Final Days

The last few weeks I spent in Istanbul did not entirely consist of study and testing. It's not like I'm at Wash U -- I'm studying abroad, which means parties in the evenings and hangovers in the morning (granted, that can be life at Wash U as well). It means explorations in the afternoons and delicious food at all times of day. I am going to jump around a bit, but hopefully this particular post will have some semblance of logic regardless.

Additionally, as my semester ended a lot later than those in America, I actually had an exorbitant number of visitors come through in the last several days. Only one of my later visitors was actually coming just for the purposes of seeing me, but the happy accident of my time in Istanbul coinciding with their respective days in town was a welcome thing.

For visitors, the day after my parents left on May 14, Professor Konig flew to town. Professor Konig is a professor I've taken a few classes with at Wash U, and is currently my major advisor. He was in town for a vacation with his wife and two colleagues. Unfortunately, try as we might, the first three days he was in Turkey, which he spent in Istanbul, I was too busy to meet him (dealing with my Alexander the Great paper so I could go to Krakow without worrying about it), and when he was back on the 23rd for a day before heading home he had managed to contract some sort of bug, and was unable to meet.

But not all was lost. Three days later, May 26, my friend from school Kimmy came by with her friend and Wash U roommate, Moira. They were visiting from Spain and France, respectively, having each finished their study abroad programs. I spent a few days hanging out with them, though their visit overlapped with finals, I tried to make time. They left on the 29th, the same day Susanna arrived.

Susanna is an old Interlocken friend, whom I have kept sporadic contact with over the years. Facebook alerted me to her imminent arrival, a three week trip to Istanbul. I tried to find time to meet her, but keeping in touch once she had arrived proved difficult, and unfortunately we did not manage to meet up.

On May 31, the same day as my last final exam, Michelle and Hannah flew in, neighbors of mine from Pequot Trail. They were using Istanbul as their kickoff city for a grand European tour that would take them to Copenhagen before flying home. At the time of this writing I believe they are Croatia, or maybe Montenegro. I left my Alexander final and went directly to the airport to pick them up.

Each of the above people (those of whom I actually managed to see) I took on a whirlwind tour of the city, to the main attractions and the lesser-known ones, and of course to the best food in the city. With Michelle and Hannah, I decided it was time to go on a little adventure I had been wanting to do for a while, so I took them to Bursa. More on that in a bit.

Leading up to and during finals week, there were several fun and exciting events that took place. I went out to dinner with Steffen, a German friend from somewhere about 2 hours from Berlin. We had a big dinner party up in Sariyer, a neighborhood even farther up the Bosporus than Rumeli. A preset menu had been negotiated, making the dinner of balık (fish), mezeler (appetizers), şarap (wine), and rakı (rakı), only about $15 per person. It was really a delicious and wondrous time.

On Saturday, May 26, the Duke in Istanbul program paid for we humble students to go on a Bosporus boat party. Everything was included, including all-you-can-drink alcoholic beverages - something we, especially I, took full advantage of. We were upgraded on our boat, and the 19 students plus 4 real adults were dwarfed on the ship designed to accommodate about 100 people, maybe more. It was a three hour event, with a full dinner to kick it all off. After the boat party, everyone went to Ortaköy to keep it going, I went to Taksim to meet Kimmy.

On May 31 there was a gigantic anti-violence in Syria, pro-Palestine, anti-Israel protest in Taksim square. I stumbled upon it after leaving Hannah and Michelle at their hostel (the Mystic Simurgh) when they arrived and just wanted to sleep off the Jetlag.

On June 1 I convinced Michelle and Hannah to leave the city they had just arrived in behind them, and to join me on a much longed-for day trip to Bursa, an old Ottoman capital and one of the closest non-Istanbul cities on the Anatolian side of Turkey.

To get there involved a 7:30am ferry from Yenikapi, near Aksaray on the far side of the Golden Horn. It meant I would get up at 5am, catch the first tram from Kabataş at 6:15am (I was the only person on the tram, a feat unheard of in Istanbul, ever), and wait for the girls at Aksaray. I waited for a while, for two different trams. I was about to give up and call them (for a major fee) to see where they were when they arrived on the third tram.

We got a cab (because we didn't realize how close it was) to Yenikapi. It was only 5TL or so. We cut the long lines at the feribot terminal and got on our ship with a few minutes to spare. It was a two hour trip, arriving around 9:30 on the other side of the Marmara Sea.

The subsequent bus ride to Bursa took about 45 or 50 minutes, standing the whole way. But no worries, because we had a Lonely Planet guide that Ben (from my program and from Wilton) had loaned me, and thus a map of and suggestions of things to do in Bursa.

Our first major stop was Kebapçı İskender, famed inventor of the İskender Kebabı. For those following at home, İskender is the heavenly combination of lamb meat off a spit laid on top of bread cubes, all of which has been doused in a red sauce. Bits of each ingredient are scooped together and a little cold yoghurt is dolloped on top, which infuses the mouth with some of the most incredible taste as of yet known to man.

The home of this delicacy, named after Alexander the Great, was not a disappointment. It was an experience rivaling, in different ways, Kebap Osman's İskender in Sultanahmet's Sirkeci.

Next we found our way to a nearby historical museum of Bursa, which boasted examples (purely in Turkish) of crafts and goods created and manufactured in this historical (and present day) manufacturing city. This included everything from cars to shoes, from textiles to metals.

A short walk would bring us to one of the big bazaars in the city, which borders the other big bazaar. We went through both. It wasn't nearly as touristy as the Grand Bazaar, but the selection was much more catered to someone who lives in the area, not someone just passing through. This meant shoes and shirts galore, and not a single major souvenir outlet.

