AaaaaaaaaaaaaAAaaaaahahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-aaahhhhhhhahhahhhhhhhhhhhHhhHHhah aAAAAahhhahhh

Or so I hear. But it is 4:38am as I write these first words. Brace yourselves.

Most of us are currently sleeping soundly in Istanbul, the capital of Turkey. In historic times, this was also the capital of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, and more recently, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

The cityscape is a marvel in and of itself. Littered with mosques, one can see minaret after minaret casting their heavenward silhouettes upon the ground at midday. Five times a day, the air resonates with the melodious, religious chant of the Call to Prayer. In fact, right now, pre-dawn Istanbul is being exhorted to fulfill its religious duty. The Call to Prayer is quite enchanting - it feels as if the whole city has momentarily turned its attention to a sacred, ceremonial duty. Of course, that's exactly what the daily prayers are - but I know next to nothing about Muslims, or Islam, and therefore merely have an outsider's narrow view.

In a few hours, the Istanbullus will be out and about - having their borek, sweet and savory pastries, for breakfast. Turkish men will be shouting and hawking at innocent tourists, yours truly included, to buy their wares or sample their food. Women in silk headscarves and fashionable long coats will be running important errands with their fellow friends.

Everything Ron Jon told you about the annoyances of Santorini are amplified fivefold here. But I have a good trick for dealing with annoyances of this sort. It's called "Ice Water". You cup your hands, and you imagine that you are holding ice cold water. Then, you inhale deeply. While exhaling, you slowly begin moving the thumbs of your hands together even as your pinky fingers remain in contact, thereby facing both palms towards each other. After that, you disconnect your hands at the pinky fingers, and you spread your hands downwards. It's like slowly pouring ice water from your hands, downwards.

Thankfully this trick also works with travel annoyances of all kinds (delayed train, delayed plane, check-in counter not yet open, hot and sweaty and tired). I have not yet employed it for other areas of my life (which all piss me off).

---

Turkey Day 2

The hotel we are staying in, the Alp Guesthouse, is located in the Sultanahmet district. This district contains a vast number of Istanbul's major attractions - the Aya Sofia mosque, now a museum and once a christian basilica - and Topkapi Palace, the residence of the sultans and his family members - to name a few.

We visited Aya Sofia, also known as Hagia Sofia, on the morning after our initial nighttime arrival. When it was a church, it was the largest basilica in the world for 1000 years. The current Aya Sofia is a mosque, reconstructed and renovated by the Ottomans. It's most prominent feature is its massive dome, supported by four hidden pillars in the walls of the mosque.


The massive dome seems to be unsupported - an architectural feat that has not since been recreated. Unfortunately, we do not have any photographs that accurately capture the immense grandeur and size of the interior of this ancient mosque. Note that at the bottom of the picture (staring into the photograph), there are two semi-domes on the side of the large dome. The second semi-dome has a picture of the virgin Mary that you can barely see cut-off at the bottom of this photo. Knowing this, observe the next photograph...


Perhaps these two pictures combined can give you some idea of how large the interior space was. The golden arched object near the bottom of the photo is the mihrab (I think), indicating the direction of Mecca. The two giant round plaques with gold calligraphy are calligraphic decorations bearing the names of one of God or a prophet whom I cannot remember... I think... I hope I didn't just say that inaccurately and blaspheme against Islam =(


The walls of the mosque were mostly plaster that covered the original mosaics of the Byzantine church - mosaics primarily done with gold tiles. As you can see here, part of the plaster that originally covered the Ottoman mosque (which was in turn covered with Ottoman tiles) has been removed from restoration works, revealing the underlying gold mosaic tiles. This scene in particular depicts one of the narcissistic Byzantine emperors and his empress seated beside the Virgin Mary.


After Aya Sofia, we also visited the Blue Mosque, a short distance away across a (very public) courtyard. As a functioning mosque, visitors were allowed in when prayers were not going on, but through a separate entrance and only to a separate area of the mosque. Cloths were provided for women who did not have headscarves.

