New York to Istanbul Chapter 7 - Touring Fatih

Chapter 7: Walking through Fatih

We stopped for breakfast at a baker, where Stephanie bargained for the freshest bread I had ever had, a loaf straight from the oven.  Passing a bakery still buzzing with the mid-morning energy of replenishing its shelves, Stephanie ducked in the front door and, with pointing and an ever increasing Turkish vocabulary, obtained a loaf so fresh it burnt our fingers as we tore open its golden crust.

Fatih is a district of Istanbul not exactly boldfaced on the tourist maps.  Named, like so much in the city, after Sultan Mehmet II ("Fatih" means "conqureror"), it is a large borough comprising most of the old city of Constantinople.  A fact which was reinforced as Stephanie, Rachel, Elle and I stepped into its narrow streets through the very gate that Ottoman warriors burst down on that fateful day in 1453 (a Tuesday, if the small metal plaque next to it can be trusted).

The mostly secular Turks we had been hanging out with had told us that Fatih was safe, of course, but "conservative."  The borough is large enough to defy generalizations, but as we walked through the central neighborhoods, I couldn't help but compare it to cutting through a Hasidic enclave in New York with Chester and Sid earlier in the summer.

As we devoured our impromptu breakfast, small groups of fully veiled women glided over the cobblestones, shepherding schoolchildren wearing uniforms copied from British public schools.  Rachel laughed and pointed out the skull capped and bearded men sitting outside their carpet shops eyeing me, the lone young man leading a harem of women through the alleys, with a look of astonishment and jocular admiration.

But we didn't have time for reflections of class, gender and religion.  We had to find a church.

New York to Istanbul - Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Two Nights in Bebek

It looked like a regular Starbucks from the outside.  The prices were definitely the same as back in the States, at least.  So there I was, walking down the stairs to the patio, muttering about paying four and half million lira for a iced coffee... and then I looked up.

"Holy ****!"

The Bebek Starbucks is widely considered to be the best in the world, at least the best in Istanbul.  Occupying an ungodly amount of real estate on the shores of the Bosporus, it has a dock where the nouveau riche of the city can park their boats as they stop in for a Frappucino.  Everyone is sheik, sexy and simultaneously typing on their PDA's while they converse across the table and check their cell phones for the next text message.

And suddenly, I thought back to the last night I spent in Bebek...  My friends and I had bought a backpack full of cheap Turkish malt liquor and were subsequently followed home by half the employees from the liquor store.  After consuming our supply, we were invited to go down to the water for more late night booze and debauchery.

After looting their store of another dozen tall cans of Efes Pilsen,  our new Turkish friends launched their car onto the sidewalk, threw the doors open and started blasting the radio.  We drank on the streets of Istanbul, we listened to centuries old folk songs about drinking on the streets of Istanbul and (when it got cold around 4am) started lighting trash on fire to keep the party going.

Around sunrise I was stuffed in the back of a Toyota, and the driver's laisse faire attitude towards traffic laws was making me wonder if I shouldn't just blackout to maintain my sanity.  That's when the life-long Istanbul resident next to me punched my shoulder and pointed with unabashed amazement at the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge.  The FSM was soaring through the cool night air, stretching from the two medieval fortresses that once kept these two shores apart.

"Bak, bak. Istanbul!"

"Look, look. This is Istanbul!"

New York to Istanbul - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Elle and the Byzantines

There are Rorschach blotches throughout the marble of Hagia Sophia. I had never seen them before, but Elle's book explained how, during the quarrying process, slabs of marble were folded like a book, creating symmetrical patterns in the natural veins of the stone. Or, at least I think. The guide book she read as we sat against a massive pillar was written like a dictionary.

“What is a concave triangular pendentive?” My new friend and fellow traveler blamed her imperfect English. I blamed the author.

“&%#@ if I know,” I generally have rules against cursing on hallowed ground, but there were enough tourists around to make this a special case. Besides, it's a museum now. Which is not to say that it is not still impressive.

