A’ight kids. It’s been two weeks. I realize this is a long time to go without a post from your friendly neighborhood Londoner, but I was out of town last week (creating such adventures as shall be chronicled below) and spent this week sifting through the experience so that I can bring the most entertaining, up-to-date, informative, comedic collection of anecdotes and histories possible. Now, if that isn’t worth waiting for, I don’t know what is. (Don’t you like how I completely justify blog laziness by telling you I’m just awesome? Truth is yet to be seen…)
SO. We awoke Friday morning and took the tube to the train to Luton airport. Public transportation I great, it’s just…time consuming. You can’t just jump in your car and go somewhere. But we got to the airport, checked the bag, and waited to board our EasyJet flight. I will take this time to explain to you The Bag.
The Bag we took is one of Claire’s suitcases. We decided to bring one checked bag because, well, ten days in the same pair of jeans is just grody. Clair and I split it. Dan managed to get everything he needed into his backpack, which weighed about a ton and looked like a brick of steel. In Turkey we lovingly named our bag Kebab, and Trusty Kebab was dragged everywhere, on every form on transportation, from Asia to Ireland. So whenever we are traveling, you must imagine Kebab, the poor little brown suitcase, getting more and more busted up as he is chucked and tossed in and out of the back alleys of Istanbul and over the hills of Wexford.
We boarded the plane for Istanbul and I slept through the flight in a daze of unbelief and adrenaline bursts and utter fear. I have never been to a non-English-speaking country. Let’s just say, this was learning to swim by jumping into the deep end. Without water wings.
We arrived at Sabiha Gokcen airport midmorning. After changing money, we faced our first challenge: getting to the hotel. Shouldn’t be to hard, right? I mean, it’s a big airport, taking international flights….right? So here’s the issue: Istanbul is created out of three peninsulas meeting along the Bosphorous straight. There are bridges and ferries between them. Two are in Europe, one is in Asia. Guess where we were. YES. ASIA. WE FLEW INTO THE FREEKING ASIAN WILDERNESS. My dad had told me to “take a ferry to the other side of the Bosphorous at some point, just to put your feet on another continent.” Well, Daddy, WE HAD BEEN STOMPING ALL OVER ASIA FOR ABOUT AN HOUR. Who knew? (do Doo do DOO!) We had flown into the new airport, not the sixty year old, established Ataturk airport, which we had foolishly expected to arrive at.
A woman came up and asked us if we wanted to take a shuttle to our hotel. (Shuttle? Direct? Without creepy public transportation in Turkish?) We accepted and were loaded into a van along with an Australian backpacking couple and a German business man. We left the airport, pulled onto the freeway…and pulled over. “Five minute! Five minute! Sorry, my English not so good,” said our driver as he got out of the car. So, we were parked on the side of the freeway. For no apparent reason. This will be come a theme in Turkey: things stopping for no apparent reason.
Finally a car drove up behind us and two old ladies got into our van. Apparently, they wanted to shuttle, too, but the van had just left so we had to wait for them to catch up. Alright, this is unconventional, but not necessarily life threatening (except for the whole pulled over on the side of the freeway thing.) After dropping of the ladies at the Ritz Carlton (uh, yeah, not our stop) we got into our neighborhood in the old part of Istanbul. Let’s pause for a little Turkish histoire.
This city has been inhabited since Luke hit Endor, and will probably still be there after Whitefall is terraformed. (That just happened.) It became Constantinople when Constantine (no duh) moved the capital of the Roman empire there, which he had inherited as a Byzantine…or something historical. Byzantines rocked the peninsula for a few centuries, including through the Great Schism, whenceforth they were Greek Orthodox. Justinian, around the 8th century, decided to build a church, and ended up commissioning the most awe-inspiring architectural feat…ever, AKA, the Aya Sofya, or the Hagia Sophia. When the Ottoman Turks took over in the 1400’s, they converted everything to Mosques, including the Aya Sofya, and then build one to rival it, the Blue Mosque (St. Peter’s Basilica of Islam, maybe?). Ottoman Turks hung around the outskirts of Europe for a few centuries, until in the early 20th century Ataturk (“Father Turk”) pulled them into modernity, and called it “secularization.” Nowadays, there’s a bid to join the EU, women aren’t allowed to wear headscarves in Parliament and there’s a controversy over female students being allowed to wear headscarves within universities (since that’s against secularization, the policy since the thirties). Centuries of history, occupation by waves and waves of different people, and culture up the wazoo.
