Why Istanbul, you're so.... different

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SEPT 1 2011

I woke up with a jolt today, jello in my veins. My uncle's alarm clock was ringing, as expected. Had I really slept or just been thinking? I looked bleary-eyed at the time. 2AM. I've seen this time before on many occasions. Sometimes because sleep simply won't bless me with respite, others because I'm, as my Grandma would say, out on the town. But waking up at 2AM... waking up at 2AM is not something I've done before. Not something I was ever keen to do. Looking out at the dark cold air, the day hasn't even started to consider unfolding. It isn't overly depressing or foreboding, it's just so early that nothing can be made of today. Or tomorrow? I can't tell.
I'm at the airport now. It's 5AM, 1.5 hours until I'm on the airplane. 5.5 hours until I'm in Istanbul, where I'll be ahead 2 hours from what I would have been in England. These are all logistics my rattled brain are going through, I guess they don't really matter.
I'm scared to fall asleep in this plastic chair, duty free wares seductively lit all around me. I won't wake up for at least a day. Maybe two. I'm hoping I'll just sleep really well on the plane. I HAVE to, if not when I get to Istanbul I'll be a ball of nerves and too spaced to be able to navigate home. I'll live on the streets, with my big suitcase and my carry on. At least my life is packed and ready to go for being homeless. Maybe I'd find a guitar and busk. Maybe I'd be able to get some money palm reading. I'd probably get kidnapped and sold into any sort of unsavory slavery. All because I didn't sleep. Screw you, 2AM.
Sorry, this is a weird post. I'm just a bit too sleep deprived and antsy to focus.
Since my last post not very much has changed. Well, it's about to, but it hasn't just yet. Since last post I've been hanging around England a bit more, more or less just shmoozing. My old room mate from the Kibbutz, Signe, came from Denmark. It was fantastic to see her. I was a little nervous at first, would we hit it off? The kibbutz was it's own little world, we all more or less had to be friendly because we only had each other. Who's to say that we would actually hit it off in real life? My worries quickly dissipated as we slipped back into our routine, but in a new place. We traveled all over London and went to a bunch of museums. I had never been to The National Portrait Gallery but it was amazing. Everyone should go! But anyways... I had a great time with her. We did our tourist thing and I discovered a bunch of new places in London. Unfortunately, both of us are pretty bad at the whole tourist thing and took no pictures (well, I guess I'm more to blame because I don't think she has a camera to not be taking pictures on) so I guess you all will have to just imagine our sweet reunion.
Hung out with my Grandma a bit. Maybe I shouldn't be writing this, but seeing her makes me scared for my future. I'm sure I'll be fine, be happy and make a lotta money and yada yada but once I'm old... ah. What do I believe now that in 60 years people will find backwards? Well, I'm sure that chemotherapy will seem barbaric. Injecting poison into your body in hopes it kills your malignant growth before you had BETTER go the ways of blood letting by the time I'm old. Will our lack of respect for Earth be seen as a blemish in our history, like the Inquisition, or will we have gone so far beyond that that this whole “go green” frenzy we have now will seem like a weird Y2K craze our grandchildren will make fun of us for. Hearing her talk about some things just makes me think, she was once “in with the times.” When did she stop trying to keep up? Or does she just not agree with society anymore and therefore stopped trying to understand it? Will I do that someday? I guess everything moves much faster nowadays though, with how small the world is and the internet I can see myself even now being a bit behind. I'm imagining 5 years when laptops will be obsolete and people will have crazy tablets that can preheat their ovens from anywhere in the world. Maybe for a long time she didn't seem so behind. Maybe it's only recent that her oldness truly shows with all this insanely advanced technology.
Who knows. I should stop thinking about these things. I should probably be nervous about how big my room is. How dingy the neighborhood. Hell, I'll be in Turkey, I should be worrying about how little Turkish I've learned. All I know is “I don't speak Turkish.” Hah. I've been imagining it to be a lot like Israel. Obviously the language will be different, and I will probably have to haggle a lot more, but similar. Those Mediterranean style houses with their flat roofs will cover the land like trees, minarets will look down on the denizens and will sing hymns 4 (5?) times a day without fail. There will be garbage and filth and the beggars will all have dogs with fur clinging to ribs. It will smell of spices and lamb and patchouli and animals, with a hint of garbage. There will be beautiful mosques built decades ago, with love and care and attention, to remind everyone to awe at the power of Allah. Bath houses surrounded by big mustashed men in dirty white shirts. Women's eyes peeking out from black masks. What will their eyes say?



