It's Coming...Wait For It...

If I don't asphyxiate on paper-mache in the next few days, I'll have a Halloween report to share.

Few and Far, but Good as Gold

Today we had our long-awaited field trip to the park with Mary and a group of adult/on the verge young people (ages 18-25 ish). We were a small group—nine in total. We started with a brief stop in the beech valley with our endemic beech hybrid. Since our topic today was seeds, we had a good time looking for and finding nuts and burrs. Then we went a short way up the road and took a walk into the park. On the way to our picnic spot, we gathered more seeds from whatever we could find—grasses and forbs, thistles and burrs, winged maple seeds, an exploded long thin pod from something unnamed, acorns, and more.

We had a nice picnic as I gave my small lesson about seed adaptations, dispersal mechanisms, and how animals are unwitting accomplices in the seed journey. I also talked a little bit about the birds who eat seeds and got out my bird book so we could look at the goldfinch’s big strong seed-eating beak. Then I finished with a poem that Aurelia helped me translate into Romanian in preparation for our excursion. It’s from Loren Eiseley who seems to be my favorite fall/winter guy these days. I explained that the author’s voice sounds like God or Nature, as you like, in its promise of a farther spring.

Winter Sign
A spider web pulled tight between two stones
With nothing left but autumn leaves to catch
Is maybe a winter sign, or the thin blue bones
Of a hare picked clean by ants. A man can attach

Meaning enough to the wind when his luck is out,
But, having stumbled into this season of grief,
I mean to reflect on the life that is here and about
In the fall of the leaves—not on the dying leaf.

Something more tough, reliable, and stark
Carries the blood of life toward a farther spring—
Something that lies concealed in the soundless dark
Of burr and pod, in the seeds that hook and sting.

I have learned from these that love which endures the night
May smolder in outward death while the colors blaze,
But trust my love—it is small, burr-coated, and tight.
It will stick to the bone. It will last through the autumn days.

Or, if you prefer…

Un Semn al Iernei
O pânză de păianjen întinsa între doua pietre
Cu nimic doar pentru aprinde frunzele de toamnă
Este poate un semn al iernei, sau oasele subţire şi albastre
Ale unui iepure curaţate de furnici. Un om poate să ataşe

Destule semnificaţii vântului când norocul lui este puisat,
Dar, întrând de nevoie în sezonul acesta de supărare,
Vreau să reflectez despre viaţa care este acum şi în jurul meu
În caderea frunzelor—nu despre o frunză muribundă.

Ceva mai puternic, de nădejde, şi gol
Duce sângele vieţii spre o primavară urmatoare—
Ceva care se află ascuns în întunericul tihnit
De la un scai sau de la o păstaie, în seminţele care se a agătă şi înteapă.

Am învăţat din acestea că iubirea care durează noapte
Poate mocni în moarte exterioră pe când culorile ard,
Dar ai încredere în iubirea mea—este mica, căptuşita într-un gimpe, şi strânsă.
Va înţepeni la os. Va dura prin zilele toamnei.Above, Patrica, Colin, and Mihaela at our lunch table making some drawings. I took paper and colored pencils and let them go. Below, Colin, Patrica, Ana Maria (standing) and Mihaela. On the table in front of Patrica is the pile of seeds we collected.

A Letter

Dear Istanbul,

I would like to thank you for hosting us on a wonderful vacation. Thank you for preserving your history while making a monumental leap forward into modernity. Thank you for your cleanliness and the abundance of free toilet paper. Thank you for your kind citizens, the nice young man who had lived in Los Angeles who led us to the ferry in the morning and turned up again to say goodnight to us on the tramvay in the evening. Thank you for the waitstaff and vendors who really didn’t speak English so well but were friendly and helpful beyond compare to a couple of quintessential tourists, the man at the store downstairs who gave us gum every morning. Thank you for your excellent public transportation, the clean sleek tramvay, the ferry, the city buses with well marked stops. Thank you for the bus driver who announced our stop in advance, then showed us the way down the narrow street to our museum. Thank you for the adorable historic trolley in Beyoglu that, yes, was delayed but was delayed because it was a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon and two—TWO—demonstrations were taking place along the route: one against animal cruelty and one in support of people with Downs Syndrome and their families. Thank you for providing a home for our Romanian countrymen and women, offering them a different kind of life. Oh Istanbul, thank you for your voices, most notably Orhan Pamuk who writes so eloquently about his home city. We did not delve deeply enough to understand the melancholy of which you speak, nor to explore the hidden neighborhoods where the true heart of a city lies. We of course did what tourists are supposed to do and went where tourists are supposed to go. And we loved every inch and minute of it. So thank you for saving secrets that reward the repeat visit. Thank you for the color, the spice, the music, the wake-up call to prayer, the fresh-baked bread for breakfast, the pistachios and pomegranates, the breeze off the water, the cats that accompanied our every journey, for the old and the new, the straight and the crooked, the soft and the rough, the blessing and the blessed.A collection of vagabond kitties. And then we came home and got back to it.

