Photos taken in Istanbul
First report from Istanbul, distributed by email on 12 September 1999 I received a brief message from Ron in Istanbul. He was scheduled to leave Dulles at 5:45 on Thursday 9 Sept, but says:
"Sat in Dulles airport in the plane in a lightning storm until 9:30, arriving in Munich at the moment my 11:45 connecting plane was taking off. Bought a salmon and spinach pizza and caught the underground to downtown where I spent a few wonderful hours walking around. Returned to the airport to use my second 25DM chit for dinner before leaving at 7 PM.
"Arrived fine in Istanbul and after a long night walk around the old town area called it a day. Expenses were $10.50 for the underground day pass, Turkish visa fee $45 and $12 for the taxi.
"The ATM card was a real convenience to get local currency at the airport upon arrival. And the night view of the mosques was quite impressive."
Tomorrow [Monday 13 Sept] Ron was planning to leave Istanbul via bus for Bucharest Romania.
Ellen
Ron meets the Turkish computer keyboard, distributed by email on 13 September 1999 As you can see, Ron's encounter with the Turkish keyboard produced an interesting looking message. I wonder what the next message (from Bucharest) will look like! This message was sent Monday morning from Istanbul (7 hours ahead of Virginia) -- and I got 4 copies of it, each sent a few minutes apart. I got another message, sent about 8 hours later, with the subject line "Ready for next bus rýde", but there was no text in that one. I hope that if there was something important in it, Ron remembers what it was!
Regards to all,
Ellen
Hi Ellen,Confusing Turkýsh keyboard. You may get some funny characters. The main problem is the - i -. And I cannot fýnd the double quotes key. Where the period should be is a - í -. The @ takes a special key and the numbers keys have three things on them.
No one seems to know about býcycle travel on buses in Turkey. I will keep asking, but my best guess is we can transport the bikes on buses so you can leave your wheels and axle and spare cart tube at home.
Tourism is down so lots of bargain rates. I am now waiting on the owner of the Orient Hostel to bargain for our deluxe room. In any case there are many to choose from in similar price range $20-30.
Leaving today on a bus to Bucharest. Yesterday I watched the same bus depart and they also put a bike in the underneath compartment. This is an international bus, so it doesn,t tell us about Turkish buses.
Yesterday I visited the Blue Mosque, walked across the bridge to the other side and then to the Taskýn Park area. The Mosque was very interesting architecturally, with what they call half-domes supporting the main dome. I have used buses, trams, metro, and trýed unsuccessfully last night to find a ferry. So when you get here I will at least be able to help wýth the transportation system.
Met an English gentleman last night, Peter Rawlins; my guess he is 10 or more years older than I. He just returned from Bucharest and just a moment ago he walked in to bring me the card of a cheap hotel where I can stay for $6 per night. Very nice of him. He is teaching English here. He went to Bucharest to meet an American, a retired disabled Vietnam vet, from a prominent American family, who trace their family back to the Mayflower. Anyway, the American had sent Peter the money to travel to Bucharest to meet him to view the eclýpse. Peter waited a couple of weeks for the guy before returning to Istanbul and found out when he got back that the American had died suddenly. Peter ran out of funds in Bucharest and could not get money from his bank in Istanbul because the earthquake had disrupted communýcatýons.
Enough of this crazy keyboard.
One more thing. Last night there was a soccer game with large crowds so I decýded to go in and see part of the game and experience the atmosphere. Well, when I decided to leave I found the gates locked. The policeman found someone who could speak English to explain to me that the Turkish government always locks the gates until the last 15 minutes of the game. I joked with the policeman about how I was a prisoner, so he found me a good front row seat in the aisle.
The second-hand cýgerette smoke was the worst I have experýenced. There were more women polýce than women ýn the audýence. And the polýce presence was awesome. My estýmate of more than a couple hundred. They would not even let people ýn wýth pens because they could be used to stab. They fýnally allowed me to keep mýne. Tourýst get all kýnds of exceptýons, except gettýng the gate unlocked.
