The Orientalism Express

Emily's Kitchen: Eggplant Dolmas with Tomato Sauce and Yogurt

2010-01-04T00:28:00.002-05:00

You can stuff just about anything. I have already learned to stuff philo dough, grape leaves, and cabbage. This time, Jon and I would try our hand at stuffing eggplant. We cut them in half, coring out the center. Then we mixed the pulp from the eggplant with a mixture of rice, ground lamb, onion, and spices. Then we simmered these bad boys for a long time in a pot. We served them up with tomato sauce and plain yogurt. They weren't too bad, although a bit bland in flavor. I have baked stuffed eggplant halves state-side, and I remember them being punchier in the flavor department. But still, not a wholly unsuccessful enterprise.

South East Trip, Part 3: Gaziantep

2009-12-30T00:20:00.011-05:00

Our next stop on our journey in the South East, after Antakya, was Gaziantep. It used to just be known as Antep, and many Turks still call it by that name. "Gazi" is an honorific title for a distinguished war veteran, and the Turkish government bestowed the city with this special name for the citizens' bravery during the Revolution.

Antep was one of our favorite cities. It is very green, full of trees and parks. The food was also great, and there were lots of nice people. One of the cities main attractions is the mosaic museum. I am prepared to say that it is one of the best museums in Turkey. Period. And they are already planning a new building and visitor center. The mosaics were rescued from the nearby ancient site of Zeugma. The fate of this ancient site along the Euphrates (right: mosaic from Zeugma featuring the Euphrates personified) has been intricately woven with the modern infrastructure program in South East Turkey, the GAP project. GAP is a multi-sector integrated development project designed to bring sustainable living to the 9 million people in South Eastern Turkey. At its most basic level, GAP is an incredible effort by the Turkish government to raise the standard of living for the populations in the South East region, eliminating regional disparities and hopefully even quelling the Kurdish resistance movement (PKK) in the process. If people aren't poor, they aren't as inclined to terrorism, or so the logic goes.

GAP has been very controversial, especially the proposed construction of 22 hydroelectric dams. Iran and Syria have expressed concern that Turkey is hogging a vital natural resource commonly shared by all three countries. Relevant to us, many of these dams threaten important ancient sites, immersing them under water. When the Birecik dam was completed in 2000, the rising waters endangered the ancient site of Zeugma, which is so rich in archaeological material it has been called the "Second Pompeii." That same year a hasty and extensive rescue operation commenced to save as many important mosaics as possible from the floors of ancient Roman villas, soon to be claimed by the waters of the Euphrates. These mosaics were brought to Antep, and we had the fortune to see one of the most impressive collections of ancient floor mosaics in the world.

Some mosaics were propped vertically like paintings in an art gallery for better viewing, but all of these mosaics were originally intended to be on the floor. This incredible mosaic has been exhibited as it was found on site. The subject is a lesser known story from the Trojan War. Odysseus was charged with rounding up all of the great Greek warriors, but none of them wanted to go so they all tried to squirm out of their responsibility. Of course, no draft-dodging trickery would dupe the clever Odysseus. In this scene, Achilles has gone into hiding dressed as a woman. In order to out Achilles, Odysseus has laid out on a table a bunch of weapons. The ladies of the villa gather in the room, and Odysseus feigns some kind of enemy threat. He concludes that the butch girl who immediately grabbed the shield and sword had to be Achilles. This mosaic has Odysseus on the left, with the rather foxy-looking Achilles to right of center, brandishing a shield and lots of leg.

This is a really lovely abstract design. It is difficult to tell from the photo, but it is huge, approximately seven feet to a side.

By far the most famous mosaic in the museum is the enchanting "Gypsy Girl." Her eyes have become an informal symbol of Antep itself, and she is often featured on promotional posters for Turkey. When we were at the museum we began to be shooed out by the guards because they were closing up for lunch. As I was walking into the entrance foyer it occurred to me that I had not had a chance to see this mosaic. I yelped and without any explanation I bolted away from Di and Wu, screaming something like, "I'll die first!" I ran down the corridors, in the opposite direction of all of the tourists rushing out of the museum. I suppose one of the guards appreciated my enthusiasm for mosaics because he laughed and quickly ushered me into the room the mosaic was kept. He flipped on the lights, which had already been turned off for the museum's closing. I snapped this photo in a few seconds and I went to go find Di and Wu at the museum entrance.

Antep is world-famous for its pistachios. Here Wu is enjoying what is probably the yummiest pistachio gelato in the world.

Antep also features a pretty impressive fortress. Inside had just been refurbished with what turned out to be a propaganda museum detailing the atrocities of the Armenians. Hmmm

Aphrodisias

2009-12-29T23:12:00.015-05:00

During our trip to Pamukkale, Ceylan, Cat, and I also took a side trip to Aphrodisias, which is one of the best-preserved ancient sites in Turkey. I will mostly let the photos speak for themselves. Quite a few of these photos were taken by Cat, who always does a great job documenting they journey!

For reasons still unexplained, the five-minute walk between the parking lot and the site is serviced by a tram pulled by a tractor.

The statue didn't have a head, so I provided one.

Frolicking.

Remarkably well-preserved stadium.

We tried to recreate a gladiator scene, with varying success. Ceylan is delivering the death blow with her sword (stick she found on the ground). Blood is pouring from my chest wound (pink scarf I was wearing).

There is a very similar photo of me doing the same thing in front of the pyramids. I am beginning to notice a trend.

Cat was inspired to shoot through an ancient clay water pipe. It made a nice frame.

Ancient graffiti. I guess someone was bored at the theater.

I am fairly confident that this is a representation of a Roman emperor subduing Persia, personified as a half-naked chick. Well-played, emperor, well-played.

South East Trip, Part 2: Di's First Turkish Coffee

2009-12-28T02:13:00.005-05:00

A woman's first Turkish coffee is a very important experience. Di's sacred rite of passage occurred in Antakya, and I happened to record the incident in photographs. Let's see what happened:

Di starts off optimistic. Turkish coffee is one of the most famous parts of Turkish hospitality, and no meal is complete without one.

First sip.....

That's about everyone's first reaction. The coffee is bitter, even if half the cup is filled with sugar. Don't worry Di, it grows on you, we promise!

50 Cent Concert

2009-07-13T18:05:00.002-04:00

Istanbul is apparently one of the must-do cities when a music mega-star is doing a world tour. I lived next to the Turkcell Arena, a huge open-air stage set-up right on the Bosphoros. This last summer a lot of really great music acts passed through Istanbul: the Rock n Coke tour, REM, Moby. When my friend Rebecca told me 50 Cent was coming to town, I knew exactly where I was going to be that night. For those of you who don't know, 50 Cent is a super-commercialized Hip-Hop super-star, known for such classic hits like "In Da Club," "Psycho," and "Baby By Me." He was out on tour promoting his new album. Rebecca and I were really excited. It was pretty amusing to see the majority of Turkish people there who clearly knew very little about 50 Cent or what he sings about. With lyrics like "I love you like a fat kid love cake," the less they understand is probably for the best. Of all the things I thought I would do in Istanbul, going to a 50 Cent concert on the Bosphoros was not one of them. But I am glad it was!

South East Trip, Part 1: Antakya

2009-07-09T16:20:00.018-04:00

My friends from college, Wu and Di, were awesome enough to come and visit me for two whole weeks!!! We had a good time in Istanbul, but Wu and Di also wanted to get outside of the city and take a longer trip. With questionable judgment they left the choice of our destination completely in my hands. I decided that we would visit one of the last regions in Turkey that I have not explored--the South East.

The South East of Turkey is a fascinating place. It has certainly been the site of much controversy; sharing the border with Syria, Iraq, and Iran, this region has been known to be a hotbed of the Kurdish resistance movement, the PKK. Over the past years, however, the situation has been getting better and the region is certainly opening up to tourism, like the rest of the country. Geographically at the crossroads between Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, South East Turkey also has much to offer. Some of Turkey's most breathtaking landscapes are located there, as well as some of the most important historical sites. And since this region is only starting to open up, traveling in the South East still has the charm of the road less traveled. We were perfectly safe, and had a wonderful time. This was definitely one of my favorite trips in Turkey!

Our first day we got on a plane in Istanbul and flew very early to a town called Adana. From there we got a dolmus to our first real stop on our journey, Antakya.

Antakya is situated on the Mediterranean coast, extremely close to the Syrian border. The city is probably better known by its ancient name, Antioch. The city has significance for early Christianity; this was the first place in which the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. It was also a significant center in the Byzantine empire.

Because Antakya is so close to the Syrian border, there are many Arab influences. This can be seen readily in the local cuisine, like the offerings of hummus and falafel. On our first day we had some of the best hummus I have ever had in my life. It was very fresh and had a rich, nutty flavor. The plate was served with a giant resevoir of olive oil in the middle, with plenty of hot flatbread right out of the oven!

Antakya has significantly expanded, especially in the 80s and 90s. But the old city still manages to maintain its character. During our stay in Antakya we explored some of the twisted roads with traditional Ottoman houses.

Antakya has a diverse religious landscape. We caught up with one of the thriving Christian communities, which runs a Catholic guest house and church. When Di told them she was Catholic too, we got serious cool points.

One of Antakya's most significant historical sites is the Church of St. Peter, which is one of the oldest churches in Christianity. The church has been cut out of the rock of Mount Starius, which overlooks the old city. We tromped up there to see what it was all about. Unfortunately, we got there too early, and the church was not open yet. So we decided to explore the surrounding environs of the mountain. We discovered all over the mountain remains of old dwellings, churches, and tombs, all cut into the rock. We had great fun climbing all over them.

This is me the archaeologist. Notice my Indiana Jones hat, which makes everything I say about antiquity instantly true. Here you can see a view from the mountain to the city of Antakya below. You can also see me in the middle of explaining to Wu and Di the difference between carved stone, and regular stone. My foot is indicating the rectangular block that was probably the lower jamb of an entranceway. When I am trying to make a point I often like to demonstrate what I am talking about by stepping on it. That is just good archaeology.

The Church of St. Peter is still a site of Christian pilgrimage. According to Acts, it is the place where Peter first preached the Gospel in Antioch. In a small corner of the rock church is a small spring of water, which supposedly has healing properties for true believers. Wu was complaining of a headache, so I thought I would give it a shot.

In the Church of St. Peter is also supposedly a tunnel that early Christians used to escape in times of trouble. Our tour guide told us that it "went all the way to Syria." Here Di is at the entrance of this tunnel, already trying to escape from what is proving to be not the vacation she signed up for.

The last place we went to Antakya is its archaeological museum. Apparently it has some of the nicest Roman mosaics in the world, but we wouldn't know because those galleries were closed for renovation. At least they let us look at the stuff in the courtyard. Di is making best of the situation, while I pout in the background.

Pammukale and Hierapolis

2009-07-07T15:59:00.014-04:00

After the Fulbright end of the year "evaluation" meeting, Cat, Ceylan and I headed off for an adventure in Pamukkale, which is in the south east region of Turkey, very close to Izmir on the Aegean coast.

Pamukkale literally means "Cotton Castle" in Turkish. It is a natural site where hot springs rich in minerals leaves behind pristine-white travertines. We also visited the ancient city of Hierapolis, which was built at the summit of the cloud-shaped travertines. It seems that even the Romans were interested in the medicinal properties of the hot springs. The ruins include a huge bathing complex. Also, Hierapolis is one of the Roman cities mentioned by name in the Bible, so it is also a stop on Bible tour groups, which are becoming more and more popular. We ran into a group of Evangelicals from New Zealand, of all places. They were really nice! Enjoy the photos:

This is me posed in front of the travertines. Sadly they are not what they used to be. Tourism pushed the site to the brink of destruction. In the 50s hotels were built on the top of the hill, choking the source of the springs, and motor bikes were allowed to go up and down the slopes. People tromping up and down the shallow pools in their shoes also wore away the calcium deposits. When Pamukkale was declared a World Heritage site, the hotels were demolished and wearing shoes on the white travertines became forbidden. The new administration also restricts access to certain parts of the site to give the travertines time to build up their deposits once more. When we were there it looked like the site was on the road to recovery, but it still has a long way to go.

This is one of the channels of water from the hot springs. The mineral-rich water has created this moon-like landscape over thousands of years. The minerals in the water makes your feel kind of slimy, but apparently it is good for you!

A view of the terraced pools of water, with the ancient ruins at the top of the hill. This area was closed off to tourists to let the limestone reestablish itself.

These are the ruined ancient baths, fed by the hot springs. Today it is a tourist attraction and you can still swim in the pools.

Near the ancient theater at Hierapolis are the marble blocks that once dedicated the interior and the exterior. Here Cat, Ceylan and I decided to try our hand at imitating the theater masks!

This was last spring, and that time of year the ruins were covered with red poppies. Cat took some really lovely pictures of the flowers with the ruins in the background. Here you can see the arches of the ancient theater.

Ceylan and I take a break inside the theater, just like spectators did 2000 years ago.

Happy Fourth, Ya'll

2009-07-06T19:15:00.015-04:00

My friend Rebecca and I decided to celebrate the Fourth of July by going to the Koc Museum along the Bosphorous. There is a general rule in Turkey that if you are massively rich, you must collect a large amount of objects and then put them on display in your family's old summer house. Or, in Rahmi Koc's case, an old warehouse and dockyard. Well, I guess there is always an exception to a rule. I was expecting an art museum, like those at the Sabanci and Kadir Has Universities. Apparently, Rahmi Koc, easily one of the richest men in the world, is obsessed with all things mechanical. So his museum is dedicated to science and industry. Rebecca and I found warehouses of cars, planes, trains...even a US submarine! It was a great way to celebrate America's independence. Check out what we found:

This is a display titled, "The World of iPod." It was obviously nothing less than a shameless product placement, sponsored by Apple. Here at the museum we have a display case cataloguing every single iteration of iPod ever, even from way back in the beginning in the year 2oo2! I don't think people were even alive back then! We were lucky to see such priceless artifacts. And, for the record, I own that little iPod shuffle in the third row.

Similar to the iPod display, this was Microsoft's timeline of the computer, which is a little more legitimate, I guess. I had to take a picture with the monitor-plus-keyboard deal because I am almost positive my dad has one in our house. I used to play Frogger and Wheel of Fortune on it. Good times!

This was legitimately exciting, a Ford Model T. I mean, how often is that you see one of these things? The reason the Koc Museum was perfect for the 4th of July is because the US made a lot of technological innovations in the last 100 years, so Rebecca and I were constantly being reminded how awesome America the country really is. First mass-produced automobile, BABY! I really, really wanted to turn that crank.

Apparently something else you do if you are massively rich is to take a two-year sailing trip around the world. What we weren't expecting was that after the fact there would be an entire museum exhibition of photos, maps, and, yes, lots of tchotchkes to remember the trip. It was beyond belief. There was a whole cabinet displaying all of the tacky key chains that Mr. Koc had picked up along the way. All over the exhibition were these t-shirts hanging on coat racks. To be honest, I at first thought we had entered the museum gift shop what with all the t-shirts on hangers and the crazy stuff in cases. But I quickly realized that these were Rahmi Koc's souvenir t-shirts from his trips. I could touch the clothing of this man! How great is that? I told Jon that if he ever becomes rich and famous we can put his old t-shirts in a museum too!

There was a "touch and feel" table where you could try on crazy hats and touch some old things. I had a go at the Bobby helmet. It was a little too big for my head though!

There was a giant plane on huge black pillars, positioned as if it were taking off. They had the stairs coming down to get in and out of the plane, and Rebecca thought this would be a good photo opportunity to play some important politician/celebrity who is always mobbed the minute they get off the plane. Here I am waving to all of my adoring fans.

If this isn't American, I don't know what is. This is a WWII bomber plane that went down during the war in the ocean off the shore of Antalya, which is on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. Seven of the 10 soldiers survived to tell the tale. In 1995 the last surviving crew member helped in an effort to locate and retrieve the submersed plane. They did, and it was subsequently brought to the Koc Museum. That is rock-solid America right there. Here I am, in my red, white, and blue, doing my best Rosie the Riveter pose. Happy 4th of July everyone!

LolCats: Catcrobatics

2009-07-06T05:36:00.003-04:00

Calligraphy Update

2009-07-03T18:47:00.008-04:00

On this blog, I talk a lot about my travels and adventures, but I bet you are wondering about how my Fulbright project, all things Islamic calligraphy, has been going. I am happy to say that it has come a long way. I have been meeting lots of people in the field; and I have been continuing my lessons with Savas Hocam. The lessons are going really well, except of course for the times when I am mixing my ink and things go horribly, horribly wrong (left). Before I washed my face, I had to take a picture, since it looks like some piece of modern art, or a Rorschachs test. Don't worry, the ink I use isn't poisonous...I think!

I have been trying to meet as many different calligraphers as I can. Many of them tend to reside and work on the Asian side of the Bosphorous. Last month, I met a calligrapher named Arda Cakmak (right). He was a friend of a friend. I wanted to meet him because I heard he was a very young hattat who was also skilled in illumination. He turned out to be a very intelligent, and nice man, with a very impressive library. We had a good laugh over a language misunderstanding. Arda Hoca was showing me a book of miniature paintings from Iran. He pointed to a beautiful painting, saying in Turkish, "this is from Hungary." I was pretty skeptical, as Eastern Europe is not exactly known for their fine tradition of Islamic miniature painting, but I figured I misunderstood him and I nodded enthusiastically, "OH! Is that so?" I then asked him of many miniature painters come out of Eastern Europe. He looked confused and said no, then thought for a minute. "Wait, where is Hungary? Isn't it in Asia?" Then he realized he had accidentally been saying Hungary when he meant to say India, which, to be fair, are very similar words in Turkish. When we figured out the mix-up we had a good laugh and made a few jokes, saying that we should make a trip to Hungary to see all of their exquisite examples of illustrated Shahnames.

As for the academic side of things, I was given the opportunity to participate in a speaking program organized by the State Department. This program, run in Turkey by the US embassy in Ankara, works with several universities in Turkey to bring American speakers to give lectures on a variety of topics. The Fulbrighters are already living in Turkey, so it only made sense for the embassy to extend this opportunity to us as well. I gave two lectures, the first at Ataturk University in Erzurum, out in the north east. The second lecture was at Erciyes University in Kayseri. I felt pretty special, having my own lecture series. I made sure to save a couple copies of the promotional posters! (left) The first talk was well-attended, but I was frustrated with how they provided Turkish translation. We did what is usually referred to as simultaneous translation, whereby the speaker says a few sentences of the talk, stops, and waits while the translator interprets whatever the lecturer said to the audience. I understand that with limited funding this is really the best way to handle a language gap, but I really disliked the stop-and-start feel to the lecture; the translation broke up the flow and I think made it pretty painful to watch. This method also doubles the length of one's lecture, and because I was not informed until 30 minutes before the beginning of my talk that this would be the case, I had to quickly cut entire sections from the talk so that it could still clock in at about an hour, which is the maximum amount of time I believe anyone should be forced to sit into a chair and listen to someone else talk. In between my lectures, I pondered over the best way to solve this problem. I resolved that there was really only one solution-I would have to deliver the lecture in Turkish. The thought was daunting at first; but I took courage in the fact that one of my best language skills is reading aloud from a cold text without making too many pronunciation errors. So, in theory, if I could just get a good translation of the text, I should be fine. At first, the embassy was reluctant to let me do this, pointing out that many of the university students will be attending the lecture to listen to a native-speaker of English. My contact at Erciyes University, however, rallied to my cause and sent to me the translation of my lecture, which she would have done anyway in preparation for the Turkish translation during my lecture. It was a bit of a close call; I only received the final version the morning of the talk, but it worked out.