Istanbul, part 5—The Bosphorus

Istanbul, as I’ve mentioned, as everyone mentions, is a city poised on the edge of continents. Maybe it is the center of the world, I don’t know. It is certainly an active intersection. And nowhere is this metaphor more tangibly evident than on the Bosphorus, the body of water that separates the European side of the city and the Asian side. The Bosphorus connects the Black Sea to the north to the Sea of Marmara immediately south of the city, which then leads out to the Mediterranean. In addition to being an important shipping channel, the Bosphorus looms large in the personal landscape of Istanbullus. Pamuk writes about being a child and going boating on the water with his mother and brother, or walking along the water to get fresh air when they were sick (I guess Turks didn’t get the memo about curent). He writes, “To be travelling through the middle of a city as great, historic and forlorn as Istanbul, and yet to feel the freedom of the open sea—that is the thrill of a trip along the Bosphorus.”

And so we spent a day of our holiday on a trip up and back the Bosphorus. A city ferry goes every day and is populated mostly by tourists. It makes a number of stops on its 90 minute trip north, almost reaching the Black Sea, and giving a view of what we would call suburban Istanbul, but in reality an amalgam of neighborhoods with their own rich histories. We chose to ride to the end where we enjoyed a three hour break before the ferry returned. Naturally we had a leisurely lunch of seafood. We wandered the few small streets, sat and had tea and baklava, then enjoyed a relaxing ride home. We had considered getting off partway back to explore another town and then bussing back home, but gave in to the lazy ferry afternoon. Plus, the second town is renowned for its yogurt, which we thought we would like to try, but they brought it on the ferry and we were able to sample it on board. Also, the ferry was staffed with people bringing around tea and other drinks for sale. Also I bought a package of fruit and nut snacks that were delicious. I foolishly thought I could get this little pack at other places, so I didn’t stock up on the ferry. It would have made a nice gift. Oh well. I enjoyed my snack.

Pamuk writes about the wooden summer homes that line the Bosphorus north of town. I don’t know if they are all summer homes now, or year round residences. The population of Istanbul has increased so dramatically in recent years that I would imagine housing is at a premium. We saw the wooden houses, as well as a few palaces, some ancient fortresses, and some interesting mosques. We rode under two bridges that today connect the European and Asian shores. The pictures show much of what we saw, including a hint of the wonderful weather we experienced most of the week.

Pamuk also writes about his fascination as a child (and perhaps he never outgrew it) of watching ships on the Bosphorus, and of always needing to live in a house with a view of the Bosphorus. We observed in our neighborhood that most hotels and homes had rooftop or top-floor dining areas for viewing the water. Pamuk actually describes a fascination with disasters on the water, both with ships and with cars that have gone off bridges or waterside roads. With a bit of ghastly humor he describes many such incidents. In fact, the following story struck me so funny and perfect because of course I’ve had this conversation before, once on a road trip with a friend. Oh, Orhan, thank you for sharing your city. Here is his story, in case you should find the information useful:

“I should remind readers that once the cars start sinking, it’s impossible to open their doors, because the pressure of the water against them is too great. At a time when an unusual number of cars were flying into the Bosphorus, one refined and thoughtful journalist wishing to remind his readers of this fact did something rather clever: he published a survival guide, complete with beautifully drawn illustrations:

“How to Escape From a Car That’s Fallen into the Bosphorus

1. Don’t panic. Close your window and wait for your car to fill with
water. Make sure the doors are unlocked. Also ensure that all passengers stay very still.
2. If the car continues to sink into the depths of the Bosphorus, pull your handbrake.
3. Just as your car has almost filled with water, take one final breath of the last layer of air between the water and the car roof, slowly open the doors and without panicking, get out of the car.

