messiestobjects

Our Father, Why Did They Forsake Thee?

Anybody here ever heard of a paternoster? Yeah well, I read in my LP Budapest guide book that there was a building not far from where I'm staying that has one, and I made a special trip over there because it's just one of those things I need to do before I die. They're so neat... it reminds one of the days when people thought the future was going to look like the Jetsons. Unfortunately, as happens sometimes in the travel book industry, it was a bit out of date and when I got there there was nothing but a rather abandoned-looking building that was all locked up. I peeked through a very dirty window and saw a whole mess of disconnected paternoster cabins strewn about the filthy hallway floor... it looked like the workers who were dismantling it could have just taken the day off and were coming back tomorrow, so there's no telling how many days I missed my chance by. Very sad.
Anyway, I'm leaving in a few minutes to go to the airport, but in the meantime I found a nice little wireless hotspot so I wanted to upload that picture I was talking about. It's a little blurry; I've been going through a blurry photo phase lately. I like the way a slightly blurry photo often leaves more room for interpretation than a clear one. Unfortunately, this is a rather silly photo, so no highfalutin' mumbo-jumbo should be taken from it, but I still like the way it looks. And so okay I lied, it's not really very funny at all. Oh wait... unless I tie this photo to my emotions upon finding the paternoster dismantled... sweet! The Title of this amazing photographic piece of art is now "WHYYYY GOD?! WHYYYYYY?!!" Now it's funnier. A smidgen.

My Two Days In The City That Thinks That The Buddah Was Annoying

Per certain comments from a previous post, I am morally obligated to have a poll; SOME people seem to think that the sound clip that loads every time you open my page, while very cool, gets a tad annoying. While I am the type of person who thinks that things get funnier/cooler every time I hear them, I guess I may have to make an allowance for those of you with shorter attention spans. SO, in that spirit, if enough of you comment and think I should lose the Ministry sound clip, I will duly and dolefully turn my page into a silent loader.
Anyway, Budapest is okay... There are alot of statues here. A LOT. In fact, they have a whole park, called Statue Park, which is a dumping ground for Hungary's communist era memorial staues. (They had a great gift shop; I bought myself a pair of red CCCP Lenin socks, but at the last minute decided not to get the cd of Songs of the Revolution, although I really wanted it.) When I finally get around to opening my Budapest gallery on Smugmug, I'm afraid that all of my pictures are pretty much going to be of statues. I haven't yet decided if that's because the only photograph-worthy items in Budapest are concrete or metal busts of dead authoritarians, or if that's just the frame of mind I'm in. I wandered around the very gloomy (and, if I may be so bold, Hungarian) inner city park this afternoon, listening to the album "The Black Rider" by Tom Waits on my mp3 player, and that was kind of perfect.
Another thing I've decided about myself is that I am no longer a hostel kind of traveller. There are two reasons to stay in hostels rather than hotels: 1) They are slightly cheaper, as you generally share a room with a few other people and the also-shared bathroom is across the hall. And 2) it's a good way to meet people. Well, after staying at this tiny little hostel here in Budapest, I've come to the realization that A) I don't really mind paying the extra 10 or 20 dollars to have my own room and for not having to wait for other people to finish using the shower because B) I really don't like people and therefore have no desire to meet them for the most part, anyway. Don't get me wrong, meeting people on a train or a plane, or in a bar or at work or something like that is totally fine, but meeting them in the hall while trying to keep your towel wrapped around your loins on the way back from the shower, and then having to fend off the 1 or 2 Betty or Bob granola's (which are a staple of hostel travel 'round the world) while passing the kitchen is not my cup of coffee. When I meet up with my Comrades in Munich on the 4th, we will be staying in a hostel, but that's ok because since there are a bunch of us we booked our own room, so at least I'll be sharing with friends whom I 've already met. The whole shower thing will still be uncomfortable, though. I enjoyed staying at hostels very much back in my early days of European travel, but it seems I've gotten quite a bit older, crankier, and snobbier since then. Also, I wanted to insert a picture I took at Statue Park here, but the hostel doesn't allow you to plug things into their hard drive, so you'll have to settle for a description: It's a black & white shot of this statue, right, (because pictures of statues in Eastern Bloc countries always have to be in black & white) only I'm standing in front of it and making the exact same pose that the statue is in! It's hilarious, dude, you guys are totally missing out. Well, you have my stupid hostel to thank for that.
Right. So after two days in Budapest, I feel that I've squeezed everything out of it that I want to, and tomorrow I will be flying to another city that I never got around to visiting while I was living in Germany, but really always wanted to: Rome. I'll have three days there and then it's off to Krampus!

