Paul, Doreen and I have just stumbled back to our friendly Hotel Erguvan after a daylong adventure involving many miles, several towns, some significant bodies of water, and more mosques than you shake a stick at. Well, maybe I should be careful on that last point. Sharia (Islamic Law) may take a dim view of someone shaking a stick at a mosque. And I’ve only been here for a day, so I don’t want to make waves.
My day began at 5:30am when the Call to Prayer from the Blue Mosque came billowing through my window. Billowing? How about blasting? Blasting is probably too strong, but it wasn’t nearly as soothing as the previous evening’s APB to the faithful. Remember when your mom would say goodnight and wish you sweet dreams, and then wake you up the next morning with a "Get your butt out of bed! You’re going to be late for school?" Imagine mom waking you up with a microphone hooked up to your stereo. Let’s just say that the hazans want to make sure that everyone knows it’s time to get it together to do some serious praying. Allah’s got a busy day and he’s not going to put the universe on hold because you’re taking your time with breakfast.
Ah yes, nothing like a little blasphemy to cap off a long day.
So, after the hazan finished his call, I did what any nice Jewish boy would do under the circumstances. I rolled over and went back to sleep for another couple of hours. Allah wasn’t the only one who was planning a busy day.
Actually, when I went up to the hotel’s rooftop café for breakfast, I had no idea how I was going to spend my first full day in Istanbul. The museums are closed on Mondays, so I thought about checking out the Grand Bazaar and maybe the Spice Market.
The wonderful people at the Hotel Erguvan put out a wonderful spread for breakfast, and it’s included with the room. They had one table loaded up with cheeses, meats, olives, tomatoes, some really amazing yogurt, and a bowl filled with a mixture of honey and raisins. The other table had pastries, coffee, breads, coffee, juice and coffee. I was very pleased, particularly with the coffee.
It was a beautiful morning. Fifty degrees and blue skies. A perfect day for checking out the city. The hotel’s café looks out toward the Sea of Marmara and the Blue Mosque. It also looks out upon a lot of stray cats. Cats are everywhere. A gray calico is pawing against the door to the enclosed part of the café. Someone opens the door, but the cat doesn’t come in. After a while, one of the guys from the hotel places a slice of meat on the part of the roof that adjoins the outdoor café, and where the cat is now perched. The cat is quite happy with its breakfast. I tell the other folks in the café that I have two big cats back home, and that the biggest one weighs in at around 50 kilos. Everyone’s eyes get really big. Oops, I did the metric conversion backward and now they all think I have a pet leopard. I correct myself. Let’s see. Rufus is twenty-five pounds. So, I tell the astonished (and very concerned) crowd that I meant to say 15 kilos. They return to their breakfasts. Rufus is big, but I don’t imagine him carrying off small children or antelopes.
I hear a couple at the next table commenting about Rick Steves’ Istanbul travel guide. Well, as it turns out, I happen to be reading Rick’s guide as I eat my breakfast. I say hello, and then we introduce ourselves. They are Paul and Doreen from Minneapolis via Alexandria, Virginia.
They are a sweet couple in their mid-30s. They have been married for five years, and are still very much in love. Doreen works for United Healthcare and Paul works for Conagra, the people who brought us every teenage boy’s favorite delicacy, the Slim Jim. I’ve always wondered what went into a Slim Jim. Apparently, as Paul explained, the primary ingredient is "mechanically separated chicken parts." I’ll just leave that one to your imaginations, but let’s just say that Rufus would be pretty pissed off if he found it in his dinner bowl. Teenage boys, on the other hand, will eat just about anything.
Paul, Doreen and I have a great time chatting, and they ask me if I’d like to join them on their Monday adventure. They’re planning to take a ferry ride up the Bosphorus to Sariyer, where they will take a bus to Kilyos, a village on the Black Sea. Once they are in Kilyos, Paul will walk to the beach and stick his hands in the waters of the Black Sea. Hey, we all have our dreams. And this one happens to be on Paul’s to-do list.
