Mutlu yıllar!

Happy twenty-ten everyone!  We're back in Istanbul - well, I'm here for another few hours :(  My flight leaves tomorrow at 6:35am.  Oy.  And last night I (along with everyone else in the family) got very little sleep.  The "no special" celebration turned out to entail raucous street parties, loud Arabic music, squealing tires, drunken college students, etc., until 4am-ish.  And we had to keep the windows open to counteract the heater, which tho set at 'low' still seemed to want to keep the room at a healthy 90° or so.

We caught the 9am bus out of Edirne ;)  So the city wasn't great, but we got a good two days' worth of entertainment out of it, and it was WAY different from Istanbul.  I feel like we definitely have a more complete (though by no means actually complete) view of Turkey because of it.  Plus, I need to say that, just like in Istanbul, everyone was extremely nice.  Plus, unlike Istanbul, very few people spoke English, and those who did, didn't well; nonetheless they went far out of their way to help us tourists.

After getting into Istanbul, we took a crazy shuttle through town, which bounced and swerved so much that it almost made Mom throw up.  Then we ate at a really nice little restaurant a few blocks away from our hotel.  As we walked there, we were greeted by a bunch of shop and restaurant owners asking us questions like "Where'd you go?"  and "How was Edirne?"  I felt a bit like a celebrity.  The food was really good, and we got to sit outside (on January 1st!) because it was 64° today and not a cloud in the sky.  Then we went back to the hotel, unpacked (and I repacked) and chatted with Fatih. 

From there we walked to the bazaar for Annaliese to buy some more scarves and for me to get a good Turkish dictionary (the only one I had before was not thorough enough).  On the way, Annaliese realized she'd left her expensive camera sitting on her chair outside of the restaurant we'd had lunch at.  She jogged back and found it right where she'd left it.  The owner apologized numerous times for not having noticed, and several people murmured in astonishment "Just look how safe it is here!"

Well, we're off to Turquoise again for my last meal in Turkey :(  This was an absolutely wonderful trip.  Annaliese has said several times this is the second country (not counting the US) in which she could see herself living.  Thank you, Mom, Dad, Anna, Fatih, Rolf, Hermann, Anita, Volker, for making this one of the best vacations of my life! 

Love, peace and good fortune in the New Year!
Colin

PS - My parents have promised to post one more entry to this blog tomorrow evening, their last day in Turkey.

kronik psikozlu!!

Wow!  Today was the most unusual New Years Eve I have ever experienced.  I ended up choosing "kronik psikozlu" (see below) for the title of this entry, but my other favorite suggestions were "most travelers avoid Edirne" (from a travel blog I read this morning) and "fighting OSHA since 125 AD".

Before getting into today's adventures, though, I want to start with the last fail of yesterday followed by its redeeming grace:  Anna is now a vegetarian, so we've been looking for places that serve things other than just meat.  We were recommended a place nearby called Balık.  We walked in, sat down, got water and opened up our menus.  Everything was in Turkish.  I could pick out a few words related to seafood, but that was it.  No one in our family really likes seafood.  None of our waiters spoke English.  Suddenly, we realized that balık means "fish"!  Oy!  Fail.

After getting help from the wonderful people working there (negotiated in broken Turkish and English), we ended up in an alleyway being welcomed into a smokey pub by its proprietor, a very mafioso-looking Turk with a slightly unbuttoned shirt and gold chain.  He sat us down in tiny wooden chairs next to a mural of a forest.  The table next to us was full of young, raucous twenty-somethings; otherwise the establishment was empty.  Young men and boys kept coming in the entryway, picking up packages and running off.  Anna suggested that these "business transactions" seemed a bit illicit.  A three-man band came into our little room and started playing what I can only assume is traditional Turkish or Bulgarian music (we're only a few miles from Bulgaria here).  It was AMAZING!  They were great; there was a clarinet, a drum and some sort of 16-stringed banjo or something.  And they all sang.  After a while, the young Turks at the table next to us joined in on the chorus.  The Don kept bringing us tray after tray of vegetarian food without our even ordering it.  He was extremely nice, jovial even, grinning broadly and speaking in very decent English.  The music was wonderful, the food was good, and the people were friendly and helpful.  It was the most true-to-life, the "realest", experience I've had here.  It truly salvaged an otherwise less-than-fantastic day.