I apparently had not exactly communicated what I had in mind to the university contact, because when I showed up to the lecture hall with the Turkish translation marked up in pencil with my additional edits, she looked a little confused. "Oh, do you intend to do the entire talk in Turkish? Because I thought you would just do two or three pages and then switch to English." That was not what I intended at all but I just promised her that I would go until I was tired, and asked her to look over my corrections, just in case. I began my talk, eyes glued to my paper, not daring to look up to see the reactions in people's faces. I actually had hit a good stride until about four pages into the talk, when a female student way in the back raised her hand to interrupt me. I asked her if she had a question. She told me that she was from the English language department, and that I was welcome to the university, but she just wanted to ask if I could switch to English, because she and her friends came hoping to hear a lecture in English. My heart sank; I was really scared that she was going to ask me to switch to English because she could not understand me speaking in Turkish, but this was exactly what the people at the embassy had warned me about. But I took heart in the fact that, save for the small delegation from the English department in the very back of the salon, every other student and teacher did not speak English, and obviously enjoyed and appreciated what I was attempting to do. I think there is always an element of people liking to watch foreigners speak in a tongue they don't normally learn, a dog-and-pony-show effect if you will. But I also saw that the rest of the audience understood my lecturing in Turkish as an act of good will, which is how I honestly hoped it would be interpreted. I wanted to keep going in Turkish, but I deferred to my colleague at the university, who was hosting the talk and therefore was in charge. To my delight, she supported me, and explained to the female student in the back that I was a guest and that I specifically had stipulated that I wanted to do as much of the lecture as possible in Turkish, and that I would switch to English for the Question and Answer period. After that, there was really nothing the girl to do, so she just folded her arms and settled back into her chair. I kept on going. As I said, I never looked up to see the audience's reactions, but I could hear their murmurs of delighted surprise when I hit a stride of competent Turkish and their soft words of encouragement as I struggled through the hard words (some words in Turkish, because of grammatical endings, can easily be ten letters long). One may not realize it, but reading aloud approximately 15 pages of text in a language of which you are barely at the intermediate level in front of a live audience is incredibly exhausting. At around page 14, I got very tired and was ready to give up. But, I figured, hell, it is only 2 more pages, so I just pushed through the last part. I suppose it was all those years of disciplined crew training helping me out. When I was finished, I felt the satisfaction of a job well done wash over me. As I settled back to answer questions from the audience, I became aware of the adrenalin that had been pumping through my body. I was very proud of myself, and it was definitely one of my most memorable experiences here in Turkey.

My lessons with Savas Hocam have easily been the most rewarding part of my whole year. I genuinely look forward to visiting his studio every week, where we eat, drink tea, chat, sometimes play with toy helicopters, and then finally get around to looking at the lesson I have prepared for the week, which usually only takes about 20 minutes. Savas says that my lessons are progressing very well and that he is pleased with what I have learned this year. When we first began, I made it clear that I was only going through this process as a researcher, to get a more practical understanding of my topic, but that in the end it was never my intention to train and become a master calligrapher. I don't think Savas ever really believed any of that right from the beginning, but he was kind enough to not contradict me. Over the year, I can say that I have started to enjoy writing calligraphy for its own sake, and not as a means to enhance my research. I finally got up the courage to ask Savas if I could continue my lessons after I leave Turkey and move back to the US. He said yes, and we plan to keep up the apprenticeship via technology. Thankfully, unlike many other hattat, Savas is pretty good with a computer. We have arranged that I will do my lesson, scan it, e-mail the image to Savas in Turkey, where he will print it out, correct it in a different ink, scan the final result, and e-mail it back to me with his comments. In preparation to go, I will have to learn how to cut my own pens and make my own ink, since I will be on my own in the US. It is Savas's prediction that my training in the rik'a script will probably continue for another 5 or 6 months, and then I will be able to move on to a more artistic script of my choice. I will also probably need to return to Istanbul for some face-to-face work during Christmas or Spring Break. As I am now in the last few weeks before I go home to the US, I am comforted by the idea that I will hopefully see Istanbul again, sooner that I had imagined.

Kayseri

2009-06-28T19:06:00.015-04:00

After Lindsay and I went to Cappadocia, we took a one-hour bus ride to Kayseri, where I was to deliver a lecture at Erciyes University. Kayseri is one of the largest cities in Turkey, and its main industries are business and textiles. The tourists coming through the city are usually only making their way to and from Cappadocia. This bustling Turkish metropolis with a lack of foreigners and tourism (very unlike Istanbul or Ankara) made Kayseri one of the more interesting cities I have visited here in Turkey. Lindsay and I met a whole host of people, from the director of a local historic sight, to an imam who spent half an hour trying to bring me to Islam. Say whatever you want about Kayseri, but it does have character. Shout out to my friend Matt, the newest Fulbrighter from BC who will be teaching at Erciyes University in Kayseri next year!! I think he will have a great time.

I came to Kayseri to give a lecture, and just dragged Lindsay along with me, but I was also excited to visit because Kayseri has several fine monuments from the 13th and 14th centuries. Kayseri is situated in central Anatolia, prime Seljuk territory. Check out this huge tomb (right) that was built for a female member of the Seljuk royal family. It had amazing carving, and looked splendid lit up at night. This picture has a funny angle and framing because I had to hang through a small window in a stone wall to get it.

As I may have mentioned, I seem to have unintentionally discovered every Seljuk and Ottoman mental hospital in all of Turkey. Just my luck, I stumbled across yet another one in Kayseri, the Gevher Nesibe Hastanesi. Before my lecture, Lindsay and I headed out from our hotel near the city center to find this old medical school. I was interested in it because it was built in honor of the sultan's sister, who died from tuberculosis, brought on from grief for her dead boyfriend whom her cruel sultan brother sent on numerous dangerous campaigns to get him out of the way (so much drama!). Apparently, the sultan was overcome with remorse and asked his sister on her deathbed what he could do to make up for being kind of a jerk. She asked him to build a medical hospital and school. Thus he did, and our hospital was finished in 1210 CE.

When Lindsay and I arrived at the complex, I was crushed to discover it was closed for extensive renovation. I clung to the massive door, trying to at least have a glimpse of the hospital's inner courtyard. I suppose I looked pretty pathetic because a construction worker walking past noticed us and asked if I were Turkish. I thought this a strange question, because there is nothing Turkish about my appearance whatsoever, but I took the opportunity to tell this man that I was a researcher from America and I had come all this way to see the hospital. The worker was really excited that I was a foreigner, he shared with me that he was also a "yabanci" in Turkey; apparently he was from Macedonia. He looked around stealthily and asked if we wanted to have a look around inside for just 5 minutes. I instantly agreed and he led us through the door, Lindsay being a little confused, as I had just announced the hospital was closed a minute ago. I thought we would just have a look around on our own, but suddenly an older gentleman in a nice suit materializes out of nowhere. He informs us he is the director of the museum and that he would like to show us around. I look at Lindsay, she shrugs, and we commence on what turned out to be a very informative 30-minute tour of the complex. I tried to translate everything that he was saying for Lindsay. It was really wonderful being welcomed this way; Lindsay and I felt like such VIP! In fact, at one point, another group of tourists, seeing Lindsay and I wandering around inside from the door, walked in to have a look as well. The director stopped mid-sentence, whirled around, and shooed them away, repeating again and again "We are closed!" Nice to be the exception to the rule, I suppose. The director showed us around both the hospital as well as the medical school. The hospital, which included a very creepy corridor of cells for mental patients (above, right), had a lot of facilities for homeopathic treatment. That creepy corridor? Well, it's cells have a medieval version of "speakers" in the four corners of the room, piping in soothing music that was played in the hospital's courtyard. I was also impressed that the medical school was linked to the hospital by a corridor, so that the students could practice what they learned in the classroom on real patients. That is pretty much how medical students are being trained today. Not too bad for 1210.

Lindsay and I stayed in a hotel that was specifically for teachers and students. There was a small student art exhibition going on in the lobby, and this is one of the pieces. I thought it was pretty interesting; it symbolizes the change in Turkish in 1928, from Arabic script to a Latin one. In the picture, Arabic letters to the left swirl around Ataturk to emerge form the other side into Roman letters...pretty great.

Just some standard hero-worship of Mimar Sinan. He da man.

Kayseri is loveliest at night. All of the monuments are lit up. I took this picture because I could capture the three essential elements of any Turkish city, from left to right: obligatory statue of Ataturk, Ottoman mosque, and clock tower. What else do you really need?

Lindsay told me that she wanted to buy a carpet before she left Turkey, so we decided to try our luck in Kayseri, since many of the rugs found in Istanbul come from Kayseri and the surrounding villages. I figured if you could tap the source you could maybe get a better deal. Our friend Seniye at the university took us to a carpet shop who had already sold some carpets to guests of the university. We haggled hard, and Lindsay's heart was set on a BEAUTIFUL Iranian rug, with a deep red color. Of course, the first price thrown out was way high (like $800), and this was pretty hard to swallow since Lindsay was only planning on spending $100-ish. We got him down to $300, and I figured we would close at $250, but he just took a look into Lindsay's face as she meekly suggested $200 and turned to his assistant, clapping his hands: "Wrap it up!" Both Seniye and I were shocked; that was a freaking steal on the rug, considering it was such high quality. Seniye asked the dealer why he gave such a low price for Linday. In Turkish, he explained that he sees a lot of people come and go in his business, and he rarely sees someone who is good-hearted and sincere. He saw it in Lindsay, and that's why he let it go. I thought it was a really good way to end our time in Kayseri. Over-all, it treated us well.

**My dear compatriot Lindsay has pointed out that I did not include the story about arriving in Kayseri. We came in on the bus late in the evening, around 11PM I think. Then we hopped onto the service bus, which is a free shuttle that takes passengers from the bus station to the city center, or wherever else they need to go. I thought that I had sufficiently communicated with the bus guys as to where we were going, but apparently not. I realized we were zipping right through the city center, where we needed to be, and we had already headed out to the university's campus before I had realized our mistake. I went up to the bus driver, and he was really annoyed but kept saying, "allright, allright" but I was not clear about what he actually planned to do. After all the people got off the shuttle, the driver parked the bus in the middle of nowhere, got up, announced he was taking a 15 minute break, and jumped off the bus, leaving us stunned in our seats. Meanwhile, Lindsay is trying not to freak out, as we are totally lost in a city we have never been to before and it is almost midnight, and I am getting frantic calls from Seniye, our contact at the university. Finally, the driver comes back out again, hops back into his seat, and commences to drive back the same way we came. After a circuitous route for picking up people going to the airport, the driver finally stops in the middle of the city center, and thrusts his arm to the right "the hotel is down that street." So, Lindsay and I emerged from the service bus, after a one-and-a-half hour trip that should have taken 15 minutes. Ecstatic to have our goal in sight, we trudged toward the hotel, until we heard shouting behind us. It was one of the young gentleman from the bus, waving around a small black object in the air. We had almost left behind our Travel Scrabble!

The Belgrade Forest

2009-06-28T16:03:00.008-04:00

Once in a while, the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) organizes lectures or trips. I wrote before about Jon and I going on a tour of the Islamic Science Museum. I decided to go on the most recent tour a few weeks ago, which was a foray into the Belgrade Forest.

The Belgrade Forest is a gigantic stretch of woods between Istanbul and the Black Sea on the European side of the Bosphorous. Apparently, it goes on for acres and acres. Today, despite the uncontrollable urban sprawl of Istanbul, large parts of the forest remain preserved. This preservation of the forest is a tradition passed down from Ottoman times, when it was imperative to maintain the forests because they contained Istanbul's main water supply.

This intricate water network that the Ottomans constructed was the topic of our tour. Our guide, a member of ARIT, did not have academic training on the subject but has been an avid nature lover for years and has spent a lot of time exploring the forest. He was a real fount of information; his passion led him to learn about forestry, mushrooming, orienteering, and hiking. The path he planned out for us took us along some of the most important dams (left) in the Ottoman's water system. I learned how engineers harnessed the fresh river water with dams and aqueducts, and piped it all down to the present-day Taksim square. I also learned how some of the greatest Ottoman architects, including Mimar Sinan, first cut their teeth on the pipes of the Belgrade Forest, only to move on to mosques commissioned by the Sultan.

To be honest, I was really interested in the water system, but I also just wanted to get out of the city for awhile and spend some time outdoors. The forest is a very popular picnic spot for Istanbullus. Getting there by public transportation, however, is almost impossible, and I knew this tour was my only chance to get there. So I really enjoyed our little history tour as an opportunity to commune with nature, if you will. I even found a really cool blue beetle! (left).

Anyway, I had a great time on my hike, and it was a nice way to kick off the summer right.

Mediterranean Trip, Part 4: Bodrum

2009-06-18T10:11:00.010-04:00

This is the last installment of my trip down to the Mediterranean with Jon, which is sad because it happened way back in April, but if you can say one thing about me I am thorough. I last left you in Fetihye, along the Mediterranean coast. We then moved on to the city of Marmaris (center of map, right), which turned out to be kind of a bust because we were planning on renting some motor-scooters and go around the peninsula, but it turns out you need a special license to operate mopeds and Jon and I couldn't do it. I was pretty upset; and Jon suggested that we just get out of Marmaris as quickly as possible and move along to our last stop in Bodrum (left part of map). Luckily, Bodrum ended up to be much more of a success. The city has two harbors, in the middle of which is a giant castle, used originally by Crusaders and later by the Ottomans.

A view of the western harbor from the castle.

A picture of me and Jon on the castle, taken by yours truly.

View of one of the castle's towers, from the bottom of some steps.

Inside the tower is the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, which is one of the most best museums in Turkey. I have always been intrigued by archaeology, and especially underwater archaeology because it is soooo hot right now! I think shipwrecks are particularly interesting because they are like little time capsules, a snapshot of the past. Some of the most important work done in the field has gone on right here in Turkey, and this museum was chock-full of exhibitions on excavations that I recognized from the pages of Smithsonian magazine or National Geographic. Naturally, I got really excited. The picture here is from a display simulating an ancient shipwreck as it would be found on the sea floor, a ship's contents deposited in the sand because the wood of the ship's hull disintegrates with time. This shipwreck is very famous; archaeologists found a wreck containing dozens of large-sized metal ingots (the rectangular things stacked to the left of the large pot) that indicated a lot about trading habits in the ancient Mediterranean world.

Jon and I did a lot of other sight-seeing in Bodrum, but mostly, it was just a nice city where we could relax. We had a delicious dinner, got some dessert, took a stroll along the marina, and...we even went to a hamam!!

I have not written much about hamams yet; I want to save that for a future post. But, basically, they are traditional Turkish bath houses. Usually, the hamam is divided into two separate parts for men and women. When I found a hamam in Bodrum that allowed co-ed bathing, I initially balked at what was sure to be a tourist trap, but my feelings were outweighed by the fact that I wanted Jon to go to have the Turkish bath experience, and I would never have sent him to the men's side alone. The hamam was run by a family; it seemed like the whole gang was chipping in to run the place, even the 7-year-old girl who handed us towels while distracted by a cartoon on the television. Jon and I changed into our bathing suits, wrapped ourselves in the towels, and were led by the mother into the hot room. There, we were given a thorough scrub-down, soaping, and massage by the owner and his older son. Because this was already an unusual situation, I insisted that the father take care of me; as a general rule I would never let a 20-year-old guy rub me down, even if my boyfriend was in the same room, actually, ESPECIALLY because my boyfriend was in the room. Of course, this did not stop the son from trying. He asked me, in Turkish, if Jon was my brother. I gave him a strange look and said he was my boyfriend. The masseuse shrugged his shoulders (like, "never hurts to ask!") and proceeded to scrub Jon down. Luckily, the father could tell I was nervous about a male masseuse (this was not his first rodeo with foreigners), and he was very professional. It was interesting watching the son scrub Jon down. I obviously have no idea what goes on on the male side of the hamam, but from what I saw that day, compared to the women's side, which is supposed to be a relaxing experience, the men's side is more like a torture chamber. The masseuse jerked Jon's head in all sorts of uncomfortable directions, twisted his arms around, and slammed his hand on Jon's back a few times, in an effort to "massage" him. To Jon's credit, he took it like a pro. As for me, even though my masseuse, the elder man, seemed to be experienced with female customers, he did some unusual things that I was not used to. When you get your hair washed in a hamam, one's head tends to disappear under a froth of bubbles. As the masseuse worked his fingers through my hair, all of a sudden I could feel his hands cover my face in suds as well. Then he, well, he stuck his finger up my nose. This came as quite a shock since I had my eyes squeezed shut from the soap, and I could not see what he was going to do. I immediately let out a shriek and moved away. He calmly grabbed my head, drew me back towards him, muttered "relax, RELAX" in English, and then continued to clean out my nose. I couldn't help thinking to myself, "it is a little hard to relax when you have a 55-year-old Turkish man sticking his finger up your nose," but I endured the experience as best I could. The masseuse clicked his tongue at me for all of the gross stuff coming out of my nostrils; like a hen clucking at one of her chicks. I need not mention that my ear canal was also subject to his wandering finger; I suppose he was concerned about waxy build-up as well. There is one thing you can say; this family's hamam offers to get you clean! Once it was all over, Jon and I wrapped ourselves in big fluffy bathrobes, and enjoyed a cold water together, sitting on the hamam's patio. We chewed on cherry-flavored taffy that the children brought out to us. Opposed to what I just told you, it was actually a really relaxing time, and I am glad Jon got to enjoy it, even if it wasn't exactly the most "authentic" hamam in Turkey.

Emily, Diana, and Wu's Kitchen: Pirzola and Tabouli

2009-06-18T10:00:00.003-04:00

When Wu and Diana visited, they mentioned to me that they were sad that there have not been too many "Emily's Kitchen" segments on the blog lately. That has been due to the whirl of guests, and not having the ambition to be adventurous in my Turkish cooking. But, since they asked, we decided to come up with something while we were in Istanbul. Wu was hankering for some tabouli, so we mixed up a batch with bulgur, parsley, tomatoes, lemon juice, olive oil, and crumbled some white cheese on top. MMM...makes great leftovers, and I have decided it could be improved by pine nuts, and being served over arugula. For the main event, we decided to make lamb chops, what the Turks call "pirzola." Ideally, pirzola should be grilled, but we just pan-cooked them. Before cooking, Kwu rubbed the chops with a mixture of honey, pomegranate extract, cumin, and garlic. She did a great job cooking them, and we each had about 5 each. Yum!!

