Istanbul and Vienna . . . A Study in Contrasts!
Gutten Nacht!
I have seen the most incredible places in the last week . . . I am not sure where to begin!!! First, I will give a nod to Verona . . . great city, very pretty, you can almost picture Romeo and Juliet when you look at the balcony from which they (allegedly ) spoke. Very friendly people, too . . . I received my first marriage proposal there from a guy whose last name is (incredibly) Italia and whom I had known for all of 40 minutes. He approached me in the street and asked if he could practice his English with me. I said that would be fine, but he would have to walk along with me to the next place I wanted to visit. Next thing I knew, he was proposing and I, not sure I could live with the name "Lisa Italia" for the rest of my life, turned him down. I left that evening for Vienna (by train) and flew from Vienna to Istanbul the next morning.
I hardly know where to begin in describing Istanbul. Everywhere you look, you see minarets pointing skyward from ancient mosques (see the attached picture). Natives constantly approach, some trying to sell carpets or postcards, some just being friendly, others interested in your blonde hair and blue eyes. The air is filled with the smell of roasting nuts from a street vendor and apple smoke wafting from bars where people are seated on low cushions or stools and eating pita bread filled with lamb. Periodically throughout the day, the sound of the call to prayer rings out, with a man chanting verses from the Koran. Relaxing in a 400 year old Turkish bath, you look up to see the architecturally perfect rendering of stars and sky in the dome that protects the round, hot stone on which you lie while awaiting your bath and massage. In brief, I loved every one of the four days I spent in Istanbul!
My hostel window looked out on the Aya Sofia, a mosque so old it is only used as a museum now. On the way to the hostel, I met a Japanese girl who was my roommate while in Istanbul. We met no less than three Turkish men en route to the hostel, one whose mother made us a traditional Turkish dinner that night. After dinner, we were treated to a viewing of American Pie on a bootlegged CD . . . the movie was in English but with Turkish and Chinese subtitles! It took me all of the first day to learn to say "thank you" in Turkish, phoenetically, tishicur iddidum.
Day 2 in Turkey included meeting Jonathan Nieuwsma's friend Muge (thanks, Jonathan!!) at the Blue Mosque. It was beautiful and huge! Muge then helped me select a carpet from the nice carpet seller who snagged me outside the mosque. He served us apple tea in his shop while we looked at what seemed like a billion rugs. He then showed us another, less accessible, mosque and took us for lunch at a traditional Turkish restaurant, where I was introduced to Ayrun (a Turkish, watered down yogurt drink that Muge loves and that I can live without). Muge and I spent the rest of the day checking out some other sights and snacked at a place where the patrons spontaneously stood and belly danced. Muge was able to add lots of interesting commentary on the things we saw. For instance, she explained that the different belly dance styles we saw reflected different regions in Turkey. In the middle of this place, women sat in front of round stones making the pita bread that they cooked on a low stove before serving it to us. Muge and I also visited a place where several sultans and their families are buried. As with the mosques, we had to take our shoes off in order to visit this place. After another dinner made by my new Turkish friend's mother, I retired to the bar at the youth hostel and met a few fun Australian girls and lots of other nice travellers too.
My new Australian friend (Orley) and I visited the Topkapi Palace the next day to see where the sultans governed and kept their harems. It was fascinating! We then strolled to the Grand Bazaar, where the level of harassment increased exponentially from that we found in the streets. We met a nice guy named Suat (he claims it means horse water in Turkish but was his grandfather's name)and Orley played backgammon with him while I learned the game and drank apple tea. The Bazaar, by the way, is a HUGE Turkish shopping center with about ten aisles of booths dealing in ceramics, jewelry, carpets, clothes, etc. The ceilings are all painted in traditional Turkish designs and are incredibly beautiful! We ate dinner at a wine bar with our new friend Suat, his friend Hambe and Neval Ozturk, who dates my friend Gary Cerasuolo's brother and lives in Istanbul. Dinner was great and the company was delightful (thanks, Gary and Linda, for putting me in touch with Neval, she is so cool!). We then walked the fashionable Taksim part of Istanbul.
Much to my dismay, my final day in Turkey arrived all too soon. Orley, Paul (from England), Ted (from Minnesota originally but Japan of late), Paul 2 (from Australia) and I took a boat to Bosphorus, which marked my first visit to Asia!!! We crossed into the Black Sea and disembarked into a small village with a gorgeous deserted castle on a hill. We hiked up to the castle and enjoyed the sunny weather for a while, then relaxed with apple tea in the village before taking the ferry back to Istanbul. I scrambled in an effort to change my plane ticket so I could have more time in Istanbul, but to no avail . . . it was nonchangeable. I spent my last evening in Istanbul experiencing the Turkish bath, admiring the way the two main mosques look lit up at night, practicing my backgammon and listening to stories in the hostel bar about a fellow traveller's adventures in Iran and Iraq and the difficulty of getting a visa to Syria.
