messiestobjects: 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.