“I’m tempted to add a fourth pointer: with God’s help, your raincoat won’t get caught in the handbrake. If you know how to swim and manage to find your way up to the surface, you’ll notice for all its melancholy, the Bosphorus is very beautiful, no less than life.”

Visit the Bosphorus here.

Istanbul, part 4—Shopping

If you know me well, you know that I’m really not big on shopping (unless books, greeting cards, or other paper products are involved [or food or tea or other delightful digestibles]). Now that we’ve qualified that, let me say that Istanbul is a shopper’s paradise, and fortified by the benefactors and a willing co-conspirator, I shopped Istanbul. Mary and I visited both the Spice Bazaar and the Grand Bazaar, popped into museum gift shops, sampled baklava for the purpose of science, and ogled many a window display in pursuit of the perfect gift “for the folks back home.”

The Spice Bazaar was pretty much what I expected in all of its crowded craziness, ie, it was wonderful. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking, but we went here our first day and instantly entered Istanbul market life. Since many vendors pursued us, asking in English what we would like, Mary and I decided to try to use Romanian to evade them. Nope, Mary found a Romanian vendor almost immediately. OK, I bought some tea from him. Lots of yummy bulk teas, mostly with herbs, flowers, and fruit. I also bought myself some cinnamon and cardamom in hopes of making chai masala here at home, which I have done with great success—black tea with cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper, cloves, and ginger, a little sweetener of choice, milk or not. We also saw great amounts of Turkish delight (which in Romania has the unfortunate name of rahat, which is also, inexplicably, the vulgar word for poop). Mary and I snapped up some gifty-gift stuff here that shall remain nameless until I can afford to send it all to the recipients.The Grand Bazaar was its own day. I don’t know if I can accurately describe how big the Grand Bazaar is, except to believe that it is as big as a typical mall in America, maybe bigger. But small aisleways with low-ish ceilings. Fortunately for people who can read them, there were signs. And around the time we were getting hungry we wandered into an area with cafes, yes the Turkish food court. We began our adventure at a handbag store. The nice man served us tea, as we’d read is common. He explained many things about the bags to Mary, including which ones were made in Turkey. Finally she settled on one and they negotiated a price, including some smaller zippie bags we both bought as gifts. As we wandered around, each with our own mental lists of things to get, we generally found people to be polite; although we both preferred buying from people who largely left us alone or simply and pleasantly answered our questions—which was actually most people (I should say men, all vendors were men although shoppers were mixed). One particularly pleasant experience was a pottery shop where I found myself a beautiful teapot with a carnation design that we saw everywhere, in tile at the Blue Mosque, etc. Because it had a small chip I was bold in my price negotiation. Elsewhere I was pretty wimpy and always got the price I asked for. It is not our culture to haggle, and I never paid more than what I thought something was worth. On the contrary, it’s all cheap to an American. Anyway, at the pottery store, the pottery man was actually pretty busy with customers but the rug man from next door asked if we wanted tea. Why yes, and after a few minutes a man arrived with our complementary delicious tea, as always served in a glass with a saucer, spoon, and sugar cubes. The rug man was somehow connected to the pottery man. And here’s a mistake I made: The rug man was obviously having a slow morning. While Mary was doing pottery stuff, I should have had the rug man explain the rugs to me. I was not in the market for a rug, but when in Rome for goodness sake… Oh well. I also bought myself a very pretty scarf which I have wrapped up with the teapot to send home. I don’t really want it for here, as it’s a bit fancy for This Romanian Life. I will have a nice Christmas when I get home. We also bought some olive oil soap which was prevalent and Mary bought herself some nice bathwraps like we’d had at our hamam. After many hours in the labyrinth and a mediocre but atmospheric lunch inside, we stumbled out to find that Istanbul still existed. The Grand Bazaar is definitely its own world. Oh, even with its own well-signed toilets, and I have one small story. As usual everywhere, I paid my coin to the man at the door. Then he led me to the toilet room and let me enter, then pushed and pounded into place the door which had come off its hinges. When I was finished, I knocked on the door from the inside and he came and let me out. But overall, if I haven’t mentioned it, the toilets in Istanbul are very modern AND THEY ALL HAVE TOILET PAPER!Everywhere in the areas we visited there were things for sale. Yes, we followed the general tourist routes so that is to be expected. It was just a little weird for our Romanian sensibilities because Romania has not really figured out marketing and merchandising. One thing I did not get a picture of was the area we visited on day 2 in Beyoglu, between Tunel and the Galata Tower. Here we found a number of stores selling musical instruments. I only went in one store and the salesman was busy with other people, but I was very intrigued by the oud. And I read Istanbul is hosting an international oud festival in November. It’s a string instrument with a 90 degree angle in its neck. I did not see one being played, but that’s something to look into.