In other news, they just recently started using street names. And there are lanes, but nobody uses them. It's pretty much a free-for-all. So we get to our neighborhood area in Sultanahment (old Istanbul, one of the Euro peninsulas, not the hip one but the one with all the museums/tourist destinations). Our van driver yells out the window to a bunch of men asking for Hotel Birbey. They point him around the winding one-car-wide alleys until we arrive. Nice place for a couple of college students. Mostly occupied by Iranian couples who managed to give us death glares at breakfast every morning, and then a few confused German families. Our bathroom ceiling had a chronic drip right in the middle of the room, so you basically had to walk on the outsides to get to the sink, toilet and shower (slightly bigger than the Chokie).
Breakfast of Turkish Champions
Let’s talk about The Hair. I dyed my hair pink, as you know, but I didn’t really think about the fact that I was about to travel to a majority-Muslim country when I did it. So here I am, walking around Sultanahment with fuchsia hair, getting openly stared at by men in a culture where that is pretty taboo. I often walked by comments in broken English of “Hello I like your hair,” “You have pretty hair,” or “I like your hair color.”
Apple tea, the drink of choice anywhere and everywhere
When you walk down the street, there are barkers EVERYWHERE, asking you to come into their restaurant, look at their menu, buy their stuff, etc. Because we were so CLEARLY tourists, we were constantly haggled by everyone. Interesting thing, though. My hair, coupled with Dan’s ridiculous sunglasses, made us look particularly German. “Guten Tag! Hello!” Followed us a lot. Also, because people assumed we were from countries other than America and the UK, we got to act as if English was our second language, too, which made bartering a lot more interesting. If I didn’t like a price, I could just act like I didn’t know the word I was looking for. Playing a character made me feel a lot less obligated to buy things.
We were from different countries depending on the day. Iceland was our first choice. We went into a kebab café (Dan wanted to try some hookah) and decided we were students from the University of Reykjavik. This excited the manager a lot, and he came over to tell us he’d read in the newspaper about the issue we’ve been having with our pipes system. “Ah, yes, the pipes…tragic…” was all we could really say. Our waiter asked what the currency of Iceland was, and Claire brilliantly said the American Dollar, before I quickly corrected with the Icelandic Dollar. (Does anyone know what it's really called? Chrissy...)
The next day we were from Finland, ya. I had an accent the whole day. We attended the University of Helsinki. When one of the men at a spice stand in the Spice Bazaar asked us our names, I told him mine was Tarja (the name of the ex-lead singer of Nightwish, my favorite band, which happens to be from Finland). It made the pink hair all the more appropes. Funny thing was, though, after two days of being Finish I was stopped on the street by a man who asked me if I was from Finland. Apparently, word had gotten out…
First day there we went to the Hagia Sofia, the one place I had made a goal of getting to whilst in Europe (and the inspiration for the whole trip). It was kind of the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen with my eyeballs. Except for the whole big black structure taking up a quarter of the dome. They were renovating it and ran out of money, so they just sort of left it hanging out. For, like, forty years. Whevs.
There were many BRILLIANT mosaics, which had been uncovered after it was converted into a museum (after being covered when it was turned into a mosque). The whole building was like a history of religion in conflict. The mosaic of Gabriel was next to a large script name of Allah, and the Alter sanctuary area had been altered (jajaja) so that it pointed to Mecca, not Jerusalem. I stood where Empress Theodora sat during Orthodox services, and walked the halls where Sultan Mehmed II had led in the removal of Christian artifacts.
After that we went across the lawn to the Blue Mosque, a totally gorge building and, interestingly, the first mosque I’ve ever been in. (Go big or go home, right?) We didn’t have to cover our heads when we went in, but I’ll admit, I felt a little awk walking around with my bubblegum top. Interesting thing about mosques: there are no icons or pictures of any kind, just lots of intricate painting and tiling. It was very beautiful. There is not real alter or pews, just lots of luscious carpeting (which was nice, since we had to take our shoes off). The men prayed in the front, closer to the pointing-to-Mecca wall, and the women’s prayer area was in the back, behind the tourist corral. I borrowed Claire’s scarf and wrapped my locks up to go pray with the woman, and I slipped in for a minute to say an Our Father (am I allowed to do that?). It was very peaceful.
