The Golden Horn

Beaucoup de French Kids

2010-05-11T14:17:00.001-07:00

Up and out in good form this morning. Made it through our very fine breakfast and out the door to the British Museum not that long after it opened. That was a good plan as the museum just seemed to increasingly fill up as the day moved along.

I was mentioning to my loyal opposition that the one surprising thing about London is how few English people you run across hereabouts. I guess it makes sense that we tend to cluster around the tourist things, but perhaps this is the very first truly international city. It’s past, though, is thoroughly British Empire as we saw today with gallery upon gallery of the world’s archaeology. We took in some of the Assyrian and Greek stuff first off – including the Nereid tomb from Lycia (which has greater meaning having spent some time these past two summers in Lycia itself) and, of course, the Parthenon marbles. I enjoyed those and felt it is fine by me if UK holds onto those for now, my guide and contradictrice feels otherwise – but settling that one goes beyond the scope of my plans for this trip.

The museum itself was impressive. The dome that was built over the entire internal courtyard of the museum is really striking. The museum was thronged, unfortunately, with squads of little French kids being marched past things with “grand importance historique”. The English school kids wore dayglo green vests and seemed well managed; the French kids were more of a force – drumming on the sarcophagi or some of the teenagers smoking in the stairways. I’d imagine that smoking in a place like the Smithsonian is probably a felony now in the US – anyway, kids today…

I liked the early European galleries most of all. There was an intriguing exhibit of clocks and also lots of material from early Medieval or even stone age Britain. I was surprised to see what a large footprint the Byzantines had even in Medieval British art and artifacts. I gather their arts and artisans were sought after all through Europe.

We did not push the museum thing too far. The museums in the US – and particularly Boston – do a nice job with lots of the archaeological stuff as well – and the contemporary world beckoned. So, after a few hours of galleries we had a nice lunch down in the cafeteria and wandered out by foot and by tube to Trafalgar.

My memories and image of Trafalgar was of an utterly immense place, so I was surprised by its relatively modest scale. We spent a bit of time at St. Martin’s in the Field.

Probably the most remarkable thing today was tea at Claridge’s. This required swinging back by the hotel to put on a sport coat but it was a surprisingly nice experience. Nice tables in the back of the lobby, a five page menu of tea selections and a succession of little tea sandwiches, biscuits, little pastries are brought by the table over the space of an hour or so. Very nice place - mirrors, pianos playing with cellos, leather upholstering on the walls. Very nice and relaxing experience – my teas in Durham, NH are going to have to kick it up a notch starting with a bit more clotted cream, scones and black currant jam.

Also, I am happy to report more advances on the “getting around” front. The #13 bus is everything we need, running from next block on Baker Street down past Selfridges through Oxford Street and Oxford Circus down onto Regent Street, Piccadilly and Trafalgar – everything you need on one double decker run.

Photo: The Elgin Marbles in Lord Duveen’s Gallery at the British Museum

Where Am I?

2010-05-10T15:16:00.001-07:00

Figuring things out.

I did not have much time these past weeks to read up on things London, so today was a nice day to get my bearings on the city. London hardly follows any sort of grid plan, and the thing with driving on the left is bound to create some confusion (I am looking both ways about five times before I even put a toe over the curb around here) – but made some progress.

Jet lag seems to be passing ok. Woke up very early as my travel companion had a “math problem” in setting her cell phone alarm – something about adding or subtracting five – but actually it was pretty hard to drag myself out of bed even at 8:30. Breakfast was a nice reward. It’s obviously included in the bed&breakfast idea, but it was good – nice croissant, eggs and Cumberland sausage, good black tea, marmalade, oj – all the things you might want from the English treatment.

We headed out on a journey by Underground down to the Tate Modern, although those trains were pretty slow today. As we poked up out of the hole and wandered down toward the millennium bridge we got distracted by the wonders of St. Pauls. In the end that turned out to be a more athletic event than religious and we climbed up the three series of ever narrower spiral staircases up to the very top of the dome. The views were magnificent and I got some nice photos there.

We only got to the Tate Modern in the afternoon – we grabbed a bit of lunch at some chain French café – a sandwich and a bowl of cappuccino. I gather the Rothko’s which are the big item there have been moved over to the Tate Britain – but we enjoyed a few galleries of contemporaries and abstract expressionism. The latter galleries were my favorites. They had some nice pieces of Jackson Pollock (Summertime) and a large panel of Monet’s water lilies. It was a nice visit – not my favorite chunks of the Western artistic tradition but it was fun to get some idea of what they were up to in their various ways as they rooted out and upset absolutely any kind of expectation one might bring to art. The last gallery involved things painted in blood which had (mercifully) faded to grey over the years. That was about my limit. I am looking forward to seeing the Turners over at the Tate Britain – maybe Wednesday as I think the British museum is on the itinerary for tomorrow.

It was fun walking around the Thames and downtown today. After the Tate we walked up and down Bankside a bit and grabbed a bus that took us down to the London Eye (the really huge Ferris wheel) and over across the Waterloo Bridge into the Strand and the theater district. We strolled through Covent Garden market and then got on one or two wrong buses (or buses going in the wrong direction) but, no matter, it was nice to check things out. We finally did make it back to Oxford Street and down Gloucester Place to the hotel. Found a nice neighborhood restaurant right here for dinner and took a stroll around this neighborhood after dinner. I spied two or three interesting pubs that might merit a second look.

The architecture of the city is really neat – an odd mix of old and really modern work. Especially downtown it seem every other building is trying to put the old stuff behind it with bulging curves of glass, metal skins and all manner of other odd features. It’s also fun to wander into these places I’ve heard about all my life but never actually seen (Bloomsbury, Blackfriars Bridge, Soho, The Strand, St. Martin’s in the Field, Covent Garden…).

So, I am happily being a tourist with an ever clicking camera and sore feet.

Photo: St. Paul’s figure from the door of the south entrance. The church was built after the fire in 1666, thus the Phoenix and the motto. I’ll also post a few pictures of the view from the the dome.

The Same only Different...

2010-05-09T12:12:00.000-07:00

The Golden Horn blows again…

I wasn’t sure if I would blog this trip. After Moscow and Istanbul and the wilds of Turkey, merry old England seems pretty tame – especially the nicer bits of London, but here I am.

The flight was uneventful and as pleasan as one might expect except for the Icelandic volcano that did its fighting best to keep us home. Even before I headed off to Logan I had hear the flight was delayed from 7:45 until 11 PM because all the London planes were being rerouted around the plume. When we finally did get underway we flew straight north over Newfoundland and Labrador and off to the northern parts of Greenland before arching over Iceland and down across the Faroe Islands and the Orkney’s and on down to London.

No complaints with the flight and I even managed to sleep a bit more than I usually do. It was the least crowded fliht I've seen in about twenty years (only 151 on the plane). The Heathrow arrival and customs was also easy and we made it through and on into Paddington Station by train, and then by taxi to our hotel here in Marylebone on interestingly enough the address is: The Hart House on Gloucester Place….

We took a long walk this afternoon to stretch our legs and get some bearings. We went up through the southern edge of Regent’s Park and then back up Baker Street through Prospect Square and on up to Oxford Street with meanders through the food court at Selfridge’s, etc. Then we cut up to Hyde Park and took a stroll through Speaker’s Corner before collapsing footsore and jet lagged. This provided a good opportunity to figure our “how the bus works” – we have bought a very useful 25 Pound London bus, underground pass that is good for our entire week. So, we got the experience of riding along in the top of the double decker down Oxford Street.

I had spied an interesting Italian place earlier – and one that receives some good praise from the bulleting board here at our hotel- so after it all we parked it for a nice Italian meal. It’s not even eight and here we are back at the hotel thinking about how long we might manage to keep awake…fading fast.

This might explain the general lack of insight and wit that Golden Horn readers have come to expect and demand. My travel companion was rather freaked out by squirrels, pigeons and other little parkland creatures– perhaps I will expand on that soon, but so far so good.

Tomorrow? Probably one of these museums – maybe the Tates, or perhaps a run through the major downtown sites like St. Paul’s. Westminster, Churchill’s Bunker, etc.

I was surprised at how much I recognized particularly of Hyde Park around Marble Arch station from my long past trip here with Mom and Dad in 1977.

Photo: An interesting street sign reminding us of the prudence of NOT renting a car for our visit.

Grind

2010-03-26T13:28:00.000-07:00

Moscow is not an easy town for tourism. As wonderful as our hosts have been this is a bit of a daily grind here. Many reasons for this:

1. Cyrillic: Graphically a beautiful alphabet and it adds a definite mystery to the place; it is fun to run across a Ctarpuk3 (or something like that) and find its really a Starbucks – but it can be dangerously inconvenient. This is because place names are pretty important in getting ones bearing in a new place. Even in unfamiliar languages you can pretty easily retain the idea that your metro stop is Marienplatz or Pont Neuf, but with Cyrillic you either remember a string of unfamiliar symbols (or a few of them) but there is always enough confusion and doubt to make you miserable wondering. Occasionally you will find transliteration into our alphabet, but that is pretty rare. Knowing the Greek alphabet helps, but really doesn’t make it. If you come to Russia, study Cyrillic on the plane ride in.

2. Signage: Not there. For example, after the ballet we went into the metro with Irena (one of our hosts) who knows but rarely uses the metro. We go into one of the larger downtown metro stops, likely one most frequently used by tourists because three or four of the lines come together in this station. So you enter and go down the usual impressive escalator and there is a platform – but not the correct line for us. Then there is a stairway to a lower platform; still not the right line. Irena is confused and asks the man in the box. Down the lower platform is a tunnel leading further on to another junction of several tunnels, and down some more stairs to another platform and up, through another tunnel to what actually turns out to be our desires line “3”. Absolutely none of this is marked. Had I been alone there would be absolutely no way I would have figured this out for myself. I would know (by staring at the Cyrillic) that this is the right train station; my map would have promised me line #3 but it would simply appear to be not there. You need to hope the man in the box (a) speaks English (highly unlikely) and (b) wants to help (not very likely). This brings us to the next difficulty:

3. Demeanor. The Russians I have met have been wonderful, kind, polite and friendly in every way. The street demeanor is a very different thing. Interestingly enough, during Kerry’s presentation yesterday she got the Russian students talking about stereotypes and one of the main points about Americans is how we go around grinning and nodding and smiling all the time and for absolutely no reason at all. So, we are as different from them as they are the other way. In crowds they do not speak – even crowded subways can be totally silent – and they tend to push on ahead (or through or cut into a line) with a kind of determined push. It does not send off any kind of a comforting vibe to the stranger, and one gets the impression they are ok with that. This might be one thing out in the districts, but it is equally the case in Red Square or Arbat Street or even with the staff in the tourist hotel.

4. Papers and Officials in Boxes: There is a great deal of official paper here. In some places you might be tempted to simply lose that extra form from behind your declaration form when you land at the airport. Better not do that here. There are additional pieces of paper certifying your residency at your hotel. Papers attesting the fact that you applied for and received your visa which you must keep with your actual visa (go figure….), pieces of paper that must be presented to the hotel staff along with your room key to get breakfast (more on breakfast – see below), papers to get you into the school. It is quite extraordinary. They are equally given to controllers who sit in boxes or behind little windows or turnstyles who will then dispute the efficacy of this paper. This happens even to Russians. For example, our host had to argue with the guard at the school to allows us to use one entrance to the school building rather than another (but later relented); the students with us at the Pushkin exhibit yesterday were turned away by the lady at the turnstyle because they should know better than to wear their jackets inside a building. There is a lot of paper; it all counts; its validity can always be rejected in which case one is plumb out of luck unless you are prepared to argue about things in Russian. There are people in boxes everywhere here, checking to make sure things are in official order and you can never assume their cooperation (even if your paper is in fact in good order). It is a place that like paper and likes bureaucracy.

On Friday, we are having a little ceremony for students here who have participated in Global Modules. Our hosts suggested that presenting students with a little certificate attesting to their participation and completion would be a nice thing. Scudder eagerly complies with this; inkjets and heavy paper make this an easy request to satisfy. But it puzzled me why this would be desired. The GMs are fine things, but they are really on the order of a class exercise and activity. Now I understand exactly where they are coming from; this culture likes official paper. If there is such a certificate at the end it does a great deal to legitimize most anything.

5. Food: I have known from some experience that Russian food can be quite good. I’ve had a few excellent bowls of borscht, the appetizers and dumplings that first night were very good. So, good stuff is out there – but not that reliably available. The food we have gotten at the hotel has been really dreadful – greasy, overcooked, dry – reliably bad. Out of an entire banquet running across and down two walls of the breakfast ball room, the only palatable breakfast items I can find are orange halves, and a kind of deep fried English muffin patty, perhaps a rather greasy crepe. The milk is warm; the vegetables boiled or heavily vinegared/pickled, the salami is greasy and tasteless; the bread is cheap and dry; the cheese is flavorless and has been left out too long. They proffer hot dogs as a kind of breakfast meat, and if you get one of the omelets it is unlikely to be fully cooked (see (3) above). Don’t hope for coffee – but the tea is good.

