Day 2 –Mosque, Mosque and more Mosque

I wonder if that title is going to trigger FBI alerts? Maybe I should add bomb, Allah, president, and clowns. The last one is just to confuse them…

Photos: http://s221.photobucket.com/albums/dd238/nickwalls/Turkey%20Day%202/

So we woke in our hostel on day two, having had very little sleep; Turkey is a pretty hot place to start off with, and then you have three guys in a small room – it’s less than ideal, let’s leave it at that… The morning wakening takes a bit of getting used to – an eerie wailing begins from every direction, as each mosque tries to outdo the next one in its call to prayer. The other guys later confessed that they found the call to prayer annoying after a while, but for me, every time I heard it, I thought “man that’s cool.” Probably I was just jazzed at being in somewhere that was so palpably different from what I was used to, but I never found it annoying…

I think that it was this morning that I received a message from Dad, telling me to find the breach in the Theodosian Walls, and stand there and weep for the empire. I wouldn’t manage to do this until our last day in Turkey, when I took my leave of the other two, and took a taxi ride to the slums, and wandered around by myself. With no common language at all. But more of that later…

So we got up, and headed up to the terrace to have the breakfast that was included in the price of the room. Call me provincial, but I am not too impressed with Turkish breakfasts. I ate the hard boiled egg, but the salad-type stuff looked decidedly dodgy, and the bread was stale. Looking at what I’m writing now, I’m thinking “God, Nick, you’re a bit precious, aren’t you?” But at the time I just drank a lot of tea, ate the egg and the stale bread, and enjoyed the novelty of eating breakfast in the morning on a terrace overlooking the Bosphorus.

The plan on out first full day in Turkey was to see the Sulan Ahmet Camii (Blue Mosque), and the Hagia Sophia, grab some lunch, then go and see the Topkapi palace. That’s quite a plan for a day, so we got moving relatively swiftly.

Walking up from our hostel, the road led through the square separating the Sultan Ahmet Camii and the Aya Sofya. Standing between these two massive and frankly mind-bogglingly impressive buildings, the effect was undeniable – both were built to impress the magnificence of the city and it’s rulers upon the populace and visitors, and it’d be a hard-bitten world-traveler who wasn’t inspired to awe. Architecture at it’s most imposing…

Heading to the Blue Mosque first, we wisely read up about it beforehand. The guidebook had several suggestions, the most useful of which was to sneak in the exit rather than wait for a half hour behind a million tour groups in the dizzying heat. Naughty guide book! What a thing to suggest! So we waited until the guy on the door was dealing with some question from a tourist, and then ducked through the door. The first thing which impresses one about the inside of the Blue Mosque is the sheer size. There’s not much in the way of internal structures, really – just an internal space of rather immense proportions. We got a little bit of tour guiding by standing in the vicinity of overly loud American accented tour guides, but generally, you’re there for the awe, not the tour (Yeah, I know the rhyme doesn’t quite work. Stop complaining. You don’t have to read this, you know. Right, well as long as you’re sorry, we’ll continue). The floors were entirely carpeted, which must be expensive considering the wear and tear caused by a constant flow of tourists (even if they are all barefoot). Having had a decent look around, listened to a few tourist guides (Gareth translated the Portuguese ones for us), and generally done the whole gawking around thing, we exited the same way we came in.

And onwards, to the Aya Sofya. I’ll let you do your own research about the history of the Aya Sofya. Let’s just say that it is ancient, and monumentally impressive from the outside. The statuary is a little worn, and there is much in the way of Christian symbolism still extant on the exterior of the church. As impressive as the outside is, however, it has not a patch on the inside. Even the antechamber is pretty jaw-dropping, but the vastness of the dome took my breath away. Unfortunately there was some work going on on the inside of the dome, and the scaffolding detracted a little from the mind-boggling awe, and the thumps, crashes and bangs impeded the serenity which one felt should be present in such an ancient place of worship. We got a few pictures, in a couple of which Gareth and I feature, looking gormless. I’d like to say that the awe-inspiring nature of the church removed all our gorm, but I suspect that we were both just born with a sub-normal quota of gorm. We sat a little while and looked at the ceiling, from which a few gold flakes would drop with each shattering crash from the “construction.” One can only assume that they knew what they were doing…

Up a flight of stairs, dips worn in the stone by centuries of ascending feet, there were some original murals to behold. It speaks well of the conquering Turks that they didn’t destroy these when they captured the city – it would have been fairly easy for them to destroy, rather than capture and convert as they did. The Catholics who captured the city during the fourth crusade were not so kind, breaking up the altar, tearing the hangings, stealing the silver, and generally being barbaric…

There are ancient murals on the walls, one depicting Jesus, Mary and John the Baptist, another depicting Jesus and Mary between an emperor and his wife. I’m not sure if that was to imply the emperor’s divinity, or his piety, or just his eagerness to get as far as possible from his wife, but they were impressive none the less. We ran into a couple of Japanese girls who were staying at our hostel, and so got a couple of pictures with them too.

