Topkapi Palace

I haven't updated in a while, so I'll fill all you reading in on the stuff I've been doing the last week. As I said, we went to Topkapi palace on Monday. Topkapi palace was built in 1465 in the years following the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul in 1453 (by the way, today is the 555th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of the city, and the city is celebrating it through with fireworks and music). The Ottoman sultans decided to build the palace to be removed from the city, so he situated at the end of the Sultanahmet peninsula (see map). Obviously, the city has built around the palace, but the grounds still include dozens of acres of green grass including a park built alongside of it. Here's a picture of the palace model:


The Topkapi palace is structured around different courtyards. The outermost courtyard, which comprises of the stables and the gardens, is the most accessible to outsiders. As you move in from courtyard to courtyard, things start getting more and more restrictive. After the third gate, only the sultan and his close advisors are allowed in. Here's a picture of our guide Leslie Pierce, an Ottoman period historian from Princeton, guiding us through the third gate:



This most private section of the palace was called a harem in which only the sultan and a few other men could enter; harem in English has the connotation of a group of women devoted specifically to the sultan; in reality, the harem is a very private, isolated section which was only accessible by certain women. Women were allowed into the palace after some time but lived in a specifically designated area labeled, of course, the harem. The women of the harem were "protected" from the outside world by African eunuchs who lived right inside the harem entrance. Here is a picture of the entrance of the womens' harem, with the eunuchs' quarters on both sides:



The eunuchs could only go so far into the harem. After that point, the only male allowed in the harem was the sultan. He had a secret entrance from his own harem in the third courtyard, and even shared a bathroom with the queen mother, who was in charge of the women of the harem. This is the famous "living room" of the harem where the women hung out:


The rooms inside the harem were very elaborate and beautiful, and the decoration for the administration rooms was very ornate, but overall the palace was very bland in comparison to other European palaces I've visited. Interestingly, most of the fine art and detail went into mosques like the Blue Mosque and Sulemaniye because it was considered more appropriate to decorate public spaces. Another room in the palace:


The part of the palace I thought was most interesting was a special set of rooms in the third courtyard which housed relics of Islam, Christianity and Judaism obtained through Ottoman expansion into Egpyt. Among the things we saw were David's (as in David and Goliath) sword, Moses' rod (as in the one he parted the Red Sea with), the arm of John the Baptist, Muhammed's footprint and beard, and Jacob's saucepan. Here is Muhammed's sword and bow:



Obviously, most of us were very skeptical that all these objects had survived and were in the Sultan's private collection - I mean, Jacob's sauce pan... really? But Professor Shields' told us to take the objects as they were, not really to question their legitimacy but to accept that the Ottomans (and contemporary visitors) see these artifacts as the real deal. It was all very interesting.

But anyway, I'll wait to go into more of the stuff that I've done this week tomorrow - this post is long enough as it is. Here are some more pictures - enjoy.

The entrance to the administrative center of the empire:


A side view of the third courtyard overlooking the Bosphorous.


The dome inside the relics museum.

A Geography Lesson

I realized while I was talking to my mom on the marvelous free Internet phone service we like to call Skype that I was describing all these places to her (and you, whoever you are that is reading this) through words but had not really given a good image of the lay of the land. So I went onto Google Maps and created and labeled my own set of maps with places of interest to me and you that I have talked about in these blogs. The first image is a broader picture of Turkey so you can locate yourself (all pictures are from Google Maps - click on the picture to see it in full size):


As you can see, Turkey is divided into two sections: Thrace and Anatolia. The bulk of the country is in Anatolia, the Asian side. Istanbul proper is located in Thrace, the European side, though much of the city spreads to the Asian side as well. The Bosporus Straight, which connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Black Sea, separates the two sides of Istanbul. The Golden Horn, the small river-like inlet that winds its way on the left side of the map, separates the districts of Sultanahmet from Galata. Historically, Galata was the section of the city where the Europeans lived, while the Ottomans with their monuments and palaces inhabited Sultanahmet.

I live with my classmates in Galata, as indicated on the next map. The windy red line indicates the tram which we take us to Sultanahmet across the Galata Bridge. The major mosques and places of interest are indicated.

Here is a picture I've put up before taken from our apartment in Galata looking over at Sultanahmet - you should see most of the stuff from the picture labeled.


