Travels: Measures of Tourist-itude

I have no idea how I'm going to catch up blogging. I want to write about Paris and Istanbul even though I've been back from Poland too. And I have yet to upload photos from Istanbul to facebook. 

I found that in Istanbul, you can judge how touristy a place is by two factors: the quality of its bathroom and the admission price.

Best bathroom: Topkapi Palace gift shop. The best part was that it's in the gift shop. since it's not inside the palace, you can go without buying a 20 lira ($13 or 10 euro) admission ticket.

My couchsurfing host and I went to a kebab shop on a side street off Istikal Avenue which had a squat toilet. This didn't surprise me since it was an entirely non-touristy kebab shop.

I was surprised by the squat toilet at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum because I thought it was popular tourist spot. Well, after going to the museum, I realized it wasn't THAT popular... Or maybe I didn't find the one for tourists in the exhibition wings. This was in building which has the museum's offices.

Topkapi Palace: 20 lira. (I didn't go.)
Hagia Sophia: 20 lira. (It's now a museum, not a place of worship, so they charge substantial admission.)
Istanbul Archaeology Museum: 10 lira.

Oh in Turkey they don't do student discounts either.


Oh yes, some photos of things I had only seen in photos before going on this amazing trip:

The famous Deesis mosaic in Hagia Sophia

Alexander the Great, first guy on the left, though not the guy in this sarcophagus.

Very sad women and some gawking tourists.

Travels: Origins

I was also frequently greeted with "kunichiwa". Eventually I wasn't bothered so much by being misidentified as Japanese because they are definitely the most common Asian tourists in Istanbul. There were some Koreans and very few Chinese. Statistically they'd have a higher chance of guessing the correct nationality, I suppose. It didn't change the fact that I got unwanted attention, regardless of the language.

One evening a Turkish friend and I went to a restaurant where the maitre d'expressed surprise that I was from America. At least that's what I think he meant. I heard my Turkish friend tell him "Amerika", probably saying where I was from. But then he looked at me and waved his hand over his face, drawing attention to my face as if to double check that I really was from America. 

During my whole time away from the US, I've noticed just the racial diversity in the US is an anomaly compared to many other countries. In Denmark, for example, the earliest immigrants only arrived in the 1960s. The country is still struggling to include non ethnic Danes in the country. But in the US we know that there are many Americans who aren't white. However, it seems that abroad, people don't realize this reality so much. To people I've met abroad, I hope that our friendship has shown you what America is like apart from the movies and TV.

Travels: Not so wonderful thing about Istanbul

I had some warning that traveling alone in Istanbul may be more difficult than doing the same in Spain. My Rough Guide to Europe had the following in the Culture and Etiquette section on Turkey:

Single female travelers may experience some harassment. A common approach is being stopped to answer a quick question. Be aware that a quick question is never a quick question and you could find yourself embroiled in a desperate attempt to solicit your phone number or arrange a dinner date. 

I wasn't sure if I would encounter the described harassment in Istanbul since it is more liberal than elsewhere in Turkey. In fact, I thought it would be rare because I find that cosmopolitan cities seem to have more with each other than smaller towns in the same country. I also thought that because I'm not white or blonde, that

Unfortunately, I was harassed a lot in Istanbul. Their tactics were just as described in my guidebook. As I walked by, the most common conversation opener was "Where are you from", which was often repeated if I ignored them. Some of them would say something about the sights near us like "Oh you are visiting Aya Sofya". But I did ignore them and just kept walking.

I'm not sure what their intentions were or where the conversation would lead if I even made eye contact. I never responded to their calls. I just kept walking. I suppose some would eventually try to sell me something. Or that's what I hope because that it gives them a reason to me, for the lira in my pocket. But according to The Rough Guide, it sounds like some of them want to have dinner with a random non-Turkish tourist woman.

These "friendly" men were in particularly high concentration at the square between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, middle-aged men just hanging around the square while tourists criss-crossed in front of them. This only happened when I was by myself in the historic quarter of the city where the main tourist attractions were: Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia. This didn't happen to me when I was elsewhere in the city that were less touristy and I was accompanied by a Turkish friend. I don't know if it was because I was alone or because I was in a particular part of the city.

I can tolerate friendly haggling with a souvenir T-shirt vendor but I became uncomfortable when he started to say he broke up with his girlfriend "yesterday." And proceeded to have me stay for a cup of tea with him at his stall. I paid for two t-shirts and practically ran away.

The harassment was enough to make me really cranky and suspicious of men walking my way on the sidewalk. I know that people will tell me that that's just the way (a certain) Turkish men and foreign women interact, I'm a tourist, I was alone, blah blah. But none of those circumstances is an excuse. This behavior gives me the creeps. It rubs me the wrong way. It's just not an appropriate way to treat women.

But my time in Istanbul also included many fond memories such as -- like I recalled in a postcard to a friend -- having tea on the top of a parking lot overlooking the city and the Bosphorus glittering in the evening sun. That moment made me want to stay in Istanbul forever.

Unphotographable Travels: Istanbul from above

My flight left Istanbul at 11pm and gave me the most beautiful take-off view of any city I've seen from the air. I saw lights outlining the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn and the bridges that span them. Ships dotted the black waters in the waterway connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. It looked like a game of battleship.

In the distance was an intense thunderstorm. I saw lightning pierce through clouds. It looked just like photos I had seen, long lightning bolts that lit up the gray clouds. Oddly, I couldn't hear the thunder from inside the plane, just the hum of the engines. Fortunately our plane wasn't in the storm. The sky was clear around us, allowing me to see the yellow lights on the ground and the white lightning in the clouds.

The airport was on the Asia side of Istanbul so we crossed into Europe. Then the darkness surrounded us as we flew over Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland before landing in Copenhagen.

Travels: Cities

At the beginning of the semester I went to an English class called Literature of the City. I ended up dropping the class but during the first session of the class we had an interesting discussion about cities. The professor asked how many people grew up in cities. A few. And how many want to live in a cities. A lot.

I've said to many people I've met through my travels that I love cities. Istanbul was a city in all the ways that I love cities. It was a city of contrasts. The atmosphere of one neighborhood was very different from another neighborhood. By myself I went to the European side south of the Golden Horn. It's the old part of the city where the old historic sights and where most visitors are. I also went to neighborhoods with a distinctly European feel, historic European quarter and the modern European. 

Paris is a great European city, perhaps The greatest European city. I was in Paris a few days before going to Istanbul. But unlike Istanbul, I feel like I only saw central Paris. It felt fake to me because I saw the parts of the city mostly for tourists even though the buildings are original buildings, not reconstructions. I didn't get the feeling that real, average Parisians lived here. It was all palaces, Haussman-design apartments, and manicured gardens. Maybe Paris had become too famous that I could only see it as a series of postcard-worthy monuments.

Travels: You Know You're not in a Christian-majority country when...

One of the funny things about China in recent years is the arrival of Christmas as a most commercialized and  generally good-cheer consumerist holiday. People living in countries with a Christian tradition know Christmas as a once-a-year holiday on December 25th. The Christmas merchandise goes on sale on the 26th and you shouldn't have your Christmas tree up a couple weeks past New Year. But most people in China know Christmas as a time of general celebrating and shopping so the date isn't so important. In China it's not uncommon to see images of Santa Claus when it's not the holiday season.

I was delighted to find similarly out-of-season Santa Claus in Istanbul! Istiklal street was the main road of the historic European-influenced district. It's across the Golden Horn from the historic Ottoman district. It's now a very crowded and lively pedestrian shopping street. 

Above the street were these lights.