Our immediate neighborhood was packed full of stores selling high end goods—rugs, lamps, textiles and clothing, felted hats, pottery, jewelry, and more. We did not inquire about prices much, assuming that things were cheaper at the market, a belief that proved correct based on lamp prices that we checked. And every day we would tell the vendors who stood outside that we would be back on Friday to do our shopping, Friday being the day after we left.And Friday should have been the day I went to my office with the pound of various baklava treats I’d bought but I slept all day. We ate the baklava on Monday which is actually too bad because I could tell it wasn’t as fresh. Still light years ahead of no baklava and even considerably better than the mushy mess that passes for baklava at the store here in town. I was happy to share a small piece of my adventure with the ladies of PNMM. And I’m glad myself to have some beautiful tangible items by which to remember this magnificent adventure.

Shop more here.

A Good Day for Wheelchairs

We are interrupting the normally scheduled stream of slow-to-be-written dispatches from Istanbul with some truly good news that gives me the strength to continue.

As my dear readers know, Romania challenges me in ways that perhaps I don't feel I need or want to be challenged. But today simply confirms that I am where I need to be, so put up, shut up, and keep marching. Today I visited my friend Matei and his amazing superhero wondermom Olga to see his new wheelchair and to deliver the co-pay that I arranged to be funded. In short, after last winter's medicine crisis during which we helped to arrange funding for medicine to be shipped from Italy (which still isn't fully long-term resolved, but we're getting there), and after Olga was able to take Matei back to the great childrens hospital in Italy in May, she told me that the next hurdle was to get him a better wheelchair. Ding-ding-ding. Yes, I can help! Thanks to fellow volunteers Micah and Ted (I owe so much to the Peace Corps network) I was put in touch with Motivation, an NGO whose sole mission is to provide appropriate wheelchairs for people with disabilities. I gave Olga the contact information (as she was despairing over finding the thousands of dollars needed for a chair) and turned her loose. We don't have a Motivation office in Tulcea, but there is one in Galati, only a couple of hours away. She reported back that yes, Motivation could help; but there would be a co-pay of a few hundred dollars. Yay, progress. At that point, I contacted my favorite corporate donor and secured our co-pay (thank you immensely Donna and all the folks at Upturn Industries). Time marched on, alas, because this is, after all, Romania. Olga found out that she could get money also from the local government if she used their contracted wheelchair distributors in Bucharest. I think they must have gone round and round, but in the end they ended up back with Motivation for reasons I would have understood if my Romanian was better. So today I was able to check out Matei's snazzy new chair with its specially-for-him designed support for head, torso, and legs. Olga showed me the accompanying sunbonnet and feeding/therapy tray. And she couldn't be more grateful for our help. Although I must say, she is a delight to help because she busts her own ass for her son (the whole family is wonderful) and she takes nothing for granted. She was the one who made this happen. Plus thanks to Mary and Noroc for providing an avenue for donations. Mary set up a special account through her agency for Matei. And since the chair came in on budget (which I was NOT expecting) we have enough money left over to more fully address the lingering medicine issue.

