Munich and Istanbul Trip
Tuesday, November 26
Our first morning in Istanbul we were up and out of the hotel by 9:00 walking down the street. Our street is one of the spokes that feed into Takism Square (really more like a circle or blob), and we are just two blocks down it. One block in we saw a borek place that looked wonderful, serving steaming plates of borek with big cups of tea to assorted Turkish people. Though Taksim is full of hotels and in part a tourists’ area, nevertheless there was zero English in this place, and only Turks eating their boreks both inside (down some very steep marble steps) and outside (in a sporadic drizzle). We opted for inside, and a cheese and meat borek, which arrived chopped up on two plates, with tea for me in one of the characteristic hourglass-shaped tea glasses on a saucer (oddly the same printed saucer everywhere we went in the city) and a Turkish coffee for Robert. Marcus loves eating “Pop-pop’s favorite cheese,” and Samantha just loved everything about boreks.
We took a fast detour back to our hotel to change a diaper and bring a big jug of bottled water back to the room from one of the little stores along the street. It was probably overkill, but it was inexpensive enough. Then we took a cab from Taksim over the bridge into the Old City to the Spice Market.
Istanbul is very diverse in some ways. The people around us ranged from paler than us (though still mostly dark-haired) to darker-skinned, some with Asian features and some not, and at any given moment on the street there were usually women with hair covered and uncovered in relatively equal amounts. Except for the two kids strapped to our bodies in brightly-colored devices, Robert and I wouldn't obviously stand out as non-Turks. Robert did decide he should "grow a beard" for the trip, and beards are common, even though there are still plenty of clean-shaven Turkish men. There is not, however, a lot of English around us. Beyond the hotel we've encountered many people who can't even say "No English." I note this consciously not as the nagging tirade of an "ugly American" who expects the world to bow to me and always speak my language but more as the naive expression of surprise from someone who had never really thought much about the amount of English, Turkish, Arabic, or indeed, any other language, in Istanbul at all. At any rate, we've been able to make ourselves understood for the most part, even with cab drivers who didn't have a word of English at all.
While walking around the city this morning, Marcus's engineer tendencies showed themselves, and he was drawn to the drainage system around us--he's fascinated by the gutters and drain spouts and the little "streams" running down troughs that border each sidewalk. Yes, we came to Turkey for the drains.
We admired these drains while walking through the Old City this morning, but first we arrived at the plaza in front of the Spice Market and enjoyed the balmy 50-degree temperatures and the light drizzle—such a change from Munich! Marcus enjoyed feeding pigeons on the plaza, thanks to an old lady who basically accosted him and handed him a paper plate of bird food. Regardless of what we paid her afterward—as we saw from her interactions with the parents of a number of other children, Turkish and tourist alike—the woman complained bitterly that we were cheating her, and generally seemed the grumpiest person in Turkey.
Samantha and I then walked through the pet market, while Robert and Marcus were searching for a bathroom (WC for “bay,” or men), and she had a great time looking at all the birds especially. There actually seemed to be a lot of public bathrooms in Istanbul, both near tourist attractions and near regular functioning mosques, and though some of the bathrooms were cleaner than others, most of them sufficed for Marcus. Changing diapers was more challenging when out and about, and a random bench proved to be the best spot for diaper changes for Samantha when we had to do them outside the hotel, as no bathroom had a changing table or indeed even a dry-ish spot to use on a counter or floor. One baklava café did have a changing table, but that was rare and luxurious.
Walking from the spice market to the Grand Bazaar was uphill up slippery cobbled streets—not my favorite walk, but Marcus’s excitement at the drainage systems continued, and we stopped for a freshly-squeezed orange juice along the way, with the juice man inviting us “in” to his “store” where we sat on carpet-covered benches and boxes to sip the juice.
In the markets and bazaar we discovered that people in Turkey tend to call to babies as though they’re cats. Wherever we went, people smiled at Samantha, called to her, clucked to her, offered her marriage proposals, handed her cubes of Turkish delight, whole bags of roasted hazelnuts, entire hazelnut-chocolate bars. She waved back at everyone like a President on a float, and she gleefully ate whatever she was handed. People came up and stroked her hair, rubbed her back, touched her cheeks, and she basked in the attention. Marcus, too, was showered with Turkish delight (he loved it—we told him the story of Edmund, who betrayed his siblings for some, and we actually became a little worried at the monster we’d created) and chocolate bars (he loved the idea of them, but whereas Samantha would demolish hers, he would eat a bite or two of his and then declare himself done). Between Turkey and Germany, in our limited exposure, there is no comparison: Marcus said that Turkey has better playgrounds, friendlier people, more cats, and Turkish delight, and, well, he’s right.
Cats are truly everywhere--in and out of courtyards, all around tourist attractions, in the Hagia Sofia, where Robert practically had an allergic reaction, and everywhere on the sidewalks and streets. Dogs are present too, but not to the same extent, and both are very clean and nicely-kept. The dogs on the street all bear tags in their ears showing they've been vaccinated by the city, even, and we felt very comfortable with the animals around us.
In the Hagia Sofia, Marcus loved the spiraling ramps up to the balcony, and also the different mosaics.
On the street once more, his love of civil engineering feats took over and we closely examined these trash cans, which open to a chute about twelve feet below, possibly where the trash can be collected underneath the street level. We rode the funicular train between Taksim and Kabatas, and that, too, was a hit--two stops, one route, a cable, and a giant wheel. We'd ride the train, then run to the front and watch the wheel and the cable and watch it go back and forth until the next train came into the station again.
We found a few open spaces to run and play with a ball at various points, and we did visit a few of the most famous mosques in the Old City.
All of us loved the Basilica Cistern, a sixth-century cistern with over three hundred pillars holding it up (Marcus counted them). Two of the pillars have Medusa heads on them, and were thought to have been brought over from a different site at a different time. We went on a quest to find these (one upside-down and one on its side) and all felt a sense of accomplishment when we got there. "Girl up-down!" Samantha exclaimed, trying to get her own head into the same configuration.
Ah, street food--roasted ears of corn (looking better than they tasted, as they were a bit overly dry actually) and roasted hazelnuts. Yum!
For dinner we walked to the seafood district of Kumkapi and ate somewhere empty, unfashionably early, while Marcus slept. Samantha made friends with the owner, playing ball in the restaurant with him, and we ate sardines and white beans meze and fish in a brick and then enjoyed the free dessert of a hot halvah pudding.
Marcus woke up after we'd left, and walked around more, took some subways and that funicular, and then headed back to the hotel and then out to our second dinner, at Ficcin, a Circassian restaurant not that far from our hotel, where we had a wonderful creamy chicken soup (Marcus ate all of it, while Samantha slept through this dinner), a meat pie kind of like a stuffed pizza, and lovely stuffed manti, or dumplings, very similar to what I ate as an exchange student in Russia years and years ago, served with a yogurt sauce. We drank tea (we never saw anyone drinking water in restaurants) with our meal, and enjoyed it.
We stopped for an assortment of Turkish delight and baklava near our hotel and made it a late but happy night to bed.
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Created: 12/1/13. Last Modified: 12/4/13.