Turkey

So I haven’t gotten around to writing about this for a while, but the ship went to Turkey and I spent all five days in Istanbul and it was awesome. Istanbul was the first port where I never left the city where the boat docked, but I just never felt the need to leave because Istanbul is so big and I really wanted to check it out.

In my five days in Istanbul, I got to check out a lot of the major sites of the city (Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, etc.) and just get to walk around and check out the city. The city was much different from what I expected, it was much more modernized and European than I thought it would be. Being in Istanbul really felt like being in Europe. The city is on two continents (although the boat docked on the European side, and all of the tourist attractions of the city are on that side) but both sides totally feel like Europe. It looks like Europe, except for the fact it has mosques.

Istanbul is one of the nicest cities I’ve been to (and Dubrovnik, Croatia, where I just went to and will write about later, may be the nicest of them all.) Its just very nice to look at, with the Bosphorous separating the two sides and all of the mosques lining the skyline. The city is very beautiful (it looks very European), and its very clean too. The city also has great public transportation, it has these really awesome, modern looking, above ground trams that go around the city and those were pretty awesome to ride. It also has really nice ferries that go around the city and connect the European and Asian sides (the Bosphorous is really wide, and I only saw one bridge that connects the two, although there must be more in other areas.)

Even though Istanbul is an Islamic city in an Islamic country, it doesn’t really feel Islamic at all. Istanbul is very westernized, and you see very few women wearing headscarves (big contrast from Egypt, where almost every woman is wearing a headscarf.) Alcohol is served everywhere, and lots of Turks drink (big difference from Egypt, where alcohol can be found relatively easily, but not lots of Egyptians drink.) It doesn’t feel like Islam is really important to lots of Turks, especially ones in Istanbul, although the mosques still blast prayers five times a day to accommodate to those who are religious (speaking of this, I stayed on the boat for two nights, but me and some of my friends got a hotel for two nights to get away. Our hotel was right around the corner from the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, and one morning, I heard the prayers blasting from the Blue Mosque at 6 AM…..in Islamic countries, the mosque blast things from loudspeakers than can be heard from pretty far away.)

Turkey is also pretty nationalist….the only place where I’ve seen more flags is America post 9/11 (and in America, you don’t see as many flags now as you do in Istanbul.) The Turkish flag is literally everywhere, you go down a street and you see flags all over the place. There is definitely lots of national pride in Turkey. They also really love the father of the country, Mustafa Ataturk, who westernized the country in the 1920s, and you see pictures of him everywhere as well. He’s also on all of the currency.

Istanbul is also COLD, after going to countries where it was in the 80s and 90s for two months, we went somewhere where it was in the 40s and 50s the whole time, and it also got pretty rainy and windy at different points. It really got cold the fourth night when we all went to a soccer game, which was the highlight of my trip. I’m a huge soccer fan, so I knew I wanted to get to a match at some point in Istanbul. I looked up the different clubs in Istanbul, and saw that I couldn’t see Fenerbahce because they were away the weekend I was there, and that I couldn’t see Galatasaray because their match was late on Sunday and I wouldn’t get back to the boat on time if I went to see them. However, Besiktas had a home match Saturday night, so I knew I had to get tickets for that. Even better was the fact that they were playing Sivasspor, which was second in the Turkish league at the time (and Besiktas was fourth in the league) so I knew it would be a cool match to get to. When I got to Istanbul, I went to get tickets for the match, so around 10 of us went to check out the match the fourth night. The stadium actually had a lot of empty seats, but it was because Besiktas lost 8-0 in Champions League to Liverpool that week so the manager told the fans not to show up. Still, the stadium was two thirds full, and it was real loud.

Going into the stadium, it was really funny because our group was half girls, but yet there were no girls at all going to the match (besides other random SAS kids we saw there), so they definitely got some weird looks. Also, when going in, the cop pulled me to the side because I had too much stuff in my pocket. He was saying all of this stuff in Turkish, but when I said “No Turkish” he just let me go in. I guess he thought I was Turkish because that day, we were walking around the market and they had jerseys for 30 lira (like 25 USD) so I bought one (and I was wearing it above my hoodie and you couldn’t really see my face, so I guess I sort of fit in, although wearing a hoodie isn’t something people in Europe do.) Anyway, after getting in, the fans had all sorts of crazy chants, and we talked to some awesome fans and they taught us a few of the different chants. The match overall was pretty sloppy, but it started off well with a Besiktas goal by this guy named Bobo (I think hes Brazilian) in the first half. However, the second half didn’t go as well. Besiktas got a red card around the 55th minute for a bad tackle near the penalty area, and Sivasspor scored off a free kick. Around the 80th minute, Sivasspor scored their second goal off a counter attack and won the match 2-1. I froze my ass off, and it sucks Besiktas lost, but the environment was still loud and awesome and it was just pretty sweet overall to see some Turkish soccer. Sivasspor also got to the top of the league after the win, but I doubt they are still there. Also, I love how they have so many cops at matches in Turkey (way more than they do at sporting events in America), and they sit out in a line essentially waiting for a riot to happen. It’s awesome, but there was no riot that night, there were only a few bottles thrown from another area of the stadium after the second goal.

