Europe, Asia, or Something Even Better?

Middle East » Turkey » Marmara » Istanbul
May 18th 2008

Published: June 27th 2009

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mattylee

Afternoon Light

A Pleasant Way to Wake Up at 5am

I woke up feeling the only way you can after an overnight bus ride - with a crick in my back and a faint confusion over exactly how few hours I managed to sleep. Then I looked out of the window. A faint yellow light was just taking hold and everything still had that quiet and peaceful look that can only happen between the rise of the sun and the rise of all the people. The colour yellow appeared to be everywhere; no green or red, nor blue, just yellow everywhere. Immediately outside of the bus there was the yellow, dusty soil which led towards the fading yellow stone walls surrounding the yellow buildings which themselves clustered around minarets that were themselves tinted yellow by the morning sun, hundreds upon hundreds of minarets.

Never before have I felt such a sense of having gone to sleep in one place and awoken in somewhere so completely, utterly, and totally different.

I was in Istanbul, a fact which I had to remind myself of several times that morning. No one is immune to the draw of this city which sprawls across the

Intrigue

border between two of the most diverse and different continents on Earth. Europeans come here to see the start of Asia, Asians come here to see the start of Europe, and everyone comes here to see the ancient city which is simultaneously an undeniable part of both. To say that I’ve always wanted to come here is nothing short of a truism. However, I still managed to know very little about the city itself before I arrived; somehow I was being drawn to the idea of Istanbul, not the actuality of the place, so as I arrived there I was anxious to find out if it would live up to its promise.

The bus slowly meandered into the city, for Istanbul is a sprawling mass that stretches beyond comprehension in all directions that it can. For perhaps an hour after I first woke up we moved through an unending collection of mosques and suburbs that looked like they had been there since, well, since the world as we know it began. Finally the bus pulled into its station which was well outside of the city center and Ben, Mitch and I (for we had all left Dan’s hospitality together)

Stained Glass Ottoman Style

Inside the Blue Mosque.

found our way onto the subway. Here lies the first intrigue of Istanbul. For a city as ancient as Istanbul (and in all of its incarnations), which to this day still looks and feels ancient, it is quite an experience to ride on a whiz-bang modern subway. On a later excursion several days later, Ben and I were looking at a museum exhibit of artifacts uncovered during the construction of a single metro station on the European side of the Bosphorus (in the very heart of the old city) where they had found the remains of not one, but seven ancient ships stacked on top of one another, all sunk over the course of several centuries, along with the remains of the city’s walls in 300 A.D., countless fragments from the last few thousand years of history, oh and nine human skulls in a bag from 6000 B.C. or something like that. Really guys, isn’t that a little excessive for one dig site? My point here is simple: where else on this great planet can you ride on a super-modern train which runs through an earthquake proof tunnel that runs 60m below sea level across a strait knowing full well

Scale

See what I mean? The interior of the Aya Sofia is phenomenal for its size, its age, and its decorations.

that 8000 years of densely packed history had to be carefully removed just to put it there?

The Old City

Emerging from the subway, we hopped onto a tram which was to take us the final kilometer or so into the heart of the old city where our intended hostel was to be found. Here in the heart of Istanbul everything seemed even more exciting than it had on the outskirts. Here, surrounding us on every side, were certifiably ancient buildings, all of them densely cramped together to form a rabbit warren of alleys and streets winding like mad across the hilly expanse of central Istanbul. Actually, I’m not sure if you can call anywhere “central” in Istanbul for it is actually made up of dozens of areas which all seem just as old, just as central, and just as interesting as each other. The tram slowly took us deeper into the city past street after street of markets and stores, schools and houses. Plus there were the mosques. At any given moment there would be at least two minarets clearly visible, peeking out over the tops of the buildings. I could not believe how many of

Bosphorus

A lot wider than I had actually expected, the Bosphorus looks more like an ocean than anything else.

them there were. There were so many things to look at; the place was literally jammed full of things to look at, and that was while the streets were empty as it was still only 6am!

