Turkey Travels

When I was nineteen I traveled to Istanbul by overnight train from Salonika, Greece with several college friends. I remember the train ride as being creepy, the city in dark tones, a few amazing buildings, and the Grand Bazaar as being loud, confusing, and filled with hawkish leather merchants. So with not great expectations, more than forty years later, I went again. I LOVE Istanbul.

Immediate impressions were that it is spotlessly clean, friendly, easy to navigate, wonderful public transportation, inexpensive, colorful, lively, and very Western. And the food is delicious. People were wonderfully helpful and interesting. The tourist area was full of tourist buses with people from China, Korea, Japan, Spain, Italy, and the US. It appeared that few people, other than wonderfully adventurous students, traveled on their own to Turkey. But Turkey is a very easy country to navigate on your own.

I had just read a revealing book by Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk on Istanbul. He talks about the cloak of melancholy that all Istanbullus wear, the feeling that their once great city, the center of civilization, peaked in 1453 with the Fall of Constantinople, and that they can never achieve those heights again. The Byzantines disappeared and the Ottomans never achieved as much. I asked several people if they had read the book, and how they felt. All agreed with Pamuk. You can feel this tension in the city. This mix of Christian and Muslim. Five times a day loudly recorded prayers are broadcast from the city’s mosques reminding Muslims to pray. While 98 % of Turks identify themselves as Muslims, I suspect, after reading Pamuk’s book, and observing the Turks that the number practicing their faith is far smaller. At the same time the Turks are quietly respectful of the importance of the country’s Christian heritage and the amazing buildings and art resulting from this connection. (I was surprised at the number of Turks who asked us if we visited Meryemana, Mary the Mother of Jesus’ home until her assumption into heaven and a popular pilgrimage site. I had no idea it was near Ephesus.)

There are fifteen million residents in Istanbul. It is an immense city situated on hills facing the Bosphorus Strait which we cruised by public ferry, a highlight of our trip. We had Rick Steves’ Istanbul guidebook, saw all the required sites, wandered the streets, enjoyed the delicious food, and soaked in the atmosphere. Highlights were Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, the Grand Bazaar, the Mosque of Suleyman the Magnificent, the Underground Cistern, the Chora Church Museum, the Spice Market, a Turkish bath, and a non-fat no-foam latte from Starbuck’s. (Actually Gloria Jean’s, from Australia, is better!) There are more than a week’s worth of sites and experiences to enjoy in Istanbul at a very reasonable cost. (See my “Itinerary” post.)
(Olives in Spice Market)

From Istanbul we flew to Izmir and bused to Selcuk to see the Ancient Greek ruins of Ephesus, which felt very humbling. We had fabulous weather.
(Ephesus public toilets)
(Ephesus Library of Celsus))

(Rebecca in Roman Theater)

(Storks nesting outside our hotel room)

Two days later we took a public bus to Pamukkale to see the bizarre geological formations of cascading hot mineral springs. Then we traveled to Konya, the center of Sufism and the home of the Whirling Dervishes founded by the poet Mevlana Rumi in the 13th Century, to visit the Mevlana Monastery. This city has more mosques per capita than any other city in Turkey. We noticed that with the exception of one other woman, we were the only women not wearing headscarves or burkas.
(Pamukkale)

From Konya we took the bus to Cappadocia a surrealistic landscape of weird geological formations caused by wind and water erosion of volcanic material. We spent three days visiting underground cities, monasteries, and hiking. Cappadocia is one of the most amazing places I’ve ever seen.
(Cappadocia view)

(Staci in Valley of Love.  Can you see why it is called this?)

From Cappadocia we headed back to Armenia by overnight train to Kars, a journey of 19 hours. A new experience was trying to use a Turkish toilet (squat) on a rocking bumping train.

I had so many “aha” moments on this trip. Remember Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians or the biblical mentions of the Cappadocians? It just felt so strange and humbling to be walking in these ancient areas and reflecting on all the changes that have occurred, and wondering if we’ve really improved the world. You can’t help but feel that the answer is in many ways yes, and in many ways no.