Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Just a Note
Sorry about the no pictures of the last posts. I'll try to update again when I'm in a more internet savvy place and put up my photos.
Sunday, June 29, 2008 Ankara
We’re finally in Ankara. After a most adventurous trip from Kapadokya to Ankara where our driver almost refused to take us to Ankara and was on his way to Istanbul, we finally arrived in Ankara and went to Bilkent University where we stayed in dorms.
Ankara was nice. The first day we went over to Gordion and walked around those interesting ancient ruins and visited King Midas’ tomb. That’s right. The tomb of the guy whose touch turned everything to gold. Apparently it doesn’t work when you’re dead because his tomb was of wood not gold. But now they’re saying that the guy they found in the tomb might be Midas’ father instead of Midas, so maybe the golden touch skips a couple generations. We were taken around the Gordion ruins by Ken Sams, a professor from UNC who’s been working on this site for quite some time.
The next day, we went to Anitkabir, the place where the man of Turkey, Ataturk is buried. I’d asked for my grandfather to take us around the place because he has many interesting stories and he kindly accepted and showed us around. After Anitkabir we went over to the castle and to the Anatolian Civilizations museum and walked and explored around that. The museum we toured with another professor friend of Prof Shields’, I don’t remember his name at this time but if I do I’ll re-update and note it.
The night of the 30th we took the train instead of the disastrous Fez Travel bus to get back to Istanbul. The next morning, we were finally back home. I had missed Istanbul.
Ankara was nice. The first day we went over to Gordion and walked around those interesting ancient ruins and visited King Midas’ tomb. That’s right. The tomb of the guy whose touch turned everything to gold. Apparently it doesn’t work when you’re dead because his tomb was of wood not gold. But now they’re saying that the guy they found in the tomb might be Midas’ father instead of Midas, so maybe the golden touch skips a couple generations. We were taken around the Gordion ruins by Ken Sams, a professor from UNC who’s been working on this site for quite some time.
The next day, we went to Anitkabir, the place where the man of Turkey, Ataturk is buried. I’d asked for my grandfather to take us around the place because he has many interesting stories and he kindly accepted and showed us around. After Anitkabir we went over to the castle and to the Anatolian Civilizations museum and walked and explored around that. The museum we toured with another professor friend of Prof Shields’, I don’t remember his name at this time but if I do I’ll re-update and note it.
The night of the 30th we took the train instead of the disastrous Fez Travel bus to get back to Istanbul. The next morning, we were finally back home. I had missed Istanbul.
Thursday, June 26, 2008 Kapadokya
The pension we stayed at here was also a really nice place called Kilim Pension. Wonderful view from it’s terrace which we all frequented often during our three day stay. Kapadokya is a really nice place and an interesting place; because of all the interesting and naturally formed caves and towers and other random stuff like that, it really does seem like you’re in a different planet. Cool enough.
We hiked around a lot in Kapadokya and went to an outdoor museum where we walked around to a bunch of churches from centuries ago that still had some paintings and images of Christ and the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist and other stories from the Bible and whatnot on the walls. Also cool enough.
Our most interesting day was our second day there I think when we decided to do a nature walk through Ihlara Valley. It was pretty cool; we walked the 7 kilometer road and got to see some more churches and got up close and personal with Turkish nature. After the walk, we went to the crater lake and we decided to swim in it. That decision alone was crazy; some of us then also decided to swim across the lake and believe me, not a feat to be attempted by the faint of heart. Or the weak of body and mind. It was long. 1 entire freaking kilometer in diameter. And yeah. We swam across that. Call us brave or crazy. I don’t even know how to describe ourselves.
We had a lot of adventures in Kapadokya, not the least of which was when we were almost losing our minds because of too much nature while walking through Ihlara valley so we decided to start singing, starting with the Sound of Music and continuing with Disney. I’m pretty sure we scared off some birds and other wild animals.
We hiked around a lot in Kapadokya and went to an outdoor museum where we walked around to a bunch of churches from centuries ago that still had some paintings and images of Christ and the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist and other stories from the Bible and whatnot on the walls. Also cool enough.
Our most interesting day was our second day there I think when we decided to do a nature walk through Ihlara Valley. It was pretty cool; we walked the 7 kilometer road and got to see some more churches and got up close and personal with Turkish nature. After the walk, we went to the crater lake and we decided to swim in it. That decision alone was crazy; some of us then also decided to swim across the lake and believe me, not a feat to be attempted by the faint of heart. Or the weak of body and mind. It was long. 1 entire freaking kilometer in diameter. And yeah. We swam across that. Call us brave or crazy. I don’t even know how to describe ourselves.
We had a lot of adventures in Kapadokya, not the least of which was when we were almost losing our minds because of too much nature while walking through Ihlara valley so we decided to start singing, starting with the Sound of Music and continuing with Disney. I’m pretty sure we scared off some birds and other wild animals.
Monday, June 23, 2008 Eşenler Village
After breakfast this morning we packed up enough stuff for two days and went on our way to the village. Our stay in this village was arranged by the carpet-seller friend of Sarah’s. Before getting to the village, we went up a mountain and looked around and had a picnic arranged by our social chairs, Amanda and Edward. After this delicious meal, we went up the mountain to check out the view and what a view that was. When we got back to the village, Muammer (brother of carpet-seller friend who speaks English) took us to his family’s cherry…farm? Orchard? I don’t really know the word for it, but he took us to his cherry tree area and showed us the multitude of fruits and nuts that were growing around. We learned that there were woman-cherries and man-cherries and that woman-cherries have two kinds—sweet and sour. Both, well, all, were delicious.
Once we’d walked around and tasted pretty much every tree available and fruit-ed in the area, we walked back to the village to divide up among the houses and families. Amanda, Kristina, Emily, and I were with one family, Kevin by himself in one, David again by himself in another, Zoe, Kelly, and the Profs in one house, and Clayton and Edward together with another family. All our families were really nice, plus we had Muammer with us. Lack of English/Turkish wasn’t a problem at our house, and not really in any of the other ones, but Muammer’s presence in the village helped out a lot.
Our family consisted of Hasan and Emine, and Yasemin, their daughter. She’s 23 years old. Hasan and Emine have another daughter older than Yasemin, but she’s married so she wasn’t with them. Yasemin was also supposed to be getting married right around then, but apparently her husband-to-be changed after the engagement so they’re now trying to break it off. To be Turkish for just a second about this topic, hayırlısı inşaallah.
After the initial introductions and conversations, we had some more fruit, this time from their garden/farm/orchard, and then they allowed us to walk around and check out their house and the surroundings. They have a nice house; 3 rooms, one living room, roomy kitchen that has an additional space used for eating, small bathroom, nice bath, and sink. There’s also a little area out the back door that has a ladder that leads to the top of the house which was apparently used as a rendezvous point for a girl and a guy from an earlier trip much like ours. They fell in love in the village and got married when they got back to the US. Cute story. :D
Dinner was a delicious meal. Let me just say now that all of the meals we had at the village were delicious, fulfilling, and completely healthy. Hasan is a bee-keeper so the honey we ate came from his batch. Their garden has peaches, cherries, erik (green fruit that can be sour or sweet but are delicious and what I miss most when I’m in the US because they don’t happen over there), walnuts, almonds, apricots, pomegranates, bees and thus honey, and many other fruits that I just don’t remember. They have another, smaller garden right next to their house where they grow vegetables and whatnot, but the place they took us to where we helped them out with the peach-picking was their actual land and it was a large amount of land.
After we helped them with packing up the peaches in crates (they wouldn’t let us help with the actual picking which was a good idea because we wouldn’t have known which peach to pick), we had the most awesome lunch ever. They grilled chicken, and they fried squash, and delicious tomatoes and cucumbers, and wonderful watermelon, and my god I can’t remember what else but it was all DELICIOUS. That done, Muammer came with the rest of our people from the village and we went to the waterfall close by and swam around in that. What an adventure that was. The river wasn’t like what we swam around in at Egirdir; Egirdir’s water was pretty stationery whereas this one was a powerful flowing river so the only way was to cross really fast from one side to another and then hang on to some rocks. We hiked towards the waterfall, which was an adventure, and then we hiked back. I swear, just within these five-ish weeks in Turkey, I’ve gotten more bruises and scratches than the last seven years of my life. It’s still all fun and games though. The water was cold, but wonderful, and when all of us were sitting on a rock in the middle of the river, Muammer threw us the peaches that Hasan had given which we ate.
Dinner was once again a delicious affair. Hasan and Emine weren’t with us for dinner; they’d gone off to sell the peaches we’d helped pack, and so Yasemin and us were alone in the house. Kristina helped out with making dinner while Amanda and I took a short, much-needed sleep. After dinner, the entire group congregated in our house and we just hung out for a while. When everyone had gone home, Yasemin showed us her amazing dowry full of wonderful towels and other intricate little things that she has been preparing since she was 12. Helped out by her mom and older sister at times, of course.
We woke up the next morning, had breakfast, packed up, and congregated at our house again for good-byes. We left in the morning to go back to Konya, where we picked up all our other stuff and went on our way to Cappadocia, or Kapadokya, as I will write it from now on.
Once we’d walked around and tasted pretty much every tree available and fruit-ed in the area, we walked back to the village to divide up among the houses and families. Amanda, Kristina, Emily, and I were with one family, Kevin by himself in one, David again by himself in another, Zoe, Kelly, and the Profs in one house, and Clayton and Edward together with another family. All our families were really nice, plus we had Muammer with us. Lack of English/Turkish wasn’t a problem at our house, and not really in any of the other ones, but Muammer’s presence in the village helped out a lot.
Our family consisted of Hasan and Emine, and Yasemin, their daughter. She’s 23 years old. Hasan and Emine have another daughter older than Yasemin, but she’s married so she wasn’t with them. Yasemin was also supposed to be getting married right around then, but apparently her husband-to-be changed after the engagement so they’re now trying to break it off. To be Turkish for just a second about this topic, hayırlısı inşaallah.
After the initial introductions and conversations, we had some more fruit, this time from their garden/farm/orchard, and then they allowed us to walk around and check out their house and the surroundings. They have a nice house; 3 rooms, one living room, roomy kitchen that has an additional space used for eating, small bathroom, nice bath, and sink. There’s also a little area out the back door that has a ladder that leads to the top of the house which was apparently used as a rendezvous point for a girl and a guy from an earlier trip much like ours. They fell in love in the village and got married when they got back to the US. Cute story. :D
Dinner was a delicious meal. Let me just say now that all of the meals we had at the village were delicious, fulfilling, and completely healthy. Hasan is a bee-keeper so the honey we ate came from his batch. Their garden has peaches, cherries, erik (green fruit that can be sour or sweet but are delicious and what I miss most when I’m in the US because they don’t happen over there), walnuts, almonds, apricots, pomegranates, bees and thus honey, and many other fruits that I just don’t remember. They have another, smaller garden right next to their house where they grow vegetables and whatnot, but the place they took us to where we helped them out with the peach-picking was their actual land and it was a large amount of land.
