Why Turkey

last night

2009-08-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!
Sorry for my delay in posting the last update. I'm in America now, and have been for a little over a week. However, the pictures from my last night are way too good to go unposted, so for your viewing pleasure, here they are. One note: apparently it's a Turkish custom that, when your guests leave at night, you stay up with them until they leave. As our flight left at 6am, we stayed at the house until 4am- and the whole neighborhood with us. It was a great night.

Here's the cookout with just our family (that's my host mom Fatma on the right)

This is my host-dad Kadir ingeniously lighting his cigarette with a coal from the grill

This is Maggie (the girl in the program who was also in my house) and I with Seda, a really nice Turkish girl who lived just a few houses down.

Me with two of my amcas ('amca' means uncle in Turkish and is what I called most of the male neighbors), Ali Amca on the left (with raki!!) and Kazim Amca on the right

Me with all the amcas! Ali, Habip, Kadir, and Kazim

At one point, pretty late and after a LOT of raki, Habip Amca actually sat us down to pray. But everyone in the neighborhood was cracking up (including me) so I'm pretty sure it was a joke; Habip is basically the clown of the street.

Seynaz Teyze is lovin it

Seynaz Teyze, about a half hour before we left, went into the kitchen to make us some delicious cheesy Turkish item for our departure.
It was actually really hard to leave, but it is so good to be back. Thanks to everyone who kept up with the blog, I really appreciate it. Until next summer (back in Turkey hopefully!),
Clayton

Final Trip, 4 Days Left!!

2009-08-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

Merhaba all!
Well, I've got 4 days left, and as little energy as always for this blog. Sorry I've done such a bad job with updates. Today, as usual, is mostly pictures and captions. But I'll be seeing most of you in less than a week so we can do the stories in person in AMERICA.
We got back from our last trip, to Amasra and Safranbolu, yesterday. Amasra is a small town on the Black Sea coast about 5 hours from Ankara and Safranbolu is a small Ottoman town on the way back. Before we got to Amasra we stopped in Cakraz, an even small beach town down the coast to go to the beach. Here's a hilarious picture of us at lunch, me and our teacher Nese:

After lunch, we explored for a bit and then swam. It was pretty cold and rough, but I've now swam in all of Turkey's seas, Black, Aegean, and the Mediterranean! Pretty cool setting too:

ARTSY PIC:
After Cakraz, we headed toward Amasra. Here's a view of the town from above:

It is a beautiful little town, with really interesting architecture:

The house on the right is the one we stayed in, so beautiful:

And the view from the backyard:

And another direction:

Here's the restaurant where we had dinner. It's pretty usual for restaurants in touristy areas to have various flags out front, but I've never seen the Confederacy:

This is the light up portrait of Ataturk that is on the Roman/Byzantine castle that overlooks the city:

This place is so beautiful:

After an entirely too short stay in Amasra, we headed the next day to Safranbolu. Here's the view of the famous old houses:

After the beautiful Black Sea, it was a little bit of a let down; not to much to see, aside from some really cool Ottoman mosques (but I'm really the only one into that kind of stuff hahaha):

And we got back last night. Bonus picture of the mosque by my house and the sun over Batikent:

So it's Wednesday night now. We have class tomorrow, final exam Friday morning, final party Friday night, and leave very early (flight at 6am) Sunday morning. I land in DC at 2pm Sunday, and hopefully will be in NC a few hours after. Doubt I'll post again, so to all those who have read, thanks for checking up on me, I apologize for not writing better or posting more often, and I truly cannot wait to see you. Love and miss you all, and I'll see you so soon!!
Clayton

Hittites and the Mediterranean: 2 Weeks Left!

2009-08-03T08:13:00.000-07:00

Herkese Merhaba!
Hello all! And sorry it's been so long since my last post. In that time we've had two trips, so that's what the pictures I'm posting are from.
The first was a day trip to Hatusa (the s has a thing under it, so it's pronounced 'sh'), the capital of the Hittite Empire. The Hittites were one of the world's first empires, contemporaneous with the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Mycenaeans, existing from about 1600-1200 BC. Their civilization is not nearly well known as that of their neighbors, and even today little is known about the Hittites, a fact that becomes abundantly clear when you visit their capital. Very little survives, and these few physical remains (together with the thousands of clay tablets with Hittite cuneiform) are used by historians to describe an entire civilization. Still, it's pretty cool to see such old stuff, especially the outdoor rock carvings of Hittite gods:

Again though, not that interesting. It was a good day, but a day (including the four hour trip from Ankara) is definitely enough to see Hatusa.
Our next trip, however, was one of our most highly anticipated ones: to Alanya, on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. Get ready for a dramatic change of scenery:

This place is beautiful:

And this is Turkey, so of course mixed with the beautiful landscape is history, this time in the form of the 13th century Seljuk castle:

Our first day (we took the night bus, arriving at about 7 in the morning), we went scuba diving. Yeah, scuba diving. My first time, too. It was amazing. Here's where we were:

In a little cove at the base of the hill the castle sits atop. Just beautiful. Not too much to see in terms of fish, and no coral, but it was such a great experience; I really would love to do it again. Plus we got to hang out on a boat all day,

Turks are crazy. I did this same jump though! Not like that, but from that height, maybe 15 feet above the water? Sans glasse of course, so it was a big deal for me! And I loved it.
The next day, we had another outdoor adventure, this time to a nearby river for rafting. Not exactly whitewater, but there were some rough patches. Aside from the other rafts who kept splashing us (especially the Iranians; don't think it was political, they're just obnoxious), it was a great trip.
Our last day (yeah, 3 full days!) was free, so I went with a couple people to visit the castle before hitting the beach. On our way there we got a glimpse of just how touristy Alanya is. There is basically no Turkish here; everything's in English, Russian, or German, and while I can't speak for the latter 2, the English is HILARIOUS:

Probably. Who knows?
I mean I just don't even know what this is saying/asking.
But most of all was this little gem:

A Russian tourist passed out drunk at 11AM, after what looks like a beer and a half. Only the finest come to Alanya. This place is just touristy beyond belief.
The castle was really amazing though, with breathtaking views; it sits on a peninsula, dividing the city in two, so the views are really cool in both directions:

Hey, it's me!

After a few hours of exploring, plus lunch, we made our way down to the beach at the base of the castle:

We had a great time swimming in the water, which was actually a little too warm. Still, absolutely beautiful. It was such a great vacation; we really needed it.
When I got back on Sunday morning though, after a 4 hour nap, it was back to work, this time picking the family's apricot tree. Here's half of our harvest. My host mom's on the left, and a neighbor's on the right:

My host dad playing backgammon (tavla in Turkish) with a neighbor; typical Sunday afternoon.
So it's Tuesday now, August 4, and we just had our final performance, a bunch of Turkish songs and dances that we performed at the school for our host families. Of course, a bunch of my neighbors came as well. The neighborly bonds here in Turkey are really incredible, and sometime I really wish we had in America. The street really is a tightknit group. Anyways, tonight was great, and I absolutely love traditional Turkish songs (especially turkus, old Turkish songs about life and love and death and stuff, usually funny and always fast and catchy) and dance. If you have time, search 'Kolbasti' on youtube; I somehow learned how to do it today, and performed it with a couple other people. Hopefully I can post video somehow in the coming days; if not, in America, where, coincidentally, I will be in 12 days! Less than 2 weeks. At this point, I'm pretty ready to come back, but I know that I'm going to miss the program people and especially my host family so much, and, even more, I'm scared of losing all the Turkish I've learned this summer. But mostly I can't wait to see all of you again. Love and miss you all, and I'll talk to you so soon!
Clayton

Birthday Party!

2009-07-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

Merhaba all!
First of all, thank you so much for all the birthday messages, it really means a lot; thanks for making me feel not 6000 miles away from home.
And I'm happy to report it was a GREAT birthday, completely exceeded all my expectations. The best part of course was the party my family hosted at our house. It was such a great night- everyone in the program, two of our teachers, and some other students' host families came. I'll just post the pictures because I think they speak for themselves. Enjoy!
First, this is my host mom Fatma getting things ready in the kitchen. She said this is the picture she liked best, even though she looks really serious in all of them for some reason; she's really not:

The garden, pre-party, with our teacher Nur in the foreground

Candles!
yeah, they wrote "Day Clayton" on the cake. ?????

Cutting the cake was a very big deal.

The intermediate class!

Hepimiz! With host mom and dad on the left.

Hope you all are doing well, and I can't wait to see you in less than 4 weeks!

ISTANBUL

2009-07-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

Merhaba all!
Unfortunately this post won't be nearly as long as it should be; I'm just a little too busy now to write as long of a post as Istanbul deserves. I'm hanging out with the fam, watching Turkish soap operas, and doing homework due tomorrow, so this will mostly be pictures accompanied by stories. Overall though, as you can imagine, our three days in Istanbul were incredible, especially our last day, a free day to wander around the city. I really do miss it now, and this weekend only strengthened my determination to come back to Istanbul soon, hopefully to work and, at least for a time, live.
We arrived early, at about 7, having taken the overnight train from Ankara (about a 7-8 hour trip), and immediately took the ferry over to Europe:

Gunaydin, Istanbul! As tired as I was, it felt so nice to be back. The rest of the morning, we did the touristy Sultanahmet things. With the execption of Aya Sofya (Hagia Sophia- yeah, I use the Turkish spelling now), nothing was really that special. Aya Sofya is truly one of the great buildings of the world, and I can't imagine ever coming to this city without stopping by to wander through for a few hours. Words and pictures truly can't express how incredible it is:

The miraculous dome (it's still not really known how it was built, in the 6th century), still somewhat obscured by scaffolding, as it was last summer. So many of the city's sites (including Sulemaniye Camii, still closed) are under renovation in preparation for the city's being honored ast the European Capital of Culture for 2010. Sounds vague and meaningless, but it is economically (ie tourism), politically (EU?), and socially significant; hopefully I'll be back next summer to see the city in its...cultural capitally magnificence.

After lunch, I took the ferry over to Asia to see my friend Sena, a student at Bogazici University who studied at UNC in the fall of '08. We had a great time, and she showed me some neighborhoods in Asia I hadn't seen before. The Asian side, despite its almost utter lack of historical sites, really is beautiful and the parts on the water are such nice residential areas. I was exhausted returning to Europe, so after a quick dinner I went to bed.
The next day, we started with a tour of Dolmabahce Palace, the extravagant Ottoman palace built in European Baroque style in the mid 19th century (1843-1856). Though the claim that this palace was what bankrupted the empire is incorrect, its luxuriant excesses certainly didn't help the faltering empire's finances. It's really beautiful and impressive from the outside, especially its incredible position right on the Bosphorus, but if you've ever seen a European palace, or even a really nice hotel lobby, it's not that amazing.

View from the balcony towards the old city; minarets of Sultanahmet are visible on the horizon.
Still, Dolmabahce was a good time. Mostly, I was looking forward to our Bosphorus tour, something we kept meaning to do last summer before we ultimately ran out of time. The trip itself was really fun, but the best part was the end: delicious fish lunch and then a quick hike up to a Byzantine castle to see the view of the Black Sea (first time!). The view of where the Bosphorus opens up into the Black Sea was an incredible site:

Looking south, back toward Istanbul.

God it was so nice up there.
The next day was the best day, our free time to explore the city. I had a bunch of items on my agenda, and my friend Jon tagged along to see my favorite parts of the city. Our first stop was to the doner stand that we used to go to every day last summer. The donercis couldn't believe it when they saw me walking up and were even more surprised when I was able to say more than 'Hey how are you!' in Turkish. It was pretty great. Here's Tuncay and I:

Plus the place is huge now! There's an upstairs dining room and they now have pilav (!!!), a outside drink cooler, fresh ayran, and new awnings. Plus a name; I don't think it was called Eryilmaz Kardesler (Brothers) last summer. I'm really happy for them and I'm pretty sure that our continuous business last summer helped more than a little with their little expansion project. Look how awesome it is now:Here's Jon, who spent the better part of the day trying to steal all my Turkish friends, with Tuncay:After our doner stop, we had our failed expedition to Sulemaniye, after which we swung by Kapalicarsi (the Grand Bazaar) on our way to Yeni Camii. Walking through, I decided to stop by Adnan & Hasan's carpet store, the store we visited last summer because Hasan is good friends with Prof. Shields. I was a little unsure of myself, but I'm so glad we stopped by- Hasan is such a great host (gave us tea of course) and told us really interesting stories from his 30-odd years in the Grand Bazaar, including the times when Kofi Annan and Hilary Clinton visited his shop. After a quick stop in the tiny but beautiful Ottoman mosque of Rustempasa, we finally got to Yeni Camii, my favorite mosque in the city:

I could spend all day in this place:

And here's the view from Eminonu (Yeni Camii's neighborhood) across the Golden Horn to Galata:After Eminonu, we wandered around the tip of the city (Seraglio Point, as it's still orientalistically known I think). Somehow last year we never made it to this part of the old city, even though its about a 20 minute walk from Galata. It's a beautiful setting, and tons of people gather to sit on the rocks or even swim in the water (not really something I'd want to try without a lot of preparation). It was a really nice find:

This is looking north, up the Bosphorus (with Asia on the right and Europe on the left) with Bogazici Bridge prominent in the center.

Finally we wandered back through Sultanahmet, getting a rare view of Aya Sofya from behind:

And at last made our way back through Galata to the hotel:

After a quick doner dinner on Istiklal, we walked around a bit to enjoy our last hours on the city. We found a beautiful little used books and old maps store right on Istiklal (can't believe I never noticed it last year). Most of the stuff was in Turkish, including the old maps, which I loved. I ended up getting an Ottoman world map from 1895- a copy, obviously, but still really cool looking. In talking with the store owner, I also managed to get a discount- he couldn't believe I knew about the Second Balkan War (1913, duh, who doesn't?!) and when I went to pay for the map and some old postcards, gave me about 25% off- a "tarihci indirmi," he told me- historian's discount.
Again, it was a great trip, and returning to Ankara was a little hard, especially because this week is going to be pretty grueling: class 6 hours a day every day, and we don't leave for the Mediterranean until next weekend. It's nice to be back with my host family though, and back to delicious Turkish home cooking. Love and miss you all so much, and I can't wait to see you in less than 4 weeks!

Week 3: Kapadokya and AK Party

2009-07-12T01:15:00.000-07:00

Merhaba all!
Hope you're all doing well.
So the last time I posted, we were getting ready to go to Kapadokya; over a week ago! Still can't believe I've only been here for three weeks.
Kapadokya was amazing, as it always is. I would post all the pictures I took, but, in all honesty, they're pretty much the same as the ones I took last summer, especially the ones in the rock churches. If you want to see them (WHICH YOU SHOULD) look at the entry from last summer; this is the same blog after all.
But we did go to a few more places in Kapadokya than last summer; last year we pretty much stayed in Uchisar, but we did a fair ammount of driving around the entire region this year (excepting the Ilhara Valley). The views in this place are just amazing:

This is the view of Uchisar from another town; at the foot of that mountain (into which a honeycomb of houses and chambers is carved) is where we stayed last summer.

View into Kapadokya from Uchisar.

William, striking a particularly heroic pose and surveying Kapadokya.
So Kapadokya was great, but no major surprises. Except I got sick again- gonna blame the hotel's open buffet for that little gastrointestinal episode. When we got back to Ankara on July 4, I was feeling horrible, and went to bed almost immediately. I was still not feeling well on Sunday, but my family had a cookout:

That's my host dad Kadir, grilling out. Even though I was feeling bad, and knew that it would be a bad idea to eat anything except bread and rice (let alone some barbecue), I couldn't help it. I at a TON of lentil soup, grilled mushrooms, borek, and kebabs. The best part? I felt fantastic the next day, and have been fine ever since. Also, last Sunday I met the family's new kitten. Everyone, this is Ayıcık (EYE-uh-juk), which means 'little bear' in Turkish:

Also an incredible sunset that night. I just can't help myself! When I took a picture of this one, this woman walking by yelled 'What are you doing!' are me. I guess she thought I was CIA or something. Definitely worth it though:

The rest of the week was good: just class every day so not too much to report. On Friday though we had a surprise trip to the headquarters of the AK Party, the political party that has been in power here since 2002:
So pretty much every Turk I've ever met is terrified of this party and thinks that it is a crypto-Islamist party that aims to turn Turkey into Iran. My family in particular HATES the Turkish president (Abdullah Gül) and Prime Minister (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), both of whose wives wear the traditional Islamic headscarve. The headscarve, as you might know, is one of the major flashpoints in Turkish politics. The parliament (controlled by AKP, which won about 47% of the vote in 2007 elections and has a huge majority in parliament) passed a law allowing the wearing of headscarves in universities in 2008, a law that was quickly annulled by the staunchly secular Constitutional Court. In fact, in 2008, the country's top prosecutor brought a case to the court accusing AKP of anti-secular activities and asking that the party be banned and that 70 of its top leaders (including Erdoğan and Gül) be banned from politics for five years. It was, as you might imagine, a political storm that both the party and Turkey weathered. This episode is an example of the considerable, thought now reduced, power of Turkey's secular establishment, the same forces that brought about three coups in the past 50 years.
Because my interaction with Turks is generally limited to those who speak English, live in America, and/or are fairly affluent, I've only met people who tell me really scary things about AKP. After Friday though, I'm not really scared. True, AKP is conservative, and some of its members have histories of participation in Islamic parties, but the party, as it stands now, is fairly moderate, especially compared to how it is usually portrayed in the West. Additionally, AKP is staunchly in favor of Turkey's membership in the EU (a fact which alone does much to combat 'AKP is secretely Islamist' rumors) and has done more than any other party in Turkey's history to make this dream a reality. Also, the party has stabilized the economy and improved the financial prospects of many Turks. Finally, the party has brought many ordinary, previously marginalized, Turks into the political process; in fact, many AKP leaders point to this as the reason that secular elites ('Istanbullus who speak perfect English and have never been east of Ankara' as someone put it) despise AKP so much. We talked to the party's head foreign relations expert, an extremely enlightening conversation. Of course, when I talked to my host mom about it that night, she said 'Well yeah, he's a politician. AKP wears a mask; it has two faces," and proceeded to give me the same talk I've heard from many Turks in the neighborhood. Maybe I'm just naive, but the visit really allayed my concerns about the threat AKP poses to Turkish secularism. Plus they gave us lunch, served on AKP china:

After visiting AKP, we went to the parliament, a frankly unremarkable building, though the grounds of the mosque in the parliament complex were really nice:

The next day, Saturday (yesterday) we went on our trekking expedition, basically a 6 hour hike around a park an hour outside Ankara. Though it doesn't compare to most national parks in the US I've been to, it was a really nice hike and had some really beautiful views. Plus it was nice to be in the woods:

That's about it. Right now I'm drinking Turkish coffee, watching my host dad and the neighbor play tavla (backgammon) lightening fast; I can barely see the pieces. Also, I need to go pick the family's cherry tree; they're making cherry preserves later this week. The program's going to Istanbul Wednesday (!!!!!), so probably no updates for a while. But you're used to that. Love and miss you all!