Bye...next communýcatýon, hopefully, from Bucharest.
Love you. Brýng some more new pennýes. They are a býg hýt.
Ron
Ellen arrives in Istanbul; Original message dated 17 Oct 1999 From Ron:
In my last message I forgot to tell you about my last dinner in Constanta. Dana and Gabi gave me the names of three types of fish and I went to the fish market the next day while everyone was working or attending school and did the shopping: fish, tomatoes, cucumbers and lemon. Took the goodies to Dana's house, and she cooked up a wonderful fish stew dinner, Romanian style. Attending were Dana, her boy friend Liviu, Gabi, and Eliana the English teacher.
Waiting for Ellen at the airport I started up a conversation with a Turkish lady who had some flowers for someone she was meeting. I think the custom here is one we should adopt: the ladies give flowers to the men!
From Ron and Ellen:
Ellen arrived in Istanbul with only a 10 minute delay. The hostel uses a shuttle which Ron had taken out to the airport, and we rode a later shuttle back. After settling stuff in the room, we went out for a long walk, past the Blue Mosque and Topkapi (quite close to our hostel) and all through the market district and the Grand Bazaar, as well as through the spice market. Took a tram back to the hotel. Practically everywhere you look there are carpet merchants, all eager to have you come into their shop. We turned them all down, and kept walking -- first day of the trip is not the time to shop! We had dinner with a Portuguese couple Ron had met (whom we will contact when we visit Portugal), then Ellen collapsed to sleep. Amazing -- she was awake until 10!
Saturday we did lots of sightseeing things, all on foot since they are very close. First we visited the Blue Mosque, so called because of the blue on all the painted tiles that cover the interior walls It is a huge open space, with great high ceilings and is most impressive.
Then on to Topkapi, palace of the Ottoman Empire sultans for many centuries. The palace covers a huge area, including the harem, the private family quarters of the sultan's huge extended family. Again, amazing tilework on the walls, stone floors that would have been completely covered with carpet, cushions and couches for sitting. Much of the harem is still under repair and restoration. Then we went on to the more public areas (including the Divan, which was the council and receiving room), huge kitchens (600 people lived in the harem alone), the treasury to see gold thrones encrusted with emeralds, gold daggers with bejeweled handles, diamond studded tea cups, and other amazing treasurers. There was also an area with religious items, including one of Mohammed's teeth, hairs from his beard, and dust from his tomb. We agreed that the most amazing thing was not any particular jeweled item or thing in the harem, but the sheer size of the entire place and the breadth of power that it represented, and the power the sultan had which allowed him to maintain a virtual city within the palace walls.
Within the palace walls, there was an exhibit of photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson that we also found fascinating.
After eating lunch (chicken kebabs with bulgur and wonderful bread), we visited the cistern built in the sixth century to store water brought from a forest outside Istanbul. This was an immense underground area, perhaps the size of a football field, with columns and arched roof. Absolutely amazing, particularly since we had no idea that it was going to be so huge. There was also an exhibit in the cistern of very unusual video art, some of which we liked, some of which we didn't understand, and all of which is too hard to describe.
Having worn our our feet, we went back and napped and read until dinner at a nearby restaurant where Ron had gotten to know the Romanian waitress, who supplied us extra (wonderful) bread.
Today after breakfast we put Ellen's bike together, then biked along the water to where the ferry leaves for Bandirma. We needed to find out the ferry times for our departure tomorrow. There was what appeared to be the very end of a marathon going on in the road next to the waterfront, and when we left the ferry dock, since there seemed to be no more runners and still no cars, we proceeded to ride all the way around the end of the city along the water on the road with the police stationed at the crossroads waving us through all the red lights. We were only a few blocks from our destination when the police finally came along to clear the road for the busy traffic.
Our destination was the boats selling fish sandwiches, cooked on the boats tied up by the bridge that crosses the Golden Horn. We then came back to organize ourselves to leave on the 7 a.m. ferry to Bandirma tomorrow morning. From Bandirma we'll take a bus to Izmir.