After my morning flight to Vienna, I located a hostel and set out to find a new camera bag and explore the town (shopping is a great way to learn a city's layout quickly!). Vienna is SO different from Istanbul: my light hair and eye color means nothing to them (yea!), the street are neatly organized, street signs easy to find and read, public transportation is useful and easy and the people generallz keep to themselves but are very nice when spoken to first. My favorite sights in Vienna were the Kunst Haus (a modern art museum in a cool house designed by the artist), the zoo, the Shoenbrunn and Hofburg Palaces (Bryce and Penny, you would not BELIEVE the china service!) and the opera tour. At the zoo (the oldest zoo in Europe), I met an Austrian man who fought in World War II and told me about being a POW in the US for 2 years after the war. I never knew we brought the other side's soldiers to the US before meeting him. He was really nice and not bitter at all . . . the subject only came up when I asked him while we were chatting about the antelope how he learned his very good English.
My favorite activities in Vienna were seeing a Wagner opera, hanging out in a coffee house that received an award from the Emperor and having dinner in a "skeller" . . . an underground restaurant with brick ceilings and walls and acoustics that permit you to hear all the other tables' conversations. I made another good new friend in Vienna . . . Bridget, an accountant from Canada who is halfway through her year's leave from Ernst and Young. We met at the opera tour and then attended the opera together and tried a Sacher torte (a wonderful dessert originating in Vienna that is made with chocolate and apricot) with another Canadian named Dwaýne who we met at the opera. Luckily, I avoided the political protests occurring in Vienna by leaving any place that was swarming with police . . . on my last night there, several people were tear gassed and injured during a protest about some newly installed conservative government members.
I left Vienna last night for Heidelburg, where I am now! Heidelburg is quaint and beautiful, with rows of traditional cute German buildings set in the middle of a forest and next to a river. I cannot believe my tour is nearly over . . . only three more cities after this (Rothenburg, Hannover and Paris), then I fly home! So this is my last update for you . . . I hope I have been able to share with you some of the awe, curiosity, luck, friendship, adventure and bliss I have experienced during this amazing trip. I look forward to returning home to sleep in my own bed, hug Kip the dog and see all of you again!
Take care and see you soon!
Lisa
I have seen the most incredible places in the last week . . . I am not sure where to begin!!! First, I will give a nod to Verona . . . great city, very pretty, you can almost picture Romeo and Juliet when you look at the balcony from which they (allegedly ) spoke. Very friendly people, too . . . I received my first marriage proposal there from a guy whose last name is (incredibly) Italia and whom I had known for all of 40 minutes. He approached me in the street and asked if he could practice his English with me. I said that would be fine, but he would have to walk along with me to the next place I wanted to visit. Next thing I knew, he was proposing and I, not sure I could live with the name "Lisa Italia" for the rest of my life, turned him down. I left that evening for Vienna (by train) and flew from Vienna to Istanbul the next morning.
I hardly know where to begin in describing Istanbul. Everywhere you look, you see minarets pointing skyward from ancient mosques (see the attached picture). Natives constantly approach, some trying to sell carpets or postcards, some just being friendly, others interested in your blonde hair and blue eyes. The air is filled with the smell of roasting nuts from a street vendor and apple smoke wafting from bars where people are seated on low cushions or stools and eating pita bread filled with lamb. Periodically throughout the day, the sound of the call to prayer rings out, with a man chanting verses from the Koran. Relaxing in a 400 year old Turkish bath, you look up to see the architecturally perfect rendering of stars and sky in the dome that protects the round, hot stone on which you lie while awaiting your bath and massage. In brief, I loved every one of the four days I spent in Istanbul!
My hostel window looked out on the Aya Sofia, a mosque so old it is only used as a museum now. On the way to the hostel, I met a Japanese girl who was my roommate while in Istanbul. We met no less than three Turkish men en route to the hostel, one whose mother made us a traditional Turkish dinner that night. After dinner, we were treated to a viewing of American Pie on a bootlegged CD . . . the movie was in English but with Turkish and Chinese subtitles! It took me all of the first day to learn to say "thank you" in Turkish, phoenetically, tishicur iddidum.