We wandered for a bit, finding the old city walls, the gates to the old fortress, and the tombs.

The first tomb was for Orhan Gazi. It was much less fanciful than the second, which I'll get to in a second. Orhan Gazi was the Augustus Caesar of the Ottoman Empire. He was the son of Osman Bey, a man who united the tribes that would form the Ottoman Empire (a name derived from a bastardization of the name Osman). It was after Osman Bey's death that the new leader, his son Orhan Gazi, declared himself the first Sultan of the empire named for his father. Much like Augustus Caesar became the first true emperor after the death of Julius Caesar. Anyways, the tomb was a fenced off coffin with a triangular prism lid, draped in a simple green cloth. On the edge of the coffin, Orhan's gigantic turban is posted for all to see. The rest of the ornate building, complete with fanciful moldings and curtains, held smaller coffins, probably of the family, concubines, close servants, maybe even pets or children (some of the coffins were very small). It was a very somber place.

The second tomb was, predictably, that of Osman Bey himself. Living 1257-1326, he was the son of Ertuğrul Gazi and grandson of Süleyman Şah, who came to Anatolia as Bey of the Kayı tribe and drowned as he was crossing the Euphrates. In 1299 Osman Bey founded and developed a new state, which would be known in the future as the Ottoman Empire. Osman Bey was buried, according to his wishes, in a Byzantine Monastery dedicated to the Prophet Elijah, which in Ottoman Sources is referred to as "The Silver Kümbet." The Monastery was damaged by fire in 1801 and completely destroyed in 1855, and the current octagonal structure that surrounds him was built to replace it. Osman Bey's coffin is laced with fine mother of pearl. Several of his sons (one of whom was named Aladdin!) were buried with him, much in the same way as with Orhan Gazi. In fact, the interior layout is identical, except Osman Bey's turban is smaller and the coffin more ornate.

There's a clock tower near the tombs, built in 1905 and renovated a few times since, that sits next to a huge lookout point over the city. Apparently, residents of Bursa who watch the Simpsons often refer to the town as Springfield, because of the twin smokestacks in the back of the city skyline.

Michelle, Hannah and I next explored a few mosques. First, the main one in town, which has historical value that has escaped me. If I had to guess, it's the first mosque to have a truly Ottoman style. It also forwent the single large dome in favor of many small domes. And the walls are covered in Ottoman calligraphy that form beautiful imagery, or at least as close to it as Islam will allow.

Next we went to the Yeşil Camii, built between 1412 and 1419. Inside, we met a man who had been in charge of recent renovations. The mosque had only opened up to the public again a few weeks earlier, and it was as vibrant a place to be as it must have been when it was first opened in the early 15th century. It was quite amazing. But this mosque was more than a place for prayer. It was also a place for administrative things, including a courtroom and judge's chambers. There is a fountain in the building, which was used not for decoration or cleaning, but to drown out a judge's deliberations while they discussed cases.

After this we headed back to Istanbul. It was about 4, and we wanted to catch the 5pm train. We went to the nearest metro, where we found a fun farmer's market, then caught the train to the water. It didn't go all the way, we had to take a marshrutka from there.

But we didn't even get the right marshrutka! We ended up in the wrong part of town, at the wrong ferry. So we got a taxi to the right one.

Fortunately for us, the ferry didn't actually leave until six or so. We had been walking all day, so when we finally got tickets and boarded, we all fell asleep until we arrived in Istanbul around 8. 

The next few days I took Michelle and Hannah around, spending the evenings with them and my Boğaziçi friends, drinking and merrymaking.

Isabelle, Savannah, Emily and I went on one last excursion on July 3 to Rumeli Hisarı. We went to our last Balkan music night on June 7.

On June 5, I went for a swim with Kate, Sarah, Emily, Rhys, Jake, Savannah, and Katrin (a friend of Leslie and Bernie's [from the weekend in Tbilisi] whom I met when they visited Istanbul last month) in the Bosporus! It was so damned cold, but we swam around for a while, fighting the current. At one point, an American professor who was going for his daily exercise by swimming in the same spot, took Katrin and Savannah and I upstream a little ways (towards the Black Sea), where we jumped in from about 10 feet up and surfed the tide back to where we started. It was a ton of fun.

Later that day, my roommate from Wash U, Michael, and his girlfriend Lindsey arrived. They were coming in from Berlin on a whirlwind tour of that city, Istanbul, London and Marrakech. They were also there for my last few days in Turkey.

Once again, we went to all the major sites. I took them souvenir shopping, something I hadn't done yet. I got, amongst other things, two nargile, a giant suitcase to carry all my new crap, spices, and some chachkas. Quite fun.

I also took them to the end of year festivities, like a night we went to Anjelique, one of three superclubs in Istanbul. It was fun, but not my type of place. Michael and Lindsey didn't care for it either.

Michael and Lindsey left on the morning of the 8th. I spent all day packing.

The night of the 8th was the last party of the semester, up at Boğaziçi's Black Sea campus. They have a private beach up there, and we took a bus all the way up there in a packed drunken party. I hadn't finished packing, and my flight was for the morning, but no worries! It was my last night!

Most of my remaining friends (who had been slowly disappearing over the past several days/weeks) were up there. It was a ton of fun, on a beautiful spot. Also, I got to dip my feet in the Black Sea after midnight on the morning of June 9. Just a few hours later that day, I would be on the north shore of the Black Sea, in Odessa, doing the same thing, but out of Turkey for good.

Until the next time.