Hagia Sofia (or Ayasofya in Turkish) is one of the few places in the world that truly lives up to the hype. Everything is built on a super-human scale: doors for giants, massive candle holders and (above all) the largest dome of the ancient world. It's enough to make you feel very small, like Jesus really was twelve foot tall and played center for the Chicago Bulls.

Stuffing the book into Elle's backpack, we explored the building that had served as both the principal cathedral of the Byzantines and the principal mosque of the Ottoman Empire.  I had met Elle on my second day in the city.  A former tour guide, she suggested we visit a lesser known spot as we walked into the Istanbul heat again.



Now, I don't want to get in the habit of ruining secret places, but given the AdSense revenue this page has been pulling in, I think this secret is still safe from the prying eyes of the public. Across the street from arguably two of Istanbul's most famous sites, Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, is an entryway into the forgotten underworld of the city. The Basilica Cistern is, for my money, the most overlooked attraction in Istanbul crowded tourist center.

We walked down the stairs into a world blessedly cool and dark compared to the metropolitan summer above. The cistern is one small part of the extensive Byzantine sewer system. Here you can examine perfectly preserved Roman statues, if only because they were used as building material. Sure the piped-in music is a little too new-agey for my tastes and the cafe is ridiculously over priced. But, after a day of walking around the city, the Basilica Cistern is an uncrowded, cool and soothing oasis.

Now, I'm afraid I have to back up a little bit. You see, buildings and architecture are wonderful, but not why I fell in love with Turkey. For that I'll have to tell you about what happened to Elle and I on the tramway:

While discussing our plans for the day, an old lady tapped me on the shoulder and asked if we spoke English. Elle caught on quicker than I and told her we did. The old woman then pointed to the front of the car, where two French tourists stared, befuddled, at a tourism map and practically pushed us up to them.

Never before have I seen such hospitality as routinely happens in this region, where the proper treatment of a guest is nearly a sacred duty. Unbidden, people will go out of there way to help you and (even if they can't) they will find someone who can.

New York to Istanbul - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Summertime

As it turned out, I had managed to arrive in Istanbul for the hottest summer in thirty years. After only two days in  the brick oven-like construction of the Uçaksavar dormitory, I was feeling like a tandoori chicken. I had to get out of there before I marinaded myself in yogurt.

Thus, the weekend found me on a bus with a my new friends: Stephanie and Rachel, and they expect me to show them around. This unexpected position of leadership would have been less stressful if Rachel didn't keep referring to me as "Oh Captain, My Captain."

By way of bus, foot and some blurry memories, we navigated the winding streets of Istanbul to the Beyoğlu, a neighborhood known for its fish market and its many meyhanes, small tavern-style restaurants.  Somehow, we had acquired a sizeable following from among the good students attending the Boğaziçi University Turkish Language and Culture program along the way.  I picked a meyhane as I usually do, based on the good humor of the proprietor, who motioned to a long table with 12 chairs and joked that they had been waiting for us all day.

Mezzes are the Turkish version of a Pan-Mediterranean tradition of meals consisting of many small dishes, baskets full of bread and the local Anise liquor, rakı. Most of the offerings are simple, fresh fare: a crumbly white cheese with olives and fresh melon, a spicy red pepper paste, seaweed salad with olive oil and lemon juice.  But, it was something else offered at this establishment that caught Stephanie's eye.

"Ooo, they have lamb brains!" Stephanie said excitedly.  "Do you want to split an order?"

I raised an eyebrow at the veined blobs sitting in the glass refrigerator case like props from a B-grade science fiction feature.  I shrugged.

"Sure, why the hell not?"

The brains were prepared with a minimum of fuss, simply chopped and sauteed in olive oil, brought out with a couple of lemon wedges.  After knocking back a glass of strong anise liquor, I dug in, surprised by the brain's  mild flavor and custard-like consistency.  Not exactly chicken wings, but an excellent drinking food anyway.

Eventually, we ended up at my second favorite bar in Istanbul, a stone-hewn rock 'n roll establishment a short walk from Beyoğlu called “The 45.” The good students didn't last ten minutes before leaving, complaining that the jukebox was too loud. Which is kind of like getting out of the swimming pool because the water is too wet, if you ask me.