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SEPT 11 2011


Well, I made it to Istanbul with no mishaps. I actually fell asleep before we even took off, so I hardly was freaking out while we departed the Earth. I slept until an announcement by our captain told us that we were crossing into the Turkish border, after which I was too curious to fall back asleep and instead stared out my window at the landscape miles below me. Yellows and browns with rifts of green. My first thoughts of Turkey? “Hm.”
I've been here a total of 11 days now. I've been putting off updating this because I honestly had no idea what to say. But here it is.
My original idea's of Istanbul were influenced by my stay in Israel, hearsay, and TV. But the reality of what Istanbul is (at least on my 11th day) is much different.
I could say I wasn't prepared. I know I wasn't, and I justified my procrastination of preparation by saying that I'd get to learn it in the country. Which I'm ok with, but maybe if I did learn some of the language it would be nice...
So. Istanbul. I guess I'll start with the Bosphorus, which is no doubt the lifeblood of this city. It's the body of water that divides Asia and Europe. If you look close enough at a world map (has to be a really detailed, really big world map because it's maybe as thick as the Hudson, maybe) you'll see that between Asia and Europe there is a small divide of water. This connects the Black Sea to the North with the Southern Marma Sea (which is a couple seas removed from the Atlantic.) Istanbul is not a desert paradise. It has water from the Bosphorus. I feel like that's the first misconception I should dispell. Really, not true. There's more trees then I've ever seen in any other major city. Ahem, but anyways... There are always great barges passing through this crystal clear sea-connector. People swim, fish, and lounge along it's shore. The occasional garbage floats along, but the Bosphorus looks well maintained. Maybe people have a common respect for it because it's where our tap water comes from. Maybe Turks show it respect simply because it should be respected, something I find hard to imagine living next to the Hudson. Either way, the shade of blue the Bosphorus takes on in the sunlight is breathtaking.
This city is made up of hills, which makes my idea of getting a bike a dud. Well, that and how lawless the roads are, I'd get hit before I left my block. The hills make walking around a little bit of a pain, but I just tell myself my calves will be great by the end of this and carry on. But as much as they are a nuisance, the views they create are awe-inspring, making me incredibly slow at walking anywhere because of my stops to admire.
My apartment is amazing. I've definitely lucked out considering I didn't shop around much and took it before I saw pictures. I live with a Turk (also my landlord), a Romanian (his girlfriend,) a Slovenian, and a German. All of them are really nice and helpful. We don't just live together, we hang out as well. When one of us goes out we always invite the others. They've made living in a new country where I have no friends much, much easier then it could have been. Yes, it's still a bit lonely but knowing I have some people willing to listen to me gab is always really comforting. My room is, as usual, incredibly big. I have no idea how I do it, but whenever I go to a new place and am assigned a room I've always managed to get a big room. I always prepare myself to live in a hovel and find myself living in a room bigger then I could of possibly imagined. Not complaining, not bragging, just commenting on my AMAZING luck. Honestly, I don't know how I do it. I just feel my room-karma rebounding someday and winding up in a pitiful room. But until then I'm just going to LOVE my rooms.
So I have a huge room and a door to the balcony. No big deal.
Our apartment is about half a block away from a fresh foods market that's open every Saturday. Last Saturday I got more then enough food, enough to fill half of my fridge, for a mere $20. It's fabulous, but the trade off (and there always is one) is that meat is ridiculously expensive. I don't understand, when hole-in-wall eateries can sell what is basically meat in bread for 50 cents how can I not buy any chicken for under $1.50 a breast (which is like half a breast, chickens here are much smaller then American ones)? Maybe the cheap meat is in a hidden place, to be honest I haven't looked very hard, but still. I don't like having to do a treasure hunt for my groceries.
We're a 5 minute walk from my school, a 5 minute beautiful walk with views overlooking the Bosphorus. So my tradition of walking 10 minutes before class can continue, except it'll be much more enjoyable then the Purchase walk.
Istanbul is full of banks. Banks and skincare stores. All the skincare stores sell Murad and dermatologica and many other high end brands that I don't really know. I haven't asked anyone, but I'm assuming that this is a rich city if it's a normal thing for stores to be selling these products. And having so many banks around, I'm only assuming everyone has a bunch of money they keep having to move around.
Yes, there are beggars, but less then in NYC (or they have better hiding places). There are many stay cats and dogs, but no dog and cat roadkill. The strays know the streets very well.