Second week

2009-07-01T11:07:00.000-07:00

Merhaba!
(Turkish for hello, for those of you who have not taken the initiative to start learning the necessary Turkish with which to welcome me back to the US). Hope you all are doing well and not suffering too much because of my failure to post for the past week. Right now I'm sitting outside with my host mom and sister...they invited me outside, and I found them waiting with a few of the neighbors who I haven't met before, so hopefully I'll be able to write this in the midst of this lil impromptu block party.
So it's been a week, and I've now been here for...10 days, I think. I have to admit, before I left the States I was really worried about being consumed by homesickness the whole time I was in Turkey. And while I think about home a decent amount, and miss you all of course, I'm happy to report that I'm really loving it here and this experience has already surpassed many of my expectations.
The family is still great, and I can't imagine any kind of intensive language experience that wouldn't include a homestay; it's really invaluable. Because the dad and son are gone a lot (work for the former, still don't know about the latter), most of my contact is with the mom and daughter. The mom speaks NO English, but the daughter speaks a decent amount. Definitely able to communicate with both, which is nice. There are good days and bad days though; sometimes I'm conversing pretty well with them and other days I'm mostly nodding and smiling
(I'm talking with the neighborhood ladies right now about my favorite Turkish foods, this is AWESOME). Quick note about the Turkish language, since most of you, understandably, have a lot of questions about it. First, Turkish is not Indo-European, so it's not related to Greek or Persian or any of the other geographically close languages. It's also not related to Arabic, which is a Semitic language. Instead, as part of the Turkic language family, it's related to Central Asian languages like Uzbek, Kazakh, and Uyghur. It has a lot of vocabulary from Arabic and Persian (Farsi), but isn't related in any other way. It's a pretty simple language, very logical and ordered. It's agglutinative, which means that eveyrhting is done by suffixes. For example, ev is 'house'; evim is 'my house'; evimde is 'at my house'; and evimdeyim is 'I'm at my house'; evimdeydim is 'I was at my house'; you can pretty much go on all day, all in one word. I don't really know how to describe how it sounds; probably not pretty, in the sense that most people think French is. If you want to know how it sounds, videos on Youtube is probably the best way to go (Youtube, by the way, is actually blocked in Turkey; the government banned it a couple years ago after videos insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk were posted). Oh one more grammar note: Turkish has 5 main verb tenses; they have the normals ones (present continuous, future, etc.), plus one called the 'reported past tense.' Basically, it's an entire verb tense that describes events that the speaker did not personally witness. It's usually translated in English as 'apparently' or something like that (Clayton yazmis- Apparently Clayton wrote), but it's so confusing as to when to use it. Still, it's a really interesting part of the language and society. I keep trying to use it and my family usually laughs.
That's probably enough linguistics for now. Now it's time for PICTURES. This kind of sums up the past week, which has been mostly class, plus an Ankara tour and a terrace party. Enjoy!
First here's some of the sunsets. They really are incredible here:

And awesome storms too. It stormed almost every afternoon last week:

The highlight of our Ankara trip last Thursday was Anitkabir, Ataturk's mausoleum. Ataturk, of course, was the founder of the Turkish Republic. He is universally revered in Turkey, and is a constant presence (statues everywhere, his face is on every coin and banknote, there's a picture of him in almost every home and business, etc.). It's easy to dismiss the extent to which he is revered as a 'cult' and a government sponsored one at that. But while the government surely plays a role in propogating Ataturk as a, perhaps the, symbol of secularism and the Turkish Republic, the very real accomplishments of Ataturk himself merit the respect and reverence he is accorded. From the wreckage of the Ottoman state after the First World War, it really was the sheer force of Ataturk's personality which forged a Turkish identity, defeated the various European forces seeking to seize parts of Anatolia (particularly the Greeks, against whom the Turks waged what is perhaps one of the world's most unique conflicts- two countries that won independence, at different times, from each other), and, most importantly, put the Republic on path to become a Western, modern nation. It's been a rocky road, but the transformation from 1923 (a rural, uneducated, isolated country) to the present is remarkable and due in no small part to Ataturk. His mausoleum is equally impressive:

This is a good example of the kind of rhetoric use to talk about Ataturk; it can seem over the top, I know, but he really was an incredible figure:

Oh and here's out teacher, Nese!! Nese is the best, an indomitable little Turkish woman who is such a great language teacher and an even better person. That's her in the front of our little bus (in the safari jacket???):

We had a great little party on the terrace of our school last Friday and went to a bar after; we called it a night pretty early, but it was a great time. Here's the club, empty and kind of creepy:

And here's some of the group:

We were planning on going to the Citadel, an ancient castle that sits on a hill overlooking the whole city, but a storm came so we went back yesterday. The views are just breathtaking, and the citadel district is full of interesting old houses:

Finally, Jon (a friend in the program) and I went to Kocatepe today after class, to get bathing suits (apparently our hotel tomorrow has a pool!). Kocatepe is famous for the huge mosque built between 1967 and 1987 in classical Ottoman style; it's one of the biggest mosques in the world and can be seen from almost everywhere in dowtown Ankara. Also, there's a mall under the mosque, so that's normal. It's really really impressive:

Well I've been writing this over the course of like 2 hours, interspersed with conversation with the neighbors (so far we've talked about Michael Jackson, politics, the economic crisis, my favorite foods, if my mom's a good cook, and how many kids I want to have), so I'm bout to call it quits. We head to Kapadokya tomorrow for 3 days, so expect some GREAT pics on Sunday or so; I won't have my computer until then. Love and miss you all, and I'll talk to you soon!

Call to Prayer

2009-06-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
It took me about an hour to load this; hopefully you'll be able to watch. It's from this evening, after dinner, of the view from the neighborhood across Batikent with the call to prayer in the background. Hopefully you can hear it.

PS- when I asked for people to email me yesterday, I forgot to put my adress!! It's cbthomas@email.unc.edu and I really would love to hear from you. Hope you're all doing well back in the states, I miss you all, and I'll talk to you soon!

Ankara!

2009-06-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
Well, I'm back. In Turkey that is. If you read any of the blog last summer, I guess it shouldn't come as much of surprise; I'm kind of into this country. But this summer is much different from last year and I'll try briefly to explain what I'm doing in Ankara for the next eight weeks.
I'm here on a Critical Languages Scholarship, or CLS, a program run by the State Department. Basically, they oversee intensive language institutes in a number of countries, teaching languages that no one knows that they need people to know. There are currently 7 programs: Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Indic (Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu), Turkic (Turkish and Azeri), and Persian (in Tajikistan) (not enough info for you? FINE: https://clscholarship.org/home.php). There are 5 locations in Turkey: Izmir, Alanya, Istanbul (one at Yildiz University and one at Bogazici University), and Ankara. I'm in the last, obviously, and I'm here for 8 weeks, taking intensive language classes 5 days a week and going on various trips on the weekends.
Before we came to Ankara, the whole Turkey group (52 of us) was in Washington for a 2-day long pre-departure session. It's a pretty diverse group; about half undergrads, half Master's students and PhDs. Not too many rising Juniors. 2, in fact, and we're both in Ankara. On Friday, we flew to Ankara, the Ankara group (there are 12 of us) separating from the rest in Munich. Here's some views of the city coming in:

The first shows the city proper, I think; the second shows a kind of typical suburb, with lots of high-rise apartments centered around modernish, mass-produced mosques (McMosques?). Anyways, if you can't tell, Ankara is a HUGE city, with a population of about 5 million. It's the capital of Turkey, and has been so since 1923, when Ataturk (if you want to know about him, read my old posts) made it the capital to move the new Turkish Republic closer to its Anatolian roots and further from the imperial excesses of Istanbul. In 1927, it had a population of 35,000. Basically, this place has sprung up overnight, and there is very little history here, a big departure from life in Istanbul. Ankara is pretty dry and hot (you can probably tell?) and mountainous. I think a good way of conceptualizing Ankara is by comparing it to Washington, DC. Like DC, Ankara was a small town chosen to be a national capital chosen for political reasons; they have roughly similiar populations; and culture is dominated by government and the civil service. Istanbul, in this analogy, is New York: huge coastal metropolises that attract millions of visitors and have vibrant cultures. But enough about the city itself; I've only been in it one day.
The best part of the Ankara CLS program is that it's the only one in Turkey with homestays. I'm staying with a family in Batikent, a suburb about 10 miles west of the city (for some really interesting information on Batikent, which evidently is the world's largest coop-based mass housing project, go here: http://www.unesco.org/most/easteur1.htm- thanks Sarah!). I wish I could post pictures of my family, but it seems to early to be creepily asking them to pose for pictures. Soon though, I promise. For now, here's the deal:
-mom, Fatma, stay-at-home-mom
-dad, Kadir, "social service" worker?? (I think that's what he said)
-son, Orun, 25; unemployed?
-daughter, Yasemin, 18, just graduated from high school
They're really nice, but, I have to admit, not quite as overwhelmingly hospitable as I was anticipating. I think our Bursa trip last summer may have spoiled me. I really like them though, and, though the dad and sister speak a fair amount of English, I think my Turkish is better already. For example, the first day, I wasn't able to talk to the mom at all, but after dinner tonight, we had a pretty fair conversation, without her 'dictionaries' as she calls Kadir and Yasemin. Overall, it's a great set-up, and I'm really enjoying it here. I love the neighborhood too. Here are some pics:

The mosque next door that wakes me up at 5am every day.

Looking away from the city; this is alllllllll Batikent.

Just because its too early to take creepy pics of my host family doesn't mean it's too early to creep on the neighbors!! This is from my bedroom window looking into the next yard. Basically, these people sit outside all day long eating, drinking, playing cards (they play CONSTANTLY), telling jokes, and yelling at each other and their other neighbors. I love them.

Our street.

This is the house! We've eaten all our meals at a little plastic table that they put in front of the door, at the end of the walk that you see (the gate is right on the street); I don't think it was out when I took this. Actually yeah it is, you can barely see it on the left there. The weather's been beautiful the whole time, with really gorgeous sunsets every night.

Kitchen
My room! Small, as you can tell, but it's cozy; I really like it. I'm upstairs, and they have a basement as well, so it's a pretty big house by Turkish city standards.

I'm not sure how often I'll be updating the blog; it's not going to be like last summer where every single day was a completely new experience filled with so many great adventures and stories. Like I said I have class every day, usually for about 5 or 6 hours. The weekend trips should yield some good stories and pictures, so look out for those at least. If you are wondering about anything (my living situation, the family, Ankara, the Turkish language, etc.), PLEASE send an email; I can't tell you how much I enjoy getting them, even if I don't respond immediately. Hope all is well back home, and I love and miss you all!
Clayton

Last Days and Homecoming

2008-07-12T05:58:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
I'm writing from my living room in North Carolina; Edward and I got back to the US about 4 days ago. It's a little strange to have to reflect on our last days from America, but I feel obligated to finish what I started almost 2 months ago.
So Sunday was our last full day in Istanbul as a group. Being us though, we still requested a full agenda. We started at the Yerebatan Cistern, an incredible early Byzantine site a stone's throw away from Hagia Sophia. There's not much water in it today (only about a foot), but there's a forest of columns and a bunch of fish, which is bizarre:

The red lighting and classical music in the background (for some reason Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto was playing) heightens the surreal atmosphere. In the very back of the cistern are the two famous Medusa heads, monumental column bases that no one has been able to sufficiently explain:

We emerged from underground to catch a boat for our tour up the Bosporus. Because of time, we didn't go all the way up, but were able to see all the sites up until Rumeli Hisari, the fortress built by Fatih Sultan Mehmed II in 1452 before taking the city:

No shortage of great picture opportunities on this trip; one of my favorites was sailing under the huge Bosporus Bridge:

Also, the view of Ortokoy Camii and the bridge:

We got back to our flats in the afternoon to get ready for our final dinner together. William and Sarah took us to a beautiful restaurant right on the Sea of Marmara. Here's the group, with the view:

We had such a good time, eating the (huge amounts of) delicious food and reminiscing. Even Hande, our Turkish teacher, showed up!

The very next day, starting at 2am (!) our group began to drift back to the United States. For those of us left on Monday, it was a day to get a little more sleep, work a little on our assignments, and take one final walk through the city that had been our home for 5 of the last 7 weeks. To use a completely original word, it was quite bittersweet. We payed a visit to our donercis (the guys who operate the doner stand/restaurant where we got about 25% of our meals), and got some pictures:

David with Scowly and Smiley (what we called them before we learned their names, Olcay and Tuncay). The next day, before Edward and I left for the airport, we went to say goodbye. Though we made clear we were in somewhat of a rush, Tuncay told us to sit down, and ran off. When he came back, he had a Fenerbahce (one of Istanbul's 3 club football teams) banner which he proceeded to wrap around my shoulders. It was an appropriately Turkish ending to our trip. A new friend (who spoke no English!) sent me off with an obviously meaningful gift; I think it was his, because it doesn't really look brand new. We got their email address, so we'll be able to send them the pictures and check up on the doner business.
Edward and I's journey back to the US was, barring a slight crisis in Ataturk International Airport, fairly uneventful. When we arrived at the airport, our flight to London, scheduled for 2, had been moved back to 5:30, ruling out any chance of our making the connection to Washington. Through some finagling I still don't understand, we were put on another set of flights (Istanbul-NYC, NYC-Washington), and ended up arriving at the same time at Dulles.
The past few days have been incredible, and I've loved every minute of being home. Seeing family, friends, and Peaches (who is not happy about all the cats she's seen on the blog) has been great. I wouldn't say I miss the city yet; I've only been home for 4 busy days. I know that I will though, which only makes me more excited for my inevitable trip back. In case you haven't gathered, I kind of had a good time in Turkey, and my considerable pre-trip interest in the country has been immeasurably widened and deepened. The trip hasn't really given me more insight into whether I want to pursue academia or foreign service, but I know that in either of these fields, I want to specialize in Turkey.
So I guess that's it; the blog has finally come to an end. I thank each and every one of you for following it, even casually; I can't tell you how happy it made (and still makes) me every time someone mentioned reading it. I hope that I've been able to explain 'why Turkey' a little more clearly. It would be futile for me to succinctly name the reasons, as I tried to do before in my inaugural post; instead, I'll let the blog stand in its entirety as a testament to what is surely one of the most fascinating and engrossing countries on Earth. I'd also like to thank Professor Shields and William for their incredible leadership on the trip; there's no way we could've learned as much, or had as much fun, without them. And before I overstay my welcome, I want to thank the 9 other UNC students, my new dear friends; I had such an incredible time with all of you, and I cannot wait to hang out with y'all in Chapel Hill.
Until "Why Turkey- Round 2!", that's it!
Clayton

Update- Last Week in Istanbul

2008-07-05T22:41:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
Sorry for the lack of updates the past week; it's been a pretty quiet/busy couple of days. For the most part, this last week is for working on our final projects (as part of our classwork here, we're doing a oral history/research project about some aspect of Turkish cultural identity; I'm doing the tourism industry, and how Turkey markets itself to the international audience), so we've been busy with those. Still, we've found some time for fun.
Tuesday:
Got back to Istanbul on the early morning train from Ankara; didn't sleep very well, but it was infinitely more comfortable than a bus. Also, no chance of the driver hijacking us (see: first day in Ankara). Slept/laid around for the rest of the day.
Wednesday:
Most of us worked on our projects, doing research, lining up and carrying out interviews, and writing some of our papers. Edward and I also desperately needed haircuts, so we went with Yekta to Istiklal to find a little barber shop. It was a fun experience: Edward got a real Turkish haircut (lots of gel, stuck up in the back, flattened down in the front; we call it The Rooster), I got a semi-Turkish haircut. Yes, I have gel in my hair for the first time since 8 grade. Hopefully this won't last long. Kind of expensive, but it did come with a temple massage and tons of mystic Turkish ointments. Here's Edward, post-cut:

Thursday:
Big activity was going to the US consulate, which is located about 2 hours north of where we live. It's still Istanbul though. The building sits on a hill, surrounded by walls and barbed wire. The fortress:
We were lucky enough to be able to talk to several top officials for an hour and a half. We talked about the duties of the consulate (outreach mostly, as the embassy in Ankara handles policy discussions), US-Turkish relations (OK, but necessary, with lots of bumps in the road: Iraq, Armenian Genocide resolution, etc.), and foreign service (something I might want to do). We came back around 6 to keep working on our projects and our party on...
Friday:
Fourth of July! We decided while on the road that we wanted to have a party, but weren't really able to prepare for it, especially in terms of inviting people. The 30 people we invited spanned the spectrum of people we've known here: professors who've talked with us about academic topics; our local pilav and doner sellers; mystics; and fellow Americans in the city. Despite the best efforts of all the subcommittees (yes, we divided ourselves into subcommittees to prepare for the party; I was privileged to serve on the Meat-and-Cheese and Day-of-Food Subcommittees), we had all of about 2 RSVPs by the morning of the 4th. Prepared for a possible12:0 host to guest ratio, we still got ready for the party. Props to the Decorations Subcommittee for creating a real live American atmosphere on the terrace:

(there was much more food than this, also balloons and a banner). In the end, about 10 people showed up; not the group we originally intended, but it was a great time. It was especially good to meet 2 Bogazici students who are studying in the US next fall, one at UNC. They stayed later than everyone else as we compared notes about college life and got them ready for living in America. We are all really excited about welcoming the 3 Bogazici students who are coming to UNC next semester; we finally have a chance to repay these people for all the incredible hospitality we've received here.
Saturday:
A day of intense project work, on everyone's part. I had an interview set up with Gunhan Borekci (see day on Hagia Sophia), our guide for the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia; he is still a liscensed tour guide, so I figured he would be a good person to talk to about tourism. How right I was. We ended up talking for 5 hours, discussing Turkish tourism and how it relates to identity for a good 3 of them. The rest of the time we talked about academia (he's a PhD student at OSU in Ottoman history), literature, and Turkish history. It was a great time, and got my paper fairly well prepared too.
Pictures from today's Bosporus trip coming later today or tomorrow. Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to (and probably see) you soon!