Later in the morning, I spent time with Mary's middle school kids making pinatas in preparation for our Halloween party. And then Mary, myself, and her fabulous assistant Christina stopped for a nice lunch. As we were enjoying one of our Last Beautiful Days of Autumn, we ate our lunch at a table outside across from a park. We saw a man across the street rolling himself down the sidewalk on something like a skateboard as his legs were non-functional. Mary wondered out loud if he needed a wheelchair. I thought she was thinking that we could put him in touch with our new heroes, Motivation in Galati. But no, as he crossed the street and rolled by us, she made Christina stop him and ask him about his need for a chair, and Mary explained that Noroc will shortly be getting a shipment of generic wheelchairs. Long story, but there is a Danish city that has "adopted" Noroc and every year ships or brings a lot of goods for the children and the agency's use. This year Noroc is expecting 10 wheelchairs and does not have need for all of them. So it was Florin's lucky day. Yes, he would love to have a wheelchair, and we arranged to contact him next week about it. Of course it would be great to get him into a specially designed chair like Matei's, but even a regular chair would be an improvement. Crazy! Mary told me if I spot somebody else on the street in need of a chair, I can feel free to get their phone number. Sometimes this service thing is a lot of fun!!

Now tonight I'm off to Aurelia's for dinner and scrabble. I suppose the universe has swung back to normal and Gabi will kick my ass at scrabble. I kind of hope so because this is more excitement than I can stand.
Matei and his mom, Olga.

Istanbul—part 3, History and Religion

While it seems like I’m taking on two big subjects in one part here, I feel like the history of Istanbul is indelibly intertwined with its religion.

Turkey lays claim to the world’s first city around 6500 BC. Certainly the region was settled and well trafficked in trade during the Bronze Age (starting a few thousand years BC). Troy, that city famous for its fateful wooden horse, was just down the coast from present-day Istanbul. Greeks, Persians, Romans and even Egyptians rolled through Turkey for hundreds of years (it all gets a little confusing). Christianity spread into Turkey as Apostle John retired to Turkey to write his gospel and brought Mary along with him. They lived out their lives in Ephesus, Turkey. The Christian community grew.

During internal strife in the Roman empire, Constantine emerged victorious and chose to build a new city to rival Rome on the site of a former Greek city of Byzantium. He named it after himself, naturally—Constantinople. Constantine supported Christianity and so therefore the empire became Christian (round about 330 AD). Meanwhile, the western (Roman) half of the empire was falling to dust, but the eastern half (Byzantium) thrived. For about a thousand years, this empire succeeded in ruling the region. Incursions from the Arab/Islamic world were frequent and led to cultural cross pollination. Eh, Turks, Crusaders, Persians, Mongols, Ottomans. A lot goes on in a thousand years.

Finally in the middle of the 1400s, the Ottomans grew strong enough to conquer Turkey, Greece, and finally the city of Constantinople. This ushered in the era of sultans and harems into the newly Islamic city of Istanbul. During this era, many of the Christian churches were turned into mosques, which we saw evidence of. During the Ottoman era, they waged war-ish (at least the stance of) with the Hapsburgs, Napoleon, and others. Bit by bit, the empire eroded away as Bulgaria, Macedonia, and others gained independence. The Ottoman empire was dealt its final blow in WWI, with areas of Turkey occupied by various forces. WWI also saw the atrocious genocide of over a million Armenians at the hands of Ottoman armies, a bit of controversial history that Turkey is still figuring out how to admit and address.

Following WWI, a war hero named Mustafa Kemal became president of the secular republic of Turkey. He took the name of Ataturk (“father Turk”) and is generally recognized as becoming a benevolent dictator figure. He sounds like a pretty amazing man who used his extreme power to modernize the country, adhere to a secular vision of government and society while maintaining Islamic cultural traditions, and leading Turkey into the 20th century with national unity. Today Ataturk is rather beloved, particularly in retrospect of an era that spawned Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. Alas, he didn’t live that long, and the modern history of Turkey involves coups, activism and political violence, and various weak coalition governments. Today, problems still exist regarding ethnic conflicts, most notable with the Kurdish population. Nonetheless Turkey is making inroads in perhaps becoming a part of the European Union in the future. Istanbul was named a 2010 European Center of Culture.

So what does that mean to the average tourist: The city is undeniably Islamic with its multiple working mosques, its celebrated skyline-dominated mosques—the Blue Mosque, the Suleymaniye Mosque, the number of women choosing to wear headscarves, the call to prayer that booms out of the loudspeakers located in the minarets of every mosque five times a day (sunrise, mid-day, mid-afternoon, sunset, and a few hours after sunset), the absence of pork and sometimes alcohol. For a westerner, Istanbul offers a wonderful introduction to Islamic culture while at the same time being accepting of our touristy foreignness. After recently seeing the wonderful movie Cairo Time and watching Patricia Clarkson’s character’s unsuccessful attempts at city exploration as a lone woman, we definitely appreciated that all of Istanbul, at least in the more traveled districts, was ours for the enjoying. The nice man we met on the tramvay insisted (nicely) this is a failure of imagination on our part (that Istanbul is “easier” in this way), and he may be right, although my imagination fails to grasp exactly what he meant.

