The Whirlwind

I should really try to recap the past few weeks on here, shouldn't I? Sean and I had a fantastic time in Turkey. It hasn't unseated the reigning champion of vacations, our trip to Greece, but then I don't know that anything is going to beat the magic of our first great adventure together. Still, Turkey gave it a good shot.

The night before we left, we stayed with Sara and Zach in Brooklyn and hung out with them and Heather. The next day our flight wasn't until 5, so we had brunch with Zach, who was then between jobs, and played with The Greatest Dog Ever Hands Down ( usually know by the shorter name of Oscar). I was surprised by how well Sean and Zach got along, actually, what with Zach being a hipster, and Sean being a "get off my lawn" old man, and all. But it turns out that they have compatible visions of world domination. *eye roll*

Our flight over went smoothly. We scored a pair of aisle seats, also known as Michelle's Magic Formala for traveling without killing your spouse (I hear some people fare perfectly well sitting next to their husband or wife on a plane, but those people have clearly not been married next to Sean "you're going to be my playtoy now" Gleason on a long flight). I even managed to get a few hours of sleep, which is rare. We landed in Istanbul at around 10am, and enjoyed the pleasure of seeing a sign with my (misspelled) name on it outside the arrivals gate. Being whisked away by a driver at the airport is nice, especially when it only costs 20 euros for you both. I want this to happen on every trip!

Our hotel, Hotel Peninsula, was located in Sultanahmet, which is the touristy district of Istanbul. Istanbul is a curiously sprawling city, divided by its two rivers, the Golden Horn (separating the more historical Ottoman/Byzantine neighborhoods, including Sultanahment, from the trendier and more crowded Beyoglu) and the Bosporus, separating the European and Asian halves of the city. Our hotel was a five-minute walk from the Topkapi Palace, the Hagia Sophia, and the Blue Mosque, which was our favorite architectural monument in the city.

The guy at the front desk of our hotel, Rohat, was an incredibly friendly guy--so friendly that you couldn't hand in your key and leave the hotel without at least a five minute conversation! He knew quite a bit about American culture (more than most Turks, though they are all quick to profess how much they love America), and wants to be a screenwriter, so he watches a lot of English movies. We also discovered, on our last night, that he was also a Kurd, so we got an interesting perspective into what it's like to deal with both Kurdish and Turkish identities, within an overwhelmingly nationalistic culture that wants you to deny one half of your background.

Turkey is crazy about nationalism. They made us look pretty normal, actually. Ataturk, the guy who basically made Turkey into a modern state in the 1920s, is seriously revered--his face was absolutely everywhere, including on a three-foot-high poster outside the duty-free in the airport! Likewise for Turkish flags--I don't think I've ever seen such a saturation of flags, except maybe right after 9/11, and I'm not sure even then. We're talking flags flying on nearly every building as you walk down a crowded street; flags all over the promenades, on all the boats in the harbor, on the subways; a massive flag suspended between two high-rise apartment buildings in the suburbs. (I was quite sick and tired of seeing that red with the crescent and stars halfway through our trip, honestly) It's still a crime to insult Ataturk, the flag, or 'Turkishness', and the Lonely Planet advised that those are definitely still being enforced.

We also witnessed one very interesting example of this incredible pride in Turkishness. Our arrival in Bergama coincided with the beginning of some kind of sports match in a little park. All of a sudden, we realized that not only had traffic halted, but everyone around us had frozen in their steps, women with their shopping bags, police officers, everyone. Then we realized that most of them were singing the national anthem, and the officers were saluting. Even people who weren't actively singing were frozen, though. It was like being in one of those movies where time stops around you! I can't imagine that ever happening for the American anthem, though. We're just...not that committed.

Turkey is also 99% Muslim, though it's technically a secular state, thanks first to Ataturk and now to powerful military that wants to prevent the erosion of its power by a theocracy. Never having been to a Muslim country before, I'll admit that it was a little strange to be surrounded by so many women in headscarves and burqas. There was, of course, a wide variety of dress; many Turks, as Rohat assured us, could really care less about their faith. Sultanahmet, however, is apparently a conservative neighborhood, so we saw a lot of traditional attire. Full-length burqas were less common, however, than just headscarves and modest clothing, but perhaps the most common sight was the particularly Turkish form of conservative dress, with a long button-down coat worn on top of extremely modest clothing. Like, a long heavy coat, despite ridiculous heat. I don't know how they weren't dying in those things. I mean, at least in a burqa you can imagine they're getting some air flow under there. Hell, they could be wearing a bikini and no one would be the wiser. In short, I couldn't help gawking at these women a little bit, mostly because I was trying to imagine how I would survive wearing what they were wearing.