Next we it the Basilica Cistern. This cistern under the city was built by Justinian back in the day, and then just sort of forgotten. Fifty years or so ago someone realized people were getting fresh water from an unknown source, and many could just throw a fishing line down their water hole and come up with fish. Someone went investigating and BAM! A perfectly preserved cistern. What should we do with it? Slap a ticket booth on in and turn it into a tourist attraction, of course!
That evening we went to Taksim Square, on the European peninsula. We walked up and down the super-hip street, which was PACKED. Found the Catholic church, attended Mass in Turkish. It was kind of interesting to have gone to a Mosque during the day and ogled it, and then go to a church and see Muslims walking around, looking at the statues and icons. We went to a nice-ish restaurant and had the most amazing meal I have ever eaten. Then we got the check. Note to self: never let the waiter order. We thought we had ordered the cheapest items on the menu. Apparently not… So we were pretty much relegated to kebab stands for dinner for the rest of the trip.
Million Lira Meal
Well, actually only 123TYL
Next day we woke up, went outside and…were met by the largest wave of geriatric tourists I have ever seen. Thousands upon thousands moving slowly towards the museums, each with their Nokia cameras and Lonely Planet city guides. What had happened? Where did they come from? Their migration had even shut down the Tramvay. Then we realized: The Princess Cruise had docked last night. Oh, joy.
We went to Topkapi Palace, THE home of the Sultan for years and years. Basically, every Aladdin fantasy fulfilled. Actually, the stereotypes aren’t that far off. Sultan, Grand Vizier, Harem, the whole shebang. Saw everything from the fourth biggest diamond in the world to John the Baptist’s arm (does the Pope know about this?). My favorite thing: kiosks. They are gazeebo-esque rooms with couches and a fireplace, just sort of hanging out in the garden. They were named after battles. What a great thing to do! Hey, I just won an epic battle, and to commemorate it, I’m gonna build a KIOSK!! I’m gonna put some EPIC COUCHES in it so I can SIT AROUND ALL DAY!! I mean, these people knew how to party. Can you lounge in a statue? No. Note to self: when I rule the world, there won’t be statues honoring me, there will be puffy furniture everywhere.
Nothing says Harem quite like wax figurines.
I never want to see another tile as long as I live.
After the palace we went to the Archeological Museum. Now, I’m gonna make an observation here. Turkey is chock full of epic, historical places, and therefore artifacts from ancient history. They have SO MUCH OF IT they don’t even know what to do with it, so just sort of throw in into museums. We walked around bunches of sarcophagi just sort of hanging out in rooms, and hundreds of statues. Where are they from? How did we find them? What’s their significance? Dunno. It’s as if they keep digging them up and have so many they just ship them to museums. Maybe it’s because I’m from a place where mummies are so rare, so if you have one in a museum it’s a big deal.
Outside in the garden were a bunch of Grecian looking statues, many without heads. Which means photo opportunity, of course. I climbed up the back of one, wrapped my arms around it to steady myself, and felt something dusty in my hand…only to realize the statue was crumbling off into my palm. Which is when the Turkish security guard saw me. And scene…
After the hookah café (and the Icelandic Incident) we went to the shop of the first Turkish Delight purveyor. Now, I thought TD was gross, until I tried it in Turkey. TD is gelatinous squares covered in powdered sugar, and can range in flavor from cherry to pistachio. The original is rose, and it literally tastes like roses. We had a fantastic time picking it out, eating it at a table outside the shop, and having man behind the counter bring out more Turkish candy for us to sample, just because he liked us so much. (Hair? I was a bit of a novelty…) We walked back to the hotel through the ghetto of Sultanahment. I was getting pretty good at navigating our slice of the city.
