Getting to Prague

My flight out of Istanbul left at 3:30am. I'm not sure who thought that was going to be convenient for anyone, but I think he should be fired.

I hung out in Istanbul all day, ate dinner on the Asian side, and then returned to the hostel around 10 to read some Moby Dick and wait for the shuttle that, at 12:30 in the morning, took me and a bunch of other tourists, packed into a van like Ecuadorian chickens, an hour or so away to the airport (not the main airport, mind you).

I waited there for hours after checking in, listening to my iPod and falling in and out of sleep, and finally boarded the EasyJet plane around 3:15am. The flight to Basel, Switzerland couldn't have gone slowly enough as I sat in sweet unconsciousness on the right-hand side of the plane.

It's interesting, as much as I loved Turkey, arriving in Switzerland brought with it a feeling that can best only be described as relief.

In Basel, I had to wait like 6 hours for my flight to Prague, so I walked around and found a nice bench where I slept for like 3 hours before I was able to check in. Then I got on the plane around 1pm and slept all the way to Prague.

Well rested now, I arrived at the Prague airport and caught a bus, then metro to the A & O Hostel. It had a high satisfactory rating on hostels.com - a rating that could not be further from reality. This was THE WORST hostel of the trip. The smaller rooms might have been ok, but the dorm was ridiculous. At 1am, backpackers sat with the light on (in this 20 some-odd-bed dorm) drinking and talking. When I arrived there were only two open beds. I opted for one that was a top bunk right up against the sloped ceiling. The bed was the furthest from the door and seemed like a good idea at the time I chose it. However, when I came back at night to go to bed, I discovered that my body was too big to fit under the sloped ceiling. I had to manipulate my body in ways certain to cause life-long back problems if I intended to fit under the ceiling.

And so, I got up and took the one other free bed in the room - a bottom bunk two beds over toward the door. It became readily apparent why this bed, too, was open. It was broken in half. The bed consisted of a thin mattress resting on a piece of plywood. The plywood was completely cracked in half. It managed to work ok as long as I maintained a precise equilibrium of weight on the foot end and the head end. If the equilibrium was disrupted due to any shifting on my part, the bed collapsed. Good times. As I lay there trying to sleep, I determined two things: to write a stinging review of the hostel on hostels.com and to switch hostels the next day.

In spite of the hostel, however, Prague was a beautiful city and wonderful experience. Unscathed from either world war, the central buildings are all very old - and not only are the original buildings intact, but there is also a noticeable absence of modern buildings in most of central Prague. The result is a feeling of stepping back into medieval times. Indeed modern Prague is a hermit crab, scurrying about in the shell of an earlier civilization.

First on my list of things to do, was to see the site of the Prague scenes from Mission Impossible I. I walked down to the river and found a building and bridge that looked like (and indeed were) the scenes from the plot-laying of the film. I snapped some pictures and then moved toward the side of the museum/concert hall that served as the party scene from MI. A relatively long line had formed and, having no idea what it was for, I, like any good sheep, got in it.

After twenty minutes or so, I was ushered into the building and handed a brochure which explained that tonight was Prague's annual Museum Night, in which, from 6pm to 1am, almost every museum in Prague was free. I happened in upon a free orchestra concert in this modern art museum. It was pretty cool. I stayed a few minutes and then crossed the Charles Bridge (where people in medieval dress were dancing to medieval music) and headed up to Prague Castle, where I walked around a bit and then went into the museum of the ancient Prague Castle.

Here, a long-unanswered question from my childhood was finally answered. You know the Burger King crown? Where did they get that design? I've seen lots of crowns from throughout Western Europe and none looked so plain and simple as the Burger King Crown, which looked like it was made of a sheet of gold wrapped around a head and adorned with chunks of jewels. Well, that is EXACTLY what the crown in the Prague Castle looks like. Case closed.

After the castle, I wandered down a really cool quaint street that served as home to a bunch of medieval alchemists. The houses were cozy and low, rising only a few feet above my head. It looked almost like a hobbit town. I would have loved to wander around more, but it was approaching midnight and the metro closes around then and I had found out that church in the Prague Branch starts bright and early at 9am.

