Istanbul

Ferries across the Bosphorus

I have been looking forward to visiting this city for many years, its history, its landscape, the archaeological remains that just litter some parts of the city, some visited, some not. It's position as the crossroads of the world; straddling the divide between east and west physically and culturally. It was supposed to be the beginning of a great step into the unknown. The start of traveling in Asia, the beginning of the unfamiliar and the challenging contrast to what was so familiar and too easy in mainland Europe. It's that challenge thing again, I'm seeking experiences either consciously or unconsciously that will be difficult. At least I think so.
However, three factors have changed the route for me. The first is the cessation of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Iran following the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_attack_on_the_British_Embassy_in_Iran incident, the bandit-country nature of the border regions near Turkey and Pakistan. Secondly it's getting really cold here so I'm sticking to the coast where it's warmer and third my Indian visa is swiftly running out (it only lasts for six months).
So I'm flying to India on the 8th of January and sticking close to Istanbul until then. I'm actually writing this post in Izmir where I headed to get some slightly warmer weather. My travels until then will be confined to the western side of Turkey. 
The journey into Turkey was difficult to sat the least, which I enjoyed, but my travels here have involved too much tourism for my liking. In Istanbul there are literally weeks worth of things to do and see. Except I'm not happy doing just that. I can visit historical buildings and museums for a few days but aside from the learning about the place that goes on there isn't much living there for me to see. Also wandering around a (cold and rainy) city by yourself loses it's appeal after the third or forth day.
I am travelling because... Honestly I cannot say why exactly, but to experience new and interesting places through my own eyes and also through the impressions of the local people I meet along the way is important. That is what I takes me along the road to the next place. There is no guidebook for Turkey in my bag. No list of sights to tick off, places to stay or eat and definitely no key vocabulary.
So when the only people I have stunted conversations with are shopkeepers, cafe owners, hotel desk staff and those strange guys who are employed to start friendly conversations with tourists for the purpose of luring them into shops and selling them items for an extortionate rate- I'm not at my happiest.
You can tell when I'm having this kind of experience by the way I take many more photographs than usual.

Tourism at Topkapi

The Tower of Justice- more tourism...

Looks cold and wet doesn't it? It was.

Inside the council chamber, the sultan used to sit behind the golden window to observe the proceedings taking part in his name.

See? Just like that.

Ottoman Bunchuks, symbols of power a lot like a standard.

16th Century Armour, the irate guard caught up with me at this point and told me 'no photo'

Re-curved composite bows

Views from Topkapi across to the Galata tower http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galata_Tower

There were far more photographs taken, I didn't manage to get any from the inside of the room where the relics of various religious figures are kept, there were far too many security guards around for that so I couldn't better the picture of the hand of John the Baptist that my father took many years ago with my own of the staff of Moses. In all I spent around 4 hours at the palace and I didn't see it all, missing several important exhibits and the harem altogether. Then again, I am a lousy tourist.

Agia Sophia, more tourism, but wow! Just look at it!

There was one place that I simply HAD to go to and that was Hagia Sophia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia which was one of the big draws of the city for me. 1500 years of history on top of another several thousand years worth buried underneath. I can confirm that it really has to be seen, read up about it first, then just go along and experience the place. Cathedrals are built to awe the visitor and in this respect Hagia Sophia did not disappoint, with many of the original Byzantine mosaics restored and visible after being stripped of the later layers of plaster put there to cover the idolatry by the conquering Turks. 

Recently it was discovered that the four seraphim have faces under their gold masks!

The spot where the emperors of Byzantium were crowned.

Isis and Horus

Stereotypes :)

Oh look, a thing you can touch!

Christ Pantocrator with the Mary and John the Baptist

Breathtaking mosaics around the galleries

It was a little busy on the day I visited, so I cannot begin to imagine how busy it could be in the peak season. I would recommend a visit to anyone, I may even go back again myself! However I would think twice if there were so many visitors that stopping, staring and contemplating was impossible. That is, I believe, the point of visiting a place like this, it's that whole 'pilgrimage' thing again.

The Archaeological museum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Sarcophagus

A gladiators grave steele

Part of the chain that closed the Golden Horn to ships in times of siege.

A female deity figure from the neolithic, yup another one...

