Christians, Coughs and Cappadocia

I'd like to extend an apology to Istanbul: I have become one of those people who cough on public buses. And in the office. And on small children with weak immune systems.

Two weeks ago, I boarded a bus headed for Cappadocia with The College Friend and her Mom. Eleven hours later, we were deep in Anatolia surrounded by the former cave houses of early Christians, and the so-called "fairy-chimneys", towering phallic rock structures that... well, I can't really finish that sentence without it turning into the punch line of a penis-joke, now can I?

It feels flippant and even cliché to say that Cappadocia was amazing, but it's the kind of place that defies description and demands awe. I kept thinking -- with my camera pressed to my face -- that I could take thousands of pictures of the region's underground cities, iconoclastic remains and cave-side homes without ever conveying how special, how amazing the place really is.

I crawled through so many fresco covered eighth- and ninth-century churches and soot covered former kitchens, all carved into the soft rock faces of the region's strange and alien terrain. The underground city was ten stories "deep", complete with winery, stable, monastery, wells... Of course, despite the awe-factor of the place, I couldn't help but wonder who would want to live underground, where you tell day from night by peeking up a chimney that reveals a postage stamp of sky.

Turns out the Christians who lived there weren't too keen on the whole troglodyte thing either since they only took to the underground city when the Romans were in town. In fact, the passage ways in the city were [are] purposefully tricky, full of bumps and ceilings that rise and fall before you have a chance to duck. Giant mill stones, once used to close off rooms and halls from enemies, sit as a reminder that the Romans were some nasty bastards.

After four days in Cappadocia, I was ready to petition the government of Turkey to change the word's official meaning. "Cappadocia" is an ancient Persian word which means land of beautiful horses. I think the word should translate as, "Life for early Christians was hard."

Back to my cough: after five days in Cappadocia, I was sick. Things stayed under control until the Ankara bus station where I stumbled into a bathroom and joined the line for the Western toilet. Turns out all I needed was a place to throw up, in which case a squatter seemed fine. My advice is to reject this thought if it ever occurs to you. The custodian assigned to the bathroom began yelling at me in rapid Turkish which only became more strident when I began using the sink to wash the vomit off my shoe. I'm not sure what she expected me to do. It was very hard to remain polite.

Somehow, I found my bus again and managed nine more hours on the road without incident. When I finally arrived home -- I left for Istanbul at 8:30am and arrived at 9:00pm -- I literally fell into bed and stayed there for a week. My neighbors, who are also my co-workers, rallied to my aid, but it was nevertheless a truly horrid week.

So, hence the lack of posts lately, and hence the cough.

(Note: More pictures soon. The wireless I am borrowing from my neighbors is painfully slow tonight.)

Two weeks in review

Since my arrival in Istanbul two weeks ago, I've moved three times. While I appreciate the convenience of rolling suitcases, I'm happy that my days as a wanderer (Anatolian nomad?) are over. I'm finally settled in at the consulate apartments in Etiler, the same neighborhood I lived last summer.

When I tell people you could fit my Austin apartment in the kitchen of this unit, I'm only exaggerating a little. I once read that Hitler's office in the Fuhrerbau was so big that it took five minutes for a person to walk from the door to his desk. Hitler's office and my living room have this in common -- the room is big enough to roller skate in. Since I left my roller skates at home, I'm thinking it's a perfect place for a dance party. There are five more rooms, three baths and two patios that face the Bosporus. The family who lived here was recently transferred to a different post, which means I get to squat in this enormous unit until the next family arrives (conveniently several days after my departure for the states).

View from my kitchen porch. Appreciate your tax dollars at work -- the USG pays over $100,000 a year to rent a single unit at this property.

Before dragging my belongings to my current manse, I stayed a week with the brother ["The Engineer"] of a Turkish friend I met in Austin. The Engineer has a small apartment in Şişli and was kind enough to provide me with a place to sleep until the consulate found me earth-quake safe housing. He's also a great host -- last Saturday we spent a lovely day walking around Ortaköy and Üsküdar before eating an amazing meal on the Bosporus. I had never eaten in a restaurant so nice that even the lemons got dressed up.