After we helped them with packing up the peaches in crates (they wouldn’t let us help with the actual picking which was a good idea because we wouldn’t have known which peach to pick), we had the most awesome lunch ever. They grilled chicken, and they fried squash, and delicious tomatoes and cucumbers, and wonderful watermelon, and my god I can’t remember what else but it was all DELICIOUS. That done, Muammer came with the rest of our people from the village and we went to the waterfall close by and swam around in that. What an adventure that was. The river wasn’t like what we swam around in at Egirdir; Egirdir’s water was pretty stationery whereas this one was a powerful flowing river so the only way was to cross really fast from one side to another and then hang on to some rocks. We hiked towards the waterfall, which was an adventure, and then we hiked back. I swear, just within these five-ish weeks in Turkey, I’ve gotten more bruises and scratches than the last seven years of my life. It’s still all fun and games though. The water was cold, but wonderful, and when all of us were sitting on a rock in the middle of the river, Muammer threw us the peaches that Hasan had given which we ate.
Dinner was once again a delicious affair. Hasan and Emine weren’t with us for dinner; they’d gone off to sell the peaches we’d helped pack, and so Yasemin and us were alone in the house. Kristina helped out with making dinner while Amanda and I took a short, much-needed sleep. After dinner, the entire group congregated in our house and we just hung out for a while. When everyone had gone home, Yasemin showed us her amazing dowry full of wonderful towels and other intricate little things that she has been preparing since she was 12. Helped out by her mom and older sister at times, of course.
We woke up the next morning, had breakfast, packed up, and congregated at our house again for good-byes. We left in the morning to go back to Konya, where we picked up all our other stuff and went on our way to Cappadocia, or Kapadokya, as I will write it from now on.
Saturday, June 21, 2008 Konya
We arrived in Konya towards the afternoon after a bit of a stressful travel because the driver couldn’t get along with the people around him and the tour person leading the trip couldn’t get along with the driver and thus me because guess who knew Turkish and could translate and was only trying to help out? Me. So after a bit of an eventful trip where we also visited this really beautiful and old Seljuk wooden mosque (yes, it’s still standing, and it’s still beautiful) we arrived in Konya and went to our hotel, Hotel Dergah.
After putting our stuff down, we met with Prof Shields’ carpet-seller friend and he took us around to his workshop and also to the house of one of his carpet-makers where we watched a master artisan at work. I didn’t learn the name of the woman who was making the carpet for which I’m really sorry, but the work that she was doing was truly beautiful. After showing us the carpet-weaver, Mehmet (the friend) took us to his house where we saw his workshop where he makes the colors for the yarn used in he carpets and kilims he has.
Once we’d walked around and looked at the colors and taken loads of pictures, we went back to our hotel and split up to look for some place to eat dinner.
The next day, we had our day of touring Konya. We visited the tombs of Rumi and Shems, Rumi’s teacher. We also visited some mosques and a couple museums which were interesting, but after the grandiose city of Istanbul, there really wasn’t much to equal it in Konya. Rumi and Shems’ tombs were interesting to look at and compare—Rumi’s tomb has been converted from being a religious symbol to a marketed tourist place so it’s now a museum. Shems’ tomb however, is still pretty religious. Despite the tourists that were in Rumi’s tomb, you can still feel a bit of the interesting energy, and this energy was definitely felt in Shems’ tomb. Shems’ tomb was one of the few places in Turkey that we’ve visited that I just didn’t want to leave; I felt so much at home and at peace there.
Having exhausted Konya’s available tourist locations, it was time for dinner, and we were taken to a most wonderful restaurant where we had a delicious meal. We got to sit on the floor and kind of have a preview of how we would be eating at the village that we were to go to next. Dinner was simply delicious, delightful, delectable, and all other wonderful d words that I don’t know that explain to you, my avid readers, that dinner was seriously a most wonderful experience.
After putting our stuff down, we met with Prof Shields’ carpet-seller friend and he took us around to his workshop and also to the house of one of his carpet-makers where we watched a master artisan at work. I didn’t learn the name of the woman who was making the carpet for which I’m really sorry, but the work that she was doing was truly beautiful. After showing us the carpet-weaver, Mehmet (the friend) took us to his house where we saw his workshop where he makes the colors for the yarn used in he carpets and kilims he has.
Once we’d walked around and looked at the colors and taken loads of pictures, we went back to our hotel and split up to look for some place to eat dinner.
The next day, we had our day of touring Konya. We visited the tombs of Rumi and Shems, Rumi’s teacher. We also visited some mosques and a couple museums which were interesting, but after the grandiose city of Istanbul, there really wasn’t much to equal it in Konya. Rumi and Shems’ tombs were interesting to look at and compare—Rumi’s tomb has been converted from being a religious symbol to a marketed tourist place so it’s now a museum. Shems’ tomb however, is still pretty religious. Despite the tourists that were in Rumi’s tomb, you can still feel a bit of the interesting energy, and this energy was definitely felt in Shems’ tomb. Shems’ tomb was one of the few places in Turkey that we’ve visited that I just didn’t want to leave; I felt so much at home and at peace there.
Having exhausted Konya’s available tourist locations, it was time for dinner, and we were taken to a most wonderful restaurant where we had a delicious meal. We got to sit on the floor and kind of have a preview of how we would be eating at the village that we were to go to next. Dinner was simply delicious, delightful, delectable, and all other wonderful d words that I don’t know that explain to you, my avid readers, that dinner was seriously a most wonderful experience.
Thursday, June 19, 2008 Eğirdir
Egirdir is a small town of not many people. This was unlucky for us because one of the most dramatic game of the Eurocup where Turkey was involved was played here, and Turkey won, and people did spill out into the streets, but there just weren’t many people to spill out so when David, Kelly, and I walked around, other than the five or six cars driving and honking around, we were the only other people making noise. Still, it was fun.
So. Egirdir. Within the city itself there isn’t much; there’s a mosque with Seljuk designs, and right next to the mosque there’s the market that would garner the money to support the renovations and everything else about the mosque. Before we went off exploring though, we desperately needed some sustenance so we walked around looking for a nice restaurant. Having found one, we ate and then went back to our hostel, the Lale Pension. Nice place again. Having arrived, we went and swam in the lake right next to our hostel and it was BEAUTIFUL. Mere words do not and cannot explain it. It was clear and amazingly it got deep really quick, but since we were all together none of us had much fear.
After swimming around a bit, we went back up to the hostel and bathed and dried and clothed ourselves, and then we went out exploring. There was an old Seljuk castle really close to our hostel so we walked up and down that for a while, then we walked more into the city and looked at a mosque and the market. Egirdir is known for its rose-y products be they shampoos, soaps, Turkish delights, perfumes, and many other things, so Sarah bought loads of boxes of Turkish delights. They were delicious. After the market, we went to the island right next to Egirdir. It’s connected by a bridge so we walked over that and went to a restaurant and had good dinner. It was delicious.
The next morning we woke up to have a nature day. This day we first went to a different part of the lake and walked around a bit of that, and then we went to the actual place of nature where we also swam. The second place was on the King’s Road so we got to walk on that enormous roadway that connected not only empires as if that isn’t enough but continents in general so I felt really important. It was also nice to be walking along that because we saw some Greek stuff on the walls of the road. Having walked around we found a nice little cove with its own waterfall and a really nice little pool into which we jumped off a normal wall, a 15-foot rock, and some of us did the 30-foot rock right next to the 15-foot rock. None of us have any idea how deep the pool is or what’s down below at the bottom of the pool. We had a really great time though. Having swum ourselves witless, we went up to where the profs were and had a discussion about tourism in Turkey.
It really is an interesting topic because of what the Tourism people of Turkey deem to be important and marketable to people. Places like Sultanahmet, Aya Sofya, Ephesus and others like that teem with tourists but in places like the nature walk we took in Egirdir have almost no tourists at all. How much of a balance is that? Plus there’s also the question of the damage that could be done by tourists, especially to a fragile place like the nature in Egirdir. As wonderful as the added income of tourists could be, there’s no real guarantee that the income the tourists would bring would be worth the toll and stress on the environment itself.
After our discussion we went back to our hostel and had dinner and packed our stuff because in the morning, our travels would be starting again.
So. Egirdir. Within the city itself there isn’t much; there’s a mosque with Seljuk designs, and right next to the mosque there’s the market that would garner the money to support the renovations and everything else about the mosque. Before we went off exploring though, we desperately needed some sustenance so we walked around looking for a nice restaurant. Having found one, we ate and then went back to our hostel, the Lale Pension. Nice place again. Having arrived, we went and swam in the lake right next to our hostel and it was BEAUTIFUL. Mere words do not and cannot explain it. It was clear and amazingly it got deep really quick, but since we were all together none of us had much fear.
After swimming around a bit, we went back up to the hostel and bathed and dried and clothed ourselves, and then we went out exploring. There was an old Seljuk castle really close to our hostel so we walked up and down that for a while, then we walked more into the city and looked at a mosque and the market. Egirdir is known for its rose-y products be they shampoos, soaps, Turkish delights, perfumes, and many other things, so Sarah bought loads of boxes of Turkish delights. They were delicious. After the market, we went to the island right next to Egirdir. It’s connected by a bridge so we walked over that and went to a restaurant and had good dinner. It was delicious.
The next morning we woke up to have a nature day. This day we first went to a different part of the lake and walked around a bit of that, and then we went to the actual place of nature where we also swam. The second place was on the King’s Road so we got to walk on that enormous roadway that connected not only empires as if that isn’t enough but continents in general so I felt really important. It was also nice to be walking along that because we saw some Greek stuff on the walls of the road. Having walked around we found a nice little cove with its own waterfall and a really nice little pool into which we jumped off a normal wall, a 15-foot rock, and some of us did the 30-foot rock right next to the 15-foot rock. None of us have any idea how deep the pool is or what’s down below at the bottom of the pool. We had a really great time though. Having swum ourselves witless, we went up to where the profs were and had a discussion about tourism in Turkey.
