 |
|
Main
| August 2008 »
So, after a week in Istanbul, I am well known by "Dr. Delicious" the owner and proprietor of "Saїd's" the best baklava and pastry shop in the Sirkegi part of old Istanbul and "Muza" the Kurdish owner of "Enjoy", a small döner and şiş restaurant down the block.
My friend, Ahmed, who speaks rather decent German, has given me a break on my laundry and we've shared many glasses cay while my clothes tumble inside his underground shop.
I know I've logged 100 kilometers on foot since I arrived, mostly because I am afraid of taxi drivers (and circus clowns, but that isn't really relevant, is it?)
There is so much to see and do in Istanbul; it would take a lifetime to accomplish half of what I would like. I have seen whirling dervishes, men fishing for bait 24 hours a day on the bridges, Moslems rushing to prayer before the muezzins finish their calls, beautiful women with covered faces, homeless people sleeping on the street, children providing for their families by selling bottles of cold water for 50 cents each and some of the most beautiful mosques, churches and synagogues one could imagine.
In spite of all the wonders of the former Constantinople, I am off to Turkey's third largest city, Izmir (formerly Smyrna, population over 2.5 million.)
 
While the ancient city has great shopping, the famous Saat Kule (Clock Tower) the remarkable ruins of the Agora, the traditional Jewish quarter of Karataş or in Havra Sokak (Synagogue street) in Kemeraltıand and a beautiful park called the Fuar in the center of town, I was most impressed by the wonderful people I met.
The luxurious six hour coach ride from Istanbul winds through the rich agricultural countryside and includes a stunning 40 minute ferry crossing, yet the truly memorable part of the journey was meeting a delightful, modern, educated young Turkish woman named Kadriye Çetin.
Kadriye patiently answered all my questions about Turkish politics, economics, social change, customs and religion in perfect English for over two hours and then stayed with me until i was on the correct Pamukkale service shuttle to the correct part of the city where my lodgings were located.
She shepherded me to an Internet cafe to check the phone and address of the Vatan Hotel and even helped me wrestle my bags up and down stairs in the vast Otogar where all the buses from around the nation converge. Turkish coaches are like first class airplanes and the bus stations are a huge and complex as many US airports.
This lovely woman showed such patience and kindness, as well as informing me about the opinions of western, moderate Muslims, that she set the tone for my entire stay in this gateway to the Aegean.
I MAY have accidentally offered her a job at Champlain College.
In the next blog, I will tell you about an articulate, passionate journalist whom my daughter Vera (Champlain '02) met via the Internet and who turned out to be my guide and translator for the next part of my stay.
Stay tuned for the story of the two "Efe"s and the Turkish blogosphere. [g]
Ken
Dear Readers,
ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) - Bomb blasts that killed 17 people and injured 150 others in a crowded neighborhood square appeared to be linked to a Kurdish rebel group, Istanbul's govGüngören, Turkey, killedernor said Monday, though the rebels immediately denied involvement.
The suburb, Güngören, Turkey, lies about 10 km (6 miles) from where I was staying until the middle of last week. Before you blame the Kurds, hold off judgement until more facts are in. The Turkish Government, like some well-known others, will blame the terrorists first and then wait to see if they have to retract the accusation.
My Turkish friends say it could have been a particularly stupid "prank" pulled by teenagers, so please don't jump to conclusions just yet.
As much as I would like to claim that I was in danger, I am actually about twelve hours south of the city in a somewhat remote coastal town called Datca.
The other millionaires in our village do not seem very concerned about a small bomb hundreds of kilometers away, so I am taking my cue from them.
I will tell you more about my harrowing experience after several of us get out of the Jacuzzi.
Stay tuned,
Ken
I’ve come to a deep and somewhat painful realization. This trip to Turkey has made me realize that I have been lying to myself and the only way I can make it right is to come out publically and admit who and what I really am.
I’ve tried to hide my true nature. I’ve studied the way other people around me walk and talk, the way they dress and laugh and express emotions and I can no longer live the lie. I keep my feelings to myself and I try to watch my every gesture, my every word, hoping I won’t give myself away.
Each day I get up, put on drab, inconspicuous clothing, walk with a manly, determined, purposeful swagger, fix a stern and humorless expression on my face and try to pass for “normal.” But it just isn’t working. I have to confess and face up to who I truly am. I hope my family and friends will understand.
I am a tourist.
The sense of freedom I feel now is hard to describe. I think I’ll start by signing on to the “Hop on/Hop off” City Tour bus.