Ankara, Pt. 2: Who's Your Daddy?

2008-07-02T06:51:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
Our second day in Ankara began with a trip to the city's most famous site: Anıt Kabir, Atatürk's mausoleum. Since my day was cut a bit short by illness (Turkish food got me again!), this post will mostly be about Ataturk the man, and what we've come to know about him throughout Turkey.
Atatürk was born Mustafa Kemal in 1881 in what is now Thessaloniki, Greece. He quickly rose through the ranks of the Ottoman military, becoming a colonel by 1915, when he found himself at Gallipoli. He eventually became commander of the Turkish force, and his successful defense of the peninsula gave the Ottomans their only victory of the First World War. After the Ottoman Empire surrendered in 1918, its vast holdings were partitioned among the victorious Allies. More ominously for the Turks, the Allies even sought to divide up the Anatolian heartland of the Empire; by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, well over 2/3 of what is now Turkey (including Istanbul!) went to Greece, Italy, France, Britain, and a newly created Armenia (for a dramatic map, go here). Mustafa Kemal refused to accept the settlement and waged over the next three years a titanic struggle primarily against the Greeks for Turkish independence. Improbably, they won, and in 1923, the Turkish Republic was born, with Kemal as its first president. Over the next fifteen years, he revolutionized every aspect of Turkish society: he upturned the calendar, introduced last names (he picked 'Atatürk', a name by law reserved only for him; it means 'Father of the Turks'), changed the alphabet, introduced women's rights, revolutionized dress, and that's just the beginning. Since his death in 1938, politics in this country has revolved around his legacy, and what relevance it has in the current era. One key platform of his ideology, secularism, has been seized upon by the military establishment as the core principle of Kemalism; they have enforced it rigorously, including 3 coups since 1960.
Some call the omnipresence of Mustafa Kemal the 'Cult of Atatürk'. It's a hard notion to disregard out of hand given these kind of images; he really is everywhere:

Conventional heroic equestrian statues (this from Bursa)

Statues of the Great Man, striding forward, winning the War of Turkish Independence (this from Taksim Square in Istanbul)

Huge pictures of him atop decrepit buildings (from Fatih, in Istanbul)

Double sided (Ataturk as Janus?) statue, with Ataturk's famous phrase "Happy is he who calls himself a Turk" emblazoned on both sides (this from Sirkeci train station)
Golden Ataturk head emerging from map of Turkey (this from Kultepe)

Or perhaps you'd like an Ataturk tea service, with the GMK ('Gazi Mustafa Kemal'; Gazi is Arabic for holy warrior) monogram on the cups?

And just in case you've missed the other 4,000 Ataturk portraits right next to you, they're occasionally posted randomly along the street (here outside of Bursa).
After seeing him everywhere, it was pretty cool to go see the center of 'Ataturk worship' in the country, his enormous mausoleum. It's situated on a hill such that it dominates the city (facing down the 1987 Kocatepe Mosque about which I posted yesterday). First you walk down the 'Lion's Road', lined with stone lions (ancient Hittite symbols of power) and Turkish soldiers:

You finally reach the colossal mausoleum itself, a kind of austere Lincoln Memorial:

While we were in the building (all that's inside is his 40-ton sarcophagus which marks the place where, 7 meters below, his actual body is buried, in Turkish soil), the Turkish Minister of Sports or Youth or something marched in with a general and an entourage to place a wreath on Ataturk's grave; I guess that kind of thing happens every day.
There's a huge museum underneath the mausoleum that's equally as interesting, with huge oil paintings showing critical moments of Ataturk's leadership in his various wars. Unfortunately, by that point I was already starting to feel bad; I was almost completely unable to pay attention at the incredible Museum of Anatolian Civilizations and was sick/asleep by 6 in a hotel.
It was great to visit the Big Man's grave, a definite stop for anyone in this part of town. The ostensible purpose of this trip is to define 'Turkishness', to explore what makes a Turk. Is it religion? History? Something in the water? More and more, I'm coming to think that it's Ataturk; that an identification with this man truly defines someone as a citizen of Turkey (I'm using Turk in the political sense, not as an ethnic construct), and everyone in this country frames their politics and identity either in line with or in opposition to Him.
That's probably enough historical and political musings for now; thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you soon!

The Best Part of Ankara

2008-07-02T00:13:00.000-07:00

Hello all,
So we left Cappadocia on our tour bus about 8 on Saturday. It's a four hour drive, so we settled down for a short sleep before getting off in Ankara. I dozed off, despite the horribly uncomfortable seats. I was awoken by the sound of the driver yelling in Turkish, and the tour leader yelling back in English; my fears were confirmed when the clock read 12:30 and there was no sign of a city around. It gradually came out that we had missed the city, and the driver was not turning around. After an extremely tense 20 minutes (lots of yelling and cell phone calls) he did, but he was not happy about it. We got off as soon as possible in Ankara, and took taxis to Bilkent University, where we were staying in dorms. As you might imagine, we resolved to make that our last contact with the Fez Travel agency.
Our first activity in the morning was to visit the site of Gordion, currently being excavated by UNC's own Ken Sams. Gordion was the capital of the Phrygian Kingdom (c. 8th century BC), whose most famous ruler was the legendary King Midas. The site is about 2 hours outside the city, and we were given a complete tour by Prof. Sams. Only about half of the old city has been excavated, the most impressive site being the main gate, which once would've stood 20 meters over the surrounding plane:
Our next stop was Midas' tomb itself, discovered in 1957. It lies under a man-made mound known as a tumulus around 50 meters tall, making it the second largest such grave in Anatolia. Most of which was in the grave (mostly bronze bowls and sculptures) has been removed to museums, but it's still pretty cool to see where King Midas was buried.
By the time we got back to Ankara, it was about 6, so we took the metro downtown to grab dinner and watch the Euro Cup final between Germany and Spain. After dinner, we still had a good 2 hours until the game, so we decided to go try to find Ankara's largest mosque, Kocatepe Camii. It's one of the largest mosques on earth, with a capacity of 100,000:

Finished in 1987, we were a little skeptical about how nice it would be; we've been a bit spoiled with all the beautiful Sinans of Istanbul. But the mosque is as beautiful as it is large, a larger-than-the original replication of the Blue Mosque with a huge circular chandelier in the center:
We found a bar around kick-off and watched the game. As the game progressed, Kristina felt worse and worse, becoming obviously quite sick by the end of the game. We rushed back to the metro, but when we got to the deck, Kristina had to run back up to use the bathroom. We thought the next train would be the last, so we decided to get on the train and meet Edward and Kristina at the train stop (the last stop on the metro line). Somehow, there was another train after ours, which they managed to get on, saving themselves a costly cab ride. Equally inexplicably, I arranged a dolmus from the train station to our dorms for 30 lira (about half what we were expecting), and, an hour and a half after leaving the bar, all of us were back safe (though Kristina still had some intestinal issues to work out).
When the Turkish poet Yahya Kemal was asked what his favorite thing about Ankara was, he responded, "Going back to Istanbul." By the end of our first night, we were beginning to understand why. After our two weeks on the road, we were ready to get back and with only one day left, our excitement was palpable. We still had one day though and who knew what adventures/digestive problems it would bring. Day 2 of Ankara coming later today.

Cappadocia- Is This For Real?!?

2008-07-01T04:44:00.001-07:00

Hello all!
I have not posted for a week. A week. Last you heard from me, we had just left the village; we arrived back in Istanbul this morning. Dear readers, brace yourselves for the 15,000 pages of posting I plan on putting up today.
First, Cappadocia! Cappadocia is the Roman name of a region in central Anatolia that is easily one of the craziest-looking places on earth. We arrived at about 7, greeted by this view:

Sunset over Cappadocia.
Here's the view from our hotel's terrace in the morning, with some huge, snowcapped mountain in the background:
First item on Day 1's agenda was, obviously, exploring. A couple of us went climbing through some rock-cut houses by our hotel. To give you an idea about how weird this place is, this is the police station:
That is a big rock with entire floors carved into its center, and that's the way people have been living here for thousands of years. More pictures of this crazy place:
Half the group standing in a halfway eroded room of one rock-cut house, overlooking the valley.

What's this little gem? We entered by the tiny entrance and found that it was...

a 7th century church. Just a small, early-medieval church (arches, dome, and all) cut into big rock on the side of the path.
As Paleolithic as it all seems, every once in a while things like these satellite dishes remind you that people are still living in these structures.
These are some of the things we saw on our way to Goreme, the central town of Cappadocia. It's really touristy, so we stayed in another town a few miles away (Uchisar). The main event of our first day was a visit to Goreme's incredible Open Air Museum. This is the set up: there are a dozen or so rock cut churches in the 'museum', built into the cliffs, and you get to wander at will through them. Here's a typical interior example:
The most incredible is the 'Dark' Church; here's the exterior:
It's so amazingly beautiful inside, more visually impressive than everything we've seen so far except maybe Hagia Sophia. I don't know how much you can see of these, but here are some of the best parts:
Christ Pantocrator (ruler of the world), on the central dome.
This is the Emperor Constantine the Great and his mother Helena with the True Cross, which the latter discovered in Jerusalem in the 330s. This scene was in almost every one of the churches. Also, many of the churches' figures had their faces (or at least eyes) scratched out; we're not sure if that was done by iconoclastic Byzantines or the Muslims.
One of my favorite paintings: Christ breaking the gates of Hell, leading Adam and Eve into Heaven. I don't know if the person under Christ's feet is supposed to be Satan or a personification of death.
This place was so beautiful.

Here's the apse of the 'Buckle' Church, the largest in the Museum. I think you can get a sense of the scale- and this was carved into a cliff.
The next day we went to an underground city (writing this post a week later, all these bizarre things seem rather normal). There are several such complexes, which extend up to 8 floors below ground level and could accomodate up to 20,000 people. This is what it looks like going down:
The staircases get narrower the farther down you go. Also, there are thousands of tourist groups, making it a claustrophobe's dream come true. Only way to get around:
Amanda, sporting the ever-popular miner look.
Emerging from our time underground, we took an hour ride to the Ihlara Valley, a kind of large-scale Open Air Museum. It's spectacularly beautiful; the path follows a clear stream, flanked by huge cliffs into which more churches have been carved:
These churches are so inconspicuous; you really do have to look for them.
Really interesting ceiling of one.
Apse of another.
This is what they look like from the outside. I wish our national parks had Byzantine churches in them too!
After our long trek through the valley, we were ready to cool off, so we went to a lake. Located in a volcanic crater, it was absolutely beautiful:

Unfortunately, the lake bed was mud (or, more accurately, quicksand). For some reason, we swam across. I can't really say anything else, because I don't know why we decided to, but we did. Rather an impressive feat; I had to photoshop two pictures together to make the one above. That night we had a little darty in our cave rooms. Yeah, our hotel had cave rooms. So obviously we slept in them, even though they were cold and damp (who would've thought?). Note- 'Darty' is UNC/Turkish for party.
The next day was our last in Cappadocia, so we went to Red Valley, the last major site in the region. Pretty incredible, but you've heard enough about valleys and rock-cut churches haven't you? I still have to post pictures though!
The valley we walked through
The view from one of the hills
Ceiling of one particularly beautiful rock-cut church along the trail.
A cliff- or is it?
It's a huge rock-cut church! One of the biggest we saw, definitely. Still can't get over how incredible these buildings are, carved right into the rock.
David, by one of the columns, for some scale.
So that's Cappadocia. We spent 3 days there, longer than anywhere else on our excursion. I think it was probably my favorite stop, filled with so much history and natural beauty. Ankara to come, either tonight or early tomorrow. Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you soon!

The Village

2008-06-26T09:33:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
As usual, it's now about 3 days later than what this post is actually about- our stay in the village. Had an incredible time in the Open Air Museum in Cappadocia, and with any luck you'll find out about it before the end of the week!
But first, the village (it's called Eşenler). How did we end up in a remote mountain town? It's kind of a program, started by Mehmed, who I've mentioned before. Originally from the village, he came to Konya, where he now runs a successful carpet store; the local boy made good, and now he's giving back. He organizes groups of tourists or students to come stay in the village, where they are put up with families (20 lira a night, including three meals). With the income generated by this program, the town has been able to install either running water or electricity, I can't remember.
We arrived in Eşenler mid-afternoon after a 2 hour drive from Konya. Before going into town, we went up to a hill for a picnic, terrific views,

and Eşenler's famed enormous praying mantis, the third largest in Turkey:

Also, we walked through some cherry fields with our host, Muammer (Mehmed's brother), sampling the cherries, apricots, and erik. Erik are little green fruits that are very sour. How sour? Ask David:
When we got to town, this was the site that greeted us:
A whole field of carpets. Western buyers don't like the naturally vivid color of Turkish carpets, so they're put out in the sun to give them a more pastel look. They told us that after a large theft several years ago, several villagers now sleep out on the carpets at night; a plot began to brew in our heads.
Meanwhile, it was time to go meet our families. Edward and I were given to such a nice family! I would say we lucked out, but everyone's families were so hospitable and generous. Here's a little family portrait:

Me, Edward, Erdag, his mom (don't think we ever learned her name), and his wife. Unfortunately, we never got the whole family, including the dad Mustafa, the daughter Isra, or any of the assorted grandparents who floated around. This was taken in the store the family runs out of one of the house's rooms.
The family was so great! Especially the mom, who loved to play jokes on us (sneaking up on Edward, putting some kind of plant on me that gave me a rash for a couple hours, etc.) and made such delicious meals with her daughter-in-law. This is how we ate: the mom put a big tablecloth on the floor, put a big tray with all the meals' dishes on that, and we sat around with our legs under the tablecloth and ate communally out of the bowls of food. Nothing in common with the American style, but it worked, and I rather liked it.
The next morning we went out with our families to their respective farms to pick cherries. Such cute kids:
It was not hard work, and Edward and I really enjoyed it. But after an hour, they told us we were going back! I managed to ask why we were only working for 60 minutes (I couldn't remember the word for hour. Sidenote about language: our family spoke no English. Like, none. Seems impossible to live with them for even 48 hours, but we are all doing pretty well with the language; all the basic nouns pretty much, and 5 or so key verbs. The Turkish-English dictionary played a prominent role, but we did pretty well- they even said so!), and they said it was enough. We came back for a huge, delicious lunch, and then went to a waterfall for some relaxation after our long day. Before we left though, we met the grandpa of the family, and had a little dance party (non sequiter, much?). Turns out the old dude loves to sing and dance; he's 85, so it's awesome. Of course, they made me dance with him; hilarity ensued:

The things in our hands are spoons, because that's what you dance with in Turkey. You clack them together, and they make beautiful, beautiful music. What an afternoon.
The waterfall was amazing. I challenge you to find a better one than this:

We swam in the strong current for a good hour or two, then walked around, as far as the falls themselves. When we got back, we talked to our families about our idea for sleeping that night: on the carpets. They were very accomodating, and, after dinner, Edward, Zoe, and I gathered lots of blankets to go sleep under the stars. I've never seen a night sky like that in my life, such incredibly bright stars. It was a great experience.
I woke up early, cold, and more than a little disoriented. After watching a beautiful sunrise
I fell back asleep. Eventually, 7 came, and it was time for us to wake up, eat breakfast, and leave our families for Cappadocia. It was so good to get to experience Turkey beyond Hagia Sophia and Istiklal, to really get to know how most of the people in this country actually live.
We're in Cappadocia now, and my computer's about to die. Thanks for reading, hope to talk to you again soon!

Whirling Through Konya

2008-06-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

Hello all,
The Turkey-Germany game just ended; looks like the Turks won't take Vienna after all. Close game, but this time the last minute shot wasn't Turkey's: final score, 3-2 on a 90th minute Germany goal. Turkey played remarkably well for having 8 or so players out due to penalties and injuries. Still, I'm in a bit of a down mood as you might imagine. But the blog must go on.
Our day in Konya was a blur of mosques that spanned almost the entire history of Islamic Anatolia. We started with this elegant 17th century Ottoman mosque:

From the night before.
It was built by Murad IV, one of the only sultans after Suleiman the Magnificent whose reign did not continue the empire's downward trajectory. It's kind of a balance between the classical, Sinan
style of the 16th century and the more European, baroque style of the 19th:

Absolutely beautiful as you can tell.
From there we went to Konya's second most significant religious site, the tomb of Şems. Şems was the teacher of Rumi, or Mevlana, the founder of Sufism; Rumi's tomb is probably the thing for which Konya is best known today. But before we visited Rumi, we saw his teacher. It's a site of significant devotion for Muslims; one woman we saw screamed 'Allah!' and went into some kind of convulsions, though apparently this is frowned upon in Sufism.
After Şems' tomb, we went back in time a little more to visit another mosque, Alaeddin Camii, built in the mid-12th century. In the 11th century, a group of Turkish nomads from Central Asia moved to the Middle East, where they came to dominate the politics of the Abassid Caliphate. This Turkish dynasty, known as the Seljuks, also fell after some time, dividing into several different groups. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rum (the Turkish term for 'Rome' or Byzantium) established itself in Asia Minor, with its capital at Konya. That's why Konya has such a rich Seljuk heritage. Alaeddin Mosque is the most prominent example of this; it's set up in a really bizarre way, but has a breathtaking mithrab:
This color of tile (sometimes it looks awfully like UNC blue) was unique to the Seljuk period, and you see it often in Konya.
We continued with the Seljuks, next visiting Ince Minaret Medrese; a medrese is a religious school and this one is named so because of its thin (ince) minaret, most of which was destroyed by lightening in the 20th century:
It's now used as a museum of Seljuk and Ottoman wood and stonework. The most incredible part is the facade, on which is written the entire first chapter of the Koran in beautiful Arabic script:
After a quick lunch, we went to the main attraction: Rumi's tomb. Rumi was something of a mystic, and not in the sense that we use it (i.e. a sketchy Turk). He lived in the 13th century and preached a message of religious universalism; today, he is the best-selling poet in America. His tomb is a place of pilgrimage for Muslims across the world, but especially Turks, who visit by the millions every year. Its famous for its distinctive blue-green tiles:
You can't take pictures inside the mausoleum itself (which contains Rumi, members of his family, and members of the royal Seljuk family as well), but it was beautiful. More significant was the remarkable 'devotional energy' (as William would call it); really powerful.
We finished up with another mosque, from the 19th century, very European in style. It was a really interesting contrast with everything we'd seen up to that point. After a huge Turkish dinner, we went back to bed early to get ready for our trip to the village. It's about 1AM here now, so I'm gonna go to bed; stay tuned for the village post! Thanks for reading, talk to you soon

KUPAYI İSTİYORUZ!!

