Akçakoca to Istanbul, Turkey, Wednesday May 21st

Keith and Christine would love to hear from you with questions, comments, personal news and any news at all from Australia or wherever you are. We will reply to all emails! Please write to either windlechristine@gmail.com or windle.keith@gmail.com

At last we were going to Istanbul. We had heard so much about it from other travellers, all of it positive except that we should watch our belongings carefully and not be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This last was a lesson Jim in Şanlıurfa had learnt when he was seriously beaten up by a bag snatcher when he was in Istanbul a couple of years ago. Our last words of advice had been from Camille, an English woman who has lived there happily for forty years. She said that we need to remember that it is a large city with a diverse population so take appropriate care, but apart from that, that it is magical and to give ourselves time to walk around absorbing it, as well as seeing the sites.

In some ways Istanbul has come to represent the end of Turkey for us, even though we will go to other places on our way to Bulgaria, so it felt a little final and sad to be farewelling dear Akçakoca and our freedom to wander the country. Nevertheless, loaded up with our packs we set off for the bus station. On the way we passed the always closed Tourist Information booth and a smartly dressed young man leapt forward and greeted us effusively. It was his first day manning the office, and he was also studying for a Masters Degree in Tourist Administration. He unlocked the booth and pressed pamphlets and a map on us, even though we explained that we were leaving. Actually I was pleased to have something to read because I had lots of questions about the area. I asked about the strange statue and, while not having an answer, he was very pleased to have a topic to research on his first day and he said that he would be able to tell future tourists the answer. When we left he locked the booth; the only tourists in town being about to board a bus.

The trip to Istanbul was uneventful other than to keep thinking we were there whenever we passed an extremely built up area. We followed the advice in the Lonely Plant Guide to get off before the main bus station at a smaller one at Harem, and to take a ferry across the Bosphorus to Sultanahmet, the suburb we were staying in and part of old Istanbul. It was lucky that we had consulted our fellow passengers and the steward about our plan because the bus didn’t actually go very close to Harem. It stopped somewhere else and a kind man, also going to Harem, took us under his wing, bundled us into another bus and carried my bag all the way to the ferry ticket office when we got there. He wasn’t going on the ferry himself.

The ferry passengers came from the four corners of the earth. From this moment on we realised that we were not the only tourists in the village (think of Little Britain), just two of millions past, present and future. It was very exciting to be chugging across the Bosphorus, seeing the gardens and buildings of the Topkapı Palace and the minarets of a mosque that must surely be the Blue Mosque.

We walked to our hostel, about one and a half kilometres uphill in 34 degree heat, with the perspiration running down our backs beneath our big packs. Istanbul is more expensive than other parts of Turkey so we had booked in to a four bed dormitory with a shared bathroom.

After cooling down a little we set off to see the Blue Mosque, which is so close that we regarded it as our own. When I looked at the outside of the Blue Mosque, I felt that I was looking at a perfect building. It is built on the south side of a large courtyard which is even bigger than the mosque itself. Almost like a living creature, and freed from straight lines by the way each dome seems to grow out of another, it has a simplicity of external decoration and a dignity that emphasises its form.

It is watched over by six tall, slender minarets. We walked around the gardens and the courtyard while we waited for prayer time to finish and for tourists to be allowed in again. Tour groups sat in their matching t-shirts, listening to their guides and an exuberant little boy ran to and fro, oblivious of his surroundings.

Inside the mosque, it was hard to know where to look. Every surface is patterned and there is an explosion of colour in the tiles, in painted domes and in the stained glass windows. The tiles are predominantly blue in a band around the mosque, which apparently is how it got its name. The Iznik tiles were made in the 16^th century and in some spots where one has broken, it is not possible to replace it because the way of achieving the exact blue and tomato red has been lost. They are very Persian in design, with repeated flowers coiling in and out of leaves. My favourite has carnations on it, although to have a favourite is actually impossible. The same patterns are on ceramic ware all over Turkey. There was a wonderful list in the information of the flowers depicted in the tiles, painted patterns and windows and it seemed that an obsessive gardener was let loose on the decoration plan. The windows are very pretty and ring the many domes so the effect is light and colourful. The carpet is richly bright red with vivid blue flowers on it. Despite the tourists and the guides, the atmosphere is maintained and people speak in whispers.