In Which I Get A Taste Of My Own Medicine, Which Sounds Kind Of Gross, But That's The Expression, Isn't It Then?

I've been watching the news for the last couple of days from Baghdad, and I caught myself doing exactly what I've been telling friends and family not to do for the last three years... which is to worry about my friends there. (Well, I never said for you guys not to worry about my friends. Actually I told you all not to worry about me, but you see, now I'm worried about them, so it's the same thing. Or rather, my position has now changed, so that rather than having people worry about me, I have to worry about people there. I hope I didn't just lose, or worse, bore you; I'm actually having trouble piecing the last couple of sentences together myself; I think I may have overexplained an unimportant point, just a tad... I need a drink.) See, the thing is, is that when you're there, in Baghdad, relatively safe inside the Emerald City, and stuff blows up or you read about stuff blowing up in various other parts of the city, you kind of shrug your shoulders and go tsk tsk, but you go on with your day, you know? I mean it's not like you don't worry or you don't care, but it's just another aspect of the environment where you go about your daily business. Noony noony noony noo-ny.
But the current crisis in Baghdad, which began on the 24th, and seems to be calm for the moment as of yesterday, really has me on the edge of my seat. Full-out Civil War seems fairly inevitable at this point, and that just means a whole world of badness for anybody still there, Iraqi wise. I'm sure that those inside the Interzone will still be fine, for the most part, and most of the Iraqis I know have emigrated to Kurdistan anyway, where the madness hasn't reached yet and hopefully never will. I'm trying to remember how the news always makes it seem worse than it feels when you're in the middle of it, but the more time that goes by where I'm having cappuccinos, walking around posh shopping areas, touring pretty mosques and museums, and eating McDonalds, the more distanced I've begun to feel, naturally enough, and the harder it is to put my head back into what's going on over there.
But my point is, now I know how things looked like to those few of you who were worried about me (and/or others in Iraq) from the outside for the last three years... didn't mean to minimize your nagging voices to a Peanuts adult character quite as much as I did... sorry about all that! Heh heh. All's well that ends well, aye? No hard feelings? Right-e-o, moving along then.
So Turkey has been real fun, but I've been here way too long... I have gotten to know Istanbul rather too intimately. I don't have much to add, excitement wise, from my last week here. I've mostly just been hitting the pavement and shoving my nose into every available nook and cranny, and even retreading the more choice spots. I really like the mix of East and West here... lots of haijabs, lots of carpets, lots of eyes of Fatima, and lots of other Middle Eastern stuff-n-junk, and also fast food. This has totally been a great place to ease back in to the West. I even went to see the new James Bond movie... it was in English with Turkish subtitles, so that was nice. It's a good one; definitely a bold move in the Bond franchise. I like that he gets his butt kicked all over the place, before sort of coming out on top. It's not really what Bond is supposed to be about, but that just made it more interesting. Anyway, Istanbul, not Bond. Sorry. It's a wicked neat city, but sadly it's not as exotic to me as it might have been had I not already toured several Middle Eastern countries before arriving here, though as I said, I did enjoy the mix. But I feel that I've finally seen everything I need to, and it's time to move on, so tomorrow morning I'll be flying to Budapest for a few days, and then making my way by train to Munich. I will, as usual, tell you more than you probably want to know about how it all goes.