2008-06-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

Yeah we do. Translation at the end as a reward for reading this monster.
So our second day in Eğirdir was nature day. After our Turkish breakfast (I'm gonna miss them- believe it or not, I even eat the cucumber now), we drove an hour or so to a national park northeast of town. I think I'll just post pictures, to explain that way:
This sign greeted us as we entered the park. The point is: Turkish parks have everything American ones do (squirrels, rabbits, deer) plus, ya know- leopards. We cracked up for hours. Is this even hilarious? I don't know. Sometimes I think that our collective sense of humor is so relative to our experience here that others may not get it. Anyways, we didn't see any juaguars or whatever's on the sign, so maybe the sign was a joke itself.
God, was this place beautiful: a perfectly clear, flower lined stream surrounded by towering peaks.

But beyond the astounding natural beauty, the park is significant because it contains a portion of the ancient Royal Road. The Road, originally built by the Persians in the 6th century BC, ran from Susa (in southwest Iran) to Sardis (in western Turkey). It was said that messengers could travel its nearly 1,700 miles in a week. For a little more perspective, this was the route Alexander the Great took when he conquered the known world in the fourth century BC. The Road, or at least what we walked, is not in very good condition today, but it's still spine-tingling to consider that you're following the same route that, say, Xerxes did over two millenia ago. That sense of history is heightened when you see things like this right next to you:
This is a random Greek engraving on the cliff side that lines much of the road. Not sure what it means; all you classicists out there, get to work! We saw 4 or 5 of these.
When we reached a suitable location, we put down our stuff and swam among the pools and waterfalls for a good 3 hours, much of it in one particularly beautiful grotto with high cliffs for jumping.
That night, we gathered around our hostel's TV for the day's main event, Turkey vs. Croatia in the Euro Cup quarterfinals. After 90 minutes of play, the score was tied at zero (exhilarating, except not at all), so the game went into a fifteen minute overtime. Still tied, so there was another, after which there would be a shoot-out if still tied. With two minutes left (at the 118:42 mark!!), Croatia scored. What a letdown; all this time wasted. Turkey's final drives all collapsed, and it appeared that the extra minute of stoppage time would be just as unproductive. Just before the final whistle, at 121:12, Turkey finally scored, the latest goal in Euro Cup history. It was so improbable, so incredibly exciting- so Turkey. With so much momentum, Turkey's victory in the shoot-out seemed assured, and the Turks sealed victory only 3 shots into the 5-shot shoot-out. God, what a game. In the entire tournament, Turkey has led for nine minutes; they play Germany on Wednesday, and I can only assume that they will score 7 goals in the final minute to win. One bad thing- Eğirdir is a town of about 10, so there were no celebrations to speak of; how incredible would it have been to be in Istanbul or Ankara!! I find it a little hard to believe how much I've been swept up in this whole soccer thing, but I'm there cheering as hard as the Turks, cursing and congratulating the players (whose names I mostly know now) and generally acting like a football fan. One of Turkey's biggest dailies, Aksam, had this headline the next day: VIYANA'YI ASTIK, KUPAYI ISTIYORUZ: We passed over Vienna (where the game was held; a not-so-subtle reference to the famous unsuccessful Ottoman sieges of 1529 and 1683?); now we want the cup! Turkey is missing about half its lineup against Germany, the favorite to win the Cup, but at this point, anything seems possible.
We left Eğirdir the next morning on a packed bus for Konya, a city of about 1.5 million, 3 hours away. The drive was beautiful,
and, much to the chagrin of our horrible 'tour-leader', included a stop at a 13th century wooden (only one of its kind) Seljuk mosque. Arriving in Konya, we grabbed a quick lunch and went off to meet our host, the Shields' friend Mehmed. He's a carpet dealer, and it's his village in which we'll be staying tomorrow and Tuesday. He gave us a tour of the homes of some of his employees, women who weave carpets at their homes throughout the city. It was so interesting to see them work and walk through the neighborhoods. It was a beautiful night. Unfortunately though, I wasn't feeling well, so I went to bed early. It's about dinner time now on Sunday; we've had a very full day, so I don't have time to actually catch up to real time! Maybe tonight; hopefully, because we certainly won't have internet in the tiny (pop. 1,000) Taurus Mountain village we're going to tomorrow for two days. Until next time, miss you all and thanks for reading!

Pamukkale and Eğirdir: "Free Water Pipe for the Kids!"

2008-06-19T13:44:00.000-07:00

Hello all!

It's about midnight on Thursday night; we're in Eğirdir (in Turkish, do NOT pronounce the g-smiley face; instead, it's soft, so the town we're in is pronounced 'Ey-er-deer'), a small town in southeast Anatolia. We left Pamukkale this morning, so I'll start with our time there.
Pamukkale means 'cotton castle' in Turkish, a reference to the billowing white cliffs that dominate the town. I had heard of the town before, through my dad, but only knew of the thermal springs. It turns out that on top of the huge cliffs, made of calcium deposits, is an ancient Greco-Roman city, Hierapolis, which at its height was home to 100,000 people. Can you imagine? I guess not, because I haven't posted any pictures. This place was incredible:
The view from the bottom-ish.

Us going up. To get to the top, you have to take off your shoes and walk 250 meters up the slope. Doesn't sound that bad, but if you step on the wrong rock or knife-shaped calcium deposit, your life sucks.
Have I mentioned that I hate Europeans now? This was one of about 4 couples we saw having these kinds of photoshoots. Yuck.
Here's the agora, or marketplace, of the ancient city Hierapolis. Perhaps you've seen enough ruins now, but I still love this stuff. Hierapolis was much more unregulated (and much less crowded) than Ephesus, so I pretty much was able to wander at will.
Here's a beautiful little temple/tomb half buried by the deposits, with the incredible view.
Again.
There are literally fields of debris, much of it beautifully carved, on the site, filled with columns, capitals, and engravings.
The amphitheater, with much of the stage sculpture uniquely still intact.
The sunset. Pretty incredible to watch it from the top of the amphitheater.
Hey lil Hierapolitan kitty! This was actually tragic, because this tiny kitten tried to follow us down the calcium path and meowed after us for a good 5 minutes.
And of course, cute little kids running after us saying 'click! click!' when they see the cameras.
We left Pamukkale at about 9 this morning, arriving in Eğirdir around 4. The town is set at the foot of a mountain on the shores of Turkey's second largest lake:

Our hostel was very accommodating, offering, as one of the managers put it, 'free water pipe for the kids!' (us). We spent the afternoon swimming in the lake and walking around a 13th century Seljuk mosque compound, finishing up with a moon-rise dinner:
With Edward and Kelly's help, I'm finally starting to learn how to use my camera!
That's about it; we're actually in Konya now (it took so long to load pictures that I wasn't able to post in Eğirdir), so I still need to talk about yesterday. Hopefully soon. Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you all later!

Fascinating Ephesus

2008-06-18T13:05:00.001-07:00

Hello all!
We’re on the bus now, from Selcuk (Ephesus) to Pamukkale. No internet obviously, but I don’t know when we’ll have it, so I’m writing now.
Yesterday was a free day; Prof. Shields promised we wouldn’t have to get up before 11. So we decided to start our day at 8. I mean, we were in Selcuk/Ephesus for one day, and there’s a lot to do, as you’ll see.
Stop #1 was, obviously, the city of Ephesus itself. One of the largest and most important cities of antiquity, Ephesus is now the site of some of the best preserved Greek and Roman ruins on Earth. The Greek city went through the hands of countless invaders (Lydians, Persians, Alexander the Great, Rome, Arabs, Turks…), but continued to flourish until a final conqueror appeared on the scene: environmental change. Ephesus, like most other great cities of the classical world, was a port city. In the second century AD, however, the rivers that fed into the harbor began to change course, filling the city with silt. The Romans were able to stave off the inevitable for a while, but by the fifth century, the wide harbor had been transformed into a malarial swamp; today, the sea is 7km away from Ephesus’ ‘harbor road’. By the time the Ottomans arrived in the 14^th century, a ragtag village was all that survived of the great city. Still, the city is of great importance, especially for Christians: Paul was here and two ecumenical councils were held here.
It’s kind of unreal to go through the site, passing the same buildings (or foundations of them anyways) and walking down the same streets that existed two millennia ago. I won’t recount every single building, statue, and engraving, but here are a couple pictures:

Hey lil Ephesian kitty!

For William, all Ephesus' a stage

There were several huge, beautiful storks in the hills around the site

The most important extant building in Ephesus is the Celsus Library, built in the second century AD

The columns and ceiling carvings are particularly beautiful

The theater, which could hold 44,000, or about twice the capacity of the Dean Dome
One commodity for which ancient Ephesus was famous is still sold here:

Genuine fake watches. God, this place was so touristy.
After Ephesus, we took a 20 minute drive into the mountains to see the House of the Virgin Mary. Yeah, I was confused too- this is where she lived at the end of her life. Evidently, after Jesus' death, John brought Mary with him to Ephesus (where he is buried). In the 19^th century, a blind German nun who’d never been to Ephesus described the area with remarkable accuracy, and said that Mary’s house was here; expeditions later in the century found the house as she’d described it, and the Pope’s visit here in 1967 confirmed its authenticity for most Christians. It’s a place of significant devotion; not as much as some of the Islamic tombs we’ve seen, but still very powerful.

The house where the Mother of God lived.
Next stop was the Ephesus museum. It's pretty small, but has a good number of interesting objects. Not as many as you might think though, because many of the objects discovered here were transported to European museums. It's a common, and for Turks unfortunate, phenomenon. For example, in Pergamum, the stunning, 40m+ frieze from the altar of Zeus was removed entirely in the 19th century; it's now exhibited in the Pergamum Museum in Berlin. Probably the most interesting piece was the huge votary statue of Artemis:

One of the most important buildings in Ephesus was the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. It was continuously rebuilt and repaired until the fifth century when a Christian mob destroyed it and buried the votive statues. Nothing of this incredible building exists save these few statues.
After the museum, we met up with a family friend of Emily's, Mrs. Gurel, a member of Izmir high society. She took us to meet her equally well-heeled friends at a beautiful lunch spot, where she fed us a delicious meal. Her friends had a very interesting take on the current political situation, at once recognizing the popularity of the AKP and proclaiming how "Turkey will be very happy" when they are banned. (SIDENOTE- for a very interesting article connecting politics and Turkey's recent soccer success, read this). The food and company were great, but we had one more item on our agenda for the afternoon: the BEACH.

Unfortunately, this is the only picture I got of the beach; this is walking up to the lovely Aegean. We had a great time frolicking for a few hours in the waves; maybe not waves by NC standards, but more than we expected and good enough for a least a little body surfing.
The day's final activity was a trip up to a small village in the mountains for dinner. Sirence is billed as a 'Greek village', but no Greeks live there anymore. A mosque has replaced the churches, and you only hear Turkish on the street. Still, the 600 or so inhabitants live a very different life from what we've mostly seen so far. They're geared slightly to tourism, but it appears that most were engaged in agriculture or handicrafts. It was a gorgeous little town in a breathtakingly beautiful setting. I wish I was better at taking pictures:

Well, now it's 11pm on Wednesday; we had another busy day (bet you weren't expecting that) in Pamukkale. Waayyyy to tired to post about it now, hopefully soon. Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you soon!

EXCURSION BEGINS!

2008-06-16T12:08:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
Well, we are on the road! I don't even really remember writing here two mornings ago (hey, it was 5), but I guess I already posted the itinerary. I'll start at the beginning:
So we left Istanbul bright and early, heading west, north along the Sea of Marmara. We got a sense of how truly huge this city is; this is what it looked like a good 15 minutes on the highway past the old walls: Yeah, I know it looks like I'm in an aquarium or something, but still, I think you can tell the sprawl; and I thought Southern Cal was bad. After some stops, we finally arrived in Gallipoli (Gelibolu in Turkish) at the other side of Marmara about 1 in the afternoon. Our first tour guide, the mystic Captain Ali, was violently thrown off the bus by the driver, who accused him of being drunk. This is Turkey; it would be weird if it made sense. Our next guide spoke the funniest native-Turk-learned-English-from-an-Australian English I've ever heard- and we were with him for five hours (dude loved the definite article, eg "the Admiral Ian Hamilton", "the Brighton Beach", etc.).
The battlefield is truly interesting. For Americans, I can hardly imagine a conflict more obscure than the Middle East theater of World War I, but for Australians and New Zealanders (Kiwis!), it is at the forefront of their national consciences. A minute or two to explain: by September 1914, the two sides in the First World War had solidified. The Triple Entente of Great Britain (and her Commonwealth), France, and Russia squared off against the Triple Powers: the German Empire, the Austro-Hugarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. Russia, therefore, was entirely encircled on the west, blocked from the sea and her allies. To relieve that pressure, Great Britain (in a plan engineered largely by then-First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill) planned an invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula. After securing the peninsula, the Allied fleet would sail up the Dardanelles and seize Istanbul, freeing up Russia's Black Sea ports for resupply.
Instead, somehow, the decrepit Ottoman Empire managed to put up a stiff defense against the Allied attack, the backbone of which was formed by the sizable ANZAC (Australia-New Zealand Army Corps) contingent. A Turkish colonel named Mustafa Kemal ended up becoming commander of the resistance, and eventually won basically the only Ottoman victory of the war; a few years later he took up the nationalist cause, became President/Father of the Nation, and you know him today as Ataturk.
Anyways, the enormous sacrifices made by Australians and Kiwis on the beaches of Gallipoli have featured hugely in the formation of those nations' identities. As one Australian man said in response to my question, "heaps" about the battle is ingrained in children ("sticking with your mates" and whatnot). It's so interesting how many nations have formed their identities in opposition to the Turks: the Greeks won their independence from them; Serbia, Bosnia, and most other Balkan nations, the same; certainly the Armenians; and Australia and New Zealand too. Well that's enough history for now; here are some pictures from a beautiful site with breathtaking views:
Actually, this monstrosity first. Turkey evidently has a vast surplus of sculptors (there is a sculpture in the park of a random man who died in a 1994 brush fire. A brush fire), most of whom are terrible. Where even to begin? These blue-green figures are nothing short of gelatinous; the flag (besides being incorrect! Don't forget these were soldiers of the Ottoman Empire, not the Republic of Turkey) 'hangs' limply; and a barbed-wire olive branch emerges from the ground to wind skyward around one of the soldiers' bayonets. This is pretty representative of public sculpture here.
Okay, here's the terrain. This is the cove they meant to land at; instead they landed a little further down. Really beautiful, history notwithstanding.

The very impressive Australian memorial.
This might not look very interesting. Know what it is? Here's a clue: it's in the Turkish memorial. No idea? It's a mithrab- the niche indicating the direction of Mecca in mosques; the platform is evidently for prayer, though we didn't see anyone doing so. The tour guide said that in recent years, the Turkish memorials have been visited mostly by religious tourists from Istanbul, funded by AKP- weird blending of nationalism and Islam.
What a view- the Aegean is so beautiful. The island on the left is Imbros, and the one on the right is Samothrace (you know that headless, armless, winged statue of victory or Nike in the Louvre? Yeah, it was carved on that island).
So today we got up early again (not that that's getting old or anything) and went to Troy. Like, ya know, Troy. It's funner to say than actually go, because it's pretty underwhelming. Before we left Canakkale, we stopped to see the Trojan horse used in the 2004 movie 'Troy':
Our guide sold it with the line "stand next to something Brad Pitt once touched!". Again, the key word is underwhelming. The actual site of Troy is fairly interesting, as long as you don't expect walls and watchtowers. 9 separate cities were built here, from 3000BC to Roman times, all on top of each other, so seeing the layers was fascinating. Like Turkey itself, kind of (Turkey, by the way, claims Homer as one of their own, a 'son of Anatolia'; seeing which elements of history Turkey embraces and rejects has been one of the most interesting things here). And, of course, beautiful views.
Look! A ramp!
After Troy, we drove a few hours south to the Turkish city of Bergama (Pergamon to the Greeks, Pergamum to the Romans). The old settlement is on a citadel overlooking the modern city and the surrounding valleys and mountains all the way to the Aegean. Settled in the third century BC, Pergamon was the center of a Greek kingdom in Anatolia, part of the Hellenistic heritage created by Alexander the Great and his conquests.
So this was the thing we went to the top of. I really loved this place:
The view west
Part of the reconstructed Temple of Trajan. Today the columns are mostly used for senior portraits.
Also, Pergamon had the steepest known theater in the classical world. We didn't go to the bottom (quick tour), but I think you can tell from the top:
Apparently it had a capacity of 100,000 and the acoustics are so good you can hear someone talking at the bottom in a normal voice from the top.
We're in Ephesus now, it's about 1am, and we have yet another busy day tomorrow, so I should probably go. Thanks for reading, miss you all, and I'll talk to you soon

Trip Up the Golden Horn

2008-06-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

Hello all,
Evidently it's been three days since I last posted. On the other hand, it's been a fairly slow week, as people have been dealing with various illnesses and the group's been getting ready for the trip; we leave tomorrow (more on that later). I'll just hit the high points:
Thursday: our plan to take a boat trip up the Bosporus to the Black Sea was foiled by sickness- this time it was Prof. Shields who succumbed to one of the bugs going around. We took another day to clean, pack, and work on our projects. That night we had a little party with Robin (our landlady), some of her friends, the Shieldses, and other assorted mystics. Great company, with delicious items to boot:
After the last of the guests departed around 11, the affair took a decidedly undergraduate turn, with lots of Efes and dancing. Not many pictures, but it was a great night:

Soulja boy. Oh god.

