Calcium, Doctor Fish, and Hierapolis

Ancient ruins at Pamukkale

Since arriving in Turkey 2 ½ weeks ago, my view of Turkey has been limited to the busy, hustle-and-bustle metropolis life of Istanbul. Today, my view has been expanded as the global scholars have departed Istanbul for an overnight getaway to the province of Izmir.

We began our day before the sun rose at 4:30 am.  Despite some hiccups, we all managed to make our 6:45 flight time from Ataturk to Izmir safely.  Once we touched down in Izmir, we were quickly ushered into a coach bus for a three-hour ride to our next destination: Pamukkale Hierapolis.

As we rode along the southwestern region of Turkey, the landscape was breathtakingly beautiful. Mountains and fields lined the roads around us on either side, and I was finally feeling that Mediterranean vibe and weather typically associated with Turkey. 

Our tour guide enlightened us on the basic history and demographics of modern-day Turkey as we rode.  One thing she pointed out that was very eye-opening is the unequal distribution of wealth and opportunity throughout Turkey.  She told us that the Eastern half of Turkey suffered from mostly infertile land making unemployment very high in this area.  Those who are able will often leave these regions in the hopes they will have better job-opportunity in cities like Istanbul.  This information coincides with Turkey’s status as a “developing” nation more so than what I’ve seen of Istanbul thus far.

Calcified pools in Pamukkale

When we finally arrived at the ancient city of Pamukkale Hierapolis, we were greeted with a white mountain covered with mineral deposits.  Our tour guide led us through the ancient city before allowing us to explore the city on our own for a couple hours. Members of the group took advantage of the opportunity to hike the mountain in search of an old monastery; some considered getting the Doctor Fish massages, while others decided to have the experience of hang-gliding over the mountains.  I decided to visit the calcified pools on the mountain – a decision I do not regret.  On top of the mountain, visitors take their shoes off and are then allowed to explore the pools at their leisure.  The built up calcium deposits make magnificent walls on the mountain, with the water trickling down into the pools. The water was cool and refreshing as we wade in knee deep. 

After being allowed to explore on our own, we met back up at the bus for a three-hour ride to where we’d be spending the night – Kusadasi, a city near Ephesus.  Our hotel had a waterfront view of the Aegean Sea which some of us took immediate advantage of.  Watching the sun set while wading in the temperate water was the perfect way to end this busy day. Seeing Turkey outside of Istanbul has broaden all of our perspectives of Turkey and has better equipped us to understand what development means in relation to Turkey.  

Hotel view of sunset over the Aegean Sea in Kusadasi

Globalization. Hamburgers and Falafel

Before I left home my dad asked me what I was most excited to experience on my trip to Istanbul and Rome. Immediately I answered the food. At the very beginning of this trip we landed in Istanbul and went out to a small restaurant in the neighborhood of our hotel. I took a look at the menu and realized I was definitely not at home anymore. I did not recognize any of the words and ended up just pointing at a picture on the menu. When it was brought to me, I realized it was meat, when I had thought from the menu it might be eggplant; I’m a pescatarian. But curiosity got the better of me and I tried a small piece. When I got back to the hotel I looked it up on google and realized I had accidentally ordered lamb heart cooked in tail fat.  It was then that I knew I needed to be more careful with just pointing at food items.
               Upon our return from Rome, I was excited to step away from the more familiar world of pizza, pasta, and panini, and into the unknown. I was specifically hoping to find falafel, an originally Arab deep-fried ball made from ground chick peas and/or fava beans. I understood that Turkey was not an Arab country, but it was located closely to Arab world, and since Istanbul had been described to me as a highly globalized and diverse city, I was hoping to find some. However, after our orientation I asked one of the women if she knew of a place where I could find some and I was told, “That’s not a Turkish thing”, which was disappointing but fair.
             As we come closer to the end of the three weeks I have come to adjust to many food customs  Turkey.  Istanbul is not very accommodating to vegetarians, which honestly is not that surprising. While there are definitely options available, such as salad bars, the predominance of meat made finding food on the streets difficult at times. Everything smells so delicious and well seasoned; I was tempted to end my 2 year pescatarianism for a dӧner or kebab several times. This was further exacerbated by the several cold dishes I was served by our dinner restaurant, Murat, which made me crave the hot meat dishes my friends ate even more. Being here during Ramadan also meant that many restaurants were closed during the day. However, I could not expect the city to change for my dietary preferences. I became accustomed to new foods such as Spinach with yogurt sauce, lentil soup, eggplant stuffed with onions and what I believe are raisins, and eating lots of tomatoes and cucumbers.
            What was slightly perplexing though, was the prevalence of hamburgers, not only in McDonald’s and Burger King, but on the streets as well. I accepted that I was not going to have falafel but certainly if falafel was not a thing, hamburgers could not be, or so I thought.  While Turkey is geographically located closer to the origins of falafel rather than the origin of the hamburger, Germany, Turkey has historically been more western than the Middle East despite also being a predominantly Muslim state. Today the question was raised about whether globalization really meant Americanization, or rather Westernization. We characterized globalization not only as opening of and entering into global markets, but also cultural integration. While originally I thought that the more conservative Middle Eastern states would be judgmental of Turkey for being more secular, especially in Istanbul, it was told to us by our guest lecturer that in fact these states look to Turkey as a sort of role model, to being integrated with the West but also still keeping with the culture. While there may be more hamburgers instead of falafel, you can also get chick peas and rice, boza, or a balik ekmek, a fish sandwich, right off the pier, real Turkish street foods, much more easily Western fast food.  This indicates that while Istanbul has definitely adopted many Western customs, it still has a strong identity of its own. 