The interest escalated more and more until we reached our final destination: Sultanahmet. I’m not sure if I can accurately describe the view from the square in the heart of that district. On our left was the Aya Sofia (or Hagia Sofia to some), a gargantuan church/mosque built in the year 532 that I will get to shortly. On our right was the Blue Mosque, the modern equivalent of the Aya Sofia (which itself is 400 years old!), which is the national mosque of Turkey and, to be honest, is one of the most amazing buildings I’ve seen. Having these two buildings there, next to each other, just about blew my mind. I simply couldn’t figure out which one to stare at. For those who can, imagine looking at the Taj Mahal in wonder, and then turning around and seeing an equal stunning, yet completely unique, wonder looming behind you and then you will understand how amazing it was to stand there in

Galatta Tower

North of the Golden Horn, near where we spent a lot of our evening time, this tower stands out above the surrounding town.

Istanbul that morning. Plus, the three of us had the entire place to ourselves.

We found our hostel down some backstreets on the other side of the square. It was a standard enough place, if you discount the fact that it was on an ancient cobbled street, looked to be older than time itself, and had a rooftop view that encompassed two continents, both of the buildings I just described to you, and a gaggle of other historic buildings in the old town. Plus, good food and cheap beer could be had while you enjoyed said view. Life doesn’t get much better than that.

At the time I wasn’t quite aware of just how ancient that area was. However, the construction site for the new metro station - the one I told you about where 8000 years of history spanning more empires, religions and historically important events than I care to recount for you (that’s right, if you want to know the history of Istanbul you should go read a textbook for I can claim to be neither accurate nor exhaustive here) - was less than 30 meters from our hostel. To put it simply, we were staying

Blue Mosque

Larger than life.

in a cool hostel.

Aya Sofia. . . A Building You Must See Before You Die

No joke, if you die without seeing this place then you seriously missed out. Built by the Byzantines over the course of 5 years in the 6th century as the principal church of the empire, this place is simply gigantic. It is so huge and so old that it is practically falling in on itself as you can clearly see from the outside. The giant pillars have a decided lean to them and the roof is slumping almost everywhere. Yet, somehow it still stands to this day.

From the outside the Aya Sofia is fairly unassuming. It looks just like the other mosques in Istanbul, only notable for its vast size. In fact, compared to the other mosques, particularly the Blue Mosque which faces it, the Aya Sofia looks rather plain from the outside. Its red tinged walls are mostly undecorated either by design or because the original exterior has disintegrated. However, from the inside there is nothing quite like the place.

Ben, Mitch and I went inside early on our first morning after a couple of hours wandering

Outer Tower of the Aya Sofia

Plain, unadorned, but still very very imposing.

along the Bosphorus’ foreshore around to the Golden Horn (an inlet which splits the European part of Istanbul in two). The entrance way is a cavernous rectangular opening with spiral staircases at either end. And when I say stair cases, I actually mean ramps for only stairs that may have been there have long since been worn down to nothingness. From that room you then walk through any number of two-storey tall archways into the main hall. . . and that’s where you see it. “It” is the dome, the humongous dome way, way, way above you. So far above you in fact that at first I didn’t even notice it. It took about 30 seconds before my eyes finally managed to get drawn all of the way to the top for the intervening space between floor and ceiling is filled with amazing things. Little miniature domes, some of them big enough to amaze me in their own right, were scattered all over the place, each one decorated in dazzling colours. Muslim decorations and paintings were everywhere (for the church was converted to a Mosque when the Ottomans took over in the 1600’s), which were each spectacular for their flowing

Ancient Catholic Stelae

In front of the Aya Sofia, and somehow still intact after a good thousand years in a country that wasn't even remotely Catholic.

brush strokes and mystifying Arabic letters, and when put together, the massive collage in front, above and around me was nothing short of spellbinding.

To prevent it from caving in upon itself, the central dome is supported by an enormous scaffold in the centre of the building. Somehow this intrusion did not diminish the scene; in fact, it added to it as it lended some sense of scale. From the entrance way the dome looked to be a long, long way above me, however, when I walked up to the scaffolding and realised just how big each section of the scaffold was (and there were a hell of a lot of them) I actually had to rethink just how far up that ceiling was. A similar feeling is when you see a skyscraper from afar and think to yourself “that is a tall building”, yet when you stand directly below the building and count the number of stories you start to wonder if the building ever actually stops going upwards.

Ben and I spent a lot of time inside that church for there was a lot to see. At first it was the sheer scale of the place

Entranceway of the Aya Sofia

Impressive enough in itself, but wait till you see the interior.

that amazed me, but as I became accustomed to the monstrous cavities around me I started to be amazed by more subtle things. For example, in a lot of places the walls of the lower sections have been painted to match what you would see if those walls weren’t there; at first you don’t even notice some of the pillars as they blend into the domes behind and above them, which simply makes the entire building look even larger and more open than it actually is!

