Turkey – Day 7
Turkey – Day 7
Getting up in the morning was not the easiest, but we did it. Walking the couple of hundred meters from the hostel to the train station, at 6am, we were accosted by someone who was very persistant in his enquiries about whether we needed help – no doubt because he was behind on his boy scout daily deeds of good. This sort of thing was beginning to wear a little thin on us, most notably Richard. The train to the airport at Izmir and the subsequent flight to Ataturk airport in Istanbul were uneventful to the point that I can actually no longer remember them at all, so I'll skip all that.
I remember getting back to Istanbul, though, because on the way back to our hostel, Richard and I jumped onto a tram that was about to leave, while Gareth had been fiddling with something, unnoticed, behind us. We found it hilarious, as you do, when the doors closed with him still on the platform, and had a good laugh about it until we realised that we'd jumped on the tram going in the wrong direction. Needless to say, Gareth did the gentlemanly thing and never mentioned the incident again (those who know Gareth can have a good cynical laugh at this point).
There were a few things which I still wanted to see in Istanbul – the grand bazaar, the aqueduct of Valens, the mosque of the conquerer, and the walls of Theodosius. The other guys, I think, were rather touristed out, but they came along anyway. We managed to find the grand bazaar pretty easily, but finding our way out again was a bit of a mission. I think it would have been much better to visit this on our first day, as, going through when you are tired and irritable, you're less inclined to think charitably of people grabbing your sleeve and trying to haul you into their store. I must say, when I got back to England after this trip, I actually appreciated (for at least a day or so) the particular English take on customer service where they completely ignore you. The grand bazaar is a pretty cool place, I guess, but I think it'd be a much better place if you're not a white guy. The rule of tourist Istanbul applied here too – prices hideously over-inflated, people not as nice as other parts of Turkey.
Finding the aqueduct was more difficult than you'd think – we had a map, and it runs in a great line right across the city. After much wandering around, two ice-creams each, and an unplanned trip to Istanbul university, we eventually found a rather disappointing remnant of the aqueduct. This was somewhat demoralising, as it's quite tough going wandering around in the Turkish sun. This was when we met the second shoe-shine merchant who “dropped” a brush in our path. I seriously felt like picking up his brush and keeping on walking, or flicking the thing over the nearest wall, but I think that common sense prevailed – spending your last day in a foreign country in hospital would be a dampener. Needless to say, Gareth and I had a good time giving Richard a ribbing about this. “You didn't pick up the brush, Richard?” “Are your sandals shiny enough, Richard?”
A little more walking along the line of the aqueduct paid dividends, as we came across a point where a main road had been laid at right angles to it, passing seamlessly through it, an intersection of modern and ancient. I felt that this was an apt analogy for Istanbul, as I'd seen it – a modern piece of infrastructure lying in the shadow of a glorious ancient construction, fallen into disuse and ill repair, but still imposing in it's form and history. We saw a couple of people sitting on top of the aqueduct, and thought that that looked like fun, but our attempt to find a way up led us into pretty slummy areas very quickly, and every way that we could see looked to involve clambering over chain-link fences and then a little monkey-work on the crumbling aqueduct itself. We abandoned the idea, intrepid adventurers that we are, and moved on, having first obtained some good photos.
The mosque (and tomb) of Mehmet the Conquerer was a bit further out, and we walked there in the sweltering heat. Mehmet was the man who conquered Istanbul and the surrounding area, finally putting paid to the Roman empire after almost 2000 years of continuous existence; but more of that later... Needless to say, by the time we'd found the mosque, we were in need of a sit-down, which is what we did. The complex itself is an excellent place to sit in peace, peace being what it has in abundance. Once recovered, we went and found the tomb. The tomb itself is pretty unassuming, given that we were now used to seeing buildings like the Hagia Sofya, but the solemnity inside was something to experience. We'd dressed for the day according to the heat, and not according to Muslim sensibilities, and I was acutely aware of the fact that I was in jeans and a t-shirt. I have never felt so alien as I did when I walked into this solemn place of worship, so obviously there as a tourist, and observed people deep in prayer or religious contemplation. I was so self-conscious of this that I couldn't bear it for very long – I got up and left, and hung around outside, waiting for the other two. This was an interesting turn of events, as it had been me that pretty much set the agenda for the day with the things that I wanted to see. When Gareth came out, he was somewhat annoyed at me for having left so early, as he had felt that he was sharing in something peaceful and profound. The fact that he was in shorts and a t-shirt, and therefore very much not dressed for contemplation in a Muslim shrine didn't bother him at all. I'm not sure to this day whether I was over-sensitive, or he was insensitive. From a purely selfish point of view, though, he had a better experience...