Back to today:  Morning smog rises around the Selimiye Mosque.  The air is so dirty that Annaliese couldn't actually join us for our walk around the city.  By the time I got back to the hotel (about 3 hours after leaving), there was so much grit and grime in my mouth that I could hear a crunching noise when I ground my teeth.  The first thing I did was brush my teeth.

Before heading back, however, we went to three mosques (including a second visit to the Selimiye) and to the Edirne Archeology and Ethnography Museum.  This museum was actually really nice, full of artifacts from back in the Roman period when Edirne was called Hadrianopolis.  The museum director/curator even talked with us for a while - in German, because he didn't speak much English.  Then at the end of our visit, he shook our hands and wrote down directions to the Museum of Health (Sağlık Müzesi), which was another place we planned on stopping at.

Some great English translation efforts from the museum are:

"It caught at Kapıkule" (about a pot found at Kapıkule)

"The Edirne Museum's aim is to make the knowledge be more apprehensible for the community."

The streets today were full of people selling live fowl.

Mom went shopping at a little outdoor pavilion of women knitting and selling their wares.

one of the mosques we visited

(The calligraphy on the left in bold face says "Allah", and the outline says "Muhammed".)

Then we went back to the hotel, got Anna, and went to lunch.  Here you can see two chickens that ran through the outdoor restaurant we ate at.  Anna and Mom got gözlemes (which are like tasty, goat cheese-filled quesadillas), and Dad and I got adana kebaps.  While eating, we saw a young man, who had been smoking a hookah, have a seizure and almost die.  The ambulance came and he was taken away on a gurney-chair.

After lunch we began our trek to the Museum of Health.  Getting slightly off the beaten track, we found ourselves in a very low-income district.

This is probably in all truthfulness the most acute poverty I've ever seen.  Also, though the kids look sweet here, they turned into the Children of the Corn further down the cobblestone/dirt path.  Photo credit here is due to Annaliese; I didn't feel like taking my camera out during this long, long portion of the trek.

sheep in the foreground, the museum/mosque/madrasah complex in the background

sunset and more of the sheep

At the museum we saw a man practicing the old Ottoman art of ebru, or paper marbling.  You float paints or inks on the surface of a container with water, and then you use brushes to push the paint around.  When you have a design or image you like, you place a piece of paper or silk on top of the water and peel it off.  Voilà, and ebru painting!  His work was really beautiful.

the museum

A large portion of the museum consisted of mannequins dressed oddly and acting out various mental disorders that Ottoman sufis would treat with mystic healing arts.  Various rooms also contained scenes of repairing hydrocephaly through cutting, procuring medicine from a rooster being bitten by a viper, and  treating vertebral maladies with a hot branding iron.  The person in the above picture (the one behind me) was labeled kronik psikozlu or "patient with chronic psychosis".

As we were leaving, we asked a guard to call us a cab.  (No one wanted to walk through the slummy area in the dark.)  At the restaurant where we had dinner, Christmas music like "Go Tell it on the Mountain" was playing for New Year's Eve.  It was a wild day.

mushroom milkshakes

Sadly, today we left Istanbul for Edirne.  Before heading out, though, we went to the Basilica cisterns.  They're from the 6th century during the Byzantine period and were built under Emperor Justinian.

the cisterns

more cisterns

Oddly enough, there were tons and tons of fish - some even very decent sized ones.  How do they live in an underground, manmade cavern with no natural light?  I have absolutely no idea.

sunny day (The structure in the background is the German Fountain; I don't remember why it's called that.)