Turkish beer tastes much better in a loud, cheap dive anyway. Even if it does occasionally cause me to spray lamb brains all over the wall of a bar...

New York to Istanbul - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Jet Setting

Last Monday, left to my own devices in New York, I headed down to Chinatown to meet up with my old boss Yung for lunch and a brief tour of his old neighborhood.  Apparently, eating in Chinatown is an all day event.  Lunch was Dim Sum style with monolingual Cantonese waitresses smothering our small table with piles of steamed muscles, dumplings, pork rolls and a couple weird jelly-like concoctions the color of dirty dishwater.  This was followed by dessert at a candy shop, where we sampled spicy monkfish chips, fried squid, fish and sesame sticks, and a wide assortment of dried/salted/candied fruits and vegetables.  A few minutes later and we're in a Chinese bakery and Danny is ordering two of everything in a perverse culinary Noah's ark progression to our table.  I have never before fought the urge to sneeze, vomit and defecate simultaneously.

So, there I was, stuffed from sinus to sphincter- crushing four Stellas at the bar in JFK, fully expecting a long day of travel, no cigarettes and very expensive booze.  Now, I don't like to endorse any particular brand or product here (unless they start sending me lots of free stuff), so I'll just say that the British know how to make transatlantic travel fun!  As long as you ignore that whole "Titanic"-incident.  Zombie walking to my seat, I found my own personal TV screen with on-demand movies, television and music.  

To top it off, no more than a half-hour into the flight, a flight attendant asks me if I want a drink... a real drink.  Looking around, I don't see anyone else paying for anything.  I take a chance and ask for a gin-and-tonic.  What followed next was a great moment in the history of mile-high boozing:

"Here you are, sir.  Now, would you like a red or white wine with dinner?  We're having chicken in a tarragon sauce,"

Television.  Free drinks.  Chicken.  The only thing that could have made this trip better would be Nigella Lawson cooking me my meal in the nude while I went into the cockpit to do some smack with Tony Blair...

Stewardess!

New York to Istanbul - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Central Park and Shakespeare

After thirty six hours of hard boozing and MacDonald-fueled treks across Manhattan island at four in the morning, I was more than willing to spend my last full day in NYC letting my liver rebuild.  Sending the last few swigs of Scotch on the Greyhound back to the 'Nati with Chester, I adjourned to Central Park and found an inviting patch of grass to sleep on.

Suddenly, I was assaulted from every direction by a disorganized mob of theater goers.  Pulling the New York Times off my face, I cursed loudly and looked around.  A half-dozen fools dressed like extras in a remake of To Kill a Mockingbird filled the clearing and began reciting Shakespeare.  Well, that's too good to pass up, even with a wicked hangover.

A young woman working the crowd handed my a pamphlet.  I had apparently been abducted by a free, and very mobile, production of Love's Labours Lost.  With every scene, the audience was made to sprint to the next location, capturing more and more innocent victims until reaching a critical mass halfway through Act II. 

While I chatted with a tall, lithe punk rocker chick (who, sadly, was looking for somebody who had one more X Chromosome then I had to offer...), I realized that life is an adventure by default.  I would never have seen a Shakespeare performance in New York City if I hadn't been alone in the city, if I hadn't been looking for a place to take a nap on a warm June afternoon.  I didn't have to do anything except stay still for a few hours.

New York to Istanbul - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: New York Cheap

Friday was Sid's birthday, and he celebrated by booking a himself a night in the Chelsea Hotel.  Presumably because, unlike our hostel, those rooms do not include an anonymous guy going through withdrawal in the corner.  We had a few glasses of scotch there, then Chester and I hit the city while Sid stayed back at the hotel with a bottle of Johnny Walker Red and Spanish soap-operas.

Despite my unforeseen residential circumstances, this was still Manhattan, and an avowed hedonist such as myself was not going to let an opportunity like this pass by.  After touring the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a donation of all the nickels and dimes in our pockets and a viciously disgusted look from the lady at the desk, it was time for dinner.  My only true restaurant meal in NYC consisted of fresh slices of sushi flopped over beds of warm and sour rice.  All of which was washed down with enthusiasm and a bottle of rice wine. 