On the other hand, we have had some very good meals in restaurants – and I expect you will find they cook excellent things at home. They have some great recipes. I have become a fan of borscht. I understand their breads are exquisite. So, I suspect this really is a product of a reliable lack of quality in cheaper or medium priced public eateries. Much of what is proffered to the public as a prepared meal is pretty poor stuff. The best solution is to get back to basics. The orange half at breakfast is ok. Tea is a nice drink and it is hard to mess it up (although watch out for some of the cheaper fruited teas they set out). Sliced carrots, sliced cabbage or a bit of cucumber is what it is – and if you can find it reasonably fresh on the buffet, go for it. They also make a simple cooked wheat (or is it bulgur) which is fine and filling. Keep it simple and you are ok.

I’ve been at plenty of hotels with a breakfast bar that isn’t even trying – you see this as much in the States as anywhere. Still, usually a look around will find you a Starbucks or some bakery or shop that will proffer something decent and easy at a fair price; I don’t get the impression that is a reasonable expectation here.

6. Smoking. Nearly everywhere. Sitting in the hotel lobby checking email, your eyes begin to sting after about ten minutes. Tobacco smoke comes through the wall of the hotel – you can even distinguish between rooms with people smoking cigars and cigarettes. Even at the nicer restaurant people are likely to light up at the table next to you. It’s strange to think how far the US has come on this. Oddy enough, school is the one place where I do not see this; just the reverse of the States where campus is the one place that I see lots of smoking.

One of my travel mates has a friend who lives here. He says that Moscow is a great city, but points out there are a few things you need to work through - knowing a bit of cyrillic, getting used to a few different patterns of human interaction - and the city itself really is amazing.

Photo: This is one of the long long down escalators into the metro, which really does live up to its reputation as without a doubt the finest one you are ever likely to encounter. Every station is done up in a different architectural style and decoration. The trains run every two or three minutes. Police patrol it regularly and it is meticulously swept clean. Very nice.

School

2010-03-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

This was a second day largely filled with school stuff. One more of those tomorrow but after that I think we have a bit more time scheduled for our own Moscow experience. Some of the students are going to take us around to some different parts of the city, take us shopping, and the Chair of the English Language department is having us over on Friday. Nice prospects.

Jen and Gary and I delivered our second and final student presentation this morning. So, I guess this is a good time to make a few remarks about the school and the students.

As I mentioned yesterday, the school is pretty run down. An old institutional place – actually an armed services academy that consists of about six or eight connected buildings. You can walk around the entire campus following indoor corridors and staircases. It looks as if a wall hasn’t been painted nor a length of flooring replaced in fifty years. There is obviously not a lot of money being passed around in state sponsored higher education in Russia.

That being said, this is actually one of the better funded schools. I gather it receives a great deal of interest and support from the current government as a hope for carving out some high end education for the first or second tier of students here in Russia. All of the students are required to have quite advanced abilities in English and one other language by the time they graduate, and the students do deliver on this requirement. Even the second year students have excellent English skills, and the third year students have really superior skills.

I’ve gotten something of a tutorial on how the state university system works. It is the state universities that really have the best reputation here (because they are supervised and quality checked by the state – clearly one different sort of attitude than we would find in the US). All of the state universities are really administered under this system. So, although there are local schools, smaller and larger, some (like the Higher School of Economics) with various campuses around Russia – they are all ultimately answerable to the state university system. So, they are not institutionally as distinct as, say, St. Mike’s and Champlain College. They are differentiated by their faculties (which refers more to the college and degree program, not the people teaching the college). Various schools will have an exactly defined program of study that takes you to exactly this small array of degrees. For the HSE this would include degrees in business, international business, finance, etc. The degree is a five year program, and my impression is that students begin it at a level slightly more advanced (academically if not by age as well) than US students.

The classes we have worked with have really been impressive. The students are completely attentive and engaged and engaging. You notice an initial hesitance, but once they start talking they have a lot to say. They are well informed. For example, the second year students understood points from the US Constitution like the electoral college. The third year students could give a succinct explanation of the Republican and Democratic party and were up to date on current issues. They are polite – have boundless energy – and seem to enjoy a really friendly, if slightly more formal relationship with their teachers.

So, class has this impressively energetic, focused and engaged feel to it despite the fact that the paint is practically falling of the wall. It is good testimony to the fact that a school is more than its facilities.

Since Sunday, we have been guided and ferried around Moscow by a nice group of third and fourth year students. They’ve met us at the hotel in the morning, driven us to restaurants at night, taken us on walks through Red Square and the Kremlin, gotten us to the Pushkin museum today – and generally been good company. Most of these are the students are coming to Vermont next month, so we’ll have the chance to return the hospitality.

I’ve been part of two presentations to students here and both of these I partnered with Jen Vincent and Gary Scudder. Yesterday we met with a second year class and talked broadly about differences between Russian and the US politically and socially. We asked them about their impressions of US culture and fielded their questions. This was much the case with another presentation today, only at a slightly more elevated level with the third year students. We talked a bit about health care policy – comparing the US and Russian systems, and I spoke a bit about the political dimensions of this recent legislation in the states. Jen was there to handle economic dimensions of these kinds of issues. In both cases, it was a good experience mostly because the students really were forthcoming with their own questions and reactions. I am quite impressed.

The Russian tuition system might be an encouragement here. I gather the size of a students scholarship/funding for education is largely determined by performance. Excellent grades are rewarded by substantial or complete scholarship funding; poor grades are met (if not with expulsion) with reduced support.

It’s this sort of connection with the school that makes this kind of travelling great; you get to interact with people you would never run across were I simply staying downtown and visiting Red Square or the Pushkin before touring along to St. Petersburg. We commute in and out from the college to the hotel with other Muscovites, and generally get something of an inside view of what goes on here.

My impression is that it is not all that easy to be a Russian these days – and that brings me to the topic of the Moscow grind. This is not an easy place to function – and for a tourist particularly so. Perhaps I will get into that more tomorrow.

Photo: Nope, not the school I am talking about. This is the entrance to one of the buildings off of Red Square. I haven't been taking pictures these past two days - so I'll make a point to carry my camera tomorrow.

Tutus

2010-03-22T21:59:00.001-07:00

An exhausting but rather wonderful day. We tucked in to the business end of the trip. After another breakfast at the Soviet style breakfast bar – AND a quick check on the news to hear about the vote on the healthcare bill and the surrounding dramatics, we were met by Olga and Gradya(?) and guided through a busy metro line and a bit of a winding walk to the Higher School of Economics.

My first impression is that schools here have wonderful students and miserable facilities. I gather the school is located in a former Soviet military academy – and that maybe one part of it was an old palace with a staircase trodden by Napolean. The building/campus is remarkable for its size – if that is the way to describe this complex of connected buildings with corridors that go up and down and off at right angles without any limits that was able to see.

Katya and Irena – our real hosts – a professor and the Chair of the foreign language faculty at the school – met us at the top of one of those flights. It was a very friendly greeting; they have clearly put a lot of work into our visit.

This morning we saw a series of powerpoint presentations from one class of 2^nd year students introducing (in impeccable English) the school, the studies, the social life, a brief review of the curricula vitae of their Dean (whom we met subsequently). After lunch in the school “cantina”, Jen and I taught a class of second year students who were studying American politics and culture. Our aim is mostly to be here to answer their questions, so we did just enough introduction and presentation to get them talking about America and Russia and spent the hour talking about a variety of questions on everything from time management to gun control. We also did our Champlain thing by asking them to work in groups to answer some questions for us. Very easy, very forthcoming – and they even knew what the electoral college is. The only problem was that class wasn’t long enough. We were pulled out of it to go meet and talk with the Dean.

The Dean is a very important individual here. The school is really a new college organized to train economic and political scholars and leaders, and the Dean is really the director of the entire institution (another teacher, Boris, later on filled me in on how the universities are organized here). He has a long and quite distinguished career in politics and economic policy in the old Soviet Union and today he advises Putin. Also, my impression is that Russia is given to it hierarchies – and so he is treated with a great deal of deference around school. Our college President, let alone our Dean, should have it so good. So, we talked about education and geopolitics and our little Global Modules program for awhile.

Later in the afternoon, Scudder and Betsy made a presentation on the GMs to the language faculty and there was a nice reception.

Too much to write about… I’ll get back to my thoughts about the school and student later. The facilities really are run down; the insides look like a 1950s school that has received almost no upkeep for the last thirty years – grooves in the stairs, cracked linoleum, repaired repairs of fixes on the door handles – but the students seem extremely capable and hard working and friendly, and the faculty is also running at full tilt. An impressive place.

More on that later. Tonight we took a long walk through some spitting snow and a brief metro ride to the ballet to see “Swan Lake”.

This was my first ballet –and I went in a little worried because (1) I had done absolutely nothing to teach myself about what’s up in this (or any) ballet and I had meant to do that before coming here, and (2) I was really quite tired after a long day in unfamiliar places and quite a hike across strange territory and I heard.

It was really great. I honestly did not think I would be engaged in it for the full three hours but it was really fun to watch. The four swan dancers did there thing in the first act, there was that great ballroom scene in the third, the storm in the fourth – quite amazing to watch. I am entirely sold. The theater was beautiful and the dance was excellent (“one thing we are still proud of” Irena remarked).

An equally long and complicated walk back to the right metro stop – and here I am back again, hoping I can catch enough sleep to do it again tomorrow. Jen Vincent and I are teaching a third year class in the morning.

Photo: No new pictures yesterday. I'll bring my camera to school later this week to get some photos. This shot is of one of the folklore statues near the front of the Kremlin.

Downtown!

2010-03-21T13:22:00.000-07:00

Very impressive day. We toured the major sites: Red Square and Kremlin as well as a “country house” of one of the old aristocratic families. The weather was such as it is in March (rainy, a kind of on and off drizzle) but the truth is that is much easier to take than bright sunshine of Istanbul in July.

The hotel breakfast this morning certainly had variety – but I’d say the Istanbul comparison might play the other way. I slept like the dead last night, about ten hours solid. So, I feel pretty much caught up with the local time. That was easy this trip. Around eleven Irena, one of our student guides, met us, along with Karina (from last night) and we were ferried off for a day of the sights.

This morning we went to an old county estate of one of the aristocratic families – Sheremetov. Interesting place. It was really an estate designed mostly around hosting large balls. At least the central hall seemed that way. I gather the family lived in some of the smaller building around the estate. There were chapels and various houses, orangeries, lodges clustered around immense gardens and landscaped ponds. The interior of the main house was especially nice for its parquet floors (amazing designs out of contrasting woods), and some other really nice pieces of furniture. The gardens and landscaping – again, this is a sloppy time in March – were left more to the imagination, but those were beautifully set out.

I’d have to say Red Square was the most impressive thing today. Perhaps that is because the pictures I’ve seen of it lowered my expectations. In reality the size of it and the way it is anchored by these spectacular buildings, each of which more or less command their own space and need a big setting, all made it enormously impressive. For example, St. Basil’s – the multi domed colorful church we’ve all seen in pictures – it’s really a spectacular building not only in its details but also its overall shape, it fills up a space like Red Square very nicely.

The Kremlin wall runs down one side. This is the place that we know from the old photographs of the politburo lined up near the wall by Lenin’s tomb for the May Day parades. The other side is dominated by the GUM (pronounced “goom”) or State Department Store. Amazing place. I’ve seen these very old glassed covered arcade malls before, but never on this scale. There are three tiers of stores rising up on mezzanines joined by arched iron work scrolled bridges covering two long arcades of high end shops and cafes. We stopped there for a coffee and pastry late in the morning – very nice.

After wandering by St. Basil’s Cathedral, Lenin’s Tomb , a perpetual flame monument for the World War II dead, and a kind of flowing pool filled with sculptures depicting various Russian folk tales and fables, we got to the Kremlin around four in the afternoon. That gave us some time to explore some of the sites there – particularly the Church of the Annunciation used by the old royal family. This was an intensely decorated, although rather small, interior crammed floor to dome with beautiful wall paintings and an enormous iconostasis of old and beautiful icons. In the church of the Archangel, across the way, you have the tombs of many of the Czars and other Russian royals.

We had dinner at a buffet place just off Red Square which offered a chance to try a variety of different dishes, which was nice. I am very impressed with what the Russians do with dumplings – all kinds of filling and sauces.

On the way home I got my first glimpse of the impressive – both by reputation AND (I can now say) in fact – Moscow subway. The stop by Red Square (Kruschkaya?) was lined with marble and filled with bronze sculptures (mostly military themes).

So – as you can tell – today was a rush of new sights and impressions, an excellent way to start. Again, it makes a huge difference to have these students helping us around. I don’t get the sense that Moscow makes a point to cater to tourists, so having someone to point out how to make it through the subway, etc. is a big help. The guide books say it makes a big difference to learn a little about Cyrillic letters before coming here, and unless you have guides like these, that does make a big difference. The little Greek I once studied helps with some of the letters (think “rho” not “p”) but that only goes so far. In most strange places the sound and spelling of the words is usually all to clue you need to get by, but here – without familiar letters – that doesn’t work. The help has been essential.

Tomorrow will be nice in a different way. We finally get over to the college and get a chance to talk to some students and teachers in their classes – and that will be fun.

Photos: The top picture is of the interior of the GUM arcade (built in the 1890s) just below that are some of the domes of St. Basil's Cathedral.

First Things

2010-03-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

As I write this, our first full day in Moscow begins. We arrived here yesterday around mid-day, which left enough of the rest of the day available to get settled into the hotel and form some first impressions, and have a great first dinner at the David Denisov (Denis Davidoff) Restaurant –chosen for its most traditional Russian fare. Our hosts have been wonderful. It’s nice to have a landing like this really well managed – and they’ve been great.

