Wanderlust Heaven!

Will try to keep this entry relatively short, despite a news- and event-filled week.  Met up with a b-school classmate who’s from Istanbul named Asli, she was a year ahead of me at Darden but we both think we probably met once or twice while there.  She was kind enough to meet me for tea in Taksim Square, tell me about her life, and give me the scoop on where to go and what to see/do in Turkey.  Her husband is in a restaurant group that owns a number of ritzy joints in town, so might check some of these out when next in Istanbul in a few weeks…

Continued to agonize over the stock market.  Heard that Warren Buffet bought a ton of Goldman Sachs shares…so, being the independent and thorough thinker that I am, I jumped in and did the same – I bought approximately 0.00003% the amount that Buffet did.  So there.  I’m sure he appreciates my support.

Got a call from Ken in Madrid.  He manages to track me down in odd spots – Mongolian dumpling cafes, Russian churches, and Turkish koftecisi (meatball restaurants). 

Had moved from Sultanahmet to Beyoglu, across the Galata Bridge.  Beyoglu is a genuine Istanbul ‘hood and has far fewer tourists than Sultanahmet – but there are still a fair few honkies running around here.  I checked into the Hotel Sen Palas, a modest operation that was budget-friendly.  The room was only a bit larger than my Odessa-Istanbul cabin, but at least I wasn’t sharing with three crazed Turks and I even had a little bathroom to myself.  I suspect 99.99% of this hotel’s guests are traveling Turkish biznesmen – the rooms were a bit smoky but not too bad.

Beyoglu is centered on modern Istanbul’s main drag, Istiklal Caddesi, which is a great place to walk around.  Lots of little restaurants and shops line it, and the side streets are absolutely packed with bars and music halls.  One of the more sociable areas I’ve ever seen – there are some little streets that are wall-to-wall drinking establishments and restos.  Reminded me of some of Madrid’s livelier neighborhoods.  Was happy that I had moved over here – I was OK with Sultanahmet, but it feels pretty artificial, life-support for the Aya Sofya and Blue Mosque.

News of the financial crisis was never far away, though.  I could even make out headlines in Turkish newspapers that covered this topic, and the foreign papers spoke of nothing else.  The two US presidential candidates did their fair share of posturing, while saying nothing of note.  McCain probably came out looking worse, however, when he ‘suspended’ his campaign and flew to Washington to ‘deal with’ the crisis.  This consisted, from all accounts, of sitting with all the other bigwigs in a room at the White House and saying nearly nothing for a half-day or so.  I don’t expect McCain and Obama to really have much of an impact – yet – on the crisis, but at least don’t grandstand and take credit for doing nothing.  Talk about a stupid, impulsive gambit – McCain really shouldn’t be president, his judgment has gotten increasingly questionable and perhaps desperate. 

On that topic – Sarah Palin.  I’ve seen a few clips from her Couric debate, and read more about her – very scary.  This woman is the female George W. Bush – dumb, inarticulate, and without an ounce of grace.  The V.P. debate is tonight, will try to watch some of that, but no matter what happens I think Palin is completely unacceptable and she’s just more evidence that McCain has become so cynical he’ll do and say anything to win the election.  Sarah Palin…Dan Quayle.  Where do the Republicans find these clowns?

Watched the first Pres. debate.  Fairly even, but McCain looked pretty angry, very patronizing, and I thought Obama at least held his own.  Polls look to have picked him as the winner, for the most part.  Bravo.

I’d love to see a talkshow where a leading scientist debates a leading Republican politician about evolution and the origins of the planet.  Many of our so-called leaders today believe the earth is only 5,000 years old, and that evolution is a myth.  To be fair, there are Democrats in this camp as well, but suffice it to say that the GOP has stewardship of these sorts of insane beliefs.  I blanch whenever I’m talking with another traveler or a local out here and they ask me about religious lunatics running the US…it’s not as if I can accurately refute their assertions.  What a sorry state to be in – from an admired, emulated nation to one that’s the laughingstock of much of the world.  Thanks, George Bush & Co.

