Miniaturk

Miniaturk is Istanbul's newest theme park. Out in the middle of nowhere, this place is basically a tour of Turkey's greatest landmarks...in 1:25 scale. When I first heard about Miniaturk, the name alone made me want to visit, and when I found out that the Lonely Planet guide despises the place for being too cheesy, I was totally sold. There was no way I could be disappointed. I brought along my friend Maggie, who was making a pit-stop in Istanbul on her way back to Tajikistan.

Miniaturk had everything, from a miniature Trojan Horse, to a human-sized chess board for the kiddies. One of the cool features was that you could select your preferred language when you buy your ticket, which has a barcode on it. In front of every display, there is a small scanner that reads your ticket, and automatically a small description about the monument in your

 selected language begins to play. Unfortunately, since Maggie and I were posing, quite unconvincingly, as Turkish university students for the student discount, we were automatically given Turkish-language tickets. But, hey, it was good for me to practice. If anything, Miniaturk made me realize just how much there is to see in Turkey outside of Istanbul that I haven't been to yet. I was especially intrigued by the beautiful Seljuk (Islamic dysnasty in Turkey before Ottomans) architecture eastern Turkey has to offer. Miniaturk even has models of things no longer in existence, like the Temple of Artemis and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. I was especially amused to spot Michelangelo's David as one of the statues in the pediment of the Temple of Artemis, probably a historical inaccuracy.

No miniature model park of Turkey's greatest hits would be complete without a huge soccer stadium! Maggie kindly posed in front of the massive Ataturk Stadium. Quite ingeniously, the owners of the park set up three coin machines, each labeled with the shield of one of the three famous football team in Istanbul: Galata Saray, Besiktas, and Fenerbahce. If you put a 1 lira coin into the machine of your choice, your team's fight song would begin to be pumped through these massive speakers. Needless to say, the lines were long, and fierce, and we were serenaded by rotating football cheers during the entire extent of our visit. 

In the end, I would recommend Miniaturk for anyone visiting Istanbul. In fact, I was thinking of just photographing all of the models at the right angle, and just posting the pictures to the blog every so often in lieu of actually leaving town. It works in the movies, right? Maggie was so inspired she has already begun her plans to introduce this model theme park to Tajikistan, dubbed MiniaTaj. We wish her the best in that endeavor.