And now we are heading off to find some dinner and the ATM.
Love,
Ellen and Ron
Back in Istanbul, 10 November 1999 Hello all, We're back in Istanbul for our last few days before Ellen leaves on Thursday.
Our last day in Göreme in Capadoccia we spent hiking around town and on the ridges that surround the town, where we had spectacular views of the surrounding valleys and rock formations as well as of the little town itself. We took the night bus back to Istanbul on Thursday night, arriving at 5:30 on Friday morning.
A bit about long distance buses in Turkey -- they put Greyhound to shame! The buses are all very clean and very comfortable (although it still is not easy to get a good night's sleep!). There is the driver plus another person who is sort of like the attendants on airplane flights. After the bus starts off, and again after every major stop, he comes around with a bottle of liquid similar to what is in the little packaged hand wipes on airplanes. Everyone takes some and rubs their hands, and the whole bus smells of lemon. The attendant serves tea, coffee, and cola at various times, hands out snacks (usually a small package of cookies or a sweet cake), and cups of water.
Every several hours the buses stop at huge restaurants that are obviously designed for buses and other travelers. The restaurants have a wide selection of food (all much better than McDonald's), clean toilets, and some have even had stands selling fruit, nuts and toys. And, also unlike Greyhound, they will take our bikes in the baggage compartment without the bikes having to be boxed or in the suitcase. A fine transportation system.
After settling back in to our hotel and having breakfast on Friday morning, we went to Aya Sofia, the immense domed building built in the 600s which was first a church and then a mosque and is now a museum. It is a huge open space and the dome soars above you without any support columns. There are the remains of lovely mosaics from the time it was first built, and frescos from the time when it was a mosque. We finished the day by wandering through the Spice Bazaar.
Saturday was a beautiful sunny day, and we took advantage of the good weather to take a boat ride up the Bosphorus to the mouth of the Black Sea. It takes 1.5 hours each way, and the boat stops for 3 hours at the town closest to the Black Sea on the Asian side. There is time to wander through the town, eat some delicious fish sandwiches, and climb up to the ruins of the Byzantine fort (restored in the 1300s by the Genoese, but now ruined again), from which you could see in all directions: down and across the Bosphorus and out into the Black Sea. Clearly a strategic place for a fort, and indeed, there were also the remains of what appeared to be bunkers from World War II.
On Saturday evening we watched Australia beat France for the World Cup in rugby. There was a considerable crowd watching the game in the restaurant of our hotel, most of them rooting for Australia, and all of them half our age or younger!
Sunday was another nice day, so we took the boat to the most distant of the Princes' Islands, an hour and a half from Istanbul in the Sea of Marmara. The island we went to is a summer residence for wealthy Turks, and there were some huge mansions there, many elaborately gabled and decorated 19th century wooden ones. We found a nice park on the tip of the island where we had a picnic lunch before walking back to the ferry. We had an unexpected adventure going back: we took the wrong ferry, so when it landed at a place where we didn't expect to be, we had to take a minibus up the coast to the next ferry stop and take the ferry from there back to the main ferry area in Istanbul from which we had left. It gave us a chance to see and learn a bit more about the Asian side of the city.
That evening we had a fascinating conversation in the terrace restaurant of a nearby hotel with an American woman we'd met in Göreme, and her sister who is working in Bosnia for MercyCorps, a nonprofit economic development group based in Portland OR. There was also a guy there who was a student at a Case Western Reserve University program in Budapest for international business and economic development which was started by George Soros. There are students there from all over the world, including many from eastern Europe and from the republics of what was the Soviet Union. He has traveled a lot, lived in China for 2 years, and had some excellent book recommendations. An unusual evening with some very interesting people.
Monday we explored the Taksim Square area, north of the Golden Horn on the European side of Istanbul. And today we've spent a considerable amount of time packing both bikes (the weather is turning colder and Ron does not plan to use the bike during his remaining travels) and fitting all the things we've bought into spaces between spokes and into empty water bottles. As some of you know, Ron has a great talent for fitting more items than anyone would believe possible into a given space. While we were packing, the hotel folks brought a heater for our room. Clearly they think winter has arrived, and we were glad to have the heater because it is cloudy, windy and chilly.