This is great! Everybody on the top of this double-decker bus is standing up, running from one side to the other snapping pictures of every mosque, aqueduct, tower, church, synagogue and body of water in Istanbul. We all wear headphones so we can listen to heavily accented narrations in our own tongue.
Wow! This tour took me from the Aya Sophia to, in order, the Blue Mosque, the Underground Cistern, Gülhane Park, the Sirkeci Train Station (end point of the Orient Express), the Yenicami or New Mosque, the Spice Bazaar, the Women’s Prison (now an upscale Storks restaurant), Topkapi Palace, the Galata Bridge and Tower, the Dolmabahçe Palace, the Stadium, Taksim Square, Istiklal Caddesi, Golden Horn or Haliç, Atatürk Bridge, Aqueduct of Valens, the Patriarchate of Fener, the Bulgarian (all metal church built in a day),Balat Synagogue, Justinian Palace, Pierre Loti Café, City Walls, Yedikule Dungeons (Ancient Guantanamo), Florence Nightingale Hospital,Golden Gate, Byzantium Harbor and Fish Market.
Whew! OK, Istanbul, been there, done that!
Now, what should I do tomorrow?
Did you ever have a dream that you were in a strange, dangerous, alien place only to awake and find you were safely tucked in your own bed at home?
No, OK, I must be insane. Sorry.
In any event, yesterday I was strolling down one of the greatest shopping malls in Istanbul; it's a street called Istiklal Caddesi and you can wander from Starbucks to the Body Shop to a Jazzersize studio to McDonalds to the Bambi Cafe to a movie theater showing "Journey to the Center of the World" in 3-D.
In Turkish.
I joined a large, diverse congregation celebrating mass in a reasonably familiar church, St. Antoine's. Except for the All-Filipina guitar choir, my inability to understand the Nigerian priest's accent and the rough, splintery hardness of the kneeler in my pew, I might have been in the St. Albans' Church of the Holy Angels.
On the off-chance that I would be able to find a variety of religious experiences on this hot, sunny summer morning, I shuffled aimlessly down hill until I stumbled on a small sign next to the Mehlevi (Whirling Dervish) Cultural and Religious Museum inviting me to the Union Church of Istanbul.
I found the entrance and greeted the guard at the metal detector in my cheerful, atrocious Turkish and he pointed to a small door and informed me, "inglish." By the way, I set the detector beeping furiously (probably my camera and handgun), but Erkut was completely unconcernd and waved me through.
The Dutch Chapel was built in the 18th century yet it was comfortingly as familiar as most of the churches I've ever attended in Vermont. They had stacks of The Pilgrim Hymnal and, unlike St. Anthony's, lots of cooling fans in the thick window sills!
When the sermon and singing ended, other than hearing a symphony of accented English - Scottish, Chinese, Africaans, Malgasy, Russian, Moldovan, Turkish, Farsi and Californian, it was eerily like the Congregational Church at 11 am on any given Sunday.
Coffee and conversation in the church basement was just as familiar - the same plastic cups, weak tea, children coloring, store-bought cookies, families catching up on vacations and mutual friends and a warm feeling of fellowship.
I am a terrible freeloader. It took very little wheedling for me to secure an invitation to the weekly church feast held at the Dutch Embasy.
The food was a delicious mixture of fried chicken, watermelon and Turkish salads.The genuine friendliness of the congregation actually made me wonder which was the dream and which the reality.
I was, in a very real sense, home.
Associate Pastor,Greg Lee-Parker and the Blythes, Jonathan and Juay, answered all my questions for nearly two hours. Juay, from Singapore and Jonathan ( a law partner in a Turkish firm AND an ordained minister) met at Seminary in Scotland and were called to Istanbul in 1991. They've raised two delightful children in this culture while keeping very grounded in their own past. Jonathan, from Bearsden near Glasgow, and I even chatted about my favorite Scottish football team, Parick Thistle! Juay told me that Jonathan is so fluent in Turkish, he earned his law degree here.
Greg, from Fuller Seminary in Southern California, is incredibly knowlegeable about the immigrant situation in the Republic and had many delightful stories about the "pressure" applied to Christians and other non-Muslims by the majority culture. He estimates there are fewer than 3,000 Christian Turks in Istanbul and many of them are afraid to tell their families and most dare not tell their employers
But that is truly another story for another time. I'm going to have some more fried chicken.
Ken
In my last posting, I promised to try to blog every day. HA! Clearly, I do not have the required discipline to be an online journalist. So much happens here every 24 hours, I can write as fast as it all comes in. I first discovered this time-dilation phenomenon when my wonderful,late father-in-law would take me fishing.