Sultan Ahmet wanted a mosque that would make his name and put Aya Sofia, which started life as a Christian Basilica, in the shade. He employed an architect called Mahmet Aga. We attended the free sound and light show but on the night it was in French so some aspects are still a mystery for us. If we are still here we will go to the English version when it is on. It was a very intense drama, with the Sultan sounding like a very demanding man. Eventually the mosque, was completed and a very deep voice representing Istanbul said that it was there for eternity, while bright blue lights flashed joyously up and down the minarets and orchestral music rang out the news. Keith spent the time doing phone messages and he couldn’t shed any light on the sound and light show at all.

As we left the mosque, a man started up a conversation with us in which he said he had a brother living in Australia and a cousin with a carpet shop that he could take us to. Wiser, we did not hesitate to say we weren’t buying carpets, and despite his continuing to ask us questions, we walked away. This scenario was acted out several times during the evening and becomes tedious over time. We saw other tourists being given the same spiel and still others told us enthusiastically of making friends with people who took them to shops. So maybe we are a bit jaded on this one and need to realise that it is just a legitimate business tactic for them and not a cynical tourist seduction as we sometimes see it. The ultimate came when we had wandered into the suburbs beyond the Blue Mosque. There we came upon a mosque and school complex, where we were invited in and welcomed to enter the mosque. A young boy accompanied us and pointed out features, such as the use of stones from Mecca in the decorations, in a disinterested voice and at such speed that he could have been a protégé of Mama Castle from Marmaris. We were still looking for the special stones when he whipped out a package of photos of the mosque interior and began a much more enthusiastic commercial spiel. When we didn’t buy any he said that at least we should make a donation to the mosque, which we did, all the while wondering if we were in fact making a donation to this self-appointed guide. I cannot tell you about that mosque because this experience overwhelmed the opportunity to look at it carefully and Keith just wanted to leave. We felt that a little stall outside the mosque would have been OK and would not have compromised the visit for us.

Wandering on, we passed into suburbs where wide squares were filled alternatively with parks and playgrounds for residents and tables from restaurants for tourists. The narrow streets ran off at angles and mostly uphill, which was inevitable since we were on the side of one of the seven hills of Istanbul. These streets were lined with tall buildings, with every now and then an ancient and marvellous building rubbing shoulders with the rest, and seemingly being ignored by the locals from familiarity and by tourists because of being out of the way and not one of the big 25 ‘must sees’. Many Ottoman houses, the equal of those in Safranbolu, were majestically rotting as we watched, or had fire-gutted upper floors. Even the most dangerous and precarious, with broken windows and balconies about to drop to the pavement below, had lights in every window once night fell.

People were everywhere and we have found that being crowded is a characteristic of many parts of Istanbul. Quite often we would see a flood of people heading off in a direction and when we followed to see what the attraction was, it was simply that so many were passing along a narrow thoroughfare. We ate very cheaply in a café frequented by locals and wound our way back until we could see the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia lit up and standing out against the city lights and knew that we were nearly back at the hostel.
An Australian voice behind us, asking if we were Australians, caused us to stop. The man who had greeted us had been teaching English in Istanbul for two years and had just resigned. He was happy living in Istanbul and had many Turkish friends. He was about our age and carried a very full black garbage bag. I was dying to ask about his black bag and also his black eye when he suddenly said “A word of warning. Don’t trust Turkish men, particularly the Kurds. I did and I got this.” He indicated his eye in a manner not unlike Long John Silver. “I went out for a good time and some people can’t be trusted. I spent all day at the Australian Embassy but that’s another story. I’d better be off.” He left abruptly, crossing the road to start a conversation with another man about the mysterious contents of his black bag which was opened for perusal. It was like reading the first chapter of a book and then leaving it on the bus.