Hamam mi? Tamam.

So now that it's quieted down somewhat here since my last post, I've been enjoying the culture and such. Ever since I found out I was returning to Turkey, I've been really looking forward to one thing: the hamams. I am a fan of the hamams. In Ankara, we'd go to these wonderful ancient little neighborhood hamams, somewhere in the order of 500-700 years old, filled with little old Turkish ladies (and younger Turkish women as well, but they were pretty popular among the septuagenarian crowd). For under 30 lira, I could get an amazing relaxing break, scrub, and massage, all in this gorgeous marble chamber with scalding-hot water and steam everywhere. It was fantastic.
In Istanbul though, there are tourist hamams, which cater to both Turks and foreigners. I'm sure there are neighborhood hamams, but they're not at all publicized, and I've no clue where they'd be. So, given that Istanbul in the summer is pretty darn hot and sticky, I figured I'd give a tourist hamam a try.
On my roommate's and the Internet's recommendation, I decided to try Çemberlitaş Hamamı, a hamam built by Sinan and right next to Sultanahmet. A friend of mine, one of my roommates, and two friends of my roommate came along as well, as hamams are quintessentially social experiences (that sounds confusing; there were 5 of us). We took the Light Rail to the hamam, which was handy, as it stops literally right in front of Cemberlitas. After a brief and surprisingly fruitless search for an ATM (seriously? We couldn't find an ATM in Sultanahmet??), we entered and paid the receptionist for the "Traditional Bath". It was definitely pricier than my Ankarali neighborhood hamams, but we got a student discount (being a student in Turkey is awesome; so many perks), so it was 35 YTL each. After that, we turned to the women's side and stripped down to our bathing togs and wraps (in hamams, women are traditionally nude, while apparently on the mens side men always keep their underwear/towels strategically on; in tourist hamams like Cemberlitas, some women choose to wear swimsuit bottoms--everyone is given a cotton wrap to stretch out on though), before entering the main part of the hamam. In the main hamam room, there's a huge heated marble slab in the middle, where you start your hamam experience by stretching out and sweating while chatting. It's not unlike a sauna. Around the walls are marble semienclosed chambers for secluded washing/rinsing, and open faucets/basins also for washing/rinsing. It's a decently large room, with a gorgeous vaulted ceiling with small globe-shaped glass windows that kind of looked like stars.
So, we hung out on the marble slab for probably half an hour, 45 minutes, just relaxing and chatting and steaming. After a bit, the bath attendants motioned that it was time for our scrubs. This is probably my favorite part of the hamam experience: hamam attendants are goood, and when they finish scrubbing you down it feels like you shed your old skin in favor of a brand new one. It is awesome. The ones at Cemberlitas had this pretty nifty soap method: they had a pillowcase in a dish of soapy water, and they'd open up the pillowcase, trap air inside it, then wring it out, forcing out cascades upon cascades of bubbles. I may need to try this with my own pillowcase some time. As the attendants scrub, they exfoliate, and scold you for not going to hamams more often (they're like Turkish versions of Norwegian Grandmothers). They really knead your muscles; I can't imagine getting a massage in addition to the scrub, but some people do-- I think my muscles would melt were they subjected to both a scrub and massage. Anyway, the attendants scrub all over, then take you to one of the secluded chambers to wash your hair. They left us there so we could rinse off a bit before going back to the marble slab to chill a bit more. It took a while for all of us to get scrubbed, as there were 5 of us, so I think we were in there almost 3 hours. After we were done, we rinsed off once more at one of the marble fountains, and then left. It's tradition to cool down after hamaming by sitting and having tea for another hour or so, but members of our party were pretty hungry, so we wandered off to find this amazing kofteci right in Sultanahmet (Kofte is kind of the Turkish version of meatballs, but more unhealthy), where we sat, ate, and people-watched before taking the Light Rail back to Kabatas. Cat, Abby and I decided to walk from Kabatas to Besiktas to catch a bus back to campus, so we set off and got distracted by a number of things. First, we wandered by the Basiktas Iskele, which was fortuitous, as we needed to fill up our Akbils (Akbils are Istanbul's version of Charlie Cards, but there are not so many top-up machines). From there, we got to the Besiktas district, where I showed Cat and Abby the DVD shops where I'd stocked up on bootleg Scrubs episodes and various movies; we spent a good 45 minutes going through the DVD selection of one of the shops and they both ended up with a decent amount of Turkish cinema to tide them over. After that, we finally got on a bus to Etiler, and got back to our dorm roughly 6 hours after we'd started out, exhausted but really clean.
It was just so nice to visit a hamam again, and I enjoyed the tourist hamam experience much more than I thought I would, although I still prefer the non-tourist ones back in Ankara. Cemberlitas was a really beautiful hamam, and I kind of wish I could have taken photos of the architecture. There are a few photos of the building at the hamam's website, which you should most definitely check out: Cemberlitas website