The other guys were feeling pretty knackered by this point, and were ill inclined to accompany me out into the slums to see the walls of the city. The Theodosian walls were famous in the dark ages as the ultimate in city defence – they were the benchmark with which other city defences were compared. As usual, if you want to find out more about them, look on wikipedia – some pompous prat with more time on his hands than this pompous prat will have written screeds on the subject. I felt that I had to go because my father, showing his oft-obscured poetic side, had texted me to say that I should “stand on the breach in the walls of Theodosius and weep for the empire.” So I had an obligation, nay, a quest, to fulfil, and fulfil it I did. The fascinating thing about Istanbul is the way it was conquered, and conquered again, and each time, the conquerors pretty much left things as they were and built around them. This had happened in Topkapi, the area around the walls, as well. When you think of “the breach in the walls,” you think of a small but discernible gap in an otherwise intact wall; this is misleading. Mehmet had a number of large cannons, which fired large stone cannonballs – the breach is the best part of a kilometre long, and the shattered walls were never rebuilt. Well, sections have now been restored for commercial purposes, but they were never rebuilt militarily – the slums just grew up around them. The nice thing about being out there on the walls was that it wasn't a part of the standard tourist package, so I was the only non-turkish face in sight, standing at a place where something historically pivotal happened. Well, symbolically, anyway – the Empire was screwed at that point either way.
Anyway, that was the last day that we had in Istanbul. We spent the night on the terrace at the hostel, drinking beer (yay for secular states!) and playing cards. The next morning we made our way to the airport and back to England.
Getting up in the morning was not the easiest, but we did it. Walking the couple of hundred meters from the hostel to the train station, at 6am, we were accosted by someone who was very persistant in his enquiries about whether we needed help – no doubt because he was behind on his boy scout daily deeds of good. This sort of thing was beginning to wear a little thin on us, most notably Richard. The train to the airport at Izmir and the subsequent flight to Ataturk airport in Istanbul were uneventful to the point that I can actually no longer remember them at all, so I'll skip all that.
I remember getting back to Istanbul, though, because on the way back to our hostel, Richard and I jumped onto a tram that was about to leave, while Gareth had been fiddling with something, unnoticed, behind us. We found it hilarious, as you do, when the doors closed with him still on the platform, and had a good laugh about it until we realised that we'd jumped on the tram going in the wrong direction. Needless to say, Gareth did the gentlemanly thing and never mentioned the incident again (those who know Gareth can have a good cynical laugh at this point).
There were a few things which I still wanted to see in Istanbul – the grand bazaar, the aqueduct of Valens, the mosque of the conquerer, and the walls of Theodosius. The other guys, I think, were rather touristed out, but they came along anyway. We managed to find the grand bazaar pretty easily, but finding our way out again was a bit of a mission. I think it would have been much better to visit this on our first day, as, going through when you are tired and irritable, you're less inclined to think charitably of people grabbing your sleeve and trying to haul you into their store. I must say, when I got back to England after this trip, I actually appreciated (for at least a day or so) the particular English take on customer service where they completely ignore you. The grand bazaar is a pretty cool place, I guess, but I think it'd be a much better place if you're not a white guy. The rule of tourist Istanbul applied here too – prices hideously over-inflated, people not as nice as other parts of Turkey.