Will I join them? Hell, yeah!
We leave the hotel fifteen minutes later and take a tram to the ferry. A one-way ticket costs 10 YTL (around $6.50). Paul hands the ticket agent 50 YTL for two tickets, but the agent accidentally charges him for two round trips. Paul is busy chatting and doesn’t realize he’s been short changed until a security guard comes running over to us and explains in perfect Turkish, and then in broken English, that Paul has overpaid by 15 YTL. He gives Paul the correct change, and we are quite impressed. Actually, we are as astonished as we would be if the guy had come running to tell us that he had a 90-pound cat.
The ferry sets out from the Golden Horn, an inlet that extends from the Bosphorus. The Bosphorus is a strait (actually a river) that separates Europe from Asia. One side of the river is Europe and the other is Asia. It connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, which is connected to the Aegean Sea through The Dardanelles. As a result, the control of the Bosphorus is so strategically significant that Turkey doesn’t actually own it. Whoever controls the Bosphorus controls the shipping between the Black Sea and the rest of the world. And as history has shown many conquering armies, he who controls the Bosphorus, controls Constantinople. As the result of a Post-War treaty, the Bosporus is considered international waters. It is owned by everybody and nobody. And the fact that we will be traveling in international waters means, yes…we will have to be on the lookout for Somali pirates.
The Hagia Sofia and the Mosque of Suleyman the Magnificent are incredible sites from the water, and we pass them very quickly. So quickly that people are running back and forth from side to side of the ferry, trying to take photos and videos of these sites before they pass into and out of our rear view mirrors. As we move down the Golden Horn, we see fewer historical mosques and more luxury waterfront homes. And then we are out on the Bosphorus. International shipping waters. No Somali pirates, but lots of tankers and other ships flying different national flags.
Please excuse me for a moment. I’m about to get a bit soulful. Rivers tend to do that to me. Rivers are wonderful. They are awesome, and are like natural superhighways. Mark Twain said that you feel mighty free on a raft. In other words, you’ll enjoy the ride a lot more if you just sit back and let the waters take you from place to place. It seems a good strategy for travel, and probably a good metaphor for life. Though it’s always a good idea to keep a hand on the rudder.
In The Dry Salvages, T.S. Eliot writes...
I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
I told you I was feeling soulful.
Aside from it’s strategic importance to international shipping, the Bosphorus is a romantic passageway, defining the relationship between the Black Sea and the world, connecting Istanbul, Odessa, Varna and other cities to the Aegean, Mediterranean, Atlantic, St. Lawrence and Lake Michigan, which is only a 40-minute bike ride from my house. I told you rivers were cool. Without the Bosphorus, the Black Sea would either be landlocked or joined with the Aegean as another large chunk of the Mediterranean. There would be no intrigue. No romance. Just like the towns and streams flooded into oblivion by a manmade lake resulting from the completion of a hydroelectric project. No intrigue. Just water. Life without memory.
The Bosphorus is a conduit that forever (or at least in terms of our human experience) links Europe to Asia, but keeps one continent fixed on one bank, and the other fixed across from it. East and West. Europe and Asia. Christianity and Islam. Never the Twain shall meet, so to speak. Mark would have liked it that way. Maybe a lesson that not all things that could be or should be, will be. Memory on one side. Imagination on the other. And in the middle, perhaps our dreams, forming a Bosphorus between what we have and what we desire, two entities eternally linked, but which can never merge. And perhaps that’s the way it should be. Two hearts beating together as two hearts, giving us a brass ring that we can never grasp, because grasping it would only leave us with a brass ring.
Or as the song goes, "You can’t always get what you want." On the other hand, was there really anything Mick Jagger wanted that he wasn’t able to get?
And thus, I shall end my soulful reverie. I told you I had a thing for rivers. And don’t even get me started on oceans.
