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.