Now we have tomorrow free from packing to do some final exploration of Istanbul before Ellen leaves early Thursday morning.
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
Ellen comes home and Ron plans further adventures, 14 November 1999 I'm back in Virginia, after an uneventful return trip that certainly seemed much longer than the 25 hours it actually took to get from the Istanbul hotel to home. Ron has 3 weeks of further adventures before he returns on 6 December. Following are some miscellaneous notes and observations we forgot to put into one message or another, plus a bulletin from Ron as he starts on his new travels.
Ellen Assorted notes and info:
When we were talking about the long distance bus travel, we forgot to say that when you have the stops at the restaurants, there is a bus-washing crew. They have big brushes with hoses attached, and they wash each bus from top to bottom: sides, front, back, all the passenger windows as well as the front and back windshields, mirrors, headlights, tires, hubcaps -- so you set off again in a sparkling clean bus.
The day we took the boat up the Bosphorus, we noticed two elegantly dressed Turkish gentlemen in suits and ties and overcoats wandering around the ruins of the fort guarding the mouth of the Bosphorus. Later, when we were walking down from the fort, we noticed that they were trying to take a short cut down to the road. It was easy to see they were going to have a problem because the last bank was very steep with lots of loose gravel and sand. Ron left the sidewalk and crossed over to the bank, climbed up halfway and offered a hand to the first one, who could speak no English. The second person then decided to avoid the bank and walked back up to the road. The first man waited on the road for the second to find his way down, while we went on down the hill towards the town. Later they caught up with us and the second gentleman could speak some English and they wanted to speak to us to find out where we were from and thank Ron for the hand down the bank. As we continued down the road to the town we kept the exchange going. Turns out they were judges on the Supreme Court of Turkey in Ankara, and were attending a seminar on labor law in Istanbul. In the town we parted and they went to find their third friend who had not walked up to the fort. Later we saw them again in a larger group entering a restaurant. We figured they would have a private vehicle and would not be traveling on our ferry. But to our surprise, when we were on the ferry heading back to Istanbul we saw them all sitting together on the a bench. Ron went up and asked them if he could take a picture and the one who could speak English nodded his head yes. Later the third judge, whom we had not met, came up and asked if we would like a coffee, and bought Turkish coffee for us and the two Australian ladies we were talking with. Perhaps his daughter will visit us one day.
Food: it was wonderful! Someone told us that Turkey can grow all its food and doesn't need to import anything except coffee. We don't know if this is true, but given the range of climates and variety of things we saw growing, we believe it could be. (Although we wonder about rice -- can't imagine that there is a rice-growing area in Turkey.) We had wonderful fresh fruits and vegetables, and it was a luxury to have good fresh tomatoes in November. We had good seafood, and of course good lamb. The standard bread is a sort of baguette, and there are neighborhood bakeries everywhere. We also had some wonderful flat breads, and the favorite snack (sold by street vendors everywhere) is a ring of chewy bread about 6 inches in diameter covered with sesame seeds. Apple tea is served everywhere (made from dried apple pieces steeped in boiling water), and became a great favorite of ours. Soups were especially good, as were cheeses and the yogurt. Other highlights: lamachun (a circle of thin flat bread spread with a seasoned tomato sauce/paste and served with shredded lettuce and cabbage, slices of onion, and pieces of tomato and cucumber that you roll into the flat bread); spicy couscous (ingredients included tomatoes, roasted red peppers, lemon juice, olive oil, and various seasonings), and manti (tiny ravioli-like pasta stuffed with ground spiced lamb and served with a sauce of yogurt and garlic). We'll be trying to recreate some of these goodies in our kitchen.