And so, I caught a metro back to the main square, where I grabbed a quick bite at McDonald's before rushing on to my hostel.

It is worth noting that during my feeding at McDonald's, I must have eaten something that disagreed with me. And the manner in which it disagreed with me was not like that of a disgruntled Swede, who crosses to the other side of the room, ceases to look you in the eye and remains in quiet sulking until you can gently coax out the nature of his discontent. No, this food disagreed with me like a nationalistic terrorist, launching rockets and mortars with reckless abandon at the slightest provocation.

And so, we add to the discomfort of the hostel bed a ferocious stomach ache.

The Turkish Bath (Hammam)

My second to last night in Istanbul, I headed a couple kilometers out of Sultanahmet to a very authentic Turkish bath I'd stumbled upon a few days prior. (By the way, I ate a small overpriced pizza with spicy peppers on it on the way.)

My hammam, or Turkish bath, of choice was constructed in the 1400s. I was greeted by a couple big Turks who spoke virtually no English and I paid my twenty or so dollars for a bath and massage. I was first shown to my room, a small place in the entrance where I stripped, put on the little loin cloth-esque towel they'd given me and locked my stuff up. The room is yours for the duration of your stay and there's even a bed for taking a nap should you feel so inclined.

From there, I was escorted to the back of the building where the bulk of the bath-related activities take place. It's a giant marble room with a giant heated marble slab in the middle and washing stations, wash rooms and a sauna forming a ring around it. The ceiling is a dome and has a few holes in it, which I think opened to the outside. Luckily, at this point a Turkish immigrant living in England came in and, seeing that I was clearly out-of-place, helped me decipher the process and translated.

First, I laid on the (really hot) marble slap, front and back, for about 20 minutes. This relaxes the body and gets the sweat flowing. Then, a big hairy Turkish man, clad in the same loincloth-esque fashion as the bather, comes in to wash you. The first thing he did was chiropractor-esque. He pulled my arm over my chest and popped my back (first left, then right). Then he popped my neck.

Next, he put on a glove made of something like a mix between sandpaper and steel wool, with which he scrubbed me from head to toe. This is intended to scrub off the dead skin. Then I sat up and he dumped a couple buckets of colder, very refreshing water over me (remember, it's really warm in this room and the slab is hot). Then I laid down again and he got a big tub of soapy water into which he dunked a big sock-like cloth made of a permeable fabric that looked similar to cheesecloth. He filled it with bubbles and then wrung it out over my body several times, covering me with bubble bath-like suds.

Then came the washing and massage. He proceeded to scrub my whole body clean and massaged it for around 20 minutes. To the best of my recollection, this marked my first real massage. After this, he rinsed me again with the semi-cold water and led to me a washing station where he washed and rinsed me again. Then he gave me a fresh towel, dry loincloth and bar of soap and told me I was free to continue bathing, sleeping, relaxing - whatever I wanted - for as long as I wanted.

I returned to the marble slab for a bit, then went into the pool room, where I relaxed in the cool water of the chest deep pool. After that I returned to the marble slab, then rinsed myself in cool water, then showered off, got dressed and left.

The much-anticipated Turkish bath, long expected to be a highlight of the trip, lived up to its expectations fully. It is definitely an experience!

Istanbul Stew

If you read the preceding entry then you already know what we're going to do here. We're going to take all the notable chunks of my week in Istanbul and throw them into this entry...hence the title, "stew."

So, I had a lot of time in Istanbul. I took it easy. I relaxed. I slept in. I ate good food. And there's lots to do, so I really didn't get bored. And if there's one thing I've learned on this trip, it's that I get bored easily.

The day after my adventures in the Blue Mosque and the Grand Bazaar, I slept in and visited the enormous cathedral-turned Mosque-turned museum, Aya Sofia (Hagia Sofia). It's interesting because the cathedral (the largest building in the world at the time of completion) started as an enormous cathedral covered in Christian tile mosaics. When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, however, they plastered over the mosaics, hoisted up some giant Islamic ornaments and shifted the altar a few feet so that it faced Mecca. Today, much of the plaster has either been removed or fallen off and beautiful Christian mosaics reside peacefully under the giant domed roof along with Arabic writings from the Koran; perhaps a lesson to us all.

