Various Vistas and Taxi Troubles

It's been a long time since my last post again; the internet has been spotty both here and at school. I've been keeping busy with classes and exploring in the past week.

On Tuesday we had our Urban Morphology class in the morning. I spent a good chunk of the rest of the day frustrated in the computer lab trying to print autoCAD drawings for studio and pictures of Taskisla for my project due Wednesday. All of the computers seem to have some kind of virus, and for that reason, they are extremely slow and like to randomly restart. After two tries and with Chad's help, I got everything printed that I needed.

Tuesday evening Christine and I took a bus to Ortakoy. We went to a small pedestrian area she'd been to before on the Bosphorus with shops and restaurants. We got coffee and tea at Gloria Jean's Coffee, which has a terrace with wonderful views of the mosque next to it and the Bosphorus.

Once we couldn't feel our fingers anymore from the cold, we went in search of a restaurant to get stuffed baked potatoes that are popular in that area. We found them at the first restaurant we passed. They were so good! I wish I had taken a picture, but I'm sure I will go back. The potato was twice-baked and loaded with cheese, slices of hot dog, sour cream, a spicy red salsa-like sauce, and "American salad": carrots, peas, corn, and cabbage. It was so good and so filling!

Wednesday morning we had our Architecture and Design in Cultural Context class. It lasted from 8:30 am until 12:30! The lectures are interesting, but it's hard to keep focused for that long. After class Mandy and I decided to stay in studio to do some work. After a couple minutes I got up to go to the bathroom, and realized we were locked in! Our studio connects with the other half of our group's studio by a center door, and each studio has a door leading to the hallway. Our door had been locked and the last ones to leave from class must have locked the other hallway door behind them, not realizing we don't have keys yet. We were the only ones left after class cleared out, so we had to wait a couple hours for someone to show up so we could leave.

That afternoon Mandy, Chris, Casey, John, and I walked to the Golden Horn then took a taxi to Pierre Loti where we sat and drank tea at a cafe on a hill overlooking the best panoramic view of the Golden Horn. We stayed through sunset then took a cable car over a cemetery and down to the bottom of the hill where we caught a taxi home. We had dinner at Zencefil, where Walker and I had eaten on his last night here. The lemon pie there was amazing. That night I worked on a small watercolor of an area near the Bosphorus. We have to do one per week for Tarik's class.

Not sure why when ever I use photoshop to edit pictures, they upload with inverted colors... so I've included the pans and later I'll put up the pics they came from under them.

Thursday I spent my afternoon of studio upstairs in the cafe so I could use the internet (because the internet in studio has been broken for the past week and a half). I finally downloaded VectorWorks so that I can now do CAD work using the autoCAD documents we were given.

Friday Cameron and I went to Kanyon mall to go to browse shoes for the salsa dancing lessons we are going to begin this week. A group of us, all foreign exchange students, are going to start them on Wednesday. I found a pair I liked, but didn't buy them until we went back there for dinner yesterday. Cameron also got a very cute pair of shoes; both of ours were from Nine West and on sale, over half-off, just 55 lira!

Last night I went with Cameron, Jamie, Casey, Chris, and John to a house party pretty far north of here. They had met some of the kids who would be there at another party last weekend. It was so much fun! The best thing about it was that it was Star Wars-themed. Almost all of the people there went to Koç University. We headed home around 4 am, and because the buses stop running around 11 pm, we had to take a taxi the whole way back. The door on Chris's side was broken, so he had to hold it shut as the taxi whipped down curvy roads. Then, fairly close to Taksim, we were stopped at a red light and SLAM! We all jerked forward as a girl pulling up behind us slammed into the rear-end of the taxi. We sat there in shock for a minute while our taxi driver got out and called the police. While waiting for the police our cab driver finally got Chris's door to shut. About twenty minutes later, after seeing the police drive by once without stopping, we decided to just pay our fare and take another cab for the rest of the way. Quite a night.

Time to figure out what to cook for dinner. I'm trying to use up all my food in the fridge before we leave for Mardin on Thursday.

Designer Couches and Crowded Buses

I'm listening to a shrieking cat on the street and a man yelling sales pitches (at this time of night?!) as I write this from my room.