In other news, the court's still deliberating over the AKParti's fate, but folks are hedging their bets and starting to register new parties--one apparently is called the Hak Parti, wonder who's name they're playing off there. The Ergenekon case has been fascinating the last few days though; apparently this shadowy group has for 20 years been attempting to cultivate Turkish-Kurdish tensions to destabilize the country enough to semi-legitimize a military coup. It sounds crazy, and it may indeed be, but it's fascinating as it unfolds.
On that note,
-R

Bombs in Istanbul

Hey everyone,
So again, I'm absolutely fine; two bombs went off about 2 hours ago in Istanbul, and so far the papers are reporting 13 dead and over 70 injured. It's really not good; this may be (if I recall correctly) the worst attack in Turkey since the HSBC bombs by the PKK in the early 2000s.
On a personal note, the bombs went off in Gungoren, which is about 8 miles as the crow flies from my apartment, so I'm not really near the site, although clearly still closer than I'd prefer to be. I'll be keeping a lowish profile the next few days (although this does not seem to have targeted foreigners--it was in a working-class, non-touristy neighborhood); as I mentioned in an earlier post, the decision on whether to close the AK Parti is expected to be made this week, so political tensions will be high, and this bombing will only exacerbate things. Jenny White speculated in her post about the bombings that they may have been orchestrated by Ergenekon, which frankly makes more sense to me at the moment than the PKK. I suppose time will tell. But for more info:

Jenny White's post, with a concise synopsis: http://www.kamilpasha.com/2008/07/27/bomb/

Turkish Daily News' story, with details: http://turkishdailynews.com.tr/excontent.php?htmlcon=explosionistanbul.htm

BBC's coverage: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7527977.stm

It looks as though whoever did this timed the separate bombs so as to achieve maximum harm: by setting off a smaller "decoy" bomb and then detonating a larger, deadlier one once people had swarmed to help the victims of the first bomb. From the photos on TDN, it looks like some of the injured were children, which is just horrible. I really hope that morning brings more information to light, and hopeful prognoses for the 70+ injured people.

-R

Life in this fair city

So life here in Istanbul has been fairly quiet since my last post; I suppose that's what happens when I update more frequently than every 2 weeks. On Thursday, I was supposed to go to a hamam with friends, but I've been kind of sick most of this week, so we postponed that til next Monday or Tuesday. I've been looking forward to going to a hamam again ever since learning I was coming back to Turkey: it is such an amazing and relaxing experience, and you feel so clean afterward, as if you'd traded in your old skin for a fresh one. Mmmmmm, it's nice... I think we're going to a touristy one this week, and I'll be interested to see how the experience compares to my fondly-remembered neighborhood hamams back in Ankara. I've heard some of the tourist ones require you to wear swimsuits, which would be very different.

