Continent #5: check

Check Asia off the list: with this weekend's trip to Istanbul, I can now officially say I've been to five different continents, if only just over the fifth continent's threshold. Esteban and I took a long weekend and ventured to the other end of our home continent and into a world not as foreign as I'd anticipated. Istanbul, though straddling both a geographical and cultural divide between Europe and (western) Asia, is very much a westernized city.

Despite expectations shaped by a long weekend in Marrakesh in 2010 (my only other time in a predominantly Muslim country), Istanbul is suprisingly secular and modernized. Women wearing headscarves appeared to be the minority, and many of those covering their heads did so with brightly patterned, silky headscarves that looked distinctly Russian. I didn't hear any crude comments made to women passing by unaccompanied by men: after such experiences in Morocco, I'd made a point to book this trip with a male travel companion, which in retrospect was far from necessary.

Another surprising impression with which I was left was the extent to which Turkish embraces foreign languages. Unlike the incredibly proud French who have a special academy to protect their language, the Turkish borrow so many words that it wasn't always hard to guess what signs were saying, with vocabulary including elektrik, oto (auto), porsiyon (portion), and kuaför (hair stylist, from the French word coiffure) to list a very few. Despite ventures into a handful of countries with languages distantly related to my own, from the Czech Republic to Hungary to Finland, I'd never before seen something quite like this!

Here are a few of the highlights of the weekend in Istanbul:

Crossing the Bosphorus Strait

Each morning as we came into town from our Couchsurfing host's place in the Asia side, we caught a ferry to cross the Bosphorus Strait.

Admiring iconographic clashing at the Hagia Sophia

The Hagia Sophia as viewed from outside the Blue Mosque

Built in the 300s AD, this building served as an Orthodox basilica for a little over a millenium before its conversion to a mosque under Sultan Mehmed in 1453. Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey was declared an independent state in 1923. Turkey's first president, Atatürk, made major reforms to modernize and secularize the country, including the conversion of the Hagia Sophia: In 1931 it was closed and in 1935, the Hagia Sophia re-opened now as a secular museum, as it is to this day. The walls and ceilings are covered with a confused blend of Christian mosiacs and Islamic geometric artwork. The building is stunning though maddeningly in need of a fresh coat of paint as the colors inside are a drab testament to the glowing place of worship it clearly once was.

The view from the Empress's seat

And the commoner's perspective: still not too shabby

Esteban admiring a side view of the basilica/mosque/museum from the upper level, above and to the side of the altar

We were both amused by the old Christian mosaics next to the Islamic artwork

Covering up for the Blue Mosque

Talk about efficiency: the French may have been a few centuries ahead of the Turks in constructing Notre Dame, but the Turks set up their own renowned house of worship in their modern-day capital city in a mere seven years, from 1609 to 1616. Some scandal surrounded the construction of this mosque as it was to have six minarets, rivaling the Grand Mosque in Mecca. To settle contention, Sultan Ahmet financed the construction of an additional minaret in Mecca.

The Blue Mosque is so called due to the color of its tiling. The inside of the mosque is covered with tens of thousands of intricately patterned handmade ceramic tiles. To get in, I first had to slip off my shoes and cover my head, though I was amused to discover that a hoodie is considered an acceptable substitute for a headscarf!

Respectfully covering up in my hoodie

Low hanging chandeliers lit the mosque from below as sunlight filtered through the stained glass from above.

The blue mosque answered the call for vibrance and life that had been missing from the spectacular but clearly aging Hagia Sophia. Here, though the colors are said to have faded on the tiling, I'd have hardly guessed. In contrast to its neighbor across a grassy field, this mosque is still very much alive.

Strolling on palace grounds

The Topkapi Palace was home to the Ottoman sultans from the 1400s through the 1800s. The home, situated along the Bosphorus Strait, was not to shabby, nor was the Harem where young women selected from surrounding regions for their beauty and intelligence were taken to be educated and groomed for potential selection by the sultan. 

Entering the harem

I couldn't help but be a bit shocked and horrified as I imagined life in the harem. On one hand, these women were spared the hardship of a commoner's life. On the other hand, this home had to be filled with enough drama to titillate any reality television producer: these women all spent many years together being educated and groomed in the ultimate fight to win the sultan's favor. Just imagine a sorority house in which graduation does not clear out a fourth of the population every year and, to top it off, all of the sisters are fighting for the same frat boy. Not exactly the place I'd want to live. And better yet, consider how these women won: the top four to eight ladies became the sultan's "favorites" and were given special privileges and rights upon their first pregnancy. (No pressure, right?) And finally, only after years of child-rearing would one of the four to eight favorites be selected as the future queen-mother (the most powerful woman of the harem) based on the sultan's preference for heir among his lot of children borne by these four to eight women. I'm sure there wasn't too much tension in such a household, right?

Looking out over a courtyard in the harem

View from inside the harem, take 1

View from inside the harem, take 2

View from inside the harem, take 3

A library on the palace grounds. Many rooms were of a similar large, open layout with seating around the edges. The Mediterranean climate shaped the architectural design, as many small buildings or single rooms stand independently and require walking outside to go from one to another.

