Day One: First Impressions (Istanbul)

First, an important note: the Turkish government is big on Internet censorship. For some reason I can post to my blog, but I can’t view it or view comments on it because it triggers the censorship blocker thingy. I guess I can post seditious material, I just can’t view it myself?

Aside from my confused brain waking me up a couple of times in the middle of the night, I slept very well. Breakfast this morning was fresh bread from the bakery next door; two types of delicious olives; goat’s cheese; sour cherry jelly; hard-boiled eggs; tomatoes; cucumbers and Turkish tea. It was raining this morning, meaning I was in no hurry to get out and about, so I took my time with breakfast. Then I logged online and managed to spend 3 hours chatting with Celia. Maybe I was jet-lagged or maybe it was the weather or maybe it was the company, but I just didn’t feel like going out.

But go out I did. As I emerged on the main street from the hotel, I was infuriated to see that I had needlessly spent forever and a day yesterday trying to find the place when it’s quite nearly on the main road. I went down every street in the neighborhood except the one I needed. My first stop was to buy a phone and then visit the ATM. Then I walked down into the Sultanahmet section of Old Istanbul and started my day with the goal to see three things: the Blue Mosque, the Aya Sofya (Hagia Sophia) and the Topkapi Palace. Otherwise I decided to take it easy.

I spent the majority of the day hanging out with carpet sellers. I bought a carpet for Henry & Bushra as a wedding present (it’s hideous but it was practically the only thing within my price range even with substantial haggling) just to get that out of the way. If you have a sense of humor, carpet sellers are a lot of fun. They will approach you EVERYWHERE in Sultanahmet. Sometimes you’re just &*@&!*& sick and tired of them and you can tell them very firmly to go away (sometimes works, sometimes not) but for most of the day I was in a good mood. They will always begin by either asking where you’re from or trying to direct you to some major site, which apparently is an invitation to follow you. Today I have been British, Dutch, German and Canadian – everything but what I actually am. For the most part I went with the story that I’m from Chicago, and I’m teaching in Gumushane. This helped dispense with a lot of the nonsense since they assumed I had quite a bit of experience in the country (why else would you be teaching in a village like that?).

Everyone wants to comment on my accent. “Why do you not sound like an American?” When I tell them that I lived in East Africa, they’re generally not sure what to say. In fact, it takes them so off guard that if I needed to this was the point where I could force my escape. I told them all upfront I wasn’t going to buy anything, but they all had faith in their salesmanship. Fine by me.

So off they whisk you to “their” nearby carpet shop, which is more often than not owned by an entirely different person. I kid you not when I say I visited at least 10 shops. They offer you a choice of Turkish tea, apple tea or Turkish coffee. You sit down on a nice sofa and the salesman seats himself in a chair beside you. They chat amicably, occasionally interjecting comments about carpets – it’s like a fun game. I talked about the weather, life in the Turkish military, Syrian-Turkish relations, Iranian-Turkish relations, US-Turkish relations, Israel, the American military base…and nearly everything else under the sun. I’m so wired up on caffeine from all these shops that I couldn’t sleep even if I wanted to!

Aside from the carpet sellers, I accomplished all three goals plus the underground Roman cisterns. The Aya Sofya was the most awe-inspiring; the Blue Mosque was the most beautiful; the Topkapi Palace was the biggest; and the Roman Cisterns were the most unbelievable!

So the Byzantines built the Aya Sofya, and I’ve been confusing it my entire life with the Blue Mosque. But anyway, the moment you walk inside the building you’re struck by the immensity of it. The spaces are enormous, and there are beautiful mosaics throughout most of the building. It was converted into a mosque after Constantinople fell to the Turks, and there are somewhat tacky reminders of the building’s ownership in the form of giant signs in all four corners with large Arabic script on them.

The Blue Mosque has to be the most iconic Turkish monument, and it’s breathtaking. There are some buildings where you’ve seen so many pictures of them that you feel a little let down when you’re actually there but not the Blue Mosque. The huge domes and six minarets (an oddity in mosque construction) are really something to behold but the inside is more magnificent. As with all mosques, you have to remove your shoes before you enter but they provide you with a plastic bag to keep them in. Inside, every square inch is decorated in some manner, generally with small painted tiles. About half the mosque is reserved for actual prayer. I know it’s mildly intolerant, but it still irritates me to see the women relegated to praying in the back of the mosque behind a sort of little wall-like enclosure.

Topkapi Palace was the seat of the Ottoman government. It just goes on and on. Really, there’s seemingly no end to it. There’s the Sultan’s Stables, the Sultan’s Treasury, the Sultan’s Clothes, the Sultan’s Fax Machine, the Sultan’s Toilet Paper, the Sultan’s Glove, the Sultan’s Used Kleenex…. Most of the palace is actual very nice, and they do a great job of maintaining the gardens. There are pretty amazing collections of jewelry and things that belonged to the Empire – I can recall one gold box just full of emeralds, probably 100 of more of them. And then you move on to the slightly ludicrous portion of the exhibits, which feature historical pieces belonging to significant religious figures such as Moses. Yes, seriously. They claim to have Moses’ walking cane. THE Moses, as in Old Testament. Somehow the Ottoman Empire acquired the walking cane, magically preserved it for hundreds of years and then forked it over to the Turkish Republic. Among the other ludicrous things are King David’s sword; St. John’s sword; and Joseph’s turban (no, it was not technicolored). There’s also the sword of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as his tooth, beard and footprint (he had a huge footprint). The thought of a decaying tooth in a box kind of weirded me out, so I left after that.

Those Romans… I don’t know how they constructed the cisterns you see. You go underground and there are a ton of huge columns holding up the roof. Fresh water used to flow in from some nearby source but it’s sense been shut off. The bases of two columns inside are made from statues of Medusa supposedly plundered from a temple. People seemed to think it was fun to come along and rub the chin of the upside-down Medusa but I couldn’t bring myself to molest 1,500-year-old ruins.

I had kebap for dinner (a very Turkish thing to do) and hoofed it back up to the hotel. I discovered that you should never buy water from your hotel: they charge 2 Turkish lira, whereas the grocery store RIGHT NEXT DOOR charges 0.40 Turkish lira. I also discovered that I have taken two showers and used the bathroom innumerable times in the poorly marked women’s bathroom. No wonder all those women looked at me funny when I cheerily said, “Good morning!”.