Istanbul, Part II


So yesterday I left you all at the Grand Bazaar. I would like to jump from there to starting out Sunday at the Basilica Cistern, but Chachan at our hostel requires mention first. He was very friendly and chatty, and even managed to persuade your curmudgeonly correspondent to eat at the hostel for dinner. He was Kurdish (as apparently are the majority of workers in that district of Istanbul as I later found out) and of course spoke like a half-dozen different languages. I wish I had a picture of Meredith and I with him, instead you'll have to settle for a (washed out) shot of the street the hostel was on, sorry.

The next day we set off bright and mid-morningish for the lovely streets of Sultanahmet (where no Westerner ever felt unloved by the tourist vendors) and the famed Basilica Cistern. This was also a project of the the emperor Justinian and quite an interesting space just to be in. It was underground of course, but it was very well set-up and reminded me of a huge indoor version of a pond in a park, at night. I thought they should put in little paddle boats that people could rent. None of my pictures came out that well except for the ones of the main archaeological attraction, the Medusa heads that served as pillar foundations. They reminded me a little too much of my boss. One was upside down and the other was sideways. This is actually why modern delivery boxes have the "THIS END UP" thing on them.





From the Cistern we headed east to the Topkapi Palace, former home of the sultan and his four hundred-plus wives. The grounds were fairly expansive for being in a city and pretty well-kept, so it was a very beautiful spot to walk around. The jewels on display were really impressive. In between bouts of retching at the level of unequal distribution of wealth it displayed I had to admire the craftsmen of that era and their skills. And the tones reflected in all the rubies and emeralds awed me near to silence before I remembered I was supposed to be disgusted by the decadence of it all. At least the guys had taste. Unfortunately they wouldn't let you take pictures of the bling, but trust me, it was pimpalicious. The picture on the left here is the entrance to the royal treasury.

The other room that really fascinated me was the one with all the guns. I'll admit that one of the reasons Ottoman history fascinates me is the way firearms were developed and used during that dynasty, especially by the imperial janissaries. The guns on display in Istanbul were certainly worth the cabinet space just for their designs and decorations, which were interesting and intricate. But the museum also got me thinking about what the origin of those firearms can tell us about their use in the world today. It is telling that they were used by the janissaries to guard the imperial palace and treasury, because those origins show that their first purpose was legitimation through force and the protection of power and accumulated wealth by the fear of force. On the right here we have the closest thing I could find to the Patrick Harper special.

the Archaeological Museum was also terribly fascinating, one of those places that I would take my kids and spend a week or two if I were homeschooling them here. I have to mention especially the Necropolis of Sidon which had some pretty impressive tomb engravings. All I can say is that when it's my time to go, someone had better carve some naked, partying Romans into my casket before I start pushing up petunias. There were also good rooms on Byzantium, other sarcophagi, Bronze Age sculptures and Famous Mothers, but by that time Mery and I were both suffering from acute fullness of the brain, so we took a walk in the tea gardens next door, which were quite pleasant in the falling dusk. Once we got to the far end there was a great view of the Bosphorus from some cliffs that produced the picture on the left. The big treat that night was that Mery and i ran into our fellow SSI Mirelle Phillips at the Metropolis Cafe on the way back from dinner. We ended up talking with her and the guys who worked at the cafe for over four hours, and the illustrious Paul Berry stopped by also with our mutual acquaintance Andrew Tobolowsky.

That pretty much concludes the visual part of the presentation. But I would like to share that with no particular plans for what time we would leave on a bus, Mery and I left the hostel around ten thirty and walked/took the metro to the bus station on the European side. It was easier to get to than the one on the Asian side but probably has fewer buses for Ankara. At any rate, we roll up at 11:50 and I said "I hope there's a 12 o'clock bus". Ask and ye shall receive! I love it when that happens. This anecdote is actually partly an excuse for me to share the story of coming back from DC to Providence last year that I have forgotten I told most of you. In that instance, I was trying to find a cheap way home from a weekend of protesting and lobbying and ended up taking the Chinatown bus to NY, then to Foxwoods Casino where I slept under a craps table for a couple hours, then to Boston where I got a free donut by begging the Krispy Kreme guy, and finally to Providence. I had a 9am Colonial History (which actually has nothing to do with anyone's colon, disappointingly) lecture from Nobel Laureate Gordon Wood to get to, and managed to walk in the doorway wrapping up a 17-hour trip at 8:58. Now that's timing for you.