Touching the walls of Babylon

Lions from the walls of Babylon

The Archeological Museum here in Istanbul holds quite a few gems, unsurprising given the country's borders with Iraq, Iran, and Syria, generally the birthplaces of civilization.

The museum holds loads of ancient texts, including the oldest written love poem.

Sipping on Turkish coffee and tea 

Much like in Marrakesh, tea is readily available everywhere in this city, and it isn't just a touristy gimmick: the locals constantly sip it, be it at the café table next to ours or behind their boutique counters while at work. Similarly, the beverage is consumed in small, clear, handle-less glasses. Unlike in Morocco, however, the standard is not a sweet green mint tea but just your standard black served consistently with two sugar cubes on the side. The tea is mixed fresh from a highly concentrated steeped brew blended in your cup with steaming water. (We observed this both at restaurants and when our Couchsurfing host served us tea at home.) Stopping regularly for this simple, inexpensive treat was a great way to break up the day and give my feet a rest.

And of course, no visit to Turkey would be complete without a good cup of Turkish coffee. Turkish coffee is a distinctive sort of thick, intense brew in which the finely ground coffee is allowed to settle in the cup. Beware not to down the last sip or you'll be in for a rude surprise!

My Turkish coffee and an unusual sweet called a kazandibi

If you are ever in Istanbul, I would highly recommend an afternoon stop at a certain café called the Hafiz Mustafa (Address: Hocapasa Mahallesi Muradiye CaddesiNo: 51, Sirkeci - Fatih - Istanbul, 34080 Sirkeci Eminönü / Istanbul. Founded in 1864, this old and picturesque café with large upper floor windows overlooking the Bosphorus offers over a hundred different kinds of desserts and a wide selection of coffees and teas. I braved a kazandibi which, as it turns out, is a gooey, stretchy milky blob with a sort of creamy caramel flavor. Of course, your more standard fare of baklava and Turkish delight are available in a variety of flavors. We even got a sample platter with some pomegranate pistachio Turkish delight that was good enough to grab a box for my labmates on the way out.

The view onto the Bosphorus from our café table at Hafiz Mustafa

One of the café front windows at Hafiz Mustafa, filled with Turkish Delight

More standard fare in terms of Turkish dessert: a honey-soaked pistachio sweet we picked up on our way in to town

Sampling the cuisine

It made me cringe a little to embrace the incredibly touristy bilingual-menu'ed restaurants, but as English is so commonly spoken outside of the touristy areas, we dove in. The food was pleasantly spiced though not spicey. One particularly good classic dish is a yogurt mint cucumber appetizer, shown in the center of the above image. Another particularly memorable dish included grape leaves spiced with cinnamon-- a delightful little surprise to bite into! And one funny detail I couldn't help but notice was that the lentil soups we ordered at several meals were always served with a lemon wedge.

In Istanbul, lentil soup comes with a lemon on the side

Both of the restaurants we tried were decent finds, not so much to write home about but a good deal for the money with tasty options:
Turkish Kitchen
Hocapasa Mah. Ebussuud Cd. No: 5 Sirkeci, Eminönü, Istanbul

Cafe Han
Alemdar Cad. No: 28, Sultanahmet, Istanbul

And let's not forget what the local bakeries have to offer...

The New Yorker in me squealed with delight when we wandered into our Couchsurfing host's local bakery on our way out of town and I discovered bagels! The proper name for these not-quite-puffy-enough bagels are simit, and they're standard Turkish fare. They have a distinctly bagel-like flavor to them (unless I was just imposing my wishful thoughts onto my taste perception) and as such, I left town thoroughly satisfied to have had a taste of my first home when so far away.

Befriending the locals

No story of our trip to Istanbul would be complete without mention of our Couchsurfing host for the weekend, Sezo. He showed us Turkish hospitality, led us to learn quite a lot about the public transport in the greater Istanbul Asian region (he didn't exactly live in Istanbul per se...), and introduced us to some stylish looks as you can see for yourself.

And of course, when I mention befriending the locals, I wasn't species-restrictive. This city is just full of furry feline friends! (And yes, I was equipped with hand sanitizer for use post-befriending...)

Saying farewell to the red-roofed city

Before I knew it, we had packed our bags and caught yet another bus from a stop along the freeway. (I don't know what city planner thinks it such a great idea to plant the stops right alongside so much traffic, but pedestrians in this city seemed far less timid around cars.) I'd anticipated visiting this city for so long that suddenly wrapping up the trip seemed so anticlimactic: Seriously, just a weekend, this is it? It hardly even felt so very foreign as I'd imagined! I hardly even got to know the city! I felt like yelling. I'd wanted to experience something more, yet I hardly knew what. The funny thing is, the more you travel, the less of a culture shock each new city becomes. You start to expect the unexpected and the rush of discovering each new place... well, there's less of a rush, I'm ashamed to admit.

We left with one final image of the clay-red rooftops that seemed to uniformly cover the city buildings, from those that looked to have been standing for decades or centuries to those freshly laid atop new glass skyscrapers along the suburban highways where much construction appeared to be underway.

I can't say when I'll be back again, but it was well worth the visit. From one seasoned city traveler, here's a recommendation for Istanbul if ever you've got the chance.