Rumeli Hisari

2009-06-03T16:39:00.006-04:00

How many people can say that they live next to a castle? I know that in Europe, castles are no big whoop; if anything, they are suitable venues for clothing bazaars, concerts, Renaissance Fairs, or a McDonalds franchise (I have personally witnessed all of these in European castles). But for a citizen of America, where we consider something from the 1970's "vintage," living down the road from a 15th century castle is kind of a big deal. The name of this castle is Rumeli Hisari, which in Turkish literally means "Castle on the Roman (European) side (of the Bosphorous)." I guess they were not too creative with names back then. Rumeli Hisari is paired with another, smaller fortress directly across on the other shore, called Anadolu Hisari, or "Castle on the Anatolian (Asian) side (of the Bosphorous)." Rumeli Hisari was built mid-1400s by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, just a few years before Mehmet, well, conquered Constantinople. Barricaded within their seemingly impenetrable walls in the Golden Horn, which, at that time, was all that was left of an enormous empire, the Byzantines proved frustratingly difficult to snuff out. So Mehmet decided to build this castle up on the Bosphorous to cut off the supply lines from the Black Sea to the Byzantines. This castle has 3 huge towers, all named after a different vizier of Sultan Mehmet. As the story goes, Mehmet was so eager to get Rumeli Hisari built quickly that he put three of his viziers in charge of building one of the 3 towers. Just to give them incentive, the vizier who finished his tower last would be executed. As a result, the castle was completed in a record 4 months. There is also a story that Mehmet was so eager to see the completion of the castle that he supervised construction personally, and occasionally pitched in and laid some stones himself. Who knows if these stories are actually true, but I find them amusing. The same thing apparently happened when they built the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur; the contractors intentionally hired a Japanese construction team to build tower 1 and a Korean team for tower 2, counting on mutual hatred and competition between the two nationalities to get the towers built as soon as possible. After the fall of Constantinople, the castles on either side of the Bosphorous became giant toll booths to collect taxes from merchant ships passing through the strait. After that, there was apparently a squatter village inside of the walls up until 70 years or so ago when the Istanbul municipality moved the families out and turned the castle into an open-air museum (i.e. place to put old cannons from WWI).

I always pass the castle when I am going up and down the shore, but Jon and I decided to investigate further. We ran up and down A LOT of steps, managed not to fall off the parapets to an almost certain death, and took a few Facebook pictures for Jon, with the Bosphorous in the background. When we visited in the springtime, the castle was especially beautiful because the red blossoms of the Judas tree where in full bloom. A nice way to spend an afternoon!

Cappadocia

2009-06-03T14:08:00.031-04:00

Whenever I have a visitor, I kind of feel like Bob Barker on The Price Is Right, yelling into my wand-like microphone, "Lindsay, you just won an all-expenses-paid trip to...Cappadocia!!" Unfortunately, all expenses were not paid, but we did have a great time in Cappadocia, which is a beautiful region smack dab in the middle of Turkey. Cappadocia is famous for its "fairy chimneys" (rock formations naturally shaped by wind and water), and Byzantine churches carved right into the rock. I think this is definitely one of those journeys better expressed in pictures rather than words.

Here is a Byzantine monastery carved right into a massive rock formation. You can see the doors opening into large rooms on several levels. Many are inaccessible now; the the ladders once used to reach the upper levels are long gone. It was thought that these caves also served a defensive purpose, even though I have heard from multiple sources that the persecution of Christians in the Byzantine period has been seriously overemphasized in the history of Cappadocia.

A grand sweeping view of one of the wadis, or large plains shaped by wind and water over millenia.

Many of the churches had several graves at their entrances, and most are now exposed. When Lindsay and I approached one of the cave churches, we saw two workers happily cleaning outside. I said good day to them, and we had a brief chat. After talking for a few minutes, one looks around and then asks me, in Turkish, "hey, you want to get a better look at this grave?" I figured, what the hell, and said yes. They immediately bent down and lifted away the thick plastic that allowed visitors to walk on top of the grave (this one still complete with skeleton) but still view it underneath their feet. I quickly snapped a photo. Not creepy at all!

This is the interior of one of Cappadocia's most famous churches. It is called the "Black Church" because there are few windows and therefore very little natural light, but this is actually a great thing because the frescoes inside of the church are incredibly preserved. It was really beautiful, and Lindsay and I had a great time identifying all of the Biblical stories and characters depicted on the walls. I was pretty proud of myself; using the logic of deduction, I managed to identify all 4 evangelists, reading their names in Greek. Knowing something about fraternities comes in handy at some point, I guess.

A detailed picture from a fresco in the Black Church, from the Byzantine period. I just absolutely love the angels surrounding Christ; they are so beautiful.

A nice dramatic shot of Lindsay, admiring one of the earliest rock-cut churches in the area. We are actually in a subterranean chamber here.

This rock-cut house was literally a block from our hostel. And we loved the magical horse that showed up to graze right in front of it.

Cappadocia also has a lot of really cool outdoors-hiking options. As part of our tour, Lindsay and I visited the Ihlamur Vadisi (Linden Valley) which is this huge canyon with a river rushing through it. I was in hog heaven with all of the massive boulders strewn about our path. I couldn't help but scramble up on top of them.

We also visited one of the "underground cities" as part of our tour. Derinkuyu is an underground city, supposedly done during Byzantine times, and then added upon later. The city is carved straight out of the rock, that goes down for 8 stories. To be honest, it was a little disappointing, even a little shady, because it's history is so spotty and there is an appalling lack of archaeological information about these places. But, it can still be enjoyed as a massive labyrinth of dark passageways and spooky corners. Lindsay and I were amused by the bible school we found on the first level of this complex. the chamber was complete with a dunking pool for baptism. I immediately climbed in and was ready to be saved.

Another shot from the Ihlamur Valley. This is the rambling river going through the gorge. I bet white-water rafting on that baby would be a lot of fun.

Another rock-cut city. I just thought this passage way was really beautiful, even extraterrestial.

This one goes out to my pigeon-loving friend out there, Diana. This is a picture of a pigeon in the aptly-named "Pigeon Valley." One might notice dovecotes in some of my photographs. A dovecote is a series of small square holes designed to attract birds for nesting. Apparently, the Christian monastics wanted to raise pigeons because they used them as carrier pigeons, and they also valued their droppings for making paint for their precious frescoes, as well as fertilizer. Unfortunately, the monks are no longer here, but the pigeons are!

One of the cheesy rest stops had a tree completely covered with evil eyes of all shapes and sizes. It was really pretty, so I decided to take a picture of it. FYI, I am really obsessed with the evil eye, because I really like the color combination (blue and white, so classic) and I will definitely be using it next year as the inspiration for decorating my studio apartment.

There was one and only one reason we chose the hostel we did: kittens!!!! The hostel was infested with the three tiniest kittens you ever did see. They could name their price; we were staying. The other guests were frighteningly passive about the little guys, which made me question if they had a soul. Lindsay went berserk and definitely warmed up to the little orange and white fellow. I think he warmed up to her too.

I was really interested in the arrangement of the Byzantine tombs because they resembled the early Christian tombs I saw in the catacombs in Alexandria. I was busy musing over them when we struck up a conversation with a British guy (or he was Australian, I can't remember now). Anyway, we asked him to take some pictures of us in front of this church, then he put down Lindsay's camera for a second and said, "hey, why don't you guys just jump down into those tombs?" Both of us were a little freaked out by his cheerful suggestion that we settle into someone's last resting place for a photo op, but I conceded and dragged Lindsay down into my web of shame. It was a cute shot, though.

Nice picture of one of the gorges. You can faintly make out the dovecotes carved into the cliff; they resemble the cubbies they throw mail in at the campus post office.

GREATEST SIGN EVER

Our hostel room was great, it really was. It was cut into the side of a mountain, for goodness sakes. But we kind of had a problem with the key; it was really difficult to turn it and open the door once it was locked. On checkout day, we just couldn't manage to open the darn door, so, we just climbed out of our window. A narrow escape!

Lindsay took this picture of me in full art history mode. I believe I was excited because I saw a painting of St. Onuphrius, this hermit saint that lived naked in the Egyptian desert. I wrote a paper about him in my Baroque class.

The food in Cappadocia was also exceptional. We were enjoying some home-made wine at this family restaurant, where we had to call five hours ahead so they could slow-cook our meat in a clay pot, which was broken at our table! A gourmet life, I'll tell ya.

Cheers to Cappadocia!

Hanging with Hanefi Bey

2009-06-03T13:41:00.002-04:00

Remember when I went to Konya, and I met Mehmet Bey, the Felt Guy? Well, Mehmet wanted me to meet a friend of his in Istanbul, named Hanefi Bey. Hanefi is a musician, specifically, a neyzen (someone who plays the ney, which is a flute-like instrument used in Turkish folk music). Way back when on this blog I talked about attending a ney lesson. Neyzen traditionally played a very important role in the Sufi communities, because they would play the ney during religious ceremonies (sema). Modern practitioners are very much carrying on a living tradition in the same way calligraphers do, and as a result I have found that these close-knit communities of musicians and calligraphers are very inter-connected.

I met Hanefi Bey at his studio, very close to the Topkapi Palace in Eminonu. In his studio, he not only gives ney but also crafts the musical instruments by hand. I was lucky enough to get a private concert from Hanefi Bey (right), and to watch him create a ney from raw materials like reeds and bone! I was really impressed with Hanefi Bey (a former professional football player!), and with all of the information he had for me about playing the ney, which he has been doing for about 25 years. He has travelled around the world, as far as France and Argentina, to give music workshops and talk about his work. He speaks English and Spanish, and understands French, but he was kind enough to suffer through my insistence on practicing Turkish! The ney is a deceptive instrument. On the exterior, it seems really simple: a mouthpiece, a stick made out of reed, and a few holes. But, being able to control one's breath and create different sounds is really really difficult; apparently, some students take a whole week just to be able to produce a sound that resembles music! I took a shot at it, and after about 20 minutes of looking in the mirror, screwing my lips up to look like a bunny's, and blowing into the mouthpiece I finally got a sound out. Another fact I did not know is that there is not just one kind of ney; they vary greatly in size and length to create different musical chords (according to Hanefi Bey, there are over 20 different kinds of ney).

I have never been all too gifted musically, but I really enjoyed my visit and I loved seeing all of the similarities between the neyzen and the hattat. For one thing, pursuing the ney, as well as calligraphy, could only be a labor of love.

Mediterranean Trip, Part 3: Kas and Fetihye

2009-05-31T17:52:00.010-04:00

After Olympos, Jon and I hopped on a minibus and kept on going west along the Mediterranean coast until we reached Kas, which was my favorite place to stay during our whole trip. Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures there, but I did manage to nab one of the view of the bay from our hotel room window (left). We really liked Kas because it was very relaxing and uncrowded, and it had beautiful weather. Near Kas is a wonderful island called Kekirova, which was once home to a flourishing ancient Lycian town. Unfortunately, in the classical period an earthquake struck and the town literally slid under the sea. Nowadays, one can go see this underwater site via sea kayaks, and that is just what Jon and I did. Our started from the mouth of a bay, and we kayaked about two kilometers over to the island, where we alit in this small cove for swimming and looking at some of the Byzantine and Roman ruins still above water. As I was swimming, I could see ruins of some kind of building, its columns and massive ashlar blocks, 20 feet below me through the clear, turquoise water. It was pretty amazing. Then we kayaked by the sunken city itself, coming within a meter or two of top of the ancient entrance to the harbor. This was a great way to tour this site because most boats can only get within a hundred yards or so of the site because the ruins are so close to the water's surface, but the kayaks glide right on over. After that, we stopped for a fish lunch across the water. It was a really great day.

After Kas, Jon and I moved on to Fetihye, which is a beautiful town, much bigger than Kas, that has a huge marina and tons of British people. We still liked it though. One of the coolest things we did was get on a minibus for about an hour out to this secluded ghost town called Kayakoy. Greece and Turkey had a lot of population exchanges in the last century, and in this Greek village the whole population moved to a village somewhere in Greece, leaving this city abandoned. (left) It is absolutely massive, with several small chapels and churches, a cathedral (below), a large school, government buildings, and acres upon acres of houses. It was really creepy walking around, and also very sad to reflect upon people leaving their homes behind. This effect was enhanced by the fact that Jon and I pretty much had the whole town to ourselves, since most tourists highly prefer the glittery beaches of Fetihye to depressing ghost towns.

Interior of Greek Orthodox cathedral in Kayakoy.

Jon standing in the now vacated streets.

Jon and I decided to go on a boat cruise around the islands in Fetihye's Bay. To be honest, it wasn't that great; the boat operators didn't do much in the way of giving us interesting information, and they were constantly hustling their snacks and drinks upon us. But, we still made the most of it and enjoyed all of our stops. Here is a view of the bright blue water from one of the islands we stopped at. (right)

Fulbright "Evaluation" Meeting

2009-05-30T17:50:00.006-04:00

Most Fulbright grants are for 9 months, and their duration follows a normal school year, from September to May. Because I received an extra grant to learn Turkish for 3 months before the beginning of my full grant, I am staying in Istanbul a little bit longer than many of my compatriots. That being said, in early May all of the Fulbright grantees, the Fulbright office, and various folks from the American embassy and consulate who support our program met together for a final "evaluation" meeting. I am using quotation marks here because our meeting ended up being an all-inclusive three day weekend at a high-end beach resort on the Mediterranean coast, near Antalya. I live a very hard life, I know.

I met up with my friend and fellow Fulbrighter Candace on the flight down from Istanbul to Antalya. Candace is a Classical Archaeologist studying the nature of sacrifice in the Roman world, which to me makes her the coolest person ever, and she asked me to accompany her to the Archaeological Museum in Antalya on our way to our exotic Fulbright vacation. She did not have to convince me too much. Suitcases in hand, we rolled up to the museum. Inside, we saw a lot of really nice marble statuary, sarcophagi, and, coolest of all, the bones of St. Nicholas (above), who, fun fact, lived and died in a village close to Antalya along the Mediterranean. So, bad news kids, I saw irrefutable evidence that Santa Claus is, shall we say, no longer amongst the living.

After our delightful jaunt, Candace and I boarded a minibus, in fact, the very same minibus Jon and I got on to go from Antalya to Olympos, to be dropped off at a small sea-side town called Tekirova. There we checked into the resort, which was, brace yourselves, PIRATE themed!! (right) The attention to detail for the pirate theme was pretty impressive. The reception area was designed as a ship's prow, the staff dressed as all manner of wenches and scallywags, and there was even a live parrot. The resort was a ton of fun, and had a lot of different things to take advantage of, like two pools, a hamam, the beach with a diving raft, watersports, and even a waterslide, which I think was my favorite part.

The actual meeting part was not so eventful, at least for me. A lot of the English teachers had some great input because it was Fulbright's first year sending them all over Turkey. By comparison, the researchers in Istanbul looked downright boring. We all had a great time reconnecting, and meeting the new American ambassador to Turkey, the honorable Mr. Jeffrey. Lucky guy got the chance to pose with all of the Fulbright ladies at one of our big dinners! (below)

Frolicking in Istanbul with Lindsay

2009-05-13T15:43:00.011-04:00

When Lindsay came to visit, we did a lot of fun things right here in Istanbul. Lindsay was also very good about getting me to pose in photos. As most of my friends and family know, I love taking pictures of old buildings and such but I rarely think to put myself in the photo. So, thanks Lindsay!

Here we are on the ferry to the Asian side. This was Lindsay's first night in Istanbul, and her first trip to Asia!

The Hippodrome is this really cool park between Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. It is called the Hippodrome, well, because it is the old Roman hippodrome! It is also a great place for a spring picnic. Lindsay and I plopped ourselves right next to a Sultana's tomb, and feasted on some tomato bulgur and kofte, and fresh corn on the cob from a street vendor!!

Nice shot of us in front of the Blue Mosque. Lindsay, quite impressively, took this photo herself!

I knew Lindsay's trip here would not be complete without a trip to the hamam. We decided to go to the Cemberlitas Hamam, which is kind of touristy but easily the nicest hamam I have ever been in. And they gave me a student discount. For obvious reasons I was not allowed to take photos inside.

Lindsay and I met up with my friend Ceylan in her hood, Ortakoy, which is only 20 minutes walk down the Bosphorous from me. When in Ortakoy, you have to indulge in the street food. Ceylan and Linday are eating kumpirs, which are basically huge baked potatoes. They come with all sorts of toppings that I think Americans would find strange: cabbage, pickles, corn, olives, tapenade, mayo, ketchup, tabouli, cheese, hot dog pieces, and this weird pink sauce that no one has been able to identify. Lindsay loves baked potatoes, so we were all in heaven. Ceylan has big plans to open a kumpir stand in DC. I think she would do a booming business.

I took Lindsay to Emirgan Park to catch the end of tulip season, which is apparently only a very small window of time. We still managed to find a bunch that were still holding up and got a nice shot of Lindsay.

Lindsay took this picture without my knowledge. We are walking down Istiklal Street, a place I mention frequently on this blog because it is the heart of the modern city. I like this photo a lot because it looks like I own the damn place.

Lindsay and I went to the Prince's Islands to climb up the hill to the monastery and have a bodacious lunch. Lindsay is clearly excited about the spread. She laughed when I was trying to decide to order the eggplant or the sausage, and I just ended up ordering both.

Lindsay and I are out on the town at Riddim, Istanbul's premier hip-hop club. It was a really fun night, and I am pretty sure this photo speaks for itself. Yeah!!!

Mediterranean Trip, Part 2: The Chimaera and Olympos

2009-05-13T10:30:00.010-04:00

After Konya, Jon and I headed down south for our beach-ey Mediterranean holiday. We stopped in Antalya, but didn't hang out there too long since I will be going back this weekend for our Fulbright meeting. Our first stop along the coast was in a place called Olympos. Olympos, not to be confused with the mountain in Greece, was a Greek and then eventually Roman town in Southern Turkey. The ruins are really beautiful, situated between two cliffs, along a gurgling stream letting out right into the ocean. Jon and I stayed in a little cabin just behind the ruins. We had to actually walk through them to get to the beach.

Nearby Olympos is a natural phenomenon called the Chimaera. The area is prone to geothermal activity; in other words, natural gas is emitted from the ground, and, for reasons Jon and I can't understand, ignites upon hitting the air. So basically it is kind of a natural eternal flame. After dinner one night Jon and I set off by foot to find it, which turned out to be quite the adventure. We had to walk through the ruins at night, which was really spooky, and then along the beach and then basically up this mountain into the woods. All said and done it was a 2 hour hike one way. But totally worth it. As you can see to the left, it is literally giant balls of flame coming from the ground. It was really cool seeing it in the middle of the woods at night. Scholars, even Classical authors, posited that this phenomenon was the source for the old myth of the Chimaera, an ancient Greek monster that was part lion, snake, and goat which breathed fire. I figure, if I were an ancient Greek sailor from Olympos, and I noticed random fire emitting from the ground on a nearby mountain, I would probably figure it was some kind of monster as well.

Part of the ancient city of Olympos, which we walked through to get to the beach. This arch was probably part of the Byzantine settlement.

Jon and I diverted from the main road for a few minutes to explore some of the ruins, and we were wandering through the woods until I noticed bits of Ionic columns lying around. Then I looked up and saw this massive temple door peeking beyond the trees a little bit. It was awesome!

This is what we found when we got to the beach. Straight up Mediterranean awesomeness. The water was really clear too. Unfortunately, it was still a little too cold to swim, but I did wade in a little bit.

Jon is a connoisseur of skipping stones. I just threw this in because he didn't know I was taking pictures and I think it is a fun action shot.

The ancient site had a lot of cool mosaics. You can see me and Jon in our shadows. It is hard to see, but I think the mosaic is of a duck.

Avenue Q (in Turkish!)

2009-05-12T12:04:00.006-04:00

When I heard that the Broadway musical Avenue Q was coming to Istanbul, I thought it would be the perfect thing to do with my friend Lindsay when she comes and visits, because she loves musicals. Just for anyone who doesn't know, Avenue Q is an insanely popular Broadway musical that is basically Sesame Street for adults and beat out Wicked for Best Musical at the Tony's. Lindsay asked if the musical would be in Turkish. I figured that it would be in English, because this show seemed to only have a very short run, most foreign movies are only subbed, and I felt that it would be pretty difficult to translate songs into Turkish using the same music.