And finally, a picture of Beyoglu and its subsection Galata with corresponding labels:


The map images are from Google Maps, but I added the labels. Visit www.maps.google.com.

Weekend Roundup

So I'm finally getting around to writing this after several days of putting it off - we've been so busy, it's been hard to find time to just sit and relax. Here's a summary of what I've been doing:

Thursday we met the Medresesi Caferaga, an old Ottoman university turned art school that is right next to the Hagia Sophia. The room we had class in was a dorm room for students centuries ago. We talked about our first week, our blogs, then delved into the more intricate details of trying to figure out what it was that made the Ottoman Empire collapse.

Friday we went to the Covered Bazaar (the famous Grand Bazaar), or Kapali Carsi in Turkish. It is one of the largest covered bazaars in the world with more than 4000 shops and an estimated 400,000 visitors a day. The bazaar was not what I expected it to be - although it certainly was busy, it didn't have the same hustle-and-bustle atmosphere with weird smells and people yelling at you as the Spice Bazaar which is down the street - it reminded me more of an American mall, albeit 550 years old. Sellers offered objects as far ranging as fine gold and silver, Turkish carpets, tourist mementos, fake Lacoste and Polo shirts, antiques like Ottoman-era coins and lamps, sunglasses, crystalware, soccer jerseys, headscarves, and more. We went into Adnan and Hasan, a carpet seller who knows Sarah, our professor, and he went into great detail about the different types of carpet, the knots that go into each one, the different sizes and styles, the symbolism in each design, the regions different types of carpet come from, and more. It was really a good experience, and I might go by and buy a carpet myself before I leave. Here's a picture of us in the shop learning about Turkish carpets over tea:
After that, we went to the Mederesesi again, this time to visit with a calligrapher who explained his craft. He also drew our names in the Arabic script that looks more like art designs than a written language. The calligrapher said that it takes a good five years to learn the how to do calligraphy and a lifetime to really understand it.

Saturday night was our first real night experiencing Turkish nightlife - or at least what we could afford of it. Turkey is a Muslim country and thus there is some social pressure to tone down drinking here, so taxes on alcohol are very high. In addition, Turkey's parliament just passed another law saying that all alcohol must be kept in its original container - a serious blow to bars who keep their beer on tap. Nevertheless, what we saw of Turkish nightlife was impressive - Istaklal, a street just up the block from our apartment building, hosts dozens if not hundreds of bars, restaurants and clubs that keep going till six in the morning (from what I've heard). Turks have two drinks here: Efes, a local beer that has a monopoly on the market, and Raki, a licorish flavored drink that is mixed with water. I had a sip of raki and thought it was the most disgusting thing I had ever tasted, but Turks like it, so I guess that's all that matters. Anyway, we hit up a discoteque on Istaklal for a bit which played only techno, and then decided it was all too overwhelming and headed back home.

Saturday was a lazy day. I made my way back to the Grand Bazaar with Kevin and Clayton determined to get a good deal on a fake Lacoste shirt I had seen earlier. Unlike the salesmen in China, though, these vendors were a difficult bunch to haggle with. Some priced their shirts at $50 -- I wanted to get it at $8. And so the process began. I visited one shirt vendor after another (they are all on the same street, so it wasn't too difficult) and tried to get them to bring the price down. One man cussed me out when I told him I didn't want to pay $20 for a fake shirt, and others just said no to me when I told them my price. After more than an hour, I finally got a shirt for $10 - a bit above my price, but it was a decent shirt and the guy who sold it to me was nicer than most.

Today (Sunday) we went over to the Asian side to watch the Red Bull Flugtag - a kind of show where people build "flying devices" and run them off a large platform and see how far they get before they crash in the water. It really ended up being a show to see what would be the most spectacular crashes. Here are some pictures:


A look at the crowd - there were tons of ships out there, too.

And I guess that's all for this week - tomorrow I head to Topkapi palace, home to the sultans of the Ottoman Empire. More later!


P.S.