I like the Egyptian Spice Market. It sits down near the port and has the cheapest fresh Turkish Delight in central Istanbul. It also has...you guessed it...spices. I didn't buy any of those, though. I believe they are abundantly available in American supermarkets...a tragedy indeed of globalization and the modernization of the old spice trade route.

Topkapi Palace, home to the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire, was a really cool place. I paid the extra $7 to get into the Harem and see the Sultan's, his mother's and his women's living quarters. The entire palace was covered in impressive tile work. In one of the buildings which houses a bunch of artifacts, I came across the mummified arm of John the Baptist, along with a large chunk of his skull; spoils of war from the Byzentine Empire. That was interesting. I also saw a bunch of jewels and crowns and swords and stuff.

The Basilica Cistern was pretty cool - an ancient underground water cistern built by the Romans underground in Sultanahment. I saw that my last day.

On the Asian side of Istanbul, there is a super busy shopping street and a bunch of restaurants. I ate here my second-to-last night. It was a frustrating experience because it's not a very touristy area at all and I couldn't understand the words on the menu. I had something with lamb and rice. Noticeably absent was my favorite mealtime companion, yogurt.

Since I had a lot of time in Istanbul, I also took two boat rides: one up the bosphorous - essentially a water tour of Istanbul as seen from the strip of water that runs between the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea. That wasn't as impressive as I'd anticipated. Let's face it: most cities that incorporate water into their charm really have nothing on Europe's most beautiful city, Stockholm.

The other boat ride I took was out into the Marmara Sea to the Prince Islands (no, I don't know why they're called that - although I could venture a guess). I got off the boat at the last island (even though in hindsight the first looked coolest). There was only one car that I could find - a very loud garbage truck - and everybody got around by foot, bike and horse-drawn carriage. It was a pretty cool atmosphere. I now carry a spoon in my backpack for impromptu yogurt eating sessions and I enjoyed one such in a little fisherman's port not far from the center of town. Owing, however, to the fact that, for all my efforts I couldn't find anything to do on that island, I took the next boat back to Istanbul, after buying a little cheeseburger from a kebab shop (I'm a rebel, I know).

Stay tuned for the next blog entry: the infamous and much-anticipated Turkish Bath.

Istanbul (not Constantinople)

Yes, I'm taking a long time to update the blog. Without any further ado, here's Istanbul:

I rolled into the sweeping metropolis that once served as capital to several of the world's largest empires around 7am. I was incredibly tired. I took my time getting to Sultanahmet where I intended to find a hostel, because it's hard to check in so early in the morning. So I stopped by a cafe for a breakfast of...you guessed it...yogurt (and orange juice - the combination of which, by the way, does weird, somewhat painful things in one's stomach).

After breakfast, I jumped on the tram and headed for the center of all things touristy: Sultanahmet. This neighborhood on the tip of the Golden Horn on the European side of Istanbul is home to Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace (the Sultan's Palace), the New Mosque, the ancient Roman underground Basilica Cistern, the Egyptian Spice Market, the Grand Bazaar and a TON of hostels. I chose the Sultan Hostel, a nice little place that stands in the shadows of the Blue Mosque.

I arrived around 9am and was luckily able to check in that early, whereupon I immediately jumped onto a top bunk and slipped into a much-needed several hours' slumber.

When I woke up, I decided to head out to check out the sites. It was Monday, and since Hagia Sofia is a museum, I wasn't able to go there, so I went to the Blue Mosque. It is an ENORMOUS building that was built by the Ottomans as an answer to the Christian Hagia Sofia which, at the time of construction, was the largest building in the world. This was my first time inside a mosque and it was very beautiful. I was also impressed that Turkish Muslims have chosen to allow non-Muslims to see the mosques, whereas Moroccans vehemently prohibit it. The mosque was, as I said, enormous and was filled with Turkish carpets and lights hanging from the ceiling.