Kristina and I, somewhere between the third and fourth glasses of rakı. If that doesn't make me a real Turk, I don't know what does.
Friday: woke up with a pounding headache (whoever said rakı doesn't give you a hangover either played a cruel joke on me or didn't know what they were talking about) and went to join the group in front of the Spice Bazaar for our trip up the Golden Horn. First we took the ferry to Fener, where the Greek Patriarchate has been located since 1453. After his conquest of the city in 1453, Mehmed II gave the Greek Patriarch religious and temporal authority over the city's Greeks; quite a concession, as Greeks represented a sizable part of the city's population until the 20th century. After the Turkish War of Independence, population transfers, and anti-Greek riots in the 1950s, very few Greeks remain, putting the Patriarch (currently Bartholomew I) in the awkward position of administering his flock from overseas (he is the spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians). The church, built in 1600, is just as sumptuous as you'd imagine, with golden icons, mosaics, and candelabras everywhere. I didn't get many good pictures because of the lighting, but here's the altar:
Interestingly, the Patriarchate uses as its symbol the double headed eagle, symbol of the Byzantine emperors (and later adopted by the Russian czars).
Afterwards, we walked through the neighborhoods of Fatih, with their rundown houses, winding streets, and bands of roming, grinning children. I wish we spent more time walking through them:
Man, was this a steep climb! That's the Golden Horn down there
Cool corner house.
I almost feel like a real photographer with this picture
Just wanted to get a picture of the house in the background, and then the little dude on the right popped up. Ochay.
Before continuing to Eyup, our destination, we stopped at the Bulgarian Church of St. Stephen:
You know what's on the right! Don't you? Don't you??? (it's Galata Tower, where we live)
The church is made entirely of iron pieces, made in Vienna, shipped to Istanbul, and put together in the 1890s. Rather dark and gloomy inside, compared to all the mosques we know here.
After lunch, we took the ferry further up, almost to the end of the Golden Horn, getting off at Eyüp. Eyüp is the neighborhood named after Abu Ayyub, the flag-bearer of the Prophet who was killed during the Arab siege of Constantinople in 670 (some scholars believe the defeat of the Arab sieges of Constantinople in 670 and 714 were as important as the Battle of Tours in halting the Arab incursions into Europe). His grave was 'discovered' in Ottoman times and a mosque compound built around it. Today, the mosque is surrounded by acres of graves, as the ground is believed to be sacred. Also, the mosque is a common destination for families celebrating a son's circumcision. In Turkey, this happens between ages 6 and 10. I don't want to talk about it. Still, it's a really big deal: they dress them in these tiny king suits (pictures below) and they fuss about them as they proceed through Eyup's tomb and the mosque. Pictures:
The view east, over the Golden Horn from the Pierre Loti Cafe. If you click, you can probably see Hagia Sophia, etc. in the center.

Does he know he's about to be circumcised?!??!

Another one of the little princes, in the mosque

Part of the grounds
UPDATE- so the power went off as soon as I posted that last picture last night, and stayed off until now; it's about 5am, and we leave in an hour for our trip. Here's out itinerary, quickly:
-Canakkale
-Selcuk
-Pamukkale
-Egirdir
-Konya
-Kappadokya (Cappadocia)
-Ankara
I wanted to post a map, but I'm afraid I don't have time. Anyways, I'm not sure how much internet we'll have access to on the road, so this may be my last post for a week or so. Hopefully by then. Thanks for reading, and I'll update as soon as possible!

2008-06-12T02:53:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
The main thing about not posting for 4 days (besides the guilt that comes from stressing you, loyal readers) is that I have no idea what to title this thing. This is Istanbul; every corner of this huge city is completely unique, and every day is equally distinctive for so many reasons. There's no way I could sum up what we've experienced (especially last night) in some pithy witticism. I guess I'll just go day by day. Sorry if it's a little text-heavy, I've forgotten to bring my camera the past couple days.
We started Monday in class with an extended discussion of modern Turkey, especially politics since 1945. To call this period ‘chaotic’ is an understatement, with military coups in 1960, 1972, and 1980 (and, some would argue, 1997, the world’s first ‘postmodern’ coup). Turkey, therefore, is overdue for a coup, and at some points last year, observers set the probability for a coup in 2007 as high as 50%. While a military coup is not very feasible at this point, the proposed disbanding of the governing AK Party would amount to a judicial coup. The people of Turkey are relatively used to having their governments removed from power, but never has a party with such widespread support (AKP won 47% in the latest elections, a landslide for a multiparty system) been outlawed. We split over the issue of whether the military has been a stabilizing or destabilizing force in Turkish political life (I think stabilizing, given the vast polarization in Turkish politics and the degree to which extreme leftists and rightists used violence and terror in the 60s/70s), and then went to go pay a visit to the Grand Mufti of Istanbul. If you're impressed by that title, good; you should be. The Grand Mufti is the chief Muslim religious figure for Istanbul and the surrounding regions. As such, he (and his extensive office) is in charge of the religious affairs of around 20 million people. He also hosted Pope Benedict XVI on his groundbreaking visit to Istanbul a few years ago. So it was quite an honor to meet him (no pictures- sorry!) and even more exciting for a member of our own group, Yekta, to translate his remarks for us. They even gave us goody bags at the end!
After meeting the Mufti, we dashed across town to Yilidiz University to meet with the eminent sociologist and political scientist Haldun Gulalp. Like Sevket Pamuk, he dismissed the notion that the disbanding of AKP would lead to violence in the streets, a prospect I find hard to grasp. I pressed him, asking what recourse an ordinary voter, who had supported various disbanded parties culminating in the AKP, would have in the wake of such a decision except to protest in the street. He said that AK supporters will simply form another party, and life will go on as it always has. That's Turkish politics for you. We ended the day with another delicious William-cooked meal at the Shields'.
The next day (Tuesday), I was sick. As people have dropped like flies over the past week or two, I fancied that I, somehow, was immune. And, excepting a brief encounter with what may be termed 'Osman's Revenge', I was. Then I woke up Tuesday with a throbbing headache and queasy stomach. Of course that was the day Yekta and I were to present our site, Kariye Camii. I felt better an hour or so after waking up, made it to the Kariye okay, and then went immediately back downhill. Our presentation was, as you might imagine, somewhat underwhelming I think. The building, however, did not disappoint. Rather unassuming on the outside isn't it?
Inside, however, are veritable galaxies of frescoes and mosaics. Dating from the early fourteenth century, these mosaics, while incomplete, are the finest (after Hagia Sophia of course) surviving examples of Byzantine church decoration. A small sample:
I wish I had been well enough to fully appreciate it; I may have to go back before we leave here.
After Kariye, we went to another Byzantine church-turned-mosque, Kalenderhane Camii, where Zoe and Kelly gave a great presentation. As soon as they were done, I had to get back to the flat- I was exhausted. I proceeded to sleep for about 6 of the next 8 hours. Then I watched the Russia-Spain game, and went to bed. Wednesday was a work day, which worked out phenomenally well, giving me enough time to really rest up. These sicknesses that are going around never last much longer than 24 hours. Hopefully, now that I've paid my dues, I'm in the clear for the rest of the trip.
Feeling much better even by Wednesday afternoon, I decided to go out with everyone to watch the Turkey-Switzerland game. If you remember, Turkey lost to Portugal a few days ago; this game was pretty much a must-win for Turkey to advance to the playoffs of the Euro Cup. What a game it was. The game was held in Basel, Switzerland, and the Swiss scored the first goal. Turkey scored about 20 minutes later, and the game was tied at the end of 90 minutes. Turkey scored 3 minutes into the 4 minutes of stoppage time, winning 2-1. It was exhilarating, to say the least, but things seemed a bit quiet, especially compared to our expectations of craziness in the streets.
At first we didn't think much was going on in the streets. After a couple minutes, the bars and restaurants emptied, and a tide of people (with varying levels of spirit and/or intoxication) began spilling down Istiklal toward Taksim Square.
(NARRATIVE BREAK: So I just took an hour to deal with the fact that apparently a pool of water has been building for who-knows-how-long under a lot of my stuff, including laundry and the piece of paper with my name in calligraphy (destroyed). I think it has to do with the AC? I've been trying to fashion some kind of pipe to divert the water outdoors, as opposed to, you know, my room. Despite my vast stores of plumbing/AC-related knowledge, I am lost. Awesome.)
Anyways, I'm a bit tired now, so I'll be kind of short: last night was great. Again, I forgot my camera, to my utter dismay; I might be able to post other peoples' pictures in the next day or two. Once in Taksim, we decided throw ourselves entirely into the celebrations. Not sure how smart of an idea this was, but it was incredibly fun. 6 Americans joyously celebrating the Turkish soccer victory was quite a spectacle for some of the Turks, so we attracted a bit of attention. Somehow, in the course of events, we made some mystic (the adjective we attach to basically everyone here) Turkish friends, none of whom spoke English. As the celebrations wound down, we made arrangements to take the party elsewhere. How, if they didn't speak English? Well, we speak a good deal more Turkish than we did in, say, Bursa. Thanks to Hande's lessons, we are approaching a 2-year old's comprehension of the language- this is actually quite considerable, as we did hang out with these people for about 3 hours last night. To get to our destination, the pier at Ortaköy, we took a taxi. Yes, a taxi. 3 Americans (just Dream Team at this point, everyone else had melted away) and 5 mystic Turks. In one taxi. Hilarious doesn't even begin to describe the ride.
Ortoköy has an almost unearthly beauty at night, with the ornate 19th century mosque on one side, the Bosporus in front (obviously), and the huge Bosporus Bridge (which changes colors!) on the other. We had a great time reenacting our Turkish classes, doing Turkish and American folk dances (Soulja Boy, anyone?), and, of course, drinking Efes. About 3 we decided to head back, with plans to meet again tonight at 11. This blog session has gone on entirely too long, so thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you soon!

Relaxation and Exploration

2008-06-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
Hope all is well. It's about 6 on Sunday here, I just finished my pilav, and we are getting ready for another busy week, our last in Istanbul before our excursion. It's been a great weekend, very relaxing, which is what we all needed after two very hectic weeks. Yesterday we mostly stayed in, reading and napping. Kristina made a delicious falafel dinner, which we ate while watching Turkey lose to Portugal 2-0. As most of you probably know, soccer is not my thing; still, when in Istanbul, do as the Istanbullus do (or as you think they do, because we didn't see anyone with jerseys or anything soccer-related on walking around after the game).
After a leisurely morning, Kevin, Zoe, Kristina, and I decided to explore our neighborhood in a different direction. So far, our wanderings have been either south into Sultanahmet or north onto Istiklal Caddesi and its environs. Today we went east-ish, exploring the area between the Bosporus and Istiklal. We weren't disappointed; it's basically impossible to be in this city, but still.
About five minutes in, we stumbled upon an insignificant looking mosque. We were shocked to learn that it was built in the 1550s by the great Sinan. I'm almost ashamed how much we still have to see just in our immediate surroundings. The mosque was completely empty, and very beautiful. The most striking thing about it was the incredibly vivid stained glass:
We continued along the Bosporus toward a certain mosque, an imposing structure we always notice when we take the ferry back from Asia but have never visited. Turns out it was built in 1825, comparatively late ('old' here has such a different meaning in the states as it does here!), so it was very interesting to compare it to everything else we've seen. As you can perhaps tell, its facade is very influenced by Renaissance Italian architecture (certainly Palladio):
The interior was painted, lacking the thousands of tiles that other mosques have. It was an entirely different kind of beauty, very ornate, and somewhat reminiscent of Dolmabahce, which was built about 20 years after this mosque:

As we left, it began to rain, so we climbed a hill up to a little cafe and drank tea overlooking Sultanahmet. Quick topography lesson; I know I don't do a very good job of explaining where all these sites and neighborhoods are, sorry.
This is the view from the cafe:
And to put it a little more in perspective:

One thing that was really incredible about the neighborhoods we walked through was the amount of political graffiti, all against the current government. Most was fairly simple ('AKP'yi Istemiyoruz!'- We don't want AKP!), but some were a little more creative. WARNING- not for the eyes of children or proponents of political Islam:

'Tayyip' is Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan; this is one of the more uncommon criticisms of the Islamist-oriented leader of the AK party. DEHAP, on the right, was a pro-Kurdish party disbanded in 2005, so I guess this is pretty old.
We also saw dozens of old ruins and literally hundreds of kittens, but you already know what those looks like, don't you? We eventually made it back to our flat, where we got dinner and started writing our blog entries. Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you soon!

Hagia Sophia! Plus, It Looks So Sarong, But It Feels So Sa-right

2008-06-07T01:19:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
Yesterday, we finally made our long-awaited visit to Hagia Sophia, or the Ayasofya Muzesi as it's known in Turkish. But Hagia Sophia wasn't the only monumental domed structure we visited. We also went to the Blue Mosque, or Sultanahmet Camii (named for its builder, Sultan Ahmed I), before Friday prayers. Our guide for the two monuments was OSU PhD student Günhan Börekçi, a former tour guide and a future renowned academic. His dissertation is on Sultan Ahmed I, who put himself on the throne at 13, started building his mosque at 19, and died at 27. I won't bore you with the details of the building's construction, but here's a couple pictures from one of Istanbul's most impressive sites:

I finally figured out how to take pictures inside buildings! This is the south wall, facing Mecca, with incredibly beautiful stained glass windows

The monumental dome and one of the four 'elephant legs', the enormous pillars that support the ceiling.
But the day's main attraction was, of course, this lil guy:
God, I love this building.
A quick summary before I post an excessive amount of pictures (but still a small fraction of the number I actually took): the building standing today is the third incarnation of the Hagia Sophia church; the first two were destroyed. It was built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian from 532-537, in less than 6 years. Obviously, the minarets date from the Ottoman era, and flying buttresses were also added, but overall the building exists today much as it did 1500 years ago.
When we first entered the building, I was immediately disappointed to see huge scaffolding covering up about a fourth of the floor space:
But, come on, I was in Hagia Sophia. See that mosaic above the door? We spent about 20 minutes talking about that in Byzantine class (it's Leo VI or Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos being blessed by Christ). As Günhan said, you could spend a lifetime in this building and never get sick of it. Here's the dome, which has collapsed several times:
As a result, the dome is not perfectly circular. We finally made our way over to the apse where we gazed up at one of the building's most famous mosaics, the Virgin and Child:
That's it on the left (in the center is the Archangel Gabriel; on the right is one of the huge Islamic shields bearing Koranic verses added after 1453). The Byzantine Empire was convulsed by two periods (730-787 and 814-843) of iconoclasm. For a theocratic state like Byzantium, issues of religious representation were very much political issues, and for over a century, emperors, patriarchs, and the people fought over whether figural representation was heretical or not. The Virgin and Child mosaic is the first of the post-iconoclasm mosaics, from 867. Miraculously, it has survived. For the most part, the Ottomans whitewashed the building's mosaics; humidity has taken a greater tole on them than Islam. A note on Islam and Hagia Sophia- walking through the building, which is now a museum after nearly 500 years as a mosque, I couldn't help but feel that the Islamic parts (the shields, the mithrab, the covering of mosaics, etc.) should be removed. I don't think it's inappropriate to, say, put them in a museum and restore the building to its Byzantine glory.
Another one of the most famous Byzantine images greeted us as we climbed to the upper gallery:
This image of Christ is sold everywhere by street vendors here. The date is uncertain, but apparently it dates from after the Byzantine reconquest of the city from the Latins in 1261. Apparently there are 4 acres of mosaics in Hagia Sophia; I won't pictures of all of it up, but here's a few more:
This is the Empress Zoe mosaic. As a royal daughter, she held the power to make men emperor, which she did through marriage three times. Each time, the head on this mosaic was changed; this final version shows her with her third husband Constantine IX Monomachos. Her face was also changed to make her look more youthful; you can tell up close how much they have been altered. Lest you need any more examples of how sumptuous Byzantine art is:
This is a family portrait of Emperor John II Comnenus, his wife Irene (she's blond! She was Hungarian I think), their son Alexius, and his BFFs the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ.
A porch overlooking the vast nave.
The final mosaic, and one of my favorites: it shows the Emperors Justinian and Constantine presenting to Virgin and Child models of Hagia Sophia and Constantinople, respectively.
The point is, everyone should see Hagia Sophia at some point in their lives.
After Hagia Sophia we went to yet another hamam (I coined this post's title quote at the Bursa hamam but forgot it until yesterday). This time it did come with a massage, which I was terrified of, especially because my masseur looked like Genghis Khan. It was actually more relaxing than I thought, and we had a great time. Immediately after, I had to run to the other side of town to go to a dinner party at my friend Char's flat. I made it back to Galata by about midnight.
Today's our first day to relax in a good two weeks, so that's what I'm up to now. Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you all soon!

Dolmabahçe and Boğaziçi

2008-06-05T12:27:00.000-07:00

Extra credit if you can correctly pronounce both names.
Today's title is a little more utilitarian than usual, but I'm pretty tired; it's been a very busy week, and tomorrow we have Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, and another hamam- stay tuned.
First, Dolmabahçe. Dolmabahçe Palace is a kind of disgusting palace built in the mid-19th century. Remember Topkapı from a couple days ago? Dolmabahçe was built to replace it. As you can tell from the first picture, they have basically nothing in common:

It is certainly impressive, in the same sense the Versailles is, as a manifestation of the ruler's wealth. Except in this case, the ruler (the Sultan) and his empire were broke. The money used to build this colossus was mostly borrowed, driving the troubled empire further into debt. And what a way to spend it too. I say disgusting because fourteen tons of gold were used to guild the ceilings alone. It is incredibly situated, right along the Bosporus; here's the view out the sultan's front door:
That's Asia over there. It was really hard to take pictures because of awkard lighting throughout the palace, but here's a few examples of how nauseatingly lavish this place was.
One of the approximately 14 billion enormous chandeliers in the palace, and enough gold to pay the salaries of a small army.

Some bearskins, gifts of Czar Nicholas II, another ruler who presumably could've used his soon-to-fall empire's funds to more advantageous ends.