Friday was my roommate's birthday, so we celebrated with cake in our room before heading out dancing. I should say rather, before everyone else headed out dancing: I was a little light-headed/passing out-ish, which was like a party only not, so I just made an appearance at the cake part and went to bed, hoping to feel better enough this morning to go to Bursa for a daytrip with Robin and Abby. Sadly, I was not quite up to that, so I slept in this morning and will have to get to Bursa sometime later. I need to get there, as Bursa is famous for its bathtowels and I am currently towelless. Anyway, instead of day-tripping, I had a leisurely morning and then headed over to Cat's (the other Fulbrighter) in the afternoon, as she was also sick, for a convalescing party. It was pretty much exactly what I needed: we had a late lunch of healthy vegetarian food, did some studying while watching my sick-day movie of choice, Pride and Prejudice, and chatted/gossiped/planned/commiserated. She's trying to convince me to do a 10k run in late August (it's called The Human Race, which is reason enough to do it right there), but I am pretty sure I am not yet at that stage in my feeble attempts to become a legit jogger. We'll see.

After returning from Cat's, I did a little more studying before indulging myself with a little American comfort food by ordering in an asian chicken wrap and a smoothie. They were wonderful, even if I do feel a little bad for not having real Turkish cuisine. I do feel all better, so I think tomorrow will consist of studying at Starbucks with a roommate and a friend, and doing a little waterfront exploring as a study break. Then, next week will bring the hamam early in the week and inshallah a daytrip to Edirne next Saturday, where Sinan's greatest mosque is located.

Next week should be just fascinating here, politically: the judge in the case to shut down the AK Parti begins considering the case on Monday, which means the verdict could come as early as Tuesday or Wednesday. If the verdict is to close the party, as it is pretty widely expected to be, it will make my research kind of interesting, and at a wider level will make Turkey very interesting, as they'll have to call new elections and many current politicians will be ineligible for office. The AK Parti members will have to re-form as a new party, which may not be as popular as AKP, so it could be a real power shift. Also, given the whole Ergenekon affair (a shadowy group apparently dedicated to effecting a coup, in the name of Kemalism; lots of arrests of supposed members have been carried out in the past few weeks), civil unrest and even a coup might not be unexpected. Kind of makes me wish I was already in Ankara...

On that note, I'll leave off til next time,
-R

Turkish, the City, and Cappadocia

So I left off my last post with some of my always-entertaining visa woes. Thankfully, after a helpful visit to the Fulbright Istanbul office, I should be just fine on my current documentation until September, when I'll get my residence permit. I just can't really leave the country til then, which I suppose is fine, as I wasn't planning any extra-Turkey trips this summer.

Last week was pretty hectic for me: I had midterms on Thursday, for all my classes. After a lot of studying and even more procrastinating, I finished up with all of them by 4 on Thursday afternoon. After that, I headed right back to the dorm to pack: we had no classes last Friday, so I went on vacation. Thursday night I took the overnight bus to Cappadocia with 2 of my roommates (Robin and Abby), my fellow Fulbrighter (Cat), and Cat's cousin, who was in town visiting (Nicole). We all rushed to get our stuff packed and to the bus station to try and get an 8 or 8:30 bus to Goreme; this however didn't happen, as Istanbul is enormously huge and it ended up taking 2 hours to get to the bus station via city bus. In Ankara, I lived 5 minutes away from ASTI (their intercity bus station), so this was a bit shocking to me. Anyway, we got to the bus station by 9, figured we'd buy tickets, and head on our merry way to the land of fairy chimneys.
Except, when we got to the first bus company that travels to Cappadocia, we were told that they had no more tickets that night. Uh-oh. One of the bus company representatives told me to come with him to the other Cappadocia-going companies (after a semester of travelling in Turkey via bus, I am in my element, Turkish-wise, in bus stations and thus handled our travel plans), and we headed to 2 other sold-out busses before finally, luckily, getting the last 5 tickets on the 9:30 bus at a third company. We found out later, they actually only had 4 seats available, and kicked some poor guy off the bus to make room for us. Anyway, we did get on the bus, and off we went to Cappadocia.
We arrived in Goreme at about 8:30, after a short stop in Nevsehir (the regional capital, but really boring from a tourist perspective), and after setting off in the wrong direction managed to find our pension and have breakfast. They had French toast, which was so, so wonderful. After checking in and cleaning ourselves up a bit, we struck off to Goreme Open-Air Museum, which is just like 3 km outside of Goreme and a UNESCO world heritage site. I'd been through it the last time I was in Cappadocia, but it is really pretty so I didn't mind going again. When we got there, we found that our Bogazici student IDs got us free admission, which was excellent, as it's normally 12 YTL. We had a pretty leisurely and enjoyable time exploring the cave churches and monastic ephemera, and this time around I sucked it up and paid the extra cash to see the Dark Church, which was totally worth it. The frescoes inside were stunning. I'll post one of my photos below, the rest are on my Flickr account, in my Cappadocia set.