It really is an interesting topic because of what the Tourism people of Turkey deem to be important and marketable to people. Places like Sultanahmet, Aya Sofya, Ephesus and others like that teem with tourists but in places like the nature walk we took in Egirdir have almost no tourists at all. How much of a balance is that? Plus there’s also the question of the damage that could be done by tourists, especially to a fragile place like the nature in Egirdir. As wonderful as the added income of tourists could be, there’s no real guarantee that the income the tourists would bring would be worth the toll and stress on the environment itself.
After our discussion we went back to our hostel and had dinner and packed our stuff because in the morning, our travels would be starting again.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 Pamukkale
Today we came to be in Pamukkale, the place of the calcium falls and Hierapolis. We arrived in Pamukkale sometime around 10 or 11 in the morning, so the first thing we did was to find a place for lunch. Pamukkale is a really small town and maybe it wasn’t tourist season or something because the town was really quiet. We grabbed some lunch, and then we met back at the hotel to have a bit of a discussion about Hierapolis, the ancient town up ahead after the calcium falls, and some of us also swam in the pool of the hotel.
Here’s some information about Hierapolis. I think the translation of it is something along the lines of “sacred place;” there are many temples and it is also geothermal place—hot springs were thought to have healing properties. Within Hierapolis there is also apparently a huge necropolis (cemetery) and interestingly enough there’s also the legend of a poison cave. This cave is a little interesting because it apparently was the cause of the start of a cult where people would go in and if they came out alive there would be a huge hullabaloo. I think this was Pluto’s cave—within Hierapolis, Apollo and Artemis were worshipped and Pluto was feared. There isn’t much remaining of the Greek city, a combination of Seljuks, Crusaders, Seljuks again, then Mongols, and then finally an earthquake equaled the inability of the city to recover and people pretty much abandoned the city.
Before getting up to Hierapolis, you have to walk up the calcium falls. You aren’t allowed to go up these falls with shoes so it was great for the feet. There’s not much chance of slipping down these falls because there are lots of creases up in the calcium itself even when the water’s flowing really fast. And it’s beautiful. I hope I will be able to go back there and walk up the falls again.
When you get to the top, there’s a museum on your right and straight ahead of you there’s a pool. This pool is really interesting and very cool—it’s 37°C, fizzy, and contains some ancient Roman ruins because it used to be a Roman bath. Meaning if you have goggles and you’re swimming around under there, you can see the columns and swim around underneath or over the columns. The water is nice and warm so it’s great for working out the kinks in your back and just wonderful for relaxing. One warning though—the water tastes weird.
After swimming and joking around in the water, we got out and walked up to Hierapolis and walked around the ancient city. I enjoyed walking around Hierapolis more than I did Troy and Pergamum despite the fact that it’s not really all that different than either of the two—rocks and walls is all, but because we were sans tour guide, we were happy. And the view was also wonderful. Once again, we were up in Hierapolis right around sunset time, and we were also in the theater of the place again, so we walked up and down that and watched the beautiful sunset and took awesome pictures.
The next day I went up to the top of the falls again and took pictures. When I got back down, we had breakfast and then got on the bus to go Egirdir.
Here’s some information about Hierapolis. I think the translation of it is something along the lines of “sacred place;” there are many temples and it is also geothermal place—hot springs were thought to have healing properties. Within Hierapolis there is also apparently a huge necropolis (cemetery) and interestingly enough there’s also the legend of a poison cave. This cave is a little interesting because it apparently was the cause of the start of a cult where people would go in and if they came out alive there would be a huge hullabaloo. I think this was Pluto’s cave—within Hierapolis, Apollo and Artemis were worshipped and Pluto was feared. There isn’t much remaining of the Greek city, a combination of Seljuks, Crusaders, Seljuks again, then Mongols, and then finally an earthquake equaled the inability of the city to recover and people pretty much abandoned the city.
Before getting up to Hierapolis, you have to walk up the calcium falls. You aren’t allowed to go up these falls with shoes so it was great for the feet. There’s not much chance of slipping down these falls because there are lots of creases up in the calcium itself even when the water’s flowing really fast. And it’s beautiful. I hope I will be able to go back there and walk up the falls again.
When you get to the top, there’s a museum on your right and straight ahead of you there’s a pool. This pool is really interesting and very cool—it’s 37°C, fizzy, and contains some ancient Roman ruins because it used to be a Roman bath. Meaning if you have goggles and you’re swimming around under there, you can see the columns and swim around underneath or over the columns. The water is nice and warm so it’s great for working out the kinks in your back and just wonderful for relaxing. One warning though—the water tastes weird.
After swimming and joking around in the water, we got out and walked up to Hierapolis and walked around the ancient city. I enjoyed walking around Hierapolis more than I did Troy and Pergamum despite the fact that it’s not really all that different than either of the two—rocks and walls is all, but because we were sans tour guide, we were happy. And the view was also wonderful. Once again, we were up in Hierapolis right around sunset time, and we were also in the theater of the place again, so we walked up and down that and watched the beautiful sunset and took awesome pictures.
The next day I went up to the top of the falls again and took pictures. When I got back down, we had breakfast and then got on the bus to go Egirdir.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 Selçuk
Today was to be our free day, which we took to mean “squeeze everything you can do in one city into one day” and we did exactly that. We started off with a really nice breakfast at my now favorite hostel, the ANZ Guest House. After breakfast, we went to Ephesus and walked around there. William did an awesome performance of Shakespeare in the theater for us to test out the acoustics and it was pretty amazing. If you talk just a bit louder than how you normally would, it’s still possible for me (sitting way at the top as far up as I could go) to hear you (standing and talking way at the bottom in the pit).
After Ephesus, we went to the Virgin Mary’s house and visited and walked around there. It was a nice quaint little place; up in the mountains, surrounded by trees. I don’t really know if this is the way it was back in her time of course, but if it is, than I think it would have been a nice, peaceful place. There was a wall where they had fountains to take water from because there’s a little river nearby so we did that, and there’s also a wall just full of the prayers and wishes of the people who’ve visited. We did that too.
Virgin Mary’s house having been visited, we went back to near our hostel and checked out the Ephesus Museum really close to it. They had some cool pieces there of some of the stuff they’d excavated from Ephesus and whatnot, plus there was a really interesting exhibition about the wounds that gladiators received. Disgusting, kind of, but still really cool because they had the bones and pictures of where the bone would be if it was in the body, plus they had the weapons that had injured the bone next to it. So you could pretty much put yourself in Russell Crowe’s place and imagine those wounds and hits happening.
We walked around the museum for a while and then Emily’s family friend came and took us to a really nice place for lunch. We had a good, really filling lunch at the semi-golf club-like place of the friend of our hostess. There was good conversation, and our hostess asked about our final projects and whatnot and even answered a couple questions for some of us. Really nice lady.
After lunch, we just had to cool off even more, so we decided to go to BEACH!! Thus we went to the beach near Selcuk and had a nice time. Clayton gave Amanda a black eye (funny), Clayton lost his prescription sunglasses (not funny but we laughed and for some unfathomable reason helped him search for them anyways ((unfathomable because we’re in the SEA. With WAVES.)) ), we called for whales (watch Finding Nemo if you haven’t, Dory was imitated), got thistles all up in our feet (NOT fun), tried to do water fighting of a kind where the guys got on the shoulders of the girls but that just ended up being which girl could hold up which guy the longest…or if she could even get him up there (fun, again).
And then it was off to Sirince village for us where we had really good dinner. Before dinner, we walked around the village a lot and took loads of pictures. It’s a really nice and picturesque village. Peaceful too, and we went there right around sunset time so we got to see this really nice orange-yellow big sun setting between the mountains with the sky colored all rainbow-y and pretty.
After Ephesus, we went to the Virgin Mary’s house and visited and walked around there. It was a nice quaint little place; up in the mountains, surrounded by trees. I don’t really know if this is the way it was back in her time of course, but if it is, than I think it would have been a nice, peaceful place. There was a wall where they had fountains to take water from because there’s a little river nearby so we did that, and there’s also a wall just full of the prayers and wishes of the people who’ve visited. We did that too.
Virgin Mary’s house having been visited, we went back to near our hostel and checked out the Ephesus Museum really close to it. They had some cool pieces there of some of the stuff they’d excavated from Ephesus and whatnot, plus there was a really interesting exhibition about the wounds that gladiators received. Disgusting, kind of, but still really cool because they had the bones and pictures of where the bone would be if it was in the body, plus they had the weapons that had injured the bone next to it. So you could pretty much put yourself in Russell Crowe’s place and imagine those wounds and hits happening.
We walked around the museum for a while and then Emily’s family friend came and took us to a really nice place for lunch. We had a good, really filling lunch at the semi-golf club-like place of the friend of our hostess. There was good conversation, and our hostess asked about our final projects and whatnot and even answered a couple questions for some of us. Really nice lady.
After lunch, we just had to cool off even more, so we decided to go to BEACH!! Thus we went to the beach near Selcuk and had a nice time. Clayton gave Amanda a black eye (funny), Clayton lost his prescription sunglasses (not funny but we laughed and for some unfathomable reason helped him search for them anyways ((unfathomable because we’re in the SEA. With WAVES.)) ), we called for whales (watch Finding Nemo if you haven’t, Dory was imitated), got thistles all up in our feet (NOT fun), tried to do water fighting of a kind where the guys got on the shoulders of the girls but that just ended up being which girl could hold up which guy the longest…or if she could even get him up there (fun, again).
And then it was off to Sirince village for us where we had really good dinner. Before dinner, we walked around the village a lot and took loads of pictures. It’s a really nice and picturesque village. Peaceful too, and we went there right around sunset time so we got to see this really nice orange-yellow big sun setting between the mountains with the sky colored all rainbow-y and pretty.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008 Troy, Pergamum, and Selcuk!!
This morning we left Canakkale and went to Troy. Troy was interesting, again, but a bit bland. Layers of walls on top of another, and another bad tour guide added up to a very historical and important place but my imagination was stumped by the dryness and lack of excavation I think of the area. Or maybe we just didn't get to see the interesting stuff, only the land and the walls. The walls were really impressive, almost nine or ten of them one on top of another or next to each other. Great as that was the drought of information that I experienced made me be not so impressed by the place.
And here's how Amanda had to stand in order to get her head above the sculpture :D ...
Walking around Pergamum was interesting as well, but again kind of bland although this time our tour guide was better than the other ones. Don't get too excited though because she wasn't all that much better.
After walking around Troy, we went to Pergamum, which was more fun because we had a lot more freedom to walk around and climb up and down things. We also got to take some amusing pictures...
Here's David...
And here's how Amanda had to stand in order to get her head above the sculpture :D ...
You see how Amanda's standing? David was having to do the exact opposite in order for the picture to be more...eh...realistic?...
