The end (ish)

The last four months were incredible. I still can't believe it's over. You invest so much of yourself into your surroundings that you forget that it will come to an end. The last week the realization set in. It's over. And I can't ever go back to it. Yes I could return to Istanbul but it wouldn't be the same. At least I can say that Istanbul was my home for four months, yes definitely a home, with a family.
However with that realization I was determined to make the most of my last few weeks. The only problem in my way was exams. I had three exams and three take homes. Well they were all half-assed, three of them I had no preparation for. However I can now safely say that I passed all my courses, and all with amazing marks! I guess standards are not as high in turkey.
Some of the things I managed to see was Rumilseri Castle. One of the first ottoman forts. It was absolutely incredible. We were able to climb the many towers and could see all along the Bosporus. It was a little nerve wracking climbing because there were no safety rails, the steps were not even and many of the bricks were loose. It was amazing, my favourite tourist attraction of Istanbul. This was my last visit to the European side.
Another archaeological site that I saw was the walls of Constantinople. These were not Ottoman, they were Byzantine. Which means that it is being left to ruin. Turks and their political archaeology/tourism. In my time in Istanbul I never saw any Byzantine sites or tourists attractions - except for Hagia Sophia, however that was conquered by the Ottomans and turned into a mosque. Turks neglect anything Byzantine.


Everything else that I did in the last  weeks I did with some of greatest people I've ever met. It didn't really matter to me where we were, just as long as we were spending our last few days together. We drank çay, smoked nargile, enjoyed Turkish cuisine, stressed over exams, visited parts of Istanbul we had neglected. We visited the prince islands, rented bikes and drank beers on the beach. We visited the largest hill in istanbul. Too bad the smog was too think to see much of Europe, but you could see the Asian side perfectly. We walked along the Bosporus in Ubskudar, Maltepe, Bebek, Kuzguncuk, Moda, kadikoy and sariyer. In Orhan Pamuk's book Istanbul he discusses how people of Istanbul have a deep attraction to the Bosporus and believe it can heal those who walk along it. After many walks I've had there, I believe it too. There was nothing more heartbreaking then flying out of Istanbul and seeing the distinctive Bosporus.

Having been out of Istanbul for a few days I really miss it, mostly the people. I also definitely have to go to çay rehab, there was more caffeine in those little drinks then I realized.
I spent my first three days out of Istanbul in Athens. I'm definitely experiencing another culture shock. Churches and church bells, Many English speakers and more skin being shown. Athens is very nice but it doesn't take long to see it all. Only three subway lines and all the tourist sites within walking distance. Unfortunately I didn't get too see the archaeological museum but maybe before I leave I will head over there and check it out. Truthfully I like Istanbul more, it feels more like a living city rather then a tourist hub. However Athens is much more calm. Everywhere you go in Athens you are always stumbling into archaeology sites, big and small.... Everywhere. It was definitely a dream for me.
The first site we visited was the acropolis. Really amazing even though it was under reconstruction. The view was also incredible, all white no skyscrapers, and it was so quiet. People in Athens rarely honk their horn, where Istanbulites are always honking. Nice little change. Then we visited the Minostraki flea market. It was cool to walk through and have lunch. It reminded me of Kadikoy, but kadikoy is bigger and cooler.
Day two we saw the Panthatic Stadium. The birth place of the Olympics. It was very cool walking along all the marble staircases and viewing the exhibition area. There they displayed all of the Olympic torches and their corresponding posters even the one from Athens in 1896. Very very cool. Then we saw the temple of Zeus. It was very hot and it was very difficult to concentrate on the history when your mind is fixated on finding ice cream.
Which brings me to food, feta cheese. Wow it's awesome In Greece. You can order it on its own and eat it with bread. Also pork, oh man I haven't had that in four months and it tastes really good. I even got bacon in a salad. The beer of choice is Mythos, very fitting name for a Greek beer with a Pegasus for a symbol. It's very funny how Turks and Greeks really oppose each other, but there are still many similarities, such as Greek coffee, it's the same as Turkish coffee, and ouzo liqour, it's the same as Turkish Raki.
The third day we visited the agora. There was a couple that was taking pictures and touching some of the statues. This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, artifacts should only be viewed, not handled unless you know what you're doing. Anyway as they were doing that a woman came running over and in a thick sassy Greek accent she said "excuse me this is an archaeology site, not a playground! If you don't like it then leave!" So awesome. Another funny part of the Agora was a random turtle in front of the Agora. As soon as people saw him they were way more interested in the turtle then they were with in the Agora. The list of other places we went goes on.
At the moment I'm on a 5 hour ferry headed to the Island of Naxos. I hope to spend the next few weeks Island hopping through the Cyclades Islands. On the 24th I'll be back in Athens and on the 25th I head to Bucharest Romania. Yay bye bye money.