After the Blue Mosque, (which by the way is called Sultanahmet and is the building from which the Sultanahment neighborhood derives its name) I headed up the street to the Grand Bazaar, which is the world's largest covered market (they seem to have an affinity in Turkey for all things "the world's largest"). I wandered around the bazaar a while taking in the atmosphere and seeing if anything perked my interests. The objects that did surprised me: pillows. And so, for the next couple hours, I wandered the bazaar examining a wide array of Arabic pillows before settling on the four which will likely adorn my bed in Boston.

Pillows? you say. Middle Eastern pillows are cool. They have cool Arabic/Middle Eastern patterns on them and are all over the place in this part of the world. Instead of couches, most people have assorted sized and shaped pillows to sit on. Even the Sultan's throne in Topkapi Palace is essentially a giant pillow covered with other pillows which were in turn covered with beautiful women who existed for the sole pleasure of the Sultan.

Enough of pillows. After that, I headed out for some food. In the interest of retaining the reader's attention, I will condense all of my Istanbul food experiences (well, most of them) into this paragraph:

Turkish food is good. I've already made clear my affinity for yogurt. Now let's talk about Turkish Delight. That stuff is amazing. And for those of you reading this who are my friends and didn't just find this blog while browsing Technorati or Blogger (although I'm glad you're here), you will get to try some of this precious succulence upon my return in early July. Turkish Delight is much light a giant "inside of a jellybean" covered in powdered sugar. It's good eatin'. Turkey is of course also famous for its kebabs. In fact, after 8 days in Turkey I am currently boycotting kebabs. A restaurant menu is essentially a list of every conceivable way of preparing a kebab. My favorite is the infamous Iskender Kebab (named for Alexander the Great - ya, I think they had trouble pronouncing his name). It is a plate covered with traditional döner kebab pita bread upon which the lamb meat is spread and then topped with two heaping scoops of fresh yogurt. Good stuff. Another common sight in Istanbul is corn sellers. They stand with little stands throughout the city and sell corn on the cob. Döner kebab stands abound (those are the ones, similar to a Greek gyro that have the kebab meat inside a pita with lettuce, onions and tomato and either a white yoghurt or red sauce). Down by the port (water taxi and ferry are common forms of public transport in Istanbul) they sell fish sandwiches - a fillet of fish stuffed into a roll with lemon juice and lettuce. Finally, I should mention the mussels. There are mussel street vendors all over. They take mussels, stuff them with rice, cook them and then sell them for pennies from street carts. They're super good too. Oh ya, and don't forget the fruit salesman that provided me my self-determined daily recommended value of cherries.

Well, now that I've departed from the chronological format that has hereto served as the foundation for this blog, and because it's been a couple weeks since I left Istanbul anyway, I think I'll just throw in all the other notable events of my 7 and a half or so days in Istanbul into the remainder of this blog entry. No wait, better yet, I'll start a new one - and I'll call it Istanbul Stew.

A Day in Izmir

I left Selcuk at around 10am and took a minibus an hour north to Izmir, one of four cities in Turkey that have an LDS Church. Armed with the address, attained from www.mormon.org, I first asked the staff at my hotel if they knew where it was. They told me that with that address alone it would be very difficult to find. Apparently all I had was a street number and name and the address lacked the crucial part of the enormous city in which the street was located. Essentially I was looking for a street in New York City without knowing if I should go to Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Harlem, Brooklyn, etc. Still, I thought I'd give it a shot.

I arrived at the Izmir bus station and asked a travel agent at one of the many booking booths. Upon showing him the address, he replied "Problem. Big Problem." And then he reiterated the same message I got at the hotel. I asked another travel agent. "Big problem." They basically said it was impossible to find it.

I kept walking around and finally ran into a police officer who spoke virtually no English. I showed him the address and gave my best "Do you know how to get here?" look. He seemed to understand and pulled out a cell phone. He spoke for a few minutes with someone very helpful on the other end of the line and then flashed me a triumphant smile. After hanging up the phone he wrote the section of the city the church was in inside the book I had written the address in and then he led me to the local bus pick-up point and told me to catch a bus from there.