After that we walked around and found some columns and decided to take cheezy senior photos. That was fun. I only have a couple, but if you look on some of the other people's blogs you'll find much more extensive senior picture stuff. But here's an amusing picture of Edward, David, and Clayton being Turkish but not gay :D ...
Walking around Pergamum was interesting as well, but again kind of bland although this time our tour guide was better than the other ones. Don't get too excited though because she wasn't all that much better.I'm sorry but I just don't have a lot to say about Troy and Pergamum. Both were very nice places with obviously a lot of history, but to learn that history I would have to do personal research because the tour guides just couldn't supply me with the information I needed to be satisfied. Said research will be happening another time. Not now.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008 On the Road and Canakkale
And thus our two week adventure began. We all got up at a pretty horrible single digit time and went to meet the Profs and the other poor people that would be joining us on the Fez Travel bus behind Aya Sofya. I call them poor people because they're most likely not used to having 10 crazy Americans in the same bus for a whole two week trip. Anyways. We got our stuff on the bus, got on the bus, and headed off.
First stop was Canakkale, or Gallipoli. We were to stay in Yellow Rose Pension or something. All of us, with the exception of the Profs, were in dorm-style rooms. Some shared the room with the other peeps who just didn't have the money to pay for the single or double room as need be. Anyways. Before even getting to the pension, we actually did the tour of Canakkale with probably the...I don't know how to put this politely, so I'll say in a roundabout way that I didn't enjoy our tour guide at all. Probably because I'm Turkish, I would have rather heard the Turkish stories, but all we were bombarded with was the ANZAC (Australian New Zealand Armed Corps or something) point of view. As interesting as that might have been, it wasn't. The guy just couldn't do it. The Kiwis in the group were probably interested but I was bored throughout.
There was also an incident where a girl in the group (not my group) asked if the First World War had really been started because of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a young Serbian man. She was essentially really surprised that a young fellow could do that...at which point two questions popped in my head: 1) do you not watch the news lady? and 2) what type of world history class did you have??!?! I might come off as snobbish, and I apologize for that, but for some reason I just can't accept ignorance at that level. Why does it seem so hard for a young person to go and assassinate the Archduke? If someone sets their mind to it, they can pretty much do anything.
Anyways. Back to Gallipoli. We went around a lot of ANZAC monuments, churches built up in memory of the soldiers, repetition of the same story over and over again, and "like" placed in unnecessary places, making the tour guide's speech even worse.
To clearly sum up my feelings: I was only impressed in two places--one was the Turkish soldier monument, and the other was when we were walking around the trenches. The trenches because they were so close together, and the Turkish monument because you can feel the sadness but also the interesting energy of the place.
Just for the fun of it, here's a picture of Edward and I sitting over the ANZAC sign...
After walking around the battlefields, we crossed over the Dardanelles I think to get to our hostel. We left our stuff in our rooms and went to dinner at a pretty nice restaurant. I had fish. It was delicious. :D
After that, we walked around to try and find a bar type thing we could go in to watch the game. True to Turkish fashion, we won the game only in the last seconds with an awesome last goal. I don't remember who we were playing, and the matches all had the similar characteristic of ending with a desperate goal by the Turks in the last 30 seconds of a game sooo...yeah. Anyways, we watched the game, the Turks won, so we went out to celebrate, and it was awesome. Turks know how to celebrate after a win. Oh yeah, while we were celebrating, at the end it was David, Amanda, Kelly, and I remaining to celebrate. To this foursome came a random creeper and essentially stalked us for a while despite David putting himself between the three of us girls and the guy. Finally, after what seemed like a really long time, David managed to make said random creeper understand that he was unwelcome and we were finally free of him. Nothing much else happened.
Oh, we saw the Trojan horse that Brad Pitt touched while filming the movie Troy. Here's a blurry picture. It could've been better but we were walking and that's the best my camera can do at night...
After the celebration, we went back to the hostel and went to bed. Woot. I'm still not over the bad tour guide. Subsequent ones weren't really any better. Just a heads-up. :D
First stop was Canakkale, or Gallipoli. We were to stay in Yellow Rose Pension or something. All of us, with the exception of the Profs, were in dorm-style rooms. Some shared the room with the other peeps who just didn't have the money to pay for the single or double room as need be. Anyways. Before even getting to the pension, we actually did the tour of Canakkale with probably the...I don't know how to put this politely, so I'll say in a roundabout way that I didn't enjoy our tour guide at all. Probably because I'm Turkish, I would have rather heard the Turkish stories, but all we were bombarded with was the ANZAC (Australian New Zealand Armed Corps or something) point of view. As interesting as that might have been, it wasn't. The guy just couldn't do it. The Kiwis in the group were probably interested but I was bored throughout.
There was also an incident where a girl in the group (not my group) asked if the First World War had really been started because of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a young Serbian man. She was essentially really surprised that a young fellow could do that...at which point two questions popped in my head: 1) do you not watch the news lady? and 2) what type of world history class did you have??!?! I might come off as snobbish, and I apologize for that, but for some reason I just can't accept ignorance at that level. Why does it seem so hard for a young person to go and assassinate the Archduke? If someone sets their mind to it, they can pretty much do anything.
Anyways. Back to Gallipoli. We went around a lot of ANZAC monuments, churches built up in memory of the soldiers, repetition of the same story over and over again, and "like" placed in unnecessary places, making the tour guide's speech even worse.
To clearly sum up my feelings: I was only impressed in two places--one was the Turkish soldier monument, and the other was when we were walking around the trenches. The trenches because they were so close together, and the Turkish monument because you can feel the sadness but also the interesting energy of the place.
Just for the fun of it, here's a picture of Edward and I sitting over the ANZAC sign...
After walking around the battlefields, we crossed over the Dardanelles I think to get to our hostel. We left our stuff in our rooms and went to dinner at a pretty nice restaurant. I had fish. It was delicious. :DAfter that, we walked around to try and find a bar type thing we could go in to watch the game. True to Turkish fashion, we won the game only in the last seconds with an awesome last goal. I don't remember who we were playing, and the matches all had the similar characteristic of ending with a desperate goal by the Turks in the last 30 seconds of a game sooo...yeah. Anyways, we watched the game, the Turks won, so we went out to celebrate, and it was awesome. Turks know how to celebrate after a win. Oh yeah, while we were celebrating, at the end it was David, Amanda, Kelly, and I remaining to celebrate. To this foursome came a random creeper and essentially stalked us for a while despite David putting himself between the three of us girls and the guy. Finally, after what seemed like a really long time, David managed to make said random creeper understand that he was unwelcome and we were finally free of him. Nothing much else happened.
Oh, we saw the Trojan horse that Brad Pitt touched while filming the movie Troy. Here's a blurry picture. It could've been better but we were walking and that's the best my camera can do at night...
After the celebration, we went back to the hostel and went to bed. Woot. I'm still not over the bad tour guide. Subsequent ones weren't really any better. Just a heads-up. :D
Monday, July 14, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008 Getting Ready
Sooo today is the day before our big two week tour, and thus I spent the day eliminating clothes and other stuff that I wouldn't need so that I would have only the most basic of stuff and be able to travel light for the next two weeks. I think I managed it.
After packing and saying goodbye to my grandparents and everything, I crossed over to Europe (because I live in Asia) to stay with the other peeps since I'd decided that it would be smarter for me to be over there since we would be leaving at, you know, 5 or 6 in the morning...
Since it's our luck, the lights went out right then, and thus we had a lot of fun walking around with lanterns from Pottery Barn or something and using Amanda's headlamp to see. This was also when I fell in love with my cell phone for the third or fourth time. It has a really powerful light that comes on when you're trying to take a picture at night and there's no light, and that came in really useful when we were walking up and down stairs and also to see in the bathroom. Fun and exciting moments. It wasn't as much of an issue when we decided to just stay inside, so my phone and the headlamp got to rest for some time since we had a lot of candles.
While staying inside we decided to play a game, which was fun, and then we went to bed and slept for a couple hours before waking up. And then it was time to travelll!!!!
So here's where we'll be going in the next two weeks:
-Canakkale/Gallipoli
-Troy
-Bergama.....(Troy and Bergama are pretty close to each other)
-Selcuk
-Pamukkale
-Egirdir
-Konya
-village in the Taurus Mountains (name is Esenler--the s has a squiggle so you pronounce it "sh")
-Capadoccia (Kapadokya in Turkish)
-Ankara
-aaaand back to Istanbul!
After packing and saying goodbye to my grandparents and everything, I crossed over to Europe (because I live in Asia) to stay with the other peeps since I'd decided that it would be smarter for me to be over there since we would be leaving at, you know, 5 or 6 in the morning...
Since it's our luck, the lights went out right then, and thus we had a lot of fun walking around with lanterns from Pottery Barn or something and using Amanda's headlamp to see. This was also when I fell in love with my cell phone for the third or fourth time. It has a really powerful light that comes on when you're trying to take a picture at night and there's no light, and that came in really useful when we were walking up and down stairs and also to see in the bathroom. Fun and exciting moments. It wasn't as much of an issue when we decided to just stay inside, so my phone and the headlamp got to rest for some time since we had a lot of candles.
While staying inside we decided to play a game, which was fun, and then we went to bed and slept for a couple hours before waking up. And then it was time to travelll!!!!
So here's where we'll be going in the next two weeks:
-Canakkale/Gallipoli
-Troy
-Bergama.....(Troy and Bergama are pretty close to each other)
-Selcuk
-Pamukkale
-Egirdir
-Konya
-village in the Taurus Mountains (name is Esenler--the s has a squiggle so you pronounce it "sh")
-Capadoccia (Kapadokya in Turkish)
-Ankara
-aaaand back to Istanbul!
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, Thursday, June 12, Friday, June 13 Site Presentations and Project Discussions and Up the Golden Horn
--Wednesday, June 11, 2008--
Today Clayton and I did our site presentation. We took the tram from Karakoy to Aksaray and then got on dolmuses (this time we didn't have to squeeze) to get to our church converted to mosque converted to museum.
Clayton and I did our presentation on Kariye Camii, a truly wonderful mosque, much like the Aya Sofya--it used to be a church, and a relatively important one at that, and after the conquest of Istanbul by Mehmed the Conqueror it was turned into a mosque. It contains the second largest collection of mosaics, coming only after Aya Sofya.
It's a very interesting building architecturally as well because it's very unsymmetrical--usually churches are made in the cross shape but this one is different. You walk into the church from the side and that takes you into the Parakklesion. From the Parakklesion (if you want to walk around the church in an order that makes sense with the mosaics) you go through to the exonarthex. Most of the mosaics of the church are contained in here and they depict the things that happened before Jesus was born along with some of his miracles. Afte walking around the exonarthex you go into the esonarthex where the mosaics are more genealogy related. From the esonarthex you walk into the narthex, the main body of the church and in the naos there are three mosaics: the dormition of the Virgin, Jesus, and Theodokos, the man who endowed the church with the mosaics. Here's a plan of the church, it's an easier way to explain the non-symmetry of the church...
