Isanbul: Europe and Asia (Like Europe, only Asianyer...)

This past weekend, that of both my birthday and Canadian Thanksgiving, I ventured to Istanbul with Dave, Rachel, Olivia, Shannon, Bianca, Steve and Caitlin. This was my first time travelling to a (predominantly) Muslim country and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Going in I was sure that I would be forced to have a 'dry' birthday because of Muslim laws against drinking. Of course, it turns out that Turkey is a quite secular country and getting a beer or wine wasn't difficult outside of a few restaurants. Not that we abused this. I think I had 3 beers all weekend...

Some other things that made Istanbul a lot different than anywhere else I've been include the frequent call to prayer blasted from each of the numerous mosques in the city (which took turns singing verses of prayer resulting in an experience reminiscent of a singing duel but was more likely out of respect...) , the predominance of muslim dress (particularly for the women), the ability to haggle, and the sheer number of doner places (I didn't realize how prevelant this type of cuisine really was!).

We arrived at the early hour of about 02:30 and, after paying an extortionate 45Eur for a visa (thank YOU Canada for that one..) we made it though passport control and onto our hostel shuttle by about 03:30 and to the hostel by 04:00.

Got a good 5hrs of sleep and then crawled to the roof of our hostel for a nice Turkish breakfast of bread, cheese, tomatoes, cucumber, olives, cereal and condiments (this would be further expanded to include hard-boiled eggs and yoghurt in the following days). The roof afforded a nice view of the Golden horn and, in the distance, the Bosphorus Strait. We could also see the minarets of the Hagia Sofia mosque. After breakfast, we rendezvoused (Sp?) with the 3 who had been staying elsewhere and walked down to the water's edge. Here we admired the water, marvelled at the number of ships going by, watched men fish, and Steve stuck his head in a hole. We walked along the water and eventually headed inland to explore some Palacial Tea Gardens. At the entrance to these gardens, we were stopped by a police car full of officers who rolled down their window and proceeded to shake our hands and say "Salam" or some such thing. I'm fairly certain they only shook Dave and my hands because we happened to be bordering a group of girls.. Anyway, turns out this tea garden happened to flank Topkapi Palace which, I guess, is pretty signifcant. We paid some money to go in and it was actually pretty cool. Lots of neat muslim architecture and a good bit of history as well. Notable points include the large Harem and a museum featuring Moses' (the Moses') staff (with which he led the jews out of egypt) and other various religious artifacts.

After walking around the palace for a few hours we got pretty hungry and decided to leg it to the nearest Kebap place. We ended up being enticed to enter the sit-down portion of a fast food place and ended up pretty disappointed with our small meals. Also, turns out that Ayran, turkish yoghurt drink, isn't very good. From here we decided to check out the famous Grand Bazaar. It is an extraordinarily huge place in which it is almost impossible to not get lost because all of the winding, crisscrossing roads look exactly the same, full of touristy merch and crap you wouldn't give to your worst enemy. Inevitably, we all got split up and elected to meet in a specified location an hour and a half later. This was far too much time for Dave and I as we spent the entire time not buying anything and mostly just trying to find the exit. A cool experience though, certainly. We left the bazaar and, on our way to finding dinner, decided to check out the famous Blue Mosque. It was my first time going inside a mosque and to be honest I thought it was pretty cool (compared to churches anyway). The first thing one notices - after they get over having to remove their footwear and, if they are female, covering their head - is the distinct lack of stuff in there. There is a far wall with, for lack of knowing the proper word, an altar of sorts towards which prayer is done. Other than that, the decorated ceiling and the columns that supported the roof, there was a carpeted floor and that was it. Certainly a much different experience from churches that tend to be adorned with chairs, booths, ornaments, statues and so on. I quite liked it. It was very peaceful and, despite the sheer magnitude and impressiveness of the place, seemingly humble in a way.. I can't really explain.. Anyway, we had to go grab some eats afterwards and we went to a place recommended by Caitlin's guide book: Doy Doy. Had a great chicken kebap. Its kind of strange eating what you'd usually have as fast food in a sit-down restaurant arranged more like a meal than like a convenient snack.