The flight over on Aeroflot was fine – about as comfortable seats as you can expect from any coach level service, movie screens behind each seat. I think I must have even been able to sleep a bit as those wee small hours seemed to pass fairly quickly. On landing passport control was pretty quick (contrary to what the guide books prepared us to expect) and ALL the bags made it here from Vermont in good condition – so, good travel.

Nikita – a fourth year student at the college met us and with impeccable English distributed maps, metro passes, contact phones as we piled into a van for a trip to the hotel. The Ismail Beta is where we are staying. It’s part of an enormous hotel complex built for the 1980 Olympics (and, now that the US is fighting its war in Afghanistan hopefully our visit here will make up for that bit of Olympic history). The hotel is good – nice rooms, wifi is free in the lobby and you can also pay for an in rooms service, there is breakfast buffet included – everything we need.

The drive in from the airport was pretty long, though, and the van was hot – I am actually forming the general impression that Russians like to keep building warm. The weather seems to be a wet mid-thirties, which is ok but we are often warned to bundle up. It is not a particularly pretty time of year – grey brown snow melting into slush and wet ice doesn’t make anything look great, but this notwithstanding I am forming some good first impressions of the place.

As Nikita points out, Russians live in apartment blocks. This conjures in our minds immense Soviet towers and pavement- and perhaps you can find some of that, but actually what I am seeing is more like five or ten story building arranged around green spaces like a college campus. I am eager to get a look at the city center (I will be heading there in about fifteen minutes).

Rather than succumbing to the temptations of an afternoon jet lag nap, Scudder and I wandered off to some of the shopping spots behind the hotel. Nikita came with us just long enough to make sure we knew where things were and helped us change some cash. We looked at a few shops and got ourselves a bowl of borscht - the standard beet and cabbage soup – which was really quite good. On the way back to the hotel – leaping over icy puddles of snow melt – we negotiated buying a few bottles of water (voda) in a little store nearby that sells mostly cakes, candy and dried fish. Feeling flush with accomplishment and interaction we got back to the hotel in time to clean up for our dinner rendezvous.

Dinner was wonderful. Two more student guides met with us – Karina and Dennis – second year students at the college. They drove or taxied us to the restaurant and pointed out the especially Russian things on the menu. The best thing I had was called a “two pea” soup – which actually did involve a few types of peas,but mostly it was like a good leek and potato soup and had a nice grilled lamb chop set right in the soup bowl. My kind of soup. Then an entree of a kind of stuffed dumpling, pirogi, garlic toasts – a nice Czech lager – trying other people’s stroganoff – all good stuff!

All in a very nice start! Made it back to the hotel around 10 PM and slept like a log until 8:30 this morning. Actually, I feel pretty much with the time zone right now – a successful transition.

Today, I am just about out the door right now for the big turista day: Red Square. Keep tuned for more later – and pictures.

Photo: This is above an entrance to the Church of the Annunciation in the Kremlin.

Idlewilde

2010-03-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

It begins: an entirely new direction for the Golden Horn. Balanced blogging requires some exploration of the other side, and here is an opportunity to explore the ancient rivals of the Turks – the Russians.

It was an easy take off this morning. Went into the office for an hour or so before hitching a ride to the airport. The one irritation of this getaway is that we are expecting temperatures in the 30s or 20s in Moscow with snow melting into slush. Burlington Vermont, on the other hand, was expecting to shatter some warm weather records – maybe even get up to seventy. So, it felt sad to haul out the winter coat and fleece vest and generally get ready to bundle up again. Almost left the coat in Burlington airport, so perhaps there is some subconscious resentment about that too – but the trip promises to be fantastic.

Easy flight down. The plane was filled with a track team from Middlebury heading out to SanDiego – who were busily doing online library research in the airport and competed with each other over crossword puzzles on the flight down (students like this do exist?). Other than the man in front of me with the tattooed bald spot on his head (the track team thought that was pretty cool) – nothing remarkable.

So, here we sit for our long layover in JFK airport. Scudder, Jen and I got some good work done on one of our presentations – Kerry and Betsy doing much the same for theirs. Our flight is direct to Moscow on Aeroflot (the track team had enthusiastic recollections of Aeroflot apparently because it distributes free alcohol regardless of age). Hopefully it will be a comfortable flight and I will not arrive too fried, but generally I do not agree with long air flights overnight.

I am still getting clear about the schedule of what is coming up over the next week. I believe we are met at the airport in Moscow and taken to our hotel which was constructed for the Moscow Olympics and had the notability of being the largest hotel in Europe (something like 4000 rooms). We can do a little sight seeing or perhaps just catch up on sleep; some sort of dinner is arranged for Saturday evening.

My impression is that most days we have four or five hours of sessions with students in classes or perhaps with faculty; perhaps another two or three formal receptions of various types, but this should leave us some additional time to see the city both on our own and with some guidance from our hosts. The chief soiree should be the Bolshoi ballet dancing Swan Lake on Monday.

This is also the end of a very busy week. Lots to do at school, so I have not really had the time to think much about what is coming up although yesterday I was finally feeling that growing travel excitement.

OK – time to go find some kind of lunch/dinner meal so we can have a good bite before the flight. Next stop: Moscow.

Topkapi & Out

2009-07-17T00:45:00.000-07:00

July 17, Friday: Istanbul: Time to let things wind down. Yesterday was a really busy day. We spent some excellent hours at Topkapi, and the later afternoon was mostly about getting ready to leave. This trip was a nice length -and the pause in Cirali in the middle of it all made it really work nicely. I am ready to not have to think too much about planning where to go each day; it will be nice to get home. Unfortunately, there is a long travel day in front of us. I think we pretty much stay at 4:30 PM (by the sun) for seven or eight hours.

That visit to Topkapi was really nice. We followed the plan from last year and were at the outer gate of the park (Babuhumaniye?) fifteen or twenty minutes before it all opened. If you play things just right, you can feel you have the place nearly to yourself for about one hour before the crowds really begin to flow into the palace. Also, we honed right in on the Harem (a seperate tour inside the palace), and that worked out perfectly. We effectively had the best rooms there to ourselves. Also, the basic layout of the palace made a lot more sense to me this time. You could see the hierarchical zones of eunuchs, concubines, Favorites, Valide Sultan (mother), Crowned Princes, Sultan with successively nicer hallways, courtyards and baths for each. My favorite place was the reading room off the chambers of Murad III (room designed by our hero, Sinan) – a beautifully ornamented, smaller sunny place overlooking all the waterways of Istanbul.
Topkapi is all about successive zones of beauty and privacy; it's not a European palace designed to overwhelm you with enormous galleries ornamented to impress. The rooms, although elaborately and beautifully decorated, are fairly small. The quantity of space that even a Sultan occupies is not that great. Meanwhile, in classic Ottoman style the inside flows onto the outside in many different gradations. It takes some imagination to recreate what the place would have been like when the many pools and water fountains were operating, and everything was draped with carpets and cushions.

We even had the time and endurance to make it through some of the museum galleries, seeing the clothing and jewels of the Sultans and the the vast collection of relics. I understand the clothing of the royals was considered nearly sacred. For generations (200 years, in fact) after he died, Suleyman's tomb was draped with his kaftans and turbans. The jewels were remarkable, although I must admit this stuff is not something I find particularly amazing. The “Spoon diamond” (one of the largest) was so called because it was found in a garbage pile and sold to a dealer for a few wooden spoons before being brought to the palace. Then there was the Topkapi dagger – and so it goes as you file past little case after little case.

The relics were much the same sort of experience. Was it the arm bones of John, the sauce pan of Abraham – or was that Abrahams arm and skull and John's staff – or Moses'. There also was also a run of gutterpipe from the Kabbaa – and a magnificent case you could view from two rooms away that contains the cloak of the Prophet.

Religion is incompatible with material reality. The world is truly composed merely of concepts. Sensation only particularlizes the abstract – nothing more.

An expensive but pleasant lunch just off the Hippodrome -then a nap and a scramble to pick up some turista stuff, and a goodbye at the carpet store where we had a pleasant talk about the Carpet biz with our guy, now that all the buying was (almost) done. Dinner at Buhara(?) 93, just down the street, another superlative salad and plate of roast meats.

This completes the 2009 edition of The Golden Horn. We will see what 2010 brings. My faithful assistant is already lobbying for a return. He feels he has invested too much work and practice into his Turkish language skills to simply leave things rest here. I am open to this, but my feeling is we need new travel companions. Now, having figured out the central mysteries of practical life here, we need to start our career as tourguides.

Most Remarable Thing: Well, when we were on the Sultan's pavilion, just outstide the Circumcision Kiosk, one of the tourists hauled off and kicked another in the pants. Delicacy forbids that I dwell on this or the ensuing brawl and arrests, but honesty demands that it was quite remarkable. It also reminded me of the aggravations of tourism. At that moment I decided that my travel experience had reached some sort of completion (depletion?).

Photo: Topkapi. This is the back of the Throne Room that is located just inside the Gate of Felicity where the Sultan received Ambassadors and other state visitors. The design and decoration shows the general ornamentation and feel of the palace.

Galata

2009-07-15T13:56:00.000-07:00

July 15, Wednesday / Istanbul: Oddly enough, getting back to 'stam boul feels a bit like getting home.

The flight was only about an hour and presented some nice views of the country below, especially the bit where we came in over the Marmaris Sea.

Today we were intent on getting to Topkapi palace - but even within forty minutes of the opening the place was filled with tour busses. I noticed it is closed on Monday and Tuesday, so I think (hope) that Wednesday might be an especially crazy day. Anyway – we hit the eject button and decided to take advantage of a nice day to take a walk through Galata.

This involved the metro rail across the Galata bridge and the funicular up to Taksim Square. Galata is located on the steep incline of a hill between the north coast of the Golden Horn and Taksim square.

It's an interesting place. Essentially, it is this traditional Italian (Genovese) town that has always been the seamy world of trade and commerce balancing the serenity and pieties of the palaces, mosques, and churches across the water. This is the place the Ottoman Sultans came to take on so much debt and such high interest that it effectively broke the Empire.

Again – not learning my lesson from our guided stroll through Balat and Fener – we attempted
another one of the guided walks from the book. It is no more possible to know where you are on a map in Galata than in Balat. That's a kind of interesting fact about Istanbul. Even the taxi drivers need to ask directions and look at their gps systems. But the idea was “go downhill” and that worked for us. We did manage to catch a few of the listed sites from the book along the way. One of these was the Dervish lodge, an interesting old Catholic Church, a synagogue (with an exterior, I must observe, like a Brinks armored truck, apparently enough of that kind of religious tension exists to keep the Jewish congregation concerned). Of course, the Galata tower was the big item halfway down the hill. It is set in a kind of convergence of roads winding down the hill, surrounded by cafes, sleeping street dogs, and old Ottoman fountain. Below that you get into the banking section, and finally a market area down by the water.

I like these walks through the city – and this really is a city of neighborhoods. I think if I were to live here for some time, Galata would be a nice choice. It has a quieter feel – mostly due its narrow streets - and is close to the water and the big sights of the Sultanahmet across the estuary, yet it remains its own small place. The hill would keep you healthy. It might also be a nice place to stay even for a shorter visit – there was a nice looking hotel right there at the foot of Galata Tower.

Galata has always been a kind of counterpoint to Istanbul. It is a city of Italians and Catholics and Jews in a traditionally Islamic and Ottoman city. It even predates the fall of Constantinople and was recognizably its own concern back in Byzantine times. People like to say that Constantinople is where Europe meets Asia -but I think that specifically and practically really took place in Galata. That is where all the big Italian trading firms, banks and finance really brought the European world to the Sublime Porte.

Lunch at the old Kofteicisi – I've been there three or four times this year and last. This is an old fixture dating from the 1920's(?) where white coated waiters bring out plates of salad and kofte (lamb/beef grilled meatballs) with a special red pepper sauce. It's a wood panelling, brass fixtures, marble table top kind off place with lots of old pictures and letters from all the Turkish notables across the walls.

After that – back to the hotel for the usual afternoon down time, and then off, once again, to the Arasta Bazaar to kill some time with the carpet merchants.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Turkey. We really need to get to Topkapi and Aya Sofia.

Most Remarkable Thing: The city really is a city of neighborhoods and interestingly enough even the markets throughout the city specialize. For example, the top of Galata is filled with music stores – if you want a guitar or drums, that's where you find it. Lower down, this is the mechanical and electrical parts place for all of Istanbul. Clothing is purchased on the other side of the Golden Horn on the streets that fall down from the Grand Bazaar (which sells exclusively tourist trinkets) to Eminonu. Pet food is in the blocks outside the Spice Bazaar where you can also find plants. Pots, pans and metal work is near the Suleymaniye Mosque. Whatever product you care to name – eyeglasses, lawn mowers, air fresheners ,garden hoses, bicycle tubes – I am sure it has a specific address here.

Photo: Galata Tower.

Olympos

2009-07-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

July 13, Monday / Cirali: Finishing three perfect beach days. Days one and two were exclusively devoted to the kind of beaching stuff that really needs no description. Today we did find the motivation to walk down to the end of the beach in order to look around the ruins of Olympos.