I, of course, was completely wrong. It was definitely in Turkish. None of the content or music had changed, this baby is under copyright of course, but all of the lyrics and dialogue had been translated into Turkish. Lindsay arrived at the airport, and that night I whisked her off to the theater located on the Asian side. The night was cold, and wet, and we got a little lost so I was really thankful to finally reach the theater. As we were walking to our seats, the cast greeted us at the door, speaking in Turkish with the audience members. This was my first clue that we were going to be in for a Turkish Avenue Q, or should I say, "Q Caddesi." Surprisingly, it was I who would have the most problems with the musical being in Turkish. Lindsay had already seen the show twice in the States, and had memorized all of the songs, so she pretty much knew what was going on, despite the language barrier. I, on the other hand, had never seen Avenue Q before, and despite the fact that my Turkish is getting better, one of the hardest things to do is to understand songs. Luckily, Lindsay saved the day. She just happened to have the entire Avenue Q soundtrack on her iPod. So we shared earbuds, and the entire show I had the English music in one ear, and the Turkish version live on stage in the other. It was kind of crazy, but awesome.

As always, it was interesting watching this American musical with an entirely Turkish audience. I felt that the show was really raunchy, and I was worried that a lot of the content would offend Turkish sensibilities. But, one of the things I love about Turkish people is that they always surprise you, just when you think you have them figured out. The ballad "The Internet if for Porn" was by far the show-stopper of the night, and according to Lindsay, the number "You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want," in which two muppets have sex on stage, was apparently a much bigger dance and light production than in the American version. We were also shocked by this grandmother and her 10-year-old grandson sitting right in front of us. Even in America, who the hell takes a 10-year-old to Avenue Q? But they both seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. All of the actors were Turkish, even the one playing Christmas Eve, a Japanese woman who is an unemployed therapist. I had heard before that there is a very famous Japanese actress here in Turkey who somehow learned fluent Turkish and now plays every Asian woman role in all of the movies and tv. I really hope it was her.

All in all, we had a great time!

Star Trek

2009-05-12T04:54:00.006-04:00

Though I have tried to resist it over the years, without a doubt I have been raised to be a good Trekkie. My family members have always been big fans of all the Star Trek series and movies, and I do have fond memories of watching original Star Trek and Next Generation at home. One of my favorite exhibitions at the science museum in Tampa, MOSI, was a traveling Star Trek exhibition, which I am pretty sure we went to on multiple occasions. I even vaguely recall a Trekkie convention or two, especially one where I got to see an appearance by the original actor who played Scotty. But I digress.

I was really excited to go see the Star Trek movie this week, especially because the original Star Trek series was by far my favorite from the franchise; I loved the back-and-forth between Spock and Dr. McCoy. Seeing the movie in Istanbul was an unusual experience. Ceylan and I were clearly the only people in the room who had a clue about the Star Trek franchise. I got the impression that most of the other people in the audience had just come to check out the new space movie from America. If they had seen any of the tv series, they probably had seen it dubbed or subbed in Turkish. What made this really funny and awkward was that the new movie is riddled with the young characters uttering classic lines, and Ceylan and I would usually emit audible shrieks or laughs when that happened, causing the people around us to get very frightened. I was the only one laughing when Scotty screamed, "I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain!" or when the Guy in the Red Shirt died incredibly quickly when dropped to Vulcan's surface. I think Ceylan and I really scared everyone at the end when we recited the "Space, the final frontier..." speech along with Leonard Nimoy's voice. The whole time I just thought to myself, "whatever, you can stare all you want, but this is MY cultural heritage. Respect!"

Mediterranean Trip, Part 1: Konya

2009-05-05T12:42:00.010-04:00

When Jon and I were planning our trip outside of Istanbul, we knew we would have to compromise. I happen to have an affinity for old stuff, and Jon was hoping for more of a beach holiday. So we met in the middle. We would go to Konya, a true center of Islamic art and culture, and then move on to the southwest coast of Turkey for a Mediterranean adventure.

To get to Konya from Istanbul, we boarded the Meram Express, an overnight train. (left) The trains in Turkey can be slow, but they are also really comfortable and a good option if you want to travel during the night. Jon and I got our own sleeper compartment, complete with sink and refrigerator!

We woke up to find a very green and flat landscape outside of our window. Konya is in the plains of central Turkey, and the reason I wanted to go there is because it was the capital of the Seljuk dynasty in Turkey, as well as the center of the Mevlevi order of dervishes, known popularly as the whirling kind. Jon and I both really enjoyed the city. Lonely Planet has a laughable travel warning that the city is full of "conservative people," which I personally don't find problematic in and of itself. In truth, the people were super nice, the food was good (they have firin kebab, a fatty mutton slow cooked in the oven, and et ekmek, a kind of thin pizza with ground lamb), and I saw some pretty sweet architecture. Jon was a champ going with me to all the museums and holy sites; he even went into his first mosque!

This is the turquoise-tiled conical dome over the tomb of Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, known commonly in Turkey as Mevlana, and commonly everywhere else as "Rumi," which actually only means "dude from the lands of Rum (Rome)." I had no desire really to catch an authentic whirling dervish performance, mostly because I doubted how "authentic" it was really going to be. That and I felt I was already asking a lot out of Jon, making him endure two solid days of mosques and museums, it seemed that adding men spinning around with funny hats for two hours was a little too much to hope for.

The Seljuks ultimately had a lot of background and influence from Iran and Central Asia, so we see a lot of very pretty blue tile work in their architecture. Check out this kick-ass blue and black tile dome!

The Alaeddin mosque in Konya, a really interesting place that was probably built on top of a Byzantine church. The crazy white tent thing to the right, which looks to be straight from Tomorrow-Land, is a protective covering for what little remains of the palace walls.

So I need to talk about felt guy. Every region in Turkey is famous for some kind of product, whether it be wood, or clay, or amber. Konya's is felt. Shepherding is the main source of income for many of the surrounding villages, and the wool from the sheep is cleaned, dyed, and essentially matted together to make felt. The Lonely Planet told me that if I wanted to check out a master felter, to go to the bazaar and find Ilkonium. After the second try, we finally found the shop. It looked closed; the display windows were boarded up, and when we walked in the place was a complete wreck with piles of wool everywhere and a half-finished creation taking up the surface of two tables pushed together. Standing in the center of this maelstrom was a man we later learned is named Mehmet, who I refer now to as the felt guy. He was broad-shouldered, had a huge mustache, wore a denim shirt, and was chain-smoking. I asked him if they were open. He took a drag on his cigarette and told me "oh yeah, my wife and I just got back from this big craft show in Maryland, and we just threw our stuff down." He invited us to have a cup of tea, and we ended up sitting there with Mehmet and his wife, who is actually from Argentina, about the felt business and about my research. My favorite part was how he chastised me for not being able to produce an indigo vat my freshman year in college for a project I was doing, "that is like, the easiest one. How the hell did you screw that up?" As we were getting ready to go, felt guy invited us to come back to his shop for dinner. Jon and I had already made plans to have dinner with fellow Fulbrighter Aundreta and her husband, but Mehmet shrugged and told us to just bring them along too. It turns out that Aundreta had met the felt guy earlier in the year at an exhibition at the local university, and had been meaning to visit his shop for some time, so it all worked out in the end. It turns out Mehmet cooks some really killer kofte, and we had a wonderful banquet of meat, rice, and meze! Yum! We stayed up chatting with Mehmet till midnight, at which point we decided to wander back to the hotel. So lucky to run into felt guy!

Spring!

2009-05-04T15:50:00.013-04:00

Enjoy these pictures, all from different parts of the city. Spring is in full force, and the tulips especially are lovely.

Scenic Bosphorous Tour

2009-05-03T17:55:00.014-04:00

I have been putting off a lot of "must-dos" in Istanbul so that when my guests come I have some new things to do with them. One of these trips that I did with Jon was a "scenic Bosphorous tour." This is a regular city ferry which plies a journey from the Golden Horn, chugging up the Bosphorous until it almost reaches the Black Sea, and then returns. Jon and I had a pleasant day going up and down the strait; check out the pictures:

This is a picture I took from the ferry, looking at the European shore. Actually, this is a view of Arnavutkoy. If you look very carefully, you can see my house!

The ferry deposits its visitors in Anadolu Kavagi, a small fishing village within a stone's throw of the Black Sea. The fish restaurants are supposed to be very good here, so Jon and I tucked into a lunch of grilled sea bass. On my way out, I saw this beauty of a picture. My friend and I here have noticed the Turks' affinity for pictures of crying children, and this is only one of several I have seen in restaurants, hotels, and furnished homes!

Jon poses next to the fortress, which protects where the Black Sea meets the Bosphorous.

Instead of taking the ferry back to the Golden Horn, Jon and I opted to take a bus from Anadolu Kavagi back down the Asian side of the shore. We stopped in a village called Kanlica, which is home to a park very similar to the one I visited in Emirgan, on the opposite shore. It is tulip season, and I couldn't resist getting a picture with the lovely foliage!

In this large park stands the Hidiv Kasri, an unusual building built in 1907 for the Ottoman governor to Egypt. I am really interested in early 20th century architecture, and this is a glorious gilded Art Nouveau/Art Deco/Ottoman/froofy mess, and I loved it! Check out the Ottoman-style entrance...

...and then the stained glass ceiling in the atrium. Gorgeous! Apparently, this building housed the first elevator in Turkey

Jon Does Some Culinary Exploration

2009-04-28T03:43:00.007-04:00

My boyfriend loves to try new and different foods. So, when he came to Turkey, he insisted on sampling some of the more unusual treats Turkey has to offer.

First up is tavuk gogsu, which means "chicken breast." It is basically a thick milk pudding dessert which has chicken in it. When foreigners first hear about the dessert, they get grossed out because they imagine large chunks of chicken inside of a rice pudding mixture. On a night out Jon ordered this dessert just to see what it was all about (right). It turns out that this tavuk gogsu does indeed include chicken breast, but it is finely ground up and mixed in with the pudding, so that there are hardly any chunks of KFC swimming in there, but the pudding has a grainy texture and a faint hint of chicken-y goodness. I had a bite, but I can report that Jon ate the whole thing.

Jon's other divergence in the traditional culinary path was a visit to my friend Ali, whose family owns a pickle shop in the fish bazaar in Uskudar, which is in the Asian side of Istanbul. In this shop you can find a wide array of pickled vegetables, delicious olives, vine leaves, pomegranate and grape sauces, various kinds of vinegars, and so, so much more. One of the Turks' favorite past-time is to invite their foreign friend to take a sip of what looks to be a harmless pink fruit punch, when in fact that pink drink is pickle juice, which packs quite the punch and apparently is a tried and true hangover remedy. I like to visit Ali's shop and once before, feeling brave and curious to try something new, I sampled the pink pickle juice and salgam, a milder juice that is darker in color and made from fermented vegetables. I dragged Jon down to Uskudar to meet Ali of course, but also to challenge him to partake in the delights of the pickle shop (below). Ali was kind enough to serve Jon up a cup full of selected pickled vegetables, filled up with everyone's favorite pink pickled concoction. Jon ate all of the pickled vegetables, and commented that they were really great! I myself enjoyed a pickle and an olive or two. Delicious!

Obama Wuz Here

2009-04-28T03:30:00.004-04:00

This is hopelessly late but still important enough to post about. Obama mentioned that he aimed to visit a Muslim country in his first 100 days, and he delivered on that promise with a planned visit to Turkey, followed by a surprise visit to Iraq. Before the big trip, which was at the beginning of April, all of Turkey was abuzz with gossip during the weeks leading up to Obama's arrival. For security reasons, many details of the President's trip were unknown, even when he was here, so there was a lot of speculation from expats and Turks as to where and when Obama would be doing things. We all knew Obama would visit Ankara, because it is the nation's capital, but all of the Istanbullus knew that there was no way Obama could come to Turkey and give the country's cultural capital a miss, but this stopover was announced with only about two weeks to go.

Luckily, a lot of the Fulbrighters here in Istanbul had a chance to help out the consulate with Obama's visit. We had the opportunity to be escorts to the White House Press Corps during their stay in Istanbul. I unfortunately opted out because the planning meeting and the actual times for which they needed me coincided with Jon's arrival. So I basically love my boyfriend more than Obama, surprise! Some other Fulbrighters did participate. Ceylan went to the meeting Obama had with Turkish students; she got in with the Secret Service and apparently was caught on some of the television coverage!

The Istanbullus themselves were absolutely thrilled that Obama came to Turkey. The two days Obama was in Istanbul, which, by the way, resulted in the shutting down of a long stretch of the European shore for his motorcade :-(, I could hear Turks on the bus and in the street all talking about Obama. From what I could tell, he made a really good impression here, which in turn makes it not so bad a time to be an American right now abroad. Some of Obama's remarks that went over well were his pointing out that America does not consider itself a Christian country, and neither does Turkey consider itself a Muslim country, and he hoped that therefore both countries would work to keep that constitutional promise of separation of church and state, as well as some conciliatory remarks about the controversial Armenian genocide issue.

The Maiden's Tower

2009-04-23T05:37:00.009-04:00

Jon and I went on his first excursion to Asia. As I have mentioned, Istanbul straddles two continents, divided by the Bosphorous, a waterway connecting the Black Sea to the Marmara. Not many tourists have the time to get over to the "Asia side" which is a real shame because there is a lot to do. We took a nice stroll along the shore, and then boarded a small boat which puttered the half mile distance out to the Kiz Kulesi (called the Maiden's Tower in English), which sits on an islet just off the Asian shore. It has served as a prison, lighthouse, old people's home, and now is a very posh cafe and restaurant. When we went, Jon and I were able to snag our own private corner with a grand view of the Golden Horn. Tre Romantique. But the real reason I wanted to get there was because the structure features prominently in a James Bond film, The World is Not Enough. In the film, the place is headquarters for the bad guys, and Bond is tortured there by evil hottie Elektra King. The tower is also where the bad guys decide to park their stolen nuclear submarine. In the final action sequence, the submarine sinks into the Bosphorous's briny depths. Sweet!!

<<--Along the shore were these awesome sculptures a la Robert Indiana's "LOVE" statue. 1453 is when the Ottomans conquered Istanbul. This sculpture was paired with another one of 1923, the year the Turkish Republic was established.

-->> The lovely view along the Asian shore. In my opinion, Istanbul looks best when it is full of melancholy. Check out the grey skies and rusty fence.

Tour of the Islamic Science Museum

2009-04-21T03:06:00.003-04:00

I was worried about dragging Jon all over God's green earth to look at places of interest for Islamic art. He has been a real champ going to mosque after mosque (his first was in Konya! what a place to go to your first mosque) but I do realize that the majority of the world's population has only so much patience for endless minarets and Iznik tiles. So, I thought he would like going on a tour of the new museum of Islamic science, which is part of the Archaeological museum I think. The tour was led by John Freely, a professor of physics at Bogazici but author to several books about Ottoman and Byzantine history. I just finished his book on Istanbul and I was excited to meet him. Jon liked the tour well enough, especially the section on medicine. The picture I took is of Freely in front of the Column of the Goth's, which is this random column stuck behind the Topkapi Saray in this cute little park that I don't think many tourists know about and has a great view of the Bosphorus. It has an inscription in Latin characters but it is really hard to read.

Jon Has Arrived and Spring Has Sprung

2009-04-21T02:56:00.002-04:00

I have not been posting lately, and that is because Jon has come to visit me! We have been doing a lot of traveling, but we are settled back in Istanbul now until he leaves at the end of the month. Jon also brought spring with him! Everyon is relieved that this cold and rainy winter is finally coming to an end. To celebrate, I have been growing tulips in my room (did you know they were brought to Holland from Turkey?). I don't have much of a green thumb, but these babies shot up from their bulbs! Very encouraging.

The Wild Wild East, Part 3: Sivas and Divrigi

2009-04-01T16:43:00.006-04:00

This is the last installment of my adventures in Northeast Anatolia. From Kars, I wanted to go directly south and travel to a city called Dogabeyazit so I could see the Isaac Pasa Palace and Mt. Ararat. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to check my Lonely Planet only to discover that the palace was closed on Mondays, which was the only day I could go. Rats! I did not, however, want to go back to Erzurum and sit around for a day, waiting to give my talk. I wanted to make the most of my time out east. So, sitting in a hotel room in Kars, I totally re-planned the last half of my trip in about half an hour.

I ultimately decided to go to Sivas, which was actually kind of a psychotic decision considering that I was four hours east of Erzurum, my home base, and Sivas is six hours WEST of Erzurum. It meant that I would spend a lot of free time on a bus, but like I said, I just couldn't waste the little time I did have. And for this part of the trip I was alone, which made traveling by the seat of my pants (normally not my M.O.) all the more crazy. I was on a bus for approximately ten hours, which put me into Sivas at 10 PM. I hopped on a minibus into the center of town and found myself a hotel room. Out of morbid curiosity, I opted to stay in the Madimak Hotel, which has a very dark past. In 1993, a mob of radical Islamists set fire to the hotel, where several Alevi intellectuals had gathered for a cultural conference in Sivas. Alevis are considered a religious sect of Islam, and they are often associated with the Bektashis, the order of dervishes I am studying right now. The mob's intended target was the Turkish translator of Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses." Unfortunatley, 37 people died in the fire, and the hotel was burned to the ground. The hotel is rebuilt now, I believe on the same site as the original. I was psyching myself out, expecting grisly accommodations, but the staff was helpful and friendly, the lobby bright and cheery, and my room huge and cheap! After tiring myself from jumping on the bed, I decided to go to sleep for my big day in Sivas.

The next morning, I got up bright and early to look at some serious Seljuk architecture. The Seljuks were a dynasty originally from Iran who lived in Anatolia before the Ottomans hit it big. They tend to have nice blue tiles and crazy stucco molding. I saw this sweet calligraphy executed in a style I would call "strawberry bush" (right), and a pretty dramatic madrasa, or theological school (below). While wandering around, it began to snow pretty hard, making me long for Boston. As I braved the snowflakes whizzing through the air to take pictures of my mosques and madrasas, I reflected just how much I really wanted to be committed to Seljuk architecture.

After wandering around Sivas in the morning, I headed over to the minibus terminals that ply routes out to all of the small mountain villages surrounding Sivas. I climbed into a van headed for Divrigi, a very small and remote mountain village that just so happens to be a UNESCO world heritage site because it has a really nice mosque (right). The mosque is not all that exciting on the inside, but what gets this place on the list is the insane entrance portal, which is a great example of some local rich guy who had more money and ego than taste. The ride to the village was interesting. I was sitting next to this Turkish woman older than Moses, who informed me that she had fallen and broken her wrist, and she had to come into Sivas from her village to go to the hospital. I expressed concern for her health to which she exclaimed, "My dear, I kiss you!" I thought she was speaking figuratively until I saw her going in for my cheek. I realized that it was actually going down, stuck out my cheek, and she planted a big one on my face. Since we had kind of bonded about five minutes into a 3 hour trundle through the mountains, I entertained her by taking pictures of the scenery and then showing the results on my camera screen.