Some days the kindness and openness of strangers truly shocks and fills me with awe and gratitude simultaneously. It shouldn't as I'm couchsurfing and I'm trying to remember that people can be amazingly open, yet it does and frequently I cannot express how grateful I am. 
Antje, a former couchsurfer of mine who stayed in my cold little house in Wales nearly two years ago asked me randomly on facebook what I was up to and ever-so-kindly took it upon herself to find me some more friends in the city, to my surprise it worked out wonderfully and her university friend Aslihan replied that she could meet up one evening; she took me to a rooftop restaurant with the most ridiculously good views. I mean they were literally breathtaking, even the cold was worth it, I've forgotten the name of the restaurant, but it was a stones throw from the Galata tower

Sneaky pic

One part of the panarama; towards Topkapi Saray

One day I took a walk along the city walls (another reason I had to visit). The walls are situated in a band of open ground in a girdle around the peninsula. Often major roads and transport infrastructure has been built in this open space giving the walls a surreal aspect as in places they have a four lane highway in a deep trench as a kind of impenetrable 21st century moat. There were also strange-looking men lurking between the curtain walls looking out and down upon passers by. I didn't linger anywhere long and took few pictures as a result. My host later told me that an American woman was molested and murdered there in the summer. 
I did find a little museum along the way; it was called the panorama 1453 museum. Inside after a lot of information boards you climb into a spherical chamber where there is a panoramic painting of the scene when the defences of Constantinople  were breached. It was quite interesting to watch the other visitors as most seemed to want their photograph taken in front of various scenes, what visitor and which scene is open to interpretation. The wording of the exhibition was also fascinating in respect to it being very much the history of the victor and the glorification of the personal skills of the sultan Mehmed II. There he is below, sitting on his horse winning the battle all by himself. 

I think the artist has misguidedly used modern Turkish faces for models, look carefully...

Cavalry charges at the city walls? Really?

The city walls today

The maritime museum, I just cannot resist a maritime museum....

Propellor from SMS Goeben/Yavuz Sultan Selim

Rowing boats that belonged to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

I find Istanbul fascinating, like Turkey in microcosm it is a city with many personalities; traditional, progressive, nationalist, pious, conservative, liberal and countless more modes of thinking live inside the same shared space and shared consciousness. I'm not done with it yet, there is so much more to experience here, so I'll be back for another helping in the new year.

Top 5 funny things street hawkers/shopkeepers have said to me in Istanbul

I'm posting this from the relative calm of Izmir, I don't miss the constant hard sell of shopkeepers, market traders and random guys standing around waiting to help tourists that happens in the tourist areas of Istanbul. Still, once or twice I have literally cried with laughter at the cracking lines they unwittingly deliver.

1. Something for your... Secretary, sir?

2. These are happy socks, effendi!

3. Fucking Australian idiot, I'm trying to do you a favour....

4. The mosque is closing soon, I can be your guide...

5. You look French.

Thessaloniki to Edirne / Adrianopolis

 

I love Thessaloniki, It's not as cool as counter-cultural Berlin, it's nowhere near as anarchic as Athens, nor as historic and monumental. It's not as dirty as Plymouth on a Saturday night, it's not particularly beautiful, it has it's disgustingly modern grid system, fancy boutiques and a sleazy strip bar district,  but I love it. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe it has the sea. The sea is always there, acting like a heat sink for hot Mediterranean blood: Never allowing a boil-over.

The sea front (I've no Idea what they call it, but the locals basically promenade) is a popular choice for a walk in the city and one of the few placed that you can go for a run without breaking your ankle on the 'character-full' pavements. Recently someone has paid millions to extend this promenade miles along the coast with ornamental parks and gardens. So now they can walk further!

Mount Olympus at sunset.

that old time religion

The sea front promenade extension with nice wooden boardwalk and snazzy umbrella art.

One of the first things that I did was to climb up through the old high town that escaped the great fire (Ana Poli) to the Byzantine/Ottoman fortifications at the acropolis. The Belted tower (below) was free to visitors and very interesting. It was an interesting land parallel to a Martello tower in design. The views of the city were great so a hint to any traveler, when visiting a city or town in Greece, always head uphill if you have the choice.

The belted tower was a key point in the city's fortifications, it is now surrounded by houses but once dominated the hillside.

A view from the tower, you can see the line of the city walls and the Roman Rotunda and Arch of Galerius as well as the iconic White Tower by the sea front.

The summit of the hill is capped by the defensive citadel know as Heptapyrgion or YediKule which both mean 'seven towers'. For much of it's recent history it was a prison with very hard conditions. Many Rebetiko songs have been written about it (so I've been told).
The prison was closed in 1989, so is still in good condition.

The prison door, note the wear on the steps.

The exercise yard, I think there used to be barbed wire stretched over the top.