We meet a new friend on the ferry. His name is Bill, and he’s from Geneva in Chicago’s western suburbs. Bill is a tall guy, around 6’4", with a salt and pepper mane of hair. He has striking features, and reminds me a bit of Burt Lancaster. He thanks me for the comparison, but says that most people think he looks like Tommy Tune, though Mr. Tune is a bit taller. Doreen says, "Yes!" that’s whom she was thinking of. Bill says that he was walking around Chicago’s theater district when an older woman asked him to sign her theater program. So, he signed his best Tommy Tune autograph, and now she can tell her buddies about how she met Tommy Tune while shopping at Marshall Field. When he’s not doing impromptu celebrity stand-ins, Bill is an English teacher in LaGrange. He’s currently on sabbatical.
Bill was stationed at a navy base on the Bosphorus in 1969-1971, during Vietnam. That was three years before the first suspension bridge was built. Prior to 1974, the only way to cross the Bosphorus was by boat. A man walks around the ferry, selling tea and then coffee and then yogurt. The travel guides say that ferry’s specialty is the yogurt with powdered sugar on top.
So, I plunk down a 1 YTL coin and give it a shot. It was really good. I mean really, really good. Paul and Bill give it a shot, and they are also quite pleased. And so we sail along, taking photos of Europe on the left and Asia on the right, in no-man’s land between two continents. We pass under two bridges that join the two sides of the Bosphorus, and begin our approach into Sariyer.
Paul’s master plan is for us to arrive at Sariyer, take a bus to Kilyos, eat lunch, visit the beach, and take a bus back to Sariyer, where we will take a bus back to Istanbul, stopping at Fortress Europe along the way. He’s got this all planned out, including the bus transfers. I’m just along for the ride.
We arrive at Sariyer and say goodbye to Bill. Sariyer is a small village with much more of a Mediterranean flair than Istanbul. We catch a dolmus to Kilyos. Dolmus is the Turkish word for “packed,” as in packed in like sardines. A dolmus is a mini-bus that will wait at its stop until it is filled to capacity, which may take ten or fifteen minutes. After a sufficient number of people are standing, it will finally head out to its next destination. We go up and down hills that wind along steep drops and groves of olive trees. Paul and Doreen say the landscape looks a lot like Greece. I tell them I’ve never been to Greece, but that it reminds me of the footage of Sicily in The Godfather, Part II. Yup, very Mediterranean. I take video footage as we bounce along the countryside. I wonder how people with motion sickness will enjoy my video.
Kilyos is a little spot on the road. We get off the dolmus and attempt to figure out where we are in relation to the beach. An elementary school is behind us, and a mosque is across the street. We walk up the road to where we can see a man selling some kind of small fish Maybe smelts or sardines. Some are laid out on a board, while others are swimming around in buckets. Meanwhile, a woman walks out of a food stall and asks us what we are looking for. We tell her we’re looking for the beach. Her English is pretty good. She tells us to take a left up the hill, and then to take the right after the last café. Once we take that right, the beach will be just down the hill. We follow her directions, take the right, and see the Black Sea in front of us. All of this traveling has caused us to work up a bit of an appetite. We have successfully located an extremely large body of water, and now we need some lunch.
We go back down the hill. Paul tells me to pick out a café. I see a short Turkish woman cooking meat on a grill. How about this one? Paul and Doreen agree. But before we order, I need to find a bathroom. And I do not know the Turkish word for bathroom, and the short woman behind the grill doesn’t know the English word for bathroom. This creates much more a of a problem for me than it does for her. So, Doreen, Paul, the Turkish woman and I engage in a meeting of the minds. I’m on the verge of pantomiming what I’ll be doing in the bathroom, when the short woman finally gets our meaning. She points to a small building at the end of the road. I read the sign. "Ah, Lavabo!" She smiles and nods her head. It sounds enough like lavatory.
The lavabo has a sign over it that says "Tuvalet," which as I later learn is pronounced more like "toilet" than "too-VUH-let." The Lavabo also has an old couch out front between the doors that separate the men’s and women’s sides.