At lunch, Anna and I decided to try the local liquor specialty, rakı.  In fact, even Mom and Dad sipped a bit from ours.  The white one is mine.  It apparently turns white when you add water to it.  It tastes like licorice.  It is so SO gross that just looking at this photo makes me gag a bit.

Here we are just before leaving with our AWESOME hotel-working friend Fatih.  Not only was he amazingly helpful and completely proficient in English, he was also a great guy.  We played cards, Anna went to cheer him on in soccer, etc. etc.  He absolutely made our stay at the Osmanhan hotel.

After a two and a half hour trip in the nicest bus I've ever ridden in (which cost about $10/person), we arrived in Edirne, right on the Bulgarian border.  We're here for the next three days or so.  It's a small city whose main (basically only) attraction is a huge mosque built by Sinan (again).  It's supposedly his best; that's what we'll see tomorrow.  Other than that, I guess we'll just wander.

The hotel here is actually completely decent, but I wanted to post this one picture of the odd decor.  Look at the tiny little picture hidden behind the TV.  Love it.  Very feng shui.

In closing, I will leave you with the ridiculously touristy meal I ate this evening:  hamburger and milkshake.  Yum.

taksi Taksim'e

We got a relatively late start today.  We began with a great breakfast on the terrace.  Breakfast is included at our hotel, and it is always delicious:  fresh squeezed orange juice, homemade pastries, yogurt, fruit, Turkish coffee, and simit bread etc.

After breakfast we caught a crazy cab to Chora Church, a small Byzantine church on the other side of town.  (Driving here is insane.  I know people say that about anywhere they go, but this is especially true of Istanbul.  Although lanes are normally marked, the drivers pay them little mind.  The first evening here, my cab driver stopped me from putting on my seat belt, saying "No, not need", before barreling down several dozen narrow cobblestone streets at about 50 mph.)

Chora Church (or Kariye) was beautiful.  The ceilings were covered in mosaics and frescos from when the city was still Constantinople.  Here is the icon of Christ Chora ton Zonton ("Land of the Living").

And guess who we saw there?  None other than the French woman from the night of the dervishes.  She was crazy as always.  Anna posed "with" her here.

After the church, we went to Taksim Square, the social center of Istanbul.

It was kind of miserable out, cold and raining, so we spent the day inside.  First we grabbed ice cream (dondurma) in waffles.  I assumed "waffle" meant "waffle cone", but really it just meant "waffle".  It was delicious.  After ice cream, we walked to a Starbucks.  The family was apparently craving its coffee goodness, but I don't really drink coffee, so I just sat there.

After wandering around Taksim a bit, we went to a movie theater (sinema) and saw Avatar (check out the awesome trailer here).  I actually had to use quite a bit of Turkish to find this place.  I spoke more Turkish today than the rest of the trip put together.  Just about everyone in Sultanahment (where we are staying) speaks extremely good English, but we found almost no one who spoke English in Taksim.  Avatar was AWESOME!!  Yes, its plot was contrived, goofy and weak, but the visuals were absolutely spectacular!  And the aliens were SO COOL!  I absolutely recommend it.  And actually, even if the writing is not the best, it is still fun.  Go to it for the wild, carnival ride-like visual entertainment.

On the way back, Mom and Annaliese saw #157 and his dog-friend.  The women have been carrying around bread in their pockets for the last few days so that they could feed the street animals.  #157 ate the bread that my sister gave him, but friend-dog was more interested in the empty metal can that at one time may have contained sardines or something along those lines.  Not a great success, but a valiant effort by Mom and Anna to better these dogs' lives ;)

a day for the cats

Today we went to the Archaeology Museum (Arkeoloji Müzesi).  It was awesome!

On the way there, we saw some cats.  As I mentioned before, there are a lot of street cats (and dogs).  Today we saw TONS of cats!