Ceiling of the sultan's hamam.
This is the room where the first Ottoman parliament met in 1876, and where Atatürk was laid in state after his death in 1938. It's impossible to capture the enormity of this room which was by far the most impressive in the entire compex.
I think that's about it. Looking back over my pictures from the day, I can safely say that 90% of them are blurry pictures of a room with a chandelier. I had to pay 6 damn lira just to take my camera in the place, so I think I was taking pictures more to justify that steep purchase (6 döner!!!) than to document artistically or historically significant features of the palace (I guess the room where Atatürk died could count as that; if any of you are dying to see it, let me know- it pretty much just looks like a room).
After the palace, we were given a presentation on the Turkish Military Museum by Kevin and David. It was full of interesting relics and artifacts, but was a bit disorganized. On the other hand, it did give a fairly accurate picture of the course of the Ottoman military situation: on a list of battles (including Attila the Hun's 447 invasion of the Western Roman Empire?) fought by Turks, there is a gap between 1538 (naval victory at Preveza) and 1683 (second unsuccessful siege of Vienna) and then again until 1897 (the pitiful victory over Greece). Certainly there were more than 3 battles in these 350 years, but the Military Museum would rather you not think about them. It would like you to think about the 1453 conquest of Constantinople though, devoting half the museum to it, including a bizarre 3-D lifesize (with sound effects!) portrayal of the siege.
The most interesting room, however, is the room elegantly entitled "Hall of Armenian Issue With Documents." Yes, this is about the Armenian Genocide, but you'd never know it by seeing this room. Why not?
Because it consists solely of this, pictures of dead people labeled with some variant of 'Turkish civilians martyred/burned/massacred/executed by Armenians'. This should give you some kind of idea about Turkey's peculiar notion of 'liberal democracy'. This kind of revisionism is unconscionable in the West. The Turkish government could advance the conversation simply by acknowledging the genocide and recognizing that it was conducted by the Ottoman Empire; after all, the Republic was founded as a reversal of everything the Empire stood for (the caliphate, expansionism, etc.). The continued denial only feeds Armenian resentments and discredits Turkey in the eyes of the world. The room on Cyprus was no different; one particularly glaring example was a knife labeled "Bloody cleaver used against the Turks by the Greeks in Cyprus". Subtle this museum is not.
We finished off the day with another delicious meal at Prof. Shields' and divisive round of Catchphrase. Walking back, we decided to indulge in a Turkish tradition: nargile, or hookah. Sorry, no pictures, but it did feel really freakin' Turkish.
Today we went to Boğaziçi University, which has to have one of the most incredible views of any university on earth:
Looking south over the Bosporus
Looking east-ish; on the left is Rumelihisarı, the fortress built by Mehmed II in 1452 as a prelude to conquering the city.
At the university we met with Şevket Pamuk, an Ottoman and Turkish economic historian. Prof. Shields didn't tell us until about 5 minutes beforehand that he's the brother of Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize winning author. We read Orhan's memoir Istanbul, where he discusses growing up with his brother in great detail; it was kind of surreal to meet him. We talked about Turkish politics and economics for about two hours before going to lunch. He particularly impressed me with his intimate knowledge of US politics, asking us if we thought North Carolina was in play this year. Afterwards, I met up with my friend Char from UNC, who has attended Boğaziçi this semester (founded by American missionaries in 1863, all classes are still taught in English). UNC and Boğaziçi have a mutual exchange program; maybe I'll end up here sometime in the next 3 years.
Like I said, tomorrow's a huge day, so I should go rest up- I need to be on my A game for Hagia Sophia.

Political update: the law overturning the ban on women wearing headscarves in universities was thrown out today by Turkey's Constitutional Court; basically, women still cannot wear the headscarf. For the story, click here. Some observers see this as foreshadowing the larger case against the ruling AK Party, for accused anti-secular activites; the country's top prosecutor (independent from the government, obviously) is seeking the dissolution of the Party, the removal of the President and Prime Minister from office, and the banning of 50 or so top leaders from public life. This case will probably be ruled on sometime in the fall. For the more intrepid Turkish scholars among you, here is an outline of the suit brought against AKP.

So You Think You Can Dance (Like a Turk)?

2008-06-03T13:05:00.000-07:00

Answer: you can't.
But I only found this out tonight, and it's been a long, busy day (do you see a pattern?). Let's start at the beginning.
We went over to Asia (ha! sorry, still not old) this morning to meet with the nicest Turkish lady of all time; I feel horrible for not remembering her name, but I'm not sure if we ever actually learned it, so that's that. Anyways, she runs an NGO (non-governmental organization) that specializes in women's issues and Islamic studies, both doing charity work and hosting scholarly conferences. We had an extremely interesting conversation with her about Sufism (the mystical branch of Islam, adherents of which are prohibited from practicing in Turkey), women's rights, and the role of Islam in Turkey. She was one of the warmest people I've ever met; as she put it, "I am dominated by love", and it showed. As our conversation wound to a close, she said "Children, I want to feed you." And out her coworkers came with cups of Ayran and plates piled high with lahmacun. Also, she arranged for us to meet, when we go to Konya, with a friend of hers who is a descendant of the Mevlana, or Rumi.
We came back to Europe for a presentation by Kristina and Emily on the Orient Express. We were also invited by Sarah and William to join them for a concert at 6. Before that, I wanted to go exploring, so I walked over to Rüstem Pasha Camii. It's the smallest but most intricately tiled mosque I've been to so far. I don't blame you if all these pictures are starting to look the same, but I feel obliged to put them up just the same:

The front of the mosque
Ceiling.
One thing about this mosque- it's very small, and the only other people in it with me were French tourists. Tourists are everywhere in this city, but for some reason these ones particularly annoyed me, with many of the women's heads uncovered and many of the men wearing shorts. It's not that I've turned into an Islamist, but I just don't understand why people come to this city if they don't plan on respecting local mores, norms, and traditions. I'm very curious about why people come in the first place (especially these huge tour buses filled with Japanese couples; do they have any idea what they're looking at when they go to the sites? What possessed them to vacation in Istanbul?), but that's another issue.
At 6, we headed over to the instrument store/museum where the performance was supposed to be held. But this was no ordinary performance. As Sarah and William had discovered last Tuesday, after an hour or so of traditional Turkish music, the venue changed from concert to prayer hall. Sufi orders, whose most familiar representatives are the famed 'whirling dervishes' whose dancing gives them a closer connection to the divine, are outlawed in Turkey. Though the law is not enforced, apparently Sufis are not liberal enough for the secularists or orthodox enough for the Islamists, and therefore do not publicize events like the one we attended tonight. I began to think we weren't going to see Sufi prayer, but about an hour into the Turkish music (which was really interesting itself, played with a host of bizarre instruments), a man dressed in traditional Sufi dress entered and began, well, whirling. For a good 20 minutes. It was really beautiful actually. I wish I'd gotten a picture, but I thought it would've been inappropriate- apparently it's not. After the ceremony was over, a woman brought out a birthday cake to the man who clearly was the group's leader. Then they told us, in English, to sit down.
We should've figured what would happen next. First they brought out bowls of soup. We told ourselves we were going to leave after the soup, but there was no time; as soon as we had finished, they were filling our bowls with another kind of soup and bringing out plates of bread, chicken, and pilav.
After dinner, the music was started up again, but was much more celebratory, with people clapping and dancing. About 20 minutes in, one of our Turkish acquaintances indicated that I should join them in dancing. Me, dancing with a dozen Turks, including the whirling guy, who was quite a dancer. Pretty soon, we were all up, making fools out of ourselves trying to dance like the Turks to this traditional music. I can't really explain why, but there's just something fundamentally different about the way Turks dance and the way we dance. We noticed it in the clubs 2 weekends ago too; maybe we dance more with our hips, and theirs is more in the shoulders. Whatever it is, something was just off, though we gave it our best. I'm pretty sure the Turks had as good a time as we did, and I daresay we made the old guy's birthday party. Here's the dancing part, with me and the group leader:
(props to David on the candid pic, and no, I am not drunk here)
It's just breathtaking how how much Turkish hospitality we have received in the past 4 days. And none of it expected either. What a country- that's why Turkey. We're going to an Ottoman palace tomorrow, so I doubt we'll get the same treatment, but at this point I wouldn't be completely surprised if we do.

Walkin the Walls

2008-06-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
I guess I should probably give you, loyal readers, a break after yesterday's monstrosity. But the blog must go on.
Today was a very exciting day, because we finally got to walk the walls! Inhabited since the 7th century BC, Constantinople (today's Istanbul) was established as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire in 330 by Constantine. In the fifth century, the Emperor Theodosius started the city's famous walls, circling the city on all three sides: the land walls, and the Golden Horn and Sea of Marmara sea walls. The sea walls are mostly in disrepair, but it is still possible to walk the route of the land walls north from Marmara to the Golden Horn- and that's what we did.
We started at Yedikule in the south, the 7 towered fortress that, like so much in Istanbul, was originally built by the Byzantines and elaborated upon by the Ottomans. Here's a bit of it:

Here's the view south:
On the horizon you can see all the supertankers waiting in the Marmara to go up the Bosporus into the Black Sea. There are these kinds of farms all around the walls today:
So besides lots of enigmatic inscriptions and carvings (these things have been around for a millennium and a half), what else was on the walls?

Well, a couple horses for one. Yet another Turkish mystery. The walls look like they do here in some places, are completely restored (in the past 10 years) in others, and are somewhere in between most of the time.
And, as always, adorable Turkish children, wanting their pictures to be taken.

Most of all though, incredible views, mostly from the restored towers. I tried to put these 3 pictures into a panorama, but it didn't work out. Use your imagination:
(looking southeast, towards the Sea of Marmara)
(looking east; you can see Hagia Sophia etc. in the background)
(looking northeast, over the Golden Horn, towards Beyoglu)

Oh also, we saw the grave of the oldest person who ever lived:
Afterwards, Kevin and I walked back toward Sultanahmet to go to the Spice Bazaar for some things. In all, we walked about 6.8 miles, according to Google. If you want to see a map of our trek with some ominous red continent labels on it, you're in luck:

A long day, but a thoroughly rewarding one; it's nice to be reminded that this city is, in so many ways, fundamentally Byzantine, and walking the walls is one of the best ways to do that. Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you soon!

"Türkiye...is a weird country": Weekend in Bursa

2008-06-01T08:01:00.000-07:00

Hello all,
We went to Bursa this weekend.
Sounds pretty simple doesn't it? Well, that's the short version of the past 2 days. What follows is the long version of one of the most bizarre, enlightening, and rewarding weekends of my life; after 4 hours of travel today (it's about 6 now), I'm not sure I can adequately capture this weekend in a blog post, but here's what I got:
We first decided to go to Bursa about a week ago, at Prof. Shields' suggestion. She said she and William were going, and asked if anyone else was interested in tagging along. Bursa, the first Ottoman capital and a city of about a million people, is only about 3 hours away, so everyone who was available, the group minus Zoe, Emily, and Yekta, said yes. When we told our friend Murat (the one who lives in our building, and is from Bursa) we were going, he said he was going this weekend too, and he would love to put us up! Working out details is not Murat's strong point though, so over the next couple days the plan changed about 10 times. When we woke up on Friday, we still weren't even sure. (SIDENOTE: either no huge celebrations Thursday night, or we missed them. There were really cool signs strung up on the minarets of the Blue Mosque and Yeni Camii though:)
The rough plan was for us to take the 5 o'clock bus to Bursa, where Murat's friend Selman would meet us, and Murat would arrive later that night.
The trip to Bursa was utterly surreal. We somehow managed, with much help from Yekta, to get to the station and get tickets to Bursa, though we had to get the 6:15 bus.

Amanda: "Guys, Yekta looks worried. I think she knows something we don't"
Me: "Yeah. The language"

Which showed up at 7:15, prompting Edward to wonder if we had crossed, in taking the shuttle from Taksim to the bus terminal across the Bosphorus, into another time zone. Also, at one point Kelly tried to use her cell phone, to let Yekta know we were on the road, but was told to put it away. Apparently you can't use cell phones on buses, because Turks think they interfere with the brake systems. I don't know why this is a problem because Turks use their car brakes about as often as their cars grow wings and fly over traffic, which is to say never. We also made a friend, Osman, who told Kelly she looked like George Bush, and gave me the address of an old book store with 7000 books (??) in Sultanahmet. It pretty much felt like a reality show, 7 Americans sent into a strange city with a guide (Murat) who speaks about 50 words of English. We were already disoriented, so it made a lot of sense when the bus to Bursa drove onto
a ferry dock. Apparently the fastest way to get to Bursa is to drive to the Gulf of Gemlik, take the ferry to the other side, and then drive the last hour to Bursa. The experience of the ferry can be best summed up by Edward's observation: "I think we got on a gay cruise". In addition to our friend Osman, a guy named Ahmed decided to sit with us at our table. His English (maybe 25 words) was augmented by lots of gestures, including resting his hand on my and Edward's knees for entirely too long. Not good. Finally the ferry docked, we continued on to Bursa, and arrived about 11. Selman, Murat's friend, was faithfully waiting for us with two friends, Eyup and Taner (told of our travels, Selman replied "Türkiye...is a weird country"); we stayed in Eyup's family's house that night. We had such a fun night meeting them and their friends, drinking Efes and some kind of wine and Sprite mixture, and listening to music. The Turks loved, of all things, Elvis, and kept breaking out in Elvis songs. They know our pop culture better than we do, at least when it comes to 50s and 60s music. Two of them were in a band, Rollyzma:

Still not sure where the name comes from, and they do always refer to 'rock and roll'; also not sure what genre this generic term would translate to in America. As we prepared for bed around 1:30, it began to dawn on us: not only were we all sleeping in the tiny room (we knew that the 7 of us were going to be in one room) but three of the Turks were too; there was just nowhere else in the small house. I hope you can tell how small this room is:
It truly does not extend more than a foot beyond the borders seen here. And there were ten of us. The hilarity of it all was only heightened by our realization the next morning that it was shaped like a rhombus, or kite, or some shape not yet discovered by geometricians; the night in The Rhombus was an experience we will always treasure.
Oh, and we found out Murat wasn't coming. Selman talked to him at about midnight, and said he was coming in the morning; in what shouldn't have been a surprise, Murat canceled in the morning. Selman's explanation was that some moving company had taken all of Murat's money (this was aided by a Turkish-English dictionary and some kind of vacuum noise Selman made with his mouth to symbolize the Murat's total lack of money). Bottom line: we were 7 Americans in a large Turkish city without our ostensible host, thrust upon 3 utter strangers for 24 hours.

But lest you think we had only come to Bursa for the irregularly shaped living quarters, here's some pictures of a quite incredible city's most important sights:

First, Yesil Cami or the Green Mosque. Built in the early 15th century, it is an example of early Ottoman architecture, much less grand than the mosques of Istanbul. Still very beautiful though.
Then we went to see the mausoleums of the first and second Ottoman rulers, Osman and Orhan. These were particularly exciting for me, as you might imagine, though my enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by the fact that both mausoleums date from the mid-19th century, having been completely destroyed in an 1855 earthquake. This is Osman, from whom the name 'Ottoman' comes and who founded the Ottoman state in 1299:

His direct descendants sat on the throne for 623 years. More impressively, as his coffin indicates, he was about 15 feet tall.
Here's a view of about a fourth of the city; to the left of the picture it extends about as far as the eye can see, and is ringed by mountains:
Next we visited Ulu Cami, or the Great Mosque, built in 1399:
Its many domes and columns give it a completely different atmosphere than the huge, cavernous mosques we've been exposed to so far. Also, its main aesthetic feature was not tiles, but huge calligraphic designs that were on almost every surface.
Then we went to the hamam, or bath-house. Yes, we went to a real, live Turkish bath, in Bursa, famous for its baths. In fact, the bath-house we went to was built by Suleiman. The Magnificent. In 1555. So it was pretty cool.
Walking up, we couldn't believe it was the hamam; we thought it was a mosque. And it was 10 lira.
It consisted of a large central room with a huge pool about the temperature of a hot tub, side niches with faucets, and a room that was about 180 degrees. I can't even begin to express what it was like to be in the hot room; walking in was almost impossible, and breathing was literally painful. We were only there for about a minute, maybe two, and I thought I was going to pass out. The other men in the hamam were alternatively enormous or nearly emaciated (coincidentally, many of the former were strong contenders for the prestigious World's Hairiest Man title), but all very supportive of our American ignorance, showing us how to wash ourselves. Despite the reputation or images the word 'bath-house' conjures up, it was a much more comfortable environment than the gay cruise from the night before, and an absolutely incredible experience. Like William said, you really do feel like you're in completely new skin when you leave.
After the hamam, our hosts (who, by the way, could not have been more energetic or helpful on our tour through Bursa) told us they had a surprise for us. We were apparently going to stay that night at Taner's, not Eyup's. They took us to Taner's family's house, introduced us to dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins, and took us up to the terrace. Here's the neighborhood:
I'm still stunned by how beautiful it was. But dinner was even more amazing.
They asked us to sit down at a beautifully prepared table under an arbor of grape vines. First they brought us a ton of delicious fresh fruit. Then some kind of hot tomato soup. Then sigara borek. Then karnıyarık, rice, and cacık. Just when we thought we were going to burst from the amount of incredibly delicious food and our growing sense of guilt, they brought out a towering platter of lahmacun, which we ate with salata. I just can't tell you how delicious the food was, how incredibly hospitable our hosts were, and how embarrassed we were. Their evident delight at our amazement, and out realization that our requests to help were futile and laughingly brushed aside, made us less embarrassed. The fact that this meal was prepared for 7 complete strangers is a testament to the true hospitality of the Turkish people. I ate as much as I could, and finally had to give up. I did have a cup of the famous Turkish coffee after dinner; I don't drink coffee, but I actually really liked it.
That night, we stayed up with our Turkish friends and some of Taner's cousins. His entire extended family lives in the same building, every family on a different floor ('like the Godfather', he explained). Most spoke no English, but we still had a great time, listening to Turkish music and communicating as best we could. This morning, we went out early to try to find a florist to get our hosts a gift; we returned empty handed to yet another feast. This is before the heaps of bread and hardboiled eggs were put out:

I don't think I need to repeat how delicious breakfast was, or how fun the company. Here's us with Taner's mother, the incredible woman who, as far as we could tell, organized all the meals with such joy.
We were so sad to leave, and our hosts were sorry to see us go:
Them, from the bus, bidding us adieu with their kerchiefs.

