Sultanahmet Revisited

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I've been busy with school work, friends visiting, and exploring Istanbul more.

This weekend Karen Rogers and Scott Finn, two of our Auburn professors who are presently teaching the group in Rome, flew in for the weekend to see Istanbul.  Tarik was busy yesterday, so Cameron, Amanda (who was also visiting for the week), and I took them to Sultanahmet to see Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, and Basilica Cistern.  Karen Rogers had taught our Architecture History II class in Auburn in which covers mosque architecture.  It was amazing to visit Hagia Sophia with her and listen to all of her knowledge and observations on the building.  For lunch we ate kebabs at a restaurant with wonderful homemade bread.  After we got back Amanda and I did some shopping on Istiklal.  I got four shirts and a sweater for 45 lira (about 27 dollars), two scarves (5 lira each), and a very cool red bag.

We have our first set of reviews on Thursday, so I'm going to get to studio soon to work for the day.  Tonight we're going to one of our Turkish friends' birthday parties.

Waiting for School to Start

We haven't done much over the weekend. Friday night a few of us went to a bar near the fish market off of Istiklal. It was a lot of fun. We went to the top floor, which will be great during spring, because the whole roof is just an awning that folds back. Our group hunkered down in a cozy corner booth with 4 lira beers- a pretty good price for Istanbul. After about an hour a group of twenty or so people came in and moved all the tables out and the dancing began. The music was mostly American songs from the 1990s, but they still had decent beats.

When I got home I called Walker to see how his flights had gone. He said they went well, but the ride to the airport was quite an adventure. He and a British man were the only passengers on the shuttle to the airport. About a mile away they came to backed up traffic and tons of people in the streets waving flags (Turkish and one they didn't recognize). A man knocked on the door and he and the bus driver spoke in raised voices for a bit. Then the bus driver told them they would have to walk the rest of the way! So, Walker and the British man got out and started maneuvering their luggage through the mob of people. They got to the airport alright, just a little shaken. When Walker got to Atlanta and was able to use the internet he found that the people were awaiting the return of the Turkish Prime Minister who had been at an international debate in Davos; the other flag being waved was the Palestinian flag. You can read the whole scoop here.

Saturday Tarik came to visit. We all sat in Nadim's large room down stairs and drank tea while Tarik gave us an update on what we would be doing this semester. We'll be split between two studios: Tarik's and another Turkish professor's. Tarik's studio will be a vertical studio; it will have all of the I.M.I.A.D. grad students in it, us (fourth year students), and third year students. I'm not sure if the other professor is doing a vertical studio as well. We'll be going to Mardin at the end of February, where three potential sites for our project are. I'll know more about it all tomorrow. We go to campus tomorrow morning to get introduced to everything, but after that studio will be held in the afternoons on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.

Saturday evening I went out with Christine, Nick, and Tula (one of our Finnish apartment-mates) to find a large supermarket Nadim had said was about 15 km down the road. We walked for a long time, never finding the market, and decided to stop and eat at an Italian restaurant. Tula and I had tasty spinach and mushroom omelets. Most of our group headed back to the bar last night, but I decided to stay in and try to get on a good sleep schedule. I watched the first episode of the series Durham County, a Canadian TV show that was on TNT. It's about a homicide detective and his family who move to a new town across the street from a murderer and his family. It was pretty eerie.

Nothing has gone on today. I've been doing laundry, and we watched the movie Pineapple Express on someone's laptop. A few of us just got back from an Italian place down the street. I got spaghetti with cream sauce, which turned out to be mostly olive oil and pretty tasteless. Oh well. Time for me to get my laundry out of the dryer and get ready for bed!

Galata Tower

Today, for the first time since we got back from Greece, we ventured past Taksim. We went to Galata Tower to go up to the observation balcony. I really like the area there, all pedestrian traffic. The view was amazing! You can see all of the bridges, the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, and many of the mosques.

Hagia Sophia on the right and Blue Mosque on the left. ^

On the way home we stopped in a office supplies shop I had seen the other day on Iştiklal. I went in to get a pair of scissors and browsed through their selection of Moleskine notebooks. I was excited to find an İstanbul City Notebook, something I was looking for before my trip but couldn't find. It's great. It had maps of each area of the city; a metro map; conversions for everything from temperature to measurements; and spaces to record restaurants, bars, shops and people you meet.

I hadn't had lunch and didn't feel like eating out, so we came back to the apartment afterwards and had pasta (with butter, not sauce). If we can get up on time we're going to either take a boat tour of the Bosphorus or go to the Prince's Islands.

Food and Fighting

Today was begun with a another late start. Even though I had fallen asleep around midnight, I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed until 2:00 pm. Walker and I went out for food. We stopped at Simit Sarayı one of a chain of internet cafes that has fresh-baked pastries, some sweet, some filled with feta cheese or stewed veggies. Then we walked across the street to get portakal suyu (orange juice), delicious and freshly squeezed.

After that we walked down Iştiklal, looking for a place to eat a meal. Iştiklal is a pedestrian-only street and always very packed with people. Every now and then a side street crosses Iştiklal, going out to the roads that do have traffic. As we were walking up to one of these side street crossings, we heard commotion coming from down the side street on the right. All of a sudden a mob of many teenagers/twenty-somethings came running out onto Iştiklal. We and everyone walking around us stopped dead in our tracks. There was noise of glass shattering and I saw the neck of a green glass bottle fly in the air. Walker and I quickly turned around and walked back up Iştiklal the way we had come from as police sirens started going off (there had been a police truck at that crossing, which may have been the target of the mob's rush). A little ways up the street everyone looked like they were going on about business as usual and we could no longer hear the commotion. I'm not sure what had gone on there. Just a gang of teens protesting the police or running away from a crime scene, perhaps.

We turned down a side street a little ways away, still hungry for a meal, and were beckoned into a restaurant by a man holding the menu. The food looked good and reasonably -priced and the menu was in English as well as Turkish, so we headed inside. We were taken to a tiny back room on the upper floor that had four tables and a alcoholic drink-prep area. The other three small tables were occupied by three other couples, cuddled up next to each other. One of them sucking on a hookah; I had thought I'd seen a sign for nargile outside. Upon realizing we had never gone to the ATM and only had 35 liras between us, we ordered based on cost. Walker got chicken and mushrooms and I got chicken şiş kebap. The chicken was good and served with french fries, grilled tomatoes and peppers and shredded lettuce. It was awkward sitting in the tiny room with the other couples, mostly our age, hugging and kissing each other constantly. I read somewhere that young couples usually find a secluded spot in a restaurant to spend time together because public affection is frowned upon here and I assume many households have strict rules for boys visiting girls. After asking for the hesap (check) we left and came back to the apartment, both feeling tired from breathing in the nargile smoke in the room.

This week Walker and I plan to join a few others in our group who are taking an overnight train to Thessaloniki, Greece to spend a few days touring. We can leave from İstanbul's train station at 8:00pm and arrive in Thessaloniki at 8:00am the next morning.

Not sure what tomorrow holds yet, but that's all for tonight. I'm going to try to get to bed early.