When we got out at Divrigi, which is home to maybe a few thousand people, I was thrown out into the general market area. When I got out of the van pretty much every person on the street turned and looked at me, mouths agog. The people in this area make their living by shepherding, and I guess they don't get a lot of tourists. I yelled to the general crowd "Hi there! Could anyone perhaps point me to your mosque??" which is probably not the first thing they expected to hear either. Someone gestured up the hill, where I found the large building pretty quickly. Unfortunately in Sivas I had eaten some suspicious kebab for lunch and it was not sitting well with me after a 3 hour bumpy ride through mountains. So I discreetly ran behind the mosque and booted, meaning that I can officially say that I have thrown up on a UNESCO world heritage site, something my boyfriend suggests I should not be proud of. I was disappointed to find the mosque and the connected hospital closed, but I figured that the best part were the doors anyway so I started clicking away. Then the call to prayer sounded, and I peeked around the corner to see an old man walk up to the door and unlock it. I wrapped my scarf around my head and snuck in after him, dodging down a side aisle and just sitting next to a huge column. It was nice listening to the prayers; they were very beautiful. I waited until they were done praying and then I started taking pictures of the inside, which was kind of dark and spooky. While I was photographing the minbar one of the men wandered up to me and asked me in English if I wanted him to show me the hospital as well. I told him I would be delighted and he took me over there, which actually resembled the medical hospital Ceylan and I saw in Edirne. I mentioned this to my guide, who was a little surprised that I had an idea of comparitive hospital structures in Anatolia. At that point he felt the need to present me with a coffee mug witht the building screened onto the side. "We don't get many people here, and I think you will like this," he said. It was a really sweet gesture, and then he insisted that I spend the night with his family. He promised food, family, and a huge Alevi celebration in my honor. I was really really sad to tell him that I had to get back to Erzurum for my talk the next morning, but at least we had tea and pastries before I left.

Local Elections

2009-03-31T09:23:00.006-04:00

You would have to be living under a rock to have missed the fact that Turkey just had local elections on March 29. For the past 3 weeks, flags and signs for all of the different parties have been everywhere. In some neighborhoods where the race was going to be very close, like in Uskudar (right) there were so many flags strung across the streets that they seemed to create this mile-long canopy. I also noticed in the last two months that public building projects, like the extension of the subway to Beshiktash, have kicked into high gear, I suppose because politicians are eager to prove that they are actually getting stuff done in their communities. Although these elections are for local government, they were nation-wide and seemed to be important as politicians at the local level can end up being quite powerful. My roommate Cat was beside herself right before the elections because a major part of her research here is how political parties pander to minorities or internal migrants in Istanbul; so this was a really important time for her. I tend to not pay a lot of attention to politics here; rather, I tend to walk around with my head in the clouds looking at 500-year-old buildings all day. But even I couldn't avoid the excitement of election fever. I found myself in the last weeks before the election talking to Turks about local politics, and, most importantly, which party they were supporting.

Turkey is not on a two-party system; and I have found that trying to classify the parties here with American terms like "liberal," "conservative," and "moderate" to be almost useless because the political divisions here can be very confusing, at least for me. But I will try my best. AKP, or Ak Parti, is the majority party at the moment. It is supposed to be fairly moderate, but its critics think that it is too sympathetic to Islamic issues. The other major parties are CHP (Ataturk's party, nationalist, favorite of the westernized and wealthy), MHP (super nationalist), DSP (tree-hugging liberals, apparently), Saadet (pretty Islamist, but not allowed to say so), and DTP (Kurdish national party, critics say it is political extension of PKK, the Kurdish terrorist group). All of the parties were campaigning hard with flags, posters, speeches, and tv spots. One of the most dramatic events of the campaigning was when Erdogan, head of AKP and Prime Minister, went to give a speech in Izmir, which is traditionally the most liberal city in Turkey and a CHP hot-bed. So he basically went into the lion's den. My favorite form of campaigning is what I call the "party bus." Party buses are basically minivans that party supporters drive in around the neighborhoods, shouting slogans and playing party songs (like football teams in Turkey, all political parties seem to have a boppy theme song). In Istanbul, these party buses took the form of new vans plastered with the faces of their candidates, with huge speakers bolted to the top, and in more rural areas in the east, I saw people basically outfitting their old Volvo with some flags and a guy hanging out the passenger side window with a megaphone. Whatever works I guess. The party buses are really hilarious but can be kind of annoying. The week before elections I would wake up to the DSP theme song pulsating throughout my neighborhood.
During my travels out east, checking out the campaigns was really interesting. Most people would expect that in eastern Anatolia, the more conservative parties would be more strong and the more "liberal" parties like CHP and DSP would have no presence at all. In Erzurum, I did notice that MHP, one of the more conservative parties, definitely had the upper hand, but when I went to Kars, which is about as far east as you can get, I was surprised to find almost all of the political parties present. To the left, you can see a picture of some flags I took on the street in cars. From top to bottom, there are ads for CHP, AKP, and MHP. I wasn't expecting Kars to have a more balanced political field than Erzurum, because it is poorer, smaller, and further east. Shows how much I know!

One of the really interesting things about elections in Turkey is that there is a law that prohibits any campaigning or even DISCUSSION of politics during the actual voting period, starting the evening before until the tabulation. And they are serious about it. The night before the election, I noticed city workers going around with large tree limb cutters, cutting down every single flag so they would not be flying the next morning. I really wanted a DSP flag, because its symbol is the white dove and I thought it was really pretty. That night I walked up to a police officer standing next to a pile of flags on the sidewalk. I asked him if I could take one. Hey eyed me for a second, "Do you really want a DSP flag? Don't you want an AKP flag instead?" I assured him that I wanted a DSP flag becuase of the "pretty bird" on it. He figured this was a reasonable decision and told me to go for it. All of the flags were connected together and I had a tough time separating the one I wanted. I asked the police officer if he had a knife. He told me no and I chastised him for being a police officer and not having some sort of cutting instrument on him. He thought for a second and produced his lighter, burning through the rope so I could get my flag. I marched away with my prize, the cop shaking his head.

Virtual Ani

2009-03-29T04:09:00.001-04:00

Hey guys, my friend Ben just sent along to me a really neat website on Ani, which does a really nice job of presenting the site, with a fun, treasure-map format! If you need to procrastinate a little today, find it here.

Safranbolu

2009-03-24T16:10:00.010-04:00

Thrilled by our foray to Termal, Ceylan and I were again needing to escape from Istanbul and the winter blues. This time, we headed six hours east to a town called Safranbolu. Plenty of Turks, but not a lot of foreigners, come to visit this mountain town that is placed between Ankara and the Black Sea in Central Anatolia. I think this is because it is not conveniently situated near any big tourist hot stops, like Cappadochia, Istanbul, or Ephesus. That is a real shame because this was one of the most relaxing and interesting trips I have taken thus far. Safranbolu is on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites, because the old town center is one of if not the only city that has refused any "modern" architecture and strictly consists of restored Ottoman homes. If anyone is curious of what it feels like to walk the streets of an "Ottoman" town, this is the place to do it. Ceylan and I packed our bags and hopped on the bus, which took us through some gorgeous mountain scenery blanketed in white snow. This is the first time this winter I have seen any snow like I was used to in Massachusetts; Istanbul has very few snow days, and if it does snow it tends to immediately melt. Ceylan and I got to the bus station, where the hotel folks picked us up. The hotel in which we stayed was, in my opinion, one of the coolest parts of the trip. The whole point of going to Safranbolu is to stay in a restored Ottoman mansion, many of which in Safranbolu have been converted into small 6 to 8 bedroom hotels. We stayed in the Havuzlu Konak, or "Mansion with Pool," so-named for this huge stone pool sitting in the middle of the breakfast room (above). Our room was huge, and had a padded bench running along the walls of the room in the traditional Ottoman style.

The city itself was really interesting, just wandering around these narrow streets of wooden houses (right). Upon my insistence, we packed ourselves into a taxi and headed off to the nearby village of Yoruk Koy. I was interested to go because I heard it is this old Bektashi (a certain order of Sufi dervishes) village. I am currently doing some research on Bektashi calligraphy, so I really wanted to see this village. Ceylan and I got out of the cab and found Yoruk Koy in a state similar to what I imagine Safranbolu must have looked like before its restoration. It was pretty deserted, and definitely not very popular with the tourists. I saw a man walking by, and asked him if there were any old houses belonging to Bektashis. Someone must have called ahead and told him we were coming because he told us to walk with him to his family's house, which was built by his grandfather, who was a prominent Bektashi in the community. This house (left) was absolutely amazing. Our host told us that the house has been in his family for many generations. I was really excited because there were a lot of architectural details that included Bektashi symbolism, especially the wall paintings, which our host told us were 130 years old. For example, you can probably see over the fireplace in the living room a painting of a vase with 12 carnations in it. Supposedly these flowers are meant to represent the 12 imams, a belief usually associated with Shi'ism. There was even a few fake clocks painted on the walls! When Ceylan noticed that one of the clock's time was set for eternity at 9:05, she asked our guide if that was because that is the time when Ataturk died. He looked really surprised that we even knew about that, and then told us that the painters just painted the time that they were done with the painting; so, the clock painting was finished at either 9:05 in the morning or evening, 130 years ago!

Back in town, Ceylan and I explored the rest of the city. We found an old caravansaray,

which are basically nightly pit stops for caravans traveling along the Silk Road. These caravansarays can be found throughout Turkey and Iran. This was my first time seeing a real live one, so I was kind of excited. Generally, they are built like fortresses, to protect the traders and their wares from bandits in the night. Ceylan stands outside of its massive wooden doors (right).

The food, as always, was great. The best restaurants are in the hotels themselves, so Ceylan and I had a nice dinner in our own hotel the first night we arrived. It was very romantic; right next to a roaring fire! Safranbolu is famous for saffron, as its name implies. Our favorite use of saffron though was in the lokum (Turkish delight). Ceylan and I went to this super-cute coffee shop in the middle of the historic bazaar there, and we were served this beautiful arrangement, just for ordering a cup of coffee (below)!!! Ceylan and I also tried to hit up the Turkish delight factory behind the petrol station, but it was unfortunately closed. I tried to look sad and sweet-talk my way in there, but it definitely wasn't going to happen.

Emily's Kitchen: Kofte and Tomato Bulgur

2009-03-24T14:57:00.003-04:00

Tonight, I made two big staples in Turkish cuisine: kofte and tomato bulgur. These two items are also very quick to make, which is always good. Kofte are basically like meatballs except they are a little squished, and sometimes in a small cigar shape. They are usually baked, but I don't have an oven so I fried them in a skillet and they turned out fine. The tomato bulgur was really easy, and probably one of the best-tasting things I have made here. It is exactly what it sounds like, bulgur cooked like rice, with some onion, tomato paste, and tomatoes. Look at that picture; I managed to get the steam coming off the bulgur!

The Wild Wild East, Part 2: Kars and Ani

2009-03-22T11:50:00.020-04:00

When I went to Erzurum, I met up with three of my fellow Fulbrighters: Tom, Leanna, and Ben. Together, we decided to go to Kars, which is even further east and very close to the Armenian border. I had prepared myself to find a run-down, backwater town, but instead I thought Kars was quite charming. The Russians had occupied the city for awhile, so the streets are very organized and on a grid-plan, and a lot of the older Russian buildings give the city a Soviet feel.

The real reason we had come to Kars, however, was to go to Ani, which is an abandoned city whose buildings have been left to crumble into the ground. Read: medieval ghost town. Cool, right? Ani is not a common destination for most visitors to Turkey, mostly because it is hard to reach. It sits right on the border between Turkey and Armenia, and the military has only just opened up the area to tourists in the last couple of years. Ani is really cool because it was the capital of a medieval Armenian kingdom, and also a large city during the Seljuk period being an important entrepot along the Silk Road . At one point, around the eleventh century, it's population reached 100,000-200,000 people, which is HUGE for a medieval city, and it rivaled Constantinople at the the time. Anyway, Tom, Leanna, Ben, and I, accompanied by a nice Australian we picked up in Kars, piled into a very small taxi and took the hour-ish trip out to the Armenian border. It was a really neat site, with abandoned cathedrals and mosques everywhere. Now, I think I will let the pictures speak for themselves:

Me, getting my art history on.

The Church of St. Gregory, built in 1215, has some pretty sweet frescoes that I really hope are original, but it is always hard to say with these things. I think we got ourselves an Ascension of the Virgin scene going on here.

So Ben and I go wandering, and I read in my guidebook that there is a small convent tucked away down in this huge gorge that borders half the site. The guidebook speculated that this section would probably be closed to visitors, as it is not well restored and very perilous, because it is perched on a narrow cliff. That is a very fair assessment of the situation as we found it. Ben and I naturally felt compelled to risk our lives and face almost certain peril to reach this convent. I hope this picture at least partially captures the craziness of that decision.

To get down the cliff we had to climb down what was originally some kind of passageway with stairs, which is now collapsing into oblivion. In the picture, Ben is trying his best to make his way down this steep obstacle course, which was the only feasible path up and down the cliff to the convent, providing one does not have access to mountaineering equipment.

We made it down there! And we didn't die! The view was spectacular, and we got to see this cute little chapel with nice carvings, which most people probably don't get to see up close, because they are smart enough to avoid peril.

This is the famous Armenian cathedral in Ani, whose dome has now fallen in, but as you can see, still quite beautiful. It was built by Trdat, a guy with an awesome name, and an even more awesome resume. He is the most celebrated Armenian architect, the Mimar Sinan of Armenia if you will, and he is also, interestingly enough, credited with heading up the project of rebuilding Hagia Sophia's dome when it collapsed due to earthquake in 989.

The clouds came in, and gave the site a very moody atmosphere. The Romantics would have killed for this scenery...this is about as melancholic as you can get.

Ben and I came across a mosque, whose claim to fame is being the first mosque built in Anatolia, built in 1072. It has a very nice minaret, with a very nice sign at the bottom instructing visitors not to climb the nice minaret. Well, we reasoned that we had already scaled a cliff, in a place where the caretakers didn't even bother to put a sign because they figured no one was stupid enough to get down there, so of course we are going to climb the minaret. It definitely was worth it; check out this picture I took of the extremely dramatic gorge winding its way past the city.

A nice capital of a column in one of the abandoned churches.

The Church of the Redeemer is typical of Armenian churches, circularly planned. Too bad half of the building fell down in 1955 in a pretty nasty storm.

One of the city gates, a little over-restored. You can see here the distinctive patterns that masons liked to make with the local brown and black stone.

Back in the Ani Cathedral. Ben and I climbed up some steps to the left of the altar, and found ourselves in a second-story chapel. I am looking out into the main part of the cathedral from a partially collapsed window.

At the Church of the Redeemer, I am climbing on top of the rubble of the half of the church that fell down in the storm. It is hard to see with the moss growing, but the slab I am scaling is covered with an inscription in Armenian.

Rising Stars in Turkish Cooking Television

2009-03-21T03:10:00.007-04:00

A friend sent me an e-mail one day, and told me that TRT, the national broadcasting network of Turkey, is making a new cooking show called "Turk Lezzeti," which can be loosely translated as "Turkish Flavor," but in my head I like to think that it is "Turkish Delight"! The concept of the show, which should be about 15-minute long segments, is that a famous cooking show host makes delicious Turkish food, and the catch is that she is being assisted by two yabanci (foreigners). To make this new show, TRT was desperate to find foreigners living in Istanbul who had at least basic Turkish skills, so they could talk on the show in Turkish. My friend and I volunteered immediately, as they encouraged friends to sign up as a pair. We were given the address of the studios located on the European side, and told to show up at 2PM. When we arrived, we were taken through a large studio and into the back for our makeup and hair! The woman doing our makeup was really cute, and I don't think I have ever had so much makeup on my face in my entire life. It felt like an inch thick! But Rebecca and I agreed this was probably the hottest we were ever going to look in our lives. Maybe we should hire that lady when we want to go out clubbing on the weekends! We were both given these bright striped aprons to wear, and were lead out onto the set, which looked straight from the 90s, what I recall the sets of Saved By the Bell and Mickey Mouse Club looked like. The cool part is that it was still a fully functioning kitchen. The host was very nice; at first we thought she spoke only Turkish but it became apparent quickly that she was completely fluent in English. I was a little embarrassed when I asked her later where she had learned to cook, and she casually said, "from my grandmother of course, and then I went to the Cordon Bleau," as if she had went to some community college cooking class. So she speaks French too!

For the show, we were cooking two traditional milk-based Turkish desserts: gulac and muhallebi. I was responsible for the gulac, which is this milky desert made with philo dough, and you usually only see it made during Ramazan. The camera guys told us to only look at each other and the host, and not at the cameras, so we kind of just sat there chatting with each other and made some food. She did ask us a few questions in Turkish, but we went over beforehand what we would say so it wasn't a big deal. She also asked us a few questions about what we were making, just to have an excuse to give some info to our viewers at home:

Host: Emily, do you know when Gulac is served?

Me (busily putting philo dough into a pan): Well, GOSH, I don't know!

Host: WELL, it is usually served during Ramazan!

Me: WOW!

Host: Rebecca, do you know when Ramazan is?

Rebecca: NO, not at all!

Host: It is always changing each year, because it is on a different calendar.

Me and Rebecca (high-fiving): COOL!

And something like that. I thought I would be a bit nervous; but as my friends back home know

I am kind of a media sell-out so I have been around this block before, and I was also not too worried because I knew that they would edit it later. After I made the gulac, the host handed me and Rebecca a plate of pomegranate seeds and walnut pieces and asked us to sprinkle them on top of the dessert, making some kind of attractive design. Becca and I decided to do a heart. When the host noticed what we had done, she asked us why, and, just to be the cheesy tv stars we are, Rebecca replied, in Turkish, "because we made this from our hearts!" Cue the sound-track audience sighing "AWWWWW."

So, that was it! It was a lot of fun, and we got to eat our projects later with the rest of the crew, which was great. I was told that this segment should air sometime in May on TRT International, but I have no idea when exactly.

Emily's Kitchen: Green Beans in Olive Oil

2009-03-21T03:04:00.002-04:00

One of my favorite side dishes here is cold green beans and tomatoes in olive oil. They also do it with leeks, and it is delicious! I thought I would give it a whirl. The think and long green beans we have in America don't exist in Turkey, just the long, flat kind, so that is what I used. To be honest, it didn't taste all too great when I tried some last night, but I have a feeling this is one dish that gets better if you let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.

The Wild Wild East, Part 1: Erzurum

2009-03-19T12:45:00.007-04:00

I have spent the last week in the wild wild east of Turkey, which turned out not to be too wild after all. While the cities in eastern Anatolia aren't nearly as glamorous as Istanbul or Izmir, and do feel a little nibbled around the edges, neither are they the third-world environs I was expecting after reading Orhan Pamuk's "Snow" and talking to several Istanbullus. As I mentioned before, my reason for going out east was to give a talk on calligraphy at Ataturk University in Erzurum. Erzurum is one of the biggest cities in north-eastern Turkey, and sits in a bowl surrounded by snow-covered mountains. If they do, the main draw for tourists is is the ski resort on Palandoken, one of the taller mountains in the area.

So I boarded Turkish Airlines flight 662 in Istanbul, a little nervous only a few weeks after the THY crash in Amsterdam. But things seemed fine, even a little surreal as I was completely surrounded by the National Kosovo Ski Team, all zipped up in their matching sky-blue wind-breakers. The flight was uneventful, and I was really pleased that I was served a yummy cheese sandwich and raspberry yogurt for what was a one-and-a-half hour flight. On Delta, on a flight for the same amount of time you would be lucky if the stewardess threw peanuts at your head! About halfway into the flight, I had an embarrassing moment when I opened my pen to do a crossword puzzle, only to have it explode all over my hands and my laptop, which I suppose can happen sometimes because of the different air pressure. I tried to play it cool, but when the stewardess walked by and noticed me casually dabbing my fluorescent blue hands with gel sanitizer and a tissue, as my seat-mate looked on in abject horror, she ran away and returned with a fistful of wet naps. For the following three days or so it looked like I had killed a smurf with my bare hands. The airport is so small in Erzurum that you have to walk the tarmac to get to the terminal, making me feel like some kind of rock star. My fellow Fulbrighter Ben, who teaches English at the university, picked me up and we took a walk around the city.