I think I was so stressed over our presentation that I don't actually have any pictures of the mosaics, but if you look on the other blogs you'll find many beautiful pictures of our church/mosque/museum.
After we talked about our church, we walked over to Kalenderhane Camii, where Kelly and Zoe did their site presentation. Kalenderhane Camii is also a church turned mosque. It's also the mosque that Zoe, Kevin, and I found on the day of the scavenger hunt. It's a really nice mosque, still in use. The acoustics inside are amazing, just as we were leaving on the scavenger hunt day someone started to read the Qur'an and honestly I was spell-bound.
Kelly and Zoe did their site presentation, then we had lunch, and then we went over to the Grand Bazaar and walked around for a while, then I went home. Fun times.
--Thursday, June 12, 2008--
Today was the day for our project discussions with Prof. Shields. I decided I would do my project on the implications and consequences of the AK Party closing, and I want to interview people and see what they think will happen and compare their view with what the law books say will happen.
After discussing the details of my project, I left and went over to Ortakoy to meet up with some friends that I hadn't seen in a really long time. I spent the afternoon and evening basically with them and then I went home. This was a pretty low-key day for me :D
--Friday, June 13, 2008--
This was our walk around the Golden Horn day and believe me, we walked a lot today. First we went to Rustempasa Camii, which is a really nice mosque, very similar to the Blue Mosque in decoration although it is different in one aspect--there's red on the tiles for this mosque. Blue Mosque doesn't have that, and the red here is really nice because it's a very clear and strong red. This one was also really nice because it had a lot of light coming in. Another thing that's interesting was also the fact that most mosques in Istanbul, the old ones especially, are surrounded by markets in order to finance the building, and then the maintenance of the mosque. Rustempasa is located in such close quarters that the mosque was actually built on top of the markets that are required to help out with the up-keep of the mosque. Here are a couple pictures of the outside and interior of the mosque...
This is the niche that points in the direction of Mecca for people to orient themselves while praying. Sometimes it gets crowded in the mosque, especially during Friday prayers, so people have to pray outside. It helps to have something additional like this niche helping out with the direction.
The domes and designs...
The bottom of where the sultan would have come to pray. I liked the tulip design...
This was seriously a very interesting mosque as well because it was the first place where I saw more than one type of Arabic writing style adorning the walls. Here's what I mean: there are two or three major writing styles, and usually only one is used in mosques, called divani. In this mosque, over the doorway to the entrance, I saw both divani and kufic script. Both look very beautiful. Here's what I'm talking about:
This is the divani style...
And this is the kufic style...You don't see this type much in mosques, it's usually just the divani style.
After walking around Rustempasa Camii, we got out and went to a Greek neighborhood where they had this nice church that was really old. We weren't allowed to go into that one because they were cleaning apparently, so we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood and see if there was anything else we could check out, and lo and behold, first we found a school, and then when Clayton, Zoe, Kevin and I continued walking up the street we found a Sufi dervish lodge called Mesnevihane. It was really interesting to be able to find a mosque, a church, and a lodge so close to each other, but I think it pretty much defines how Istanbul is. Everything contained in one place.
Here's the entrance to the school with the school in the background...
And here's what I mean about everything being contained in one place...
After walking around the neighborhood, we decided to walk down and check out this Bulgarian (I think) church on the main road that's made from iron. It's rusting. But the inside was pretty nice with all the decorations and stuff. I don't have a lot of good pictures from this place, but here's a decent one that's not very blurry...
We took pictures and looked around there, and then finding that we were really, really hungry, we decided to go to a restaurant and eat. We went and sat at the top floor of the restaurant in the terrace with a really nice view. Prof Shields came up to check on us, and when she came there was another table next to ours full of random Turkish people, and they told her that her English was kind of bad. We were all like, what...are you guys talking about?... but then we decided to ignore them although I'm still kind of fuming at them for that comment. How can they comment on her English when there's is way worse? Anyways...
After lunch we went back to the church in the Greek neighborhood to check it out. After that, we took a ferry up to Eyup and walked around there. To get up to the top, we took a flying gondola type thing, like a cable car up in the air, kind of like a ski lift (just fyi: it's called teleferik in Turkish if you want to look it up and get a better definiton for your own enjoyment) and went to Pierre Lotti cafe. We sat around there for a while and drank tea/soda/Sprite/Turkish coffee/etc. and then went to Eyup Sultan Mosque and visited his tomb and looked around the mosque. Eyup Sultan was the standard-bearer for Prophet Muhammad, and he came all the way up to Istanbul from the Arabian Peninsula. Eyup Sultan Camii is also a popular place for the families of boys who are to be circumsized to go and pray. We saw many little boys there walking around in the traditional circumsition garb of a little sultan. The guys in our group were a tad...worried...and...awkward...and thus, funny :D
After Eyup, we took the ferry back down to home and I left the peeps there and went to Bolulu Hasan Usta to get a dessert. After that, I went home.
Today Clayton and I did our site presentation. We took the tram from Karakoy to Aksaray and then got on dolmuses (this time we didn't have to squeeze) to get to our church converted to mosque converted to museum.
Clayton and I did our presentation on Kariye Camii, a truly wonderful mosque, much like the Aya Sofya--it used to be a church, and a relatively important one at that, and after the conquest of Istanbul by Mehmed the Conqueror it was turned into a mosque. It contains the second largest collection of mosaics, coming only after Aya Sofya.
It's a very interesting building architecturally as well because it's very unsymmetrical--usually churches are made in the cross shape but this one is different. You walk into the church from the side and that takes you into the Parakklesion. From the Parakklesion (if you want to walk around the church in an order that makes sense with the mosaics) you go through to the exonarthex. Most of the mosaics of the church are contained in here and they depict the things that happened before Jesus was born along with some of his miracles. Afte walking around the exonarthex you go into the esonarthex where the mosaics are more genealogy related. From the esonarthex you walk into the narthex, the main body of the church and in the naos there are three mosaics: the dormition of the Virgin, Jesus, and Theodokos, the man who endowed the church with the mosaics. Here's a plan of the church, it's an easier way to explain the non-symmetry of the church...
I think I was so stressed over our presentation that I don't actually have any pictures of the mosaics, but if you look on the other blogs you'll find many beautiful pictures of our church/mosque/museum.After we talked about our church, we walked over to Kalenderhane Camii, where Kelly and Zoe did their site presentation. Kalenderhane Camii is also a church turned mosque. It's also the mosque that Zoe, Kevin, and I found on the day of the scavenger hunt. It's a really nice mosque, still in use. The acoustics inside are amazing, just as we were leaving on the scavenger hunt day someone started to read the Qur'an and honestly I was spell-bound.
Kelly and Zoe did their site presentation, then we had lunch, and then we went over to the Grand Bazaar and walked around for a while, then I went home. Fun times.
--Thursday, June 12, 2008--
Today was the day for our project discussions with Prof. Shields. I decided I would do my project on the implications and consequences of the AK Party closing, and I want to interview people and see what they think will happen and compare their view with what the law books say will happen.
After discussing the details of my project, I left and went over to Ortakoy to meet up with some friends that I hadn't seen in a really long time. I spent the afternoon and evening basically with them and then I went home. This was a pretty low-key day for me :D
--Friday, June 13, 2008--
This was our walk around the Golden Horn day and believe me, we walked a lot today. First we went to Rustempasa Camii, which is a really nice mosque, very similar to the Blue Mosque in decoration although it is different in one aspect--there's red on the tiles for this mosque. Blue Mosque doesn't have that, and the red here is really nice because it's a very clear and strong red. This one was also really nice because it had a lot of light coming in. Another thing that's interesting was also the fact that most mosques in Istanbul, the old ones especially, are surrounded by markets in order to finance the building, and then the maintenance of the mosque. Rustempasa is located in such close quarters that the mosque was actually built on top of the markets that are required to help out with the up-keep of the mosque. Here are a couple pictures of the outside and interior of the mosque...
This is the niche that points in the direction of Mecca for people to orient themselves while praying. Sometimes it gets crowded in the mosque, especially during Friday prayers, so people have to pray outside. It helps to have something additional like this niche helping out with the direction. The domes and designs... The bottom of where the sultan would have come to pray. I liked the tulip design...This was seriously a very interesting mosque as well because it was the first place where I saw more than one type of Arabic writing style adorning the walls. Here's what I mean: there are two or three major writing styles, and usually only one is used in mosques, called divani. In this mosque, over the doorway to the entrance, I saw both divani and kufic script. Both look very beautiful. Here's what I'm talking about:This is the divani style...
And this is the kufic style...You don't see this type much in mosques, it's usually just the divani style. After walking around Rustempasa Camii, we got out and went to a Greek neighborhood where they had this nice church that was really old. We weren't allowed to go into that one because they were cleaning apparently, so we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood and see if there was anything else we could check out, and lo and behold, first we found a school, and then when Clayton, Zoe, Kevin and I continued walking up the street we found a Sufi dervish lodge called Mesnevihane. It was really interesting to be able to find a mosque, a church, and a lodge so close to each other, but I think it pretty much defines how Istanbul is. Everything contained in one place.Here's the entrance to the school with the school in the background...
And here's what I mean about everything being contained in one place...After walking around the neighborhood, we decided to walk down and check out this Bulgarian (I think) church on the main road that's made from iron. It's rusting. But the inside was pretty nice with all the decorations and stuff. I don't have a lot of good pictures from this place, but here's a decent one that's not very blurry... We took pictures and looked around there, and then finding that we were really, really hungry, we decided to go to a restaurant and eat. We went and sat at the top floor of the restaurant in the terrace with a really nice view. Prof Shields came up to check on us, and when she came there was another table next to ours full of random Turkish people, and they told her that her English was kind of bad. We were all like, what...are you guys talking about?... but then we decided to ignore them although I'm still kind of fuming at them for that comment. How can they comment on her English when there's is way worse? Anyways...After lunch we went back to the church in the Greek neighborhood to check it out. After that, we took a ferry up to Eyup and walked around there. To get up to the top, we took a flying gondola type thing, like a cable car up in the air, kind of like a ski lift (just fyi: it's called teleferik in Turkish if you want to look it up and get a better definiton for your own enjoyment) and went to Pierre Lotti cafe. We sat around there for a while and drank tea/soda/Sprite/Turkish coffee/etc. and then went to Eyup Sultan Mosque and visited his tomb and looked around the mosque. Eyup Sultan was the standard-bearer for Prophet Muhammad, and he came all the way up to Istanbul from the Arabian Peninsula. Eyup Sultan Camii is also a popular place for the families of boys who are to be circumsized to go and pray. We saw many little boys there walking around in the traditional circumsition garb of a little sultan. The guys in our group were a tad...worried...and...awkward...and thus, funny :D
After Eyup, we took the ferry back down to home and I left the peeps there and went to Bolulu Hasan Usta to get a dessert. After that, I went home.