Istanbul, Part I

You're getting the Istanbul entry in (at least) two parts for three reasons: I didn't get around to writing an entry last week, so this will keep my average at one a week; I have fended off over three hundred thousand requests to purchase tourist novelties in the last couple days and am kinda exhausted; this was an epic tour that deserves extra space. Basically I want to get something written now while the trip is fresh in my mind, and if I wait until tomorrow morning the temptation to plagiarize the whole thing from Meredith's blog will be too great.

We got to take the train there, an 11:30 departure from Ankara called the Fatih Ekspresi. It was the best I have slept in transportation mode without having a sleeper car at least in a while. We got in around 8am and took the ferry across the still-misty Bosphorus onto the European side of Istanbul, having arrived on the Asian side. This was a teasing first glimpse at the city because everything was pretty much still concealed inland, but you could just make out enough the buildings lining the shore to get a feel for the architecture and beauty of it. Nothing says "Good Morning, Mehmet!" like minarets rising through the fog. (I didn't take any pictures until we got to the cool buildings, don't worry, they're coming).

Meredith and I had breakfast with Amari, one of our co-workers we were traveling with, at a börek restaurant next to the Galata Bridge. Then we crossed the bridge into the "Golden Horn" part of Istanbul and the Sultanahmet district. That's the relatively touristy part of town where, conveniently, a half-dozen or so of the major attractiosn are located within several blocks of each other. We walked up a long gradual hill with the Bosphorus at our backs, to the North, and came down the other side with the Marmara Sea in front to the South. After checking in at the the Sultan Hostel (they're big on the sultan theme for tourists there, I guess Suleyman the Magnificient [best name for a dynastic ruler in the last 2,200 years if you ask me] had a thing for overpriced beer and carpet shops), we (Meredith, Amari, co-worker Ted, Ted's random acquaintance Jeff and I) headed out to the Blue Mosque, about three blocks North of where we stayed.

Before going in, I got to take a picture for some Chinese tourists from Guangzhou who wanted to get Meredith in their shot as a token foreigner. The outside of the Blue Mosque was great not just for its design but also the way it dominated so much of the neighborhood where we stayed. it had a presence all out of proportion to its size because so much was built around it and there were always lights on it at night. It was a very cool thing to have the focus on.

(Feeling blue? Go to the mosque!)

The inside was spectacular primarily for its geometric designs, its stained glass windows, and the fact that it is still used several times a day for prayer. I was too busy to give a guest sermon, but I told them I'll be in town again sometime in the next few months.



Next we headed basically across the street, to the Hagia Sophia/Aya Sophia, the one built in 530-something by Justinian to be the greatest church in the world. When the Ottomans took the city they plastered over all the nice mosaics because that stuff's not allowed for Islam (and you guys thought I was a philistine). By the way since Saturday was Teacher's Day I got free or reduced admission everywhere and ended up saving like $30!

(The Virgin, the Baby, the pizza delivery Saints [hey, who feels like cooking after a virgin birth?])
(I'm there to remind them to pray in the direction of the thing behind me. Or was it the other way around? Some of the memories got knocked around when I was tackled by the security guard for trying to nab one of the tiles from the above mosaic as a souvenir. It wasn't even one of the big ones!)

We also went to the Grand Bazaar on Saturday. Basically it was a dressed-up version of the one in Cairo, which I liked much better. It seemed like the Mall of America, Middle Eastern style. You know, if the salespeople at the GAP harassed you with special prices as you went by.

OK, that's it for tonight, coming soon: parks, museums, cisterns, restaurants, good company and good timing!