Erzurum's most famous monument, and my favorite as

well, is the Twin Minarets Madrasa. A lot of monuments in the region are not Ottoman but from the earlier Seljuk period. The Seljuks were a Muslim dynasty originating from Iran. After visiting Miniaturk, I have been really excited to go further east and discover more Seljuk architecture, as they tend to favor the blue tiles and fancy stone carving more than their Ottoman counterparts. I took the picture to the left from the old city walls. I thought you could get a good feel for the snowy peaks that completely surround the city in this shot.

Ben and I also had a chance to experience the Erzurum House Restaurant, which is an enormous restaurant composed of several restored Ottoman houses whose interior walls have been selectively demolished in order to create this huge and weird complex of nooks and crannies. The inside is over-the-top, decorated with Ottoman antiques, as well as some "modern" paintings, one of which I have pictured here. An exceptionally talented artist depicted here an Ottoman noble on his horse, accompanied by his

groom, dropped into a psychedelic checkered vortex. Groovy, man. You should also be happy to know that I discovered this painting was part of a series once I turned the corner.

The talk itself went pretty well. It was hosted in this very large lecture hall, much bigger than I was expecting. And in the end about 100 people showed up for the lecture, which I was also not really expecting. Things got a little hairy when I was informed that during the talk I would have to say two or three sentences, and then pause for a translator to repeat whatever I had just said into Turkish. I panicked, because this would instantly double the time of my presentation, which I had originally planned to be about 40 minutes. The lecture's organizer seemed not too phased by this development, but as I was giving the talk I realized that if I went through with the whole thing as planned it would have taken more than two hours, and during the talk I skipped a few parts just to make it shorter. I knew that if I would get bored giving a presentation for two hours, it would surely feel like slow torture for the audience. So, in the end I clocked in around an hour and fifteen minutes. All in all, it went pretty well!

Termal

2009-03-10T17:47:00.009-04:00

As I have mentioned before, finding a way to beat the winter blues is a bit tough. When I complained to Savas that I did not like skiing, he suggested with a completely straight face that I go hunting. And this is the man who prefers to take pictures of his friends taking pictures of mushrooms to actually killing a live animal. I guess everyone thinks that Americans love nothing better than to take out a pigeon or two.

Ceylan and I decided to skip across the Marmara and go to Termal, a forested spa resort featuring natural hot springs. Loved by the Romans, as well as the legendary Ataturk himself, Termal is a cheap and quick way to escape Istanbul for immediate relaxation. The place sits in the middle of an Arboreum, where you can take strolls before or after your spa session. The resort also boasts two hotels, an excellent restaurant, two hamams, and a spa complex that includes an open pool and sauna.

While most hamam facilities in Istanbul require a furnace to heat the water, the sauna and the hamams in Termal tap into the natural hot springs, which can be seen flowing under one of the hamams. The water is supposed to be very healthy because it is loaded with minerals. Many sick people come to Termal simply for th

e benefits and healing properties of the water. Bathing in the hot water is supposed to cure eye and foot sickness, as well as rheumatism.

I read in a guide book that the fresh trout in Termal is worth the trip. And boy was it fresh! When Ceylan and I sat down in the restaurant for lunch, we asked the man if they had shish kebab. "No kebab," he said, "We are out. Only fish. Very fresh!" We opted for the fish, as it was the only thing they had, and our waiter immediately bolted out the door and headed for what I thought had been a decorative pond in front of the restaurant. The pond apparently also functions as a giant trout tank! He grabbed a net and wrangled us up two very alive fish, threw them in a bucket, and handed them to a young man who ran off to the kitchen. When he headed back for the door Ceylan and I scurried back to our table, as if we had not been staring at him with our faces squashed up against the window. In about 45 minutes, our fishies reappeared deliciously baked on two white plates. Awesome!

I have heard of flower clocks before, but this is the first time I have seen a garden calendar. The gardeners have planted some shrubbery in the shape of Tukey at the top, placed Termal's name in the middle, and at the bottom it reads, 20 Subat 2009, "Subat" being February in Turkish. What killed me was that the "20" was situated in a little planter box on its own, and it is obvious that the landscapers have to cart out a new number every day. It makes me wonder if they have 31 plants in boxes out back in the garden shed.

I also have a picture of myself standing in front of the spa but Ceylan just ended up looking cuter. You can see behind her the hotel, the forest, the open pool, and the roof of the indoor sauna. Can you see the steam coming off of the pool from the hot mineral water? It was crazy swimming outside in the middle of February!

Just a nice picture of steam rising from one of the chimneys in the indoor sauna. The sauna area was very much like a normal hamam, except it was mixed, for men and women. Ceylan and I just ended up sitting in the "family salon." for most of the time.

Going to a Football Match

2009-03-10T11:44:00.012-04:00

Oftentimes Americans, even the most devout Red Sox or Eagles fans, can't fathom the supreme importance of football in many countries throughout the world. For many, football is much more than a spectator-sport; it is a way of life, a secular religion. Their pantheon consists of sweaty, head-butting gods who are capable of some pretty sweet jump-kicks. It is no different in Turkey, where football mania is alive and well. As I mentioned before, the three most famous Turkish teams are all based in Istanbul: Besiktas, Galata Saray, and Fenerbahce. There are also other famous teams in Turkey, but the names begin to be get uncreative, simply havingthe word "Spor" added to the name of the home town: BursaSpor, TrabzonSpor, BalikesirSpor, ErzurumSpor, etc. When I first came to Istanbul, it was obvious that I needed to "pick one," the same way I felt obligated in my Florida youth to decide if I wanted to be a Gator or a Seminole. I obviously know absolutely nothing about the actual sport of football, so I decided to make my choice based on the teams' colors:

Besiktas: Black and White, Eagle. Cool Mascot, but black and white aren't even colors. A little too drab for me!

Galata Saray: Red and Yellow, Lion. Nice combination, but especially with the lion mascot it smacks way too much of Gryffindor.

Fenerbahce: Blue and Yellow, Yellow Canary. Nice, crisp color combination. The canary is cute

as well. Also, I like the name, "Fener" is Lighthouse, and "Bahce" is Garden. I think we have a winner!

Therefore, for completely arbitrary reasons, I have elected to be a supporter of Fenerbahce. This especially became important when applying for my ATM card with a local bank here. The teller turned to me and said, "Which team do you want?" I blinked at her, "What do you mean, team?" She gave me a hard look and said, "Your football team. Which one do you support? Our cards have the football teams' logos on them." "Can't I just get a plain card?" I asked. She shook her head no, "It is possible, but the regular cards take two weeks longer than

the team cards to arrive. So just pick one."

Naturally, we had to go to a football match at least once while we are here. For goodness sakes, I pass the enormous Besiktas stadium everyday to go to my Turkish lesson! A couple of weeks

ago some friends came into town and we decided to go to a match between Besiktas and TrabzonSpor. This actually was a pretty big match, as TrabzonSpor has been the only team outside of the big Istanbul three to win the big national cup. I was very excited to go, as Besiktas fans are notoriously crazy and enthusiastic. To infiltrate the match, I would have to blend in as best I could as a Besiktas fanatic. I went so far as to paint my nails black and silver, and I bought a Besiktas scarf. It is funny how seat assignments matter in some places and not in others. While in Turkey seat assignments are very important on buses and movie theaters, which is an unfamiliar concept to Americans, at major sporting events, the seat numbers on our tickets are virtually meaningless. No matter, we actually ended up standing in an area better than what we originally had on our tickets anyway. We sat right next to the famous section of the Carsi, the most hard-core Besiktas fan group. My friend Tracey told me that the Carsi (in Turkish translating to "core" or "center") is a card-carrying group of fanatics who gather every game at

the Kazan Pub in Besiktas and then walk together past the Dolmabahce Palace to the stadium. You know they are crazy because on their logo the A in Carsi is the anarchy symbol. Apparently, in order to join this group one has to demonstrate memorization of all 200 or so Besiktas songs. That was the one thing that surprised me at the game; everyone was singing the entire time, no matter what. The Carsi songs are also known to be very political, criticizing the government, poltical events, and sometimes even themselves. I don't think that the fans are supposed to be that dangerous, but I was surprised to see that the small group of TrabzonSpor fans were roped off into their own area, and they were surrounded by five columns of empty seats and a physical barrier of police officers on both sides. I also noticed that at the end of the game as everyone was leaving the entire section of TrabzonSpor fans were forced to stay in their seats until the Besiktas fans had pretty well dispersed. I guess the police were being very cautious, and that it just isn't easy cheering for the opposing team at a home game in Istanbul. Watching the game was a lot of fun, especially because Ceylan actually knows a lot about football and could explain a lot of what was going on to me. The weather was freezing though, and it began to rain at one point, so when the game ended in a tie, we were all ready to go home and get warm!

Emily's Kitchen: Stuffed Cabbage

2009-03-09T16:55:00.005-04:00

Before I even came to Istanbul, my favorite Turkish restaurant in Boston was Saray Restaurant on Comm Ave, near Boston University. Every time I went there, I would order their Lahana Dolmasi, or stuffed cabbage. It was SOOO good! Naturally, I had to try this one out for myself here in Turkey. When people usually hear the word "dolma," they exclusively think of stuffed grape leaves. But the word "dolma" itself actually only means "stuffed" and it can be applied to many kinds of edible wrappings. The concept of stuffing a mixture of rice and meat into other food is huge in Turkish cooking. You can stuff grape-leaves, peppers, eggplant, mussels (my favorite!!), and even cabbage, which is what I am dealing with tonight. Wrapping the meat mixture with the cabbage leaves was surprisingly easy. And I loved how healthy it was; cabbage is supposed to be very good for you. I topped off my dolmas with a home-made tomato sauce and low-fat yogurt. Yum!

Istanbul Modern

2009-02-15T06:49:00.011-05:00

The Istanbul Modern is the new kid on the museum block in Istanbul. Situated on the Bosphorus in a converted ware-house, this is the place to check out what the contemporary art scene in Turkey has to offer. I went to go see this
new exhibition "In Praise of Shadows." Ceylan has been working at the museum as part of her research, so I wanted to check out what she has been up to! The exhibition was pretty cool; some of the artists fit into the theme of shadows pretty well, like the art of Kara Walker (right), whose black and white cut outs from the Civil War era allow us to indulge in horrific scenes that evoke sub-conscious shame, pleasure, and an embarrassing fascination with all things disturbing. They also had a lot of really cool old animated movies. I spent hours watching cut-out puppets perform the Magic Flute! Other artists just barely make it into the shadow category--pencil drawings of naked women superimposed onto drawings of factories? Anyway, I thought it was cool that the exhibition is held in conjunction with a section on "Karagoz" a folk tradition of Turkish shadow puppet theater. Hopefully I can go see a live presentation later this semester.

Bulgaria

2009-02-15T06:48:00.014-05:00

**Maggie has pointed out that I did not mention the large amounts of fried cheese consumed, as well as a random friend we made from Australia. This oversight was unfortunate, and I want to clarify that our diets pretty much consisted of beer, pork, and dairy products, which were usually covered in batter of some kind. Heavenly

First, I want to apologize for not posting much to the blog lately. I am really excited because in the middle of March I am going to be giving a talk on calligraphy in Erzurum (a snowy and remote city in north-eastern Turkey, near the border to Georgia and Armenia) at Ataturk University. Because most of my audience will not be native English speakers, I need to write up my talk beforehand for translation purposes, and I have been entrenched with this task for the last several days.

That being said, I want to relate to you my first adventure outside of Turkey, to the magical world of Bulgaria. I have wanted to go there, because I have never been to "Eastern Europe" before, and the border is only a four hour drive west from Istanbul. It is because of the latter that many ex-pats living in Istanbul go to Bulgaria, to renew their Turkish tourist visa which only lasts for 3 months. When my friend Maggie came to visit, we decided to make a weekend of it. I am really glad Maggie came with me, not only because she is wonderful company, of course, but also because she is fluent in Russian. Bulgarian is extremely close to Russian, and for the most part Maggie could understand everything that was said to us and was able to read all of the signs. Without her, I would have been pretty lost, as I cannot read the Cyrilic alphabet worth a damn (although Maggie kindly taught me a little bit on the bus ride there).

Maggie and I only went to the city of Plovdiv. We gave Sofya, the capital, a miss because we heard it was large but generally unpretty with big white concrete buildings being the majority of the scenery. Plovdiv, in comparison, was an exceedingly charming town full of history and culture. There are some neat Roman ruins there, as well as some nice Ottoman mosques. In the 19th century, Plovdiv was the center of the Bohemian revival of Bulgarian painting and music, and there are many cute house-museums of famous Bulgarian artists and musicians. Once again, Maggie and I were hopelessly off-season; we heard Plovdiv is really kicking in the spring and summer with cool outdoor music festivals. I am getting a tad frustrated though when people always question my going places in the dead of winter, insisting that it would be better I go in the spring. It is an obvious fact that every travel destination in Turkey is optimal in the spring and summer, but on the other hand I am only in Turkey for so long, and I refuse to sit in my house for the length of winter. It would be too depressing. So, Maggie and I got on our bus at the Istanbul Otogar, and set off on our way to shoo away our winter blues with churches, beer, and pork products across the border.

Arriving in Plovdiv in the evening, we settled into our very comfy hostel and headed out to find some grub. We went to this restaurant that had about a 20-page menu, most of the items either being meat or alcoholic, and, in rare cases, both! I opted for the gigantic skillet of pork, which was brought to our table still sizzling on its platter. (left) Because I cannot readily obtain pork in Turkey, as it is a Muslim country, I was, no pun intended, in hog heaven.

The next morning, after a hearty breakfast of tea and toast, we headed out to tour the sites of the city. Check out what we found:

-->>
There were a lot of random murals on the sides of buildings, all in a vague Cubist/Futurist style. I suppose this one is a testament to culture and industry? Why not, eh?

<<-- Plovdiv was the capital of the Eastern European province of the Ottoman empire, so there are two significant mosques in the city from the Ottoman period. Unfortunately, we could not find a way to get inside of this one, but I still really liked the zig-zag design in brick on the minaret.

Maggie and I also saw houses plopped right on top of Roman walls, making for a very picturesque site. There were also giant Soviet monuments, Jesus hovering over Rio-style. There were also beautiful pastel murals in Orthodox churches that any Art Nouveau movement would be proud of, and many nice paintings featuring the local scenery, including my favorite mosque!

Miniaturk

2009-02-13T05:15:00.006-05:00

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.

The Magic of Muze Kart

2009-02-09T04:33:00.003-05:00

They said it could not be done.

But, once again, Ceylan and I happened upon this baby by blind chance. When I first got to Istanbul, I saw signs everywhere for the Muze Kart. "Muze" being the Turkish word for museum, I figured this was probably something I would want to look into. The card is actually really sweet. For 10 Turkish lira for university students, you can have free entrance to a ton of museums in Turkey for a whole year. I got really excited, but I found out that the card is only available for Turkish citizens, and that even my residence permit would not be good enough. This was a major bummer, as museum entrance fees have kicked up lately, some to 20 lira for the big ones like Hagia Sophia, and there are no student discounts. I have been paying a ton of money just in museum fees. Last week, we had a Fulbright meeting, where we once again lamented to the office staff that we could not attain the long-sought-after Muze Kart. Sobered by the fact there was nothing we could do, we just let it go.

Then comes Friday, when Ceylan and I go to the ticket booth at the entrance of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. We are buying our tickets per usual, and then I casually mention to the ticket sales guy that we are students hoping we might get a discount. "Oh? you are students," he said. "Which university?" Ceylan flashed her Sabanci University ID, and I showed him my card from Tomer, my Turkish language school, since it is technically a branch of Ankara University. The guy looked unimpressed with my ID, but he clearly felt bad giving Ceylan a discount and not me, so I think he let it slide. Then, out of nowhere, he says "Hey? Do you guys want Muze Karts?" I almost dropped my wallet. Now I can say I know exactly what Charlie Bucket felt like when he noticed a glint of Willy Wonka's last ticket in his chocolate bar. "Wh-wh-at did you say?" I gasped. Then he actually tried to sell it to us. "It's great! You get one and you can go to all of the museums for free for one year. And normally it is 20, but for you guys it is only 10 lira!" I nodded, trying not to look too excited, and the man gestured for us to go to the other window where his colleague would take care of us. I started moving over to the next window with Ceylan, who was a little confused about what was happening. I hissed in a low voice, "We are getting Muze Karts! Just be cool, because this is happening!" Ceylan laughingly told me later she was surprised I didn't pinch her arm. I felt like we were pulling off a bank robbery with none of the other customers the wiser. I glanced over my shoulder, saw a woman and her young child, and smiled at them, thinking "That's right, Emily. Just keeeeep it up. Just keep cool, and you could actually get away with this." In about two minutes, this guy had made us our IDs, and after paying I practically ran from the booth, praying they would let us get away before they realized they had made a mistake. I just made it to the turn-styles when a security guard called to me. "Oh no!" I thought, "I've almost gotten away!" "Excuse me ma'am," the guard interjected, "but if you want to use your Muze Kart to go through the turn-styles, there is a special circle you have to tap it on." Flustered, I slapped my new golden ticket onto the circle, and I rushed through the turn-style, loudly exclaiming to the guard, "Gosh! That is SOO easy!" I was hoping my large gestures and noises would distract him from the fact that I was a foreigner who had no business owning a Muze Kart. He laughed and agreed, and I waved back to him, then turned around and ran towards my new life, a life with Muze Kart.

*As a side note to this story, I heard through the grapevine, AKA my roommate, that there are new rules put into motion lately where foreigners who were students could also get a Muze Kart. But when or if these rules will be enforced was unknown. Therefore, I would prefer to continue to believe that I actually got away with something.

Bursa

2009-02-09T04:32:00.040-05:00

A while ago, Ceylan and I went to Bursa together, where we were met by our fellow Fulbrighter Rebecca from Ankara. Bursa is to the south of Istanbul, across the Marmara, and is one of the largest cities in Turkey. We really enjoyed our stay there, because Bursa has all of the assets of a large city, but retains a certain local charm that sometimes gets lost in the glitz of Istanbul and the politics of Ankara.

To get to Bursa, we had to take a larger sea ferry. It was kind of like flying in an airplane, with inflight service, and window seats, but we were just hopping across the Marmara. Bursa is not right on the coast, it is about an hour south from the sea, so we got dropped off at the port coastal city of Yalova. My Fodor's guide led Ceylan and I to believe that it would be a snap to get off the ferry and find a bus going to Bursa, but that was not exactly the case. We wandered around Yalova for about 20 minutes, asking random people on the street for a bus to Bursa. Old women tried to point us in the direction of the bus station, but I guess we looked so confused that a young man finally just offered to take us there himself. At the bus station, we were put on a very sketchy, but cheap, unmarked bus. I figured it was safe because we were surrounded by Turkish people, so this obviously wasn't some kind of scam run on foreigners. Sure enough, it took us right to the bus station in Bursa, which was, coincidentally, right next to the local IKEA, which has taken Turkey by storm.