The Archaeology Museum has gorgeous pieces of the tiled Ishtar Gate (the gate to ancient Babylon), including the one above.  I saw other pieces of the Gate at the Pergamon in Berlin.  And actually the museum I work at now (the Oriental Institute) has two lion segments as well.

This enormous Neo-Hittite relief has engravings of Luwian hieroglyphs near the king's head.

a bowl that Annaliese really liked

the sarcophagus of THE Alexander the Great!!  at least according to the sign; Mom says it's actually only the tomb of a Sidonian king…

After that museum we went into the Topkapı palace.  The above is part of the Harem quarters of the palace.  This is where the Ottoman emperors' harem, their wives and concubines, lived.

Outside Topkapı, Annaliese fed some cats and birds.

Then we went back to the Archaeology Museum to the Tiled Kiosk (one of the three buildings it consists of).  It has a small but nice collection of iznik tiles and ware.

This evening we're going to a new place (Doydoy or "Full-full") for dinner and then are going to play cards with the young man, Fatih, who works the desk at our hotel.

Dervişler

Today we went back to the market.  Cody, I found you a patch!  It took a lot of hassling, but I got it down from 45 Turkish lira to just 15.  Annaliese bought even more scarves.  I think she has plenty now. While trying one on, the young man waiting on her told her she looked like "Shakira, Lady Gaga".

Shakira/Gaga

palm trees, sunny skies and 62° !!!

As we were walking, we came past the sign "DİKKAT, KÖPEK VAR" ('Beware of dog').  I knew dikkat and var, but I didn't know the word for dog, and so I leaned in to read it.  Then, charging from the bowels of hell comes growling and lunging this nasty beast.  Anna and I literally had to run out of the way!  In Turkey, they really mean it when they say "beware"!

Then we went to the Süleymaniye Mosque.  It's another one by Sinan, and even though the interior is closed for renovation, it was very obvious that it is gorgeous.  It is also considered the most important mosque in Istanbul.

We wandered around the grounds of the Süleymaniye.  This is the graveyard.  This mosque is also in the area around the University of Istanbul.  It was cool to see where the largest student body in Turkey lives.

Anachronistic anecdote related to mosques:  When we went into the Hagia Sophia, they had a security check with metal detectors and guards.  I started taking out of my pockets my camera, cell phone, iPod, belt, etc., but the guard sort of waved me through.  I gave him a quizzical look, but he smiled and nodded.  I walked through and the alarm, naturally, went off.  I was ready to go back out when the guard laughs, asking "Where's the bomb-a?"  Hmm, what's the point of a metal detector and security guard when the response to an alarm is laughter and disconcern?  Haha, it's a different world here :)

After the mosque, we went to a restaurant called Dârüzziyafe.  At the time it was built, under the rule of Süleyman, it functioned as the mosque's soup kitchen for the poor.  Rick Steves' book on Istanbul said that if we showed the book at this restaurant, we'd get 10% off.  Mom mentioned this to our waiter, who responded "No, no … no".  Rick Steves also recommended the "sherbet drink", which truthfully is why we went there.  Looking at the menu, however, I couldn't find it.  I asked the waiter whether they did, in fact, have a sherbet drink.  This question resulted in all four of us (without further ado) getting "rosehip syrup", which turned out to be said sherbet drink.  It was disgusting, kind of like drinking a glass of Tang, but instead of hydrating it with water, you used honey.  The meal itself, however, was really, really good.

Side note:  The word sherbet comes from the Arabic word شرب (shariba), which means 'to drink' (well, technically 'he drank').  This word is also where we got the word "syrup" and the Turks got the word şarap 'wine'.

From there, we walked back to our hotel for some quick R&R.  On the way, we saw several young men selling spirographs.  Remember, those bright plastic things from the early 90s for making loopy designs…  And they're all over here!

