Welcome to the BULL!
Tourists and Turks intermingle in the courtyard of the New Mosque built in 1597. Hardly new!
Arriving.
When arriving at a virgin destination; a place you've never been before, it's important to savour and appreciate your first impressions. Take in the smells, the noise, the burbling of life that is going on around you. What is the colour of the air, what kinds of trees line the streets? What was the colour of the clothes of the first interesting person you saw? What kind of feast laid in front of you? You need to relish the first moments of your arrival because once they are over, and you have built an impression, a knowledge of alleyways, explored all the nooks and crannies and corners, your first impression is over. It's like a childhood ending. You can never get the thrill of your first exhilarating moments of arrival back.
A little bot of everything Turkish in one photo: minarets, a flag, some serious shopping and tea drinking, and Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey.
I remember the first time I arrived in Istanbul in the summer of 2001. Rene and I were on the last leg of a three month trip through Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. We had been suffering from heatstroke after riding bicycles through the odd landscapes of Cappadocia and had spent a long night on an overnight bus with a screaming toddler. We all thought he'd fall asleep at some point during the twelve-hour bus ride but the wailing continued for the entire trip. The father, who was too poor to pay for his own ticket sat on the floor in the aisle the whole way, holding his head in his hands, trying to quell embarrassment and anger at his son, who was petrified to be inside a bus for the first time in his life.
The Galata Bridge and Tower. We often come here to see if the old men fishing have caught anything other than the day's gossip!
But then we arrived in Istanbul, and the bags disappeared under our wide eyes. What a city! We hopped off the bus and stood in the middle of a park sandwiched between two of the most amazing buildings I have ever seen in my life: The Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. Around the corner were an Egyptian Obelisk and an old Roman Hippodrome. Tall, proud minarets stood at attention as far as the eye could see. The biggest diamond in the world laid inside the Topkapi Palace a few steps away. The coolest cistern in the world, constructed with discarded roman columns and eerie underwater lights laid below our feet, under the well-trampled grass. All around us, handsome men swarmed, Did we want tea? A carpet? Help with a bag? A boyfriend?
Me and Bulent, My sister's boyfriend. He speaks fluent Japanese and is opening a travel agent with my sister.
We put our bags down, and began our love affair with Istanbul. I loved waking up in the wee hours of the morning to listen to the call to prayer blasting from a little mosque next to our hostel (which would have been the main attraction of any city if it weren’t in majestic Istanbul) and watching the light begin to filter through our coloured glass window panes, which threw beautiful patterns across our crisp white blankets as life began on the streets below.
A gypsy woman selling flowers in the upscale part of Istanbul. Traditional meets modern.
It was new and exciting. We Loved it with a capital L.When I left i cried for a good few hours on the flight to London. But I've never really left Instanbul. Since that time, my sister has moved there full time and is working diligently to open a travel agency only a few mere steps from that park we once landed in. I have been back a few times and this was time number three.
Friday prayers off my sister's roof.
Arriving at the airport, I knew the drill. Go over to the far left side of the passport line and wait in the visa line. It's easy to find the price for the Canadian visa in the list of countries- Where most countries get into the former Ottoman Empire for fifteen or twenty bucks, Us Canadians get to pay sixty. This is because our country officially recognizes the genocide of Armenians by the Turks and Turkey doesn't officially like that.
This time I brought Laura, so I had the pleasure of experiencing Istanbul once again for the first time through her eyes. As well, having lived and worked in Istanbul for a year and a half, Rene also had an alternative view of the city. We paid for our golden visas, picked up our bags and met Rene in Arrivals. Soon we were on the metro busily chatting away about life, Istanbul, the length of our hair, all things new friends and close sisters who haven't seen each other in over a year have to talk about.
Often the little mosque next door gets so full the men have to drag carpets out on the streets to hear the Imam speak on Fridays. They compete with the noise from the public school next door.These men later go back to work in the bakeries and supermarkets in the neighbourhood.
My sister lives in a neighbourhood called Kadirga, which is slipped into a few cobbled stoned streets and park-like blocks between the hyper-mosques of Sultanahmet and the Sea of Marmara. From her roof, you can watch the ships waiting for permission to sail through the Bosphorus into the Black sea. Istanbul spans both continents of Asia and Europe- Rene lives on the hip European side in amongst the many Kurds who have moved from the Eastern Anatolian region.
Yum! Fresh Simit! Straight from the oven!
Rene's apartment is above a simit shop. Her neighbours are the owners, and the old man’s neighbourhood friends gather here in the morning to gossip, discuss life, smoke cigars, complain and enjoy each others' company. They invited us in, gave us fresh simit out of the oven- a white twirled circle of unleavened bread covered in sesame seeds and containing no sugar. They posed for pictures and smiled as us while going around completing the daily routine. When my sister came, we stepped out on the street while she told the simit man's wife, hanging out of the second story window, that I wasn't up for grabs for her 24-year old son.
The Simit Men of Kadirga.
Laura and I decided we needed a change and wanted to shake things up. We got hair cuts in the ritzy part of Istanbul.
Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque
Hagia Sopia with it's one red minaret and the Blue Mosque.
The Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia face each other like the bookends of Sultanahmet. Between them, Tourists and Turks take photos in fronts of the buildings, standing next to rows of tulips. Small ten year old boys in king-like outfits stand proudly for photos in their right of passage parade around Sultanahmet- unaware of how painful the next day’s ritual circumcision will be.
The Blue Mosque peeking out from the domes of the Hagia Sophia. I can never get bored of this view!
The Blue mosque is named that because of it’s interior of blue tiles from the Turkish city of Iznik- world famous for it’s tiles. One cool piece of trivia is that when Sultan Ahmed built the mosque he commissioned the building to be completed with six minarets. At that time, the only other Islamic structure to have six minarets was the Ka’aba in Mecca. Eyebrows were lifted, and to appease the members of the Islamic Empire, The sultan commissioned a seventh minaret to be constructed at the Ka’aba.
One of the uncovered mosiacs of Jesus. When the Church became a mosque, images like this one were covered as Islam doesn't allow images to adorn the walls of mosques: only the word of God (Koran) or written names.
A Christian angel living next to an Islamic Arabesque. Peaceful co-existence.
But Hagia Sophia is so immense, it’s hard to describe. It was here back in the time when Istanbul was Constantinople, before any of Sinan's Mosques were built. It is the inspiration for the massive free standing domes Ottoman Mosques are famous for. The location itself it what defines Hagia Sophia, as the building that stands there now is the third Hagia Sophia, built by Emperor Justinian in 537. In 1453, with the fall of Constantinople it was transformed into a mosque by the Turks, who added the minarets. The front right Minaret was struck by lightning and collapsed, and was later rebuilt with pink stone.
There is something I like about religiously converted buildings or structures that really appeals to my art historian side. There are not many buildings you can go into and see the mark of history so visibly on the walls; Hagia Sophia contains golden mosaics partially exposed under Islamic plaster, Koranic writing over Byzantine motifs. Minarets added to a church, Images of Jesus, Mary and Angels dispersed between discs of Mohammad and the four Caliphs’ names of early Islam known collectively as the Rashidun. Because of Hagia Sophia's significant history of being both a church and a mosque, it is a highly debated issue among historians as to how much of Hagia Sophia should be restored, as Hagia Sophia is literally made of layers upon layers of its unique history.
Laura at the Hagia Sophia finger wishing hole. If you stick your thumb in and can twist your palm in a full circle without lifting your fingers, your wish will come true. Laura could do it! But I couldn't. But I won't be upset because I think I lead a pretty fascinating life regardless!
Now on to part two!