Olympos was founded – nobody really knows when – perhaps the second or third century BCE. They knew it had some prominence back when Lycia was Lycia (when?). Absorbed by the Romans, the Byzantines, the Genoans, and ultimately the Ottomans. I gather the place effectively died out as a city around the 15th century. An odd sort of history – it picks up in the middle of things and ends in the in-between as well. Just goes to show reality does not always follow the chapters of the history books.

What was neat about Olympos was that this was a city largely unexcavated. Unlike a place like Caunos (last year) where all the old foundation stones were pretty well layed bare and you could see the outlines and the streets of everything- this place had the feel of the ruins among the vines and weeds as they might have looked back in the nineteenth century before most people bothered to care about these things. Here were all these walls and pillars in the forest – make of them what you will....

The hike was also nice. It involves a long walk down the beach and then up along a trail following a little fresh water stream. My impression is that a lot of people access the beach this way, so there is an odd mix of relaxed Turks dragging their coolers and kids to the beach and earnest tourists clambering around looking at the stones.

This break in Cirali has been really nice. Most days we've gotten to the beach for an hour or so in the later morning and again in the late afternoon or early evening. Each day we've had dinner at a restaurant somehow associated with the hotel – but a nice place, and my assistants efforts at Turkish have endeared him to the waiters, so we are nicely treated there. We finished things out tonight by splitting one half of a large fresh fish (a grouper pulled from the sea – we are assured – earlier today).

Not much to say about beach life. I think perhaps the beach is an unsung cultural constant – a refutation of relativism. Every place, every culture and religious or ethnic group no matter how distinct in other ways seem to relate to the beach in exactly the same fashion. There is something about the waves and the sun and the semi-nudity that simply undercuts concepts and ideologies of all sorts. It is the triumph of percepts over concepts.

Tomorrow, however, we fly back to Concept Land – we should be in Constantine's City in the later afternoon provided we find our plane on Antalya set and ready to go. Our time here is dwindling. I have two or three more “must sees” in Istanbul (Topkapi, Hagia Sophia, Galata) – some shopping. We will be back in Boston on Friday evening.

Most Remarkable Thing: When you dive under the water here, there is this high grinding sound from the zillions of little round stones rolling over on each other in the surf. It's sort of like a really soothing dentists drill – if that sort of sound is conceivable.

Photo: The signs say this is part of a Roman temple, but my own eyes and my guidebook say that is a mistake. This is a gate to the Roman city of Olympos.

Idyll

2009-07-12T00:38:00.000-07:00

July 11, Saturday / Cirali: Our first fully leisured day here at the beach. It's pretty sweet. We arrived yesterday after an hour transfer out of Antalya and a winding descent down to the sea.

Cirali really is not a town; it's a beach. The only town part is a few shoebox size stores in among the little hotels, pansiyons and campgrounds bellying up to the beach. Most of the hotels also have restaurants right behind the beach – so life here is designed to be lived in your swim suit (maybe).

And that is pretty much all you need to know about today. The scenery is great. Our hotel is situated in this garden about a five minute stroll down a stone and dirt path to the beach. The gardens (see photo) are spectacular. The beach itself is mostly rounded pebbles at the shoreline but it drops off to eight or ten feet deep within about a yard or two of the shore. The water is wonderfully clear.

So, these days are pretty much devoted to rest, reading, naps and ocean swimming. The room at the hotel provides some nice air conditioning when the heat of the day is really roaring. There is some humidity but its broken by a nice ocean breeze. We have breakfast in the garden up here – perhaps tomorrow I will try making some of that tea from some local herb (maybe sage) that grows up on the mountain. The water is warm – nothing like the Puritanical challenge of the New England swimming I am used to – but very pleasant. The long chairs and umbrellas are free (from the hotel) and there is always a cold beer at one of the cafes behind the beach.

The only challenge, really, is not getting sunburnt – but my eight or ten tubes of spf 70 seem to be holding up well- as is my Orhan Pamuk novel, My Name is Red, a intrigue of love, murder and the philosophy of art, set in 17th c. Istanbul. I tend to like fiction with philosophical/theological undercurrents. It takes place in the world of the Sultan's miniaturists, illustrators and book guilders.. Islamic tradition forbids the creation of idols, which broadly interpreted means the very existence of image making is broadly suspect. This is why the Ottoman aesthetic runs to calligraphy and geometrical design. You should see some of the wood carving patterns you see in all the old palaces and mosques; it's really eyecatching – this seemingly chaotic variation of shapes and lines that spring up out of the simplest principles overlayed on each other.

So, that's about all I have to say about that. Maybe I'll include an extra photo this time as this is definitely a more visual and less conceptual sort of place.

Most Remarkable Thing: OK – it's time to praise salad. What the Turks do with vegetables is wonderful – it really eclipses the parade of grilled meats here. This evening we had this mix of green beans, carrots, beans, in a light oil based tomato dressing. They like to always add a little bit of heat to their salads and vegetables, so they do a lot with peppers. Then there is that roasted eggplant with a little oil and garlic slices – and the always perfect parade of tomatoes and cucumber (my shaman vegetable) that is always on the side of everything. I wonder if US customs is ok with olive oil? At times it seems as if the entire Anatolian peninsula (except for those mountains I described yesterday)is one big vegetable garden. This would be an easy place to get meat out of your life. I had a vegetable pide (think a long eye shaped pizza ) for dinner- covered only with roast vegetables.

Photos: Above is a nice shot of the garden outside our bungalo. Below see Cirali beach, looking north.

Meanders

2009-07-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

July 10/Friday, Antalya: Greetings from the Mediterranean!

I think I last left things off in Cappadocia. Yesterday was mostly consumed by a very long bus trip that was surprisingly easy to take. I wasn't looking forward to a bus trip that takes up the entire day (nine hours), but I figured catching the night bus (Turks generally like to do the long hauls at night) would be even worse. One way you lose the day, but the other you lose both a good sleep AND the next day.

Anyway – all the connections were easy and the scenery was magnificent for most of it. What I particularly remember was the haul up up up into the Taurus (Toros) mountains. That is a very high and very steep range of mountains running along the southern coast of Turkey. I think these are the mountains that have kept Lycia more or less cut off from the rest of the world -at least by land.

The mountains were made of something like granite with soft rock eaten away by erosion so what is left looks like an enormous pile of granite bolders with pines and cypress clinging to it. Rocks and scrub trees- nothing else. The road is mile after mile of hairpin turns both up and down.

We got into Antalya in the evening. It was ghastly hot and humid, really life sapping. The hotel we stayed in was gorgeous; a renewed Ottoman mansion. I like the architecture. Its very open and breezy and designed for shade with big overhanging eaves on the roof. There is lots of stone work and big patios and terraces. The hallways are open to courtyards and the construction is a post and beam style up top with stone work nearer the ground. Windows open everywhere, and there is often a pool or fountain in the front court.

The hotel itself was oddly aggravating Maybe it was the heat but I felt like I was on a bad cruise ship. It was crowded and the meals were big banquet affairs and they seemed to have lots of rules and procedures. Also, Antalya has limited any car traffic into the the old city (Kaleici) in the very center of the sprawling and enormous new city. This means it feels like you are in this little cobble stoned, winding street, Ottoman/Roman city with a beautiful harbor below. Another result is that it turns it into a tourist compound with the attendant street touts hawking all the same kind of trinkets. So, I was happy to get out of there this afternoon although we did have a nice walk about and a very nice lunch under an olive tree at a cafe overlooking the old harbor.
We shelled out the big bucks for private transfer down to Cirali from Antalya (80 Euros!) but that price makes sense after seeing the hour long drive out of that city and then up and down these hairpin turns following the coastal road south past Kemer to Cirali. The litle road to Cirali itself was a winding drop down to this little beach village.

But what a place! Gorgeous beach with crystal clear water rolling in over rounded pebbles. The mountains roar up just behind. Our hotel looks great. A two room place with a little porch in the back. You follow a stone path through these gardens of flowers and fruit trees, about five minutes walk to the beach.

It's pretty nice – but more on that later.

Most Remarkable Thing: I could write about Turkish driving, but those mountain and city roads and the fact that Turkey has an accident rate 14 times higher that Europe says it all. Rather, I will doff my hat to the great bus system. The travel didn't even feel like half the time. Stewards come up and down the corridor offering tea, twinkies, mints, towelettes. The busses are clean and they wash them at every stop. The service is constant ; frequent busses run off in all directions all the time. Most amazing of all – the fare for our nine hour air conditioned (sort of) ride was 40 YTL (about $30).

Photo: Here is a shot of Hadrian's Gate in Antalya from our walk yesterday. This was a Greek/Roman city -and ultimately the port which launched many of the Crusades to the Levant. The gate was built for a visit by Hadrian.

Arts,Crafts,God & Village Life

2009-07-08T11:40:00.000-07:00

July 8, Wednesday - Cappadocia: Once again, we made the right choice and handed over our decision making to a tour provider. Mustaffa did well enough yesterday that we decided to go with him again. Some of the sights were repeats (for me) from last year, and I was skeptical of my assistant's willingness to look at more caves and churches, but we decided that we did not come here to rest ourselves but to drink in things Turkish – so off we went.

Good thing! It was a really nice day, and even the repeat stuff was better than before. A lot of it involved scenery and terrain – which really is remarkable here – but we also visited a few craft places (pottery and rug weaving) – and it was all good.

The major sight in the morning was the outdoor museum at Goreme. This was a hidden monastery originally but gradually came into publicity and importance before fading away to become a merely local oddity (all these Christian drawings in the old caves). It got a bit more of the backstory this time through. Supposedly the area – simple dwellings and four of five cave churches - were founded by Saints Theodore and Gregory(?) in the second or third century. They were from the Levant (Jerusalem) and were early proseletyzers of the new Christianity. At that time, of course, Christianity was persecuted so maintaining a hidden monastery in a distant and unlikely place worked nicely as an education program. Generations of Christian missionaries were educated and trained here and sent out across the Roman Empire.

When Constantine converted, places like this came out into the sunlight (only figuratively). So there is a layer of crude wall paintings covered by a layer of much more elaborate frescoes (after the place received money from the Emperor). Unlike the cave paintings yesterday, these ones were well preserved. My assistant earned his keep by bringing a better camera that was capable of getting good interior shots without a flash in dimmer light. We'll see – if he disappoints on this I am gong to cut back his Raku ration.

I had seen this museum last year, but it was nice to see it again. Also, it was better explained and a lot less crowded. When I was in those places last year it was like being in a subway. This time through we had those Byzantine churches all to ourselves.

OK – I am hearing, again through back channels, that my readers find the historical/cultural reflections tedious. It is said they simply want more food and carpets. Well .... more on that later.

One more thing: In the afternoon we went to see Zelve – a cave city that was an inhabited village until quite recently. Our guide knew the place – and the original village – quite well and did a really good job bringing out exactly what the routines of such a life were like. The landscape, not only here but all over Cappadocia, is quite amazing. The life of living off these little gardens in hidden valleys among these caves made sense - and that is what you hope from a good tour, the ability to see how human life goes on in these very strange circumstances.
Later on we went to the pottery town, Avanos – and saw the (once again, in a cave) workshop of a pottery manufacturing studio there. They showed us the various grades of clay they used – a quartz clay being of very highest quality which was used in the tile work of the finest imperial Mosques in Turkey (e.g. The Blue Mosque). My #2 got some good shots of the store there – the pottery was quite expensive and the top quality stuff was fantastically costly (e.g. $900 for a square foot tile). We thought our money might be more effectively spent on other crafts. The charm of the pottery really is in the very very exceedingly amazingly detailed decoration. You'll have to wait for the pictures.

Then we got to go the the carpet factory – which was really neat. After seeing the girls learning to weave on the looms we went into the store area. The weaving school/factory was neat. Their finest work is a silk on silk weaving that is done at such a high knot count that it takes the girls months and years to complete even a small piece – but even a BluRay DVD cannot match the results. After that we got to see them extracting the silk from the cocoons - and thence on into the show rooms. This was a very large room with a bench around the edges. The owner/manager narrates the carpet show as his trained assistants unroll and display carpet after carpet. Again, my assistant was at it with the camera – this time using mine as his own had run out of batteries in the last church cave at Goreme.

I purchased another kilim – and my assistant was unsuccessful when his bid was not accepted. But, as he said later, you know you are negotiating correctly when you leave without a carpet, at least you know you are not bidding too high. As for me, I am happy once again. You get a nice come down in the price and figure it looks great and in any case costs a lot less than what you can get at Macy's.

The carpet factory was great. You got to see some really stunning carpets – stuff that makes sense of it's $30,000 price tag – and the haunting worry that most of what I have bought is simply crap from China.

Dinner: the usual four courses on the terrace looking at the illuminated caves across the valley.
Tomorrow: long long long bus ride to Antalya. Bloggin might be interrupted for a day.
Without a professional tour guide telling us where to go, what to eat, how to think, when to leave, what to photograph... I am not sure how we will make out tomorrow, but we'll try.

One might suspect that this is a leisured and fattening life. Yet clambering up and down these mountain paths in the sun - ducking inito the shade for relief - squeezing ourselves through cave passages and crawling up and down stairways while crouched over -it's all part of a healthy Cappadocian lifestyle.