Finding the aqueduct was more difficult than you'd think – we had a map, and it runs in a great line right across the city. After much wandering around, two ice-creams each, and an unplanned trip to Istanbul university, we eventually found a rather disappointing remnant of the aqueduct. This was somewhat demoralising, as it's quite tough going wandering around in the Turkish sun. This was when we met the second shoe-shine merchant who “dropped” a brush in our path. I seriously felt like picking up his brush and keeping on walking, or flicking the thing over the nearest wall, but I think that common sense prevailed – spending your last day in a foreign country in hospital would be a dampener. Needless to say, Gareth and I had a good time giving Richard a ribbing about this. “You didn't pick up the brush, Richard?” “Are your sandals shiny enough, Richard?”
A little more walking along the line of the aqueduct paid dividends, as we came across a point where a main road had been laid at right angles to it, passing seamlessly through it, an intersection of modern and ancient. I felt that this was an apt analogy for Istanbul, as I'd seen it – a modern piece of infrastructure lying in the shadow of a glorious ancient construction, fallen into disuse and ill repair, but still imposing in it's form and history. We saw a couple of people sitting on top of the aqueduct, and thought that that looked like fun, but our attempt to find a way up led us into pretty slummy areas very quickly, and every way that we could see looked to involve clambering over chain-link fences and then a little monkey-work on the crumbling aqueduct itself. We abandoned the idea, intrepid adventurers that we are, and moved on, having first obtained some good photos.
The mosque (and tomb) of Mehmet the Conquerer was a bit further out, and we walked there in the sweltering heat. Mehmet was the man who conquered Istanbul and the surrounding area, finally putting paid to the Roman empire after almost 2000 years of continuous existence; but more of that later... Needless to say, by the time we'd found the mosque, we were in need of a sit-down, which is what we did. The complex itself is an excellent place to sit in peace, peace being what it has in abundance. Once recovered, we went and found the tomb. The tomb itself is pretty unassuming, given that we were now used to seeing buildings like the Hagia Sofya, but the solemnity inside was something to experience. We'd dressed for the day according to the heat, and not according to Muslim sensibilities, and I was acutely aware of the fact that I was in jeans and a t-shirt. I have never felt so alien as I did when I walked into this solemn place of worship, so obviously there as a tourist, and observed people deep in prayer or religious contemplation. I was so self-conscious of this that I couldn't bear it for very long – I got up and left, and hung around outside, waiting for the other two. This was an interesting turn of events, as it had been me that pretty much set the agenda for the day with the things that I wanted to see. When Gareth came out, he was somewhat annoyed at me for having left so early, as he had felt that he was sharing in something peaceful and profound. The fact that he was in shorts and a t-shirt, and therefore very much not dressed for contemplation in a Muslim shrine didn't bother him at all. I'm not sure to this day whether I was over-sensitive, or he was insensitive. From a purely selfish point of view, though, he had a better experience...
The other guys were feeling pretty knackered by this point, and were ill inclined to accompany me out into the slums to see the walls of the city. The Theodosian walls were famous in the dark ages as the ultimate in city defence – they were the benchmark with which other city defences were compared. As usual, if you want to find out more about them, look on wikipedia – some pompous prat with more time on his hands than this pompous prat will have written screeds on the subject. I felt that I had to go because my father, showing his oft-obscured poetic side, had texted me to say that I should “stand on the breach in the walls of Theodosius and weep for the empire.” So I had an obligation, nay, a quest, to fulfil, and fulfil it I did. The fascinating thing about Istanbul is the way it was conquered, and conquered again, and each time, the conquerors pretty much left things as they were and built around them. This had happened in Topkapi, the area around the walls, as well. When you think of “the breach in the walls,” you think of a small but discernible gap in an otherwise intact wall; this is misleading. Mehmet had a number of large cannons, which fired large stone cannonballs – the breach is the best part of a kilometre long, and the shattered walls were never rebuilt. Well, sections have now been restored for commercial purposes, but they were never rebuilt militarily – the slums just grew up around them. The nice thing about being out there on the walls was that it wasn't a part of the standard tourist package, so I was the only non-turkish face in sight, standing at a place where something historically pivotal happened. Well, symbolically, anyway – the Empire was screwed at that point either way.
Anyway, that was the last day that we had in Istanbul. We spent the night on the terrace at the hostel, drinking beer (yay for secular states!) and playing cards. The next morning we made our way to the airport and back to England.
posted by Not My Former at 12:07 PM
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