Recent pics with Mom, Istanbul

These are from the Galata Bridge, the fish boats at Eminonu (the far side of the bridge for us), and at the Gullu baklava house, where the owner held up his Baraklava. Mr. President, if you're reading this, the owner says he's bummed you didn't make it to his shop during your recent visit. They're keeping your image under protective plastic wrap in the hopes that a late-night craving on one of your Eastern European or Middle East tours might lead you back.

29 July Back in Antalya

Mom and I flew yesterday from Istanbul to Antalya aboard the very pleasant Turkish Airlines. I'd read skiddish reports about their service, on-time percentages, etc. We got fairly reasonable rates for our flights, given that they were just booked in the past week ($215 each, R/T) and despite our 45 minute departure delay, we enjoyed the flight. The food was not spectacular, but it was fresh and wholesome and gave us leave to skip lunch. A fluffy white bread roll with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and the white cheese (beyas peynir) that Mom is so nuts over. Plus a cup of the Turkish yogurt that has fruit but is still not too sweet--we give that a big thumbs up too. What's the deal with sickeningly sweet American yogurt? Ick. So phony and plastic-y tasting. Yuck. (Liv and Ruby heartily disagree, mind you.) We got picked up by 2 guys who occupy different polar ends of the Turkish male continuum. Emre was young, slightly effeminate, a bit apologetic in aspect, trying to be in charge (well, -ish). The driver was a bald, swarthy, gruff but kind guy who popped in a Turkish CD when he heard that I was looking for the music of a certain Turkish percussionist, Burcan Ocal (Bur-chan Er-chal). Then our van got sideswiped by another driver and we saw the anger management capabilities of the driver kick in. He looked scary. I think he grew 6" side-to-side holding in his annoyance with the other driver. Anyway, to the hotel and the full sea view from the 16th floor. This hotel is kind of gross, as in "you wish you were here" gross. We have a full view of the Mediterranean extending out to the horizon, a deep beckoning blue, turquoise-y in the sun. Antalya is curved, an important harbor in Roman times, and we are at one end of the curve, about 4-5 kms. outside the old town. We can see the other side of the "U" the harbor makes off to the West, a full 3 (?) kms. of whitish-grayish mountains (in the glare and haze of the sun), speckled with evergreens and...well, other vegetation, sloping into the sea. They're probably 1000+ feet or so. Hard to tell from far away.

We're heading down there now, taking a dolmus (dole-moosh), a city van/bus. That will be its own adventure. I've done it once before, but now I labor under the notion that I ought to ask for things in Turkish to validate the time I've put in studying. I went over chapter 4 again at breakfast in my Teach Yourself Turkish book. I love it. It's just ridiculous that I have to leave in 4-5 days. 6 months??? I feel confident my Turkish would be strong if I stayed. I have thrown myself into it in a much more effective way than with Russian or Japanese. I am trying to overcome the "wait until you can say it perfectly before speaking" hangup. That's what has stymied my progress in the past. I keep preaching to students that mistakes are not necessarily to be avoided. On the contrary, that's how the brain learns. As such, they should be viewed as key opportunities for learning, for improving. Failure Avoidance is no way to go through life. How can you grow? Makes sense when I tell it to students. Now I'm trying to live in in practice. And it's working.

I hope we can get to the museum here. It's amazing. And a walk around the old city will do us good. We're off to a late start and it's going to hit 100 today, I think.

I'll upload a few pictures from Istanbul and from our flight over. Mom wants me to take more flattering pictures of her. I told her she should stop giving me so many instructions while I'm shooting. Ha.

And I'm finding that decelerating from our month's intense program is really hard for me. I wrote to Chris that it's funny: who else do we know who has trouble relaxing?? I'm so used to staying uberbusy, I feel unsettled if I'm not fully scheduled. Maybe that's what raki is for. (just kidding.)

This is a beautiful place. I need to let it wash over me and take the kinks out of my muscles and mind. Mom is able to. I will take a page out of her book, so to speak. And keep plugging with the Turkish!

Happy day, all.

pictures from 24-25 July Istanbul

A bit of Mom's journey thusfar. She talks to EVERYONE.