There are no advertisements full of half naked women. The most seductive ad I've seen so far has minimal cleavage and the woman is wearing very long gloves. In general, women don't wear such short shorts or such skimpy tops. At first I thought something about oppression of women, our right to wear whatever, but it's actually very nice. I really don't mind, in fact I enjoy, not having to see beautiful women on every advertisement skimpily clad. It's refreshing. It's definitely nicer on my brain, I'm not forced to see societies ideals on an unattainable beauty everywhere. Yes, wearing skimpy clothes is fun, but really, it's not fair. Men are given questionable looks when they wear short shorts or deep Vs. As much as it's nice that we are able to wear whatever, it's not fair for this double standard of dress. Here women do wear shorter shorts then the men, but not by too much. There are no ass-grazing pants to be seen anywhere.
Of course if you do wear skimpy clothes no one freaks out on you, it's just something that very, very few people do, so you'll feel awkward because you're standing out. But it doesn't seem like there is a religious right that will throw paint on you or anything. You'll just look like a skank.
There are no burkas. Well, there are, but it depends where you go. The highest concentration I've seen so far was at the airport, where women from other Islamic countries were coming in. There are burkas, but the average person does not wear them. In my area I haven't seen a single one yet. There are religious areas and there you can find more, but for the most part they're rare. There are a good deal of head scarves, which are used to cover your hair if you're married, but they're still a minority. The average person doesn't know Arabic. In turn the average person doesn't own a koran.
The Call to Prayer is piped through the mosques 5 times a day, from 5AM to I think 9PM. For some it's a reminder to pray. They make their ways to one of the trillions of mosques all over the country during TCTP and do their prayers. For the rest of us it's kind of like church bells, if you've kept up you'll know what time it is by them. If not it's just a reminder that time is passing. I could see how some people would find them annoying, but really, they're pretty easy to tune out. And I kind of like them, the singing style is foreign to me so it'll take a while for them to get old.
Then again I don't live next door to a mosque so they aren't waking me up, which I've heard some people complain about.
There are mosques all over the city. And I really mean ALL OVER. It's so strange, because it seems like the majority doesn't care for Islam, so why do they have so many mosques? I'm under the impression that many of them are left over from times past, when more people were religious, but I'll ask a professor once I get to school (yeah, I still haven't gone to school. More on that later.)
Having mosques all over is actually kind of nice. They're glorious, even the less opulent ones, they're beautiful. And the spires take over the skyline, in a very good way. Honestly, I'm happy this city has so many mosques. They're incredible and play music 5 times a day. Downside? I haven't thought of any yet.
School starts Sept 26th for me, which my European counterparts think is very early. On average they start in October. I nearly choked when they told me that. We start in August!! This has been the longest summer EVER! I came so early because I planned on doing a bunch of touristy things before school started, but apparently with a student card the touristy things are basically free. Even public transit is half off. So, I'm waiting until I become a student to do much moving around.
I haven't applied for classes yet, we do that the the 19th. Yeah, a week before classes start. Whoever thought of this system REALLY did not think it through. I have orientation soon, which I'm very grateful for. This whole system definitely needs some explaining, which no one has tried to do yet. I also have a meeting with my adviser, he has set one up with all the Political Science students, but that's 7 hours after actual registering for classes has started. So, it's worthless in regards to what classes I should be taking. To make registration even worse all the course lists aren't updated. So I can't make my schedule until I find out what classes are offered this semester, which will no doubt be when registration opens. Registration is really just going to be a frenzied scramble of 10 thousand students attempting to get their way. I'm really not looking forward to it.

So yeah. I wish I could think of some elegant way to end this post but really, my mind's drawing a blank. So, what of Istanbul so far? Beautiful (which I guess is the word of the day for me) and Chaotic. Unfortunately this place does not smell of herbs. In fact the grocery stores have a fraction of the herb choices that the American ones do. The strays look well fed. I haven't seen a bath house yet, though there is an abundance of mustaches. The house styles are incredibly varied, which I should of figured due to the amount of Empires Turkey has had a part in. But yeah, that's it for me. More later.

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Comments

[khany]

thank you
thank you for sharing!