After that, we wandered back to town, stopping by a pottery workshop for one of my roommates before heading back to our pension for a late lunch and some lounge-time. The pension had milkshakes on the menu, and I was really excited as the Turks generally seem to abhor anything resembling a partially-frozen beverage, but I got my hopes up too soon: the 'milkshake' was warmer than refrigerator temperature and the consistency of chocolate milk. So, a word to the wise: don't order milkshakes in Turkey. My lunch was better: I had Cacik, a Turkish garlic-cucumber-minty yogurt dish, served with bread. It was phenomenally good, and I'm very excited because I may actually be able to make it in my current kitchenless situation. We spent the rest of the afternoon poolside (our pension had a pool; they also had a pet dalmatian mix that guides guests on valley hikes--they pretty much rock), before ambling out to a restaurant that we heard had good vegetarian food for dinner. After dinner, we headed to the bus station to buy our tickets back to Istanbul for Sunday night, as after our almost-not-getting-to-Cappadocia, we wanted to ensure we were going to get back ok. We started with the first company, and I was in the bargaining zone. The tickets were originally 55 YTL each, and I got them down to 35 YTL/person, or roughly $28, $30. The prices were so low they wouldn't go through their computer system, so they had to give us handwritten tickets instead. It was pretty nice to be able to almost-fluently use my Turkish there; again, bus station vocab and usage is my best vocab and usage.