Ephesus trip

April 15^th

Another excellent weekend. It began Friday night, I packed bag with a few clothes and a bathing suit jumped on the bus with many other exchange and Erasmus students and we headed south. Once out of the city our bus took a ferry across the Sea of Marmara. We all had a beer or two and we were back on the road for the rest of the night. With a rough bus sleep we arrived in Selçuk, a small town tourist town, which I will remember as having orange trees growing all along the roadsides, and a man walking a camel down the road. It is touristy town because it is a pilgrimage site, a shrine to the Virgin Mary. It is believed and accepted by the Catholic Church that this is where she lived and died. It is very beautiful, with a fountain and a reconstruction of her modest dwelling that has been converted into an alter.

We boarded the bus and travelled 7km down the road to Ephesus. The reason why I came on this trip to begin with. Ephesus is a Greek Ruin dating to the 10 century BC, and was taken over by the Romans around 100BC. Apparently, its one of the seven wonder of the world. To me it looked like a massive puzzle, ruins everywhere, broken columns and piles of stone everywhere. The archaeologists have been able to reconstruct the great temple of Artemis, and the amphitheaters. But the remains residential areas, market areas and other public buildings are scattered throughout the site, in ruins. This was a magnificent site, but unfortunately our organizers only gave us two hours for the whole site, which anyone could easily spend an entire day at.

Our next adventure was a boat ride. Actually it was a pirate ship. Turkey has very small boat tour operations all over the place…real party boats. They take out all the guts of these boats and replace them with bars on the inside, and cushions and speakers on the outside. We were the first tour of the year for our specific boat and the crew was psyched to have us. Unfortunately with our long sleepless night most of us just lied on the cushions relaxing, instead of drinking their expensive booze and dancing in bikinis. However that our exhaustion did not stop anyone from jumping in the water once we got to a secluded area. The jump from the top of the boat must have been at least 4 meters, and it felt awesome. My first swim in the Aegean Sea… possibly my first swim not in the Atlantic Ocean.

Our next stop was in the town of Kusadasi, where we had hotel reservations. The view from our hotel room was amazing, looked like a typical resort destination. Everyone gathered in their hotel rooms for predrinking activities and the like, before heading off to the bars.

The next day we all woke up early and again exhausted and headed off to Pamukkelle. The drive was long, about two hours. And the visit was also short, only two hours, which certainly was not enough time to see both the Greek ruins and the calcium carbonate formations. But what I did see was very beautiful. After the visit we made our long drive back to Istanbul, and arrived at around the 3 in the morning.

Şile

April 7^th

            Well it was a busy weekend to say the least. Friday we, myself, Vania, Jeremy, Andre, Mi Mi and Samo, set off from the Üsküdar bus station to Şile on the Black Sea. I was left to ‘organize’ this adventure. So all I did was briefly look up bus times. Meh they leave every hour and we can come back whenever. But only when we got to the bus station and the bus was 3 minutes late, did I start to think “Ohh maybe I didn’t figure this out enough.” But the bus was simply running on Turkish time. Without reservations or tickets we hopped on the bus. And for the next hour and a half I felt like I was driving with my family. No I’m not reminiscing of cute family road trips, I’m remembering fighting with my siblings in the back seat and my parents telling me to be quiet. You know you have close friends when… After an hour and half and 9tl (4.5$CAD) we made it to Şile. The drive into the town was amazing, you could see the black sea and rocks with castles coming out of the water, and real houses. Oh how I was bubbling with excitement.

            As soon as we excited the bus and stretched our legs it was about 1 in the afternoon. But for one of the first times since arriving here we all felt overcome with a feeling of peace and relaxation. The town is was almost quiet. We were in the town center but there was barely any traffic, just lots of men drinking tea in front of shops, dogs lazing around on the sidewalks. I couldn’t help but just take in a deep breathe and feel relief. The sun was shining and the streets were slow and quiet and I skipped my Friday afternoon class for it. We quickly ordered some Lahmacuns for a picnic later and took off to the beach. The beach was easy to find, we walked down a staircase that led to a large marina. Its not exactly summer yet, so all the boats are still ‘winter-parked’ on shore – for lack of a better term. We kept walking along the shore towards what looked like a castle on a rock in the sea. When we got there we were all so excited, we climbed on rocks, took millions of pictures, walked into the water and immediately regretted not bringing our swim suits. But even for a Canadian those water were still very cold. The lifeguard in me also went into safety mode scanning for current or rips and of course the ultimate question – what kinds of fish live in the black sea? Cute, ugly, poisonous or sharks? Either way I should look that up so I don’t get paranoid next time. Admitting those were the clearest bluest waters I had ever seen, besides the ones in southern Nova Scotia, those don’t count because they are unbearably cold.