The entre was, of course, half a bottle of scotch back at the hostel, followed by a half-dozen gin and tonics in a truly grime encrusted bar in lower Manhattan whose name its probably better that I forgot.  Things get fuzzy towards the end, but Sid smacked his face on the pavement after tripping on the only tree root growing out of the sidewalk in Times Square (or so he claims to this day). 

Somehow we ended up in a back alley sushi bar at two AM, eating raw fish in a place that looked more like an opportunistic bait shop cashing in on culinary trends.  My only regret was being too far gone to make the obvious jokes about eating "red clam" until the next morning.  

So, how do you enjoy an expensive city like New York when your entire entertainment budget has suddenly been spent on a bare metal cot in a room full of obnoxious gap-year Europeans?

New York to Istanbul - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Just a Normal Thursday

When the movie version of my life is released (with yours truly portrayed by either Adrien Brody or Michael Clarke Duncan...), the following scene will no doubt appear:

Int. Penn Station, New York City. Day
Schendo waits by the timetable information booth, weighed down with luggage and nicotine withdrawal.  There is a TGI Friday's across the frame which he eyes with a mixture of disgust and envy and hunger.  The camera swings as Chester emerges from the crowd with characteristic swagger. He has a bandage wrapped around his left hand and forearm.

Chester: Hey, we're going hostel hunting!
Schendo: What happened? Get kicked out of your apartment?
Chester: Yea [laughs]
Schendo: What happened to your hand?
Chester: I punched through the window of a Ford Escalade.
Schendo: [Brief pause] Where can I smoke?

The Scotch I had bought as a housewarming gift was conscripted into service before we met up with Sid (a fellow nomad friend who was in NYC at the same time) and hit up the punk rock bars of Brooklyn, my friends having lost none of their penchant for desperate, heavy drinking.

After riding the L-Train for a while, our spirits were refreshed, and we managed to book bunks for the rest of the weekend in a hostel on 113th Street where we collapsed- literally- into our beds.

New York to Istanbul - Prelude

As my full time job will be consuming my life for a while, I've decided that this blog must go into a sort of summer re-run mode. My apologies to those who have already heard the story of my 2007 trip to New York and Istanbul, but I hope there are enough people who haven't to make the following posts based upon that trip entertaining:



Taking Interstate 80 across the Alleghenies is like driving through a DaVinci sfumato.  Distance is not measured by perspective or vanishing point, but by the miscible layers of fog and mist which blend into an indistinct horizon.  Of course, I should mention that a similar effect is starting to apply to the interior of my car.

I crack the driver's side window an inch lower.  The overstuffed ashtray below my dashboard CD player has taken on an exotic, almost organic, appearance- like a sea anemone with emphysema.  I've got a carton of cheap cigarettes and an expensive bottle of scotch (both to be bartered in exchange for a couch to sleep on), it's raining cats and dogs, and Harrisburg is still another 200 miles away.

It must be summer...

Review: Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

I hate politics.  I look at hard-core liberals and conservatives with the same regard as I do all those who wake up in the morning and start figuring out how to squeeze, bend and shove this chaotic and anarchistic world into the shape required by their ideologies. I never reveal who I vote for and I do not discuss politics on anything less than by a decade-by-decade perspective.

Which is part of my whole problem.  Politics seems to require a deliberate short sightedness, an emphasis on the immediate problems of today while ignoring the (admittedly safer and less controversial) bird's eye-view of history's currents and jet streams.  Which is why I struggled through the first half of Sarah Vowell's unusual travelogue, Assassination Vacation.

The book starts with an interesting premise: Ms. Vowell's pilgrimage to places and objects associated with the first three US presidential assassinations: Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley.  Distracting from this otherwise endearing adventure in the tourism of political murder, are the author's frequent asides, referring to the political situation of at the time of publication.  At least for me, reading G. W. Bush jokes in 2010 is about as funny as watching reruns of Saturday Night Live cracking on Jimmy Carter.