We return to the café and order lunch. I go first. The woman has several loaves of bread, and asks me to pick one. She offers me a small half-loaf. Nope, I’ll take a bigger one. She smiles and a man points to the chicken on the grill, but I tell him I want kefta. He picks up several pieces of seasoned beef and gives them to the woman. She puts the kefta on the half-loaf of bread, and then adds tomatoes, hot peppers, and a bunch of other things, including french fries. Yup, the fries are in the sandwich. Doreen and Paul split a sandwich. And now we eat. As expected, the food is great…and cheap. My large kefta and Pepsi ran me 6 YTL, or about $4.00. The man who gave me the kefta asks where we are from. I say, "America." He smiles. I add, "Barack Obama!" He smiles more and gives me a thumb’s up.
Everywhere I go, I find stray dogs and cats. Kilyos is no exception. As we eat, our hostess throws a few morsels to one of the local dogs. She points at the dog and says something that sounds like, "vamos." At first we think that she’s telling us the Turkish word for dog, but our dictionary says that "kopek" is the word for dog. Turns out that Vamos is the dog’s name. Vamos is a grey setter mix. Like all of the animals I’ve seen around here, he seems pretty well-fed for a stray. The locals take care of them, in the same way that I’ll throw a dollar or two to Fred or Willie, my street friends along Wabash in Chicago. It may not be an ideal existence, but nobody starves. You know, getting by on the kindness of strangers.
After lunch, we head to the beach. We walk down a hill and onto a small boardwalk. We are just off the tourist season and the place is deserted. Paul and I take photos. We can see a few tankers in the distance. Paul puts his hand in the Black Sea. He is living the dream. Then we take off our shoes and socks and wade into the water, which is quite cold. Way too cold for Paul, though not for me. So, Paul films me as I roll up my pants and splash around in the Black Sea. My daughter Alix and one of my good friends from Connecticut love to collect rocks from strange places. I grab three Black Sea rocks and put them in my backpack. I see one rock that looks awfully black and shiny. Paul says it’s probably congealed tar. I put it back in the water. Doreen asks if the water is salty.
Keep in mind that I have been drinking bottled water since I arrived. Keep in mind that I am looking at off-shore tankers and have just picked up a chunk of tar. Meanwhile, Paul is picking off black bits of something that the water has left on his feet. So, being an idiot, what do I do? That’s right. I stick my hand in the water and bring up enough to get a good taste. Yes, it’s salty. And no, drinking Black Sea water probably wasn’t my greatest idea. But I’m still alive, so it also wasn’t my worst.
After an hour and a half of frolicking, we decide it’s time to head back to Sariyer. We dry off our feet and walk back up the hill and past the cafes toward the bus stop. We pass the fish guy (yes, a real life fishmonger). He says, in his best English, "My soul goes with you." Paul responds, "Thanks." It was heartwarming. Doreen looks at Paul and says, "Thanks?" He says he couldn’t think of anything better.
We find a dolmus and take seats in the back. As we wait, we hear a crackling sound. It’s the afternoon Call to Prayer coming from the mosque, and it’s coming over a pretty bad speaker. It sounds like a radio station that comes in, but brings a lot of static with it. The dolmus is full and were are off. Paul sleeps most of the way back to Sariyer. We reach Sariyer and, after a tuvalet break, locate our bus back to Istanbul
Paul says that he and Doreen are going to check out Fortress Europe. I’m welcome to join them or, if I prefer, take the bus back to Istanbul. He says that the fortress is closed, but figures we can just walk around the grounds. What the heck. I’ve come this far.
We get off just past Fortress Europe, and see large stone battlements alongside the road. Fortress Europe is a large stone fortress built by Mehmet the Great in 1452. Somehow, this whole complex was finished in four months. It and its counterpart, Fortress Asia, on the other side of the Bosphorus enabled Mehmet and his army of Ottoman Turks to control the river as they began their descent on Constantinople, which he conquered in 1453.