The World Is Full Of Tools

So, what with the fact that I have uploaded all of my pictures from Istanbul, Cappadocia, and my tour of the South Aegean region, and typed in descriptions of each one, not to mention the other day's post and now this one, you might think I seem to have more time on my hands than a traveller should. Well, I'm back in Istanbul with a few days to kill, and while I'm still making it out there everyday, I have seen most of the city, and so I'm taking advantage of the good internet and downtime to catch up on a bunch of stuff.
One thing I've noticed online in the last few days is an upsurge in the scientific community against religion, starting with a really thoughtful post over at Cosmic Varience, and then today an article on NY Times which I just finished reading and is the cause of this out-of-travel rant.
Of course, we've been hearing alot of this noise from Richard Dawkins recently since the publiction of his book, but it seems to be stepping up a notch in the rest of science-land as well.
In the post on CV, Natalie Angier basically states her disatisfaction with scientists who wail about the whole Darwin/Creationism controversy, yet fail to step up to the plate against the scientifically ludricrous Virgin Birth. She feels that it's Science's duty to tackle all forms of such preposterous false beliefs. Have some balls, labcoats! Put Occam's Razor on Mary and see what theory you can dredge up there!
Then today, the NY Times article discussed a forum that occured earlier this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., where a bunch of scientists brought out the idea of spearheading a movement to Evangelize science against religion. There were differing views among the scientists attending, with Dawkins and like-minded god-haters basically wanting to have Christian Concentration Camps along with Bible, Koran, and Book of Mormon burnings laughing all the way, while other more even-keeled scientists wish to press forward with the age old technique of testing hypothesis, re-testing, then showing the world proof of the veracity of science with cool toys like paved roads, penicillin, rubber gloves, and home theatre systems, and eventually staging a remake of the 'ol Baal vs. God play, where Elijah (I think it's Elijah, someone else will have to fact check for me 'cause I'm on a roll!) mocks the Baal worshippers and says ok, if Baal is so great, tell him to make it rain! So they pray to Baal and weep and gnash and of course no rain comes. Then Elijah says, "Yo! Yahweh! Bring on the water!" And it dumps buckets of water and the Baal freaks freak out, only this time the scientists will be all like, okay God and Allah freaks, you guys pray to your grand high poo-bahs for a better video digital compression format than DVD, and we'll apply our science, and see who gets one first.
The reason behind all of this recent push for science to begin a more active fight against religion is, of course, due to the recent outbreak of the evils which religion has caused in the world, not to mention the very many evils caused by religion in the past. People like Dawkins think that if religion were done away with, the world would go all shiny and everybody would have spacecars and candy and live for a hundred years.
Here's my problem with all of that. Now, I am a great believer in science. I will agree with Dawkins insofar that if you're not, you're retarded because even the Amish need to churn butter, a very scientifically advanced dairy farm achievement. Well okay, it was advanced several hundred years ago or whatever, but it's still science. If you really believe that science is evil, go live in Cappadocia, but away from the main population of more advanced cave-dwellers, please.
The problem is, that in reality it is NOT religion which causes the larger of the world's evils. Oh sure, witch burnings, being afraid to sail off the edge of the flat Earth until thousands of years after the Greeks already knew the world was a ball, yeah. Totally religion. But the real problem isn't religion. Religions generally ask their followers to be nice to each other, it's just that their followers usually miss the point. "Each other" means, you know, everybody in the world, not this thing where it's taken as only your fellow Sunni muslims, and kill all the rest. The problem is people. People screw up religion, starting with people who only want to use religion as a means to power. The catholic church probably needs to be abolished. I despise the catholic church. Not because I hate god, but because the catholic church hates God; they've totally obliviated everything that Jesus had to say about real spirituality. They are the Pharisees reborn.
I'm afraid that getting rid of religion, much as Jesus abolished the old rules of Judaism, and Mohammed made a few addendums, and then so did Joseph Smith... well you see my point. There will rise up a science cult and people will still kill each other for scientific heresies. As long as there are people in the world who desire power over other people, there will be a way for them to get it, and if not religion, than something else. Religion is a tool, just like Science or Democracy or Communism. They all sound good at the beginning, but they can be used however the user wants. It's a baser human nature to be very very nasty to other humans in order to get to what they want.
I'm not saying that science shouldn't shed some light on some of mankind's fuzzier notions... Evolution is, I'm afraid, a fact, and I think it's important to teach it over Creationism... it's an old argument, but Evolution doesn't rule out God. I don't think that Science can or ever will. Science is the greatest, most effective tool we've ever come up with for understanding nature, but to a spiritual person, God is above and beyond the reach of nature. God's tool to make the universe could easily be Evolution.
But a war against religion is sort of self-defeating. What science really needs to concentrate on is George Bush's brain, and how it got that way. Also the Pope's. Rush Limbaugh's. Osama what's-his-face's. Michael Moore's. And Richard Dawkins'. And how to weed this us vs. them mentality out of the human race, you know? Make sure everybody gets up above that spinal cord thinking thing which Einstein pointed out as our main problem these days. Or at least make the Us, smart, creative, compassionate people, and the Them, power mad, intolerant, blind  freaks. Weed 'em out, yo.