The weather was pretty crappy in Istanbul, so I tried to spend much of my time indoors.  Went to the Military Museum, which is a massive complex with some very good exhibits.  The chief reason I went was to see part of a huge chain that the Byzantines put across the Golden Horn to prevent Ottoman ships from entering and shelling the city from the north.  It worked, but only temporarily – Mehmet the Conqueror just had his ships put in across the peninsula, had them placed on wooden rollers, rolled them up and down the hill to the other side, put into the Golden Horn, and it wasn’t long afterwards that the city fell. 

There was also a room dedicated to the Armenian Genocide (my word, not the museum’s) controversy.  The purpose of the room was to show documents and bloody photos in an attempt to depict the Armenians as equally to blame, as terrorists and instigators.  I need to read more about this period before I feel comfortable making strong statements here, but I have read that Hitler was inspired by this murderous period (and by the Boer War).  Draw your own conclusions…

The rain and wind picked up when I was walking home, so I ducked into the Hilton to escape, and had the opportunity to watch satellite news of the ongoing financial meltdown.  Hellacious storms outside, financial storms inside – is there nowhere to run?

That night, was in a bar nursing an Efes when I got an email from friend Don in Seattle – Washington Mutual just collapsed/got taken over.  This was no surprise, but it was still the largest failure in US history and yet another brick in the wall.  Don wrote that much/all of his savings were in company stock (Don, feel free to comment and correct me – or curse me for being so loose-lipped), so his retirement fund is now approaching zero.  His solution?  Go to Dublin for a few days and relax.  Much better than sitting around moping, huh?

Was now the weekend.  Asli was not feeling well, so didn’t meet up with her – too bad, she would have made a great nightlife guide.  My other contact, former colleague Kristina, was stranded in NYC and wouldn’t be back till Sunday.  Oh well, I was on my own – I can handle that.  I did have an appointment, as the Japanese say, for Saturday night, with a friend of former colleague Katie.  So I wouldn’t be that lonely in the big city…

Friday night was mostly spent walking around Beyoglu and it’s ‘eat streets.’  There are 2-3 alleys that, as I wrote earlier, are full of cool little places to sit and drink/gossip/eat/watch sports on the tube.  I did a bit of all of those, and turned in around 2 a.m. 

Woke up Saturday and watched the presidential debate on the Internet.  See above.

Walked over the Ataturk Bridge to Sultanahmet, to visit the Archeology Museum.  Stopped for food several times along the way – as in Spain, in Turkey I prefer not to sit for a huge formal meal, but to snack non-stop.  Had a superb fish sandwich – sardine?

Walked in the rain to the museum, which had an extensive collection befitting a country at the crossroads of much of the world.  Assyrian stele…Greek and Roman sculptures…loads of stuff from Byzantine and Ottoman times…relics and histories of Troy…and sarcophagi from an excavation at Sidon, now in Lebanon, which included a stunning tomb, called the Alexander Sarcophagi, which I’d never heard of, but which looks like it was created last week and is just awesome in its decorative might:

Around 6 p.m. I met up with Zee, friend of Katie, who is half-Turkish/half-British.  We met because Katie had read on Facebook that I was sampling food from every vendor in Istanbul, and Katie has spent a lot of time here and knows some folks from various sailing trips around the country.  Katie then put me in touch with Zee, and we made plans to meet.  I’m highly equivocal about Facebook, but once in a while it pays dividends, and I should be better about keeping it more up-to-date.