Regardless, we savored the differences and tried to take advantage of the cultural opportunities. We visited a thousand year old church renowned for its Byzantine mosaics (real, it hits you, not simply Byzantine-style) and now functioning as a small museum in a western neighborhood, off the beaten track. We waited outside the Blue Mosque during mid-afternoon prayer until it reopened for tourists. We placed our shoes in a bag and left them on a rack, covered our heads with our scarves which we always carried with us, and stepped inside a wonderland as interesting, cavernous, and stunningly beautiful as the gothic cathedrals of western Europe. And we visited the Aya Sofia (aka Hagia Sofia) which was built as a church in 537 AD, converted to a mosque a thousand years later (more or less), and made a museum by our friend Ataturk. Here too are remnants of ancient mosaics depicting biblical people and events. Alas, our greatest disappointment in our entire visit was a just-barely-missed opportunity. Aya Sofia stood between our hostel and the tramvay stop we frequently used. So every day we passed it and also a temporary exhibit that was housed in a temporary building outside the Aya Sofia. We were saving Aya Sofia for our last day for a few reasons, including it was close, open on Wednesdays, and not dependent on the weather. The temporary exhibit, 1001 Inventions of the Islamic World, would be a nice addition to our Aya Sofia visit. Alas, when we arrived on 6 October, we read the sign that told us the exhibit closed on 5 October. Oh, our disappointment, especially since it was free and we’d walked by every day and never bothered to read the sign. You can explore the exhibit a bit online and it is headed next for NYC so perhaps some of you can go see it. Regardless, the Aya Sofia did not disappoint.

For me, the most intriguing and enjoyable foray that we made into Istanbul/Islamic culture was our visit to the dervishes. Everyone has heard of whirling dervishes, but do any of us really know what that means? I do now and I’m so glad we made the effort. You may know of Sufism, an order of Islam, largely associated with the 13th century poet and spiritual master, Rumi. Many scholars of Islam consider Sufi philosophy to be the inner or esoteric dimension of Islam. In practice, I’ve heard, Sufism prioritizes love and tolerance. The brochure from our dervish performance states: “To give up one’s own existence and become non-existent in God, that is, to bind one’s heart completely to God, is the shortest way to God. It is God who moves every particle of him. In this way, that person no longer acts in accordance with his ego, doing the bad things that would cause harm to others. He has become enfolded in the moral principles of God…giving the good news to those seeking beauty, truth, goodness, light, and Divine Truth.” I once heard a radio program about Sufism in the states, and frankly it reminded me of the Quakers and the simplicity of living a life of service to others. After many travels, Rumi ended up in what is now Turkey. He created the Mevlevii Sufi order which is still prominent in Turkey and other places, and is represented by whirling which is a form of meditative worship. Dervishes exist in many places in the Islamic world as practicing ascetics, but it is mainly (maybe only…not sure) the dervishes of the Mevlivii order who practice the whirling. Again from the brochure, “Just as the moon and planets revolve both around their own axes and also around the sun, the semazens (whirling dervishes) revolve while circling the chamber. The sema is a means for humans to reach Divine Reality! They wear a special costume indicating the death of the ego. As the dervishes enter the circle their arms are crossed across their chest. In this position they represent a “one” signifying the unity of God. During the sema their arms are extended with the right hand opened upward, the left hand turned downward. The meaning of this is: From God we receive, to man we give; we keep nothing to ourselves.” The particular group we saw, including musicians and singers, performs four nights a week in a restored-mosque-turned-cultural-center. It is a uniquely Turkish experience, I understand, and we were very grateful to have a glimpse inside of this really touching piece of culture. Yeah, ok, they put on a show for tourists. But now you know a bit more about the Sufi life.Lots more pictures here.
Still to come: shopping, a cruise on the Bosphorus and a letter to Istanbul.