            After having our fill of beach, we ate our lahmacuns in front of a restaurant in one of the rocks on the water. The restaurant was closed because it’s the off season. So naturally the boys had to climb all over the rock, and disturb all the lizards. Never in my life have I seen lizards in the wild. I thought snakes were bad, but lizards have claws and are slizery. Shiver. One crawled across my foot one day on campus, I squealed, fell to the ground and then immediately tried to find it. They are gross, and they love rocks, and Turkey has plenty of rocks. 8 lizards came crawling out of a hole that one of the boys stepped on. So gross I couldn’t even get a picture. After eating we climbed up along the coast to a look out spot where we could the beach and Marina where we had come from, and a lighthouse and cove that was ahead of us. Naturally more pictures and some fooling around and messing with each other. I crawled down the front of the edge where there was some stairs and rocks that you could walk around on. The waves were crashing against the rocks and it felt very similar to being at peggy’s cove. Except there was no place to sit down, there was a lot of broken glass and prickly plants everywhere…also lizards crawling everywhere.

            Off we wander again along the shore. We stopped in at the lighthouse that had some historic significance, unfortunately the description was only in Turkish so I couldn’t get any information on it. But we were able to take a short rest and have some sunflower seeds and get some pictures of the rocky coast. But soon we off again, walking through the streets. As we moved further away from the city center the quieter it became. As we walked by a coffee shop all the men outside fell silent. Not many woman in those parts, but at least we gave them something to talk about. Shortly we came across another beach…a party beach. It a little larger than Mahoney’s beach and on either end of the beach were two bars! Too bad they were closed for the season. But that did not stop us from enjoying ourselves. I climbed the lifeguard tower, ran around the beach…you know stuff I normally do when I’m at the beach. We all hung out in the sand just having a good time as the hours passed by, we considered camping on the beach.

Eventually we made our way back to the town, but first we stopped for pizza. I have not had pizza since I’ve been here and I didn’t expect much from the pizza but it was pretty good. It took awhile but it was basically home made – we could see the old man mincing the veggies at a snails pace. We had convinced ourselves we had missed the last bus at the rate the pizzas had taken. But it didn’t stop there. The shop keepers insisted we stay for tea, and after tea they insister we stay for a game of tavla. There is always time for tea and a game of tavla in Turkey. Although we didn’t have time the hospitality was truly appreciated. Fortunately we had not missed the last bus! We sat in sweet shop gad some more tea and some Turkish delight and watched the residence enjoy their Friday evening. We made it back to the university by midnight and I went to bed with a tan...woooo.  

The next day I figured I’d take it easy, maybe even study for my three midterms next week…nope, time to go on a hike. We quickly ate lunch at Mirhan and bragged about our awesome previous day for those who failed to come with us. Then we, myself Vania, Samo and Sebi set off on our hike with Jeremy leading the way. We walked behind the university and along the sketchy back road and up behind the hill that we regularly climb. If I haven’t mentioned it before Turkey is full of hills. The kind of hills you dread to climb, the kind of hills that may make you think twice about going somewhere. And now we are purposely going out hiking? A regular walk in Istanbul is a short hike by Nova Scotian standards. On top of these steep hills it was a very humid day. The first hill we climbed did not take too much time but we all felt fairly winded at the top. Luckily there was an awesome view of our campus and a good portion of the Asia side going towards Europe. So we all stood around trying to recognize the taller buildings and pointing out certain areas we though we knew. After we had finished admiring we kept on to the next hill. On the way there we stumbled across a bee keeping  area with a bee keeping attendant. Samo who was so happy and high on life walked very close to the area and greeted “Merhaba” to the bee keeper in the friendliest tone. The startled bee keeper looked at Samu and yelled in Turkish “Are you crazy? Get out of here!” Oh how we laughed.

We continued through on to a small village area that was not as well of as our area. There were fewer cars and not as much noise. But there were lots of kids playing in the streets and chickens everywhere. We stopped briefly to have some ice cream and we watched some teens do tricks with their dogs. We continued our climb through the village, slowly. I felt more humbled as we walked through the village knowing that I have an incredible amount of wealth compared to the entire village. It is quite shocking, but not surprising to see such disparities in wealth as you traverse the city. And when you happen across those areas you cannot help but feel humbled and guilt. Although the village may not have much wealth, it had a lot of character and a lot of happy looking children.