Remember what time I started this? I did break for dinner, but it's 10 now; I'm just about blogged out. Reading over, I can hardly believe how well it worked out, going from being complete strangers to welcomed guests and family friends in just 36 hours. We got their address, so we'll send them a thank you note (we also got them chocolate at the bus stop today), and hopefully they'll take us up on our offer to come to Istanbul sometime before we leave. I've left out so many little jokes ("Y'all....is this a dream world?" -Amanda) and stories, but I think you get the general sense- sorry it's so unruly. Miss you all, and I'll talk to you soon!

Happy Conquest Day!

2008-05-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

Hello all,
I know you probably won't get time to look at this post until after you get back from all the Conquest Parties you're going to today. As you may remember from yesterday's post, today is the 555th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. I've been surprised by the very public nature of the government-sponsored celebrations. No one else has; they argue that it's a simple affirmation of Turkishness, commemorating one of the most important and triumphant moments in Turkish history. I agree, of course. But at the same time, I can't help but be confused. It seems counterintuitive for the government, which (despite its more Islamic orientation) is avidly seeking membership in the European Union, to emphasize the events of 1453. In the Western psyche, this year is viewed as catastrophic for civilization; the uncouth Turks destroyed the venerable and cultured Byzantine Empire, streaming across southeastern Europe until halted by the heroic efforts of the Austrians in 1529 and Poles in 1683. To celebrate May 29 in such a public way only heightens the fundamentally non-European identity of the Turks. Many European countries are struggling to integrate their rapidly growing Muslim populations, and are hardly enthusiastic about admitting 70 million more into the EU (a population increase of over 15%). May 29 is a day of understandable pride for Turks, but I still wonder about the government's rationale.
Enough rambling (we haven't even been to the main celebrations, scheduled for tonight- I'll report tomorrow). Today we woke up early- 8- to go to Sabancı University, one of Turkey's newest and best universities. We had to take the ferry to Asia, and then an hour-long bus ride, and techincally it's still in Istanbul! It was a really interesting day, interacting with Turks our own age who spoke much, much better English than we're used to; they actually were quiet proficient. The students were so enthusiastic, smart, and curious (I feel like this sounds condescending, and I certainly don't mean it to be!), and we're meeting up with them again tonight or tomorrow night. Here's the group:
Okay, I know this looks more like a class picture than a group of friends, but we're certainly the latter. Here's one of the University itself:
In the very background is the Sea of Marmara, with one of the Prince's Islands. The University's about 9 years old, and has almost 3,000 undergrads. It's private (rare) and interdisciplinary (only one in Turkey with liberal arts and sciences).
That's about it for the day. As any of the other students could tell you, I've been embarrassing myself all day saying stupid things, so I'll cut my losses and say goodbye, happy Conquest Day, and I'll talk to you all tomorrow!

Dead Sultans Galore

2008-05-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
I'm writing from the terrace, watching the light fade over Istanbul's skyline, listening to music, and eating my 1 lira rice-with-chickpeas dinner. It would be perfect but for the seagull brawl that is taking place on the tin roof right above me, both making a huge ruckus and giving me an uneasy, 'The Birds'-like feeling.
I need to find new ways of starting posts other than, "Wow! The past day(s) have been incredible!", but that's all I've got for now. The past days have been incredible! Yesterday was pretty quiet, which was a nice change of pace. We mostly stayed in, watched a documentary about trains, and discussed industrialization and city-planning in the late Ottoman Empire, a topic about which all of you are already so well versed as to not merit a summary of our discussion. Highlight was another delicious dinner at Prof. Shields'. Today's been a bit more busy, to say the least.
So one of the projects we're doing here is a site project, wherein we, in teams, pick a site, take the group to it, and teach them about it. Yekta and I chose (thank you Professor Connor!) the Byzantine church-turned-Ottoman mosque-turned-museum Kariye Camii. Since we weren't supposed to meet until 2 or so this afternoon, we decided to go check it out this morning. Woke up early (8:30, and oh my god was it hard), took the tram and a dolmuş (a cross between a bus and a taxi, and, at 2 lira, probably one of the best transportation options here) to get all the way out to the site- it was closed. Apparently it always is on Wednesdays. Undeterred, we went on a five hour trek that took us to six mosques and across a good third of the old city. Some highlights of a long journey:

Yes, these are sheep. Within the city's old walls (it now extends miles beyond the Byzantine walls). In the midst of a neighborhood. I really don't have anything else to say.

A good part of the old neighborhoods by the walls looked like this. Pamuk talks, in his book Istanbul, obsessively about the hüzün (or melancholy) all Istanbullus have from constantly being reminded that the city they inhabit is in many ways a shell of its former self; walking through some of these neighborhoods, I can at least begin to understand it. Also- these neighborhoods were palpably more conservative; we hardly saw any women without headscarves, and the vast majority wore black burqas. The children were just as friendly and outgoing as ever though:

These little boys saw us, identified us immediately as Americans, and said in rapid-fire English "HellomynameisXwhatisyourname?" Yekta spoke Turkish to them after my feeble Merhabas (hello) and memnun oldums (nice to meet you). They also demanded that we take their pictures. The kids here are just great.

This is the dome of the mausoleum of Mehmed II Fatih, 'the Conqueror' of Constantinople. In fact, he captured the city 555 years ago tomorrow (May 29), so there'll be big celebrations. The mausoleums are jewelboxes, so intricately detailed and colorful. His was particularly beautiful I thought.

The next mosque we stopped at was Şehzade Camii, commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent in honor of his son's early, unexpected death and executed by the great architect Sinan (one of his first buildings). It was great because:

a. it was completely empty, a first for a mosque in my experience, especially one so huge, and

b. it was so incredibly beautiful. Obligatory neckbreaking ceiling shot:

Next, we headed over to Süleymaniye Camii. Here's Suleiman's mausoleum (at this point, I think I've seen about half of the Ottoman sultans); the lighting and shape of the building are really complex, so taking pictures was difficult.
Tiles, marble, stained glass- this place had it all. Fitting for the greatest European monarch of the 16th century.
The thing on the left is a huge elephant tusk. Most of the earlier sultans are buried flanked by one. I guess a symbol of imperial power, but it looks kind of weird. And of course the huge white turban in the middle is that of Suleiman himself.
(Bird war update: the birds have either started using projectiles or one just dropped dead on the roof.)
Finally it was time to meet the group, so we drifted over to the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art near the Blue Mosque. There were so many stunning pieces, but I was most impressed by the manuscrips and calligraphy.

For some reason this picture will not rotate! Anyways, this is the bottom half of the page, 8 or 10 inches wide, and a foot and half tall. The book was hugely thick as well; I can't imagine how long it would've taken to complete. Definitely click to see the large version too. Not a bad view from the porch either:
Kind of a jarring image, isn't it? It's the obelisk of Theodosius and the Blue Mosque. In such incredible shape, it's hard to believe it's a real obelisk but it is, from 1300 BC or so and brought to Constantinople in the fourth century AD.
After our guided tour through the museum, we had our first (and hopefully not last) actual Turkish lesson! I hesitate to say that I'm more than a complete stranger to the language, but I really have learned so much in the past week.
Four seagulls just swooped down in unison from the roof about 15 feet in front of my face, so I should probably get back downstairs. İyi akşamlar, and I'll talk to you soon!

I'll Have Afiyet Olsun, Please

2008-05-26T10:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, I know I just posted, like, two hours ago, but I want to tell the story of our dinner before I forget. So we decided to go to the little döner and pilav places (they're right next to each other, and both 30 seconds from us- pictures to come) for dinner. First, over the course of dinner, we were trying to decipher the various menu items at our döner place. I asked Zoe what she usually gets, some kind of filo or pasta and cheese thing. She was like 'Um...I don't know...I usually ask for 'Afiyet Olsun'", which are the words that ring the place's walls. We were pretty sure Afiyet Olsun was not a dish, so we cracked up. Turns out 'Afiyet Olsun' means 'Enjoy your meal', or 'Bon appetite'. So, every day, Zoe has been ordering bon appetite from various vendors around Istanbul. Her ordering style is, needless to say, more pointing-oriented than visual.

Second, they brought us a round of tea for free! This might not seem like a big deal to you, but this means that we're regulars. And we've only been here a week! We engaged in something between a charades game and a conversation with them before we left, solidifying our friendships. In all, a çok successful evening!

Adventures in the Harem, and I Get My Shoes Shined

2008-05-26T07:09:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
Today's big event was a tour of Topkapı Sarayı, the foremost palace of the Ottoman Sultans for the first four hundred years of their residence in Istanbul, led by NYU's Leslie Pierce. We couldn't have asked for a better guide; she knows every part of the complex and its history, and related it all with so much enthusiasm. It's such an incredibly huge and beautiful set of buildings, I'm having trouble deciding which pictures to post. Here are the ones that best capture what interested me about the palace.

God, was this place gilded! Every surface not marbled, painted, or tiled was covered with gold. This is the the outside of the building where the sultan's ministers met; he often attended in secret, hidden behind a (surprise!) golden screen.

One of the most interesting and compelling parts of the palace, for me, was the use of columns. Every column in this picture is different, and very much so: greens, purples, reds, whites, and drastically different patterns as well (striped, spotted, solid, etc.). Imagining the various origins of the columns, which clearly all came from different Byzantine monuments (which themselves could have appropriated the columns from even earlier sources), is one of the palace's attractions for me.

Just try to count the number of tile patterns used in this one small niche of the harem (the innermost part of the palace complex, NOT some kind of stable for the sultan's concubines). The tiles are just incredible, and pretty much occupy all wall space in Topkapı.

A receiving room for the sultan, though this was in the harem, so it's not clear who the sultan would've received here. Even his ministers and foreign ambassadors would not be able to enter the harem, so I guess just select family members.

A final interesting aesthetic feature: stained glass. As far as I know, it's not an orginally Islamic art form, but we noticed it in Yeni Camii as well. I don't know of any Byzantine examples either, so maybe borrowed from Western Europe?

One of the most breathtaking rooms. I wish I could remember what it was; Prof. Shields described it as "another room with tiles", and I think that's about as accurate as I can get.

Leaving the palace, we decided to go on one of our more lengthy expeditions across Istanbul: down Divan Yolu to Ataturk Bulvari, then across the Golden Horn to Beyoglu. On our way, we stumbled upon yet another Theodosian monument that I became way too excited about: the ruined triumphal arch from the Forum of Theodosius:

If you think the design on the column is weird, you're right. Alternatively called the tear drop or peacock eye pattern it's a late Roman/early Byzantine motif that no one has been able to sufficiently explain. Pretty cool to just see it on the side of the road. But that's Istanbul.

It's also Istanbul to have a major road going under a fourth century aqueduct, that of Valens:

This thing is huge.

After a LOT of traffic-dodging, we finally made it to the bridge. While crossing, a shoe-shine guy dropped one of his brushes going the opposite way from us. I got his attention, and gave him back his brush. He was very appreciative, and we went our separate ways. Five seconds later though, he tapped me on the shoulder, and gestured for me to put my foot on his little stand, where he was already setting up his brushes/oils/whatever shoes are shined with. Yeah, my shoes are pretty crappy but still, a free shoe shine! Cool, right? WRONG. At the end, he made it clear that he expected 10-20 lira for it. Neither of us were very happy. I gave him a five, and went away pissed, out of cash for the day, and somewhat jaded. This was the famous Turkish hospitality? I guess I should've made it clear at the beginning that I was not going to pay for a shoe-shine (do people with real shoes even get them?) of all things. Oh well. Another Turkish lesson learned.
We got back about an hour or two ago, and it is, again, time for my nap. Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you soon!

MYSTERIES

2008-05-25T07:30:00.000-07:00

Hello all,
The past day and a half or so has been, well, mysterious. These are the questions that have consumed my past 24 hours:
-how do you haggle?
-is there a ruined palace right next to our apartment?
-does Red Bull actually give you wings?
So, the first. Sometime after I posted yesterday, David, Kevin, and I went to Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, the Kapalıçarşı, to explore and maybe pick up some clothes (Turkish men wear clothes that are basically skin tight- I didn't want that small, just clothes that don't look XXL comparatively). I made the first purchase: 6 pairs of socks for 5 lira. I didn't even realize until afterwards that I didn't haggle. Was I supposed to? If so, how does one initiate haggling? "Hey, let's haggle!"? "Are these prices artificially inflated because I am a foreigner and, as such, am likely to pay you upwards of five times this item's actual price?"? But I thought it was a good deal (and I still do), so I wasn't too concerned. When we got to one of the main clothing streets though, the haggling began in earnest, led mostly by David. But I discovered something: haggling only works if you know about what you're trying to buy. I would ask the price of some shirt (to judge from that street, Istanbullus only wear Gucci, Dolce & Gabanna, and Lacoste), get a price, and then freeze. I don't know what they cost in the US, let alone Turkey! I basically got more and more confused, and eventually gave up on the idea of actually purchasing something. Something else about buying things from vendors here: everytime I think about doing so, I get the sinking feeling that if they accept my price, I must be getting ripped off. David ended up buying a shirt, but only after an hour+ of haggling (including being verbally assaulted by one angry vendor) and comparing prices in various parts of the bazaar. I guess that's what it takes.

In the bazaar itself, I found some places more my style, including a tiny hole in the wall coin store. The place was barely enough to accommodate me, the vendor, and the coins at the same time. I ended up buying two 19th cent. German coins for 8 lira. Not entirely sure how good of a deal it was, but it was a very cool experience, and I'd like to go back to look at the rest.

Walking back to our flat, Kevin and I decided to explore the vicinity of our flat a bit more. What we discovered was yesterday's second mystery. A lot about half a block from our building appears to be some kind of ruin, but we have no idea of what. You tell me:

Here are the two bases of a now collapsed brick arch. I feel like this kind of masonry is not completely modern; Byzantine or even late Ottoman seems a stretch, but twentieth century doesn't make sense either.

What are these arches even doing here??

This was particularly strange. In the immediate foreground is a piece of extremely polished granite, set into the ground, not just resting atop it. Again, I just don't know what to make of it. I just can't wait to explore more of this city.

Last night, most of us just stayed in; Friday night was about as much Turkish clubbing as we could take in one weekend, for now anyways. Another mini mystery though: there were tons of fireworks throughout the city, particularly on the Asian side. Here's one pretty cool picture of one:
Topkapı Palace and fireworks from the Asian side, beyond the Bosporus.

ALSO- I had lamb intestine for dinner. !!! It's called kokoreç, and while it didn't taste too exotic, it was very, very good, very, very cheap (2 lira), and very, very close (about a 45 second walk from the front door)- not bad for dinner, eh?

Today's big event was Red Bull's Flugtag (there are commercials for it all the time on TV- click on the link for more), which luckily came to Istanbul during our time here. It was on the Asian side, so we left at about 10, but didn't get there until 12 because of all the traffic- Turks love Flugtag! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, but some of the 'flying machines' included a giant Turkish tea glass; a flying carpet; a pirate ship; Florence Nightengale; an F-117 Nighthawk; a wind-up mouse; a paper airplane; a simit seller/tram car/Trojan Horse; and a DJ booth (which the MC kept referring to as 'Chicka chika boom boom'?). Enjoy:

(Florence Nightengale. They pushed a person on a stretcher in after her; maybe I'm just old fashioned, but it did seem a big non-PC)
(You should really click on these, because it's worth it to see the large, high resolution versions of them)
Ready for a nap after such a long day. Talk to you again soon!

Arts 'n' Crafts Day! Plus: Cribs, Istanbul Edition

2008-05-24T01:33:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
I feel like I should apologize up front for the lack of kitten pictures today- thanks for all of your responses, though. Also, if you have lolcat caption ideas, please do not hesitate to pass them along.
Moving along! Yesterday, we were introduced to two of the most important and impressive parts of Turkish visual culture, rug-making and calligraphy. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves (I wish I could've gotten better pictures in the rug store, but I think you can still tell the incredible colors and designs).

The guy is Hasan, who owns the rug store in the Grand Bazaar. He was awesome, so knowledgable and so friendly. Incidentally, in a piece of presumably non-rug related advice, he told us to hurry up with having kids, because our parents want grandchildren (thoughts, Mom and Dad?). Also, the small, lightish carpet in the foreground was $1,600. No one's getting that for a coming back present, sorry guys.

The $1,600 one. It's silk, and would take a typical worker 3-4 months, working 8 hours a day.

The colors in this place were just breathtaking.

Then we went to a calligrapher, about two blocks from Hagia Sophia, who told us about techniques, etc. He drew us our names, too.

Here's my name (Clayton, for those of you who don't read Arabic or who have forgotten whose blog this is). He thought I said 'Clean' when I first told him my name.

After class, Edward, David, Kevin, and I went exploring. Things in this city just never get old to look at, visit, or photograph. I'll spare you most of them, but I particularly liked this view of the Blue Mosque, from the back:
We also persuaded some restaurant manager to let us go up to his terrace to get some incredible views of the Sea of Marmara:

This is looking south-east. The islands are the Princes' Islands, and in the foreground is the almost entirely ruined Byzantine palace, the seaside Boukoleon Palace. It's so tragic how comparatively few vestiges of Byzantium there are in this city, the center of Byzantine life for over a millenium.

Looking south/southwest. On the horizon you can see all the huge supertankers waiting to come up the Bosphorus to fill up at refineries on the Black Sea.

Coming back into the city, we stumbled upon the mausoleum of three of the late Ottoman Empire's most significant sultans, including the Empire's last really autocratic sultan, Abdul Hamid II. It was an incredible building, occupants notwithstanding.

Islamic cemeteries and mausoleums are so interesting. In the back, you can see the three sultans' coffins- they're the ones with the red fezzes. From left to right: Abdul Hamid II, Abdul Aziz, and Mahmud II (who was described on his plaque as having 'suppressed' the Greek Revolt in 1826; Wikipedia that to see why it's funny/interesting)

We explored a little more, but had to get back to get ready for our first night out in Turkey (I borrowed Edward's shirt, because I didn't think any of my clothes were tight-fitting enough to be acceptable in Turkish night-life). Very few pictures of this night survive, but here are a couple:

Dream Team is not a joke. Also- I don't think I appreciated until right now how freakishly tan I've become. Oh my God.

Successful world travelers, and Murat's beer.