I asked around for which bus to take to my desired section of the city and finally got on the right one. Of course, I had NO IDEA where to get off this bus. I conveyed to the driver that I didn't know where to get off (again, using my best body language), and he made some sounds that I interpreted to mean he would tell me when to get off. I sat close to the front and sure enough, after meandering through some sketchy looking neighborhoods, we emerged in a nicer looking part of the city and he told me to get off and pointed ahead. And so I walked ahead.

It was at around this point that I became familiar enough with my surroundings that I thought I might be able to decipher the street system enough to get to the apartment building named in the church's address. Wrong. As I would later learn, there is no rhyme or reason behind the ordering of the numerized streets in Izmir. It's a crap shoot. And so I wandered for another hour and a half or so, occasionally asking people in uniforms how to get there and getting rough directions as I walked. Finally someone told me to ask a cab driver. I'd been avoiding this cause I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a taxi if I could avoid it. As the time drew late, however, I decided I was going to have to bite the bullet. I approached a cabby. He asked another cabby, they conversed for a while over the address I'd handed them, and he returned a gave me rough directions in Turkish heavily accentuated with body language. Just then, a woman walked up who did speak English and she translated for me and sent me off in the right direction. The fact that the cabby didn't just tell me to get in and drive me a very short distance and then overcharge me for the journey is characteristic of the genuine friendliness of the Turkish people.

After wandering a while in the right direction, I saw a Domino's. Now, if anyone would know how to navigate the chaotic streets of Izmir, it was the delivery guy standing near his motorcycle not 5 feet from me. I greeted him and...he spoke English...and...knew exactly where the building was. He even drew me a little map inside my book. And so, with about 4 minutes to go until church started, I headed down the right street.

I arrived at the apartment building and rang the buzzer. A muffled buzz greeted me through the intercom and the door clicked open. I went in and, thanks to my hotel friend's help in deciphering what of the address I did have, I knew to go to the fifth floor. There, to my surprise, I was greeted in English by a senior missionary, Elder Richardson.

I walked in the door, looked around, confirmed my suspicions that church was in fact held in a home, took of my backpack and shoes, pulled a tie out of my pack and put it on.

Sacrament meeting (and Sunday School and Relief Society) was held in the living room of the senior couple's apartment. Priesthood (for all three of us) was held in the kitchen. Church was attended that day by myself, the Richardsons and three Turks: the branch president (a fluent English speaker who spent 19 years in Coppenhagen and translated the entire service), a middle-aged convert woman, and a younger investigator woman.

Church was abbreviated to two hours with all three meetings being condensed and a 10-minute break. (A 10-minute break when you only have 6 people to start with is an interesting concept.)

Different as it was, it was remarkably the same and felt like home. It had been weeks since I'd been to church, owing to the absence of the church in most of the places I was traveling.

After church, I stuck around and had dinner with the Richardson's before catching a bus back to the bus depot and there buying what may well have been the last bus ticket to Istanbul available that night. I ate a late snack of yoghurt before jumping on the bus and trying to sleep as the bus careened toward Istanbul for the next 7 or 8 hours.

Turkey: The Early Days

The boat rıde across the Aegean was only an hour and a half or so long (and not in a particularly speedy vessel). We docked at Çeşme (I think I spelled that right) where I walked around briefly before catching a bus to İzmir, the third largest city in Turkey. İzmir was only about an hour and a half by bus and from there I caught a minibus south to Selçuk, the small town nearest the Ephesian ruins.

Selçuk was great. I stayed in my own room in a pretty nice hotel near the center (for around $10 a night). Not long after situating myself in town and the hotel, grabbing a kebab and a few scoops of yoghurt for lunch, I set off for Ephesus, a 3 or 4 kilometer walk from the town. Along the way, I met a guy about my age who'd been trying to call hıs 'girlfriend' in Korea but didn't speak enough English to understand the message indicating the number had been temporarily suspended (I helped him out with that). Closer to the entrance to the ruins, I bought a few ancient looking but likely replica Ephesian coins off a farmer.