Day 2 in Turkey included meeting Jonathan Nieuwsma's friend Muge (thanks, Jonathan!!) at the Blue Mosque. It was beautiful and huge! Muge then helped me select a carpet from the nice carpet seller who snagged me outside the mosque. He served us apple tea in his shop while we looked at what seemed like a billion rugs. He then showed us another, less accessible, mosque and took us for lunch at a traditional Turkish restaurant, where I was introduced to Ayrun (a Turkish, watered down yogurt drink that Muge loves and that I can live without). Muge and I spent the rest of the day checking out some other sights and snacked at a place where the patrons spontaneously stood and belly danced. Muge was able to add lots of interesting commentary on the things we saw. For instance, she explained that the different belly dance styles we saw reflected different regions in Turkey. In the middle of this place, women sat in front of round stones making the pita bread that they cooked on a low stove before serving it to us. Muge and I also visited a place where several sultans and their families are buried. As with the mosques, we had to take our shoes off in order to visit this place. After another dinner made by my new Turkish friend's mother, I retired to the bar at the youth hostel and met a few fun Australian girls and lots of other nice travellers too.
My new Australian friend (Orley) and I visited the Topkapi Palace the next day to see where the sultans governed and kept their harems. It was fascinating! We then strolled to the Grand Bazaar, where the level of harassment increased exponentially from that we found in the streets. We met a nice guy named Suat (he claims it means horse water in Turkish but was his grandfather's name)and Orley played backgammon with him while I learned the game and drank apple tea. The Bazaar, by the way, is a HUGE Turkish shopping center with about ten aisles of booths dealing in ceramics, jewelry, carpets, clothes, etc. The ceilings are all painted in traditional Turkish designs and are incredibly beautiful! We ate dinner at a wine bar with our new friend Suat, his friend Hambe and Neval Ozturk, who dates my friend Gary Cerasuolo's brother and lives in Istanbul. Dinner was great and the company was delightful (thanks, Gary and Linda, for putting me in touch with Neval, she is so cool!). We then walked the fashionable Taksim part of Istanbul.
Much to my dismay, my final day in Turkey arrived all too soon. Orley, Paul (from England), Ted (from Minnesota originally but Japan of late), Paul 2 (from Australia) and I took a boat to Bosphorus, which marked my first visit to Asia!!! We crossed into the Black Sea and disembarked into a small village with a gorgeous deserted castle on a hill. We hiked up to the castle and enjoyed the sunny weather for a while, then relaxed with apple tea in the village before taking the ferry back to Istanbul. I scrambled in an effort to change my plane ticket so I could have more time in Istanbul, but to no avail . . . it was nonchangeable. I spent my last evening in Istanbul experiencing the Turkish bath, admiring the way the two main mosques look lit up at night, practicing my backgammon and listening to stories in the hostel bar about a fellow traveller's adventures in Iran and Iraq and the difficulty of getting a visa to Syria.
After my morning flight to Vienna, I located a hostel and set out to find a new camera bag and explore the town (shopping is a great way to learn a city's layout quickly!). Vienna is SO different from Istanbul: my light hair and eye color means nothing to them (yea!), the street are neatly organized, street signs easy to find and read, public transportation is useful and easy and the people generallz keep to themselves but are very nice when spoken to first. My favorite sights in Vienna were the Kunst Haus (a modern art museum in a cool house designed by the artist), the zoo, the Shoenbrunn and Hofburg Palaces (Bryce and Penny, you would not BELIEVE the china service!) and the opera tour. At the zoo (the oldest zoo in Europe), I met an Austrian man who fought in World War II and told me about being a POW in the US for 2 years after the war. I never knew we brought the other side's soldiers to the US before meeting him. He was really nice and not bitter at all . . . the subject only came up when I asked him while we were chatting about the antelope how he learned his very good English.
My favorite activities in Vienna were seeing a Wagner opera, hanging out in a coffee house that received an award from the Emperor and having dinner in a "skeller" . . . an underground restaurant with brick ceilings and walls and acoustics that permit you to hear all the other tables' conversations. I made another good new friend in Vienna . . . Bridget, an accountant from Canada who is halfway through her year's leave from Ernst and Young. We met at the opera tour and then attended the opera together and tried a Sacher torte (a wonderful dessert originating in Vienna that is made with chocolate and apricot) with another Canadian named Dwaýne who we met at the opera. Luckily, I avoided the political protests occurring in Vienna by leaving any place that was swarming with police . . . on my last night there, several people were tear gassed and injured during a protest about some newly installed conservative government members.
I left Vienna last night for Heidelburg, where I am now! Heidelburg is quaint and beautiful, with rows of traditional cute German buildings set in the middle of a forest and next to a river. I cannot believe my tour is nearly over . . . only three more cities after this (Rothenburg, Hannover and Paris), then I fly home! So this is my last update for you . . . I hope I have been able to share with you some of the awe, curiosity, luck, friendship, adventure and bliss I have experienced during this amazing trip. I look forward to returning home to sleep in my own bed, hug Kip the dog and see all of you again!
Take care and see you soon!
Lisa
posted by Lisa at 9:52 AM
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