Sunday 26 July Istanbul

The Fulbright tour officially ended this morning with the departure of the main body of the group: 12 left for the States and 4 of us are staying on. Mom and I went out with the two Jims on Friday night. The farewell dinner was over by 12:30 and we were ready to hit the streets of Beyoglu. Mom has been a trooper--maybe jetlag is facilitating all this late-night action on her part. At any rate, she was pretty unstoppable, especially when it came to chatting up cute Turkish guys. And the Turks we've encountered thusfar have lived up to the billing of being some of the friendliest, most open people in the world. Great folks. And on Friday we went to a section of Beyoglu with a slightly different crowd, not as many people who spoke English, a little less urbane perhaps. It was great. Mostly men, but not exclusively. And we talked for hours and hours. We came back around 3:00, each of us grinning from ear to ear. Jim and I had had to delve deep and be creative to communicate in our pidgin Turkish, but we'd won friends for our efforts. Mom found Tarik, a blue-eyed Bosnia-Herzegovinian, totally charming and adorable. She tried to train everyone to look in the eyes as you clink glasses, then she wanted to ask questions about headscarves and Muslim-Turkish identity. Tough stuff for my limited Turkish, but we had fun.
Then the marathon blitz was on. Saturday was our last official day and Jim and I made the most of it. We took a long walk in the morning--a little over 2 hours along the sea walls of the old city. Thank goodness he has a strong sense of direction. And thank goodness for the obvious indicators of bridges and the water--my sense of direction is the adverse of my vocabulary (does that even make sense?) I'm not strong in the "where am I and how to I get to Point X" department. I try to see that as furthering the travel adventure, however. Glass half full. So Jim and I talked about a joint project proposal on the evolution of identity in Turkey. It's the seed of an idea, really. We'll have to let the whirling dust of experience settle in our brains for a while. Then I'll be able to sort through my time here, the learning that has occured on so many levels. But it's an exciting prospect.

Carlton and I hit the streets around noon, walked across the Galata Bridge to the Sultanahmet district. We seemed to hit every underground passage possible, not making the most efficient progress to our destination, but getting a good view of subterranean commerce. We walked through the Egyptian Bazaar, a.k.a. the spice market. I told Mom "no shopping!" because we'll do that next weekend. That can be a draining experience, and I didn't have the energy. We went to the Hippodrome, the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, the Cistern and the Cagadolugu (sp?) hamam. We dropped some serious cash, as only the Blue Mosque is free. It's an active mosque, but why anyone would want to worship there is beyond me. There are clueless visitors who disregard the clear postings about where to walk and what to do. There are women who don't cover themselves, who go into the men's section of worship. There are men and women who walk through the area for prayer, as folks are praying. I know this happens in many of the world's most beautiful and heavily visited places of worship, but still. I wonder why some tourists are so clueless and invasive. Mom was quite taken with the architecture, recalling the Moorish elements she'd seen at the AlHambra and other sites in Spain. She loved the Hagia Sophia and the cheerleaders in the relief panel on the bottom of the hippodrome's 7th c. BC Egyptian obelisk. Or maybe 12th c. BC. I get my centuries confused. The panel shows emperor Theodosius preparing to award a laurel wreath to the winner of the chariot races. Below his box sit the regular folks, who are entertained between races by musicians and young dancing/cheering girls. The first cheerleaders, immortalized in marble in the 3rd c. AD. Right on. Can't wait to show Kelli.
Unfortunately, the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum got short shrift from me, as my tank was on empty by then. It's housed in what used to be the palace of Ibrahim Pasha, one of the grand viziers under Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (16th c.) He met his demise when Roxalena, the wife if the sultan, had him murdered. Apparently building a palace for yourself (out of stone, no less, when secular buildings were constructed of wood) was too clear an indication a person's designs on the sultanate (made up word). Roxalena saw him as too grave a threat, so she had him bumped off. Interesting. We only toured part of the museum, enough to see gorgeous tile work and carpets. I loved the dioramas in the ethnographic section: daily life in a yurt, in a black tent or in a house during Ottoman times. Those are almost always my favorite parts of museums, the windows into domestic life of other eras and cultures.

We spent 10 TL (Turkish lira) each for the Cistern and museum, 20 each for the Hagia Sophia, 60 each for the hamam (way more than I expected)...so about 200 lira, or $130. And that was before dinner. Actually, dinner was not much, and it was delicious. Plus we had the unexpected entertainment of a cat jumping from a second story balcony onto an outdoor table below, scaring the bejeezus out of the young woman onto whose plate the intruder landed. There was much crashing of plates and hurried scraping of chairs as people reacted to the "landing". I laughed.