The saga of the debit card continues. My package is in limbo somewhere in Istanbul, floating around on the FedEx (or Express Kargo?) truck to wrong addresses then back to the FedEx facility at nighttime. Dad was able to wire me some money today to tide me over until I can unite with my parcel; just-in-time too because in the morning I have to put a deposit down on our trip to Mardin.

Today was a great day, but it felt like an extremely looong day. It began with lots of Mardin research, so I could come up with a proposal for our project. It's hard to get an idea of the scale of these sites from the autoCAD drawings, but with the understanding I have now, I've come up with two proposals. The more fun idea is a cultural arts center that would have a stage for traditional music and dances to be performed, galleries for art to be displayed, and shops for artisans to sell their crafts, along with a restaurant, bar, lounge, and visitor's information center. It seems this could fit into the bazaar space well. The other idea I've had is sparked from a couple articles I read on Mardin's tourism. Over the past few years there has been a huge increase in the number of tourists visiting Mardin, but many people have to stay in a neighboring town because Mardin doesn't have enough hotels to accommodate this boom. A hotel would be a very practical project and would work well with two of the three sites. I like the idea of a cultural arts center more because I could learn about the town's culture and society as I design the project. So that is how I spent my morning, researching and brainstorming all things Mardin.

After the rest of the group started awakening, Nick and Adam kindly agreed to go with me to pick up my wire transfer of money. On the way back we grabbed sandwiches (the same I had yesterday) from the restaurant across the street, before heading to school to meet all of our classmates and professors.

Our group of about thirty crammed onto an already crowded un-air-conditioned bus to go to Koleksiyon, the upscale furniture/interiors shop that is funding the majority of our trip to Mardin. The bus ride wasn't any fun. It was over half-an-hour of standing with people packed in on all sides and sun beating in through the window; quite a trip. Our discomfort was not in vain. Koleksiyon was amazing.

When we arrived, we went through the elegant displays to the third floor cafe to be greeted by Faruk Malhan, founder of Koleksiyon. He took us through the displays, explaining the stories behind some of his favorite pieces. Koleksiyon sells its own designs, as well those of trendy designers they have discovered. One of the pieces that has sold like crazy is a slightly modified traditional Turkish tea glass and saucer. The glass has an indention in the bottom and the saucer has a little bump, so that the glass does not move all over the saucer when the set is being moved.

A new piece that is expected to be a big seller is a set of glasses for drinking rakı, a Turkish alcohol made from aniseed that is clear until mixed with water, at which point it turns white. Rakı is meant to be drunk along with water; the two are either mixed or drunken separately. With rakı, being clear, it is common to confuse which glass has which liquid. Koleksiyon's set of two glasses are slightly different sizes and curved to fit perfectly next to each other.

After our tour, we returned to the cafe for tea and cookies. I had just enough time to snap some pictures of a few pieces and do a few sketches before we were headed back to the bus.

the cafe ^




the view of the entrance to Koleksiyon ^
the view across the street from Koleksiyon ^

down the road a little ways, the view of the Bosphorus ^

A few of us went with some of the Turkish students to an outdoor restaurant along the Bosphorus. I had menemen, a dish of egg, cheese, tomatoes, and peppers; a good choice. We learned some more about the city and the language and taught the Turkish students some about where we're from. At the end of our meal the waiter demanded an extra lira from everyone, saying the prices on the menu were old...sure. The Turkish students went ahead and paid, so we did too.

Another long, but this time air-conditioned bus ride, and we were back to Taksim. The day has worn me out, so I'm going to spend the night in while the others do their nightly bar-trip. Tomorrow the Turkish students will take us to get our akbils, which are buttons that give us discounted bus/metro/ferry fare.

Visualize İstanbul

Some of the photos from the batch I snapped on the bus tour (until my camera ran out of batteries).

Ataturk Cultural Center in Taksim ^

Taksim Square ^

^ panoramic view of Golden Horn, with the İnönü Stadium in bottom left corner

going over the Atatürk Bridge ^

city wall ^

one of the major cemeteries ^
Yedikule dungeons ^
commercial ships waiting to pass through ^






Hagia Sophia ^

I'll try to get some of Walker's pictures up later. He has a few from after my camera died.