Discovering Occam's Razor In Ancient Aegean Snake Oil Tourist Traps

So I spent four days in that hotel on the Aegean Sea, which was in some seaside town whose name I still can't remember... another problem with tour packages is that they really don't encourage you to find stuff out on your own. As I said, never again. But also, again, the tours I went on were very interesting and on my own I may or may not have gotten to all of them, so there you go. On day one we did what is called the P.M.D. tour. Priene, a ruined Hellenistic (Greek) city where Alexander the Great spent more time than anywhere else on his world tour, Miletos, the city that stopped Alexander the Great and basically forced him to cool his heels at Priene until he could come up with a better attack plan, which he did eventually of course, and lastly Didyma, which wasn't so much a city as the almost 8th wonder of the old world. It was a Temple to Apollo which was never finished because it was too huge and I guess they ran out of time or money or whatever and fell just short of being a world-class wonder.
On day two I got to go to Ephesus... very neat place actually. It's the city where the Christians lived whom Paul wrote letters to, which subsequently formed the book of Ephesians in the New Testament. They got this huge Library facade there which was way cool, (The Library of Celsus in case you were curious) the prison where they chucked 'ol St. Paul into for a few years way off on a hilltop, and a very important social center for Romans, the Public toilets. They all used to  hang out there, literally, do their business side by side in unwalled stalls, and talk turkey. Here's a pleasant demonstration for you:

We also went to see the House of the Virgin Mary nearby, where they say they've got proof that she lived there the last days of her life, all endorsed by the Pope and everything, and we should silently agree because we all know how infallible that office is.
Next day we hit Pergamon and the nearby Roman therapy center of Asclepion, which was nice, but not worth the three hour drive each way. On the last day we hit Hieropolis and Pamukkale, which are side by side. Hieropolis is another run-o-the-mill dead Roman city, but Pamukkale was pretty unique; It's this hot spring whose source is called Cleopatra's pool, because I guess she used to get all nekkid and swim there, and the water continues on down to this cool rock formation which I will describe by quoting wikipedia:  

Pamukkale, meaning "cotton castle" in Turkish, is a natural site and attraction in south-western Turkey in the Denizli Provence. The tectonic movements that took place in the fault depression of the Menderes river basin did not only cause frequent earthquakes, but also gave rise to the emergence of a number of very hot springs, and it is the water from one of these springs, with its large mineral content — chalk in particular —that created Pamukkale. Apart from some radioactive material, the water contains large amounts of hydrogen carbonate and calcium, which leads to the precipitation of calcium carbonate. The effect of this natural phenomenon leaves thick white layers of limestone and travertine cascading down the mountain slope, making the area look like a fortress of cotton or a frozen waterfall.