Monday, June 9, 2008 Class, Mufti, Yildiz Technical University
Warning: No pictures included in this post, sorry.
Monday was a pretty busy day. First we had class at the Caferaga Medrese where we discussed why Turkiye is so unstable, especially concerning the government. One of the reasons that we came up with was the fact that the military keeps coming in and taking over without giving the fledgling government that was democratically elected the time to mature. People have started depending on the military to come in and change everything once said everything starts going to hell in a handbasket.
We also discussed some of the issues that Turkiye is dealing with. Some of the things we came up with were as follows:
• Opening up Kemalism to discussion
• Role of military
• Political instability
• Buying your way out of the military
• Economic instability leading to political instability
Opening up Kemalism to discussion seems to be the hardest thing to do for this country. Kemalism has been accepted as the absolute truth for political stability for so long that it seems completely amazing that there would be another way of thought that could work.
After our discussion at the Medrese, our group left to go to Suleymaniye Mosque where we would meet up with Professors Omid Safi and Jim Morris’ groups also studying in Turkiye to go to the Istanbul Mufti’s office. A Mufti is essentially an Islamic scholar who interprets or explains Islamic law. In this case, the Mufti’s job included more social things such as receiving and hosting the Pope from the Vatican and other similar occasions. I don’t have any photos of this occasion but if you check out the blogs of the other people in the group, you’ll see me, mostly because I was asked to translate and did. Hopefully I translated correctly and nothing bad slipped out. It was definitely a memorable occasion and I was confused at myself for being rather tired at the end of the day, but then I realized that I had just translated for the Grand Mufti of Istanbul, probably one of the most powerful religious officials in the country. And that pretty much took my confusion away.
We asked the Mufti about what his job entailed, and other more religiously related topics, whereas there were a couple people in the audience who touched, for some reason, on more political stuff that were thus not associated with is office. To all of these questions he answered with a smile and a very nice reply. My favorite response of his was when he was asked by a member of the audience if said member could quote him on something he had said and the Mufti answered, “Why would I say something you can’t quote?” If you read the blogs of the other guys you’ll find more descriptive and funny explanations of what happened there. And just to state a fact: I love my group. They are the best ever.
So we talked with the Mufti, I translated, then it was over, and then my group piled into three taxis and we went over to Yildiz Technical University to meet up with Haldun Gulalp, a professor friend of Prof. Shields’.
Professor Gulalp is an interesting man, we had a many-faceted and very educational conversation with him about laws in Turkiye, specifically concerning the head-cover that women wear, and then we moved on to discussing the case against AKP, and then we also touched on the issues we had discussed this morning—specifically the reason for why Turkiye is so unstable. I think it was this part of the discussion that sparked the mention of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his concepts of general will vs. the will of all. When we were talking amongst ourselves after the discussion with Professor Gulalp, I think we were all really surprised that he used something like this concept as an explanation because there are too many assumptions associated that render the argument rather shaky.
Random fact about Yildiz University: my dad went there and graduated as an electrical engineer. :D
After our many-faceted discussion with Professor Gulalp, he gave us a tour of the university and then it was time to say goodbye. So we piled into one dolmus which is only supposed to take 9 people--meaning we placed 11 Americans including me and there were 3 other Turks along with the driver in the dolmus. A dolmus is kind of like a minibus although its smaller than that too. I don't have a picture of one but I'll be sure to get one and post in a later post.
A very intellectually intense day, but still fun.
Monday was a pretty busy day. First we had class at the Caferaga Medrese where we discussed why Turkiye is so unstable, especially concerning the government. One of the reasons that we came up with was the fact that the military keeps coming in and taking over without giving the fledgling government that was democratically elected the time to mature. People have started depending on the military to come in and change everything once said everything starts going to hell in a handbasket.
We also discussed some of the issues that Turkiye is dealing with. Some of the things we came up with were as follows:
• Opening up Kemalism to discussion
• Role of military
• Political instability
• Buying your way out of the military
• Economic instability leading to political instability
Opening up Kemalism to discussion seems to be the hardest thing to do for this country. Kemalism has been accepted as the absolute truth for political stability for so long that it seems completely amazing that there would be another way of thought that could work.
After our discussion at the Medrese, our group left to go to Suleymaniye Mosque where we would meet up with Professors Omid Safi and Jim Morris’ groups also studying in Turkiye to go to the Istanbul Mufti’s office. A Mufti is essentially an Islamic scholar who interprets or explains Islamic law. In this case, the Mufti’s job included more social things such as receiving and hosting the Pope from the Vatican and other similar occasions. I don’t have any photos of this occasion but if you check out the blogs of the other people in the group, you’ll see me, mostly because I was asked to translate and did. Hopefully I translated correctly and nothing bad slipped out. It was definitely a memorable occasion and I was confused at myself for being rather tired at the end of the day, but then I realized that I had just translated for the Grand Mufti of Istanbul, probably one of the most powerful religious officials in the country. And that pretty much took my confusion away.
We asked the Mufti about what his job entailed, and other more religiously related topics, whereas there were a couple people in the audience who touched, for some reason, on more political stuff that were thus not associated with is office. To all of these questions he answered with a smile and a very nice reply. My favorite response of his was when he was asked by a member of the audience if said member could quote him on something he had said and the Mufti answered, “Why would I say something you can’t quote?” If you read the blogs of the other guys you’ll find more descriptive and funny explanations of what happened there. And just to state a fact: I love my group. They are the best ever.
So we talked with the Mufti, I translated, then it was over, and then my group piled into three taxis and we went over to Yildiz Technical University to meet up with Haldun Gulalp, a professor friend of Prof. Shields’.
Professor Gulalp is an interesting man, we had a many-faceted and very educational conversation with him about laws in Turkiye, specifically concerning the head-cover that women wear, and then we moved on to discussing the case against AKP, and then we also touched on the issues we had discussed this morning—specifically the reason for why Turkiye is so unstable. I think it was this part of the discussion that sparked the mention of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his concepts of general will vs. the will of all. When we were talking amongst ourselves after the discussion with Professor Gulalp, I think we were all really surprised that he used something like this concept as an explanation because there are too many assumptions associated that render the argument rather shaky.
Random fact about Yildiz University: my dad went there and graduated as an electrical engineer. :D
After our many-faceted discussion with Professor Gulalp, he gave us a tour of the university and then it was time to say goodbye. So we piled into one dolmus which is only supposed to take 9 people--meaning we placed 11 Americans including me and there were 3 other Turks along with the driver in the dolmus. A dolmus is kind of like a minibus although its smaller than that too. I don't have a picture of one but I'll be sure to get one and post in a later post.
A very intellectually intense day, but still fun.
Sat June 7, 2008 and Sun June 8, 2008 Memories from the past; new memories made
Saturday I didn’t do anything until the afternoon. I mean I did stuff, I read some parts of a book I have to read for the class I’m taking, but that was about it. Around 2 o’clock, I called and talked to my mom and dad over Skype (a wonderful invention) and my mom told me that there was going to be a gathering at the house of a friend of ours that none of us had seen in a long time, and she gave me their phone number to find out how to get there and all that good stuff. So I called and learned all the necessary bits of information needed, and then I spent some more time reading and writing and whatnot, then I got ready to leave. I left a little early; I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going so it was easier for me to find my way while it was still bright out.
I got there nice and early, not only with the intention of being early but also of helping out, but true to Turkish hospitality, they didn’t let me do a thing. However when all the guests had arrived and we were done with the spoken part of the gathering, they let me help with serving food. So at least I was useful some of the time.
The gathering itself was about the memories a woman had of another woman. About Samiha Ayverdi. Samiha Ayverdi was an interesting person and continues to be a bit enigmatic. One has trouble describing this woman who was truly a lady. She was a writer and published many books concerning Istanbul and love for the divine. Samiha Ayverdi loved Istanbul. Going off of Orhan Pamuk’s “Istanbullu” concept, she was a true Istanbullu. Looking at the concept of “Istanbullu” from the perspective of an artist named Erol on Ortakoy, she was a true Istanbullu once again because there was no part of Istanbul that she didn’t know, nor was there a part of the city about which she didn’t have some type of historical background or significance of the place. Amazing is the one word that comes to mind, but it doesn’t convey the true greatness of this lady. I wish all the true amazement and education that reading about this lady through her works will bring.
We were told about the way Samiha Ayverdi behaved, how she was serious and yet always able to make a joke at any time. How she was tall but never looked down on anyone. How she had what Omid Safi refers to so plaintively in his introduction to Progressive Muslims—adab. “Ah, adab…” is what he says. Indeed, ah adab…it has been quite a while since anyone’s witnessed true adab that I think one would be hard-pressed to recognize it if it came and stood next to us. She embodied adab. Hopefully there will be more people like her, but it seems very hard.
Here's a picture of Afife Teyze...
So Afife Teyze talked to us about Samiha Ayverdi, and after her talk, we ate while watching the game. It was a fun night. Afterwards I got dropped off at home by some other friends.
Sunday was a pretty cool day too. I met up with David, Kelly, Amanda, and Edward and we went to Levent to the Kanyon Mall. We went to McDonalds, a book store where the others looked at kiddie books in Turkish...
After that we walked around the mall and went in a couple stores and just looked around. Here's the sign for my favorite store because it's owned by the coolest person on earth. Once again it's kind of blurry but just so you can see...
I got there nice and early, not only with the intention of being early but also of helping out, but true to Turkish hospitality, they didn’t let me do a thing. However when all the guests had arrived and we were done with the spoken part of the gathering, they let me help with serving food. So at least I was useful some of the time.
The gathering itself was about the memories a woman had of another woman. About Samiha Ayverdi. Samiha Ayverdi was an interesting person and continues to be a bit enigmatic. One has trouble describing this woman who was truly a lady. She was a writer and published many books concerning Istanbul and love for the divine. Samiha Ayverdi loved Istanbul. Going off of Orhan Pamuk’s “Istanbullu” concept, she was a true Istanbullu. Looking at the concept of “Istanbullu” from the perspective of an artist named Erol on Ortakoy, she was a true Istanbullu once again because there was no part of Istanbul that she didn’t know, nor was there a part of the city about which she didn’t have some type of historical background or significance of the place. Amazing is the one word that comes to mind, but it doesn’t convey the true greatness of this lady. I wish all the true amazement and education that reading about this lady through her works will bring.
