April 9-21

I had a pretty eventful last week before spring break. So here are some highlights:

April 9 was my friend Glenn's birthday. His 21st. We celebrated, but it was Monday night, so my night at least was restricted to Nexus for a few hours and then home. But Yunus' 21st birthday was on Friday, April 13, and Glenn and he decided to celebrate both on that fateful day.

Obviously a 21st birthday doesn't mean much to an American who has been "legal" to drink since they left the country a few months ago, but with enough Americans around it can feel pretty special. It's all about the mentality. Plus, as Yunus said, turning 21 abroad isn't the end of the world; you can party hard on your birthday, and celebrate again when you return to the US.

Anyways, the night started with a bunch of us going to our usual outdoor drinking spot, the lookout on Boğaziçi's South Campus, which offers a 230° view of the Bosporus and Istanbul, both the Asian and European sides. In addition to several of us on the Duke program, I.e. Emily, Isabelle, Sarah, etc, we were with many who were not. Besides Yunus and Glenn, we had Alex, Becca, Julie and Paige. All of these people played a small role later in the night.

But the frat star of the evening, the champ of all champs, was Rob, Glenn's dad. Rob had flown in a little while earlier to  visit his son and was down to party. I met him on the lookout. It was a little odd at first; I didn't know his connection to this group and, since he is old enough to be Glenn's father (fancy that!), an unexplained appearance might have been awkward. But my reservations were put to rest quickly with introductions and some brief chatting. More on Rob in a bit.

When it came time to head downtown, it was about 10:30. We took the 559C to Taksim and wandered our way down Istiklal Cd to a place called Ritim Roof, on Balik Pasaj off of Istiklal (near Nevizade). It was a calm enough night, nothing too crazy going on as of yet. Ritim Roof has two adjacent parts of a building, each one only accessible from the street. We went up to the roof of the first one, which had a set of tables where we sat and ordered drinks. I didnt order anything, as I had brought a small water bottle of Smirnoff to help me save money in the night.

After the water bottle, and many others' drinks, was empty, we ventured to the other side of Ritim Roof, who's top floor contained the dance floor.

At this point, Rob seemed to feel a tad out of place, on a dance floor with a bunch of 21-year-olds. So he bought a few of us some shots. Being from Texas, his go-to was Tequila, or Tekila in Turkish. Yunus, Glenn, Rob and I toasted and tossed back our shots.

No pain. No recoil. No visceral facial reactions. This was watered down tekila. Uncool. We got another round, on Rob, then headed out.

We crossed to the other side of Nevizade to Balo Sokak via Istiklal, and turned right to find some bars just around the corner from the Mystic Simurgh, where Sophie stayed during her visit here last month. Emily insisted we go here, for the Honono.

On Emily's say so, I dropped 10TL on a drink called Honono, or something like that. It arrived in a glass with a thick, thick base. Totally clear, and apparently flat. Emily demonstrated what to do - put a napkin over the mouth of the glass, wind up and slam the glass as hard as possible onto the table. Then drink.

It was incredible. The mere act of smashing the glass on the table transforms the liquid in the glass into pure bubbles, and the drink flows down your throat in a matter of seconds. The night had begun.

That was the only money I spent that night. Everything else was on Rob. Not what I asked for, mind you. I actually offered to buy Rob some drinks in return for his generosity of endless tekila shots. The interaction went something like this, although most likely with less coherency:

Me: "Rob, you've been so generous tonight, please let me buy you a drink. I know it won't even things out but I want to show my appreciation."
Rob: "You know, that's a great idea. But what about this? How about I buy you a shot instead?"
Me: "Um... That's the exact opposite of how this interaction was intended to go down."
Rob: "Don't worry about it. You're a student, I work. I have more money than you do."

He went away to buy us Tekila shots. Well, us and Yunus, as Yunus was getting one from every round due to the birthday thing.

The shot didn't go down well, it was somewhere in the double digits for how much I'd had that night. I thought I might vomit, so I wandered outside to get some water, breathing heavily to keep myself together. The water did wonders, and I went back to the bar.

Immediately--
Rob: "Marshall! How about another shot?"
Me: "In a minute, maybe."
Rob: "What are you, a pussy?"
Me: "Well screw you, I'll take that shot!"

Here things started to get blurry, and the night dragged on into the wee hours of the morning. I know I went in a cab back with Paige, Alex, Becca, and possibly Isabelle but I can never be sure of these things, I was pretty gone.

Apparently the decision was made at some point to not go back to the superdorm, because Becca, Paige and I ended up at Alex's apartment. We crashed on various couches and I ended up on the floor, wrapped in a curtain for a blanket. I fell asleep there around 6 or 6:30am. The sun was coming up.

