Tourism

Well, I went to Topkapi palace, but then as I approached the monstrous line to pay the 20 Lira entrance fee (one CAN$ is about 1.4 Lira, I think) I was engulfed by a crowd of American Jehovahs' witnesses on a loud group trip, and I began to think about what it would be like inside... so I walked around the gardens.

And I went to the Hayya Sophia, but the lineup went forever, and it also cost 20 Lira, and then this guy came and tried to sell me carpets... he thought his chances were good enough that he took me to his kebab place and bought me a tea and showed me some carpets.

And I did go the Sultanahmet Mosque, which was quite beautiful, but rather hard to appreciate with the crowds (places of worship generally lose some of their intended function when they're full of people pointing and having their pictures taken and talking about how Turkey had THE FIRST TULIPS EVER and sneaking off their headscarves to make some sort of point and so on). And there are so many beautiful smaller mosques where you can actually sit down for a while and appreciate it. So I went to them. And got lost a whole lot.

And then I met Anna and headed to a museum which used to be a Greek Orthodox monestary and is full of very old mosaics... we didn't get there until after it closed (and we turned down the offer from two guys sitting in the doorway to get in for ten minutes for only 15 Lira each) but we walked past the old Orthodox Patriarchate and then for a long time through a neighbourhood that is very "conservative" Islamic (I judge this from dress and from a bunch of shops selling Qur'ans and Islamic materials) and also extremely friendly. There were a bunch of the old wooden houses that used to be standard in Istanbul and are quite beautiful in their construction (very square, in contrast to the very circular architecture of the mosques and palaces). We met a crowd of children who counted to us in English, and we counted back in Turkish (which I am still very bad at doing)... it is nice to finally now have had the travel experience of being surrounded by very happy children shouting English words. Then we met a man who had served in NATO and spoke good English -- he had served with a Canadian named Steve -- and his brother-in-law, who lives in the very old house he was born in with a view down the hill over the city. They invited us up there for tea, but we excused ourselves on account of time....

And we went down and sat by the water and ate chocolate Baklava we bought up near the museum, and then a guy came and introduced himself, and then his friend who spoke a little more English joined him, and then about ten other people, most of them siblings, and then their mother. They were Kurds, with 12 kids in the family... Anna has a few basic Turkish phrases, I have almost nothing, but we managed to have a friendly half-conversation about where we all came from and how large our families were... and "Salaam Aleikum" is a nicely universal phrase in a lot of the world...

And then we went to Marlene's graduation -- she just graduated top of her class from Istanbul Bilgi Universitei (degree in history) and we got to be her surrogate family for the event... the university, a private university with classes in English (although if everyone in the class speaks Turkish - both Julia and Marlene speak fluently - the classes are taught in Turkish), was recently bought by an American chain, so the ceremony combined the worst elements of English and American academic traditions, and ended with Pink Floyds "Another Brick in the Wall" played very loudly. They also played Michael Jackson during the ceremony. Then we got to meet a bunch of other students, and eat finger food, and drink cherry juice and vodka.

I am beginning to settle into being a tourist, although it drove me up the wall at first and still does somewhat... it is horrid not to have the resources to be polite. It is also wild to me, after watching so many people get publicly mocked at borders for being foreign, that I got my visa at the airport without speaking a word to anyone -- I just slid my passport under the window and the guy put in the visa. Still, travelling with people who speak a good six languages each, I'm realizing politeness, viewed broadly, probably requires some work. And that this work can be done if you try. Ah.

And now I hang out laundry in preparation for heading east tomorrow.