We were told about the way Samiha Ayverdi behaved, how she was serious and yet always able to make a joke at any time. How she was tall but never looked down on anyone. How she had what Omid Safi refers to so plaintively in his introduction to Progressive Muslims—adab. “Ah, adab…” is what he says. Indeed, ah adab…it has been quite a while since anyone’s witnessed true adab that I think one would be hard-pressed to recognize it if it came and stood next to us. She embodied adab. Hopefully there will be more people like her, but it seems very hard.
Here's a picture of Afife Teyze...
So Afife Teyze talked to us about Samiha Ayverdi, and after her talk, we ate while watching the game. It was a fun night. Afterwards I got dropped off at home by some other friends.Sunday was a pretty cool day too. I met up with David, Kelly, Amanda, and Edward and we went to Levent to the Kanyon Mall. We went to McDonalds, a book store where the others looked at kiddie books in Turkish...
After that we walked around the mall and went in a couple stores and just looked around. Here's the sign for my favorite store because it's owned by the coolest person on earth. Once again it's kind of blurry but just so you can see... Since the mall is separated into two, there’s a part that’s actually under open air, there’s nothing covering the top. That part was pretty cool, especially since it started to kind of rain just as we were walking in. The design and architecture of the mall is cool enough however that we really didn’t get wet at all.
So overall I had a really nice weekend where I got to see some old friends and spent quality time with my new friends.
Friday, June 6, 2008 Two Finallys: Aya Sofya and HAMAM!!!
Today we revisited Sultanahmet Mosque and went to Aya Sofya for the first time. Prof Shields had arranged for another friend of hers to take us around these two mosques, his name is Gunhan, but unfortunately I don't have his last name. He was doing his dissertation on Sultan Ahmet and thus was also involved in researching about the mosque itself so he was indeed the ideal man for the event of taking us and showing us around the Blue Mosque. After we walked around the Blue Mosque, Gunhan took us to Aya Sofya where he once again did an expert explanation of all that was invovled with Aya Sofya including history and architectural stuff.
Aya Sofya is an amazing building. It's around 1500 years old, and has gone through three major renovations with the third type being the building we see right now. When Constantine founded the city, a church wasn't there and it wasn't exactly a concern for Constantine since at first he was a pagan. After his conversion however, churches became more important. During his time there was Aya Irene, but that was a small church. Constantine's son built the first version of Aya Sofya in around 360 AD--this church however had a very small lifespan of only 40 years and burned down in a fire. I think during this time it was called a megala iglesia, but I'm not entirely sure if I'm interpreting my notes correctly so don't quote me on that.
Theodosius II comes around and repairs it in the same manner--basilica with a stone roof. This is still continuing the transition period between paganism to Christianity. Around 430 AD the name of the church changes and becomes Aya Sofya, meaning Divine Wisdom. (Aya Irene means Divine Peace, and there's supposed to be another church that goes for Divine Brotherhood but I have no idea which one that is.) Well, this second church has much the same fate as the first one and gets burned down during the Nika Rebellion.
Once Justinian gets back on the throne, he changes many things including the judicial system and writes his own called the Codex Justinian. Looking at some of the things he changed it isn't a surprise to see that he would have a bigger project in mind, and the third version of the Aya Sofya gets built. Apparently it was built in 5 years 10 months with 10,000 workers. The church was designed by Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus. You may want to call them architects but they were more like engineers because they had very good mathematical knowledge. Plus they were pretty dedicated which is why you could go this big with a church. Interesting tidbit of information about them--they were known for building models and they experimented with artificial earthquakes to test the stability of their models and thus their buildings.
Some interesting and random stuff about Aya Sofya: 20 years after it was built, and earthquake hit and its aftershocks lasted for 4 months. There are flying buttresses surrounding the building which were added for stability. It is also the second-most vertically distorted building in the world--Pizza Tower wins first place. On the northern side, it is 81 inches diagonal. Here's a rather blurry picture of Edward helping to hold up the columns. I'm sorry it's blurry but it does give an idea of the distortion of the building...
(in order of Jesus, John the Baptist, and Virgin Mary)
Here's an interesting mosaic that shows the Virgin Mary and Child flanked by Emperors Constantine and Justinian. Constantine is presenting a model of the city and Justinian is presenting a model of the church.
Aya Sofya is an amazing building. It's around 1500 years old, and has gone through three major renovations with the third type being the building we see right now. When Constantine founded the city, a church wasn't there and it wasn't exactly a concern for Constantine since at first he was a pagan. After his conversion however, churches became more important. During his time there was Aya Irene, but that was a small church. Constantine's son built the first version of Aya Sofya in around 360 AD--this church however had a very small lifespan of only 40 years and burned down in a fire. I think during this time it was called a megala iglesia, but I'm not entirely sure if I'm interpreting my notes correctly so don't quote me on that.
Theodosius II comes around and repairs it in the same manner--basilica with a stone roof. This is still continuing the transition period between paganism to Christianity. Around 430 AD the name of the church changes and becomes Aya Sofya, meaning Divine Wisdom. (Aya Irene means Divine Peace, and there's supposed to be another church that goes for Divine Brotherhood but I have no idea which one that is.) Well, this second church has much the same fate as the first one and gets burned down during the Nika Rebellion.
Once Justinian gets back on the throne, he changes many things including the judicial system and writes his own called the Codex Justinian. Looking at some of the things he changed it isn't a surprise to see that he would have a bigger project in mind, and the third version of the Aya Sofya gets built. Apparently it was built in 5 years 10 months with 10,000 workers. The church was designed by Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus. You may want to call them architects but they were more like engineers because they had very good mathematical knowledge. Plus they were pretty dedicated which is why you could go this big with a church. Interesting tidbit of information about them--they were known for building models and they experimented with artificial earthquakes to test the stability of their models and thus their buildings.
Some interesting and random stuff about Aya Sofya: 20 years after it was built, and earthquake hit and its aftershocks lasted for 4 months. There are flying buttresses surrounding the building which were added for stability. It is also the second-most vertically distorted building in the world--Pizza Tower wins first place. On the northern side, it is 81 inches diagonal. Here's a rather blurry picture of Edward helping to hold up the columns. I'm sorry it's blurry but it does give an idea of the distortion of the building...
The major problem associated with the building is the humidity factor. Humidity affects everything, including mosaics, so they were plastered over in order to save them from falling off. Here I feel the need to insert a little lesson on Islam and it's view of images. Islam doesn't have a problem with images. Some may think that the excuse of "the mosaics were plastered over in order to protect them" a sorry excuse for covering it up, but it's true. Islam doesn't have a problem with images--the problem starts when those images become something that you pray towards.
Since we're talking about images and mosaics, here are some examples of said mosaics...
(in order of Jesus, John the Baptist, and Virgin Mary)And an example of the first ever graffiti...interesting that its in a church...however, it was done by Vikings, or Goths, or some other type of nation from that area... :D
Here's an interesting mosaic that shows the Virgin Mary and Child flanked by Emperors Constantine and Justinian. Constantine is presenting a model of the city and Justinian is presenting a model of the church. After finishing up walking around Aya Sofya, we went and got a late lunch before going to the hamam because our social chairs and also people who organized the trip to the hamam, Edward and Amanda said that we would need our strength as well as being hydrated well. So we ate some doner and drank a lot of water.
Finishing our lunch, we went to the hamam and I had my first ever hamam experience. It was really fun, we got washed and massaged and everything, all the time while singing songs and talking and gossiping and stuff. I enjoyed it immensely.
After the hamam, I went to a friend's house where we sang songs and had sohbet with Cemalnur. I was dropped off at home by a friend of my dad's. Good day.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008 Bogazici University and Sevket Pamuk
Today we went to Bogazici University and met Sevket Pamuk. Yes, the older brother of Orhan Pamuk, the famous, or rather should I say, infamous, author.
Here's Sevket Pamuk...I don't have any other better pictures of him I'm sorry to say, but I wish I did. You may be able to find better photos on the blogs of the other people of the group...
Here's Sevket Pamuk...I don't have any other better pictures of him I'm sorry to say, but I wish I did. You may be able to find better photos on the blogs of the other people of the group...
We discussed economics in Turkiye. Professor Pamuk gave us a sheet with a table showing the economic and human development indicators for Turkiye between the years of 1913 to 2005. The talk was interesting but for some reason the only way I could keep my eyes open was to take notes the entire time the man was talking so I now have 4 pages of notes on the things he said.
There was something interesting that he mentioned that made me happy because it tied back to something I'd discussed in my freshman seminar class last semester. Professor Pamuk mentioned that income in Turkiye had increased about six times since 1913 meaning that the average person can now spend six times as much. But then he also mentioned that although the income has increased, so have the options that consumers have, and so there is no clear definition of an increase or betterment in the lives of these consumers. This was something I had had a discussion about in my freshman seminar last semester after we read an article titled "Middle Class" where the author was talking about the middle class and consumerism and it was a really good article in that it showed just how hard it is to really define the middle class and to quantify it because there are a lot of things that change and can influence this definition. So yeah, I was really excited that I could draw a connection between something I'd done last semester and during this summer.
Bogazici University's campus was really beautiful. It's up above and looks down on the Marmara Sea, and it's in a more green neighborhood of Istanbul, so it kind of reminded me of home, but I just wasn't able to warm up to the university as much as I had to Sabanci University. Maybe it was because there weren't any students to take us around the campus and show us what happened and whatnot, but it just didn't seem to attract me as much as Sabanci had. Nor was it as appealing to me as UNC is, soooo I'm thinking I'll be staying at UNC and not transferring :D
Wednesday, June 4, 2008 Wasted Money and the Museum of Soldierly Things
Today we started off with conducting a visit to Dolmabahce Saray, probably Turkiye’s, and specifically Istanbul’s most ugly building built using money that could definitely have been used elsewhere. The desire of an Ottoman Sultan to be more European by having a palace look exactly like the Versailles in France was obviously not the best of decisions, but what’s done is done. Hopefully in this case history won’t be repeating itself and all the money (and it was a huge sum, trust me. Loads and loads and loads of gold) will actually be used for the actual good of the country instead of the European look of a city that already combines everything.