And now the hamam: Cagaloglu (2 soft g's, so it's pronounced jaah-loh-lo). 300 years old, on someone's 1000 Things to Do Before You Die list, written about in the NYTimes and several other major publications. Milking the publicity for everything it's worth. We went in, apparently through the side door. We only saw the more opulent front entrance as we were heading home. Red carpet, fancy fountain, etc. Oh well, next time. We plunked down our money for a #2 which included full body sloughing. I figured I'd weigh a good 3 pounds less after they'd scraped all the dirt and dead skin off my well-worn body. We went up to our changing rooms, got undressed, put on the hamam towel and plastic slippers, then went through the lounge area with its low tables and towel-wrapped post-bath women sipping tea, into the first of the heated rooms. Following tradition (of the Turks, the Muslims and the Romans) the bath is laid out in a way that facilitates a gradual warming of the body and softening of the skin. The first room is warm but not steamy. We stayed there amid the stacks of clean towls and bowl of soaps for a few minutes, enjoying the warm air and trying to figure out what to do next. The first time is like that: part of the adventure is learning the system. Then to the inner room of the hamam, where there is a low round marble table in the center and banks of ornate marble basins and a low marble bench to sit on. We sat and relaxed and sweated profusely, chatting a bit, and watching the various scrubdowns the attendants were giving to the customers. You sit for about 10-15 minutes until it's your turn and the attendant calls you over. She has you lie down on the marble table, and as you gaze up at the designs in the high ceilings (with wonderful recessed mini-skylights), she scrubs you down with a loofah-like hamam glove. That's where I lost my 3 pounds of ick and grit. Some women got massages (looked heavenly but I couldn't afford the extra 30 lira). Then the attendant rinses you off by one of the basins--they can be pretty marshall, those women, and woe to the person who complains that the rinsing water is too cold!--and give you a shampoo and a face rub. Nice. A luxury. Then Mom and I sat in the Hot Room, like a sauna, for a few minutes before coming out for a final rinse off and exit to the mid-temperature room in which we'd started. We let our bodies get used to the cooler air, then went to the lounge where we sipped hot mint tea and felt happy about life. Expensive, but wonderful. And Secil says if we go again, we should expect to pay about 35 lira. That I could handle. And it would be good to compare hamams. Lonely Planet says Cagaloglu is good because the women's section is as nice as the men's and that that is not always the case, but Secil didn't seem to agree. We'll see.

Meze, fish and raki for dinner, with wonderful conversation. Then Mom left at midnight, we dropped off Jim Pasha, Secil and her charming friend Osman, and Jim St. Louis and I hit the streets one last time to whoop it up in Beyoglu. I've been writing this entry forEVER, so I'll be brief: we had a great time. Up 'til 2:30-3:00, met some fantastic folks, spoke as much Turkish as I knew, probably invented a bit in the process, and danced in the streets until I thought I was going to fall over. The beer might've impacted that, but I'll leave that consideration to the category of Past Actions. The archives. We had a great time and it was a fitting end to our joint efforts at Cultural Research. It's not a bad thing that the rest of the crowd is gone. My liver will be grateful.

Mom and I got up to see everyone off, then went back to bed and slept til almost 2:00! I have been needing that for ages. Sheer and utter exhaustion, but in a good way. I think we might hit the Museum of Modern Art. And maybe try to take a bus or a trolley. That would be its own adventure. The bazaar is closed today and the museums are closed tomorrow. It's good to have a down day. Maybe we'll just wander around and drink tea in cafes. That's something!

Much love to all--and drop me a line!

23July Princes' Islands

There are 9 islands in the Sea of Marmara, that body of water with the Dardanelles at the bottom (south) and the Bosphorus at the top (north). Of the 5 or so inhabited ones, we visited the largest yesterday, aptly called Buyukada (bew-YEWK-ah-dah), which lies about 20 kms SE of the Istanbul. The ferry ride over was crowded, but the throngs of people heading out of the city for the day thinned with each stop. Ours was the last, and well worth the hour or so it took to get there. Secil (Seh-CHEEL, our program coordinator, and one of the most elegant and sophisticated women I've ever known) explained that many of Istanbul's fashionable and moneyed people have second homes on the island. She said to be on the lookout for the Beautiful People of Istanbul, and I laughed. Aren't they all?? The harbor where the ferry unloads is lined with cafes and the road leads up to a central clock and little square where the queue forms for horse drawn caleches to haul visitors up to the island's main draw: the Hagia Triada Monastery. Pilgrims (both the devout and the curious) climb--or more likely are borne by the old-fashioned caleches--to a large open square near the top of the island. From there you can purchase a charm (?) to make a wish. I remember those for health (which I got), children, love, marriage, work, but there were half a dozen others. So with charm in hand (mind was a little metal elephant and an inch of thin white satin ribbon on a used-to-be-gold safety pin) you climb the cobblestone street to the very top of the hill, about 680 feet above sea level. Writing that now, it doesn't seem like much at all. But in the noonday sun, it's a reminder that we're getting out of shape from all our Anatolian hikes. The legend says each pilgrim should start with a roll of thin string at the bottom of the hill and unwind it as he ascends (for the record, I almost wrote "she"...I hate that English makes you make a choice.) The point is to make it to the top without your string breaking. You visit the church, pray, make your thematically-appropriate wish, relevant of course to the charms you purchased. Then you bring your charm back down and when the wish comes true, you either throw the charm into the sea, give it to someone you love, or bury it. But how will I know if my "health" wish comes true? Hmm...