Maybe I liked the city because there was history apparent everywhere, it hadn't been demolished to reveal the Hellenistic levels below, and there were remains from all of the cities history. There were even minarets still standing.

Kamara or Arch of Galerius

Detail- Galerius was 'first among equals' in the first Roman tetrachy, that's why only he is wearing armour.

I spent a lot of time in Thessaloniki for a traveler, I think even though I had a bit of bad luck finding a host at first and further problems with the first host that did accept, I did have the good fortune of finding a fantastic hostel to stay in and through couchsurfing met a variety of fine folk, all of whom I would love to be friends with 'in real life' if the chance ever arose. However, when travelling you just know when it's time to leave and after 10 days the itch to move on was impossible to ignore. 

The next stage of the journey was great fun but simultaneously terrifying; Most travelers go the way of Istanbul via a direct bus, I wanted to enter Turkey through a more traditional route namely the old capital of Edirne which had in former years been the base of operations for the Sultan's armies in the Balkans. The problem was that there really was no easy way of getting there without a car. 
I left my last hosts house in good time, but forgot to ask them how to get to the city bus station, so I asked a reasonably sane-looking person waiting for a bus at the Kamara and was told to get on the bus to the railway station (It was my fault, I said 'poo eena stathmos BUS parakalo') So i had to get another ticket there and find the correct bus to take me on my way. The result was that I was 5 minutes late to catch the bus I wanted and would have to wait another 3 hours for the next one. Also It would arrive late in the evening.
I was having mixed feelings about leaving Ellada, there are things that really annoy me about the place and like a bad romantic partner I want to change it to fit me better, but then again those silly things that I find annoying are also part of the appeal. I think I could live In Greece and be very happy indeed, not in Athens! Maybe somewhere in Crete or the southern Peloponnese where I can grow citrus fruits and watermelons in the garden.
Then there are all the goodbyes. Travelling in this way is a very personal business; I share peoples homes, I eat with them, get tipsy together, sometimes dance with them, learn things that a tourist would never know or know that they didn't know, talk about the most general and the most personal things in the same sentence, share a bedroom, clean their pubic hair out of the plug hole etc. The downsides of making so many of these connections is that one day you have to say goodbye to them all. There's no taking them with you in the backpack. We say that we will meet again someday and somehow along our path, but we both know that this is unlikely. It is a way of travelling that I worry will take a toll on me over the long term, but at the same time enriches my life. A kind of sadness that tears out and builds up. Too many goodbyes.

An accidental meeting with my fabulous last couch hosts when we both missed our buses and had to wait in the station, they were running about an hours sleep at this point...

Last Greek sunset during the bus rest-stop

So the bus left me 20km from the border at 9.30pm, in the snow...

Goodbye Greece, hello Turkey. The long walk across a snowy no-mans land.

Edirne or Adrianopolis is the first city in European Turkey, and very interesting. Here are a few scenes of the first two days before I go to Istanbul.

Leaving dirty footprints in the mosque courtyard, accidentally of course!

Part of the old defensive structures

Inside the museum, Google says they've automatically made this photo spangly, click it to see it in all its gaudy horror.

Selimiye Camii, the most accomplished mosque in Edirne and the preferred work of its architect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimar_Sinan

An Edirne evening, Ataturk statue in western general's uniform.

The bazaar, Mustafa Kemal watches you here, too.

I'm travelling to Istanbul today, into unfamiliar territory. I'm rather excited about it all! I wonder what Mustapha Kemal would say?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attaturk#Outlawing_insults_to_his_memory

FSPA (Floppy soft palates anonymous) -or- the trials and tribulations of a travelling snorer.

Hello, my name is John, and I'm a snorer.

*subdued applause*

If only it were that easy. I am in the one in three adults who (according to some sources) make loud noises while they sleep. The noises have a variety of causes, some including myself have problems with the soft palate being a little too floppy, some have problems with that little punchbag thingy at the back of the throat getting sucked into the airway. Others (hopefully not me) have far too much fat around the neck that closes off the airway. I suspect many have a combination of the three.
Some fun-facts:
You are more likely to snore if you are a man, over 30 (though I've been doing it for years) and pretty much certainly for the over 60's gang, and overweight.
Snoring is a co-factor and/or a suspected cause for Carotid Artery Atherosclerosis, strokes, heart disease and failed relationships. Doctors also see it as an early warning for sleep apnea and airway obstruction.

In my opinion it's a cyclical thing, snoring makes you tired and when you're tired you eat more, so you get overweight which makes the snoring worse. I also suspect it's hereditary, most definitely from my mother's side (you should have heard my Nan when she stayed over for Christmas).
Sleep is very important for the maintenance of health, and to be prevented from sleeping is very, very , very annoying.