An interesting phenomena is the number of couples we met or heard of that are western (European, British, Australian, Canadian, US) women married to Turkish men. We've never traveled anywhere where we have seen so many cross-cultural marriages. A manager at our hostel in Istanbul is married to an American, the owner of the pension in G$#246;reme has a French wife, the owner of the travel agency in Göreme is married to an Australian, the boat we went on in Bodrum is owned by a Turk and his Welsh wife. The pension owner showed Ron an article in the regional paper from several years ago which said that (at that time) in the Capadoccia region alone, 98 Turkish men had married western wives in the last 10 years. No one we talked to knew of any Turkish women married to western men. Ron is wondering what secret the Turkish men possess!
Ellen's last day in Istanbul was a Wednesday, when there is a regular market on the street where our hostel is. Mostly food (fruit, vegetables, cheese, olives, grains, etc, but no meat or poultry), but also some kitchenware and glassware, sewing supplies, and other odds and ends. They start to set up very early in the morning, with trucks unloading, display tables going up, poles and tarps set up to cover the street. Selling began around 9 am, and we watched them tear down at about 8 pm from our seat by the window in a local restaurant. The street sweeper and trash truck came a little later in the evening, and by the time we went to bed you'd never know there had been a market there. We assume that the vendors go to different neighborhood markets on different days of the week.
And finally, here's the message from Ron, received Sunday 14 Nov:
Hi Ellen,
An even different keyboard!
Had a hard time forcing myself to go out and meet new people after you left. Hung out with Steve and Doug a little, but mainly was an lonely introvert for a couple of days.
Left Istanbul by night bus to Trabzon after being told the only way to get to Sinop, the place Biagio liked so much, was to go to Samsun and then take a three hour bus ride back to Sinop. However, with a 5 hour bus ride continuing east I would get to Trabzon, so I kept going east. On the way we passed through Izmet [center of the August earthquake area] and I could see all the new camp towns of temporary housing being built. On my radio I learned about the new earthquake, and before we reached the turnoff to Ankara we passed through towns with no electricity and saw people gathered around fires in their yards. Some places lights were provided, either by vehicles or generators to light up collapsed buildings where rescue operations were taking place. What should have taken 18 hours took almost 24, and at one place I think the bus was re-routed because of damage. The two times I left Istanbul without you there was an earthquake, but this one I did not feel. If I had taken the 32 hour train, I don't know what would have happened. At least I would have slept better in the sleeper. (maybe on the way back).
I spent the late afternoon and early evening checking out Trabzon before catching a bus out to Hopa. Trabzon has a somewhat interesting center in a very hilly town, but is too large to feel comfortable or to meet people.
Arrived late to Hopa, which is not much of a place to write home about. Wandering around to find a hotel several tried to explain why there was no room for me. Strange places with women sitting in the second floor lobbies (from their blank stares I am guessing they were Russian.) with a group of men having tea off to the side. My guess is these hotels were brothels and that is why they had no room to rent a guy with a backpack.
Today, Sunday, the money exchange is closed, and Sunday is often not a good day to cross borders. So I am waiting until tomorrow to cross into Georgia. What a surprise to find an Internet Cafe in this small place.
Yes, some of you may be surprised to learn that I am going to Georgia. Probably for the same reasons people climb mountains: because it is there. All my information from people who have been there is several years old and scary, but I think travel is easier now. People here in Hopa say so anyway, and also a Georgian (friend of a friend) with whom I have exchanged some email.
Tomorrow I will cross the border and go to Batumi, a small coastal town where I hope to find out more about Georgia, especially Tbilisi before getting there, like maybe a map and a dictionary.
I am traveling light with just a day pack. The bicycle and backpack were left at the Orient Hostel in Istanbul, and I will leave the copy of the Turkey Lonely Planet Guide in Hopa to pick up on my way back. So I am entering a country where people tell me most people do not speak English [and use a non-Roman alphabet!], there are no banking or travel check facilities, and I have no guide book, map, or knowledge, except what I could find on the Internet. So, finally I am feeling a sense of adventure. It has been a long time since I have traveled so light and adventurous. It is exciting. So stay tuned.
Ron
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