We would get into the water a few hours after my prefered bedtime and we would sometimes fish from six am to ten. When we got back, I felt as though I had been away from the house for days. I would bore my wife with stoires of every nesting osprey, every escaped sunfish, every stealthy amphibian and every successful cast I had experienced, seen or heard.
Likewise, here in the big city, every tramvay journey, every auto ferry ride and every mangled, pidgin conversation I have with a tourist or local expands in my imagination to a grand adventure.
 
Maybe if I start with today and work backward, I might get a handle on the blogosphere?
It is Sunday and I promised myself that I would cross the Halic (Golden Horn) to Beyoglu and find a Christian Church to attend. I've been to Moslem services with hundreds of worshippers praying as one person and I needed to know if other religions were thriving, surpressed, clandestine or tolerated.
Thre's a list of religious institutions in the Seres Hotel "Istanbul Forever" guest magazine. There were 14 churches, four synagogs, five palaces and I kept losing count of the number of mosques.
Picking the largest, closest cathedral from the choices, I memorized "Sent Antoine Kilisi Katolic nerede var mi?", I sped to Taxim on the Katabas tramvay and funicular and spent half an hour repeating the "Where is the St. Antoine Catholic Church?" phrase to every policeman I met.
There were dozens of officers and they were all very polite and helpful. I think refering to each of them as "Effendi" didn't hurt.
I arrived just as services were beginning. The two hundred or so congregants were roughly 45% Asian (Filipino, Malay, Indian and Chinese) 50% African, including 8 of the nine priests, and very few Westerners with light skin.
  
The church managed to be huge, magnificent, opulent and completely hidden from the main street, Istiklal Caddesi. Churches, like gays, are tolerated as long as they keep an extremely low profile on the outside.
Several folks were especially friendly to me, inviting me to next Sunday's African Mass. Francis and Ustus explained that they had moved here from Lagos, Nigeria a decade ago and they did not regret the decision.
I see this posting is already too long. I'll tell you about the Union Church of Istanbul (Protestant) in the next chapter.
Ken
The word from my bosses is in.
Start blogging every day like your colleagues or we stop the check on your hotel reimbursement!
I'm going to skip over most of my Netherlands trip because
1. I will be back to talk to politicians and business people on the other end of the trip and
2. I am actually in the Eminolu section of Istanbul right now and this city is so unbelievable I can't wait to tell you about it.
I also think I may have learned how to upload pictures, but we shall see.
Here are some differences between Holland and Turkey which I believe you will find useful.
Anybody who speaks English can get a pretty clear idea what is going on by reading the street signs and shop names.
I like the "Kiss and Ride".
OK, I want to eat, drink some coffee and maybe have a beer. Betty has me covered.
I'm not quite sure what they have for sale in this restaurant, but I don't think they serve it in Vermont.
Another interesting contrast would be the view out the window of my Valk Hotel near Amsterdam
As opposed to the view from the Yigitalp Hotel in the Bazaar District near Istanbul University
Finally, oh you don't want to know. Still, if you are reading this, you are probably an adult, so this is what a dollar will do for you when you have a need and you are away from your hotel
I have to get the A/C fixed, I will elaborate tomorrow after I cruise the Bosphorus.
Ken
It is remarkably difficult simultaneously to live life and to record it.
The six days I've been overseas seem like six months to me but my wife is already annoyed that I keep calling asking what's up in St. Albans, hoping she will ask about me so that I can ramble on about minutiae for half an hour. Fortunately, we talk over the computer and she can shop while I expostulate.
The August 2008 issue of Discover Magazine has an article that claims the brain can speed up, slow down and even reverse time. Carl Zimmer describes a study that indicates "Staring at an angry face for five seconds feels longer than staring at a neutral one."
If this is true, I have been extending the lives of hundreds of people who have had to look at my wrathful visage this past week. But I can explain.
As is my habit, I was complaing to my family about the myriad of injustices I have had to suffer as I explore the coasts of history this beautiful month of Temmuz in the former Byzantine capital once known as Constantinople.
I whined, "Gee, I don't want to give readers the idea that the world is a brutal, unpredictable, dangerous place. For the most part, I am having the adventure of a lifetime, but that receptionist at that first hotel..."
"Oh stop it, Papa," interrupted my level-headed Canadian daughter, "Say what you want - the good and the bad. You never intended to write 'Chicken Soup for the World Traveler'. So, life has warts, what else is new? Stop being such a baby, Cowboy Up and get on with it. Jeeze!"
Who taught that girl to talk to her beloved father like that?
Oh, yeah right, nevermind.