Most Remarkable Thing: In a day of remarkable things, I'd have to say those two prize winning silk carpets they rolled out were stunning. One was mostly colored a deep rich purple and the other had a kind of sky blue interior. The design involved lots of traditional elements and a kind of off balance swirling design. My vision of the carpet arts has been extended. The silk extraction process was also amaziing – seeing this little cocoon unroll into a mile of fine silk.

Photo: A shallow serving dish in the Avanos pottery studio - one of the high quality quartz clay stuff. If you need to ask how much.....

Old Greeks

2009-07-07T08:06:00.001-07:00

July 7, Tuesday: Cappadocia: Today my photo documentarian and I did our tourist duty and climbed in the bus just after breakfast so that our lives could be run by competent professionals for the next eight hour or so.

The Hotel here arranges a three day cycle of tours. One day it is the old Greek cities and sites around here, and the next is the open air museum at Goreme and the pottery city (Avonos), then there is a nature day with a walk down by some lake. We went on the Greek sites trip – and I think we got the best of the three.

I think there were about five or six stops during the day. The first two were the best. We first saw one of the underground cities. These are these amazing descending tunnels and chambers sinking straight down into the ground. I think we got about a hundred feet down (which was plenty) but one could go a lot further. They really are uncertain about who used these when. They might go way back to Assyrian and Hittite times (1800 BCE?) or may be more recent Byzantine things. Essentially, they were a way that entire towns could simply go underground and hide when the war armies over ran the place. Quite a bit of work squeezing down those tunnels and up back out of them.

The next stop was an old Greek city – Soigner(?). The Greek city was lived in up until the big population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1924. Then Turks lived there until erosion and stone falls seemed to pose problems. So, the old city was abandoned. Our tour involved walking on a path around a high mesa/mountain climbing up to look at some of the old churches or communal kitchens, descending down into valleys where people still grow crops. The place was a combination of cave dwellings with stone construction as well.

The remarkable thing is how the landscape shifts between sandy, sunbaked dust and scrub then down into these beautiful green valleys and canyons. In about fifty steps you can be either in Vermont or Arizona, as you please. During the afternoon there was also a visit to an archaeological dig where they found a small Byzantine town buried in a farmers field. The a visit to a cave monastery – again, cave construction – and too an above ground (finally!) town that used to be the center of Greek wealth and religion in the area.

In the middle of it all, lunch was a simple four course event, starting with a kind of hot tomato salsa, olives and bread, then salad, and a main course of beef in a sizzling dish with peppers and tomatoes. Desert was a simple plate of apricots, just off the tree. Ads I wrote last night, the dinner at the hotel is also very nice – we'll probably do that again tonight.

The tour was nice. You get to meet a few other people from around the hotel, and with only seven of us in the van, it was a nicely paced affair. I don't know if we'll do it again tomorrow. The sites (the open air museum at Goreme and the pottery places at Avanos) are ones I have seen last year, and I suspect my assistant gets the basic idea of the old Greek stuff and cave construction. I also doubt he would particularly enjoy the pottery places – but we shall see. A day of relaxation, reading, walking might be just the thing about now.

Most Remarkable Thing: I think I need to give up gardening. The old abandoned Greek cave monastery we visited this afternoon rises up out of this Turkish families extended garden. Imagine these paths winding through these old lava stone outcroppings with caves cut into them (religious images painted on the walls) – and all around this they have planted vines, flowers, fruit trees and vegetable gardens – watered off the spring that was the center of the old monastery. Today they sit under canopies and pergolas in their gardens and collect the admission fare from the tourists who happen to roll by.

Photo: Carpets! These ones being sold out of a shop by the underground city we visited.

Troglodytes!

2009-07-06T12:48:00.001-07:00

July 6, Monday: Today we liberated ourselves by figuring out the Turkish national transit system: the busses. My impression is that reservations are either optional or unavailble. You just go the “ottogar” and a bus is pretty much leaving for every possible place within the hour.

So, after our wonderful Dedeman breakfast and a leisurely packing we arrived at the Ankara ottogar just in time to catch the 11 to Urgrup. In Turkish fashion the place is frenzied and confusing. There is bank after bank of desks where various bus companies sell their tickets – mostly helped by an army of touts that fall on you as you get out of your cab. So, we did find the route to Urgrup on the Nevshehir buslines.

Amazing fact: that four hour bus trip costs only 25YTL (= $17). So, getting around Turkey is not an expensive proposition. The busses are very comfortable too. There are tv shows, and every ten minutes the steward goes up and down the aisles offering water, coffee or tea or cupcakes. They also make a rest stop every ninety minutes. We availed ourselves of one of those to get one of those amazing Alglida popsicles (reason enough to come to Turkey).

The bus arrived around 3:30 and we took a 15 minute taxi ride outside Urgrup to Ayvalu – a little village nested in a valley. The hotel is a cave hotel – and as I write this I am lying on my bed in the back of our cave, a sweet little room and bath dug into the volcanic ash rock that makes the region what it is. We arrived in the late afternoon but had time for a nice walk around the village here before a shower and dinner.

Things are definitely quiet and out of the way here – and that's ok after the Istanbul/Ankara experience. Throught the village – which is all made of stone and winding roads. You see women in traditional dress chatting and watching the chickens. Judging from the number of roosters here, it might be an early morning. There was a donkey, a cow – and pretty much everyone is growing vegetables in tubs in their courtyards or the patios outside the house. Then, behind it all, in a little valley surrounded by high rising cliffs sits this rather high end cave hotel catering the tourists here. The place is hard to describe – the stone building sort of fade in the cliff wall with lots of different levels and terraces – and someone has done a nice job planting roses and shade trees all over the place. I'll try to provide some pictures.

I understand (through various back channels) that many of my readers want to hear more about the food. Well – today was one of the better days, and not just because of that amazing popsicle at the bus rest area. Turkish food is – as far as I can tell – mostly about good and fresh ingredients. They don't do all that much with them. Mostly the question is whether you want your lamb in chops, ground and served as meatballs or as sort of squashed sausages, or broiled on skewers. Chicken and even fish are also proffered in the same way. This is accompanied by grilled or fresh tomatoes and cucumber. They put some lettuce in the salad, but it is not the main event. I like getting the C(h)oban Salati – which is a chopped salad of cucumber and tomato and maybe some herbs or even a bit of hot green pepper in it. It is served only with a bit of olive oil and – if you want – a lemon wedge to squeeze over it. They have excellent fish which is served whole – so eating it without bones takes some technique and care. Even that rather large meal we had in Istanbul – which my assistant wrote about so luridly- was really just that. A mere surf and turn with about three pounds of shredded lettuce and grated carrrot spread over a large tray. The meal consisted of a fish – either sea bream or trout – and a few extra bites of lamb – the rest was just salad and potato.

Tonights dinner was better. It started with a kind of tomato based barley soup that was nicely seasoned. Then a course of salad – good old cucumbers and tomato with some parsley and corn kernals – this time dressed with a little olive oil and pomegranite juice (really good!). There was also a plate of chicken salad to finish the salad course. The main plate was – of course – groud lamb kofte (meatballs) and rice and (this was a surprise) brussel sprouts. Desert was a kind of honeyed bread topped with some ground spices (cardamom?) and what I think was an unsweetened cream whipped almost to butter. This was served up course by course on the rooftop terrance of one of the buildings facing the opposite bank of old caves as the moon rose over the valley.

So – I hope this proves interesting to my readers. The Golden Horn has not usually been driven to chase after ratings, but I understand my assistant has been spinning little shards of truth into whole cloths of deceptions, so I figure it is important to keep up good relations with you, my cherished readers.

Most Remarkable Thing: Those popsicles really are good.

Photograph: These are the caves on cliff face just opposite our cave. Of course, ours is nicely finished much like the Baggins place at Underhill but the basic idea is the same.

Ataturkalore

2009-07-05T13:41:00.000-07:00

July 5th, Sunday: A day of rest and reinvigoration. We both managed to get some decent sleep on that train last night, and enjoyed breakfast rolling through the wheatfields and undulating hills of Anatolia as the train approached Ankara.

And – I am back at the Dedeman Hotel. Nothing spectacular, but it did have a few essential selling points I recollected from my stay here last year: (1) the sauna and (2)the breakfast. I had also hoped to recreate the remarkable dinner narrated in my blog entry “Sea Bream” from last June – but sadly the place is closed on Sunday.

Beyond the routine sort of stuff – find the hotel, get settled, nap, find lunch - the only remarkable things was our trip to the Anitkabir (the burial shrine and museum devoted to Kemal Ataturk and the Turkish revolution). Many photographs of the pavilions and courtyard of the mausoleum. The museum withstood a second look nicely. I've been wanting to learn about that shift – at exactly what point does the Ottoman Empire die and the Republic emerge.

I gather the quick answer is May 19, 1919. At least that is the summer/spring when what used to be the Ottoman army more or less moved over to the leadership of Ataturk – who resigned his commision and said that his allegiance to the Sultan was getting in the way of his duties to the Turkish people. Peace treaties and concordats followed – but this is when the Turks and Ataturk decided they were their own nation and that the Ottoman rulers (at least the current ones) were a major disappointment and they had to act in their own interests.

Returning to the hotel I was reacquainted with the sauna and the pool, then dinner. As mentioned, the nice fish place was unavailable so we ate at some tapas bar. I liked it well enough – my assistant seemed less impressed.

Not much more to report from today. Between the nap, the comfortable shower and great sauna, it really was more a day for rest and restoration rather than insight. So, I'll leave it at that.

Most Remarkable Thing: We are sitting in this tapas bar - eating a nice little arrangement of grilled vegetables, fish and roast potatoes with a nice tarragon sauce - and two big plasma screens over the bar are playing footage of car accidents. Most of the footage was from various security cameras. So we eat our grilled eggplant and admire the mayhem. My photodocumentarian and assistant found this immensely engaging – he hardly could speak a word all dinner for his fascination and amusement. I am beginning to think that he is, in fact, a Turk.

Photo: My photodocumentarian bravely taking on the combined military forces of the Turkish Republic in order to practice his craft.

Anadolu Ekspressi

2009-07-04T23:02:00.000-07:00

July 4th : Train from Haydarpasa to Ankara. First blog from a train! This little computer is rather convenient.

Nice day today – if a little mixed up. In the morning we were pretty busy with packing and getting out of the hotel, although the inn keeper did offer up a late check-out after placing a little flag on our table for the 4th of July. So we had to get back to the hotel around two to check out and then nothing until six o'clock to leave for ferry boats to get us to the train station at Haydarpasa. Also, without a shower or refuge available after three, we knew we did not want to take on another big adventure on the far side of town.

So, the low key business was to wander over and browse the carpets and stuff at the state store in Topkapi (there is a government sponsored store that offers guaranteed good merchandise at an expensive but fixed price – so you don't have to bargain, can know you are getting the authentic item, but no bargains). After that we wandered back to the Arasta bazaar thinking we would just look a bit more and then get to lunch. Saw some nice items there at the store where I shopped last year (Harem 49) – and like good merchants they recognized me and could even tell what I had bought the year before and wanted to know if I was interested in any similar.
After checking out of the hotel – and settling up on my assistant's outrageous Raku bills – he decided he would like to go back to the store.

And so it goes – got a nice little kilim/carpet (kind of a mix) that will really look sweet. The bargaining was fun as always although I wasn't that hard nosed (actually I kind of liked the idea of carrying a bit less cash around with me and this seemed as good a ways as any....). My photo documentarian had also saved up his nickels and tips to buy something, but I'll leave it to him to communicate those details. On the whole it was a nice way to spend an afternoon. I do enjoy looking at the carpets and they seem happy to keep talking, giving you water or tea and praising your good tastes.

After that, back to the real world. Took a taxi over to the ferry boats on the north side of the Golden Horn. I think this was a bit of a taxi scam as I am quite confident the Eminonu boats would have been fine if a bit closer to the hotel. Who knows – if I was scammed, it wasn't a very good one as it involvedjust a quick ride over the bridge. The ferry ride across the Bosphorus is simply about the most fun thing you can do for 1.5 YTL. Then we more or less just had dinner and hung out at the train station. Sounds pretty tedious but it was really very nice. The food was typical but good and about half the price on the other side of the strait. Having an hour to sit on the steps and watch the sun go down over the city while the various ferry boats roared past was a nice way to end the day.

And now we are underway – rolling off into Asia.

Most Remarkable Thing: Of course my new carpet is the most amazing piece of textile art since the tapestries of Chartres, but with slightly less jaded eyes I need to remark on that neat little train station restaurant. It looked like it had not changed that much since World War I (when a munitions “sabotage” mostly destroyed the train station), Beautiful blue Turkish style tiles on the wall – nice white and red table cloths, china that looked like it barely made it through the explosion. It felt like being in an Agatha Christy novel.

Photo: The Sultanahmet (Istanbul) from Haydarpasa Train statin (across the Bosphorus). You can see the minarets of the Blue Mosque (left) and Hagia Sophia (right).

Walk on the Wild Side

2009-07-03T10:21:00.000-07:00

July 3 – Friday: Today came off perfectly. A rich and full night's sleep. I prudently set an alarm to wake us early in the morning. This annoyed my assistant – and indolent and pleasure-loving sort of person – but it got things going at the right hour. The usual breakfast, tended to some practical details like sending out some laundry. Facing facts, the wash it in the sink approach is ok in a pinch but it can easily become a kind of night-job on these trips. Called a taxi and we were off.

