselves, later, walking through a conservative Muslim neighborhood. We had a nice, extremely cheap, cup of tea, and walked past a sheep slaughterhouse (not sure if the slaughtering took place inside a building, but slaughterhouse sounded better than slaughter area, or slaughter garden). This was a complete vertical market: next door to a pen of live sheep was the slaughterhouse, then a butcher, and then the restaurants selling mutton kebap. We saw intestines being cleaned out, and muttonchops being chopped. It was fascinating and we would have investigated longer if I didn’t notice the wheelbarrow full of sheep stomachs that was being rolled in our general direction. We fled quite quickly. It was only when we reached a suitable distance away that we realized just how overwhelming the odor had been.

Onwards

We leave for Canakkale on Monday. We’ll be able to see Gallipolli and Troy. Onwards to Selcuk and exploring Ephesus. To Dalyan and the Kournos ruins. To Konya. To Cappadocia. To the Hatay. To Gaziantep.

It’s amazing how excited we are to go see things and places that we had never even heard of before planning this trip.

Walking the City Walls (Saturday 13 Nov)

We decided to walk the length of Istanbul’s old land walls. These are the walls built by the Byzantines under good ole’ Emperor Theodosius (rough time period ~450AD). Together with the sea walls, they adequately protected Constantinople up until the time they started calling it Istanbul (1453). Note: the guidebooks here don’t leave it as just the business of the Turks, they explain that Istanbul comes from Islambul, which the conquering Mehmet decided to name his newly captured city.

The walls still stretch from the Sea of Marmara to the Golden Horn, a rough arc that stretches about four miles. If a marauding band of barbarians led by a modern day Attila came to them, however, they probably would not provide much protection. Much of the walls are in some state of decay. However intimidating they may seem to Kate and I, I’m sure a determined tribe of Huns could make their way through. The wise Turkish government has realized this grave error and started to rebuild the walls: sections now stand fresh and strong.

Side note: this rebuilding is somewhat controversial, as it covers up the original Byzantine stone work, in whatever state of decay it was in, traditionalists have decried it as Disney-esque.

There are very few places along the walls where intrepid children or 32 year olds are prevented from scrambling up crumbling stairs or piles of rubble and walking along the tops of the walls. This is especially true in the Yedikule fortress where we started our adventure. The fortress marked the Sea of Marmara end of the walls. For a reasonable entry fee (5TL) we gained entry to a veritable Tom Sawyer’s Island of ancient fortifications. As practically the only people there, we could climb, go into scary dark tunnels, almost fall into 50 foot pits, and in general, have a grand old time.

Yedikule up high

Yedikule down low

We didn’t spend as much time in the fortress as we would have, given that we still had 4 miles of walls to explore. We started walking along the inside (city-side) of a crumbling wall section to start. We quickly came upon an open gate leading into what looked like a parking lot. To stay along the walls, we’d have to go in. We went through. We passed children playing soccer, and the ever popular game of run-with-sticks. The parking lot started to look more like a fair-ground being set up. Chalked guidelines were being filled with quick wooden constructions. As we neared them, the new carpentry were temporary pens for lots and lots of sheep. We kept walking and staring. More sheep than would be needed for a petting zoo… What’s that over there on that concrete platform? A group of men huddled around, now shooing away some children, and now parting slightly. I say to Kate, “Look, they‘re shearing one.” We get closer and realize that no, a sheep is being slaughtered. The complete cross-section of sheep neck that we saw was a brighter red than I would have guessed. Kate, being the delicate flower that she is, didn’t want to go up and explore more, so we continued on. I really wanted a picture of me with one hand on the sheep’s (is the correct term at this point mutton?) rump, a big smile on my face, and a thumb’s up towards the camera. Kate is very good at preventing unnecessarily awkward situations. Side-note: tomorrow, Tuesday, marks the beginning of the Kerban Bayrami festival. Otherwise known in English as “Feast of Sacrifice” commemorating Abraham’s sacrifice of a ram instead of Isaac. We are assuming that the fairground full of sheep and this festival are related, we’re not sure.

A fearless adventurer, standing, fearlessly, 4 feet from a precipitous edge

We came to a gate in the wall where our inside track was blocked. We moved through the gate and got a good look at how the walls are formed. There are really two structures: an outer wall, a section of land maybe 15 meters across, and then an inner wall. For much of this first section of walls, in between had been small farm plots. At this gate, however, in between was grass and trees, more than a fair share of litter, a little old chapel-looking building, and three old men sitting in the shade. They noticed us glance in and beckoned for us to come in. They were seated on small stools covered in newspaper around a low table. On the table was a bottle of some sort of goodness and a single glass (the same type that would be used for serving tea). They gestured for us to go to the chapel-looking building. We entered the small 10 foot square building, bending down to avoid a 15 century old marble slab from causing a horrific head ache, and when our eyes adjusted, realized we were staring at 2 ancient sarcophagi. The back wall had an engraved cross, and the two sarcophagi (or, at least, that’s what we think they are, there really isn’t any guidebook or signpostings about the details of the walls) had engravings of various religious scenes and people.

Entry to chapel-looking building

View of back wall

Side sarcophagus?

We took some pictures, carefully ducked our way back out, and started making our way back to the wall gate. As we passed the group of old men, we smiled, gave them a “teshekur” (thanks in Turkish) and would have kept moving on. However, one of the men got up from his stool and said “please”, and gestured towards it. Well, you can’t really pass that up. So I sat on the stool, and Kate sat next to the now stoolless man on the small ledge next to the table.