Istanbul, part 2—Food and Lodging

The recommended Istanbul hostel was not available so we took our chances on a different cheap hostel in the same neighborhood of Sultanahmet, just down the hill from the Blue Mosque in the historic city center. For the price it was just fine. Our room was tiny with five beds but we were the only ones in it the whole time. The first bed I tried sort of fell apart, but there was another. Our bathroom had a real toilet, although the shower was just a faucet on the wall next to the toilet. Eh, who needed to bath at the hostel anyway? The highlight of our lodging was the very nice traditional Turkish breakfast provided free every morning upstairs in the room with the view. We enjoyed hard-boiled eggs (usually still hot), chunks of feta cheese, tomatoes and cucumbers and olives, wonderfully fresh bread and jam, and tea or instant coffee. From the windows we could look across the Bosphorus at Asia. The second highlight of our lodging was that the woman who served us breakfast every morning was from Romania. She has lived in Istanbul long enough to get married and have a 13-year-old son, but still has family back in Romania. Since the proprietors’ English was not so good, it helped sharing a common language with her.Out our window. The wooden building on the left looks very much like our building. Below, the morning bread delivery. Many buildings in our neighborhood, among them many hotels and guest houses, had the upper floor patio or room with a view. Our Romanian hostess often talked across the tiny street to the neighbors in their aerie. Heading off each morning having had a good breakfast fueled our many adventures. The rest of the food did not disappoint either. Although our guide book told us our neighborhood was short on good eating, I think what they meant was that it was short on nightlife and pizzazzie dining, because we found plenty of delicious food here and all around town. While we made a few less-than-perfect dining decisions, even these allowed us to try some local standards such as the shaved meat and saucy iskender dishes. True highlights, however, came mostly from one particular restaurant near our hostel, Muradan. The first night we went here, there was a wedding going on inside so we sat out front on the patio. Unlike a Romanian wedding, this one seemed to be wrapping up around 8 p.m. and there was no alcohol served (those two things likely being related). We kept hoping to be offered cake, but no. Not to worry, we ate our favorite dessert of the trip here: rice pudding, in all its captivating simplicity. Really not that different from our rice pudding, just done very well. We also enjoyed red lentil soup here, twice. The first time it was pureed with cream and seasoned with nutmeg. This was my favorite soup of the whole trip. We had it another time with tomato which was also good. Another place we ate almond soup which was very creamy and nice. My favorite meat dish was also at Muradan—a lamb kebap with pistachios. This was actually a meatball-type dish with seasoned ground lamb with the nuts. It was served with a tomatoed couscous and a grilled tomato wedge and a grilled spicy green pepper. I dolloped some yogurt sauce on the meat and it was absolutely scrumptious. We ate hummus a couple of places, although Istanbul is not an epicenter for hummus and falafel as we had hoped. However, one night (again at Muradan—our favorite) we had hummus served with shreds of “bacon” on top. I put that in quotes since the whole of Istanbul seemed to be pork-free (as befitting an Islamic, albeit largely secular, society) so we assumed it was additive-stuffed beef. Oh so good.

Our last night’s dinner was at a small restaurant that also serves as a cooking school for tourists. We decided not to do the class, but were intrigued by the fixed menu of local dishes. Again we started with a red lentil soup, followed by some garlicky green beens, followed by a stewed lamb and smoked eggplant dish, and finished with the highlight, a spectacular dessert—stuffed figs. The people at the table next to ours had been in the class and gave away the secret. Dried figs were stuffed with walnuts and then soaked in a simple sauce of water, sugar, and cloves until they were a bit reconstituted and the sauce was syrup. The figs were served on a plate with a little syrup, two cloves for décor, and a dusting of ground pistachios. Wonderful. I think too they would be good in a small pool of whipped cream, especially if you could scent the cream with cloves.

An important feature of the Istanbul culinary landscape is the ubiquitous black tea. Although it is possible to get Turkish coffee, in all its strong grainy goodness, most people drink strong black tea. Everywhere, always—sitting on a bench in the park in front of the Blue Mosque, on the ferry boat up the Bosphorus, at the little shops inside the Grand Bazaar, taking a break from the wonders of the Aya Sofia, waiting for our reservation at the restaurant next to the Chora Church. Yes, we walked into the recommended Ottoman restaurant next to the Byzantine gem of the Chora Church (more in a later installment) to discover that they wouldn’t open for lunch for another half hour, so we walked next door and had a tea to wait it out. The tea was almost always served in a small hourglass-shaped glass on a saucer with a spoon and sugar cubes. Our exceptions to the black tea were twofold: the first came after I learned the word for herbal tea and discovered their fondness for linden tea; the second was our one true guilty pleasure when we found the Starbucks next to the Sultanahmet tramvay stop. Think not ill of me, you drip coffee drinkers without grounds in your coffee. Judge not the Americano.