We had a(nother) amazing lunch at the cafe beside the monastery. Gorgeous view of the Marmara, so blue, so inviting. So not going swimming. I walked back down rather than ride the caleche. Much of the island is punctuated with the strong smell of HORSE, horse poop in particular. Ew. There were 1000s of tourists there by midafternoon, and the 3:15 ferry was well-timed for our departure. I got a bit too much sun on the way home, but it was worth it.

Mom arrived safely, I ran into her out on Istiklal. She was pretty easy to spot, walking at .004 miles an hour looking up in all directions. She says her head's on a swivel. We had a stroll, a coffee at the base of the Galata Tower, then a drink at our hotel's bar, the one with the magnificent view. Then Jim, Mom and I walked across the Galata Bridge, went into the huge and lovely New Mosque, then had a quickly but affably served dinner at Ali's favorite Kebab house, the Hamdi. My yoghurtli kebab was succulent...minced lamb, yoghurt and spices. Humminah. We walked back along the pedestrian stretch under the Galata Bridge, packed with fish restaurants doing very brisk business at 11:00. We had a beer (2?) in the streets of Beyoglu, then called it a night around 12:00. In fact, we just woke up a few minutes ago and have to head out for a university visit this morning. Our farewell dinner is tonight and that makes me sad. No more Ali and soon no more Secil. Bummer.

Rats. The time here is coming to a close. But at least Mom's and my chapter is beginning. That'll be fun.

Upload pics later. Ciao!

22 July Topkapi Palace

Topkapi (Top-kap-uh) Palace is one of Istanbul's crown jewels, low and expansive with several large courtyards around a few key buildings. It's gently domed, rising not nearly as high as some of the city's more massive mosques and palaces. Still, as home to the Ottoman sultans for almost 4 centuries (1460s-1839) it was built (and enlarged) to impress. The location is high on a hill, right next to where the Byzantine palace stood. Apparently the 4 Seasons hotel wanted to expand its current facilities and bought the land adjacent to Topkapi, only to find during excavation that they'd hit the Byzantine palace. Ali told us that the hotel project will go ahead anyway; they'll just have a glass floor so guests can see the ruins as they move about the lobby. A bit bizarre, but if you're into top dollar novelty, go for it.
My shots of Topkapi cannot do it justice. Again, and a bit sheepishly, I recommend that you check out pictures of the place online. You definitely want to see the jewels from the treasury--Liv and Ruby would have loved a headpieces that had a huge emerald and a huge ruby surrounded by dripping diamonds, it was very Cher in Vegas, but the real thing. My favorite building was the library, which as my friend Jim says, shows that the structure was designed with reading in mind. It has 4 low couches (I didn't see any proper chairs all day) that recede into wall spaces, huge windows for ventilation (with elaborate inlayed shutters), and recessed bookshelves that blend into the tiled walls. Gorgeous. Topkapi has hundreds of thousands of Iznik tiles, and they're so beautiful, so cool and inviting, that if I lived in a warmed climate I would want much of my house surfaced in them. But Iznik tiles are several hundred dollars apiece, if you buy the real thing. Sigh.

We had one of our best lunches yet at the palace overlooking the water. Then down the lane to the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, built in part with the fine money Heinrich Schliemann had to pay for smuggling out what he thought was Priam's treasure from Troy. Creep. At least the Turks got a headstart on their fine museum from that debacle. The highlights for me were the sarcophagus built supposedly for Alexander the Great. It was found in Sidon, in modern-day Lebanon. The workmanship on it suggests that the stone is soft, like cheese or butter. The degree of detail is astounding: you can see the muscles in the faces of the horses as they strain to their riders' movements. You can see the tension in the pointing fingers of the combatants. It's amazing. There were pieces from Xanthos, from Pergamom, and from other places we've visited. Plus the cuneiform examples were as good as the ones in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. To the average American blog-reader, a museum name like that might be like taking a Xanax (sp?) But to the contrary, it's really interesting to see a love poem in 13th c. BC cuneiform, or a kid's homework tablet. I cracked up. I will upload pics when I get the chance.

The tile museum could be my next residence. All those deep blue wall spaces made me feel calm and warm. There's something about that color that is really soothing.

Jim and I ventured out again last night: corba (chor-ba: soup) for dinner and beer for research. But we didn't end up talking to anyone but ourselves. Poor Jim. He's had to listen to the same half-dozen Wendy stories 11 times each. What a patient guy.

Carlton arrives today and then the real fun begins! We're off to the Prince Islands in 30 minutes. Looking back over this post, I'm wondering how much of this I said yesterday. That's the problem with getting only 5 hours of sleep day after day. I am becoming a jello brain. Please forgive me if I repeat myself...that seems to be part of the subtext of this trip.

Iyi gunlar! (ee-ee gewn-LAR: have a good day!)

walk through Fatih, Istanbul neighborhood, 21 July