Zee was funny and friendly, and is quite skilled at getting you to open up and expose your inner self.  We met at a famous Turkish landmark – Burger King, in Taksim Square.  Didn’t eat there…it’s just an easy place to meet.  Had a nice hours-long chat with her – at Galata Tower, with its terrific views, over beers at a placed called something like ‘lemon courtyard’ (in Turkish, of course), and over meze in one of the alley meyhanes (taverns).  Capped things off with desserts at a classic old place – Zee challenged me to name one of the dishes, a puffy white concoction which was delicious and unlike anything I’d ever tried.  I got creative and guessed it was something from an animal, i.e. meat – very close.  Turned out to caramelized chicken breast, called kazandibi here.  The meat is basically turned into a soft, creamy substance with loads of sugar etc.  Much better than I describe it.

I was a bit woozy when we finally parted ways and I wobbled back to Hotel Sen Palas – whose staff got a real kick out of me.  Hotel people seem to like me these days – that was not always the case.

Next day I spent a couple hours touring Topkapi Palace, former home of the sultans.  Highlights:

-an 86-carat diamond, I think the biggest I’ve come across.  It was found in the trash somewhere in Istanbul, sold (thought fake) for a couple watches or something similarly worthless, finally recognized as a treasure, and purchased by the monarchy. 

-a room that could tell some stories

-far more interesting – in the ‘Relics Room,’ a series of ancient objects that made me raise my eyebrows.  First, the sword of Prophet/King David.  About 1000 B.C.  Hmmm.  Next, Moses’s staff, a long knobby stick that looked like a fresh branch.  Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.  What was next, I asked myself – Abraham’s jockstrap?  Nope, nothing like that.  Only Abraham’s saucebowl.  Right.  I couldn’t help but giggle, and the Filipino family behind me was also highly skeptical.  What a laugh.  The various swords and other objects of Prophet Mohammed – no problem, 630 B.C. isn’t that ancient.  But Abraham’s pottery from 2000 B.C.?  Right.

I was surprised that a prophet had so many swords…but those were violent times.  As are these, in a sense.  I read somewhere that since WWI, there hasn’t been a single day of peace on the planet – there’s always been some war on.  Haven’t verified that, but go ahead if you’d like.

After that shocker – who knew Abraham’s stuff was in Istanbul? – I walked over to Galata Bridge, and had a beer at the same café I’d been to on day 1, with Hartmut.  Watched the sun set, then walked back to my hotel.  It’d been a great week in Istanbul, and it was soon time to move on.

Took it easy that night – had a kumpir (stuffed potato) for dinner, a couple Efes, then retreated to the hotel.  Exchanged emails with financial advisor/friend Yuhin, and also with Dri, who’s coming to Turkey in a few weeks.  We’ll meet in Istanbul, along with her sister Lisa, and then figure things out from there.  They’re likely to go to Cappadocia and go hot-air ballooning…I might join them.

Meant to get my laundry back from the little shop near my hotel, but it was closed Sunday.  I was planning to get up early Monday and go to the bus station, en route to my next stop, Cannakale, but now I was stuck waiting for the shop to open.  Thankfully he was there before 8 a.m., so didn’t upset my plans.  Packed my stuff, bid adieu to the Sen Palas gang, and hopped on the Istiklal tram up to Taksim, where I’d get on a bus to take me to the long-distance bus station (Istanbul Otogar).  En route I saw a couple Reese Witherspoon ads – jeez, they really love her all over the planet.

I also thought I spied an Adam Mickiewicz Museum sign – didn’t know the Polish poet-hero was popular here too.  Must be some story associated with that…

The Otogar is a massive place, with scores of bus companies vying for your business.  But only a few go to each destination, I tracked down one, Cannakale/Truva, and went with that one.  Wasn’t as cheap as I’d hoped, but the other companies had the same price and later departures, so there I was.

I was going to Cannakale to visit the WWI Gallipoli peninsula sites, and to see nearby Troy.  I won’t get much into the history of these places, they’re pretty well-known and hey – do a bit of research if you’re clueless.