The next day, we took an organized tour to a scenic overlook, Derinkuyu underground city, Ihlara Valley, Selime Monastery, the so-called "Star Wars rocks", Pigeon Valley, and an onyx workshop. We originally were going to just go to Derinkuyu and Ihlara using public transportation, but quickly figured out that we'd spend more money and more time commuting than if we joined the tour; and the tour had air conditioning and free lunch. So, we got on the tour minibus and headed out for our day of adventure. Derinkuyu was really neat: the city is 8 storeys deep in some parts, and kind of resembles a human ant colony. The first 2 floors were made by the Hittites, for siege protection in wartime and food storage in peacetimes, and later communities just expanded as they needed. It got the most use as a legit city in the early Christian era, when the Romans weren't so keen on Christianity and sent forces to take care of their uppity new-religion-having population. The people of Derinkuyu chilled in their underground city for several months at a time, with up to 10000 or 14,000 people living just in that city. The other major underground city in the region (there are actually hundreds, but most are just 1-2 storeys) was 8 or 9 km away, and they actually had a passageway connecting the 2. The whole thing was very well thought out and cleverly designed, with multiple blockable entrances, kitchens, a church, a religious instruction room, and just all kinds of passageways. Very fun to climb around in, if a bit low-ceilinged.
After Derinkuyu, we headed to Ihlara Valley, which is in the southeast of Cappadocia. To avoid this being the single longest post of this blog's lifespan, I'll just direct you to my photostream for descriptions of everywhere else we went on Saturday, as I captioned decently well there: flickr.com/photos/bonkano.
We had lunch in the Ihlara Valley, before heading to Selime, stopping en-route to see the infamous Star Wars rocks. They say parts of the movies were filmed in the region, which I can believe. The Selime Monastery was another fun, interesting, and clamberable formation, we spent a good deal of time there before heading to Pigeon Valley to see the pigeon houses and then to the onyx workshop, which was not so thrilling but thankfully low-pressure. After that long and full day, we did some swimming before having dinner at the pension and playing some tavla.
Sunday morning, we got up and set out to hike the Pigeon Valley to Uchisar, which is the name of both a fortress and the village around the fortress, about 3-4 km from Goreme. It was a great hike, full of all kinds of steep hills, and Nicole was nice enough to quiz the rest of us on Turkish verbs taking the accusative, indicative, and ablative particles, so it was a learning excursion. It felt so great to stretch my leg muscles going up and down the valley; I expected to be really sore after getting back but so far that hasn't been the case. Anyway, we got to Uchisar village and proceeded to hike up to the fortress; it's the tallest point in the region, so it was still quite a bit up. We climbed through the interior of the fortress to the very top, where we spent a good amount of time chatting and contemplating before running into a group of American students in the equivalent of our program, but in Ankara. They were pretty nice, and we exchanged thoughts on the language, our respective programs, and travelling in Turkey; sadly they're leaving before I arrive in Ankara. By and by, we hiked back down to the village and decided to grab lunch there before heading back to Goreme. Uchisar is the French tourist hangout in Cappadocia, so all the restaurant and pension signs were in French; I enjoyed that quite a bit, especially seeing some of the Turkish-French mistranslations. Back in Goreme, we had more pool time, played with the pension owner's new kitten, and had pie baked by the pension owners before packing up and heading out. We had a 7 pm bus out of Goreme, which got in to Istanbul at 6:30am Monday morning. Mindful of our fon times getting to the bus station in Istanbul, we asked if the bus company had a shuttle into the city, which they did, so we took that. They failed to mention, though, that the shuttle wouldn't be leaving the bus station til 8am, after the next bus from Goreme arrived. The shuttle took us downtown, where we transferred to an Etiler-bound bus and arrived at the dorms at 8:45, just enough time to shower, drop our stuff off, check email, and be an hour late to class.
It was a pretty fantastic trip; 5 people is a little large a group to travel with, but it did help me bargain down our bus tickets, so I'm not complaining too much. I had a great time relaxing, and a better time exploring the parts of Cappadocia I missed the last time I was there.
It's been a decently quiet week since Monday; I've pretty much been immersed in class and homework. Tuesday my class went to the Kadikoy pazar with my TA; it was fun, and overwhelming, and crowded, as pazars are. Wednesday one of my professors took us out for ice cream at the swanky ice cream chain in Etiler, which was awesome. One of the girls in my class found a large chunk of glass in her ice cream, which was not so awesome, but the manager was wonderfully apologetic and gave us all free Turkish coffees, which was nice. My professor read all our coffee grounds for us after we finished our coffee; apparently there is a guy who will become a larger part of my life, and apparently I bring good luck. We'll see about that.
On that note, I'm out til my next blog post, which hopefully will be sooner than in 2 weeks, like the gap between this and my last post.
-R

A lot going on in Istanbul today...

If you didn't hear yet, the American consulate in Istanbul was attacked earlier today. 3 gunmen apparently killed 3 policemen/security forces before being killed themselves. It seems like an isolated incident at the moment, but the latest BBC update (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7498772.stm) has linked the attack to the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders Front, or IBDA-C in Turkish, which is linked with al-Qaeda. Time will tell, I'm sure, but it's interesting, as IBDA-C doesn't seem to have been so active for a while now.
Bogazici's campus is nowhere near the consulate, so I've been almost totally unaffected by the attack (really, folks). So while I'll be probably a little more cognizant of my personal safety, there's not much cause to worry.

...at least from that. I'm having some fun times coordinating my residence permit, and apparently may have gotten the wrong kind of visa (but maybe not), which is a bit stressful as I'm required to get my residence permit by late next week, and an essential document for my residence permit application is in Ankara. So, next week I may be dropping in to Ankara for a day, and if I can't get my residence permit in time/have the wrong visa/anything else goes wrong, I'll be heading to the EU to reapply for a visa at a Turkish consulate. I'd really prefer not to do that, so the next few days are going to be a flurry of activity for me.

