General Impressions
To begin, yes, as I could have predicted but didn’t want to admit, I indeed failed to keep my promise of posting at least two times a week while in Turkey. It was quite the pathetic attempt by me, with only two posts the entire trip. However, I will now, not only as a penance, but also in the name of not wanting to be in Bremen right now, begin a retrospective look on my trip to Turkey. I hope that this will actually be better than what two posts a week could have been, so maybe it’s good that I did not fulfill my promise (?).
Orhan Pamuk, a Nobel Prize winning author (for what that’s worth), wrote a novel published in 2005 called “Istanbul: Memories of a City.” (But he’s maybe most famous for “My Name is Red” which is really pretty good, and also a great purview into the life of miniaturists in the Ottoman Empire.) I was given this (previous) book when I first arrived at Adil’s home in Bursa, a city about two hours south of Istanbul, and Turkey’s third or fourth largest city. “Istanbul: Memories of a City” is enjoyable so far; by mixing and fusing a personal memoir with Istanbul’s history, it’s unique. Moreover, it gives an interesting introduction to the city: “To be caught up in the beauties of the city and the Bosphorus is to be reminded of the difference between one’s own wretched life and the happy triumphs of the past.” At least that’s one face of Istanbul, and that itself is again only one face of Turkey, which can’t really be summed up very well in only one sentence (unless that sentence is “You should really visit Turkey”). Istanbul I think is not so melancholy as perhaps Pamuk makes it out to be in his childhood - the glories of the Ottoman Empire, of I guess all the traditional empires of the past don’t seem to oppress the present anymore. Ideas of power and what is necessary to have a good life are quite different, to be totally facile. But nonetheless, some of the old Ottoman (and Byzantine and even other civilizations before that) structures are delapidated and sadly neglected, and act as melancholy remnants of a more prosperous time, but I suppose this is also part of the beauty of the city as well. This being not entirely visual beauty, because Istanbul is not the most eye-appealing city I’ve ever been to, but I don’t think that’s why one would visit in the first place.
I felt really at home in Turkey. I guess this is for a number of reasons: obviously, since Adil was there to pretty much make the vacation as good as it could be for me, and since his family was EXTREMELY welcoming, it was easy to feel at ease there. But another reason was also that parts of it really reminded me of Saudi Arabia. The mosques, the calls to prayer, the slower pace of life, the relentless tea drinking all were quite familiar to me, and it was nice: almost like returning to the place I grew up without the emotional baggage of actually being there. But, as Turkey and Istanbul are known for, there were also bits of western culture thrown in. Topkapi Palace was full of French influences, and (perhaps a bad - or simply telling - example of “the West”) women walked around in skimpy strips of cloth.
Turkey is just so FULL! Of everything. Workers can hardly dig a new line for the subway there without having to abort their efforts because they’ve run into more Byzantine or Phoenecian or Neolithic ruins. It’s crazy. I saw a tree that was 600 years old. Madness. I ate some of the best fresh produce I’ve ever tasted there. Delicious! Turkey was never on my list of places to visit, and I have no idea why.
I’ve got lots more to say about Adil’s family, dynamiting, forest fires, sea cucumbers, and, of course, the food. There will be more posts soon!
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You can sort of get a feel for things.