Also, as we wandered in the upper levels across floors that bowed and sank in undulating waves as a result of their accumulated weight over the course of centuries I couldn’t help but wonder how safe it was to be there. That was a strange sensation, very much akin to claustrophobia, and yet here I was in the largest man-made expanse I had ever stood inside.

As I mentioned previously, the Aya Sofia was first a church, then a Mosque, and finally became a museum during the time of Attaturk. Because of this there is a very odd mix of religious art to be seen inside. Most of the building is decorated

Simplicity Itself

All throughout the Aya Sofia there are tileworks like this. They are such a simple concept, nothing more than stone split in half, yet they look absolutely fantastic.

in the Muslim style, with their infinitely enchanting paintings that hover on that delicate line between pictures and words, yet remains of the old church can still be seen. On the upper levels where you can simultaneously look up to the dome an untold distance above you and down on the floor which seems an eternity away, archaeologists have uncovered some of the original Christian mosaics hidden behind the newer decorations that had covered them for centuries. These faded golden tileworks look for all the world like those you would expect to see in Rome, including the very traditional images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, yet here they are in a Mosque in Istanbul.

I could go on for hours about this place (and technically I already have) but I will spare you from that. I think I have gotten across my point here that the Aya Sofia is one of the most amazing places I’ve ever seen, anywhere. Go see it, it will be worth your while, I promise.

Wandering About an Amazing City

Ok, the Aya Sofia is cool, but so are a lot of things in Istanbul and the three of us

Sofia the Mosque

Muslim decorations in the Aya Sofia.

spent a lot of our first day exploring everything that we could. Fairly quickly (after a very good Turkish lunch) we found ourselves in the Basilica Cistern. This is one of those places that you simply do not expect to find and even when you’re inside you can’t quite figure out how it got there. The Cistern is an underground water tank built in the 6th century right underneath the old city. It is big, very big, apparently it could hold 80,000 cubic meters of water. That number doesn’t really mean much to me, but I can tell you that while I was inside the place I couldn’t see from one end to the other. It was just row after row of pillars holding the roof off the floor as they had done for the last 1500 years. Isn’t that simply incredible? And the cistern was still functional into modern times.

For the rest of the afternoon we simply wandered about the old city for it is full of intrigue on every street. There are the old buildings, the ancient buildings, the very ancient buildings. Then there are the people milling about as they go about their daily business.

The Ceiling

Looking straight up.

Between all of the streetside stores and the local people wandering among them I truly felt like I was in a city that was alive. This was no tourist attraction avoided by the locals: this was the thriving heart of a living city. It just happened to be a very, very old living city. I remembered my time in Asia a lot while I was in Istanbul for it had the same “alive” feeling that I love so much about countries such as China and Vietnam. Everything was happening on the streets beside me and around me. I was in the middle of things and not on the extremities, just the way I liked to be.

This feeling only grew as we walked into the Grand Bazaar. This “building” is the result of an accumulation of stores over thousands of years that at some point grew so dense that a roof magically appeared over the top of it. It is not simply a building as we know it, for it is actually thousands of small buildings that all grew together into one accumulated structure with a singular purpose: to sell everything under the sun. Nowadays it is something of

Holding Up the Roof

That's some scaffolding!

a tourist trap, for that is where all tourists go to buy their Turkish carpets, Turkish delights and Baklava. Nevertheless, it was an enchanting experience to wander through the maze (we got well and truly lost, somewhat on purpose) and to see all that was for sale. To get offered free tea and coffee at every turn was also a nice treat. Unlike a lot of similar markets I didn’t feel hassled in the Bazaar, I feel that the touts there don’t really need to hassle you as the place just makes you want to buy things, even though 90%!o(MISSING)f the products for sale are of little or no use to you.

My Only Chance at a Harem

On our second day in Istanbul, Ben and I set off without Mitch (forget why, might have had something to do with the beers the night before - after a few we discovered that there were larger sizes in Turkey, all the way up to hard-to-lift-with-a-single-hand size). We got ourselves some good Turkish breakfast and wandered into the old Topkapi palace compound which stands on top of the hill in the old city. Compared to the compact and

Caligraphy

Taking simple writing and making it beautiful.

crowded streets outside the walls, the palace was a quiet, peaceful and sparse enclave - apart for the millions of tourists that is.