Besides the match, going to the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque were awesome. The Hagia Sophia was one of the 20 or so candidates for the new seven wonders of the world competition, and it’s a really cool site. It doesn’t look great from the outside, but its so cool on the inside. It’s also a really cool site because it used to be a Catholic church, but was turned into a mosque after Istanbul became Islamic. It isn’t used for prayer anymore, but its just really nice on the inside and the fact that it was both Catholic and Islamic momentos on the inside makes it cool. The walls and ceilings are painted with images of Catholicism, but there are signs in Arabic and Islamic images on the inside as well….just really cool.

The Blue Mosque was also awesome, it’s a really nice building (my favorite in Istanbul) and I definitely went inside and checked it out. The inside to me wasn’t really that much cooler than other mosques I’ve been to, but it was still pretty cool.

The area with the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque, called Sultanahmet, is absolutely awesome. It has all of the tourist attractions, but yet it’s a really quiet, chill area that’s really nice and has lots of good restaurants and stuff like that. It was definitely awesome to stay there for two days instead of on the boat (the boat was around 20 minutes away from there by tram….it was in a pretty good spot.) And speaking of food, Turkish food is awesome. I was stuffed the whole time because we just kept eating and eating some more.

We also hit up the Asian side one day. Istanbul has a great ferry set up, each port has ferries that go to all these different ferries around the city so one day we just went and took a ferry to check out the Asian side. The Asian side of the city we saw was just like the European side (which means it feels like Europe), except there were no tourists whatsoever. The restaurants there didn’t have menus translated into English like they do on the European side. It was pretty residential, but it had lots of shops and restaurants and it was cool to go there for a few hours, especially since it was another continent. Also, the view of the European side from the ferry was awesome, the view of the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and Topkapi Palace (the place where the leaders of the Ottoman Empire lived until the mid 1800s….I went there too, it wasn’t that great) from the water was great.

And one last thing. The last day, me and Teejana thought it would be cool to just take the tram and see where it would end up. However, what happened is that the areas just started to look a little worse, then after a while, it started to get more sparse and spread out, so we just took the tram back. Thought doing this would take us somewhere cool, but it just didn’t happen.

As for bad things about Istanbul, I have one complaint, and that it’s more racist than the other places I’ve been. Most of the people there are real nice, but when I traveled around with Teej (whose Indian), she sometimes had racist comments said to her out of nowhere (someone called her a “negro,” which is funny because shes not black) and the worst was when we were walking to the soccer game. We saw a group of black people walking around (which you don’t see often in Istanbul) and right after we passed them, a little Turkish girl behind us started to make monkey noises while her whole family laughed. Obviously, not everyone in Turkey is like this, but the fact that people aren’t scared to make racist comments out loud and the fact that little girls in Istanbul will mock black people shows that racism is still a problem among Turks. Really sad, but hopefully this gets fixed over time.

Overall, Istanbul is a really nice city and I would definitely go back. I hope that some people there change their ways when it comes to racism (which I was personally really surprised by, no one on the trip complained about any racism in other countries until we got to Turkey where I personally saw it multiple times), but I would still say most of the people are really nice and that its just a really beautiful city.

After Turkey, we went to Croatia which was so nice. Stayed in Dubrovnik for four of the five days, went to Korcula for a day, and all of it was great…hopefully I’ll have time to write about it before Spain.

And to end…how about Arizona beating Number 2 Oregon in football last week and knocking them out of the National Title game race? I definitely wish I was in Arizona to see that, but I would still rather much be on SAS. Now, if we beat the scum (Arizona State) in 2 weeks, we get to a bowl game…GO CATS!

But I am happy I’m missing the NFL this year, because the Dolphins are 0-10. That isn’t something I want to witness…..

Bridge in Istanbul

Me and Eric outside of the Hagia Sophia

Inside one of the great buildings of the world, the Hagia Sophia

Blue Mosque at night

Teej, me, and Anthony at the Besiktas match