Istanbul!

So, it's high time I told you all about Istanbul. Again, sorry for the delay, but I've been busy.

Now, where to begin? Let's start at the beginning - the flight. I flew Turkish Airlines, and I highly recommend them if you ever get the opportunity. My flight left at 12:30pm and was only a couple of hours long, but they still served a full meal! And it was legitimately good food, not the usual barely edible airplane "food." So, that was exciting. After landing, figuring out the visa process, and waiting forever to get through customs, I had to wait for the rest of the BSM students - we planned our travel separately, so there was one other BSM student on my flight and 8 more on another, slightly later, flight. Also because we planned our travel separately, we were staying in different hostels. I was staying in the Sultanahmet (old city), but they were staying in Taksim (new city). However, we began the trip toward the city together on the metro. Eventually I had to part with them and get on a tram.

The tram lines in Istanbul are not dedicated, i.e. cars can drive on them, so the tram is also subject to the myriad traffic jams of Istanbul. As such, the tram ride was slow going. I finally made it to the correct tram stop, but had to ask around to find the hostel. The hostel was fairly standard in what it offered, but it was very nice and clean. When I arrived, one of the staff (I think it is run by a total of 3 guys - at least that is all I saw when I was there) showed me to my room and then showed me the rest of the hostel. I only mention this because here I noticed what I must assume is a cultural difference. When showing me things such as the bathrooms, the staff member did not just point them out, but went in, turned on the light and waited for me to acknowledge I had seen it. That was a bit strange (because we had to stop at every restroom), but this "tour" culminated on the rooftop terrace that afforded an excellent view of the Hagia Sophia!

After settling in, I went out to find some food and explore the Sultanahmet at night. The location of the hostel was phenomenal - the directions to get from my hostel to the Blue Mosque were literally: go out the door, turn right, walk about 50m, and you'll see it on the right. I have never seen so many minarets as when I was in Istanbul, there are mosques everywhere - and big mosques at that! In my wandering, I met a man from Cyprus who was also traveling alone. So, we ended walking together for a while. After exploring for a while, I decided to get some sleep.

The next morning I enjoyed breakfast on the rooftop terrace soaking up the view of the Hagia Sophia. Then I used facebook to chat with a couple of other BSM students. We decided to meet up at the Chora Church. This Byzantine church dates from the 5th century, but its main attraction are the mosaics and frescoes that date back to the 14th century - and they are breathtaking! The only issue is that the Chora church is far out from the city center, and hard to get to. Fortunately for me, the receptionist at my hostel was really nice and wrote down directions for me. These involved taking the tram to a bus depot (easy) and then taking a bus from there (not so easy). The bus depot was chaotic - to put it lightly. After a little searching, I found what I thought was the right bus, but the sign used abbreviations, so I couldn't be sure. Fortunately there was a man standing outside that spoke English, so I showed him the piece of paper with my directions and he confirmed it was the right bus.

In order to keep telling this story, I need to tell you how the public transit system works in Istanbul. There are two ways to pay: you can buy a small token called a jeton or you can use a prepaid Istanbulkart that you swipe. Since I hadn't bought an Istanbulkart yet, I was planning on paying with jeton. There are also private and public run buses. The public accept both forms of payment, but the private only accept the card. Of course, the bus I was trying to take was private and couldn't accept my jeton. Here is where I got lucky that the Turkish people are really nice. The man I met outside the bus had gone on ahead of me and spoken to the driver in Turkish to explain where I was going. When I tried to hand him my jeton, he waived "no" and pantomimed swiping a card (of course he was speaking in Turkish this entire time), so I was shook my head to tell him I didn't have an Istanbulkart. He responded by yelling something toward the back of the bus and a woman near the front handed me her card, and I paid her the equivalent of the fare. After this, the driver made gestures toward the door and the seat right behind him, which I interpreted to mean he would tell me when to get off.

The bus ride was no less chaotic than the bus depot had been. At each stop at least one person would yell a question to the driver who would either answer with a gesture inviting them on the bus or a clear "no." As the bus got more packed, I eventually gave up my seat to an elderly woman and ended up standing by the door. As we were approaching my stop, the driver slowed down and pointed down which street I should walk. Like I said, the Turkish people are really nice. At that point I just had to follow the signs to the Chora Church; however, in the struggle to get there, I arrived 25 minutes after the appointed rendezvous. I did not see Sean or Rachel, who I was planning on meeting, so two scenarios formed in my mind. Quite possibly they had gone in without me because I was so late (and I wouldn't have blamed them), or given my experience, it was also possible that they were not there yet. So I did the only sensible thing: I bought a bagel-esque ring of bread covered in sesame seeds and waited by the exit. Conveniently, one had to pass the exit to get to the entrance so I knew that I would either meet up with them when they emerged from the church in the first scenario and we could go on our way, or I could intercept them on their way to the entrance in the second scenario.