And then this evening we went to see whirling dervishes.  Whirling dervishes are practitioners of Sufi Islam who enter mystical trances while spinning in circles.  It is supposed to be a religious experience in which the dervish becomes aware of the unseen world.  So yes, the purpose of this touristy excursion was to watch five people in deep, contemplative, slowly rotating prayer.  It was about as entertaining as watching a group of people go through the Hail Mary for two hours with the soundtrack to Borat playing in the background.  Dad fell asleep almost instantly.  During the spinning, they raise and lower their arms in a manner reminiscent of the YMCA dance.

This isn't my photo, since photography wasn't allowed.  But check out the awesome hats they wear.  It's like a cat's scratching post on his head.

One interesting thing to come out of the "cultural experience" (I use quotations here, because these people charge about $30/seat for foreigners to gawk at them while they feign ancient tradition) was the ridiculous tourist next to us.  She was this elderly woman, who almost as soon as she sat down was up again, then down, then up.  She kept popping up and down like a Whack-a-Mole.  At one point, she turned to Dad and asked him whether he could see when she was standing.  She wasn't blocking his view, seeing as she was to his right, and even if she'd been directly in front of him, it probably wouldn't have mattered, because she was about 5'2".  Then during the performance, she climbed onto her seat and tried to balance herself on the back of the chair.  Failing at that, she simply resigned herself to standing upright on it.  For the entire program!  Best part, though:  NOT American!  The French get to claim that nut job as one of their own.  So no, I did not like the dervishes too much (better than in Cairo, tho).  Mom and Anna, however, thought they were interesting.

Tomorrow we're going to the Archaeology Museum, which I'm really excited for!

Noel'iniz kutlu olsun!

Merry Christmas everyone!
We woke up today and had breakfast while looking out over the water.  Afterwards we opened presents from the lovely Raiser family.  (Everyone sends their thanks for the great gifts!)

From there we went out to the harbor and took a trip by boat to Anatolian Turkey, which is in Asia!  (My fourth continent!)  

leaving Istanbul behind

The town we spent the day in is called Anadolu Kavağı (Anatolian Poplar).  We had a tasty lunch:  I had salad, meatballs, rice and "cips" (French fries), and an interesting Turkish drink called sahlep.  For dessert I had (can you guess?) rice pudding.  Yum!

The rest of our time in Asia (!!), we wandered the town.  Anna and Dad bought scarves (Dad's was a Christmas present for Mom), and we heard the muezzin's call to prayer (for the fourth time today).  The bulk of the time, however, was dedicated to climbing a mountain to get a view of the Bosphorus and the sea from an ancient castle.

hipstery shot of the hike up

Dad and Mom on the way up.

Here's the view from the castle.  Mom and Anna stopped short, because it was STEEP and a long way up, plus Rick Steves says that the castle itself isn't worth the hike.  He's right, as always.  Which reminds me, if anyone knows how one gets a job like his, please let me know.

Dad and Anna on the way back - it was gorgeous out today!  60+ degrees… on Christmas!  The way back was a bit cooler, but not much.  The wind felt great, as did the spray from the water.  We spent most of the trip listening to stories from Mom and Dad about their deviant youths.  One of my favorite parts was their romantic first meeting story:  Dad was living in a trailer with one of his friends, working on his fifth year of undergrad (just the beginning) and dating "some girl with long hair".  Yes, I too hope someday to be remembered to a current loved one as nothing more than a unique physical characteristic.

evening over Istanbul

After arriving back "home", we did a bit of shopping:  Annaliese bought a really pretty bed cover and did a more than decent job haggling down the price and getting two really pretty pillows thrown in free.  Mom, however, was not of especial help:  "Do you bargain here?  We don't know how to bargain in Minnesota.  What price will you go down to?"  One time, while trying to sell an old oven, she prefixed her pitch with "It doesn't really work".  (I love you, Mom!)  After that, we had a delicious dinner at Turquoise again.  I got mantı, which is like Turkish ravioli filled with lamb.  It was really good.  And we all (except Dad) had hot chocolates.