We take a path through a cemetery to get to the fortress. We hear something that sounds like a car alarm. Five minutes later a policeman greets us and politely tells us to get out of the cemetery. Apparently, we need to walk around the cemetery. We go back down to the road and walk along the side of the battlements and an occasional cannon. In the midst of this military display we see a path lined with what appear to be marble sheets.
The sheets have heart-shaped valentines carved into them. I tell Paul that the hearts were carved by Mehmet’s vanquished foe, Ahmet the not-so-great-but-terribly-sensitive.
It’s 4:20 and we find the entrance to Fortress Europe with ten minutes to spare before it closes. They let us in for 1.50 YTL per person, but forget to charge me. So we wander around and take lot of photos inside the stone structure. We pass what appears to be a stone amphitheater, and then climb higher and higher. The view over the Bosphorus is incredible. You can see how whoever controls this fort can control the river if they have sufficient firepower. One of the guards comes over and says that we’ll have to leave soon, but tells us that if we want, we can climb the stone stairs to the top of the fort. There is, however, no railing. Doreen wants no part of this. She waits below with the guard. Paul and I ascend the stairs. Unfortunately, Paul is afraid of heights. He is climbing the stone steps very tentatively, while facing the stone wall and hanging on for dear life. Meanwhile, I go bounding up the stairs, doing my best impersonation of a cross between a mountain goat and a medieval archer. I am now about150 feet above Doreen and the guard. Paul reaches me, but he looks a little green. From the top of the fortress, we have a tremendous view of the Bosphorus and the place where one of the bridges connects to Asia. Aside from the color, it looks exactly like the spot where the Golden Gate Bridge crosses the bay from San Francisco.
In fact, the photos taken of me with the bridge in the background look nearly identical to pictures I took six years ago in San Francisco. The village below the bridge even looks like Sausalito from the distance.
We leave Fortress Europe and walk along Bosphorus for a while. It’s getting dark, but a lot of men are still fishing. We find our bus and, after an hour or so, are back in Istanbul. We are in the Beyoglus area, on the other side of the Golden Horn from our hotel. We walk from the bus stop to a metro station and try to figure out where to go for dinner. A woman who speaks English stops us and suggests that we go up the hill to Taksim. We can walk the mile up the hill or take the funicular. The funicular is a streetcar that is pulled up a hill by a series of pulleys and counterweights. If you’ve been to Paris, a funicular will take you up Montmartre to the church of Sacre Coer.
Unfortunately, the metro and the funicular take different tokens. So, we have to exchange tokens before we can ride to Taksim. We get off the funicular at Taksim, are now looking for Haci Abdullah, a restaurant that is recommended by all of our travel guides. We are told it’s on a street just after a mosque. Describing something in Istanbul as being near a mosque is similar to a psychic demonstrating his powers by saying, "Let me concentrate. Okay, you have a grandmother? Am I right?" It may be correct, but it’s not terribly helpful.
We pass the street and then double back. We have found our restaurant. Haci Abdullah has a front smoking dining room, a middle area where you can see food prepared and a pink no-smoking dining room in the rear. We go to the pink room. Our waiter puts out a breadbasket and a few bottles of water. The bread is pretty lousy, kind of like hard, dry corn bread and, yes, they charge for it. You have to refuse it when they bring it or it winds up on the bill.
After much discussion, Paul and I split the Mixed Plate, which includes beef in an eggplant puree, Eggplant stuffed with minced lamb, lamb fried in a béchamel sauce, and lamb and various vegetables in a crepe. The last dish was like a Turkish shepherd’s pie. Doreen orders a chicken kabob. Paul says she’s very particular about the meat she eats while she travels, and tends to stick with chicken, though not the mechanically separated variety. The food is pretty good, though not great. Paul orders apple tea for dessert, while Doreen orders a large bowl of pomegranates, which we split. The pomegranates, like the meal, ore only okay. Not as sweet as we thought they would be, kind of like having a pale pink slice of watermelon. Including the tip, which is figured into the bill, the meal sets us back 30 YTL (around $20) apiece. Not a great meal, though it was a nice experience.