Hope you-all are doing fabulously,
-R

slowly becoming an Istanbullu...

I figured I'd best update this to keep up with my flickr account, which is more up-to-date than I think it ever has been. Istanbul continues to be hot, sticky, and humid; the forecast for the next 10 days is roughly 88 and sunny, with nary a chance of precipitation in sight. I would absolutely love a good thunderstorm about now.
My classes continue to go pretty darn well; I think I still speak at maybe a kindergarten level, but at least I can write and read decently. Inshallah by the end of the year I'll be much closer to fluent. Either that or I will only speak in a sort of English-Turkish pidgin...
As part of the program I'm in for the summer, we have weekly lectures in various Turkish-related topics. Our first one was on pop-culture Orientalism, and it was just fascinating. If I didn't already want to study foreign relations, I could definitely see studying popular Orientalism--the imagery is both gorgeous and fun, and it gives a lot of insights to identity and perceptions. The second one was on an Ottoman artist, which wasn't quite my preferred subject, but I still learned quite a bit, which was nice.
This past weekend, I headed to Ortaköy with my roommate Abby, to do some shopping and exploring. Ortaköy has a Saturday bazaar which is reputed to have all the non-food-pazar-stuff you'd ever want at real, not-ridiculous-Grand-Bazaar prices. I know full well that one should never actually buy thıngs at the Grand Bazaar, so this seemed like my kind of pazar. When we got to Ortaköy (after taking the ridiculously scenic route known as 'getting lost in Sinanpaşa'), we didn't quite believe there was a pazar there; the streets did not seem to lead to any sort of large open area in which to host large numbers of random vendors. Then we walked to the waterfront, where we found that the Ortaköy pazar is really more of a street market, like the Marketfest vendors, for those of you reading from Minnesota. They were laid out in long lines along the side streets and alleys all around the waterfront, surrounded by ritzy dining establishments, the local Friday mosque, the synagogue (I kid you not, Ortaköy has a synagogue. It's crazy), and the Istanbul Radisson (if you have a large accommodation budget and want to stay away from the tourist trap that is Sultanahmet, the Radisson would probably be a good choice, fwiw). While it was a little disconcerting to see the restaurants' entryway-ads for 25-lıra meals that I would normally pay 5 for by campus, the prices of the pazar goods were actually relatively reasonable, and I was able to get a few decent deals. I picked up a few pairs of 1 ytl earrings, as well as a headband-ish thing and a print of an early-20th-century German travel poster featuring Istanbul. I don't read German, but I think the print's title, 'Orientalische Eisenbahnen,' means 'Oriental Express.' After spending several hours meticulously going through every vendor's wares, Abby and I stopped at Mado. a tony Turkish ice cream chain, for some refreshment. Abby's ice cream looked good, but my chocolate mılkshake was more like chocolate milk, and not really worth the 7 ytl. Oh well. I guess I'll know in the future, stick with the real ice cream.
On Sunday, I planned to go for a run with Istanbul's branch of the Hash House Harriers, an expat running club. I was so motivated, and set off for the meeting place...only to get horribly lost and walk through the city for an hour and a half. So I still got my exercise in, but not quite in the way I might've preferred; I'll try again to find the HHHers when they hold their next run in a few weeks.

This is getting ridiculously long, so I'll close with a few thoughts:
-Every single night, at 9:30 or 10:30ish, someone sets off large amounts of fıreworks in the neighborhood. I have no idea why.
-I really love Turkish cuisine, but everything is cooked in soooo much oil; I would be ridiculously happy with some grilled vegetables or lean chicken breast about now
-The politics here have been really interesting: several dozen verrry high-ranking/important people were detained last week and are alleged to be part of a shadowy group known as "Ergenekon," which supposedly is trying to take down the current government. At the same time, the current ruling political party was in court last week as well, defending itself from charges of failing to protect/harming the secularism of the Turkish state. If they're found guilty, the party will be banned, as will its leaders, and new elections will most likely be called. Fun times.

-R