At the top of the village was the second hill, which was also covered in rocks and lizards, it was also covered in goats. There was even a shepherd herding them. It is quite a site to see from afar, you see clustered city scape and above it all a green area covered in rocks and sheep frolicking all over it. At the edge of the cliff area was a spectacular view of Bosanci and Maltepe and the Prince’s Islands. It was nice to be above it all; the city, the noise and the humidity.

Mimi's face sums up how amazed we were by our lucky find.

Getting excited and taking our shoes off as fast as we can.

Abi Andre

Vania - I wonder what she's thinking about?

Adalar

April 1^st

Today was the first April 1^st my father did not pull any tricks on me. Although I had been weary for a few days prior to, figuring that he would try and pull something. To my own surprise nothing. Oh well I pulled a joke of my own. I had Jeremy going that we were going to get deported because of the on going ‘turmoil’ in Turkey, what with the elections and the ongoing corruption allegations against the government, it was a believable tale.  Ahahaha I had a laugh. Unfortunately my midterm will have the last laugh at me. To brighten my mood an adventure was needed. So Jeremy and I took the minibus to Bostanci, not knowing where we would go from there – take the metro to Europe? Kadikoy? We walked from the Bostanci metro to the Sea of Marmara, about 10 minute walk. Its not the prettiest area of the city; two major highways to cross, a stinky river, boring architecture and typical shops.

           Upon reaching the waterfront the shore is covered in ferries, half of which we did not know where they would go. We politely asked an attendant if that particular ferry went to the Prince’s Islands. He said ‘yes,’ and we were hurriedly rushed upon the ferry and it immediately took off. The ferry was small, two levels of seating, a concession stand where you could purchase chocolates and tea. We chose a spot outside close to the bow to admire the view of the approaching Islands and the distancing city.  This spot happened to be next to the control room (?) where you could look in and see the captain smoking a cigarette and steering the boat. I want his job. The ferry stopped at two Islands, we got off at the second, the bigger one. After double checking the ferry times, so as not to get stuck on the island with no way home, we rented two mountain bikes. They were not top quality and I had to get my hands a little greasy adjusting the chain twice, but It was nice to feel some wind and fresh air – kind of a rarity in a big city. The really cool thing about Adalar is the lack of cars on the Island. There are very few, instead there are horse carriages and bikes that you can rent. Next time we want to find some mopeds to rent.

Cruising through the streets of Adalar you will see a lot of tourist shops and restaurants, the further from the ferry terminals you get the more nice houses you see. Correction they are Palaces compared to the rest of the apartment buildings in Istanbul. I should also mention the trees, they are quite large and they grow in the middle of the roads. Luckily I didn’t run into any with my bike. It is quite beautiful the Island, but also rank with the smell of horse shit. It is also littered with cats and dogs, all of which are friendly and just want a little love.  Unfortunately for me the spontaneousness of the trip did not allow me to dress quite appropriately. Jeans and a winter hat + biking up hills = sore sweaty Lucy. But hey I’m in Turkey! The last hill is always the toughest, and I broke down and walked my bike…actually Jeremy walked my bike and I carried the beer. Half way up the hill we met our first Canadian! Woohoo! Didn’t expect to meet Canadians on a Tuesday in Adalar.

Eventually we made it with sore legs to the top. At the top was an old church – didn’t get any details about it- and a restaurant. I will not lie walking that hill was a challenge but we did it fairly quickly. But the hard work made the beers all the better. After watching the sun and the boats with our shoes off and sipping on efes, we had some lunch – French fries and spider dogs. After which we continued our bike ride around the Island to the other side where we watched the sun set and drank one more beer. The ground beneath us was covered in beer cans, obviously our idea was not so original. The road is narrow and fairly easy going with other bikers cruising and enjoying the view. It really is a nice spot to escape the city for a few hours. You can look off into the Marmara and forget about the closeness of the hectic sprawling city behind you. Almost like home – except cooler because I’m in Turkey. 

The ride down was almost terrifying, the horse carriages were finishing for the day and we had to navigate our way past carriages and horses in the middle of the roads, all going down hill. At the bottom we returned our bikes and paid a mere 10tl (5$CAD) for them. I will most definitely be returning to use my gopro and bike around the Island. It is way too beautiful to describe in a blog. Overall an awesome and cheap thrill.

PS - we're not dating. We just like to do spontaneous stuff on the weekdays  

Jeremy likes to climb on rocks