All of the places I went to, except Didyma, which only had that really big Temple, had Greek or Roman colliseums. I have seen way too many of those at this point, and unless the Grand High Hypertrekking Counsil decides to begin awarding points for ruined colliseums, I really don't need to ever see another one.
Also, I woke up on the morning of the second day with a sore throat. Later that day, at the House of the Virgin Mary, I drank from the spring that comes out from under her house and which they say is Holy Water and cures many ills. The next day, I woke up with a really sore throat, sniffles, and a slight fever ache, and was quite miserable on the three hour drive to Pergamon, but of course I had to go as I likely will never be in the market for touring Pergamon again. At the Asclepion, the ancient ruined therapy villiage where the idea of antidotes was apparently discovered and where the medical profession first began using the snake as a part of their symbol, they also had a spring with an unusual mineral compound in the water and also is famous for possible healing properties, and so I drank that too. The next day I woke up with a full blown cold, the works. Really bad coughing, lots of flem, lots of achy breaky junk. So the three hour drive to Hieropolis and Pamukkale was not only absolute torture for me, but for my fellow touristers also. (I think I just made that word up.)
Pamukkale is also a famous theraputic area; Hot springs and minerals and all that. When walking about the area that is man-made, which they divert a portion of the spring water to so that tourists may walk about in the water and minerals in bare feet without stinking up the more delicate natural areas as has been done in the past, I slipped and cut open my foot and sprained my thumb.
So my conclusion from all of this is that either water which is Holy, strange, or theraputic as having healing properties is total bunkum, or I am the Antichrist and all mystical energies are aligned wholly against me. Honestly, I'm not sure which way Occam's Razor would cut on that one. I'm a pretty skeptical individual, so the first possibility appeals to me quite naturally, but on the other hand being the Antichrist would get me all the good seats at rock concerts, and would solve all of my moral dilemmas quite nicely, and that's a fairly simple answer, right?
Well I'm back in Istanbul now; Took the night train from Denizli near Pammukale. I love night trains, especially the sleeper cars. It's like you're not even travelling. You go into your cabin, plug in your laptop and play for a while, maybe hit the dining car for a tipple or two and some bad soup, pull out the bed and sleep, wake up and voila! You're in Istanbul. Much better than bus travel, hands down. Always take the night train whenever possible.
Anyway, the place where I'm staying at this time around has really great internet, so I've finally uploaded my Istanbul pictures to my smugmug page here, and will add more if I take any good ones in the next few days. I'll also be uploading my Cappadocia and Ruined Aegean Civilizations pix soon.

Overly-Friendly Travel Agents Are The Trojan Horses Of My Wallet

It seemed like such a good idea at the time, it really did. When I was in Istanbul, and getting tired of it, I stopped by a travel office one day to try and get some tickets to the Cappadocia region. Somehow, the agent talked me into this whole tour package thing... I'm trying to remember exactly why it sounded like a good idea. Normally, I have better sense, because I hate tours, being a part of a tour group, the buses, all of it. But Turkey is such a large country, and there's a lot to see, and this seemed to be an easy way to get to do a lot of it without having to think about the logistics too much, or worry about fitting it all in.
Well, I guess this was just a lesson that I needed to re-learn. Never again. Don't get me wrong, Cappadocia was amazing. It's where Hanna-Barbera got the idea for the Flintstones, I'm sure. I got to see lots of cave dwellings, ancient and modern, as present day Cappadocians still utilize the swiss-rock land to the fullest. I even slept in a cave hotel; pretty cool. But the thing I hate about tours is how much they lead you around by the hand; they neglect to tell you about simple things such as bus changes because they figure you're too stupid to remember, and just change everything in mid-direction and expect you to relax and not be concerned. Also, for every cool place they take you, they also take you to some local craft shop or souvenir kiosk where you are touted to death.
On the other hand, I got to see some things I may not have found on my own, so it's a fifty fifty proposition. We toured this underground city... wicked cool. I guess the Hitites used to hide out down there, and then the Christians. There are like seven levels of interconnected caves spreading out for hundreds of kilometers underground. We also got to see some Rock Churches... not rock-n-roll, just rock. I guess the Christians that settled in Cappadocia built several hundred cave churches around, and we got to see some of the more impressive ones.
Now I'm in some town on some seaside area somewhere... I left Cappadocia last night on a 14 hour overnight bus ride, on which I got to see some 60's Turkish slapstick comedy. It was hilarious... I have no idea what it was about or what anybody was saying, but I laughed my ass off. All I can recall at the moment is some duelling banjo-thing contest between rival harems, and there was a picnic where the fat harem ladies, in full regalia, were forced to perform sack-races and egg-in-a-spoon-in-the-teeth races for the men, and then the men got all greased up and wrestled some mentally handicapped dude. And at the end of the movie, they all started slapstick hitting each other and simultaneously all lost their balance and rolled down a sand dune together into a freeze-frame. I tell you, they aren't kidding when they say that travel is broadening.
Anyway, in the next couple of days I'll be touring Ephesus and Pergamon (Pergamum?) and some other cool junk. I had wanted to go to Troy, but the tour guy talked me out of it because I guess there's not much to see, as anything museum-worthy was carted off to foreign museums, and the big wooden horse that is there is not, apparently, the original Trojan Horse. It is a newer one built to trap tourists, which I now find to be a very funny line which the travel agent used to get me not to go there, as %50 of this tour is nothing but a tourist trap. He also managed to talk me out of going to Olympos... man, I am such a sucker!
I just Wikipediaed Pergamon, and it's both. It can be Pergamum, also. Anyway, here's a shot of one of many good spots in Cappadocia:

Even Old New York Was Once New Amsterdam. Why They Changed It I Can't Say, People Just Liked It Better That Way.

So you really only need about three or four days in Istanbul to see everything you need to see... I've been here for 11 days, which is excessive, as it turns out. Don't get me wrong, I've kept busy, and it's been pretty entertaining. The ferry ride up the Bosphorous Strait was very nice; a real continental divide, you know? (Yuk Yuk) But the total tourist trap of a town on the Asian side at the end of the ride was an unpleasant surprise. The town, named Anadolu Kavagi, is the last stop before the Bosphorous runs into the Black Sea, and you have to wait there for three hours until the next ferry returns to Istanbul. They had one of those old run down castles that you see all over both of these continents at the top of a hill there. Everything worth seeing in Europe is at the top of a hill, it seems. That took an hour to do, and otherwise the town is made of nothing but schmaltzy seafood restaurants with a guy for each one out on the street pleading with passersby to come in and eat. The first guy will say "Excuse me sir! Please, come inside to eat we have very good fish!" And I will say any of a number of things such as "No thank you", or "I just ate", or "NO!", or "F*** off you annoying s*** of a tout!" And the next guy, standing in front of the next resaurant about five feet away, and who was watching and listening to your pleasant exchange the entire time, will step out and almost block your path and say "Excuse me sir! Please, come inside to eat we have very good fish!" ...   Repeat ad nauseam.
And the Grand Bazaar... good lord. It's the same thing times ten. The Grand Bazaar is a neat place with alot of interesting things, but I pretty much was forced to run through it to avoid being harangued into a very annoyed death. This is a really bad habit that many of these near-eastern countries seem to have fallen into. Morocco was really awful that way also, especially in Fez. It's disappointing, and I think ultimately self-defeating for their own tourist business, because you know, if I am left alone, and I see something interesting, I will stop, peruse and potentially purchase. But the minute some smelly shop guy comes out and starts begging me to look at this or look at that, even if I may have initially been interested, I will run away from him, braying and kicking my hind legs out at him like the donkey I am. I have no patience for that crap. And I see alot of other tourists doing the same thing. The carpet seller's touts are particularly bad that way. It' s upsetting because they ruin what otherwise could be a very lovely atmosphere. Here's a shot I took of Touts on the lookout for suckers in the Grand Bazaar:

It's not that way quite everywhere in Istanbul, thankfully. The Grand Bazaar and Anadolu Kavagi, and various other pockets of tourist trapism here and there, but not all. Sultanahmet, the district where my hotel is, is mostly free of that except for a few carpet sellers and resaurants. Istiklal Caddesi is the main shopping area, and is the most western part of the city that I can see. There are no touts on that street and so far it's my favorite part of Istanbul, except for the Whirling Dervishes and Turkish Delight of course. There's a Starbucks there. Now, I really hate Starbucks coffee. But they have good muffins and pastries and such, and they had this special Pumpkin Spice Latte thing... the sins of the west never tasted so good. It's been a really long time since I was really able to indulge freely in a silly franchise flavored thingie on a street full of chic clothing stores playing obnoxious beat music loud enough to be heard from outside, unhealthy food vendors, dirty street buskers, and throngs of worshippers of the bargain.
Anyway, I leave tomorrow for other parts of Turkey. Cappadocia for starters, and we'll see where we go from there.
If I was still in Baghdad, I'm sure I'd have posted almost every day this week about how happy I am that The Democrats took back the power, Rummy quitting (!!! :) :) ) Bush looking like a chastened little monkey sitting next to Pelosi, and so many other beautiful moments. So aren't you glad you don't have to hear about any more of that crap from me? I am sad in a way, because I'd love to see how the denizens of Interzone are reacting to all of this... I asked my friends who are still there what the general mood is, and Darren wrote me back to say,
"As for the post-election mood, there's alot of "we're screwed now" and "that damn Pelosi's a b****" talk.  I can't wait to get the f*** out of here!"
God I hate those people. I'm glad I'm gone and done with it, but a big ugly smug part of me wishes I could be there to see all the chagrin going around. Let's just hope that voting the Democrats in just to get rid of the Republicans actually accomplishes something.

Been A Long Time Gone, Constantinople, Now It's Turkish Delight On A Moonlit Night

You know what's really great about Turkey? Turkish Delight is what. When I was a kid, I was really into the Chronicles of Narnia. I must have read all seven of those books about a hundred times by the time I was eight. In the first one, the one they've made the movie out of, the White Witch asks Edmund if he'd like anything, anything at all, and he asks for Turkish Delight. I never really was able to figure out what that was; this was way way pre-wikipedia, remember. For a long time I had this notion that it was some sort of sweet turkey pastie kind of thing... Once many years later the subject came up and someone told me it was a sort of taffy, which is closer to the truth than sweet turkey pastie, but still not quite right. Turkish Delight is a cube of one of a hundred different types of flavoured goo, (sorry I can't expound further on actual flavours; I'm not really well-versed there just yet. I think some are fruitish, but others are certainly not. One is definitely mint, and another may be a chocolatey coconutty kind of thing. Beyond that I'm stumped.) sometimes with nuts, pistachioes usually, and coated with confectioner's sugar. It's pretty awesome, and it was radical to finally sample the stuff I'd been wondering about since the days when I would knock on the back of my closet, hoping to stumble into a snow coated world where animals said silly things. You know, wacky words like the Brits use, guv'nor.
Another really awesome thing about Istanbul is the Whirling Dervishes. I've been to see them twice! They're not performances, per se, as they consider what they do to be a holy ceremony (a sema) whether there are people watching or not. They do charge admission, but if you try clapping, the one Dervish that looks the scariest will shake his head like you're a bunch of inbred oafs, and you don't dare clap again. The first time I saw them was definitely more of a tourist set-up, though. They perform once or twice a week at the Sirkeci train station, which was the terminus of the Oriental Express. It'll be funny if I take a train to Germany at the end of the month because I'll be approaching the famous rail route from the wrong way about!
Anyway, I say it was more a tourist set up because they advertise on every street on the day of a performance there and it's just an unused hall in the rail station where they set their (whirli-) gig up. You hear about Whirling Dervishes, and you go, huh, that's a weird thing. And then you find out that what they're all about is spinning around in order to get closer to God and you think, Heh! I must have been really close to God all those times I made myself sick doing that when I was 5! But then you find out that they are a really non-violent peace-and-love-centric Muslim Sufi sect who don't really think of it as Whirling so much as Dancing and you're all, wow, we could use more Muslim sects like that these days. Then you go and see them, and you got nothin'. It's a really pretty thing, actually, and I've even got a favorite Dervish, although I don't know his name because they haven't got trading cards yet. I mean, don't get me wrong, ultimately they're just spinning around in circles, but they are very graceful at it and seeing a bunch of 'em whirl around like that is really something. The first time there were only five of them, and apparently it was a sema-lite because the second time I went to see them was at the Mevlevi Monastery, where they hang their hats (which supposedly represent the tombstones of their egos) and there was alot more involved. First off, there were eight, count 'em eight Whirling Dervishes! (I'm saying this in a Sesame Street sing-song, by the way, but you can't tell that because this is type. A really inadequate medium for getting your point across economically, sometimes, isn't it?) Secondly, the building was a rather dojo-like space, much more somber, and the guests didn't need Scowling Dervish to warn them off clapping this time, although he was there and looked ready to. Thirdly, there were two extra guys there besides the Whirlers; an old guy that wore a slightly different hat and seemed to be the head-priest- who-has-whirled-to-God -so-many- times-that- he-doesn't- even-need-to-turn-a- little-bit-any- more, and another younger guy that sort of wandered about in between the Whirlers as if to make sure they were spinning their share... not really sure what he was about, actually. Anyway, as flippant as I am, it really was something to see and I actually felt like I was in a holy ceremony in church, even if it was only the church of an evil Muslim God. (Just Kidding! Allah, God and Yaweh are the same God, I know. It's the people who worship him differently that are crazy. Not because they worship differently, but because they have a tendency to judge, if not kill each other because they don't worship exactly the same way.)
Well anyway I of course got some video, which I would love to post but the internet here is so slow that I'd miss Krampus if I tried uploading any. I'll put a picture here that I'm really proud of, though, because it's a photostich! A real accomplishment when your subjects are human tops.