Today's theme was pre-Islamic Istanbul and this means a trip to see the mosaics at Sacra Chora (Karriye Camii), then examining the walls of Theodosius (whose failure meant the failure of pre-Islamic Istanbul) and then a winding walk sort of along the lines of one described in my Frommer's guide down through Balat to Fener (districts in the western part of the city) winding up at the Church of the Ecumenical Patriarch.

Sacra Chora was easily worth the trip. Its located in a quiet village like part of town – winding cobblestone streets, shady pavilions for tea, etc. When built (around 4th or 5th c. CE) it was a monastery in the country (chora). The church itself was constructed in the 10th c. The guide book claims the last bit of money in the Byzantine treasury were poured into this. It's a fairly small church – nothing like the scale of the imperial mosques, but its known for the excellence and the preservation of its mosaics. Enough were still there to give you the feel of a completely and expensively decorated Byzantine church. The mosaics were stunning, as were the painted walls in the outer galleries. My photo-documentarian had his fine camera and this might have been able to get a few shots from inside – we'll see (it might redeem him after his caterwauling about the alarm).

After that we climbed up to the Edirne Gate in the Theoodosian Walls. The walls are impressive and the cut straight across the entire peninsula. The city has made some effort to reconstruct them in places – but they clearly have served (or failed to serve) their purpose. Climbing up on the wall (no small effort in the morning sun here) you get a nice view of the Golden Horn and the city. As normal here, they are completely open and available – no hand railings, etc. and no warning when a step might be crumbling or entirely absent. We made it down ok – and I think about quarter mile after that completely lost our way.

Following the instructions for a walking tour out of a book in Istanbul is probably not a realistic expectation. I think we followed at least large chunks of it – but who knows. Things were actually nicer when I put the stupid book down and began to enjoy things around and about. Balat is one of the poorer neighborhoods (says our guide) but it was nice in its own way (which makes me think it really is not one of the truly poorer neighborhoods. A city of 16 million largely migrant people and families should be able to deliver a much more impressive levels of poverty than Balat. It was a Friday (the holy day of the week) so families were out and about going to the mosque and enjoying the street life.

It was also a part of town that was not accustomed to tourism – and you see a lot more of that open and friendly feeling. Kids want you to take their picture, adults are friendly and greet you if you pause in one spot for awhile, people come out of the shops to help when they see you trying to figure out the stupid tour book map. Actually it was the best part of the day – nice to see some of the city life off the standard trail. It was good to do this sort of wandering with company- and my assistant is definitely not a whiner ( a cardinal virtue in travel companions).
So, it was all good. Actually,we could see we were simply wandering through the neighborhoods alongthe Golden Horn – and after we got to the Ecumenical Patriarchate (a bit of a splash down back in tourist land), we walked down a park along the river/estuary and eventually hailed a cab to get back to the Hippodrome (fun ride!).

The Patriarchate was also interesting. I don't recollect being in a Greek Orthodox church before and this was one of the nicer ones. I'll have to look into the history of the Greek and Russian Orthodox church. I believe that after tha fall of Constantinople there was argument between the Greek and Russian Orthodox over which patricarch is authoritative – starting a fairly nasty schism. The double headed eagle sign over the door was the sign of the Byzantine/Roman emperors. After this schism and the fall of the city, the claim to Roman rule moved up to Russia and the double eagle sign became the crest of the Russian Tsars (Ceaesars). So, the Patriarch in Istanbul was no longer as central – this church was constructed in 1600 and became the center of Christianity in Istanbul. It makes sense why the things is surrounded by high stone walls and iron gates. I gather one Patriarch was hung in the gate there when there was a rebellion against the Ottomans in Greece. The gate has since been welded shut "in grief". Fortunately, there were two other gates on either side.

Back to the familiar Sultanahmet for a nice lunch in a breezy cafe and to stop by another carpet shop. I fear we are getting recognized in the Arasta bazaar. Right now I am writing while watching the container ships pull out of the Bosphorus. My assistant is downstairs catching up on his sleep.

Most Remarkable Thing: Sacra Chora was really impressive, but I've not seen an Orthodox church before - or at least not one like the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It involves this screen of thick gilded material like a golden treacle with the icons set on this. It really was the kind of world historic ornate that I haven't seen since that baroque church in Munich.

Photo: JWK pondering the fate of empires atop the Theodosian walls near the Edirne Gate.

Sinan

2009-07-02T22:38:00.000-07:00

Today did not have quite the wonderful start you might hope for. Massive Jet Lag last night – went to bed tired yet unable to sleep.

Here in the Sultanahmet they accentuate the point by staging a late night and pre-dawn call to prayer that echoes across the Bosphorus from a zillion different mosques to clarify exactly how long sleep eludes.

Alas. I gave up early. Did a bit of reading about Sinan up on the roof terrace and was the first down to breakfast. By then – around 8 or 9 – when my assistant was beginning to stir then I was beginning to feel sleepy again and finally caught some shut eye in the later morning. So – half a day down...

But at least the night time reading got me prepared for the afternoon. We started with the Sokollu Mehmet Pasa Mosque- designed by the immortal Sinan (actually endowed for Sokollu's wife, the sister of Suleyman.

My night time reading explained the challenges of figuring out how to get all the necessary components of a proper mosque into the appointed space with maximal aesthetic value and minimal expense. This as actually a smaller mosque – located just behind our hotel (a quick walk for the sleep deprived). But I thought it one of the more beautiful I've seen.

This particular mosque presented the challenge of getting the necessary courtyard and medrasses in on a site that falls steeply down a hill towards the coast. So most excellent Sinan contrived to bring the entrance up from the street level below the medrasse into the courtyard so you rise up through the terracce and not a jot of the impact of the facade is lost. The picture above might clarify things.

Feeling somewhat restored and architecturally invigorated we pushed along across the Sultanahmet and wandered down the Divan Yolu (Main Street) trying to avoid the attention of everyone selling everything to everyone. That seemed rather fun and exotic last year, but it is getting old. The only problem is that my assistant enjoys engaging people in their native language and in these circumstances that is rather like looking to strike up a chat with telemarketers.

Made it to the Sulemaniye – of course the GREATEST acheivement of our hero, Sinan. I guess I'll skip the details as I covered that last year (?). Sad to say the interior of the mosque was every bit as much closed today as it was then. At least its all getting a nice rehab. After a modest lunch of bean soup and salad at my favorite place from yesteryear – we took in the cemetary behind the mosque and the mausoleum of Suleyman the Magnificent and his faithrul Hurrem.
So- a good day built on weak foundations. This evening we pestered some carpet salesmen in the Arasta bazaar and had an immoderate dinner beneath the rising dome structures of the Blue Mosque.

Most RemarkableThing: I'll stick with the entry to Sokollu Pasa Cami (pictured above). Good work, Sinan!

Photo: From the entrance of Sokollu Pasa Cami looking up the stairs under the medrasse towards the fountain in the court with the mosque entrance and dome looming behind.

Antiquities

2009-07-01T09:17:00.000-07:00

Back to the "refuge of the world"....

I won't bore you with travel details – all connections were easy – Switzerland looks very nice from the sky, Swissair seats are too hard, Europeans don't like air conditioning – that sort of thing. It all came off ok and here we are.

We arrived yesterday and decided to soldier on with no catch up nap in order to put ourselves right into the local schedule. My assistant practiced his Turkish on the poor shuttle driver and managed to exchange some pleasantries about history and sports teams.

So – yesterday we mostly went out for a big dinner at the Rumeli Cafe. They have a nice roof top terrace. A few plates of Turkish food and some raku on the terrace at the hotel pretty much finished us off.

Hotel Ayasofia is nice. From the roof top terrace you can see the Marmaris and (I believe) the Sokollu Mehmet Pasa mosque. These are not the sweeping views of the Dersaadet or the Nomade where I stayed last year, but for $50 a night off the bill it's on ok compromise. The cash will be better spent later on.

It really does feel good to be back here especially with a bit of knowledge about where things are and what to do (and not do). We took a nice stroll on the way to dinner around Aya Sophia and Topkapi.

This morning it was down to business. After breakfast we figured it made sense to do some of the get-reacquainted to the city museum visiting. Actually, we ended up spending most of the day (until 2) at the Istanbul Archaeology museum. I'm glad we started in the galleries devoted to the tombs of the Sidonian kings. This was a BIG archaeology find in the late 1800s down in Side consisting of a series of underground chambers filled with tombs and sarcophagi. I gather this find was really the motivating factor behind building the Archaeology museum in the first place.

There was a particular sarcophagi – the Alexander tomb – so named NOT because Alexander had anything to do with it but because people thought he was depicted on some of the friezes on the sides. Most of these tombs were shaped like Greek temples, even down to the level of having cornices and carved roof tiles. The Alexander tomb had amazing relief work on the sides depicting battles and hunts. The lion hunt was particularly nice – definitely communicating the spirit of that kind of sport.

I also liked the galleries of classical funeral markers – door styled steele and other types -and also the personal epitaphs written by people from the non-Princely classes. There was one very sweet one someone put on a tomb he made for his dog. I asked my photo-documentarian to get an image of that for my animal sentimentalist readers, so we will see how reliable he is when he downloads his pictures from today.

There was too much to see. The remaining part was mostly "gallery-romping" (my photo-documentarian's expression's for an overly hasty rush through past precious and beautiful things). I must admit that the tile palace – which actually once was a palace joined to the Topkapi complex. It was built in a tiled Seljuk style and is, I gather, the only Ottoman building thus constructed in Istanbul. I believe it was built by the Conqueror himself. Anyway, the layout of the domed rooms – and they way light and air moved through the entire place - was especially nice, and the amazing stained glass work. Actually, it is not stained glass as much as fragments of colored glass set deeply in stone carved fret work so the design with the light through it is amazingly finely designed.

The very last galleries were in the Ancient Oriental history museum (its own building in the complex). I think I like the Hittite aesthetic most – none of that pretty Greek refinery, just solid down to business stuff like bulls, lions and warriors. We also saw the very oldest peace-treaty – drawn up between a Hittite King and Pharoah Ramses II. From the translation I gather they both agree that God demands peace and thus it will ever be between their kingdoms. More likely, I suspect it really took a long and bloody war of attrition to get those two to give it up – either way, there it was. The tiled friezes from the Gates to the temple of Ishtar in ancient Babylon were also remarkable.

And then there was those galleries of Greek and Roman statuary...

Really fine stuff. I've taken it in and been enriched and was then ready to think about some meatballs for lunch,. In the end we turned up on the terrace at the Doy Doy to enjoy their amazing views, shady terrace and gentle breezes on a hot day. Then a nap – and now I see my assistant has gotten up from his nap and crawled up to join me here on the terrace, no doubt thinking about an Efes.....

Later on: Took a walk through the Arasta bazaar and did a quick pied a deux with one of the carpet merchants just outside the bazaar. After that, an evening walk down along the shore line and some dinner at a place nearby.

Most Remarkable Thing:
No, not the peace treaty of Kadesh – although that is likely the most important. I'd have to say those Sidonian tombs- and that Alexander tomb in particular. Anatolia is an in between place and here is all this art that simply combines all the Greek and Egyptian elements. So, you see this enormous Egyptian sarcophagus with the head of Greek on it. On the Alexander tomb everything came together best. I'll see if my photo-documentarian got it adequately, otherwise I'll have to find a picture from the net.

Photo: View of the Archaeology museum from the front terrace of the tile palace. Over the top of things you can see the Tower of Justice.

Back ın İstanbul

2008-06-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

Faıthful Readers:

Sad to say- but Cs laptop has a defunct power source - so my bloggıng abilities have been trımmed. In fact - I dont know if İ can contınue. All the computers here have thıs strange Turkish keyboard wıth different keys (notice that I have not yet located the apostrophe key).

Konya was neat - lots of mosques - a very pious place. Even more wonderful was the afternoon trip to Catal Huyuk. Now I am back in Istanbul - Taksım Square - lectures and tours of neighborhoods today - after the major palaces and mosques yesterday.

Tomorrow the seminar phase of my trip ends.

If I can - I wıll make more posts.

Wild Turkey

2008-06-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

I'm back. Actually the wireless connection at the hotel in Ugrup (Cappadocia region, central Turkey) was fine - but we were out late at a mystical Islamic liturgical dance and did not get in until early midnight. It's been two long days of traveling and we've seen many fine things.

Where to begin? The quick narrative is that we left Ankara early on Sunday and rode in our bus for about three hours. We've visited Urgrup and Goreme in Cappadocia (the high, sunny yet very cool and windswept central are of Turkey), and have just now arrived in Konja (south central Turkey).

To keep things quick - there are really two central themes to the last two days: strange geology and unorthodox Islamic cults.

The geological stuff is easier to explain. Cappadocia lies between three volcanos which, over the years, have filled the area with all kinds of different mineral and rocks and volcanic ash. This and the winds have created a seemingly otherworldy landscape of uneven erosion. The result is these towering columns of eroded ash topped with harder rock "hats", and also cliff faces of easily carved rock. I gather the stone - tufa - can be easily dug out with shovels but when exposed to air dries and solidifies.

