Trippin' on İstanbul

İstanbul for Turkey is like New York City for the United States -- but if Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston didn't exist. It is the most populous city, the center of culture and finance, the port connecting East and West.

Urban migrants to İstanbul used to say: "İstanbul'un taşı toprağı altın" -- İstanbul's soil and rocks are gold; if you go to İstanbul, you'll make it.

After only three days there --the river ferries, the ancient castles and mosques, the good wine, the spice bazaar and the amazing simit* -- I know that I have to go back. In Ankara, where there are much fewer English speakers, I always feel like a foreigner. But in İstanbul I could blend into the city, just stand by the shores of the Bosphorus and be...

Because my time there was so short, I don't feel qualified to give you a real tour. Instead I want to focus on just one moment...

One of the first places we went was the Hagia Sophia ("Holy Wisdom" in Greek), first built as a church by Constantius II in 360, then destroyed twice, remade into a mosque, and finally, in 1935, converted into an official museum of the Turkish Republic.

İstanbul has been the capital of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires, and for each, the Hagia Sophia was the crown jewel of the city. Conquering the building, making your mark there, meant claiming the entire city for yourself and your civilization.

Every first-time tourist in İstanbul makes a visit to the Hagia Sophia -- I met people from Morocco, Kazakhstan, Spain, Germany, Argentina. And every one of them sees the clash of religions and dynasties right there on the walls: Arabic decorations interlace with mosaic icons, the names of Allah hang above the faces of angels, Byzantine marble pillars tower over Ottoman minnarets...

Yet when I was there, just learning about the ancient architecture and history did nothing for me.**

It felt dead, unimportant, covered over with too much dust and fingerprints... I wanted to discover something still vital, still breathing.

It was only after pestering our guide that he revealed the current controversies swirling around the dome. Some Christian groups have filed petitions to convert Hagia Sophia into a church as a prerequisite for Turkey's E.U. accession. On the other side, some Islamic groups want it to be a mosque again, and many protested when the pope visited the site...

So even today, over 1500 years after its founding, the stones retain their power and symbolism...

I think there are in general two ways to travel. Most of the tourists who pass through the ancient churches and mosques go on vacation to get away from their jobs and their regular lives. They go to turn their brains off, to just look at pretty sites and relax.

But sometimes the best relaxation is exactly opposite -- what I love about traveling is the way it forces you to think along a different course, about new things in a foreign environment. That is what relaxes your brain, without dulling it.

*****

I have only two days left here, so just a few more posts... But now I have to go in search of a bathroom :) -- only a few places in the city currently have enough water reserves for toilet flushing. Unfortunately, my Turkish school is not one of them...

*The ubiquitous Turkish sesame bread, sold every morning by simitçiler all over every city. But İstanbul's is a class above the rest.

**Probably because I major in international relations, not in history. :)