About noon we all awoke. I was still drunk. I continued to be drunk until my hangover set in around 4pm. Yunus had a similar experience, and we had some great drunken conversations around 2 o'clock. It was a successful evening by all accounts. And Rob is a legend, the man who outdrank his son at his son's 21st birthday party.

***

No one went out Saturday night. And I mean no one. The aftermath of the night before left everyone in a sluggish state. Around 10pm, though, Emily texted me with an invitation to Easter Midnight Mass.

Most of the world had celebrated Easter the week before, but Emily is Albanian Orthodox (basically Greek Orthodox), and they celebrate Easter a week after the Catholics. So Midnight Mass had arrived, and we were in Istanbul, the location of the Patriarchy, which is the de facto head of the Orthodox church, and in turn the Patriarch, an arch bishop considered "first among equals," but with the prestige that is the closest thing the Orthodox church has to a Pope.

The building is in Fetih (I think), on the original peninsula of Istanbul. The Patriarchy used to be at Hağia Sofia, but when Fetih conquered the city in 1453 the Patriarchy was ousted in favor of turning the church into a mosque, and they had to move. Sometime in the 1600s they moved to their current location, in a Greek-esque building tucked away from the main street.

Emily got us candles to light and hold during the service, and when the Patriarch walked past us outside, we managed to get past the crowds outside into the inside of the church, along the side. He was dressed, like all the arch bishops, in black, mourning Jesus' death. The first part of the service was likewise dark, with dimly lit lamps keeping the service barely visible. Then midnight approached, and the arch bishops and the Patriarch, and the people, made their way outside, while we all lighted our candles.

The bell rang incessantly at midnight. Suddenly (and I missed the switch), the religious leaders were dressed in bright colors, white, red, etc. The Patriarch had replaced his mournful attire with a bright gold and white robe and a beautiful crown adorned with priceless jewels. I was beautiful.

Emily and I were standing just inside the building watching this, and the Patriarch passed within inched of me on his way inside, brushing his robe against my feet. We followed the processional into the middle section of the church, sat in the back, and watched the rest of the service.

It was 4 hours long, and entirely in Greek and Turkish. But it was beautiful. And how many times would I have this opportunity again? So glad I went.

Emily received communion around 3am, and we got out as fast as possible. We took a cab back, stopping at Hazal Ana for some Iskender (which they didn't have, so we had something similar) to break Emily's weeklong meat and dairy fast.

Bed by 5.

***

Up by 8. My cousin Jennifer arrived in Istanbul on Sunday, April 15. I had to get to the airport to pick her up because, well, it's easier to figure out the city when someone helps you along and I think it's good hospitality.

Her flight was delayed and didn't get in until 1pm or so, after circling over the Sea of Marmara for a while. But find Jennifer I did,  and off we went to meander towards her hostel, a placed named Istanbul Hostel (creative, no?) in Sultanahmet, behind the Hağia Sofia and Blue Mosque.

With her stuff all dropped off, we went to explore a bit. I devoted all of Sunday to showing Jennifer around, since she was only in town until late Wednesday night, and I had a midterm on Tuesday I needed to study for. This was my second visitor in Istanbul, and while I'm still perfecting my tour guide skills, we were quite efficient in our explorations. Another visit to Hağia Sofia, more delicious food than any real human would care to consume in a day, etc.

We ended up in Ortaköy for some çay, nargile and tavla in the evening, where we sat for a long while. But enough is enough - I had been procrastinating studying for my Alexander the Great midterm all week, and needed to get a good nights sleep to study all Monday. I sent Jennifer home in a cab around 11pm. I returned to campus, also in a cab, to sleep.

***

Monday I studied. Isabelle, Rhys, Ben and I spent pretty much all day in various locations and combinations of people looking at maps, memorizing dates, and refreshing our memories about the life and times of Alexander the Great and all of his contemporaries.

Ascended in 336 BC, died 323 BC. Student of Aristotle, classmate of Callisthenes, whom he later had killed. Son of Philip II and Olympias, believed to be the son of Zeus Ammon. Hated Thebes, Darius, and forward thinking. Loved battles, Persian culture, and exploration. My brain was overflowing with satrapies (Thrace, Macedonia, Illyria, Lycia, Lydia, Babylonia, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Phyrgia, Capadoccia, Mesopotamia), battles (Chaeronia, Thebes, Granicus, Miletus, Halicarnassus, Issus, Tyre, Gaugamela, Persian Gates, Sogdian Rock, Aornus Rock, Hydaspes), rivers (Danube, Tigris, Euphrates, Hydaspes, Indus, Tarsus, Nile), sources (Justin, Curtius Rufus, Diodorus, Arrian, Plutarch, Callisthenes*, Ptolemy*, Aristobulus*, Clietarchus*), and names (Aristotle, Callisthenes, Permenion, Darius, Memnon, Porus). It was quite overwhelming.

