Evimizde: At our house

It occurred to me that I've posted photos of the balcony view and the outside of the building, but nothing of the inside of the apartment. Well, here is the 25 kuruş tour. Enjoy!
Starting from the familiar balcony vantage, here is our room:

(Notice the cats?)


The strangely luxurious tub... (the shower curtain is in the wash)

The kitchen...

Do you see the itty-bitty stove? It has one burner that lights regularly.

And there are three other rooms for the other roommates. The doors are all closed, so use your imagination! This is home until August 18th...

Eminönü'den Anadolu Kavağı'ya: From Eminonu to Anadolu Kavagi

We spent the day on the Bosphorus, from the center of Istanbul to very close to the Black Sea. Why not right up to the Sea, well, because the last few kilometers are set aside for the Turkish military. So, just stand back, OK? It was an especially hot and humid day. It even rained for a while, but that just made it more humid!
We started at Eminönü İskele, down the hill from Sulimaniye Camii:

The ferry chugged north, past our neighborhood,

and Dolmabahçe Sarayı (Palace)...

The first Bosphorus Bridge (Boğazici Köprüsu)...

Rumeli Hısarı (Rumeli Castle)...

Boğaziçi Üniversitesi...

The second Bosphorus Bridge (Fatih Köprüsü)...

Past a lot of interesting old architecture...

Interesting topography...

Bathers...

Up to the fortress at Anadolu Kavağı...

But, before we climb up, there's some rain...

Finally, we get our chance to climb the hill and see the Black Sea...

Explore the fortress a little...

With a few other people...

Then we walked back down to the port, caught the next ferry back to Istanbul, and cooled off in the breeze!

Ne Alex yaptı: What Alex did

Well, Alex went on a tour of a variety of interesting sites in Istanbul with his Turkish class, without me!!! I know, it's not good to be jealous... But, this is some of what he saw:

Aya Sofya en iyi: Hagia Sophia is the best!

When we visited Turkey in 1999, a lot of my art history studies were still fresh in my head. One of the classes I took at Oberlin focused on Early Christian and Byzantine architecture. Of course, one of the best examples is Hagia Sophia, still standing since the 6th century AD. My memory of our tour then was that the building was dark, damp, and full of people stepping on each others' toes to take photographs. This time it wasn't nearly so dark nor full of people. So, I had all the room I wanted to take tons of photos. There are many more photos on the Picasa site, these a few that stand out to me right now.

Old minaret, older church...
Last time, I saw graffiti that said: Aya Sofya cami / Hagia Sophia is a mosque. Until it became a museum in the 20th century, it served as a mosque for about 600 years.

Here is one of the four medallions added in the 19th century. If I read Arabic, I could tell you if it reads: Allah, Mohammed, Ali, or Abu Bakr.

Entrance to the library

Patchwork marble

Graffiti

A view of the dome above the apse

2008 Avrupa Futbol Şampiyonası: 2008 European Football Championship

Did you watch the game? You know, Turkey vs. Germany! Well, we watched it sort of on the internet and heard it from all the neighborhood TVs. Actually, Alex watched what he could, and I dozed between the shouts, car horns, and gun shots. What can I say? My adrenaline just doesn't kick in as a spectator... We could have gone to Taksim Square with however many thousands of serious fans, but neither of us love crowds (especially sports crowds). But this is how it looked in the end when Germany scored the winning goal in the final minutes:

It breaks your heart, doesn't it...

Derinkuyu, yeraltı şehri: Derinkuyu, underground city

What do you do when endless invading armies sweep through the land? Go underground, 85km underground! Make some tunnels from your regular homes above, dig some wells, create airshafts, devise some traps, and you've got yourself a solution!
Climbing / crawling through these tunnels was quite the adventure. Sometimes the pathways were so narrow and low that the backpack got in the way. The guide helpfully told us not to get lost, but if we did to follow the blue arrows back up to the surface. Coordinating all the people in the tour groups was a trick, too. The guides would run ahead to see if anyone was coming, and then shout for people to follow. It was much cooler underground, which was a relief... given the blazing sun outside.
People used the underground city from the 4th century BC to the 1950s when it was transformed into a museum.




The deepest airshaft in the eighth floor down...

İhlara Vadisi'de: In the Ihlara Gorge

As part of a tour, we hiked 3km through the Ihlara Gorge. "Hike," in this case, meant climbing down a few hundred stairs to the bottom and then walking a gentle path to a restaurant... the point was to enjoy the view. The guide, Arı, was very friendly and spoke Turkish with Alex and me along the way. She is a state employee with a tour guide license for any part of the country. She's been working in this area for 5 years, though, because her parents won't give permission to work elsewhere. She leads the same tour seven days a week. She knew her turf!

Kiliseler ve manastırlar Kapadokya'da: Churches and monastaries in Cappadocia

Carved into those fantastic kalelar are a vast network of churches and monastaries from the 8th and 9th centuries AD. These were refuges for the Iconophiles who were out of power while the Iconoclasts took control of the Byzantine Church. Even though many of the structures and frescoes are decaying, they are still quite beautiful and impressive. Most of these pictures are from the Göreme Open Air Museum.



We happened to hear a guide tell the story of this fresco. Apparently, a virtuous maiden did not want to be married. So, she prayed to remain a virgin. God helped out by changing her into an old man with a white beard. Thanks! So, the image shows the before and after at the same time, plus a cactus in the right place to keep things clean.



This last fresco is from a chapel in the Ihlara Gorge.