Mr. and Mrs. Lemon, the wedding

The dramatic Ortaköy mosque

Yeni Valide Mosque (1710), Üsküdar

Yesterday, the Engineer took me to Kelios, a town on the Black Sea (unfortunately, there are no pictures from yesterday owing to the abundance of camera destroying elements at the beach). Some of you may remember my unfortunate experiences with sand-less Turkish beaches, but yesterday was perfect. The Black Sea is clear and cold. The sand it orangey-brown, littered with rocks and shells. Ships waiting to pass through the Bosporus -- almost 30 of them -- filled the horizon. And the food was amazing: an open buffet composed almost entirely of my favorite Turkish foods. We left the beach in the early evening and wandered through Yeniköy, a Bosporus side neighborhood. The day ended on the Marmara Sea in Kadaköy. For the record, that's every body of water in the Istanbul area.

Cruising

I can still taste the salt from the Black Sea on my lips. The blotchy burn across my stomach is a further memento from today's cruise on the Bosporus and Black sea. I spent the better part of the afternoon and evening lying on the roof of our small, 15-passenger boat soaking in the Mediterranean sunshine and reapplying sun protection.

Friend snapped this while I was busy getting sun burned.

This is the kind of water in which we cruised... amazing, no?

Our first stop was a Byzantine-Ottoman fortification somewhat imprecisely named the "Geonose Castle". Before the Byzantines set up there, the Greeks called the area Hieron ("sacred"); archaeological remains evidence the earlier presence of a temple to Zeus. When Constantinople fell in 1453, the Ottomans drove out the castle's Genoese occupiers (who had taken the castle from the Ottomans in 1414). This was largely due to the castle's strategic significance: Byzantine castles were usually built in pairs, one on each side of the Bosporus. During sieges, the castles could suspend chains across the water (from one fortification to the other), thereby completely controlling all sea traffic. Interestingly, the castle is considered the architectural and strategic equivalent of Chateau-Gaillard, one of Richard the Lionhearted's castles on the Sienne River. We hiked 25-minutes uphill to reach the castle, but the view from the top was ample reward.

The Geonose Castle

Between the castle and lunch some members of our group attempted to swim the Bosporus. This was never something I considered doing. The currents in the Bosporus are strong and run in multiple directions. Couple a strenuous 30 minute swim with choppy water and the threat of being run over by a 20-story high oil tanker and you can imagine why I opted to continue lying on top of the boat.

I know you want to see the boat Dad... the other half of our group was on this vessel, but ours was the same (only it was green). I spent the day lying in the shadow of the Turkish flag...

Our second stop was lunch. What had been billed on our agenda as a "simple fish lunch" was in fact a feast of meze, salad, various fried things, fish that had been pulled from the water only hours before our arrival and plates of fruit. Drinks were also included and the dry white Turkish wine I drank was surprisingly good. The restaurant was on the water and looked like the casual sort of restaurant you find on most beaches. We sat for three hours, feeling more and more like we were really -- finally -- on the Mediterranean.


Swimming in the Bosporus intensified the feeling. The water was cool, but not cold and very, very salty. I know this because I swallowed quite a bit of it in the course of trying to keep my head above the choppy water. I was surprised at how much energy just keeping myself afloat took. The currents were strong; by the time I pulled myself onto the boat after 25 minutes of treading water and small bouts of swimming my arms shook with fatigue.

I returned to the top of the boat, covered in salt. Sun, the ocean, diet coke, hours spent lying around half-naked -- to be honest, I can't think of any way the day could have been improved. The world is so blue on the Bosporus, slower too I think. Perhaps all of that is cliche... but there was something about the beauty of the water and the sun atop that small boat that made me think Istanbul and I are really starting to get to know one another.

Adventures in Asia, Part II

Sunset, taken from Kadaköy facing the European side.