Before I went to bed, I got an email from Leslie, my new friend whom I met in Georgia while she was on break from her English teacher job in Gori visiting Tbilisi. She was in town with her boyfriend Bernhard/Bernie, who was on his way back to Austria via Istanbul. I told them I'd work on meeting up with them.

***

But in the end, it paid off. I think I did pretty decently on the midterm, which is more than I can say for Historiography the week before, where I legitimately didn't understand the question - but that's a story for another post. I studied all morning on Tuesday and took the test at 2, finishing at 4, an hour early.

After the test, Yunus and I met up to go to Akmerkez for cigars. The day before he had reminded me that there would be a boat party on Tuesday night, and that I should come. So I contacted Jennifer with the idea, who was going to come up to my school and see the area there anyway that night, and she was excited by the idea too. I also ran it past Bernie and Leslie, who agreed the morning of to come as well.

Yunus and I went to a cigar shop in Akmerkez because it seemed the perfect time to pay up for a good cigar is when you can smoke it on the Bosporus in the middle of the night with a bunch of your friends on a mini booze cruise. We found Cubans for 35TL each, which isn't bad when you consider the distance they've traveled and Turkey's absurd import laws and sin taxes. I would have paid $10-15 for a cigar of this quality in the states, and this wasn't much more than that.

With the cigars purchased, I went to campus to purchase tickets for the boat party for myself, Jennifer, Leslie and Bernie, returned to my room and passed the time before Jennifer would arrive. When the time came, I went to the south campus gates and waited.

Jennifer arrived in good time, but Leslie and Bernie did not. We waited and waited, and they finally showed up around 7:30. They had invited a friend of theirs to join us for dinner, and she arrived around 8:15. The five of us proceeded to Mutfak for a quick dinner, then to Nexus for a few beers, then to Bebek for a waffle before meeting the boat at 9:30 outside Taps.

Katrin, the second Austrian, had no ticket. She's studying at Koç University in Sariyer, and was planning on going back to her school instead of going out, since she had somewhere to be in the morning. But we convinced her to join, and since some people who had bought tickets hadn't showed up, she got on the boat.

Yunus and I lit up our cigars when we got past the bridge just near campus. The boat brought us up the Bosporus, past the gorgeous and campus-adjacent Rumeli Hisar that I have yet to visit, to a calm section of water near the Asian side, where we stopped for a few hours.

The boat was tons of fun. We brought our own alcohol, and they had beer on the boat they were selling for cheap bar prices. That, the fact that I had a plus 4 with me, the fact that more than half of the Duke program was there (Kate, Isabelle, Jake, Ladd, Ellen, Savannah, Hillary, Rhys, Sara, Sarah, and me), and that several other friends were there (Paige, Yunus, Glenn, Becca, Emre, and more), made it a most enjoyable experience.

We docked back in Bebek around 2:30am. Jennifer, Leslie and Bernie went back in a cab towards Lower Beyoğlu and Sultanahmet, Katrin headed north to Sariyer, and I went with some peoples to Nexus for a while.

***

On Wednesday, I went to class in the morning, then hopped a bus to Sultanahmet to meet Jennifer, Leslie and Bernie. We got lunch at Home Made near Gulhane tramway (where the Canadians I met one night with Jonas when we first arrived here took us). It was whelming, neither over or under.

The four of us went to explore Topkapı Palace, the last place to see for Jennifer, who had had a very successful few days on Monday and on Tuesday morning seeing the other sights we had missed on Sunday. I had to leave Topkapı early though, as I had to go register for classes for next semester at Wash U.

My registration time was 5:30. Well, 9:30 CST. But one of the blessings of being 8 hours ahead of St. Louis is I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn to register.

Anyways, I got all the classes I wanted and needed, and now I have no class on Mondays or Fridays next semester, with only a night class on Wednesdays. Pretty sweet deal.

Leslie and Bernie headed back to their hostel after the palace, so I didn't see them again. But Jennifer and I met up and wandered around for a bit. She had tickets to go see a whirling dervishes performance, and I waited for her at my favorite çay bahçesi and nargile kafe near Çemberlitaş. I smoked some nargile and watched Step Brothers on a laptop while drinking tea. It was fairly glorious.

Dinner was at Dürümzade, my go-to 24-hour dürüm place. Then some last minute shopping for snacks and candies (Baklava and Lokum - aka Turkish Delight) before we got to the Havataş bus stop in the pouring rain around 10. We said our goodbyes, I put Jennifer on the bus, and she was gone -- back to China.

I got on the bus back to school which, by some miracle and because Turks hate standing out in the rain waiting for the bus, was only occupied by up to five people at a time the whole way back. I got to stretch out, dry off my raincoat on the horizontal stabilization bars, and relax. It was fantastic.