The problem is that lately I'm doing an awful lot of sleeping around other peoples houses.

Usually when I send a request to a possible host I check to see if I'll be sleeping in a separate room, usually in the host's living room with at least one door between us. If they have a single room apartment I'll usually think otherwise before sending a request. Even if I'm convinced the rest of the experience will be a blast, I know the sleepless nights will make the experience unpleasant.

That is why I wasn't expecting what happened with one host during my last week in Greece.

That's right; I was asked to leave my hosts house due to snoring.

Incredible as it sounds, I don't blame her (the host will remain nameless) and I'm not particularly annoyed as she gave me ample time to find alternative arrangements. What bothers me, if you first imagine a very mild application of the word 'bothers', is the lack of communication. Allow me to expand a little...

I was sleeping in a separate room, on a living room couch that as it happened tended to make me lay on my back far too much, the bedroom adjoining. the sliding doors had to be left open due to my hosts cat's nocturnal activities so really they weren't much help. I slept pretty well during the night helped by a couple of glasses of great rose wine (yes, I know, in hindsight...)
The next morning I awoke to find the house empty and a rather polite and neat note in the bathroom sink first telling me I snored loudly all night, then asking me to make alternative arrangements for that night. It was somewhat passive-aggressive, but wouldn't you be after a sleepless night?
Actually I have almost no problem with being asked to leave, it's the hosts house etc but why not call my name a few times, or failing that wake me up by a polite shake, a flying cushion or a glass of water? In extreme circumstances I doubt anyone would mind being asked to sleep in the kitchen for the rest of their stay. My host's occupation requires her to have very good hearing and also she told me earlier in the day that she had trouble sleeping. Why not ask the surfer if he snores before bedtime and move some cushions and a sheet somewhere else in the house? I suppose you could say more communication would have avoided the situation but a little could have fixed it very quickly.

It has knocked my confidence a bit, I considered putting that I snore in any future requests to possible hosts in case the got any funny ideas about sleeping in the same room. Maybe even thinking about doing less home-stays altogether.

The more I thought about it the more I thought about myself, how I wanted this trip to be and what I could or couldn't do to solve the problem. I will continue to read through profiles and prefer those with separate sleeping rooms, and now if there is any question of my raucous nocturnal breathing disturbing a host I will take immediate action, like going to sleep in the bath tub.
This journey is supposed to be a journey of self-improvement in some respects, I'm trying to ask the question 'how can I be a better person' every day. So in some ways the increased awareness and consideration for the sleep of others has moved me a little way along this path. I have learned something. I hope my host has too, but I doubt it.

Acropolis Special

The Acropolis and the Parthenon is one of those iconic places that has seeped into the popular consciousness of most of the human population. In this way it is reached the situation that other heritage sites have reached such as Stonehenge in that perhaps to fully have the monument fulfill the expectations we have of it, it is best perhaps never to visit. The number of times I've heard 'It was way smaller than I imagined' about various places.
Real life simply cannot compete with glossy, artsy photography shot with exactly the right light in exactly the right conditions with no tourists in sight, or sitting back watching the same scenes in HD with stirring orchestral music and an Charlton Heston telling the colourful story of the monument as you sit in your darkened living room, fully hydrated.

The great staircase

Restoration work

People say they are trying to rebuild it, or at least put the roof back on

From the amount of new stone this is clearly not a conservation job...

The modern counterpart of the holy olive tree

A warden bunker, every now and again an angry man or woman emerges from one of these and blows a whistle at the naughty tourists before telling them to behave and going back inside.

My host's apartment was half way up this hill.

wow

hehehe, iz at yr parthanon, steelin' yr marbles

Dionysian Theatre

My trip to the acropolis in Athens was more of a pilgrimage to a site that I had revered for a long time. It symbolises a lot to the Greeks, but also to everyone else. The decision to restore much of the 5th century structure at the detriment (as in complete obliteration) of subsequent wall, buildings and defenses leaves me a little speechless. I came to see the Parthenon as a ruin. It had been ruined by the deliberate and accidental acts of people over history, but that, in my opinion is history, things happen, empires rise and fall. the story continues to be written if we ignore it or not, there was no golden age of civilisation here, instead for 2,600 years of civilisation has ebbed and flowed around the monuments here leaving it's mark as the sea does to the cliffs. 
It makes me sad to think the current custodians of the acropolis think they should and can turn time back, in effect re-writing history.