Anyway - this means that Cappadocians - since the earliest of times and most notably since the early Byzantines - have been carving houses, churches and tunnels into these cliffs. We visited Goreme where there is an old Byzantine monastery (now abandoned) dating from the early Byzantine era. There you see all kinds of rooms and even large painted churches carved into the cliff face. In the afternoon, we visited an example of a cave village - where people (again early Byzantine Greeks - probably around the 6th - 9th centuries) dug straight down under their villages. These caves were were really village defense systems. During the rise of Islamic power after the 600s, army after army pounded back and forth through Cappadocia, and villages found they could simply retreat into these excavated tunnels that go straight DOWN DOWN DOWN - something like 13 or 14 levels.

So - it has been two days of these amazing landscapes and dwellings and tunnels. The vertical caves are not a tourist attraction for the claustrophobes. I am generally ok with closed spaces, but I felt it was close crouching and climbing down through winding staircases , 60, 70,80 90 meters underground. Mercifully, it would open out into small room now and again. (Note - Turkey has a very different sense of tort law; all over the place you see all kinds of sidewalks and features of tourist places that would never be accepted in the states - broken stairs on sidewalks, walks along high walls with no railings, random holes - it keeps your wits active).

Now - the various cults and traditions of unorthodox Islam is a bit harder to understand. We tend to hear about only mainstream and very orthodox versions of Islam (mainstream Sunni and Shiite), but Turkey offers a host of diferent cults and traditions. It must have something to do with the fact that the Anatolian peninsula has always been exposed to a wide array of different religious traditions. So you run into all these very open, ecumenical versions of Islam - sort of the Unitarians of that tradition, only rather than this being a recent thing, these sects go way back. We visited and explored the home of one of these communities yesteday, then in the evening we went to a 12th c. Caravanseray outside of Urgrup to see the the spinning dance (whirling Dervish) of another mystical Islamic tradition.

That dance last night was very beautiful. I was actually expecting some sort of touristic thing dished out for the tour bus, but we saw something much better than that. The old Caravanseray had been beautifully restored, so we walked into this immense 12th c. courtyard at 9:30 last night (beautiful moon). The dance took place in the vaulted area (covered) behind the courtyard. It was a small theater, and the ceremony took about 45 minutes - a series of songs and chants that leads into the spinning dance. Afterwards we were able to go to a small room off the open courtyard to drink tea and speak with one of the Dervishes about the dance. It was a beautiful dance, strange and wonderful music, all in an extraordinary setting.

Interesting point: the fact that Ataturk banned these communities has an interesting double edge to it. These variant Islam traditions, along with others such as the Alevi's have always had tense relationships with the mainstream traditions here. There's even been various massacres and pogroms over the years. It is interesting to see that worship and practice of these sects continues - but now it exists under a kind of state protection administered by the bureau of culture and tourism. So, strangely enough Ataturk's ban has actually functioned as a kind of preservation and protection. This seems almost to be a general rule about Turkey: things tend to be the inversion of what you would expect.

Busy days but lots to see. The hotel in Ugrup was nice - I wish I could have parked there another day or two. We did some walking and shopping around town - put carpet bargaining skills to the test.

Even the bus rides have been good. It's nice to be able to sit for some time in air conditioned comfort and watch the landscape roll by. They also do a nice job of stopping every hour or so at some interesting site (today we stopped at a town known for its pottery as well as some of the places I mentioned above). So, it's nice to have your life run by professionals for a bit.

I am really looking forward to tomorrow because we are taking an afternoon trip to Catal Huyuk - the site of that original city I wrote about a few days ago. Also, the past few days we have had an architectural historian in tow with our tour - it's been great. It will be a long day though - and it ends with a midnight arrival (by plane) back to Istanbul. No chance for blogging tomorrow.

Most Remarkable Thing:

Hmmm...these past two days the harder thing has been to lay hold on something normal. Between looking at Byzantine churches carved into cliffs or crawling down curving stairways a hundred and more feet down..

Pictures:

This is a nice shot of a little roadside stop near Urgrup - and you can get a glimpse of some of the Cappadocian landscape around there.

Very Old Ankara

2008-06-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

A short posting tonight, as we have to get up extra early and pile on a bus to Cappadocia tomorrow - leaving our sweet little steppe town.

We hit the BIG sites today - The Anitbakir (Ataturk's Mausoleum, and then over to old Ankara to see some Roman ruins leaning against a very old but very important mosque. Then on to the citadel, and after a stiff climb up that in the sun, some lunch and a few hours at the Museum of Anatolian Antiquities. For all the old city bits we were accompanied by an archaeologist - a Brit who has lived here since the 70s and specializes in Anatolian archaeology.

The Anitbakir was remarkable - really enormous and beautiful - designed in the late 30s (Ataturk died in 1938) by the premier German monumental architects. We filed down the "walk of lions" and into the mausoleum court itself, finally pausing on the steps of the mausoleum to read Ataturk's message to children, then we removed our hats and filed past the tomb of the Great Leader. Even more interesting was the museum underneath the pavilion - but more on that below.

The old city was extraordinary. This archaeologist is particularly accomplished and he was able to point out lots of important things about the Temple of Divine Augustus in the city center.

The center of old Ankara has an entirely different feel. Out here near the hotels, shopping district, and embassies - this could be any pleasant European city. Cross the tracks and climb up into the Ulus and you feel as if you are getting back to a much older Turkey (and you are) - a much more intensive Moslem feel (particularly around this mosque - which is neither the largest, nor the prettiest, but definitely the MOST holy one in the city). Up in the citadel you get into a warren of tiny climbing streets that wind up into this immense stone fortification (a citadel) that offer out-to-the horizon views of all of Ankara. Our archaeologist guide was able to point out how much the city has grown since the 70s - and it is really remarkable.

We had a wonderful lunch, sitting on the kilim pillows around a breezy room in a courtyard eatery in the Citadel. I get the impression that most of the really local restaurants are family operations here - its always fathers hosting, mothers cooking, daughters serving and sons bussing tables and running plates back and forth to the kitchen. It always has a very pleasant homey feel.

In my mind the main event came after lunch - which is actually a little unfortunate because that put it at mid afternoon when everyone was feeling pretty beat up. Our archaeologist guide took us on a tour through the museum of Anatolian Antiquities.

The most important and wonderful thing here was all the best items from Catal Huyuk. This is one of the earliest known human cities. As our guide put it - it ALL began there - at least as far as the West is concerned, domestication of animals, agriculture, etc. - it all happened here first. The really great thing about going through this with him was that he was able to explain that most of the signs on the exhibits and lots of the stuff in textbooks is nonsense (e.g. there actually was no Neolithic revolution or at least it was not relevant to the formation of cities; the wall painting that is interpreted as a picture of the city in front of the blowing volcano - that's probably just beehives next to a leopard skin; the Venus Goddesses figures did NOT figure deities - they were found in trash heaps and never in important places, things like this). Actually, on a nice pedagogical point he said - skip the archaeology theories just look at the thing themselves and see what sense you can make of them.

The early items from Catal Huyuk were remarkable - but there were also marvelous things through the Hittite ages as well. The museum is located in a remodeled market place - really a series of stone domes remodeled by Ataturk back in the day. It's surrounded by lovely statue gardens.

We had some time to do a bit of shopping in the Citadel before getting back on the bus and coming back to Hotel Dedeman. Sauna, swim, quick dinner nearby and some tea & desert over backgammon at a cafe in Kisaly.

One last thing - I probably did not mention that Turkey won ANOTHER big tournament soccer match - this one against Croats. The Croats knocked in the first (and leading) goal with about two minutes left in the game. So, it looked hopeless but then a Turk player - at the very last possible moment (probably the last possible kick) tied it up. They won on overtime goal-kicks after two overtimes. Needless to say, Ankara explodes - and I fall asleep among the firecrackers, sirens, and horns. There was, fortunately, no gunfire - perhaps we'll find some of that out in the provices. We are off to Cappadocia early tomorrow.

Most Remarable Thing:

That Ataturk/Revolution exhibit in the fortress like underpinning of the Mausoleum really was the main nerve of this Turkey-Loves-Ataturk thing. It was all about the War of Revolution, but they also preserved and displayed A's pajamas, shaving kit, even his favorite dog, Fox, was there in a glass case. Just recently they have added a sort of diorama of great battle scenes replete with sound effects and choral singing. It was astonishing - and the little alcoves of the hallways describing (picturing) Greek atrocities.

Correction:

Last night I suggested that Kant says that concepts without percepts are blind. It must have been late - I was tired. Of course, everyone knows that Kant says that concepts without percepts are empty - it's percepts without concepts that are "blind". I'll try to live up to higher standards about this sort of thing in my blog in the future. My apologies.

Note: Who knows what the WiFi situation will be like in the hotels in Urgup tomorrow and in Konja the next night. I will surely be having world-historic experiences, but I am not sure I will be able to share them here.

Pictures:

Here's a glimpse of the Old City/Citadel in Ankara - the old style architecture. I gather these buildings need to be completely rebuilt when those timbers on the overhangs start to fail, and there are some sort of rules about rebuilding them. So it gives the place and extra-crubly/perishing feel that goes nicely with the chunks of Greek and Roman stones.

Ankara Over the Tracks

2008-06-20T10:18:00.000-07:00

Great day today! Not that yesterday's presentations and insights weren't sublime, but it was nice to indulge the five senses a bit more today. As Kant says: concepts without percepts are blind.

After the usual breakfast gorging we squeezed ourselves into our minibus (an hour later than usual - we felt like it was a weekend) and headed into the the city center.

Spent the morning at a school for the preservation of traditional Turkish crafts. They had a nice tour of a museum there - with some exquisite examples of the crafts they are preserving like Ottoman bath sandles, brass Hammam boxes, embroidery, more embroidery, a rather fascinating (speaking from my woodworking animus) Koran stand, and lots more embroidery. Then we got to do some "ebru" - this amazing marbling technique where after you powder and swirl paints on this long tray filled with water and some sort of fruit mash (that makes it gelatinous). As soon as the swirling is done, they set a silk cloth over it and - voila! - the design sets in the silk immediately.

Then we went to the Ulus area (the older part of town - we are going back there tomorrow too)for lunch, and pressed on to a poorer area north (?) of the city and took a tour / q&a session first at a social service center for women and families, and at a woman's cooperative. Apparently a typical pattern in poorer families is for women to take in textile piece work. Some middleman, for example, hires them to do embroidery or sewing at home. The cooperative was a group working to cut out the middleman, and find and complete their own work.

So, all of this provided some interesting information and impression about lower class family life here. It was also great to simply be in that part of town. Unlike the more touristed areas, a busload of Americans was something remarkable here - and a clot of onlookers (mostly kids) were gathering around as we came out of the cooperative.

You get a strong impression that there is a lot of street life here in Ankara - and Turkey generally - people tend to be outside chatting, playing, and more or less prefer to pick up things at one of a zillion streetside shops as their needs dictate. In this part of town you see more colorful traditional dress, kids running up who want to practice their English (which is fairly limited to "Hi"). So - it was one of these places you would not see without a pre-arranged tour.

People were feeling pretty tired and maybe ready to get back to the hotel - but there was an arranged Turkish cooking actitvity that was a lot of fun and buouyed everyone up. The tour had booked a little family restaurant in the neighborhood, and after the usual round of water and tea - we piled into the kitchen downstairs to do some cooking. They had set up four stations: gozume(?)(a kind of filled bread that is rolled thin, wrapped around cheese or vegetables and baked on this big inverted bowl cooking surface); dolmus (stuffed grape leaves); the ever popular baklava; and a bulgur salad. So we learned a few dough recipes, some amazing rolling techniques (for the gozume and the baklava), some interesting new ingredients for the tabouleh, and we even figured out the mystery behind how to make the really good tea here. The kitchen was hot, but it was a lot of fun.

Afterwards there was a "saga"(?) player - a three stringed guitar, and we ate what we cooked (and more).

For the gozume dough: flour, water, milk, salt - no yeast.
For the phyllo stuff: they take ten little balls of dough, roll them into pancakes and stack them by tens, and then roll a stack of ten thin. The smart idea is to cut the baklava or spanikoppita BEFORE it cooks. That way it will puff more, not bog down and it will absorb any sauce you put on the top. The Turks put sugar syrup on top - no honey (those damn Greeks!) - it's very nice, a bit lighter and nuttier, less sticky.

Back to the hotel around 7. We were warned to be in by midnight when the Turk/Croatia World Cup game ends - they fear street "rambunctiousness". I gather in the provinces they still do that fire guns into the air thing that you see in news from Iraq. The government puts pictures on TV of the little children being hurt when the bullets fall. So- maybe the hotel bar for a raku and the game a little later.

I am really looking forward to tomorrow: Ataturk's mausoleum (saw it from a distant hill and the thing looks HUGE) and a tour of the citadel and the Museum of Ancient Anatolia which supposedly has all the real pearls of Turkish archaeology.

Most Remarkable Thing:

I'll vote for the Koran stand. I've got to make my own secular version of this. It's really just two boards with a diagonal crosscut, but that have been overlapped around a box cut that makes the thing fold out into a stable X shape.

Pictures:

This is the Ataturk bust at the Turkish craft preservation school (set up by Ataturk himself). His picture is everywhere - even when you dont see it, if you look a bit harder you'll find at least three. The inscription on this one reads: "We owe everything to You!"

Sea Brill

2008-06-19T13:46:00.000-07:00

Today was another serious talking day - four presentations sessions starting at 9, ending at 5:30. All good presentations.