Having seen the centres of religious authority in the city, we thought we’d better have a look at the centre of (ancient) civil authority, so we headed to the Topkapi Palace. The sun was beating down with a vengeance at this point – it really is rather unbearable at times – you spend the entire time dreaming of the cool glass of water that you KNOW you are not going to get, and those few moments that you can catch in the shade are precious beyond belief. Standing in line for tickets to the palace was a curse, as the line was in direct sunlight, and was just awful.

The palace is accessed by walking through a park/garden type of thing, which is a pleasant surprise after the crowds and dirt and hassling bystanders and such of the city, but most of the enjoyment is leached from it by the unforgiving sun. Once through into the palace proper (after they took my pocket knife off me – silly boy for carrying it in my pocket!), you can wander around a bit inside the grounds. After a little of this (again, the heat), we spied the line for the harem, which Genny had told me was the most fascinating part of the palace. Consequently we lined up there, thankfully in some shade. The various tour guides were hawking their services up and down the line in an impressive array of languages, some offering to conduct tours in several languages at the same time. Enduring some blatant and unapologetic line-cutting, we eventually got into the cool of the harem. Walking through the harem was interesting, though there was much consternation from my companions at the conspicuous absence of what might be deemed the harem’s main attractions. I’ll leave you to again do your own research if you want to find out more about the history and daily life of a harem girl. I must say, I found the power structure in the harem interesting, though…

Wandering through the rest of the Palace provided some incredible sights, too, not least a NZ$5 can of coke. But seriously, I was amazed by the immense collection of Chinese pottery and the treasury. I think that the pottery collection was what finally brought it home to me that I was finally standing at the gateway between east and west, that this was where Europe met Asia. The treasury was just incredible – it’s true Alladin-style riches – gems the size of hen’s eggs, suits of armour rendered useless through the weight of precious metals, swords so covered in gems that you’d blind yourself flourishing them in sunlight. The sort of wealth on display was ridiculous – by the end of it, you were just thinking “ho hum, another piece of jewelry” about things which would probably have bought Remuera…

On of the best memories I have from the palace, actually, was when the path I was taking spilled out unexpectedly onto a balcony, and you stood there, looking across the Bosphorus at Asian Istanbul, baking in the afternoon sun. It was just one of those completely breathtaking sights. Unfortunately, I don’t think I had a camera, but if I had, I don’t think it would have done the scene justice…

We wandered out of the Palace, and, after briefly stopping for an icecream (nice, but somewhat counter-productive in that heat – I was immensely thirsty practically before I’d finished), we wandered down a side street, searching for the archeological museum that was supposed to be somewhere nearby. Lucky for me that we did - I found it to be the most interesting part of the whole day. Walking through, past the meticulously organized exhibits, detailing the rise and fall of civilizations through tablets, statuary, weapons, and tombs, I was struck by a thought which was to be reinforced throughout our tour of Turkey – how many times has the world ended? How many more times will it end? Very melodramatic, I know, but I’m like that sometimes. But it’s a difficult thing not to think when you read a (translation of a) tablet detailing every day life four thousand years ago, 20 years before their civilization was wiped out by an invading neighbour; and then you read something else by someone in the conquering civilization, 50 years before someone came through and cleaned them out. It’s a sentiment which is echoed in the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, the first world war Gallipoli campaign (because they were fighting for their civilization as well…) – civilization has risen and fallen so many times, it would be absurd to think that it won’t happen again. But I digress – there were a large number of these tablets, inventorying stock, or recording legal decisions, or detailing history, all dating back before… well, anything else, actually. It makes you feel quite small to realize that your 70-odd year life span is set against a palpable history of at least 7000 years…

Anywho, enough of that sort of thing. The highlight of the museum were the sarcophagi, beautifully carved stone coffins for the burial of the wealthy and important. Foremost amongst these is the so-called Alexander Sarcophagus, exquisitely carved with scenes from the life of Alexander the Great. Apparently it is now accepted that this was not in fact the Sarcophagus of Alexander, due to the fact that he was known to have been buried in Alexandria, Egypt; it is now thought to have contained either a Phoenician prince or a member of the Seleucid dynasty. The metal weapons are now gone, having been looted at the same time the burial chamber was, but the carving is still breath-taking.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to stay too long in the Museum, as eventually a guard came along and made me leave because they were closing. This was a great pity, as I only got to go through about half of it. Oh well, I’ll just have to see the rest next time I’m in Istanbul…

After this, we decided that we were done for the evening, and after a brief stop at the hostel, we set off to find a bar where food wasn’t so expensive as it is in Tourist-ville. After a bit of wandering, and a number of entreaties to come and have a look at this or that carpet shop, we happened upon a football bar, which seemed to fit the bill pretty well. There were a number of locals there, watching Turkish side Besiktas take on FC Zurich in the Champions League. Besiktas, the favourites, were making all the running, and were up 1-0 as a result. We finished up our dinner about half way through the second half, and lingered over beers, waiting to see the end of the game. Gareth and I are both the sort to go for the underdogs, so when Zurich scored in the 92nd minute, we both shouted “yes!” without thinking about it. We were suddenly faced with a bar full of Turkish faces directed at us. Realising the error of our ways, we sat down immediately, making placatory gestures and generally trying to make ourselves as small as possible. Needless to say, we left at the earliest possibility…