I’d already been to the Dolmabahce Saray before as well, once with a lot of friends and another time with four friends two of whom were my mom’s friends and third was the daughter of the friend, and so I was by this point rather unimpressed by the palace. Today’s excursion was made extremely amusing however by the presence of a reporter that wanted to interview us students; he’d apparently met Clayton and someone else last night at Tumata and asked to interview. What made him amusing was the fact that Prof Shields introduced us simply as her students and also said that there was a Turk among them (me, obviously), but that he had to guess who it was. The man could not guess it was me. I was definitely happy about this fact because although I’m ready to offer my translation services at any time, it does get tiring after a while and much as I love everyone in my group, I didn’t want to have to do translations again. So everything worked out and I had my own bit of private amusement because of that man.
We walked around Dolmabahce Palace and also around the harem, and I realized that I probably would have been way more impressed by this Palace if there had been another Leslie Pierce taking us around. However, there was not, and they weren’t letting us take pictures unless we paid about 6 YTL or something, so I laughed at that and used my awesome photographic memory to take all the pictures I needed; which wasn’t all that much so there’s still a lot of space left in there to fill up with actual knowledge.
After Dolmabahce Palace, we had lunch, and then we continued on to the Askeri Museum, where it was Kevin and David’s turn to do their presentation. Asker in Turkish means “soldier” so basically this was a museum that contained a lot of military history. It was truly impressive and I really enjoyed walking through it. We went in to the museum and started walking around a little but right then we heard the mehter music, which I can’t really translate other than to say that it’s the music that strikes fear into the hearts of enemies and greatly energizes the Turkish army. I love this kind of music, and they had a procession going on with the music which imitated the way it was done way back when, and that was really impressive as well. Here’s a picture that gives an idea of all the parts and the people involved in the procession…
I’m not entirely sure about the roles of all of the people, but as a whole they were definitely fearsome and impressive. The man in green in the picture is what’s referred to as a janissary, I don’t remember if I did a spiel about janissaries in an earlier post, but just in case I didn’t they were young Christian men taken mostly from the Balkan areas who were then converted to Islam and circumcised and given very good education. They were absolutely loyal to the sultan up until the point where they forgot their military training and got into business and commerce. The janissaries were a specialized core of soldiers who were the most impressive part of the sultan’s immense army (probably, this is all my imagination combining with the knowledge I’ve gained these past few weeks so…and anyone who knows me knows I have a huge imagination…yeah anyways…) and they were also the best educated and best trained. Here’s a closer picture of one of the men in green…
Check out the way he’s holding the standard. He pushes his sword kind of out of his belt and uses it to support the arm that going to be holding the standard since there isn’t actually a place to stick the end of the flag on him. I thought it was cool and a good method. He wasn’t the only man in green; there was actually one other color, red. I didn’t get a picture of the entire thing but its ingrained in my mind and it was really very impressive. After watching the mehter group for a while (20 minutes-ish. Wish we could’ve watched them some more) we went inside and let David and Kevin get on with their presentation. Here’s a cool little picture of a really small thing from the museum…
This is the chain that went across the Golden Horn in Istanbul that divides its European side in half. It was supposed to be able to keep out ships, but obviously that didn’t work against Mehmed the Conqueror since he just made his way over land with his ships and got them into the sea on the other side of the chain. The Byzantines were then already about ¾ defeated and the only thing left for the Conqueror to do was to breach the walls, which he did with The Urban. The Urban was the hugest gun of its time, sending a very heavy and long in diameter ball to tear down the walls of Constantinople.
The museum was really interesting in that about 50% of the bottom floor dealt with May 29, 1453 (the fall of Constantinople) and the rest is devoted to halls of weapons and whatnot. The second floor is devoted to the Young Turk Revolution. There is also an entire wing of the museum that we didn’t go to visit consisting only of Ataturk memorabilia, but honestly, the halls for the Young Turk Revolution were enough to quench the thirst of any Ataturk maniac. We essentially went from a bit of Ottoman history about only one day to ATATURK AND WHAT HE DID. That was it.
To go back to the mehter group for a minute, something interesting to mention: they were the first military bands ever. The British, the French, all of the Europeans got the idea to have a military marching band from the Turks. Then, when the Turks wanted to become more European, they forgot that they had actually given this marching band thing to Europeans and got rid of their own thing to institute what the Europeans were doing. Which seems ridiculous to me, you already have the original thing, and the Eurpoean marching band part actually has a piece that refers to something Turkish, but you don’t really pay attention to that and believing your own country’s attributes to be worse than that of the Europeans you decide to institute their system. I had a wee bit of a problem with that, and I still do.
After the museum, we went over to the Shields and Merryman house to have wonderful dinner, and after dinner, we went and walked around Istiklal a bit and then went to a concert being held in the Galatasary High School. It would have been more entertaining if I had known the group, and also if the group had had better songs and better voices. The music itself was nice but the voice of the guy wasn’t all that wonderful. Here’s a picture of Zoe and David…
And here’s a picture of Edward looking very pensive…
I spent the night at the girls’ flat and had a lot of fun in general.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008 Sufis and Trains
This day we met at the Kadikoy ferry station (in Asia) and took a bus to Bostanci where we met with Cemalnur Sargut, the leader of an NGO (non-governmental organization) and also a Sufi. A very nice lady who spoke to us about many things, ranging from Sufis to why women pray in the back in mosques to when her NGO was founded to what the NGO does and how it gets the money for what it does and many other different questions like that. Here’s a picture of her and her translator…
After speaking with Ms. Sargut, we took the ferry back to Europe to Sirkeci train station where Emily and Kristina did their presentation on the train station and specifically concentrated on the Orient Express. Here’s a picture of them answering our questions after their presentation…
Nicely done presentation. After their presentation, Amanda, Edward and I went to a hamam to check out prices because they were going to do their presentation on a hamam. They asked me to come because most of the time I can get a better deal than foreign people can, and we did get a pretty good deal. 30 YTL for 11 people and 15 YTL for me; so for a total of 345 YTL we would be getting a nice bath and a massage and soap and towels and everything. After checking out the hamam and negotiating a nice price for all 12 of us, we went back to Sultanahmet and found the place of Tumata, the place that deals with the science of music therapy and also the preservation of old Turkic musics and instruments. I only stayed for about half an hour, if that, and left really early because I’d already gone there before and the person who actually leads the group wasn’t there anyways. Here's a picture of the place...
It's actually a two-story office type thing, the part shown in the picture is the museum. I think I've already talked about Tumata, but just incase I haven't, it's an organization that works to preserve and find old instruments. They have their own workshop where they make the instruments, and the photo you see up there is of the museum where they display the instruments they've made. They also do musical therapy, and they start off with old Turkic songs and then move on to Sufi rhythmic chants and whatnot to induce a healthier state in the mind. They also practice with the instruments that they've made, and the museum part of the office is where this happens. Good stuff.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Monday, June 2, 2008 THE WALLS
On this wonderful Monday, we...walked...the walls. It was awesome!!!! We didn't just walk the walls actually, we walked, climbed, and essentially became on with the walls. Mom and dad, when we come to Istanbul again, inshaallah soon, we are going to walk these walls. With a camera :D
Anyways, we met at the Sirkesci train station to take the train to Yedikule. First we spent a lot of time there just going in and out of all the towers and everything. We saw the tower where they would place the prisoners and execute them if said prisoner was due for executio. We also saw the well where the soldiers would have thrown the bodies of decapitated prisoners. The body would go down this well where it would apparently wash out into the sea (proven? I have no idea...) and the head would be taken to the sultan. What happens to the head? Good question. No answer.
Here's Edward on one of the towers...
Here's a picture of five of us and what we did at the top of the Yedikule Dungeons...
They were all really happy that they were spelling "Turks" instead of "Americans" since that requires more people and is (obviously) more complicated to do. Edward looks like he's about to dive but he's actually an S so don't get confused :D
After that, we got out of Yedikule and kept on walking along the walls. At some point while walking, we came across this opening in the walls, and, of course, what do we do? We walk in to see where it leads us, and it led us to a point so high that we could pretty much see almost all of Istanbul. I don't have any pictures of the really high parts where we got up on the tower and placed ourselves among the little ramparts where the watchmen would be looking out from, but it was really fun and scary at the same time to be up there. Check out some of Emily's videos, they're hilarious and they give a really good sense of what it felt like to be up there.
We walked some more along the walls, and then we came upon this one part that had ancient Mayan ruins steps leading up, so again, what do we do? Climb them, of course! After climbing we came upon another tower, and went yp that, and just looked around at the view and at far we had come. We walked a lot that day. When I got up the next day my legs were pretty sore, but it was really fun so we just forgot about the pain.
The consensus among most of us about walking the walls was that climbing up was easy, but climbing down was hard. Because when you're climbing up, you're only concentrating on going up and what's going to greet you up there, but when you're climbing down, you realize that there's a hole on one side and a precipice on the other, so it's not even a choice. It's not that you're afraid all the time, but one wrong move pretty much does push you over the side and down. Just down. I still had the best time of my life :D The Mayan ruins especially were the best. Here they are...
After walking the walls, we got to a ferry station, but we were late for the ferry, so we took the bus back home. The Prof had organized a Turkish lesson for the other guys that evening, so before that started I went and bougt myself some kumpir. Oh, kumpir....Here's a picture...
The picture on the wall gives an idea of what this looks like, but nothing can tell you about hte taste unless you go and taste it, so I'm inviting everyone to come to Turkiye and check it out. This kumpir place is on Istiklal Caddesi, near Taksim Square. If you want to eat kumpir with a view, I'm totally fine with taking anyone to Ortakoy and having some kumpir there with an awesome view of the Bosphorus Bridge and the sea and everything else associated with a nice view.
So, what is kumpir you may ask? Let me tell you. Kumpir is this wonderful concoction consisting of a potato, butter, salt, cheese, and lots of salads and ketchup and mayonnaise if you so wish. They take a baked potato with its skin still on, cut it in half, put butter, salt, and cheese in the opening, and then stir the insides of the potato along with the ingredients just listed to make a wonderfully tasty base. After that gets done, there's a whole slew of salads displayed which you just point to and they put on the potato. Green olives, black olives, kisir (salad made from couscous, tomato, pepper, and a bit of wonderful), American/Russian salad (I'm not sure of the name anymore, I've heard it way too many times in different ways--it consists of peas, mayonnaise, macaroni, carrots, that type of stuff; it's delicious), yogurt salad, corn, and much more, and of course, ketchup and mayonnaise. I got most of the stuff I just listed, plus another salad, and took that back to the flat and ate it while the others had their Turkish lesson. It was delicious. I have officially fallen in love with kumpir. After eating my kumpir, I went home and seriously crashd onto my bed. Today was a very tiring day, but I had so much fun that I'm not complaining about anything.
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