A weekend adventure in Büyükada

               After having spent two weeks in Istanbul, most of us have “checked” off the big tourist sites and turned to explore more of the local areas of attraction like Istiklal Street (or Independence Street in English) or even our local gourmet shops. Today however we explored another area of the Istanbul favorites, the Princes’ Islands. These nine islands off the coast of Turkey in the Sea of Marmara hold a strategic place in Turkish and World History. Leon Trotsky for example took refuge on these islands during his exile in the 1930’s. However these islands have a different appeal to the Istanbul locals, they are more of the week-end beach and shore then exile locations.

                Our destination was the biggest of the nine Islands, Büyükada, which literally means Big Island in Turkish. We reached Büyükada after an hour and a half ferry boat ride provided through the Istanbul Public Transportation System. On a ferry boat with maybe even more Turkish then tourists, we were carried away from the tumults of the Istanbul life to the quiet(er) beaches of the Big Island. 

                The island was a site to behold with its tall hills and houses hanging of the forest-y cliffs before forming miniature enclaves of sand, where lawn chairs and parasols were tetrissed in as tightly as possible, in front of a clear blue/turquoise ocean.

                Not being one for sea or sun bathing, as lobster red has never been a color which suits me, I decided with three other explorers to try and find one of the historical legacies of the Island, St Georges’ Monastery.

                From the guide books information, we knew that it would be an hour long walk from where we left off the group at the beach, but armed with the confidence that the journey would be valuable, we set off with our free commercial map as our only guide. Oh and what a journey it was… What I believed would be a nice leisurely walk albeit somewhat long to the monastery turned out to be a real calorie burning, marathon training hike to the top of the highest peak of the Island (I think my Mediterranean decent is showing here…).

               After the first quarter of our “walk”, we reached a plaza where two options were presented to us, a 50° incline on small cobbled stone or a longer flatter dirt path. For the sake of my knees, we chose the dirt path which still had an average incline of 30°. So we set of to climb the deserted path overlooking the western side of the island, opposite from where we had arrived.

 We had as such a view of the Sea of Marmara with music blasting beach clubs and what I believe to be the other monastery of the Island. We rejoined the main path after a forty minute hike for the last stretch and reached the St George Monastery (or church depending on the signs we read).

                It was a beautifully restored orthodox church with magnificent point of views which made us forget the extensive journey we had just taken to reach the peak, or at least until we had to walk back…

                From this trip to the Istanbul vacation area, I have two main remarks, first the inhabitants of the island must be very good walkers because those hills where deadly and I can’t imagine myself wanting to ascend them daily. As a no car island, carriages, bikes or feet are the main transportation modes. Even the drinking water canisters were delivered by a horse tracked cart… My second remark and only piece of advice on how to navigate these islands is to pay close attention to where euphemism may be and to always wear sturdy shoes when in doubt because as I quickly realized the long skirt and flip flops were really not the best attire for a hike…

Reflecting On the Past Two Weeks

Our first view of the Bosphorus from across the Galata Bridge

Two short weeks ago, I sat on the terrace balcony of our dorm building looking out across the Bosphorus, wondering if there was possibly a more beautiful city than the one we found ourselves in. I thought perhaps that this was a feeling of infatuation; of feeling the initial elation of a city of which I may find some fault in the upcoming weeks. I had not yet explored the uneven stone roads or the bustling markets of the Grand Bazaar or the Spice Market. I had not yet met hordes of friendly street vendors, construction workers, restaurant owners, students, or families who sat on the grounds of the Hippodrome and the Blue Mosque eagerly awaiting the call to prayer at 8:24pm, which allowed them to break their fasts.