In short, we ate well. I joked that the women at the baths would notice the five pounds we put on over the course of our six days. I tried not to just eat baklava every place I went, but I must say that the pistachio baklava I grabbed as a snack at the Spice Bazaar was probably the freshest and lightest and tastiest I’ve ever had. I am inspired to return to the Turkish restaurant in Constanta and do more exploring.Me and Mary on the roof deck of Muradan with the Bosphorus behind us. The other direction was the beautiful Blue Mosque. Below, a typical spot to stop for tea.Both the corn and the covrigi-type (round bready thing) snack were commonplace around the tourist areas. This was our meal (both ways) at our bus stop just south of Burgas, Bulgaria. Bless the Bulgarians for not only knowing how to make a mean sheep feta, but also the judicious use of said cheese.

Istanbul, part 1—Bath

The story of my trip to Istanbul begins and ends with the bath. Literally I suppose it begins and ends with the bus ride, but you can use your imagination about a 12 hour bus ride across eastern Europe—heavy on the cigarette smoke and short on the bathroom breaks. Trust me, it is so much nicer to think about a bath.

The stereotype of the Turkish bath, if you have such an image in your mind, deserves every bit of its reputation. There are many to choose from in Istanbul; we were lucky to get a recommendation which did not disappoint. Since our bus arrived in the city around 2:30 a.m. and we arrived at our hard-to-find hostel at 3, we had planned a light day to get us started and what better indulgence than to start with our bath the morning of day 1?

The Cemberlitas Hamam, as our bath of choice is known, was not far from our hostel. We walked down a few steps to arrive at a counter and information about our options. We chose the full service—steam and soak, getting scrubbed, and an oil massage. After being given our scrubbie and our tokens for services, we were shown into the women’s section. We were given a thin cotton wrap and black cotton panties to wear, then shown to lockers where we could leave our things. When dressed in our undies, wrap, and plastic slippers necessary for walking around on wet marble, we were ushered into the wondrous room (womb?) of bathing. The large round room features a round marble slab in the middle where one can lay and steam, looking up at the ceiling of small holes of light. It is on this same slab where the scrubbing takes place. After an appropriate time of steaming and relaxing, a scrubbing woman—also wearing only black undies—takes control of your bathing, giving a good scrubbing and sudsing, front and back up and down, then takes you over to a faucet and washes your hair. Not a good idea to look at your scrubbie once it’s been all over your body. Could I have really been that dirty? You can see why we began our holiday here, if nothing else to wash Romania out of our system for at least a few days. Then we were free to soak in the jacuzzi or spend more time on the slab as we like. The faucets placed around the room all had hot and cold water so when I overheated on the slab, I sat by a faucet and poured cool water over my head and shoulders. Eventually we made our way out to the massage area and enjoyed our half-hour oil massages which left us relaxed and delightfully greasy and sweet-smelling. Ah, the indulgence. We loved it so much, we returned our last morning for the full treatment all over again before catching our evening bus home.

As my nearly naked Turkish scrubber was pulling me into her ample bosom to scrub the back of my neck, I considered that nudity is the great equalizer. We get so wrapped up in our bodies and how they look. But I am reminded that it is so much more useful to value our bodies for what they can do for us. Our bodies are no more who we are than our racing, distracted minds. But they serve us a great purpose. I am so grateful to have a strong and healthy body. To give it a nice treat of relaxation and touch, followed by a glass of fresh pomegranate juice, felt great. I think if Mary and I could recommend one activity in Istanbul, this would be it. All else was gravy. The domes above are part of the bath, I think the one on the right corresponds to the ceiling in the last picture here. Above is the entrance room to the women's section where we got our wraps. On the far left is a counter with drinks, including freshly squeezed pomegranate and orange juices. Below is an image from a postcard of the main room.