Met a personable German lawyer named Christian on the ferry that we took from the Europe to the Asia side of the Dardanelles.  The straits are wide there, and quite busy:

Got to Cannakale, Christian came with me to Yellow Rose Pension, where I had a booking.  They had plenty of rooms, so he got one too.  We unpacked a bit, then went out for a beer.  And didn’t come back till 1 a.m. or so.  Started in a courtyard bar called Han Bar…met some Turks there who led us to an upstairs bar with a killer harbor view, and we sat, drank and smoked there for a few hours.  Had a lot of fun with our new Turkish friends, and got fairly drunk.  I vaguely recall speaking lazy French with one Turkish lass who had studied in Paris.  Around midnight or so, we were starving (no dinner yet – the British approach, ‘eating is cheating’) and wandered around till we found a great little place that had 1) mussles/moules served Turkish style, 2) little beef-puffs, and 3) Turkish meat tartar wrapped in leaves – all delicious, really.  We sat and ate and talked with the locals for a good hour (the waitress was super-cute), and spent a fair amount of lira, all worth it.

We finally stumbled home and called it a night – we had the Gallipoli tour the next day.  A fun, random sort of day – travel at its finest!

Gallipoli brings loads of Aussies and Kiwis out this way.  Christian asked one young Aussie woman why Gallipoli was so important to Aussies – I thought her answer quite lazy, she just said something like ‘it’s a very sad place.’  I had told Christian that my understanding from knowing many Aussies is that Gallipoli is the place where their young nation (only 14 years old by that point) came together and forged a common, unique (i.e., non-British) identity.  Maybe my understanding was incomplete, but I’ve heard that from quite a few Aussies and read it in a number of places – I was sort of annoyed by her basic, superficial answer.  Oh well. 

The first few sites were in and around Anzac Cove, where the Aussies and Kiwis first came ashore.  Controversy exists as to whether this was the intended beach, or whether the currents took them too far north.  Regardless, this is a brutal place to come ashore – the beach is small, and it quickly comes to higher ground, and then to steep hills.  One Turk could probably hold off 50-100 invaders from there – and they generally did.  Just an awful mess for the Allies, all round:

Subsequent sites included Lone Pine and Chunuk Bair, the latter the highest spot on the peninsula.  Kiwis actually managed to seize this spot, in an August offensive (the initial invasion was on April 25, 1915), but couldn’t hold it in the face of a large Turkish counter-offensive.  And that was that, the campaign ended a few months later when the entire force was withdrawn (successfully).  What a waste of lives – the trench warfare, the charges over no-man’s land…too sad for words. 

We also saw a Turkish memorial – obviously, the Turks also consider Gallipoli as a sacred place, and hey – they won the battle. 

When constructing this memorial, to the Turkish 57^th battalion, which was totally wiped out, they found the following:

On the way back to Cannakale, we were with a couple of fun Scottish women who were also going to Yellow Rose, to check in for the night.  We wound up going out for mussels at the little place with the cute waitress…then to one of the pricey waterfront restos where we spent way too much loot…and finally back to the upstairs bar, where we saw a few familiar faces, but I was eventually tortured by a Turkish-American who had evidently been deported for criminal acts and wanted to be my friend.  He had huge rings on all of his fingers, a bunch of tattoos, and I wasn’t up for his sob stories about not fitting into Turkish society.  We cut out and went back to Yellow Rose – had to get up early to go see Troy. 

We didn’t take a tour of Troy, we did it ourselves – unlike Gallipoli, it’s a compact place and there’s no need to spend a pile on a tour.  We found a minibus heading out there, then walked around for a couple hours.  Much larger than I expected – and Christian was impressed, because his mother had been there and had said there wasn’t much to see.  We disagreed – you could tell there had been a large city (series of layered cities, actually) there, and the setting as well was cool.  The mouth of the Dardenelles looms a couple kilometers away, you could imagine the lower city and farms under the city walls, stretching all the way to the beaches.  Imagine the Achaean Greeks coming ashore and invading.  The place drips with history, and I was fascinated by it all.  I had forgotten my old mythology stories – how Aeneas fled burning Troy and how his offspring in Italy helped found Rome.