The ruins of Ephesus were amazing. The well-preserved 2000 year-old commerce center rivaled any ruins I've seen anywhere in the world. Marble wears well and the details and magnitude of this town, which boasted John and Mary as residents and Paul as prisoner, were awe-inspiring.

I took the long way home. I'm sorry, did I say long way? I meant wrong way. That's okay, a little exercise never hurt anyone. Once I got back to town I bought a little Turkish Delight and some more yoghurt and something else for dinner (only the yoghurt seems to ever stand out in my mind).

The next day, I took it easy. I could have left earlier, but I stuck around because I wanted to go to church in İzmir (an hour north) the next day. So, on this day - being Saturday - I wandered around the weekly market, bought a shirt to add some color to my well-used travel wardrobe, bought some more turkish delight, and bought some more yoghurt from a guy off the street (I pack spoons in my backpack). The market was a really cool experience - 12 or so hours of bustling people and the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of an authentic Turkish bazaar.

After the market, I went up to St. John's Basilica, the ruins of the hill where John resided before and after his exhile to Patmos. It was pretty cool to walk around where he walked.

Then I headed a kilometer or so out of town to what remains of the Temple or Artemis, one of the ancient seven wonders of the world. I took a couple pictures of the sole remaining column and then headed back to the hotel and layed down on the couch in the lobby. A girl from Hong Kong, sitting in a chair across from me says I slept for quite a while. I'm on vacation.

After my nap, some strawberries and my daily recommended dose of turkish delight, I went out on the town for a meal of kebab, stuffed tomatoes, peppers and some other as yet unidentifiable delicacies.

Getting to Turkey

So, initially I thought I was going to have to take a 20 or so hour bus ride from Athens to Istanbul in order to get to Turkey. I was dreading that. Beyond the bus ride itself (I really have developed some strong feelings toward buses on this trip), I was lamenting the probability that I would not be able to visit a Greek island given my timetable for getting to Turkey.

However, as I failed to mention in my last post, my first full day in Athens, I headed up to the Pireaus Port to look into ferries to Turkey. They said there were none, but there are three Greek isles from which one can then ferry across to the Turkish coast. The three islands are: Lesbos, Samos and Chios.

Lesbos has recently become a mecca-esque destination for lesbian tourists (not exactly my cup of tea), Samos was an overnight and awefully long ferry ride with many stops along the way, and Chios (pronounced Hios) was a quick 6-hour hop across the Aegean...just right. And so, I decided to go to Hios.

The next day, I slept in (I started feeling a little under the weather and was up late the night before) and caught the metro to the port in time to buy my ticket and catch the 12:30 ferry to Chios.

The ferry was a lot of fun actually. And upon experiencing life on the deck without a reserved seat, I became hugely glad that I had opted for the shorter ferry ride. In Chios it didn't take long for me to realize to realize this wasn't a hot backpacker destination. No hostels on the entire (very large) island and no backpackers anywhere in sight. I found a 20 euro room in a nice hotel run by a New Zealander and then set off to get to know the area around the harbor.

It is actually a pretty charming little port. As hunger set in, I walked up along the beach away from town and after a couple kilometers, I found a nice looking beachview outdoor garden restaurant. I went in and sat alone in the sea of tables (Greeks don't start eating until around 9:30 or 10pm and this was around 8 or 8:30.

The meal that followed quickly landed itself in the top three of my trip. I had shrimp sauteed with onions, a greek salad on the side and homemade potato fries along with a litre of water and turkish delight for dessert (I didn't know it was Turkish Delight until I got to Turkey, however). Oh, and for 6 euros, it was one of my least expensive western European restaurant meals.

I had initially planned on spending a whole day on the island, but when I discovered that:
a) I was the only young person traveling on the island and had nobody to hang out with on said island;
b) Prices on the island were more than double the prices in Turkey, which was so close I could see the buildings on the opposite shore;
c) The beaches looked to be identical on both sides of this little stretch of water separating the continents; and
d) I could just as well sit alone for 1/3 the price on the far side of the water as the side I was on.

And so, the next morning at 8:30am, after only 14 hours or so hours on Chios, I boarded a little ferry bound for the Aegean Coast of Turkey.