Sitting now, again on the terrace balcony of our dorm building, I cannot help but still feeling the same initial infatuation with this city as I did two weeks ago. But there is a difference. I have experienced so much more of it. Sitting at a dinner table overlooking the Bosphorus River and both the Asian and European sides of Istanbul tonight, I couldn't help but feel as though I had found my rhythm in this city. While two weeks ago, Istanbul was fresh and new, it is now an integral part of my daily routine. I feel comfortable getting around the city by myself, or even having a brief (if only two lines) conversation with a waiter at a cafe or restaurant. What was foreign and uncomfortable in the first hours of our arrival in Istanbul are now things that have become customary. I no longer feel awkward and eager to leave if a waiter continuously brings out cup after cup of çay long after I have finished a meal. I have now come to enjoy the completely made up stories that vendors tell me about all of the people that they know in America.

Of course, there is still so much to learn about the city, and I do wish that we could spend more time here. Then again, I guess that just means I will have to come back again soon.

Someone asked me yesterday if I could live here. Though I have only been here for two weeks and am still very much in the honeymoon phase of my relationship with the city, I can certainly say that I would love to try.

A View of the Bosphorus from the rooftop restaurant of the Istanbul Modern museum

Nargile

          Walking around our neighborhood, Tophane, where the Bilgi University dorms are located, it is almosot impossible to miss the twenty or so hookah, or nargile in turkish, cafés that light up a signifigant portion of the main street in the area. Every night after Iftar, the breaking of the fast in Ramadan, hundreds of Turks flock to the Turkish equivalent of Adams Morgan to socialize with friends and to smoke nargile. Strangely enough, smoking hookah in pubic places is actually forbidden  by law in Turkey--although this is not made entirely apparent by the clouds of hookah smoke whafting into the street in this area. This type of hookah smoking behavior is not only localized to Tophane. Nargile is widely offered in street-side beverage cafés and even in nargile cafés attached to public parks around the city. Is is undeniable that smoking hookah is a phenomenon in Turkey old enough to have thoroughly assimilated into the cuture, and is a means of public social interaction that the Turks are not willing to give up. For the time being, the Turks have made it clear that their 400 year old tradition of nargile is not something that will change in the near future. 

"I hope you all come back someday...maybe for your honeymoon!"

“Make sure to address him as Your All Holiness”—not a class instruction you hear everyday. 

Today the global scholars had the exclusive opportunity to meet with His All-Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I. HAH is the leader of Orthodox Christianity, a category of people that encompasses nearly 225 million people. In fact, HAH rules over the second largest group of Christians behind the Roman Catholics. So, getting to meet him was kind of a big deal. 

As we boarded the bus from Bilgi campus to the Patriarchate we all began to get very excited about the prospect of getting to meet a world leader. As our excitement built we were greeted with a tour of the Orthodox church on site. 

We then headed up to meet His All Holiness and got to hear him speak for 30 minutes. He gave us a very warm welcome and briefly touched on the eight different environmental symposiums he has created that have taken him from the North Pole to the Mississippi. Clearly, this man has an advanced understanding of leadership and diversity as he has been wildly successful in bringing leaders and followers of a variety of religions and affiliations together to work towards a common goal of bettering the environment. While some may consider religious leaders conservative individuals, HAH was mindful of the fact that many of us were not Christian or religious—he commented a number of times on how we are all one big family searching for love, reconciliation, freedom, and justice. His talk with us was refreshing and made us feel wanted in Istanbul as he told us, “Three weeks is simply not enough. I hope you all come back someday...maybe for your honeymoon!”

Waiting to meet the patriarch 

HAH up close!

Immediately following the audience, HAH told us that there was a 45-minute mass we could sit in on. None of knew the language so the mass was a little hard to get through, but something that many of us found interesting was the call to prayer during the mass. In the middle of the Orthodox chanting that is (heavily) involved in a mass, the national Muslim call to prayer came on and could be heard through the walls of the church. It was one of those moments where you just realize that despite wars, disagreements, and sour histories, interfaith existence is really a beautiful thing.