Pic 7 above is the original Schliemann trench.

After seeing Troy, we decided to walk to the modern town we saw in the distance.  Christian really wanted to walk for a while, I was indifferent but gave in and joined him.  Saw Troy back in the distance – good hilly place to put a settlement:

Funny adventure – we got close to the city, but there was a fairly broad creek in our way, and no bridge.  Had to backtrack about halfway, a good 15-20 minutes, then there was a road over it.  Walked again towards the city – and came to another part of the creek.  Saw a vehicle and driver at one stretch, the driver was filling up huge tanks with creek water – probably mixing pesticides.  Charming.  But he saw us stuck on the far bank, we motioned and he nodded.  After a few more minutes of mixing he drove across and fetched us – we hung on for dear life as the monster machine churned across the foul waters and onto the far bank.  We hopped off and thanked the guy – nice little vignette of Turkish friendliness.

Wandered into town.  Found the main street, had a chay (tea) in a little café, then found a place selling sandwiches – hallelujah, it was now about 3 p.m. and we were both starving.  Sat inside and were joined by a fellow who we had thought was the owner or at least a café staff, but he turned out to be the barber in the shop next door.  He was kitted out very nattily – and was an amiable guy.  Ramadan was over and people were kicking back – they called it Bayram here, it’s analogous to Eid al-Fitr in the Arabic world, more or less.  We joined the barber for a few beers – had our sandwiches, and a few of his cigarettes.  Spent an enjoyable if odd hour with the barber and the denizens of the café, apparently this place was where people hung out and met.

The barber tried very hard to communicate with us, and we had some breakthroughs, particularly when he went up to the ‘Efes Girl 2008’ bikini poster and kissed the model’s lips.  He then motioned that he cut hair for a living – I motioned that most of my hair is between my legs but that he isn’t allowed to cut that.  He found that hilarious and that was, I think, when he decided we weren’t asshole foreign tourists but just regular guys like him…

Finally discovered that this town was Kumkale, wasn’t on my guidebook map but it was on Christian’s monster map of Turkey.  The barber got us on a bus back to Cannakale, and Christian and I laughed about our little adventure, which had included climbing over barbed wire on the back side of the Troy site and wandering through farmer’s fields that have probably been growing tomatos and other crops for 5,000 hours if not far more than that.  A jaunt through history, indeed.

Last night in Cannakale.  Bought my onward bus ticket to Ayvalik, which I’ll describe next week.  Showered.  Ate more mussels and meat thingies at the little place near the harbor.  Cute waitress wasn’t there, so I didn’t linger.  We watched ‘The Fatal Shore,’ a Gallipoli documentary, at the pension.  Impactful, lots of interviews with Aussie and Kiwi vets of the conflict, as well as one with a Turkish survivor.  Then went out for a great dinner with lots of meze and a bottle of raki, which is slowly growing on me.  It won’t displace beer or regular wine, but I’m easy.  Had a couple more beers, then called it a night.  Christian was returning to Istanbul the next morning, and I had a morning bus to catch as well.

The Red Sox won theır fırst playoff game agaınst the Angels.  And NBA traınıng camps have already started – seems lıke days ago that the Celts won the championship.

Woke up this morning – water problem in the pension.  I ‘showered’ using a weak stream of water from the sink, then packed.  Exchanged contact details with Christian, then walked to the bus station.  My next round of adventures awaits, including, I hope, a day of diving on the red corals off the coast of Ayvalik, not far from the Greek island of Lesvos.  By this time next week I hope to see Obama’s lead widening, Palin even more of a laughingstock, and some sort of bill passed by Congress to calm the markets.  And, of course, a partridge in a pear tree.  Over and out.     

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