Most people know doner kebab, the late-night food of champions. Iskender Kebap, which consists of doner meat, usually lamb, on top of bread, and then topped with tomato sauce and yogurt, is a specialty of Bursa. In fact, I avoided having Iskender Kebab in Istanbul because someone told me that I should save my first time for the best Iskender in Turkey. Reportedly, one of the best places to go is this family-run restaurant on one of the main drags in Bursa. It is a total hole-in-the-wall, but I knew it had to be good when I saw a line of people, mostly Turks, snaking out the front door and along the sidewalk. It kind of reminded me of the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. There is not really a menu, because there is only one thing that they make there. When the waiter comes to your table, he only asks if you want a "big" or a "small" order. From our seats, we noticed a waiter wandering from table to table. He was carrying a frying pan full of this grayish looking liquid, and if you nodded in assent, he would pour it on top of your Iskender Kebap. I asked the boy what exactly was in this secret sauce of his, and he replied that is was a mixture of butter and the animal fat drippings from the doner. Now, I am all for the Turkish experience, but I just couldn't go that far, and I opted out on the heart attack in a pan. I do have to say that the Iskender was DELICIOUS, and that I was definitely not disappointed.

Like Edirne, Bursa was also a capital city of the Ottomans before Istanbul, and as such it has some very nice historical mosques to see. I fell in love with one called the Yesil Camii (Green Mosque), so named for its green tiles. To me, the Yesil Camii is by far one of the most beautiful mosques I have seen, ever. I really could not get over the bling bling materials (gold and marble as far as the eye could see), and the exquisite craftsmanship. To the left, I am showing just one of the several carved marble arches on the exterior of the building. Every arch had a completely different design, which meant serious $$$$.

A really nice calligraphic inscription over the main entrance.

I tried to get this picture perfectly centered by putting it on the floor, but, o well, close enough.

The Yesil Cami has some of the nicest tiles in all of Turkey. The place is practically wall-papered with tiles. What really impressed me was the range of different kind of techniques being employed, from hexagonal tiles overlaid with gold paint...

...to colored tiles individually cut and then fitted together in a pattern, like a mosaic. This is the ceiling of a smaller room off the main prayer hall, and when I took this picture it was nearly black inside. I could only capture this image with the flash on my camera, and when I had a better look at it later on my computer, I nearly passed out because of how nice it is!

I was actually just trying to get a good picture of the tiles, and I didn't even notice the prayer beads in the foreground. I think in the end it could be a very nice postcard!

Center of the prayer hall.

As I wandered around the mosque, I noticed a balcony above the main entrance, and I assumed that this was most likely the sultan's loge, or, in other words, the private viewing box for the leader of the empire. I figured if the common space was covered with ridiculously nice tiles, then the sultan's private suite had to have even better stuff. I snuck around and noticed the door leading upstairs was locked, so I found the equivalent of a sexton and offered him a small contribution to the mosque, and presto-chango, we were up-stairs in the loge! Ceylan and Rebecca could tell you that I was so excited I was almost hyperventilating. When I am in a place that really gets me going, I go into this weird trance, and just move around and take picture after picture, without paying too much attention to the people around me.

We also marched up this massive hill to find this other mosque that turned out to be rather unimpressive, save for its cemetery out-back, which was very quiet and picturesque. Here you can see rows upon rows of Ottoman graves...

...but to me, the most interesting part were these stones kind of heaped up in a corner of the cemetery. I passed them once, not giving them much notice, until I saw a figure on one of the stones! The blocks of marble were covered with Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and figures in Roman dress. Clearly, this cemetery was not only used by the Ottomans! I thought this stone was especially pretty, with the angel and the inscription in Latin.

Oscar the Kitteh

2009-02-09T04:32:00.011-05:00

December Trip Part 4: Ephesus

2009-02-08T11:40:00.016-05:00

After Pergamum, Tracey, Olga, and I got on a bus and traveled to Izmir, where we stayed with another Fulbrighter named Deirdre. From Izmir, Olga and I visited the ancient site of Ephesus. This was our last and most impressive stop on our whirlwind tour of ancient Turkey. Ephesus was a huge capital and port city, and was home to the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Ephesus also boasts a cemetery for Roman gladiators, and a huge library and theater. The town was a very important Biblical site, as it was a stop for St. Paul on his conversion tour, possibly where St. John wrote his gospel, and supposedly the last resting place of the Virgin Mary. Olga and I had some of our own divine luck; it had been pouring all day, and it immediately cleared up as we entered the site, and then the rain came right back down literally as we exited the parking lot.

This is a marker along one of the ancient streets. It is obviously Hermes, what with his winged feet and his snake wand (in the business we call it a caduceus). This is the "Holy Road" where all of the temples stood, so Hermes is probably leading the ram to a sacrifice.

Ephesus has a lot of really amazing monuments, but one of the most remarkable things about this city is how much of the day-to-day ancient city is still preserved: the paved streets, market stalls, public baths and latrines, private homes, temples, government buildings, etc. There are not too many places that make you feel like you are actually walking around in an ancient Roman or Greek city, instead of trying to recreate it all in your mind using a floor-plan. It is kind of creepy, like walking around in a ghost town. The only other place I have felt like that is in Pompeii.

Once again, the combination of old stuff and cats, especially kittens, really cannot be beat.

Olga and I snuck past some "Do Not Enter" signs and crawled into an old hypocaust. Hypocausts are a Roman system of central heating for baths, whereby the floors would be raised by columns and the hot air from a furnace was allowed to pass underneath the floors and behind the walls and up through small chimneys, thus heating the rooms without emitting any smoke into them. This picture is behind the scenes where the workers would have been feeding the furnace in the hypocaust. It was probably a dark, smoke-filled place when it was in use.

The beautiful facade of the Library at Ephesus was reconstructed in the last century, and it is probably the most famous monument from the site.

This is the huge stadium at Ephesus, which could hold something like 25,000 people. It is believed to be one of the largest open-air stadium in the ancient world. There were gladiator matches and theatrical performances. Olga and I were really excited to hear that in this very theater St. Paul incited a riot amongst the Ephesians (to whom he eventually wrote a letter, now a book of the Bible). Apparently all of the ruckus started when the city's silversmiths felt that Paul was talking too much smack about their statues of Artemis, questioning their divine nature. People got into a tizzy and rushed into the theater (Acts 19:23). The described scene sounds hilarious; most people didn't even know why they were there. For about 2 hours the crowd booed Paul and shouted slogans like "Artemis is Great!" Paul wanted to address the crowd, but his homeboys would not let him. The mob showed no signs of letting up until a municipality official had to break it up, saying that if everyone did not knock it off, everyone was going to jail for sedition. Paul was presumably kindly asked to leave as soon as possible. Now THAT is some Biblical history for ya. It sounds weird, but learning that was really special for me, because while I am a practicing Christian, I also have a healthy respect for archaeology. I have been to Israel and Palestine and I have visited holy sites like the Holy Sepulcher and the Church of the Nativity, but on some level those places didn't affect me as much because the skeptical archaeologist inside of me kept on thinking that we can never really know for sure that these were the exact spots where these events happened. But, the theater was as black as white as you could get; this was the theater were hundreds of angry people were practically calling for Paul's blood. Although it was an unpleasant scene, it is the most tangible Biblical site I have ever been to, and that really fed my imagination.

If you want to see any physical trace of the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, you have to go to the Isa Bey mosque, built in the 14th century. Apparently, the crews utilized the nice carved blocks of marble from the nearby ruin in the construction of the mosque.

Ephesus also has a nice archaeological museum. That is where I saw the very famous statue of the plentifully-breasted Artemis of Ephesus.

Photo Shoot!

2009-02-08T11:36:00.005-05:00

Ceylan and I visited the Istanbul Archaeological Museum on Friday, and it turns out we weren't the only ones interested in ancient sarcophogi! When we came out of the museum, we saw a high-end fashion shoot going on right outside of the doorway. Two models were standing in front of a Byzantine sarcophagus. Their hair and faces were covered with fine black netting, and they were wearing some beautiful black and white dresses. It was pretty stereotypical, with a ponytailed photographer in a leather jacket, various underlings holding lighting equipment and getting people coffee, and a middle-aged woman wearing all black calling the shots with a cigarette in her hand. My guess is that they were shooting for the new Vakko campaign. Vakko is one of the very few Turkish luxury houses, and I think that this was an ad for them because for the Fall/Winter campaign I saw billboards of models posing on top of Byzantine columns that also appeared to be in front of the Archaeological Museum, so I am guessing this is kind of a new marketing thing for them. Ceylan and I have both seen a lot of America's Next Top Model, and we couldn't help but notice that the models were not giving the photographer a lot of different poses, and they also weren't "smiling with their eyes". Tyra would be very disappointed.

"A Touch of Spice"

2009-01-31T18:53:00.029-05:00

On a Saturday night, my friend Felix invited me along to a film and panel program hosted by Bilgi University at a place called SantralIstanbul, which was in a cool restored factory, but way out in the middle of nowhere. We showed up and caught the end of this documentary about Turkey today and how it is dealing with human and civil rights, etc. The documentary was not nearly as interesting as the following panel discussion. The Belgian filmmakers had asked a few of the people from the movie to sit on a panel and talk about their experiences with the Turkish government. The audience, mostly Turkish, asked some very provocative questions, and at times the debate was heated and definitely bordered on the awkward. Quite a few people in the audience criticized the documentary for being more like a propaganda piece for the AKP, which is the current ruling party in Turkey, and highly criticized by some who feel that it supports Islamic causes too much.

Just listening to these foreign journalists and Turkish university students, the majority of the crowd, talk about current politics in Turkey and issues that clearly mattered a lot to them made me realize just how complex politics is in Turkey and how little I know, even though politics is happening all around me. I felt totally out of my element. One thing I did realize was how many labels were getting thrown around, "Islamist" and "socialist" and "Marxist" and "nationalist" and "conservative" and the "left," and I didn't really know what anybody meant when they were using them because I was trying to fit Turkish politics to what I know about American politics, which doesn't work at all because the American "left" and "right" is not the equivalent of the Turkish "right" and the "left," which I have heard many Turks complain doesn't even exist here. Two comments from people in the audience, however, really stuck with me. One person, a Belgian journalist now working in Istanbul, expressed his frustration that in Turkish politics there is a lot of discussion about highly symbolic issues such as women wearing the head-scarf in universities or people getting thrown into jail for criticizing Ataturk, but that he didn't hear enough talk about more direct problems in communities like homelessness, health care, domestic abuse, or unemployment and what was being done to solve these problems. The other comment was from a young Turkish women, who, kind of just thinking aloud, wondered why the Turkish government always passed laws concerning human rights, such as abolishing the death penalty, only because they want EU membership. She asked why the government doesn't just pass these measures to make their country a better place to live in, instead of just to get into the EU.

The debate was followed by a really delicious buffet dinner, where we got to mingle with everyone and talk some politics. After dinner, we sat down with dessert to watch another movie. It is a Greek film, and it's title in English is "A Touch of Spice." It came out about 7 years ago, and it is a somewhat biographical film about the director's experience growing up in

Istanbul as a Greek, and about his family being deported in the 1960s to Greece . It was a pretty emotional film about identity and trying to come to terms with the past. The story centers around the young son of the family, only 7 or so when deported, and about his adjustment to life in Greece and his return to modern Istanbul as an adult when his grandfather, who stayed behind in the city he loved, falls ill. The film is definitely thought-provoking and bitter-sweet. One of the family members laments, "In Turkey we were Greeks, but in Greece we are Turks." Apparently the film is very famous, and this was a really special experience because the program had managed to get the director to come for the screening and he got up and spoke before and after the film. It was obviously a special night for him because this was the first official screening of the film in Istanbul, which is in a way the audience for whom he had made the film in the first place. It was kind of cute because you could tell that this guy is a world-famous filmmaker but he was still really nervous to talk in front of the Turkish crowd and express his feelings about what had been done to him and his family. What was really amazing was how all of the comments from the audience were so warm and positive. One woman told the director how the movie has already become a big hit among certain circles in Turkey through the internet, and how this movie had changed all of the lives of the Turks who had seen it. The director got very emotional and it was really nice for me to witness a moment of such vulnerability and reconciliation, concerning events I had not even realized had happened until that night. It was definitely a feel-good moment.

Strolling Through Istanbul: Dolmabahçe Palace

2009-01-31T18:53:00.027-05:00

I have resolved to make a more concerted effort to see more of the historical sites in Istanbul, while they are available to me. My guide is Strolling Through Istanbul by John Freely and Hillary Sumner-Boyd, an excellent overview of the well-known Byzantine and Ottoman monuments, and some others that are more off the beaten path. The book is organized into 20-something "strolls" through various neighborhoods in Istanbul. I will try to do as many of them as I can. Although I have to say that they really shouldn't be termed "strolls," which is the word I would use to describe a leisurely, spring-time walk in the park with my boyfriend. When I go on these "strolls," I always feel like I am getting ready up for some sort of twisted and grueling art history survival course. I always pack my gear, and I have the list down to a fine science. Inside of my blue Jansport back-pack, I bring my Strolling Through Istanbul guide, camera, tripod, water, packed lunch, hand sanitizer, and another book to read on the bus to and from my destination. In my mind, my mission is to locate as many sites I can find using the guide, and enter and tour them as much as possible. My ultimate objective is to acquire pictures of the sites, the bread and butter of any art historian, because down the road if I am ever teaching a course or publishing a paper, it is highly beneficial to have your own photographs of everything since they are free, easily accessible, and there are no copyright issues. Accomplishing all of this, especially when you consider that I am trying to find sites that are NOT routinely visited by tourists, is a lot harder than you would think. Every site presents a new challenge. Sometimes the site is just straight-up closed, or is restricted, and you have to sweet-talk your way in there. Sometimes flash photography, or any photography at all, is prohibited. Sometimes finding a place is not terribly easy, and you have to ask a bunch of people on the street before you can reach your destination. Success depends on timing, and persistence. This ain't your gramammy's tour of historical monuments! So join me in the next couple months as I describe to you what it is like "working in the field," as they would say.

Our first stroll is the Dolmabahce Palace, a museum that poses no real challenges because it is one of the most visited sites in Istanbul. From the conquering of Istanbul in 1453, the Topkapi Palace was used as the royal residence of the Ottoman sultans. This was all the way until the 1856, when Sultan Abdulmecid moved the court to the newly-built Dolmabahce, located along the European shore of the Bosphorous. As opposed to the Topkapi, which is the ultimate example of classic royal Ottoman architecture, the Dolmabahce was clearly intended to compete with the great palaces of western Europe like Buckingham or Versailles. It featured all of the modern amenities of the time, and not only has a blend of Rococo, Baroque, and Neo-Classical styles, but also has some distinctly Ottoman qualities. For example, the public audience rooms and harem are still separated, and a Turkish hamam can be found in all of the living quarters. This palace is the residence of an Ottoman sultanate looking to modernize and align themselves with the major powers of Europe. It is not coincidental that 1856 was also the end of the Crimean War, where the Ottomans fought with the British and the French against Russia, and at the concluding Congress of Paris, the Ottoman Empire was included in the European family of nations. The palace is impressive, but in my opinion all of the gilding and Italian frescoes feels a little too over the top, even for a Baroque style. I heard that the interiors were designed by the same dude who did the Paris Opera House, so maybe that's why it felt to me a bit over-dramatic.

Ceylan and I had a really easy time getting in. In fact, we thought we would be charged the full fee to visit, 20 Turkish lira, because lately the government, quite lamely, has abolished student tickets for some of the big tourist places like Topkapi and Hagia Sophia. But the guy at the ticket booth took one look at us and said, "Hey, are you students? Where you from? Ok, it is only 3 lira for you guys!" We were so excited! So we shuffled in and waited for the tours. You can only see the palace with a tour, which is super annoying because they rush you through, and I didn't have enough time as I wanted to look at everything and take pictures. The Dolmabahce has a really nice collection of famous Turkish painters from the 19th-20th centuries, and I barely saw any of them because the guards yell at you if you straggle behind your group. This was especially frustrating because the Dolmabahce, as it was the royal residence, has by far some of the most famous examples of these artists' work. Am I a criminal for wanting to get a closer look at the best stuff from Osman Hamdi Bey or Fausto Zonaro? Heck no!

The outer gardens of the saray (palace), leading up to the main entrance.

This is the famous "crystal staircase," where all of the banisters are made from Baccarat crystal.

19th-century Ottoman taste goes terribly wrong. They were kind of doomed from the beginning though, as these tiles are from Britain, which is not exactly the pretty-tile capital of the world. Funny to me that the Ottomans would prefer to import such hideously-colored ceramics when their culture was responsible for the most beautiful tiles in the world.

After the Ottoman empire fell, Ataturk converted the palace for his state residence in Istanbul, which is where he died on November 10, 1938 at 9:05 AM. A little creepily, all of the clocks in the palace no longer work and are permanently set at 9:05.

The sultan's hamam, which is crazy nice. The entire thing is covered in alabaster, which is rare and difficult to carve. It was probably my favorite room in the palace.

I believe that this is nothing less than a secret booze cabinet. At first I thought it was a calligraphy set in there, but there were definitely ready shot glasses and bottles for what seemingly looked to be spirits inside. All of this is cleverly disguised as a set of six books, all of which have French titles, like a "History of Agriculture" and stuff like that.

One of the most beautiful assets to the palace is the constant use of crystal braziers and chandeliers. The crystals are imported from England, and when lit, are really pretty.

The main hall for stately gatherings. It was absolutely huge, and I have been to my fair share of European palaces. The chandelier hanging in the center, unfortunately not lit up that day, is supposed to be the largest crystal chandelier in the world, weighing 4 and a half tons.

Now that you get everywhere by car and bus, people forget about how important water transport was in Istanbul back in the day. The water entrance to the palace was used quite a lot, and I am including a painting by Fausto Zonaro, an Italian who was the court painter for the Ottomans in the 19th century, of the sultan greeting Kaiser Wilhelm at the docks, although the painting is looking south while my photo is looking north. Kaiser Wilhelm really seemed to have liked the Ottomans a lot judging by all of the stuff I keep on finding that he gifted to the Ottoman empire, especially giant clocks, like the one in the clock tower in Izmir.

A Turkish soldier guards the entrance to the dock, and, like in Britain, he is not allowed to move, so, like in Britain, tourists take advantage of this fact.

The room where Ataturk died. I don't know why, but this was a really cool thing for me to see.

The Dolmabahce architects loved crystal so much, they made a glass viewing pavilion and filled it with crystal. Ceylan strikes a pose in front of the fountain.

December Trip Part 3: Balikesir and the Red Courtyard in Bergama

2009-01-30T06:53:00.016-05:00

Our next stop after Troy was Pergamum, but Olga and I made a small detour to Balikesir, a land-locked city about two hours south of the Marmara. It was a little out of the way, but I wanted to see my friend Tracey in his natural habitat. Tracey is also a Fulbrighter, teaching English at the local university. We stayed at his apartment, which was ridiculously large and furnished with tons of bizarre art (turquoise elephants and clowns??), and Tracey even took us to his local sketchy dive bar. The owner was very nice, and let us stay after it closed. We drank a few beers in a dark room, lit only be the soft glow of a television playing non-stop music videos. At one point, we had an interesting moment lost in translation. The owner and his friend were admiring all of the female singers in the music videos, so when Enrique Iglesias came on the screen, I felt it was my chance to represent the ladies and admire his attractiveness. In Turkish, there is an adjective meaning "good-looking" exclusively used for men, like the English word "handsome." I had forgotten it, and I was asking the owner to help me remember it when all of a sudden he acted a little startled and said, slowly, "We are not gay, yani!" Apparently my asking for the word for beautiful for a man to describe Enrique was taken by our friends to mean that I was asking how they themselves felt about hotty Enrique. They started to explain that being gay was against their religion, not that they had much against it otherwise. They also kept on slapping Tracey on the back saying in English "Tracey is our friend, but we LIKE you!!!" We finally managed to explain the confusion, but not the word I was looking for. We had a good time, but had to leave once it got too sketchy.