We continue down Istiklal, the main drag in Beyoglu. Paul recommends that we take a free train to the end of the street, where we will pick up the world’s third oldest funicular to get to the metro and ultimately our hotel. Sorry, but I crack up every time I hear funicular. I keep thinking of the Italian song, "Funiculi! Funicula!" Yeah, I’m getting a little punchy. After waiting around for a while, a man asks if we are lost. We tell him we’re waiting for the streetcar. He tells us that the streetcar stopped running at 7pm. It’s now 8:30, so we’ll have to do some walking. The man asks us where we are from. I say, "America." He smiles and says, "America! Barack Obama!"
After ten minutes, we reach the end of Istiklal. Paul goes looking for the world’s third oldest funicular, while Doreen and I wait. She is looking really tired. Paul returns and explains that the funicular is closed for repair. This means we have walk all the way up the street to get back to our original funicular station. We reach the station, swap tokens again, and take the metro across the Golden Horn to Sultanahmet.
We are absolutely exhausted, and say goodnight after we make it back to the Hotel Erguvan...without getting lost.
No, I didn't have any turkey or stuffing. No cranberry sauce or sweet potatoes, and it never really occurred to me to look for any of that stuff. Paul, on the other hand, is determined to find turkey in Turkey. So, is turkey the true meaning of Thanksgiving? Or is thanksgiving the true meaning of Turkey? Hmmm... Riddle me that, Batman.
It's fascinating. She isn't running a carpet loom. She is actually sewing a carpet. She stitches with different color of thread, and I can see how they all fit together from the section she has already stitched. I can see why the carpets are so beautiful, and why the really nice ones are so pricey. This work is very labor intensive.
The cisterns were built by Justinian as a reservoir, just in case the city faced a water shortage. I walk down some damp steps into an expansive, dark open area filled with water. The electric lights they've added cast a glow off the water, the pillars and the arches. One pillar actually looks a lot like a giant green pickle. Two columns with Medusa heads at their bases are in a far corner. It's awfuly cool in a dark and spooky kind of way. It's funny to watch the way men and women react once they're inside the cisterns. Men tend to find them really cool, while the women seem to not quite the attraction and find them to be kind of creepy. It's a lot like the The Three Stooges. Oh, and by the way, they have a cafe by the water...just in case a guy wants to bring a date.
I leave the cisterns and wander toward the Spice Market. It's only a ten minute walk from the Blue Mosque. I walk through a gate and find myself walking past booth after booth after booth of jewelry, fabrics, souveniers and, of course, spices. The smells are incredible. Large barrels filled with saffron, different kinds of pepper, and other things that I have never head of. The smells are just wonderful. 
And then there are the candy stalls with their giant tubs of Turkish Delight. Okay, I'll confess. When I got into town, I was a little unclear on the concept of Turkish Delight. I thought it was either some kind of aphrodesiac or a toy of some sorts. I won't go into detail on that last point, since my daughter Alix is on the distribution list. And besides, she's already having too much fun with the idea that a bisexual pimp tried to pick me up. I try the Turkish Delight. It's the real thing, but not the sort of thing that appeals to my palate.
So, I bought a fez. Had to. I've gotta be me. I also picked up a bunch of nazul concugus, Turkish charms to ward off the Evil Eye. They're everywhere. Aside from the crescent and star, I see more of these than any other kind of souvenier, with the possible exception of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk memorabelia.
Keep in touch. And don't forget about the people in American who are living in doorways. You don't need to feed them, give them money or break bread with them. But it costs nothing to simply say, "Hi, how are you doing? Have a great day." People aren't disposable, but it's very easy to forget that the people you walk past on the way to work are human beings, and not obstacles. A simple hello will make them feel less anonymous, and it will make both of you feel more human.