***

Thursday was a day for me. Nothing special. Oh, except that my friend Peter told me I could work for him for a month in Kiev during Eurocup! The dates basically go from right after my program ends until a week or two before I have to be in London for a family trip from July 20-26. So that's exciting.

***

After Karanfil's philosophy class, which was he first I've attended in a month, due to weekly class cancellations, Rhys, Ladd, Savannah, Sarah Shaughnessy, Jake and I went downtown to attempt the Archaeological Museum, which turned out to be closed, and to walk through Gulhane park, which is displaying an epic number of tulips for the seventh annual Tulip Festival in Istanbul.

We took some photos of the tulips and had a nice meandering walk, finishing up at a çay bahçesi that sits on the Bosporus overlooking the Golden Horn. For 5TL each we got a large pot of hot water, with a smaller pot of concentrated tea sitting on top. You use a strainer to pour the tea into your glass, then dilute it with the boiling water. I like this style, as I prefer a stronger tea, so I can decide how strong to make my tea.

We headed back around 6:15, where I had an epiphany. Jake and Ladd had discovered the worlds greatest way to get back to school without sitting in rush hour traffic. At 5:50 and 6:40, a ferry leaves from Eminönü, with stops in Beşiktaş, Ortaköy, Arnavutköy, and Bebek. It's a 45 minute ride, at a time of day when a bus ride from Kabataş would take as long, if not longer. And it costs the same, 1TL with my student discount Istanbulkart, and it's a Bosporus boat ride. Amazing.

When we got back to Bebek, we had dinner at Upper Crust, a pizza place that comes incredibly close to having real pizza. Then we walked up the hill to Rumeli, and got a beer or two at To Stage (aka Toh Sta-gé) before heading back to the dorm.

***

Saturday was a jam packed day. I went downtown to meet Rhys, Jake, Ben, Ladd and Ellen at the Archaeological Museum, where we found a brand new wing I had never seen before. It stretched on forever and had some amazing items from the Istanbul area, from ancient times to the present.

Next we briskly walked back through Gulhane and had another experience at the çay bahçesi on the water. We got the 5:40 ferry back, bumping into Elliot as we boarded. Elliot, Ladd, and Ellen kept going back to Bebek. Jake, Rhys, Ben and I stopped off at Beşiktaş. We got a little food and went into a bowling alley across from the Beşiktaş bus stop.

We had talked about bowling the day before, so we were very excited to do this. The four of us only paid 18TL each for three games. We had a pretty competitive set of scores (Ben excluded, whose bowling skills are not quite as honed as the rest of us), both per game and, though less so, in overall score. I won the first two games with scores of 105 and 122, Jake won the third game with 122. Overall I scored 330, Jake 303, and Rhys 275. Ben came in at 135. It was great fun, and bowling with black light lighting, Efes beer from a paper cup and some friends is always exciting.

We left the alley and caught a bus around 8:30. We got back to Rumeli Hisarüstü at 9.

Which was perfect, because Zefir, a friend of a bunch of us whom we met while he was working at Mutfak, had invited us to his birthday party. He was turning 24. Isabelle, Savannah, Rhys, Kate, Sara, Sarah, Ben and I went to the party. 

If you could call it a party. It was hilariously awkward. A bunch of us, four of his guy friends, and a girl from Boğaziçi, standing around speaking two languages, none of us speaking the other well, with music in the background, in an apartment with such incredible potential to be either a badass hangout or a serial killer hideout. The view was incredible, of the Bosporus on the far side of the second bridge. The balcony was huge, though barren, and the rooms were, well, interesting. We had a good time regardless, though a few of us left a little before midnight, myself included. Isabelle, Ben and I headed out, and had ourselves dropped off in the heart of Rumeli. 

The three of us had dinner at Doydos, after which Ben headed back to the dorm. Isabelle and I went to To Stage to meet up with Glenn and some of his friends.

There I met Dila and Ayça, new people! I like meeting new people. They made me finish their beers ("made" is probably too strong a word. They thought the beer was flat, which it wasn't, and I offered to finish it up for them), and they and Josh, one of Glenn's friends whom I met at Yunus' party, took me to Nexus when Isabelle and Glenn decided to meander back to their respective abodes.

I was out at Nexus until 1:30 or 2, enjoying decent beer and good conversation. But I had to return to the dorm, because we had a 4:30 pick up for the Duke program's spring break vacation to the Black Sea region of Turkey. Oh, I don't think I mentioned we are on Spring Break now. Well, we are.

I didn't sleep, just finished some packing and watched some Futurama, skyped home and some friends and headed to the bus at 4:30.

***

*Sources do not survive today, but are referred to by the other authors.