I rode a city bus for 45 minutes in Friday afternoon traffic for baklava today. The city's finest mind you -- you won't find me sweating on a fetid, loaded bus for just any baklava. There's a bakery across the street from Superdorm after all. This baklava was special though. Aside from the sheer variety of baklava-esque desserts available, this bakery also sells various toppings, just in case there aren't enough calories on your plate already. I have never seen cream quite like this: solid, white globs the size of golf balls. Despite my naïveté in this area of dairy products I had a pretty good idea what the cream would do to my stomach and was therefore unwilling to do more than admire it.

Desert was followed by another ferry ride to the Asian side of the city. I really love the ferry -- I consider it more as a cruise across the Bosporus than a necessary evil of travel (such as the bus).

Man selling kitchen knives on the ferry... "you can buy two packs of cigarettes of 10 knives and a knife bloc". He sold all of his sets before we landed.

Kadaköy train station, taken from the ferry.

Ilyana, Kari and me returning from our Asian adventure.

The ferry landed in Kadaköy, another one of Istanbul's many "villages". Kadaköy is known for it's Tuesday/Friday market and is generally considered a hip place to wander around. It also has a great restaurant district -- tonight's traditional Anatolian fare was the Turkish equivalent of comfort food. It's typical for restaurants to welcome new customers with free food. Tonight that translated into a place of "meat stewed with oats" (think chicken and dumplings only more oatmealy), desert (sweetened bulgar wheat and a firm cinnamon-vanilla custard) and tea. The wait staff was in such a state of disbelief that we spoke Turkish that all of the restaurant waiters stopped by, just to see the foreign, Turkish-speaking women for themselves.

Dinner and a show.

Two Continents

I am brushing grime from two continents out of my hair. This evening dined on the Asian side of the city but before crossing the Bosporus I visited one of Istanbul's many immigrant neighborhoods.

Judging by the signs, faces and items available at the local bazaar (Thursday is this neighborhood's market day) most of these immigrants are originally from Greece, Russia, Southern and Eastern Europe and various parts of Africa. The abundance of locally grown fruits and vegetables was stunning. I have been to my fair share of Istanbul bazaars but nothing quite like this. There was the typical market swag -- plastic shoes, plastic hair bobs, plastic jewelry -- but there were also seemingly endless piles of fruits and vegetables, handmade pasta, tubs of fresh cheese and piles of eggs, row after row after row.

Everything about the neighborhood and its inhabitants felt so genuine... genuinely Turkish, genuinely local, genuinely "day-to-day". Our dorm is in a neighborhood that might as well be called Little America -- it's a beautiful, complete with a Porsche dealership, Starbucks and TGIFridays. In other words, it's an incredibly wealthy area, hardly representative of the lives of most people in the city. Most people I think live in the slightly or very dirty districts, hanging their laundry out the window to dry and buying tomatoes from their local tomato guy.

If Istanbul is anything, it is a city of often seemingly irreconcilable contrasts: movie stars and immigrants, Porches and handcarts, hi jabs and miniskirts. Turks talk about the "pulse" of the city. I'm beginning to think this rhythm is the sound of these various parts, somehow managing to co-exist in their shared, yet very different, worlds.

You say you want a revolution...

For about a week my mental dialogue has been running in Turkish and I fear it has had a deleterious effect on my English. Among these new linguistic idiosyncrasies is a tendency to speak in a strange combination of languages and start all emails and blog entries in Turkish. For your sake, I backspace and start over.

Virginia is still in the hospital. After ruling out meningitis (which, by the way, required a lumbar puncture) the doctor concluded salmonella poisoning before changing his mind again. The source of her infection remains a mystery and perhaps is less important now that she is getting better. In Turkish we say "Inshaallah" when we hope something will happen. Therefore, inshaallah, she will be home tomorrow.

Combine the stress of Virginia's condition with Thursday's looming mid-term exam and you begin to understand what kind of a week it is. After the exam, I intend to resume my adventures in Istanbul, and, perhaps more exciting, begin new adventures in Ankara. Virginia and I both have bus tickets to the capital city. Assuming she is well enough to travel, we will be on a bus headed six hours east after our exam this Thursday. Many students are heading for resorts over our three-day weekend.... but it's election season and Ankara is the place to be to see the real madness unfold. After all, the possibility of a coup-d'etat doesn't happen here as often here as it used to.