Random Catch-up Musings

-The students that I went to the football match in Ankara with traveled to Bursa last weekend for a match against their "brother team". The tradition is for each team's supporters to cheer for the other team during the game. This practice came about in memory of a student from Bursa who came to Ankara for university and had many friends in both places before he was killed in the military. So often sports is idiotically divisive, so I found this to be a refreshing and enlightened thing for them to do. I think it would be wonderful if high schools in the US and other countries had a similar tradition with their rivals. If you know of any that do exist, please let me know!

-Shimon Peres, President of Israel, received an honorary degree from Bilkent this afternoon. Among my favorite quotes from him: "If you want to serve the future, don't be afraid to be part of the minority." "
"When you win a war, your people are united and applaud you. When you make peace, your people are doubtful and resentful."
"If you serve a great cause you will be a great man."
"Unless you learn to be a teacher of yourself you will lose the flow of modernity."
Much as I disagree with the actions of the Israeli state during the time that Peres has been one of its leaders, I have to give credit to his efforts for peace and his optimism as a leader. At least his rhetoric was far more positive than most of the Israelis who spoke at Brown, even if that was mostly due to the respective locations and audiences of the speakers.

-It is a little surreal to be living in a country that President Bush is 1) trying to convince to NOT invade another country and 2) actually being listened to by. Lost in all the talk about Pakistan this week was the fact that Bush and Rice seem to have actually headed off a major invasion by Turkey, at least for the time being. Which is pretty amazing, if you think about it. This time last week I was resigned to another sequel to the spring of 2003, with a flag that had less blue on it. Now, there are tinglings of pride that we may have done something positive in the region through diplomatic intervention. Hostages were released by the PKK. Political tensions are declining. And there was far less bloodshed and ill-will than if a major military invasion had occurred. Stay tuned, we are still waiting for the other shoe to drop somewhere here.

-My new favorite game to play each morning as I scan the headlines is "Will This Make the 100 Worst Moments of the Bush Administration?" My friend Will emailed me the TrueMajority.org report on the first Bush veto that has been overridden, and at first I was sure that had to be in there. But Bush will have been in office for over 400 weeks by the January after next, meaning only about one event for month can make the top 100 list on average. Does the veto override get this month's nod? Probably, but crony-licious appointee Harriet Myers awarding a prize to a blatantly racist Halloween costume has to get consideration, right? And what about the depths of embarrassment we've seen as one of his key allies in the war on terror imposed "emergency rule" on Pakistan because the Supreme Court was in danger of ruling he couldn't be president and head of the military at the same time? Isn't this somewhat akin to talking up your boyfriend for years to your friends and then having to explain why the word "fryalator" appears prominently on his resume? Well not exactly, but you get the idea. Musharraf is shedding his final vestigial shards of legitimacy and Bush is just kind of awkwardly asking him to stop, with about the same effectiveness I would have defending Shaq in the low post. (High post is a different story, by the way.) So my proposal is for several 100 Worst Moments editions, like Foreign Policy, Emergency Relief, Failed Initiatives That Might Have Actually Been Good Ideas, The Patriot Act, and No Child Left Behind. Then we could combine them into The 1001 Worst Moments collection. Then of course librarians would have the difficulty of deciding whether to put it next to Stephen King or Gordon Wood, but I'll leave that question to Mike.

-Rev. Kendrick gave an excellent sermon this morning at First Unitarian Boston that I was able to catch thanks to the glories of streaming radio on the internet. One of his essential points was that only through silence can we answer the most important questions in our lives (he used the example of when Pontius Pilate asked Jesus "What is truth" and Jesus was silent). He cited Laozi also as a religious leader who acknowledged that since words cannot be used to answer the deepest questions, the greatest teachers dedicate themselves to service. And yet, UUism is a religion that calls for speaking out: against injustice, against oppressive power structures and against hatred and violence. How can we reconcile these teachings? As ever, I wish us all tranquility and perseverance as we embrace the paradox.