Tash wearing her scarf around her head.

The interior of the blue mosque was nowhere as impressive as that of the Aya Sofia. But what struck me most had nothing to do with Islam, the Ottomans, or mosques. The moment we entered the mosque, past the security personnel at the door who ensured that people were wearing scarves and everyone was taking off their shoes, all the women who had been given cloths to cover their heads took off their scarves. Most continued to wear the scarf around their shoulders - but others just took the whole thing off. I found this disturbing and intensely disrespectful - sure, I'm not a woman, and I don't know what it's like to be a woman in a Muslim dominated country, so sue me - but it made me wonder about things like why the Western world was perceived in certain ways by the non-Western world. That so many people cannot be respectful for the 5 minutes they probably spent inside the mosque gives me no hope in humanity of ever evolving past our disagreeable, race and religion-entrenched pettiness.

After the Blue Mosque, we had some Turkish pizza (pide) for lunch, and proceeded to Topkapi Palace, also in the Sultanahmet area. The palace was more like a public park, with tons of people and families, a lot of whom were just lazing on the grass. One of the highlights of the palace was an exhibition in the old treasury area that showcased some of the spoils of the Ottoman dynasty - gorgeous, diamond-encrusted war medals, daggers and swords adorned with huge rubies, emeralds, pearls, gold and turquoise, and my favourite of all - a shoe-box sized gold and crystal chest filled to the brim with emeralds the size of your eyeball. I cannot imagine what one would do with such a collection - sit around all day and rake them with your fingers?? Sadly, no photographs could be taken of the jewels. You shall have to visit for yourself.

We stopped to rest at a waterside cafe inside the palace, only to discover to our horror that the place was horrendously overpriced (€35 for three cans of beer - go figure). We didn't order the beer, but the fool that I am ordered what was labeled as a chicken pastry (and which turned out to be SPINACH only) and a glass of ayran - a traditional Turkish drink.

The ayran was an experience on its own. It smelled and tasted like milk that was going bad. It had the texture of starch with sand in it. Maybe this was really bad ayran - but...

In case you were wondering, it's made of yoghurt (the Mediterranean kind), water and salt. Lonely Planet kept recommending it with almost everything under the Eating section, so I tried it before learning what it was made of (thought the book mentions it like 5000 times, it only defines it once). Let's say that I tried it but I certainly did not conquer it. I did manage to finish 2/3 of it though. I recommend you not try it or risk unloading your breakfast and lunch. I'm sure it's one of those "acquired tastes".

After this daylight ripoff, Ron Tom and Jordan decided to go back to the hotel. It was "as hot as Vulcan's Dick", and we were sweating buckets. Natasha and I decided to complete our tour of the palace and see the harem section.

Don't get so excited. The harem is actually the section of the palace that is devoted to housing the sultan's family (dynasty members), as well as his concubines. It also includes the Sultan's private quarters. There were winding passages and arabic inscriptions everywhere, but the highlight was this beautiful French/German/Swiss/Scandinavian woman wearing a "cheap polyester dress" who happened to be one step ahead of us for most of the way.

She may not be the "Afghan Girl on the cover of National Geographic",
but she (or her dress) was enchanting all the same. Bad photo.

I freely admit I was appreciating her beauty but, more importantly, the flattering nature of the dress that she was wearing when applied to her particular person.

Unimpressive Ottoman tiling. I know
I'm being judgemental about this.

We concluded from this tour of the inner quarters of the palace that Ottoman architecture was really nowhere as impressive as what we had seen in Athens and in Rome. The grandeur of the ancient world simply could not be matched even by this early-modern empire. We tried to rationalize our feelings on the matter. One theory I propose is that Ottoman architecture is perhaps too familiar to us - after all, we've all seen mosques, and we've all seen tiles on the floor and on the walls. But most of us haven't lived around acqueducts, colosseums or Parthenons for most of our lives.