Monday we went to the Kapalıçarşı (kapaleecharshee), or Grand Bazaar. It’s basically the biggest indoor shopping mall ever. There were hundreds of shops selling antique aladdin lamps and evil-eye jewelry. Twice I was stopped and asked if my hair color was natural. The first time I was like, ah, no. The second time it was most definitely natural, how could you ask such a thing? As we walked by stands selling scarves or Abercrombie knock-offs (seriously, Europe is obsessed with A&F, and forty year old men walk around in Hollister t-shirts – very strange) I would hear “Pink hair! Hello! Pink lady!” as every shop owner in 20 feet asked me to peruse his wares. I haggled a 45 lira bag down to 30, as Tarja from Finland. Bought a recorder tuned to the Turkish scale (harmonic, I believe).
After the Bazaar we walked (avoiding paying for a taxi/putting our lives on the line) to the Chora Church. It’s a chosque (church then mosque) from Constantine’s time that has some of the coolest mosaics ever (not that I really have much to compare it to). It was very interesting, especially since a good portion of the mosaics chronicled the life of Mary, as told in the proto-gospel of James. The best part was the Dormition of the Virgin mosaic, in which Jesus holds an infant, which is supposed to be Mary’s soul.
Baby Mary
Dormition of the Virgin
That night we went back into Taksim so Dan could try Raki, the Turkish drink of choice. We sat on the top of a restaurant and watched the city below, discussing film and futures.
Tuesday we took a ferry up the Bosphorous, and I saw the BLACK SEA WITH MINE OWN TWO EYES!!! We got on a commuter ferry that picked up from our side of Europe and dinged back and forth between it and Asia for a few good miles, finally ending at a small fishing village in Asia, far outside of Istanbul. We bought some baklava from a local bread shop and walked up an unnecessarily steep hill to an old Byzantine ruin, which apparently hadn’t been tagged for tourist attraction yet (it was free). We sat on a rock wall and ate our lunch (bread and eggs smuggled from breakfast, under the noses of the condescending Iranians, as usual). After lunch we decided to climb up the ruin as far as we could get. This process probably had the most intense I’m-glad-my-parents-aren’t-here-to-see-this moment, especially when I was dangling unaided from a vertical rock face. Good times.
It was upon this ruin that I realized something: We had done it. We had conquered this foreign city. I had followed a whim, a little blip of a thought that I had walking from South Quad to the library, in between O’Shag and Riley, that I wanted to see the Hagia Sophia. It had turned into a mission, which had turned into a trip, which had turned into the most epic journey of survival I have ever had. Every challenge I have faced in my life has been interpersonal or emotional. This is the first thing I have ever faced that was completely outside. It didn’t matter what I thought or how I felt, because we needed to get on the tramvay or find the church or get food, armed with nothing but a guidebook, a foldy map and pure cajones. I stood there, in Asia, looking at Europe, completely blown away by the fact that I had done it. I had come to Istanbul, wide-eyed and terrified, and in the midst of jeery looks and relentless barkers had managed to see everything, try anything, and generally have a great time in the process. I have never pushed myself so much or in such a way, and I think I can say I have never felt so proud.
After we docked back in Sultanahment we went to the Spice Bazaar, where we Finnished (jajaja). Bought some Love Tea and Turkish coffee. Far less crazy than the Grand Bazaar, with better smells. I bought a 5 lira headscarf. When I was trying it on, the guy was like, “Where are you from?” I told him Finland. He said, “You look American.” I said, “I have family in America. I go there many times.” After that we went back to the Turkish Delight store, to stock up on family gifts. (Don’t worry, ‘rents. I figured you wouldn’t like it anyway so I got you something better than what I know you would refer to as “weird jelly stuff from Turkey”).
We went back to the Birbs (as we lovingly called it all week) and packed whilst watching South Park again. I’ve never seen South Park before this trip, mostly because, as a Coloradan, I don’t really appreciate the stereotyping of our fair state as such. But it was one of the few things we could follow on the Turkish telly, so we watched it every night.
Wednesday morning we got up, checked out (which basically consisted of handing our keys to the guy at the desk and waving goodbye) and dragged Kebab through the back alleys of Sultanahment to the Tramvay (Tokyo packed, of course). We then dragged him, bouncing and flouncing, to the Funicular (two-stop subway, basically goes up a hill) and then to the bus, which took us back to the Asian Wilderness, and our airport.
"Oh, snap!"
Next stop was Dublin. More stories to follow.