Olga and I managed to convince Tracey to accompany us for a day trip to Pergamum, but getting there was actually a little harder than I thought. I had not pre-planned our journey from Balikesir to Pergamum, becacuse I figured that they were two larger cities that were connected by a major road, and only about two hours apart by bus. I was wrong. Now, it may seem crazy that my plan to get to Pergamum solely relied on my brief glancing at a map in my Fodor's guide, but let me say here that traveling in Turkey is not exactly like traveling in Europe or America, where you really have to have everything worked out in advance. In Turkey, it is sometimes useless and even counter-productive to pre-plan a vacation because nothing ever works out just like you planned it to, but it does work out. All of my experiences so far has led me to believe that people here are very honest and willing to help out whenever I need it, and tend to know way more than I do about how to get things done. So I just show up and ask.

When we were at the bus station in Balikesir, every single bus agency told us that taking a bus directly to Pergamum would be "impossible," and that our only option was to take a bus to Izmir down south and then back north to Pergamum, which would have been some serious back-tracking. I was getting frustrated and in the process of marching out of the bus station when a man called out to me, "Are you going to Izmir??" It was late at night and this was a strange man yelling at me in a bus station, but I was temporarily blinded by frustration so I thought, "oh what the hell." "No, I am NOT going to Izmir, I am going to PERGAMUM, but that isn't possible APPARENTLY," I spat out, trying to sound as sarcastic as possible in Turkish. He said to me, "Oh, Pergamum? That is easy to get to! Every morning there is a minibus that comes to the station here every hour. Just get on it, and it will take you there!" I thanked the man kindly for his advice, but judging that I had no idea who he was, I didn't take him all too seriously. That was when Olga and I met up with Tracey on the city bus in Balikesir. I related to him our problem, and asked him for his advice. Tracey wasn't sure how to get to Pergamum himself, but he figured the director of his department might, so he called him with his cellphone. His director picked up, apparently in the middle of a class, at 8 o'clock in the evening. Tracey told him about our problem, and his director immediately turned to his full class of students and relayed to them the information, and asked for their opinion. Apparently one kid in the back was from Bergama, and confirmed that this was in fact the best way to get there. So, now that Tracey's director's student from Bergama had confirmed that the guy just hanging out at the bus station was actually right, we decided to show up at the station the next morning and look for a minibus that was supposedly going to be there. Welcome to traveling in Turkey.

We showed up the next morning, and there it was. The driver nodded when I asked him if I could get to Pergamum from his bus, so we hopped on. About 20 minutes later, the driver started the ignition and we were on our way. After an hour, we pulled into this remote village and the driver turned to us and explained in Turkish that we had to get off his minibus. "But where will we go?" I sputtered. He gestured across the dirt road, where there was another minibus waiting, turned in the opposite direction. "Just tell him where you want to go," our driver said. We did, and we did this weird minibus switch two more times, each in an even more remote-looking village among rolling hills and sleepy meadows. On the last minibus, the extremely nice driver trundled into what looked to be a larger city. He turned to us and said, "ok, this is Bergama, where do you want to go?" We told him the ancient ruins, and he dropped us off next to a busy road, gesturing for us to walk down into the old city. We walked in the general direction he gestured for about 10 minutes and found a cab stand. That was where we bargained with a local taxi driver to take us to the top of the hill to see Pergamum, but not before we saw the Red Courtyard in the city below.

The Red Courtyard is usually passed over in favor for its way cooler cousin the ancient ruins of Pergamum, but we had a great time there and I thought it was a really interesting site. The Red Courtyard was basically a huge pagan temple, the last built before the Romans accepted Christianity as the official state religion in the fourth century CE. After this, the temple was converted into a basilica dedicated to St. John. Now, it is just a super neat ruin.

The site is called the Red Courtyard for the exposed red bricks one can now see.

An ancient Byzantine/Roman sarcophagus. A sarcophagus is ALWAYS a for-sure guarantee that a site was Christian, for at least one point, because Islamic burial customs strictly forbid bodies to be buried above ground. According to Islamic law, a body must be interred in the ground.

The basilica was flanked by these really interesting and large round structures. One is now a local mosque, and the other has been restored, but was closed when we got there. They are probably the largest intact domed spaces in the Roman world, so that was pretty exciting

One of the coolest things about this site was all of the different layers of time that we kept on finding. I knew from my guide book that this place was a Roman pagan temple, then a Christian basilica, and then a local mosque, but I also came across tomb-stones written in Hebrew. I was very excited. I cannot read Hebrew, but the date at the bottom, 5642, is in the Jewish lunar calendar, and it's Gregorian equivalent is 1881. So there was obviously an active Jewish community living in Bergama in the 19th century.

There are many remains from the pagan temple, especially statues. I thought this was really great because at more famous sites, the statuary is usually carted off to the local ethnographic or archaeological museum, and to get a complete picture of the site, the visitor is forced to visit both the ruins in situ and the artifacts at the museum to reconstruct how the place actually looked. Here, the statues were just lying around. These are super interesting, as there were many marble monumental statues dressed in Roman garb but donning Pharoanic head-gear, which has lead archaeologists to theorize that this was a temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis.

The basilica itself was absolutely massive, and it was truly a feat of engineering, considering that it was done in brick, not the most time-tested of materials, and how much of the building still stands. The basilica obviously had massive arches spanning along the roof, and over the doorway, the middle of which has collapsed now.

Like our Temple of Trajan in Pergamum's acropolis, the building of this basilica involved a lot of smoke and mirrors. Back in the day, all of the walls were completely covered in marble, covering up the less-expensive brick, but it has all fallen away now. Only a few examples of decorated marble are still attached to the walls.

On each side of the altar was a massive tower that had a winding staircase going up about five or six stories. I tried to climb the staircase, but the bricks were badly eroded and it was pretty impossible to climb up more than twenty feet or so. I took this picture sitting in my little nook looking up the shaft, with the crumbling stair spiraling around. In my nook, I spotted some oldp painted plaster that had been fixed to the wall above a door. It looked original, and that is when I spotted some writing. As Olga and I tried to decipher it, Tracey exclaimed, "Jeez! climbing up Roman stairwells, deciphering ancient languages, I feel like I am in an Indiana Jones movie with you guys!" If only he had known how happy those words made me.

Turkey and Gaza Continued (Davos)

2009-01-30T04:20:00.003-05:00

I just posted last night a short blurb (see below) about the reactions of Turks to the situation in Gaza. Just this morning, I see posted on CNN.com an article about how the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed offstage at the World Economic Forum being held in Davos, Switzerland. The PM was having a particularly heated debate with the Israeli President Shimon Peres. Erdogan got angry because he felt he was not allowed to speak for the same amount of time as Peres, and he seemed to get particularly riled when Peres commented that the blame for the invasion of Gaza lay soley on the shoulders of Hamas.

One of the interesting parts about the article was about how a massive amount of people gathered at the Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul to greet Erdogan home, waving Turkish and Palestinian flags, and holding signs, one saying "Davos Conqueror." This group of people were obviously very proud of their PM and felt that he had said to the Israeli President what has needed to be said for the last 3 weeks. Also, if you watch the video accompanying the article, I was struck to hear the journalist also mention the minute of silence for Gaza that Erdogan had ordered for all public schools in Turkey. This minute of silence probably extended beyond schools and to all government offices, and as I mentioned in my blog post below, I had participated in this silence when Ceylan and I were at the Ministry of Education offices in Istanbul.

The international journalists jumped all over this exchange at Davos because it is unusual to have the heads of state so publicly lose their tempers at one another. This was not exactly a Nikita Khrushchev shoe-banging incident, but apparently it was kind of awkward. It was also interesting that this exchange occured at an economic forum, demonstrating that even if you discuss the economy, politics is never far behind.

You can find the CNN article here.

Also, if you want a Turkish take on things, here is a similar article from the Hurriyet Daily News, an English-speaking newspaper in Turkey. Keep in mind this paper is slanted for an expatriate/diplomat readership.

Leaving a Comment on the Blog Easier Now

2009-01-30T04:08:00.004-05:00

Dear Blog-Readers,

Many of you have mentioned to me that you have wanted to post a comment to a post before, but you are not sure how to. The problem was that you had to be a registered member of blogger to leave a comment, and I realize that would have been a pain for a lot of you. I don't know a ton about blogger yet, since this is my first blog, but I started poking around in my blog setting today and I realized I could reset who can post to the blog. For now, I have changed the settings so that anyone can post to the blog if they want. I have also changed it so that comments will show up in a pop-up window, and not take you to a separate full page, which always kind of annoyed me. I was worried to open comments up to anyone because I did not want random people I didn't know posting here, but I realize now that I have fairly decent comment moderation tools, so we will cross that bridge if we come to it. I love love love reading your comments, so now that everyone can, please give it a whirl!

December Trip Part 2: Ancient City of Pergamum

2009-01-29T17:28:00.032-05:00

Our next major ancient destination after Troy was the city of Pergamum. We had a pit-stop in the city of Balikesir and picked up my fellow Fulbrighter Tracey along the way, and getting to Pergamum itself was quite an adventure, but I will relate all of this later and just focus on visiting the site itself right now.

The windswept ruins of Pergamum sit atop a large hill, at the foot of which lies the modern-day city of Bergama. The dramatic views from the acropolis and the extent of the ancient ruins makes Pergamum one of the most spectacular sites in Turkey. Pergamum and its environs were once a major power in the ancient world, attracting one of Alexander the Great's generals to move there and establish his kingdom. In 133 BC, a mad king left the entire kingdom to Rome, which was very eager to accept it as a province of Asia minor as Pergamum's crazy wealth transformed the Roman economy. Pergamum was also a cultural center; when the library at Pergamum rivaled that of Alexandria, the Egyptians barred the Pergamenes from buying papyrus, who in turn invented parchment for themselves, a new style of writing material where they would write on the skins of animals. Allegedly Cleopatra took the whole library in Pergamum back with her to Alexandria, just to settle the "my library is bigger than yours" question once and for all.

The site itself, like a ton of ancient places, includes structures that were gradually built on the acropolis as new regimes controlled the region. So you have some Greek Hellenistic temples and walls, along with a Roman temple to the Emperor Trajan.

This was taken standing on top of the acropolis. Allow me to emphasize that the real strength of the site is the incredible view from the top. The word for the day was "picturesque."

What we liked to call the "God rays" were in full force that day.

An ancient archway, looking down to the modern-city of Bergama bellow.

I asked Tracey to stop looking so confused so I could take this picture. He is standing in front of the Temple of Athena and on top of its massive theater, which is carved right out of the hill and could apparently seat around 10,000 spectators.

Building on top of a hill can be very tricky as they tend not to be very flat. In order to build the forum of Trajan, the Romans built a massive sub-structure to create an even platform on which they could build the temple. These once subterranean passages, highly functional and never meant to be seen, are still quite beautiful.

This is a bird's eye view of a small temple next to the stage of the Great Theater, which I pictured above. The proximity of the temple to the stage reminds us how theater and religion were very much intertwined in the Greek world; the first plays were staged for religious festivals. Also, it is a money shot for art history because you can still make out the floor plan of this pretty basic but typical temple: stairs lead onto a platform with a columned porch, with a small enclosed naos, where the divine statue or altar was kept.

The most famous ruins from the site are the standing columns from the Roman temple to the Emperor Trajan, standing in the Roman forum. The columns were so darn picturesque I just had to turn on the sepia tones. Looks just like the Grand Tour, eh?

Seemingly non-exciting, but this is another art history money shot. From the ancients to today, people always want to get more bang for their buck. Oftentimes the core structure or foundation of a building will be done in stone, and then this stone will be covered with a more expensive and flashy marble revetment, creating the illusion that the entire building is executed in marble. Kind of like wall-papering. Here part of the revetment has fallen away, revealing the stone behind.

As this marble torso of an emperor, dressed in general's gear, was standing in the forum of Trajan, I will go ahead and guess that this is the Emperor Trajan. That is why they pay me the big bucks.

Me sitting on a column, trying to look picturesque myself.

Tracey and I noticed two middle-aged German men who took pictures of themselves in front of every imaginable object, but they were never smiling for their photos, sometimes even downright frowning. We decided to try and follow suit. Here is mine, I tend to look more like I am challenging someone or just smelled something bad...

...but I have to admit that Tracey did a much better job of looking unamused in front of old stuff.

Just as we were leaving some clouds rolled in, making the site even moodier and more picturesque than ever!

Inauguration Day

2009-01-29T17:13:00.007-05:00

Following the US elections in a foreign country has been a really interesting and great experience, and inauguration day was no exception. To celebrate this special occasion, I

donned a pretty fantastic Obama t-shirt (left)

that my Aunt Paula had sent to me as a gift last semester. I felt that this was the perfect day to wear it. All day long, at the dentist and the fruit market, Turkish people would notice it and tell me that they liked it, and then I would have an opportunity to tell them that I was very excited because Obama was going to become President that day.

We are seven hours ahead here in Istanbul, so if you wanted to watch the ceremony live you had to find a place to watch it on Tuesday evening, around 7PM. There were actually quite a few places that were screening the inauguration events, and Ceylan and I opted to go to the James Joyce pub, an Irish pub off of Istiklal street that is a favorite haunt for Irish, British, and American ex-pats. Ceylan's friend Anna, also American, had apparently arranged for a big-screen television to have a live feed from CNN in America. So we basically watched the whole thing on CNN as if we were sitting in our living rooms in the US.

Ceylan and I showed up, introduced ourselves to the other expats who had arrived, and ordered some beers. We watched the whole ceremony (left), and thoroughly enjoyed all of the fun

facts CNN provided across the bottom of the screen (FACT: Obama is being sworn in with the same Bible as Lincoln, last used in 1861...FACT: Michelle Obama is wearing Jimmy Choo...FACT: This is the third time President Bush has checked his watch). We wished the invocation was more on the prayer than speech side, and we regretted Aretha Franklin's choice in hats but we agreed that she's still got it. I also really enjoyed the musical number with "Simple Gifts," a song my father sung for me as a child. We wondered why Biden's oath was longer than Obama's, and we cringed at the awkward flubs through Obama's oath, but nevertheless cheered and clapped when it was over.

I really liked, and was even moved by, Obama's speech. I thought it had some really nice turns of phrasing ("the bitter swill of Civil War" stuck out in my mind for some reason), and I thought it sent a very measured but optimistic tone for the coming months. Obama also mentioned the Middle East more than once in his speech, and it was very unusual and special for me to watch this speech as an American currently living in a Muslim country. We are technically here with government funding and during our Fulbright orientation, the ambassador himself and other members from the embassy in Ankara could not stress enough how we should consider ourselves representatives of our country at all times and very much at the front-lines of diplomacy. Ours is a more subtle kind of diplomacy, but not an inconsequential one. As I said to one professor afterwards, "I just felt so darn relevant." It made me very proud and it reminded me that my mission here is not only to learn as much about Turkey as possible but also for me to represent my country, for better or for worse. Of course, I myself have no real political agenda, so in my mind the most important thing is to just be myself and try to explain my views and experiences as honestly and as clearly as possible. I just want to make Mr. O proud.

The Princes' Islands

2009-01-29T13:00:00.020-05:00

It is really hard to find good day trips from Istanbul during the winter. Everyone keeps on telling me to go skiing, but I remind them that I am from the great state of Florida and that I am not all that graceful on two sticks gliding over packed snow. So I have been forced to do a lot of trips that are very off-season. Two weeks ago, Ceylan and I headed for the Princes' Islands. Istanbullus refer to them simply as "The Islands" (Adalar) because they are the only islands close to the city. There is a total of nine islands arranged in an archipelago. They have a very interesting history. In Byzantine times, the islands were home to various monastics and ascetics seeking to shun the urban lifestyle, and the various deposed monarchs who were forced to retire to these said monasteries lends the popular name "The Princes' Islands." In the nineteenth century, the islands became popular again as a summer residence for the minority populations of Istanbul (Armenians, Jews, Greeks, etc.), and at the turn of the century it began to be a huge tourist attraction, with Westerners attracted by the ghoulish stories of Byzantine-past. Keep in mind the turn of the century the Goth style was being invented and Orientalism was also in full force.

Anyway, there are only four islands of consequential size, and the most visited island is actually the furthest geographically from Istanbul. This was our first stop, Buyukada (Big Island). The large island was still very pleasant, and we had a good early afternoon there. Ceylan and I next went to Heybeli, the second-largest island, where there was really nothing to do but sit in a cafe and wait for the next ferry to come by. We were dreadfully off-season, and instead of sites being uncrowded, they were just straight-up closed. Heybeli is apparently perfect for a spring picnic in one of it's woods, but it was too cold for that. The best part of the day was making friends with the engineers of the Istanbul Commuter Ferries, who are actually very nice fellows and were highly amused by our mid-winter island-hopping adventure.

One of the really nice things about the Adalar is that there are no cars on the islands. You can actually walk almost everywhere or take a rather inexpensive horse-drawn carriage for transportation. Ceylan and I wanted to go to the park on the top of the large hill in Buyukada, so we just hopped in a buggy.

At the top of the highest hill on Buyukada is a very old orthodox monastery, called St. George's. Only the chapel is open to the public, but by far the best thing about the monastery is the small but very inexpensive restaurant operating out of a literal log cabin next to the chapel. The food was abundant, delicious, and accompanied by a drop-dead gorgeous view. I have taken a picture of the outside tables where we sat, that, as you can see, are placed right at the edge of a sheer drop, with a sweeping view of the rest of the island and the mainland in the distance.

This restaurant at St. George's was almost too good to be true. I mean, there was a litter of six adorable puppies....

...and then a stray and seemingly magical white pony just showed up and started to graze in an adjacent grove. I was kind of wondering if this was all a set up.

Another view from the top of the hill. This direction looks out to the Marmara, and the second largest island, Heybeli.

The Buyukada ferry station is very pretty and historical, built in the 1890s, so still during the Ottoman period.

The commuter ferries are pretty big and have massive engine rooms. The doors to the engine rooms are not typically open, but on the way to Heybeli they were, so I popped my head in, since I am randomly really into mechanical stuff. The engineer was having his tea break, and suddenly came and asked if I wanted to go inside and have a closer look. I said yes, and we got an impromptu tour of the massive machinery that I usually just hear gently humming below my feet as I cross the Bosphorous. The guy was really nice, and he let me take a picture of him posing in his domain.

As I said, there was not much to do on Heybeli, so Ceylan and I just ate an eclair. While Turkish cuisine features many unique and fine desserts, the Turks also enjoy and make very well some international favorites, such as cheesecake, profiterole, tiramisu, and of course, eclairs. This one was especially yummy.

This picture neatly sums up Heybeli in off-season. Note the boarded up windows and stacked chairs and tables, obviously waiting for the upcoming summer months.

Obviously, the Princes' Islands deserve another go, at a time when they can really shine. We will try again in the Spring and the Summer. In the meantime, I will continue to try to find some more exciting winter destinations....