We went to a bar, and then two dance clubs, which can only be described as utterly surreal. Turks have appropriated some really disparate elements of Western pop culture: techno, Kelly Clarkson, and The Bump (the dance) come immediately to mind.
Also, as promised in the title, here are some pictures of where we live. We live on the fifth floor (no elevator) of a building on this street:
We pretty much live at the top of this hill. We literally cannot speak for several minutes after climbing this hill AND all 95 stairs- yes, we counted.
The guys' flat is actually really nice- small but cozy.

My eminently clean living quarters. Also, I have become a Turkish nationalist, at the cost of three lira (the flag, fools).

The kitchen. That big jug of water with a pump is how people drink water in Turkey because no one uses tap water for anything except perhaps watering the street (more on this bizarre custom later, hopefully).
That's pretty much it for now; it's döner time. Love and miss you all!

Traffic, Kittens, and Alcohol

2008-05-22T07:58:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!
I know you have been checking this blog religiously, even hourly, so I apologize for the anguish surely caused by my failure to post yesterday. A lot has gone on since my last post, as evidenced by the title (don't worry, not all those things happened at the same time).
So yesterday's big event was a scavenger hunt! Professor Shields hid 15 items (a marble, a string, an orange, etc.) around Istanbul and we had to go find them!! Actually, we had to find Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, and lots of other cool things. Like a place in Asia to eat ice cream:

Turkish soft serve, dondurma, is so much better than American soft serve (why Turkey moment of the day)

We had to go to Asia AND Europe (still not old), and take basically every mode of transportation known to man to find all the places. My group, the Dream Team, was myself, Edward, and Amanda. We won the search, obviously.

After four hours of searching, the Dream Team locates the Blue Mosque, whose minarets are only visible in 95% of the city

After walking approximately 85,000 miles, we were all treated to a delicious feast at Prof. Shields' flat. I wish I had taken a picture of the strawberries, because I've never seen huger things before in my life. Pretty much all produce is delicious here, by the way. Oh yeah, I also figured out how to do black and white on my camera, so here are yet more views from our terrace:

We got back to our flat at about 9 or so, the time we had arranged to meet some Turkish friends of ours. Yep, five days into this trip, and we already have Turkish friends. A couple days ago, up on the terrace, Amanda and I met Murat, who lives a floor or two beneath us (we're still not sure). We also met his friends, Uğur and Yucel; the three of them are students at film school here. It took us about an hour, but we arranged to meet up with them on Tuesday on our terrace for a parti Wednesday night. (Sidenote: alcohol is much more expensive in Turkey than in the US; the conservative AK Party in power for a few years now has raised taxes on alcohol and made it much harder for bars to serve it). The highlight of the night was rakı (yeah, no dot on top of that i- it makes an 'uh' sound), the Turkish national liquor. It's mixed with water, and turns milky white. Observe:

It's anise flavored, and it tastes like black licorice, so only about two of us were able to drink it steadily. I had a good two sips, and couldn't do any more. Still, we all had a great time.

Emily, Amanda, Yucel, Murat (who has a fear of smiling in pictures), Uğur, and David

Şerefe!

We gave each other different names, them in American, us in Turkish. Left to right: Eugene, George (he was not happy about being called George Bush the rest of the night), Çamil, Brad (I told you, the dude does not want to smile), Davut, and Erol.

We went to Istiklal Caddesi later that night with them, to see what goes on in Istanbul at 2 on a Thursday morning. Turns out, not much. One funny thing did happen: on the way back, Uğur gave me his puşi, a black and white scarf that you wear around your neck- it's the same thing Yasser Arafat wore on his head. Anyways, we stopped to get some döner on the way back, and the guy asked me if I was from Diyarbakır, which is kind of like asking me, when I lived in California, if I was from Compton- Diyarbakır is a rough Kurdish city in far eastern Turkey. Evidently I have gotten reallllly tan over the past couple days.

Today we had class in an art school 2 blocks from Hagia Sophia, and we talked about Ottoman history (my least favorite topic of conversation ever). Walking out, we stumbled upon baskets, literally, of kittens. Don't tell Peaches, but I did kind of freak out.

Can you blame me? The other thing I wanted to talk about today was traffic here. Maybe it's not that different from other major cities, but it is absolutely nuts. It still cracks me up how there are NO rules whatsoever. Cars, people, buses, bikes, and motorcycles go wherever they want without regard for lanes, curbs, other humans, or their personal safety. At lunch, it looked like this for about a second:
Most of the time it looks like this:
Other note- every time someone (waiters, people on the street, etc.) tells us the population of Istanbul, it goes up! The first we heard was 11 million, then 13, then 15; the highest bid is currently 18 million people. Hope all is well back in the states, thanks again for reading, and I'll talk to you soon.

Turkish food and Asia for 3 hours

2008-05-20T07:04:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
So I went to Asia today. Saying that never really gets old. Or, 'let's go to Europe for dinner'. God, I love this place.
Anyways, for my post today, I thought I'd show and tell you guys a little bit about what we do for food here. First of all, no Turkish meal is complete without tea. We went for some this morning before lunch:

(also, this is the incredible little tea place we went. It's a 15 second walk from our flat:)

It's served very, very hot in little glasses, with a cube of sugar or two and a tiny spoon to stir them in with. Based on dinner last night (payed between 15 and 20 lira for a mediocre dinner at a nicer restaurant in Galata- at fish off the bone for the first time in my life!), I think the best plan for food here is the little street vendors and cafes. I haven't gotten sick yet, and the food is absolutely delicious. After our tea, we went to a little shop even closer to our building, and got döner. Döner is meat cooked on what I guess is just an upright spit. The meat revolves, cooked on one side by a flame, and they cut off the meat as it cooks. Sounds kind of sketchy, and I guess it is. But, like most things here, it works out. Without too much trouble, I was able to get my döner, which is usually served on a sandwich with some lettuce/onions, pickles, tomatoes, and/or ketchup. Here's the sandwich, which I ate on the terrace:
Oh, and yeah, it cost a lira and a half. Street food is definitely the way to go. We took the ferry over to Asia this afternoon at one or so. This is Sultanahmet from the Bosphorus

and the view into the harbor at Haydarpaşa.

(the really cool building on the left was an Ottoman train station)

We spent the rest of the day going through a series of markets, which was incredible. We got a look at a lot of Turkish food too. One of the first things we saw a fish market,

with a Moray eel??? Not sure if that's what it was, or if people actually eat it, but that's what it looks like. And of course, it was packed everywhere.

The fruit and vegetable market was probably the most fun. I got a piece of artichoke heart with lemon for 1 lira- look Mom, I'm eating vegetables voluntarily!

David being content, me being skeptical, and Yekta being overjoyed. It was surprisingly good and, yes, I did finish it.

On the way back, we stopped at another little döner place, and got some ayran to drink. Ayran is another omnipresent facet of culinary life here. It's a thinned down, unsweetened yogurt drink. It's unlike anything I've ever tried, but it's pretty good.
Mmmmmm. Walking back to the ferry we saw another Turkish delicacy,

geese who live on the street. Actually we have no idea what this was about, and neither did the Turkish people around us. A couple more pictures of the city, from the ferry:

Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and all the city's other mosques' minarets

Do you recognize Galata Tower (basically where we live) yet? It's on the very right

Looking north, up the Bosphorus. Asia is on the right; the long, squattish building on the right is Dolmabahçe Palace; the high rises are in the city's financial district, Levent

Bosphorus Bridge, with Ortaköy Mosque underneath

That's pretty much it for today. Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you all again soon!

Are you Japan? Greece?? Korea??!?

2008-05-19T07:17:00.000-07:00

Hello all!
Well, I haven't gone to bed since my post this morning. It's just so hard to nap in this city, because there are so many other better things to do (never thought I would say that). Started the day off by going up the Galata Tower, with it's panoramic views of the city. It's usually really hazy here in the morning though, so the pictures aren't quite as beautiful as they might seem. Still really impressive though. This city is just enormous.

Looking southeast: Galata is the foreground; the Golden Horn is the body of water parallel to it, with Topkapi Palace and the Old City above. The land on the left is Asia, and the body of water receding into the distance is the Bosphorus. Confusing, I know. Just look at a map, ya bum!

Looking southwest-ish; I love the building with the stories-high Turkish flags and picture of Ataturk

Then we walked over to the Spice Bazaar and the mosque next door, Yeni Camii ('Yeni' means 'new' in Turkish, and 'camii' means mosque; in Turkish, the c is pronounced like a j). Got some kind of suspect but delicious meat item in the bazaar for 1.50 lira, or a little more than a buck. Nice change of pace from the 20$ fish/chips/mashed peas combo in Merrie England. The mosque itself (started in 1597; burned in 1660, unfinished; restarted and finished in 1663, so that's why it's 'new') is not even one of the more prominent in Istanbul, but was just amazing. The call to prayer might be my favorite thing here. Its civic and religious function fascinates me, and it is so unearthly and beautiful. I wish that pictures could do it justice. I tried:

The front of the moque is on the left; you can kind of see the mihrab (the prayer niche indicating the direction of Mecca) and the khatib (the elevated platform from which the imam gives the Friday sermon).

The dome; the entire mosque is like a jewelbox, so intricately decorated and colorful

The back wall (opposite mihrab), above door

View of the mosque from the back; not as picturesque as from the front, but more imposing

Watching the afternoon prayers was such a great experience. Then we went over to Sultanahmet again, to see the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia again. We were able to go inside the Blue Mosque (named for its blue tiles inside) Much better pictures than last night:

From the front courtyard. They built this thing in seven years- in the seventeenth century!!!!

Inside; some of the side half-domes and one of the four huge supporting columns (on the left)

You already know. One thing I'd never noticed before is that all the minarets are different, and strikingly so too; built at different times, one is brick, one is very thin, and the others have different bases.

We walked back at 4:30 or so, accosted along Galata Bridge by every restaurant manager and matre'd for a couple hundred yards. One particularly tenacious Turkish guy asked David, who is part Chinese, "Are you Japan?", to which David responded negatively. Undeterred, he asked if he was Greece. David is not Greece. Nor, incidentally, is he Korea, the Turkish man's last guess. We're not sure if we're going to that place or not yet.

That's about it for today- so far. I kind of thought I'd get burned out, but I actually really enjoy doing this. Hope you enjoy reading/looking too! Who knows, maybe I'll put up more tonight ("Are you Russia??"), but hopefully I'll get some sleep.

2008-05-18T20:24:00.000-07:00

I'm writing so early (6:20 here) this morning because I am an idiot. I was in charge of waking up myself and the two other guys in my flat, at about 9:45 or so, to go meet Sarah at 10:30. Turns out I woke us up four hours early! I'm real popular in the flat right now. Since I have so long, and am at risk of being assassinated by my roommates, I thought I'd bounce up to the terrace to read and blog (am I actually a blogger now??).
Yesterday was pretty exciting. Started off by going to my first Turkish restaurant for lunch with everyone here. I decided to use one of my ten Turkish words, 'Merhaba' (hello), as I walked into the place, a little cafe about 30 seconds from the flat. Not a good idea. The waiter immediately started off in a string of Turkish, none of which I even remotely caught, obviously. I froze and looked at my friends, and chose as my response to the guy smiling, uttering some English profanities, and just being generally awkward for about a minute. Finally, he said something to the effect of 'do you actually speak Turkish?' I don't, and none of us do, so he said 'Then we do it in English'.
After that rocky start, things went really well; delicious food (dolmas (grapeleaves or vegetable skins stuffed with rice or meat), a few kinds of salads, lamb, chicken, some pear/tomato/beef item that was incredible, and some other thing I can't remember. Then we went up to Istiklal Cadessi, one of the main streets in Istanbul. Before we got there, off one of the side streets we saw...
Some Indians playing tiny guitars! In Istanbul. As you can see, the Turks were just as into as we were, so I didn't feel too bad for slipping into tourist mode and taking a couple pictures. Istiklal was interesting, but was mostly just really crowded. The best part were the side streets: steep, filled with shops and cafes, and really colorful.

At about four or so we went back to the flat, where I, having finally figured out zoom on my camera, took some more skyline pictures. Hi-ya, Sophia!

Some people went to bed, but Kevin, Zoe and I decided to walk down to Galata Bridge, the bridge that goes over the Golden Horn, the narrow strip of water that divides the Old City (the neighborhood in which Hagia Sophia and most of the iconic Istanbul landmarks are is called Sultanahmet) from the European neighborhoods to the north. Underneath the bridge, almost the entire way, are seafood restaurants. We walked down as far as we could, coming to a little paved area almost in the center. Sitting there has to be one of my favorite moments (seems like I've been here a couple weeks already). Inexplicably, there were dolphins, jumping out of the water,

something I've never heard of, but the Istanbullus didn't seem to take much notice. At the same time, the call to prayer went out, which I heard for the first time. The Arabic singing reverberated across the water, coming from the minarets on both sides. It's so strange and beautiful. And, as always, the weather was perfect. This is our neighborhood, from across the water:

We live about a block from that tower (Galata Tower, built by the Genoese in the 14th century).; you can kind of see Galata Bridge on the left. Went back after a while, and decided to go to dinner pretty much where we had just been. I managed to actually do pretty well, in terms of Turkish, at the little place we went, ordering kofte and a kola without much difficulty. We went into Sultanahmet after dinner, to see Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque up close. Some pictures:

Hagia Sophia, through the gate into the Blue Mosque area

A hilarious Turkish concert going on in between the two??? The guy with his hands behind his back is pretty indicative of the crowd's attitude.

The Blue Mosque, from the courtyard. They have the moon in Turkey, too.

People coming out of evening prayers, Blue Mosque

OH MY GOD!!!!!!! THE BASE OF THE OBELISK OF THEODOSIUS!!!! I can't tell you how excited I was to see this guy. We spent a good half hour on this piece in my Byzantine class, and it was pretty cool to stumble upon it. My friends were underwhelmed. Theodosius and I were pissed at them.

Then we got really lost in Sultanahmet trying to find the bridge. Apparently no one lives in Sultanahmet except cats. Finally found our way (I remembered bridge, 'koprusu', which helped a bit in asking directions of the one or two people we found; one guy was sitting on the sidewalk, watching synchronized swimming on a mini TV. They really know how to creep here), after not a little bit of freaking out. Got back and went to bed about, oh, five hours ago. To repeat, I am an idiot. However, my roommates put me in charge of waking them up again in about 3 hours. I should probably go get ready to wake them up, for real this time. I will not fail them again.

The View

2008-05-18T00:54:00.000-07:00

From our terrace. Pretty hazy this morning, but take a look

Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque

Our street, from above

Our terrace, looking over the Golden Horn

Hagia Sophia

That's it.

Looking towards the Bosphorus

May 17, London: And Then There Were Two

2008-05-17T15:42:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone!
I'm currently sitting in my flat in Istanbul- and I can't tell you how incredible it is. I would put up pictures but I'm just too tired; hopefully tomorrow. In order to satisfy what I'm sure is an insatiable need to know about my trip, though, I will put up the jumbled post I wrote on Word, in Heathrow at about 4:30 this afternoon. Check back for pics (the view from the terrace is truly panoramic- I guess that'll be my 'why Turkey' moment of the day) sometime in the next day or two.

I’m writing from London’s Heathrow Airport, where I’ve been for the past 6 hours; I may have no idea what’s going on at this point, I can’t really tell. It’s been more eventful than one might think. The point is, one of my friends (Edward, for those of you keeping track at home) has a passport that went through the laundry a year or so ago. It worked fine in Washington, and they let him through in London, but warned that it might not be accepted in Turkey. If it wasn’t accepted (50% chance, they said), he would deported, sent straight back to Washington. He was going to risk it until word came from Professor Shields in Istanbul that if his passport was rejected, before he was deported, he would be sent for 24 hours to a Turkish prison. Turkey has made great strides in almost all areas of society: jails and the protection of prisoners is not one of them. Needless to say, he’ll be staying in London until Monday, when (hopefully) the US embassy here will give him an emergency passport and he can join us in Istanbul.

The biggest event of the day so far has been the fish and chips, which should tell you something about my excitement level at this point. Kristina and I chose for our lunch a place called Garfunkle’s, our only criteria being that fish and chips was on the menu, which we both ordered. I decided to also get a Stella Artois, both in honor of my dad and in defiance of US law (whose swift hand will surely be upon me as soon as I reenter the country). When the waiter brought it, he also brought a half glass of some sweet, clear liquid (see diagram below):

I called my dad in a panic, a call which will cost me, at the most of conservative estimates, approximately $24,000. After a minute and a half I realized this, and hung up in mid-conversation, still confused about what to do. When the waiter brought the fish and chips, I finally broke down and asked what the hell I had ordered. Apparently, in saying Stella Artois twice, I had said ‘top’, which meant that I wanted a small glass of lemonade with my beer?? The kind gentleman assured me I should mix the two drinks, a process which yielded one of the most disgusting things I have ever tried to imbibe. Also, the English, in their infinite culinary wisdom, have decided to invent a dish called ‘mashed peas’, which is just as disgusting as it sounds. I ate this item only to join the Clean Plate Club. Kristina’s application to that august body was, as the pictures attest, rejected outright.

What's that, Kristina? You'd like to join the Clean Plate Club?? The mashed peas on your plate beg to differ.

Goodnight!!

Why Turkey??

2008-05-15T12:17:00.000-07:00

Hello all,
I'm writing from NC, but by the time you all are reading this, I will already be in Turkey!! I decided make this blog a couple weeks ago, to help myself keep track of my experiences and keep everyone back home updated on what I've been up to. More and more over the past week though, as I've talked to people about my trip, my perception of this blog has changed. When I tell people I'm going to Turkey, they usually respond, with feigned excitement and interest, "Oh! Well! Good for you! So...why Turkey?" It's pretty clear from their tone or skeptical facial expression that they view Turkey as either a) some dangerous Muslim country; b) a boring travel destination; or c) some combination of the two.
As someone obsessed with history, Turkey most appeals to me on the historical level; I can think of no country on earth with a more diverse and utterly engrossing history. But Turkey is notable and important for so many other reasons: artistically, culturally, politically, and geographically, to just name a few. Over the next seven weeks, I will try to post pictures and stories here to show just why it is that I have chosen to travel to Turkey, and why visiting and studying it is so valuable and interesting. Thanks for reading, and I miss you all already!
Clayton