For those who watch Lost out there, look who I found on the side of a building in an ad for Turkish ice cream:

Scavenger Hunt

Yesterday we went on a scavenger hunt spanning two continents - still hasn't gotten old saying that. We met at the base of the Galata tower and Professor Shields gave us a list of things we had to get pictures of. The whole time that we were doing the hunt random people would come up to us and ask us what we were looking for, and then they took the time to look at our list and explain what was where. I was amazed by how nice people were. One restauranteur took us to the top of his building to show us a view of a palace we were looking for, and a British woman went down the list and translated all the stuff in Turkish we had to find. We first got pictures of the numerous orange juice sellers that abound throughout the city. They squeeze the oranges right in front of you and it only costs a lira. We also got pictures of various fruit from the fruit sellers. Then we went over to Sultanahmet, where we had to get pictures of the Hagia Sophia and Kaiser Wilhelm fountain. A lot of the stuff we couldn't find in our guidebooks or maps so we relied on people's advice for where to find them. It took us a good 45 minutes to figure out that we had walked past the Kaiser Wilhelm fountain twice before we noticed it. We went into the Topaki palace grounds for the first time, but we couldn't get into the actual palace without paying a fee. Instead I took a picture with this happy looking young man - the palace guard:

It's kind of like the Royal Guard in England. After that, we visited Suleymaniye mosque, a few tram stops away. We then proceeded to get lost in the endless market streets of Istanbul - hungry, thirsty, and without a clue about where we were, we were very miserable. We walked around for about 45 minutes before we found out where we were - here's a picture from where we were when we were lost in the hills of Istanbul.


After we photographed the last things on the European side, we took off for the Asian side. There we stopped by the train station, Hydrapasa. We got on a train (wile it was leaving, we saw a a vendor of simit (pretzel like bread) running to get onto get onto the moving train with a table full of simit and in the process dropping half its load - we all laughed) thinking it would take us to the ferry stop - it instead deposited us inland. We were ready to despair until Kelly recognized that the parking lot we were in was the grounds for the vegetable market we had been in the previous day. We completed the day in Asia with our last task - getting a ice cream cone. We made it back to the European side with an hour to go till the end of the task. It was a grueling, exhausting day, but the stories it gave us made it worth it in the end.

I leave you with this picture that I took - a dusk panorama shot from our terrace of Sultanahmet. Click on it for a better look.

Night Landscape

Picture from the terrace at night - thought it was cool. The Golden Horn is the river separating Galata from Sultanahmed, the historic district. On the left is the Hagia Sophia, on the right the Blue Mosque.

A trip to Asia

Today we all got on a ferry and crossed over to Asia. After we got over the fact that we were crossing from continent to continent in the span of twenty minutes (well, strike that, I'm still not over that), we sat and enjoyed the ride over. Here's a picture from the ferry looking back at another ferry with Sultanahmet in the background:

After that walked through thousands of people to the biweekly clothes and vegetable market. The markets were kind of overwhelming, a lot like what I saw in China. These markets were for Turks, though, so I feel like we got much more of an authentic Turkish experience out of it. We stopped at one stall with what looked like floating white circles in a bucket of water. Yekta told us they were artichoke hearts, eaten with lemons. They were actually pretty good:



After making our way through the markets, we got some rest at a local cafe and then headed back to them to buy vegetables for dinner. We then went back to Europe - and nope, it still hasn't gotten old saying that. Got a good view from the ferry of Galata - our neighborhood. Our apartment is near the base of the Galata tower on the left.



A look at the market:

First Impressions

Turkey is everything I wanted it to be. I don't think in all my travels that I have been more excited than I was coming into the country from Munich, and with all I've experienced since then it has only gotten better. The apartment and, more specifically the view, is perfect. The minarets and domes of Sultanahmet are amazing- I don't think I have ever seen a more incredible skyline than that. Going through the mosques and hearing and seeing Muslims at prayer and the calls to prayer was an intense experience in and of itself. The area is touristy and people can be nagging in their approaches at trying to convince you to buy something or eat somewhere - one guy persisted in asking me where I'm from, saying "you Japan?" , "you Greece", and "you Korea". I said no each time. I just can't believe I'm here.

I had an interesting conversation with Kevin and Zoe as we took a break from walking through the Istiklal street close to the apartment about national Turkish identity. From what we talked about, it seems like we're going to have some really interesting discussions throughout this trip.

Here are some pictures from the first couple of days:

The view from the airplane. (Click on the pictures to see a full resolution version)



The view from the apartment.



Blue Mosque





Blue Mosque at night:


Inside the Blue Mosque