The palace was built in the 15th century after the Ottomans took over Constantinople (now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople) and it was the seat of power for the Sultans for several centuries. Thus, it grew and expanded into quite a large collection of buildings from a bakery to a mint to, and this is the exciting part, to the Sultan’s harem.

I won’t pretend that I wasn’t excited to see the harem, after all, there is something very alluring about the concept of a harem, however, what is a harem really like? Beside the obvious, what really happens in a harem? What was life like there? It was these questions that intrigued me that day.

The first problem we faced that day was finding the Harem. After all, I always thought the Harem was a collection of women, not a building per se, however, somewhere in the thousands of rooms, hallways, and courtyards in the palace there was a definite place of that name. Intrepidly we entered a random doorway and began wandering somewhat

Soft Light

aimlessly in the hope that we would find our goal. The palace is one incredible room after another, seemingly endless yet no two rooms are the same. Every wall and ceiling is individually detailed with paintings or mosaics, some have entire walls full of flowing Arabic script to lure you onwards, some are more simple yet no less striking, and even the toilets and fireplaces seem like works of art. Also, as the palace was built over the course of many centuries there is no solidifying theme to the rooms so around every corner I was intrigued by an entirely new style of wonders.

Somewhere, deep within the maze between one amazing balcony with a view that seemed to span the entirety of Istanbul and a hallway specifically made for the Sultan’s most trusted Eunuch guards, we eventually found the Harem. Now, very much unlike what I was expecting, the Harem turned out to be more involved than I had ever imagined. Rather than just a jail/house for the Sultan’s women, the Imperial Harem was actually home to most of the Sultan’s immediate family. The Sultan’s mother, who after fighting long and hard with the last Sultan’s other wives

Letting in the Light

and concubines to be the one to birth his eldest surviving son, got to enjoy the fruits of her labour by running the household which included all of the Sultan’s wives, concubines, and children, plus all of their servants of course. Thus, the Harem in itself is a massive maze of uncountable rooms somewhat like a self sufficient town in itself. And, as this was where the Sultan spent a lot of his private time, it is probably the most spectacularly decorated part of the entire palace.

I let my pictures speak more about the Harem, as there is little that my words can convey that the photos can’t (apart from the way Ben was being a silly bugger all the time that is). After leaving the Harem I thought that we had just about covered the important parts of the palace, however, I soon found out that a lot of the buildings towards the rear had been converted into museums of one sort or another. Practically anything even remotely related to the Sultanate has a museum there (we saw Muhammad’s and sword and part of his beard!), and we even walked into the curiously named Circumcision Pavilion.

Dome Upon Dome

I think that this photo really shows how simple the Aya Sofia really is, it is nothing but arches and domes stacked on top of one another, and yet it looks amazingly complex at the same time.

Our Triumphant Return to Asia

There is no place like home, so they say, but I think this should be broadened a little as I get that same sort of feeling about a lot of places, and most of them aren’t home at all. That afternoon in Istanbul, for example, I felt a tremendous wave of relief, pure and honest relief, simply by taking a half-hour long ferry ride. Ben and I had hopped onto one of the many ferries that ply up and down the Bosphorus and found ourselves standing on the opposite shore: in Asia. Immediately I felt at home, Ben felt it too. There was something different, something familiar, yet theoretically this was the same city and the same country that we had been in on the other side of the strait.

How could it possibly feel so different? Perhaps it was just a state of mind, but the eastern half of Istanbul seemed more laid back than its western counterpart. The street stalls seemed to have that quirky Asian friendliness mixed with the well known cutthroat business sense, the people seemed friendlier and smiled at us more, and the streets seemed that much

Overview

Trying to fit the entire interior into a single photo. . . I failed.

more alluring to me. Even if it was just my mind playing tricks on me - subconsciously drawing myself back into all the myriad memories I have from that continent - I didn’t mind. I felt more at ease and happier than I had in a very long time. I felt as though I had crossed an entire continent and finally reached home, and considering my plans for the coming months, this was a very welcome feeling.

Food, Friends and a Shocking Defeat

Food! Isn’t it great? This is true in a lot of places but Turkish food is the stuff of dreams, and to make things even better, it isn’t hard to find the good stuff in Istanbul. The three of us, Ben, Mitch and I that is, spent a good deal of our time eating and drinking while in that great city. From the small barbeque places we found in the new town (oh my, I can’t even remember all the good stuff I ate there) to the ever present kebabs, the sweets that seemed to be available on every corner and in market store, and the Turkish coffee which is oh so much better

Ancient Vase

Why is there a lone vase standing in the middle of the Aya Sofia? I will never know.

than you’ll ever get at home, we truly did have a good time stuffing our faces there.