In the morning we first heard about Turkey and the EU (from an International Affairs scholar) and then about Human Development in Turkey from an Economist who works on (and with) the United Nations report on the human development index. The afternoon included a Sociologist explaining something of the history of secularism and religious parties in Turkey, and then a discussion with a lawyer from Amnesty International about human rights in modern Turkey.

I won't get into the details (thankfully?) - but actually they were all good presentations. It seems most of these talks always return to the issues I mentioned yesterday: European Union membership and Secularism (which is right now all concretized into the thing about college women wearing headscarves).

But - I am beginning to develop a few conclusions. I remember some columnist saying how Iran is a thriving democracy wrapped up inside a theocracy - Turkey seems to be something of a military dictatorship wrapped up inside a military dictatorship. The history of democracy here - ever since 1950 - has been fairly regularly interrupted by the military pushing the "reset" button on constitutions and political parties every ten or fifteen years. People seem to perceive that another one of these is in the works right now - or maybe next month.

There is a "Constitutional Court" here that was designed to represent the best wisdom of the military, the more traditionalist (Kemalist) political elite - and their task is to make sure that legislation and policies (produced by the democratic National Assembly) never get too far out of hand.

So - I think maybe the EU has some genuine problems with Turkish membership, because this Constitutional Court really is an anti-democratic institution. This is a bad conclusion for the Turks because they are putting tremendous effort into joining the union, and I am also picking up the idea that they see membership as a kind of solution to the role of the military and the Constitutional Court (military coup is just not something they would tolerate). So - there is something of a Catch 22 here as well.

OK - I won't go on about this stuff, but before I start talking about food again I wanted to get down one detail of the economic presentation. It was very entertaining. This economist explained the UN "Human Development" index - what it's components are, why it exists, how it is calculated,etc. He has been asked and appointed by the UN to work and review the Turkish figures, and a lot of his research has been on this as well. In the session, he explained the details and got us involved in a quick discussion of who we think is at the top (rank), what their rating might be (index), at the bottom, where the US is, etc.

This would be a GREAT exercise in the classroom - and all the documents and info are available online through the United Nations. So - we should steal that feature from his presentation.

OK - now food.

After the usual post session sauna and swim, I headed out with C to the Tunali area of town (that is a street near here - something of the upscale shopping district. We explored the bohemian, beery student part of town yesterday). We relied on the tried but true method of finding a restaurant by simply going to the place that seems the most crowded by locals. Tonight this was a fish place - and as it turns out another group from the seminar was already there.

We ordered the grilled Sea Brill - a fresh fish from the Black Sea (Ankara - I gather - has a good reputation for getting fresh fish from the Black Sea). So, I am now not only meeting Asians but also eating their animals. Wonderful fish - and a nice array of mezzes too.

The Turkish are smart about mezzes. Rather than simply putting appetizers on the menu, they actually put them in little dishes and bring them to your table when you are hungry. So you get two or three of these little dishes to share while your drink your Efes Pilsner or Raku and wait for your meal. Very pleasant.

Tomorrow promises to involve more walking and seeing and perhaps a little less concentration. We are doing some site visits to a craft cooperative (where crafts are taught to poor women to give them a means for earning - and WE are going to learn about marbling paper), a tour of a squatters city/shanty town on the edge of Ankara, and a tour of the old city. We finish up with a cooking lesson where we eat what we cook (and maybe, if they are nice, something they cook).

So - there might be some more interesting and original pictures up here tomorrow. I need to get some shots of Ankara city as well.

Most Remarkable Thing:

Perhaps the Sea Brill - but it was food yesterday - so I'll put down the remark from the economist:

"Channeling development funds is easy, the problem is getting it to stay where you put it."

Ataturk's Capital

2008-06-18T08:15:00.000-07:00

Today we got down to business - no more the great open spaces of the steppes - now it's just the caverns of the mind.

I could reconsider the very fine presentations from our seminar - maybe I will (poor readers!) - but first a bit about Ankara.

Remind me to write to the guide book people (Fodors) who give this city a bad rap. It's a really nice place - tree lined streets, good nice shops, a living city - not a tourist place nor a hugely governmentalized capital. I could see it would be nice to live here.

Yesterday night we had a nice meal to welcome everyone to the seminar and we took a stroll around and about on our way back to the hotel. There is a nice up scale shopping area, and then also a student district (which is where we will likely head for some dinner tonight). It's a nice place which the guide books describe as something of a dusty and windswept prarie city...go figure.

Today started off with a quick lesson on Turkish. I can see why it's so good to study languages abroad - not only for the practice but mostly for the motivation. Our sessions take place at METU, a high end technical college here in Ankara. The campus is modern but beginning to look a bit dated - e.g. the defunct monorail system that once ran from the edge of campus to its center.

In the morning we had talks by METU Professors of Political Science and Sociology/Anthropology. Both talks were very informative - I get a much better sense (both of what I understand and what I do NOT understand) about Turkish politics and history. The first talk centered on Turkish national identity -covering the (rather hidden) origins of the Turks, but also some remarks about their sense of nationalism today. Some of the most recent issues (post 9/11) were particularly interesting - particularly the worsening of US/Turkish relations. After the Turks declined fly-over rights in the 2003 Iraq fight, there were some Turkish soldiers seized by Kurds in Northern Iraq (July 4, 2004), treated badly - and when the crisis was at its height they got absolutely no help from the US on this. I gather this has been the center of considerable ill feeling about the US here.

The second speaker talked about how easy it is to misunderstand ethnic divisions in Turkey. Different distinctions overlap, and it's a complicated and local matter to understand which disctinctions might be more important in a particular context. He strongly supports a governmental secularism, and worries that the US might find itself regretting that it supports anti-secularist parties here.

The current question hanging over all of this (and other talks as well) - is the fact that the Constitutional Court overturned a government law that allows women to wear headscarfs at colleges. The big issue is whether or not this indicates some movement towards a religious state or simply a kind of mild move towards religious freedom. It is serious business because it means that government could be outlawed and removed, the party disbanded, particular candidates banned - and as this is a fairly popular government (at least in some areas) - it could provoke a real crisis.

The other big issue that cuts acoss several of these talks is EU membership and a marked degree of resentment that several European nations - and France is often singled out here - are blocking this.

In the afternoon we got over to the national assembly to meet with a member of the parliament here. He answered a few questions - and we got to look around the outside of the Assembly building (our inside tour was cancelled because the parliament is having extra sessions these days).

So - the Turkish politial system is inscrutable, but I guess trying to explain our own system would not sound any more clear (and at least they do not have State governments in on the mix).

Accomodations here are nice - a magnificent sauna and a small pool downstairs makes for a particularly nice unwinding at the end of the day.

Most Remarkable Thing:

Sorry - the sessions really were good - but breakfast was amazing. Meat, cheeses, olives, eggs, bread, fruits I have never seen before - all in amazing variety and served up on a nice outdoor terrace. Between the breakfast and sauna this has become one of my favorite hotels.

Picture: No new pictures today (left the camera at the hotel) but here is a shot of out favorite carpet store in Istanbul, just to make things look pretty.

There are people in Asia!

2008-06-17T06:18:00.001-07:00

You might have believed this is obvious, but now - and for the first time - I can say this on the basis of personal experience.

C and I crossed the Bosphorus yesterday evening around 7PM, so I first set foot on this new continent. I think it has lots of potential - but then there are all these natives...

Actually, the crossing was a lot of fun. It took some figuring and quick assumptions to find the right boat and how to get admission to the right boat. This involved buying a toke - but that was not obvious at the time. You can get to Asia really cheaply - about 1.4 YTL (Turkish Lira) - and you can even buy tea and simit while enjoying the Bosphorus breezes.

We had a few hours poking around Haydarpasa (where the ferry lands in front of the old train station. Not an especially fascinating place except for the fact you definitely feel that you are NOT in tourist land any more. We walked around the harobor docks for a while and saw the amazing TurkBalon (see below).

We finally got some dinner at a kind of sandwich/diner shop. The waiter of couse spoke no English, but he did have an English menu. Unfortunately when we ordered from that he had no idea what we were asking for. But happily for us, this was not an example of what philosophers call "radical translation" and we made it by ok.

The train was lots of fun. It lurched out of Hayderpasa station around 10:30. The station itself is a beautiful old looming 19th c. (?) building. We each had our own sleeping room (even though the rooms are doubles - squeezing two people into one of them would have removed any chance of a night's sleep).

Even though the train ride was at night, it was remarkable. There was a nice moon. Every now and again you would wake up and find the train standing in the railyard next to cars loaded with enormous blocks of stone (marble?- some white stone) - or see features of land or water move by. I believe the train gained a good bit of elevation at one point - Turkey must have the quality of a plateau.

Woke up on another planet. Sunrise over vast rolling wheatfields, and little patches of melons or orchards. Remarkable scenery - especially for a son of New England like myself who is not used to the really big horizons. Breakfast on the train was fun too - bad coffee but excellent olives and tomatoes (so far I have not seen ANY bad produce in Asia). I think I need to reform my breakfast habits - the Turks seem to be on to a much more sensible way to do things.

And on that subject - Dad - fresh squeesed orange stands are all over the place. Big glass tubs of oranges next to a hand press.

Arrival in Ankara was uneventful. I saw someone fumbling with a guide book and some program from the CIEE that I recognized, so we met up with at least one other person from the seminar. After settling at the Dedeman Hotel, and taking a walk around the neighborhood with C - the three of us had a really nice lunch near the hotel. The best of it was a great tomato salad - dressed tomato chunks on a bed of minced fresh hers, lettuce and a sweet vinegar dressing. Just the thing to go with yet another array of grilled meats.

The seminar officially begins with a reception this evening. I am going to get to the sauna and pool here before that.

It's really nice to know we will be here for five nights - nice to settle for a bit. The guide books did not have much nice to say about Ankara, but so far I really like it. Shady streets - much less humiditiy than Istanbul - a bit more workaday in its business (and a more noticeable presence of soldiers - for some reason 19 year olds with machine guns don' make me feel safer - but the diplomats might be better off for it).

Most remarkable thing:

Has got to be the TurkBalon - Bob (Scimitar?) - that peculiar round ball we were puzzling over on the Dersaadet terrace turns out to be this enormous hot air (or helium?) balloon held down in nets (on the south edge of Haydarpasa harbor). Apparently someone had the inspiration to try to create a floating cafe or room that can be lifted up under this thing. It looks like it's seen better days - but a Ferris Wheel works for London on the Thames - why not a balloon ride for Istanbul and the Bosphorus.

Asia promises many marvels - even great than this.

Pictures:
Breakfast on the train - note portrait of Ataturk over the counter in the back.
Scenery from train.
Sorry for the botched formatting - if you click any of the photos you can see a much larger version.

The Sultanehmet

2008-06-16T04:39:00.000-07:00

Finally made it...

Jeff - remind me to send you an email about some of the tips and tricks of navigating our airline flight schedule. Everything came off fine, but that was a very very very long layover in a rather busy and practically minded airport.

But it was all worthwhile when I met my taxi guy (the one with the DAVID KITE sign) and made it to the Hotel Dersaadet. I found C up on the roof, enoying the breezes off the Marmaris with the night-time illuminated Blue Mosque rising up beyond the terrace.

Exactly two beers (a very nice Efes pilsner), a shower and then a nice sleep in an air conditioned room took all the travel off me.

The city is wonderful. Went back up to the terrace for a great breakfast as the ocean traffic rounded into the Golden Horn. M, C and I took a leisurely stroll around the Sultanehmet this morning. The carpet stores are everywhere - C is already negotiating prices for pillow covers.

Actually C has developed some kind of Mediterranean atavism for bargaining. I'll leave it to him to relay his stories, but I think he is a natural at this.

This part of the city is very manageable - very walkable - nice hills (gentle and not so gentle), cobblestones - lots of souvenir places and most with some really nice items (carpets, meerschaum pipes, pottery - and some really tempting felted hats).

The weather is nice- a bit humid but the temperatures are not all that high. After another rooftop lunch at a restaurant down the street from the hotel we came back to rest up a bit. Thoughts of getting over to look at the Grand Bazaar this afternoon. C and I head off on our train to Ankara tonight.

So - it's really impressive way to start the trip. I am just beginning to explore the food, but so far it seems wonderful. Lots of fresh vegatables, great grilled lamb.

Most remarkable moment: After I just got in and was sitting up on the terrace here drinking beer, everyone was involved in a Turkish/Czech soccer game on television. We are keeping an eye on the game from our chairs outside. The Turks tie it up - and then the entire city pops - you can hear these cheers up and down the neighborhoods. A few minutes later when the Turks got the go-ahead (and winning) goal in the last two minutes, even the dogs start barking and you can see flares going up on the Galata side of the city.

So - very nice, very relaxing and LOTS to see (and buy?).

pictures: below, view of Blue Mosque from our breakfast table
above, carpets, carpets, everywhere...

Ready..get set...

2008-06-11T17:26:00.000-07:00

This blog will keep you up to date on my trip to Turkey this summer.

My plan is to leave Saturday evening (Jun 14) and arrive in Istanbul (after a healthy layover in Dublin) around 9 PM on Jun 15.

For most of the trip, I'll be part of a CIEE seminar. It begins in Ankara on Jun17, takes us through Cappadocia and Konja and ends in Istabul on Jun28. After that, I'll meet up with JK and spend a week doing some more sights in Istanbul and then perhaps down to the Lycian coast Jul 1-5. We leave from Istanbul on Jul 7.