Day 2 we elected to get on a boat and have a quick tour of the bosphorus. This was pretty neat. After being haggled with to convince us to choose his tour, the operator crammed us onto his already completely full van giving us need to stand (and in my case fall all over the place) for the short but uncomfortable ride to the boat. We snagged some dope seats at the bow though so we had a good spot for taking pics. The boat cruised us on over to the Asian side of Istanbul (I've been to Asia - woo!) where we had a whopping 30 minutes to explore. A good 10 of that was used to get out money.. We then hopped back on the boat and headed back to Europe. Tim, an Australian guy sharing our room at the hostel, then led us to the famous Spice market where, once again we all got split up. I stuck with Tim and we ended up getting some great Lamb kebaps, some great baklava, we found an exotic pet section of the bazaar featuring a toucan, turtles, peacocks, lizards and leaches, I bought a Kilo of turkish delight and we wandered into some sketchy back alleys. We regrouped with the rest an hour or so later at which point Tim took off. The rest of us headed back to the hostel for a bit of a rest and to strategize for the following day. This was followed by dinner at a charming restaurant, again recommended by the guide book, in which the waiters all wore brightly colored bowling shirts and tried to teach us Turkish. After this we ended up heading up to the roof, getting some drinks, playing some games and enjoying some Narghile.

Sunday was my birthday! However, I can honestly say it was the least birthday like birthday I've ever had for a variety of reasons. First, clearly my family was nowhere to be seen. Second, I was in Turkey. Then of course, no presents (while I was there)! Ok, that sounds kinda like something a spoiled kid would say but come on, who doesn't like to open presents on their birthday? Of course, my friends acknowledged the occasion and gave me a hushed "happy birthday" in unison during breakfast. They also let me choose the restaurant for dinner (as long as it was Doy Doy haha) and Dave bought me a beer at the end of the day.

For the course of the day, though, we had decided to take a ferry to the Prince's Island. Here we rented some bikes and rode around the entire thing in the course of a few hours. The island is supposed to be free of motorized vehicles (though we definately saw a big truck and at least one motorcycle) and as such the main forms of locomotion are shoddy, falling apart bicycles and horse-drawn carriages. The latter was somewhat perplexing as the horses were clearly malnourished and overworked but there was an abundance of faeces everywhere... We had hoped that being on an island we'd be able to locate and enjoy a beach. Unfortunately that was not the case. Instead we found a pile of garbage and a concrete pad that some fat guy was lazing around on by the water that one was expected to pay 20YTL to enjoy... We ended up sitting on some rocks near the harbor and lazing away some time instead.. Our boat back to the mainland came at around 6PM and I slept the entire way back. I would not be in the least surprised if there were some embarassing photos of me doing just that floating around somewhere... Upon return to Istanbul we, as I mentioned earlier, went back to Doy Doy and had a huge meal followed by dessert and tea in their cushion room. Soo comfy! Oh, and I had these Rum Baba thingies for dessert which were essentially turkish Galub jamun! mmmm! Went back to the hostel to hang out before everyone except Dave and I had to head to the airport to go home.

Dave and I had booked another room for our last stay and it ended up being one in which we had to share a double bed. This wasn't bad at all, turns out we're both very good at avoiding uncomfortable contact. We checked out the next morning, grabbed breakfast, left our luggage there and headed out to do some more exploring. We went into the Basilica Cistern, a big underground water storage facility, and that was pretty cool. There was a column that was different than all the others for some reason and had a hole into which tourists would insert their thumb and rotate their hands around. There was no description or explanation of why this was being done so, naturally, Dave and I both did it as well. There were also two columns propped up by rocks in the shape of Medusa's head. That was neat. I was glad I didn't turn to stone though.

The order of events in my mind for the rest of the day is a bit shaky (we did a lot of aimless wandering) so I'll just list of the things we did. We wandered really far out of the tourist area and found a restaurant catering purely to locals where we got an ENOURMOUS meal for just 7YTL each that was probably the best we'd had the entire trip. We went to the spice market again and I got some stringy turkish ice cream. We went to a turkish barber, got a shave, a trim, an ear cleaning and had my ear set on fire. We went back to the spice market for dinner. We sat on some benches between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia and listened to the call to prayer and an arabic guy with a guitar singing english and french pop songs while a 6 year old girl tried to sell me water. We had some shisha. We talked for a long time with an american guy at our hostel named Ryan. I ate waaay to many nuts. We took a shuttle to the airport at 00:20 and fell asleep despite nearly dying several times. We slept in several parks. We slept in the airport. We fought our way onto the plane past a bunch of impatient, selfish, arrogant turks. We slept on the plane. We got back to Switzerland at 5:30. We got back to baden at 7:30. I went to bed. I went to work at 10:00. I had a terrible day at work I was so tired. Dave worked the whole day then went home and was sick the next day and the day after that and the day after that.

So yeah, that pretty much summarizes my Turkey trip. I had a really good time and it was definately one of the more unique places I've been!