However, something very, very terrible happened. . . something that I could never have imagined. We had met a very wonderful group of people at our hostel and had spent a couple of nights partying it up on the roof with the floodlit towers of the Aya Sofia and Blue Mosque behind us and ships slowly moving up an down the Bosphorus in front. Somehow, no idea how, my big mouth got the best of me and I found myself challenged to an eating contest with one of our new friends. And talk about a challenge, compared to me she was absolutely tiny! How could I lose? After all, I have been known to eat up to ten meals in a day.

Well, lose I did, but only just. After a seriously massive kebab, it came down to half of a football sized (and inflated) pita bread; something that is probably the most ludicrously shaped and sized foodstuff that I’ve ever seen. However, I contest that the competition was a sham as I’d already eaten half a pizza and a bowl

The Coverup

Here you can clearly see the original christian paintings that were covered up when the church was converted into a Mosque.

of soup before it even started. Nevertheless, Meghan, if you’re reading this, prepare yourself for the rematch as I won’t rest till I out-eat you!

In addition to the amazing food in Istanbul, we found the nightlife to be equally brilliant. Somewhere between the local heavy metal band that ought to be famous and the rooftop terraces we found many ways to while away the evening hours in both the new and old city. No matter where we went, and no matter what day it was, there were always people out eating, drinking, and having fun. I fell that Istanbul is a truly exciting city to live in.

Shopping With the Locals

On one of our last days in Istanbul we were planning to visit the calligraphy museum. There is something very alluring about Arabic calligraphy for me; it somehow bends and morphs the definitions of writing and art into a single result. All around Istanbul we saw dazzling examples of this, some of them ancient and some of them brand new. Actually, there were many stores that would create amazing works to your order right in front of you; from a simple writing of your

The World's First Wheelchair Accessible Church

Why bother building stairs anymore when we can all have ramps?

name, to the incredibly complicated pieces that were both pictures and stories at the same time.

Watching a master at work was what really impressed me. He was so quick with his strokes, and yet so precise. I noticed that the majority of the writing was superfluous, it had absolutely no bearing on the writing, yet it was still laid down by some kind of deeply involved formula, as if it were a script of its own. Even the smallest details, such as the tiny diamonds drawn all about the place, were carefully thought out as though the script would be illegible without them.

Unfortunately, the museum was closed that day (and most likely every other day judging by the state of the door) so we were left with little to do. To fill in our time we decided to explore some back streets near the Grand Bazaar and soon found ourselves walking down a narrow cobbled lane which steeply fell down the hillside toward the Golden Horn. The street quickly turned and merged into one of the inevitable mazes that Istanbul is made of. Every lane and street seemed to be dedicated to a single type of

Illuminated Scaffold

That roof must be darn heavy.

market store. One street sold buttons, another sold only bags, yet another was filled with lingerie (not the sexy kind). We very quickly got drawn deeper and deeper into the maze and all of a sudden we were completely surrounded by people; thousands of people. On some streets it was almost impossible to move by our own volition, instead we just went with the flow and eventually found out where we were headed. It was incredible, it seemed that all of Istanbul was out shopping that morning.

For perhaps an hour we wandered aimlessly about, simply intrigued by the shoppers about us. Never before had I found myself in such an overflowing mass of shopping bliss. Of course, we didn’t buy anything (after all, what would I do with a bag full of buttons and lingerie?), but just being there among it all was excitement enough. It was quite literally a solid square mile of outdoor shopping mall where you could buy absolutely everything known to man, and there wasn’t a tourist tout in sight.

Alright, Enough Already!

Well, I do believe that I’ve said more than my share. If anything, I hope that I have

One of the Original Mosaics

managed to convey the fact that I love Istanbul. It lived up to all of my expectations and then some. I do believe that it is one of the most exciting cities that I’ve had the privilege to visit so far. Istanbul has everything you need: ancient history in abundance, so much so that it overflows onto the streets, modernity in spades, friendly people around every corner and in every store, enough good food to best even me, and so many hidden treasures that you could live there an entire lifetime and still be surprised around the next corner. I most certainly will return, and I suggest you give it a look too if you can.

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