Here's the short version. I arrived at Schiphol Airport just 18 clicks out of Amsterdam on Wednesday morning, after a truly memorable Delta/Lufthansa flight.
The plane was half full so I was able to sleep in that strange, twisted way that one does when belted into an aisle seat while the center of gravity of one's large, puffy body was mostly in the window seat and the armrest neatly bisecting the spine.The screaming of various children drowned out my snoring so I was able to nap with a clean conscience.
The service was stellar, the food fantastic (Geroostde kipfilet met polenta, bonen, mais en paprika. Even the brood and boter were fresh and tasty. You can see why I love the Dutch language), real silverware, free wine and the in-flight movie,with Matthew McConnaghy and Kate Hudson was...did I mention that the food was wonderful?
My body landed thinking it was two in the morning. I called the Valk Hotel to learn that I couldn't check in for two more hours, unless I wanted to pay a 15 Euro early arrival fee.
Hmm, I thought, this is different.
I showed up anyway and offered to sit in the lobby grimacing until my room was ready, but Mynheer Bosma decided it would be better for the other guests if I went upstairs.
I complimented him on his fine English, adding that I knew several Netherlanders who spoke several languages well.
"Dutch people like to make money," he explained.
My next entry will expand on this theory.
Ken
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a really good pair of walking shoes." - Sue Wade
OK, this is the day. I've been mentally preparing for this trip most of my life but there still isn't time to tie up all the loose ends before the plane leaves tomorrow afternoon for the Netherlands and then Istanbul.
I read, I travel, I meet people and I try to demonstrate to other world citizens that Americans can be kind, interested, reasonably intelligent and not much different from other human beings.
Champlain College of Burlington VT has decided to "deploy" me to the Middle East for the entire month of Tammuz (July to non-Turks) to study the lives of minority groups who are somehow surviving while living with an occasionally hostile majority culture. But that's another story.
First I want to talk about the myriad of decisions each of us has to make when planning an extended TDY, as we called temporary out-of-town duty when my Dad was called away.
For lack of a better term, let's call this the Bucket List.Traditionally those things you'd like to do before you "kick the bucket." But, more innocently in my case, those items that need to be taken care of before I leave Vermont and family to cope with my not being around to get in their way.
My study plans call for me to meet with members of the Freedom Party in Amsterdam and find out why they feel the Moslem influx into Holland must be stopped before Europe is "Islamafied."
Next, I'd like to talk to with Dutch Moslems who are seeking an "Islamic" party run along the principles of Sharia law. After setting this foundation, I'm off to Turkey to interview students, Sufis, soldiers and secularists. I am looking forward to drinking tea with bakers, bikers, backpackers, bankers, biologists and bloggers.
When I return I hope to have broken with some long held stereotypes and perhaps to be able to share my insights with my own students, family and friends.
That is, of course, Plan A. No one travels to the Middle East without Plans B-Z in the back of one's mind. Flexibility is the key; that and travel insurance.
OK, before I can begin to contemplate a mission of this scope, I have to get my Vermont ducks lined up and looking straight ahead.
Did I remember to change my answering machine at work, to get a letter of introduction from the College President, to score some real-looking press credentials from the St. Albans Messenger, to cancel all the TIVO shows that my wife will not watch while I am gone?
No.
Did I buy travelers checks (they apparently don't sell them in the US anymore)? Do I have working ATM cards, health insurance, a smattering of Turkish, prescriptions for all the pills a middle-aged diabetic needs to survive on the plains of Anatolya for four weeks?
I think so.
Have I spent long, languid evenings on the porch sipping lemonade while watching my wife work her tiny little fingers to the bone in our flower garden? Have I spoken to all my daughters repeatedly and told them how much I love them? Did I call my Mom and my school friends to let them know I will be OK even if I am out of touch for the next month? Have Sue and I spent every minute we could together enjoying the most beautiful state in the most blessed country in the world?
Check.
OK, Sue made me buy new Merrells walking shoes, even though five year-old loafers I bought at Payless and which I wear every waking moment of the summer still look remarkably good to me.
I hate to try on clothes, footwear or eyeglasses but Sue drags me like a screaming todler from shop to shop and in the end, I realize she was right and that I am a big baby. I don't know which I hate more; her iron-fisted control over my life or the fact that she is correct a disturblingly large part of the time.
Nevertheless, the tickets are bought, the first few hotels are booked, the pleading messages to put me up in friends' villas, houses and apartments have been sent and there is no turning back now.
I'll send pictures and news from Amsterdam. Thanks for coming with me.
Ken Wade
|
|
|