The man spoke a smattering of English. Neither of his friends spoke English. The man in the middle, opposite me at the table, started talking and looking at me expectantly. I shrugged. He said some more, gestured at himself and his friends. I shrugged. The man who spoke a little English said “name?”. “Oh, I’m Andrew”, “I’m Kate”. The man in the middle pointed at himself and said “Ahmet”, gestured at the man who had given up his stool, “Ali”, and to the other “U…t” (we never really caught his name). He gestured at the glass and the bottle and at me. I looked at Kate, she smiled at me. I smiled and said “Sure, thanks”. Some bad Turkish: “ever, teshekur”. He poured me a shot full. “Raki?” I ask? “No” he smiles, “shera”. OK, something I’ve never had, excellent. I take it and try it. They laugh at me not drinking the whole thing, so, as any good freshman would do, I tilted it back. I then realized that “shera” is most likely a cheap Turkish version of Sherry, but even though it’s not something that I would choose to drink straight-up with my friends, it certainly was better then some alternatives (thank god this adventure didn’t happen in China).

We talk for a while, Ali spent most of his life, 50 years, in Germany, where we believe his children still live. The men pantomime death while pointing at the chapel-thing, this helped firm up the idea of sarcophagi in our minds. Ahmet talked for a while, Ali just smiled without translating, so we smiled too. Eventually we got up to go. Without decent language skills I couldn’t politely offer to help pay for the liquor. I figured I’d be insulting if I just handed them money. Ahmet says something, I say “thanks, goodbye”. Ahmet says something else, I shrug. Kate is trying to interpret their body language. By doing this she often figures out what people are trying to say long before I can (even when I think I kinda know the language, like French, or English). Ahmet says something to Ali, Ali says “consume”. Ahmet says: “Turkomen consume… here. American” (pointing at me) “consume… here…” I smile, say thanks, shrug. He says it a few more times. Kate finally realizes that they want some money. I say “how much?” U…t says “ten thousand“. Luckily we had previously learned of the restructuring of the lira that took place not too long ago, where the three zeros that used to be appended to every price got removed. I offer five coins, the most I could do without pulling out the wad of cash that would have been inappropriate to flash. Everyone smiles, thanks are offered, we are eternal friends forever.

Side-note: as I got up, I noticed the picture of the lingerie clad model on the piece of newspaper I was sitting on. For a muslim nation there are some risqué pictures in their newspapers; Rupert would be very proud.

Farm plots along the outside of the wall

We continued on the outside of the walls. There’s another row of farming plots, a nice wide sidewalk, and then a 2 lane highway. This made for easy-going quick walking. We made our way to the next gate and moved back inside the walls, where the walking may be a little slower, but it is much more interesting. We picked our way through a bit of a shanty town (small structures with tin roofs and the ever present satellite-TV dishes) and then found a wall-side park with a café for lunch. This section of the walls were rebuilt and used for functions (weddings, etc). Just outside the WC, Kate found a one-eyed kitten. We decided that since I couldn’t take the giant Turkish knife from cooking class, she couldn’t take the one-eyed kitten home, no matter how cute it was.

We continue along. Inside the walls is often a quieter side of Istanbul: neighborhoods of playing children, small workshops, and usually not too many cars. This is punctuated at the gates with large streets full of traffic and mayhem. The walls are not an official tourist attraction. There are not always sidewalks alongside the walls. When something is in the way: a construction site, a building, etc, there are no signs to help guide you around and back to the walls. We spent a fair amount of time walking in the road, dodging traffic.

At about the 3/4 point, we ask for directions from a dolmus(mini-bus) driver and turn a bit into the city to find the Kariye museum. This is an old Byzantine church turned mosque turned museum that has what are said to be the best, most intact set of Byzantine mosaics and murals. They are fabulous. Amazingly meticulous, detailed mosaics covering the vaulting of the outer halls (the narthex?). We sit when our necks hurt from staring upwards and appreciate the art. The Byzantines seem to go for a less bloody form of art than the Catholics. It’s nice. They also usually show an emperor presenting a tiny version of the building you’re standing in to Jesus on a throne. The engineer in me asks: is there a mosaic inside that tiny building that shows another emperor presenting a yet smaller version of the building to another enthroned Jesus and so on? Kate doesn’t always appreciate my humor.

Jesus and Mary doing their thing

Mural of Jesus and a bunch of other folk

Back to the walls. We’re in a lower class neighborhood. The kids are playing in the streets, again: the run-with-sticks game. Women, mothers, grandmothers, are watching from doorways and windows. We’re happy, we smile, wave and say hello in English and Turkish. The women often flash smiles back. The kids love it. Every now and then the dour old lady just wants to be a dour old lady and doesn’t smile. She can’t bring us down, though. We keep smiling and waving.

Happy, smiley, walkers

It’s getting towards sunset, we’ve meandered away from the walls since the buildings built into the side of the walls have obstructed us. We’re navigating through small poor streets going down hills and trying to wrap our way back towards the wall. We’re thwarted. We give up, go back to the last gate, and walk along the outside of the walls on a narrow strip of sidewalk stretched out on the highway as it splits into cloverleaves and other weed shapes to join other highways and the bridge over the upper Golden Horn. We get to the bottom of the hill, to the end of the walls, cross the huge roadway and find our ferry pier. A few more waves and smiles at the men in their little boats and then we’re on a boat heading home.

Crazy roadway outside of walls

The last little bit of walls, climbing down the hill to the Golden Horn