Since I already mentioned that the mosaics were stunningly beautiful, a smart reader will have surmised that the second scenario is what had happened (didn't know you would have to be using your detective skills, now did you). After viewing the church, we walked a little ways to the Theodosian walls. According to Wikipedia, the Theodosian walls were built during the early part of the 5th century, are 12 meters high, and 5 meters thick. They were open to climb up, so Sean and I went up. They afforded a great view of the city! Also while we were up there, we heard the call to prayer from the nearby mosques (yes that is meant to be plural). It was really cool to hear that while up on the wall. We eventually made our way back to the city center, pausing so I could buy an Istanbulkart.

It was mid-afternoon by this point, so we were getting quite hungry. We decided to check out a small restaurant across from the bus depot - and that was an excellent life decision. The food was cheap, amazing, and plentiful! It was sooooo good! After lunch we decided to check out the two bazaars - the Spice Bazaar (near where we were) and the Grand Bazaar (closer to the old town). We spent a lot of time wondering through what we thought were the bazaars until we realized that it was a national holiday in Turkey, so the bazaars were closed for the day and we were just walking through the street markets that surround the bazaars. These were still really cool, but we felt a bit foolish. In between seeing what we thought was the Spice Bazaar and the Grand Bazaar, we decided to get some Turkish delight and baklava. Both were, of course, delicious. When we finally realized our mistake outside of the Grand Bazaar, it was too late to do anything else touristy that day.

Sean and Rachel decided to move to my hostel because it was so close to everything and Taksim was at least 40 minutes away. In lieu of anything else to do, I went with them to get their stuff and explored Taksim a little bit. Taksim has a really cool, modern pedestrian thoroughfare with stores and restaurants that were beautifully lit up, and there were decorations hung over the street. These decorations included snowflakes, which we thought was a bit premature in October. Since we (well Sean and Rachel) were a little sick of eating kebab, we found an Italian restaurant for dinner. We called it an early night so we could get up early and see all the main tourist sights the next day.

Since I realize this post is already quite long, I will truncate the sightseeing portion. We saw the Hagia Sophia, the Basilica Cistern (really big, underground water storage system dating from the 6th century), and Topkapi Palace (home of the Ottoman Sultans). We were going to see the Blue Mosque, but as we were standing in line they closed it down for the midday prayer. Everything was amazing and beautiful. After all of that, we decided to pop on over the Asian side for dinner. In case you were not aware, Istanbul is divide by the Bosphorus (a strait connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara). One side lies in Europe (this is the side with all the main tourist attractions) and on the other side lies in Asia. Since the sun went down around 5 and no sights were open past then, we thought it was a great opportunity to visit Asia. We had a good dinner of traditional Turkish food and wondered around for a while before ferrying back to Europe.

We started Monday off by going to the Blue Mosque (again, gorgeous) and then we went to the Grand Bazaar (for real this time!). We may have gotten a little lost in there - but we managed to find an exit (being math majors, our solution was to head in a single direction until we ran into a wall then follow that to an exit). Of course, we managed to emerge on the exact opposite side of the Grand Bazaar as where we started. Then it was lunch time, so we decided to go back to that amazing restaurant we had found after visiting the Chora Church. After that, Sean had to catch his flight back to Istanbul, but Rachel and I visited the Spice Bazaar (again, for real this time). We also explored the area around the Spice Bazaar and managed to stumble upon the main post office, which has been turned into a museum. We didn't go in, but it was an impressive building. We also worked our way over a park surrounding Topkapi Palace. Rachel wanted to head back to the hostel, so I explored the park by myself. Then I had to face the reality of homework and headed back to the hostel as well.

The next day started early so that I could make it to the airport for my flight back to Budapest. There is one last thing that I would be remiss if I didn't mention it: there are stray cats EVERYWHERE in Istanbul. I mean everywhere - there is even a cat that has taken up residence in the Hagia Sophia! Anyway, there is so much more I could say about Istanbul. It is such an amazing city! However, I feel like I have given you more than enough to ponder at this point. Also, I promise pictures are coming. I just have to write a post about Krakow and sort through all the photos. Fortunately, two of my classes are cancelled this week, so I should have the time to do so.