The most obvious feature of being in a Muslim country, however, was not the women but rather the calls to prayer, five times daily. According to Wikipedia, these are at dawn, noon, midafternoon, dusk, and two hours after sunset, but we noted that the times didn't quite seem stable, whether in Istanbul or elsewhere in Turkey. In the old days, there was a guy basically yelling "get your ass in the mosque" from the minaret, but now they've been helpfully aided by technology, namely, loudspeakers. Dear god, you do not want to be walking beneath one of those puppies when it goes off, as we unsuspectingly were on our first afternoon in Istanbul. In fact, we were walking on a street with three large mosques in close proximity, so we're talking more than 10 loudspeakers going off with what sounded--to the non-Turkish speaker--like so many cats being skinned alive at high volume. I think I developed a twitch on the spot. The worst, though, was the dawn prayer. 5'o-fucking-clock in the morning. Did I mention there was a mosque behind our hotel? Closed windows, earplugs, these did nothing. Rohat even told us, apologetically, that while some muezzins are good at their job, some are not, and this one...was one of those. So, more like pre-pubescent cats getting skinned alive, I guess.

Among Turkey's other flaws are a lack of ready alcohol, and food that, while good, didn't overwhelm us with its tastiness. Oh, and let's not forget the pushiness of every vendor and shopowner in the entire country! Window shopping, in Turkey, needs to be conducted for 15 seconds or less, or someone is going to pop out and try to finagle you into their shop, and not just in the "oh, can I help you?" way that can be brushed off with an "just looking." No, they will smile, and wheedle, and offer tea, and generally make you feel awkward before you run away. Phyllis told me that their approach is simple; if you can talk to someone for long enough and be nice to them, you create a sense of obligation on the customer's part, where they feel like they have to go into the shop and pretend to consider buying a carpet, or whatever. In other words, window shop for only so long as it takes to see someone emerging from the store's depths, and then get the hell out of there.

We also learned that the carpet merchants are always among us. Hot spots: in front of the Topkapi, where we got caught our first day, and the Blue Mosque, where we spent 10 minutes in conversation with a genial man who had actually flung his arm around Sean's shoulder when he tried to escape. We also got snagged in Selcuk just walking on the sideway back to our hotel around 9pm. Look into the one shop window that's still lit, and BAM! There's a guy in front of you saying "we are still open! Where are you from? America? I love America! I was there a few years ago. Won't you come in? Oh, no money? No problem, we'll just talk. Come, come!" The thing is, they really are friendly, and these guys are a great source of information, like the guy at the ferry station who was shilling for a restaurant on one of the Prince's islands--he wrote the times of the return ferries on his card for me, as well as a map of how to get to his restaurant. Then, on the ferry, he turned up to offer us a glass of hot tea as we sat on the deck! Sadly for him, his attempt failed, and we didn't go to his restaurant. Anyway, you feel bad brushing these guys off or ignoring them altogether, but you also don't want to be roped into every carpet shop and restaurant you walk past.

That, more than anything, made me cool a little bit toward Turkey, because it felt like you always had to be on your guard; anyone who smiled at you, anyone who helped you in any way, might be waiting to spring the rug shop inquiry on you. It's no joke--on one of our last days, Sean spent 20 minutes talking to a guy in a park before the guy made the "come to my rug shop" pitch, and sure enough, by that point Sean felt obligated to go with him. He escaped being there longer (as well as the proffered cup of tea) by pleading that he had to meet his wife. He lied and said he'd bring me back with him. Freedom!

Other than that, Turkey was awesome. We had a great time exploring Istanbul with Carla for a few days, but our time in the south was really magical. We had a brand new Hyundai to tool around in (brand new = 500 miles on it!) and plenty of ancient sites to explore. True, I did get mild sunstroke, and then a sore throat, and then a cold, but, hey.

I would make this longer, but I'm a bit tired of typing. Plus, I feel like my photos recreate most of the trip for me; it's really the kind of impressions that I can't get in a photo caption that I need to record here.