Other than those two things, Istanbul is fairly standard sightseeing fare. Alot of Mosques. Actually the only difference between big fancy Middle Eastern Mosques and big fancy European Churches, besides minor differences in décor, is that In the big fancy Churches they always make you take your hats off, but in the big fancy Mosques they always make you take your shoes off! They also encourage men to wear those not-yarmulke things and I would guess for the women to wear haijab, but I don't think they're allowed to worship with the men, so they like, stay outside and sweep the stairs or something. I haven't made it to the Bosphorous yet; it's cold and rainy most days. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny, though, and if it is I'm doing a boat tour... the Bosphorous is the strait that divides the European Continent from the Asian Continent, so you can walk across the Bosphorous bridge from one to the other, and I so have to do that, too. Major Hypertrekking points.

Transition Takes Longer Than You Might Think.

It feels weird to sit down and try and write something that's not about the latest Bush administration outrage, or Baghdad related, you know? On my smugmug page, my Baghdad gallery gets more hits than most of the other galleries combined, and I have a feeling that writing about some happy little jaunts around other less interesting parts of the world will reflect the interest level here, also... at least, I know that I myself feel that way. Somehow it almost doesn't seem worth it to sit down and try to describe Istanbul, because I've got nothing to complain about! Well, that's not entirely true; Every morning at 5:30am, I am woken by the sound of Islamic chanting coming from the towers of the Sultan Ahmet mosque, more famously known as the Blue Mosque and which has a direct line of sight to my hotel room window. It's really loud and obnoxious, and is actually more than I was ever subjected to in Baghdad. It certainly doesn't put me in the mood for praising Allah, which is what I understand is the intent.
The only other complaint I have is not so much a complaint as an observation chock full of wry amusement about Istanbul taxi drivers... this is no exaggeration, but every taxi I've been in here, the driver has had to stop and ask for directions! I don't think I've come across that particular idiosyncrasy anywhere else... my hotel is in the center of the most touristy area of the city, and the guy didn't know where it was...
Otherwise, Istanbul is great. Good food, very nice people, cobblestone streets, and alot of old stuff to see... just what I like in a vacation.
I'm not sure that I really believe yet that I am no longer in Iraq, or that I don't have to go back... in a weird way I miss it. It had a sense of immediacy that I doubt I'll ever get to experience again. It's a heady wine, being in the middle of world events, even peripherally... maybe I'll start looking for another job over there. Just kidding! Sort of.