In the Land of Canaan...

I'm currently in the process on catching up on recording the rest of our Istanbul adventures, but have already written about the next step of our journey.  Here 'tis!

Sarah and I are currently in our Jerusalem hostel, listening to (of course) the score from the Fiddler on the Roof and singing/dancing along.  Aren’t we mature?

We will be on a bus back to the Jordan border tomorrow morning, on our way to Petra for two days.  After crossing the Israeli border without any problems on Tuesday, we admired our now beautifully filled passports and our wallets, jointly filled with small change in a total of 9 different currencies (USD, Euros, British pounds, Lebanese pounds, Egyptian pounds, Turkish lira, Jordanian dinar, Israeli shekels, 1 Danish kroner (courtesy of Lydia Bello)).  We’re pretty pleased with ourselves, and thrilled to have another few days left in Jordan; our Lonely Planet guide, which is alternately snarky and hilarious, incredibly helpful, and (on more than one occasion) dead wrong, describes Petra as being like one big Indiana Jones film.

Really everyone makes a huge deal out of Jerusalem being the city of the Three Faiths… so I had always imagined it as a city with religious sites belonging to the three faiths but had never thought about the real lives of the people who live here.  Jerusalem has been pretty darn cool, and we did a lot of wandering and museum-going; but what struck me most about walking down the streets is that you can hear church bells and the call to prayer from the minarets in the same 15 minute period, walk down a single street and see Christian Orthodox priests, Orthodox Jews, Muslim women in hijabs and more observant Jewish and Orthodox Christian women also wearing head-coverings, Christian Coptic Ethiopians, Catholic monks, Jewish men in yarmulkes, and the faithful and more secular of every kind.  The separate “quarters” of the Old City are not cordoned off and the lives of all these people seem to intersect generally without much problem (not to say that greater problems don’t creep about unseen).

There are also more soldiers in the streets than I have ever seen.  Sitting in the bus station waiting for our ride from Eilat to Tel Aviv on Tuesday I was shocked by their vast numbers, especially by the numbers of women, and even more by the fact that all of them looked straight out of high school and acted like it, too – young soldiers sprawling out in groups on the bus station benches, with cell phones and iPods, talking and chatting and laughing and flirting.  Military service is required of all Israelis, both male and female; the majority of them aren’t a day older than I am and many appear to be younger.  Some of them nonchalantly carry huge guns around in the streets – and on the bus as passengers – as though it were just another part of their uniform, which I guess it is.  The thought that one of them might bump against one of the soldiers’ legs just in the right way that it accidentally discharges frightens me more than the idea of there actually being an incident in which they had to use the gun and I tend to edgily try to avoid being around them.  The young soldiers are absolutely everywhere.  This is a picture of a relatively large group of them at the Western Wall:

On our way to Israel, we spent a good deal of time in transit.  We flew out of Istanbul on Monday morning, had a layover in Cairo (ironic, because we had ultimately decided NOT to stop in Egypt because it was going to be too expensive of a flight from Istanbul), and then flew to Amman, where we slept a few hours in a hostel and got up stupid-early the next morning to catch a long bus to Aqaba.  From Aqaba we crossed the border to Eliat – we thought, and were right, that in the south it would be an easier crossing for Sarah (who recently went to Lebanon, which technically you’re not supposed to do if you want to go to Israel – we crossed without any problem at all, and the smiley young woman who examined our passports only pointed at Sarah’s Lebanon stamp and showed it to her supervisor, who shrugged).  From there we caught another 5-hour bus to Tel Aviv across the beautiful and expansive Negev desert, spent the evening in Tel Aviv wandering on the beach and eating the best shwarma I’ve ever tasted and slept another few hours in a hostel before getting up once again to catch a 1-hour morning bus to Jerusalem so that we would have a whole day ahead of us.  In short, a little more travelling than I’d prefer, but it was worth it in the end.

Our first day in Jerusalem we started out with a lunch of some deliciously cheap prune yogurt, bread and hummus, which we ate sitting on the edge of some planters in the plaza outside the Old City’s Jaffa Gate – we seem to have set a precedent of eating street food meals on planters in plazas; we did this almost every single day outside the Yeni Camii in Istanbul.  I am particularly fond of old walls, so Sarah humored me and we then took a walk around the southern ramparts of the Old City walls (built by Süleyman the Great of the Ottomans – the second to last foreign rulers of Jerusalem, after the Crusaders and before the British – in the 16^th century), which had some great views of the city:

(the Tower of David – actually an Ottoman mosque – and the Jaffa Gate beyond)

(view of the Mount of Olives and the Jewish cemetery from the walls)

It would have been awesome to walk around the whole city on the ramparts, but unfortunately you can’t do that in Jerusalem, and so the southern ramparts ended near the Western Wall, which we observed from a distance but did not go all the way up to:

Apparently, you can also view a 24-hour per day online live video of the Western Wall at   www.aish.com/wallcam.  For some reason, I find this a little over-the-top.

We also observed the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount from a distance, figuring well, we can’t go in anyway, and it’s probably better to stay safe in a city where three religions have basically fought for centuries over that one spot.  It was a pretty dome!

We then spent a couple of hours wandering the Muslim quarter and markets of the Old City and admired displays such as this:

It’s a mountain of beautifully-arranged spices – sesame seeds nestled in holes in a base of some green spice, and that’s a model of the Dome of the Rock on top if you can’t quite see it.

In the Muslim quarter is the Church of St. Anne (commemorating the memory of the Virgin Mary’s mother Anne, who supposedly gave birth to the Virgin in the caves below)…

…right next to the excavated ruins of the Bethesda Bath where Jesus supposedly healed the sick man:

We then walked down the Via Dolorosa (Jesus’ supposed path to Golgotha) to the Church of the Sepulcher, the supposed site of the Crucifixion and burial side-by-side, which is a really intense place not only because it’s an architectural disaster of clashing styles and laden the smell of incense filtering from thousands of incense-burners above but because there are chanting monks, enormous candles, frantic and enraptured pilgrims that kiss the stone that Jesus’ body was laid on in the tomb and stand in long lines to enter the tiny shrine enclosing the site of Crucifixion, clanging church bells, processing monks, be-robed women touching hundreds of bottles of “holy” water to the holy stones, tourists taking photos… it is, in short, total sensory overload.

We left the church starving and exhausted, so went to go find some food just outside the Old City gates – some delicious chicken kebabs from a street vendor in the Muslim part of town.  We were so exhausted that we crashed in our (not-so-nice, dirty, cold, awkwardly-arranged, internet-less, don’t-provide-breakfast) hostel at the early hour of 6 pm and slept the whole night through, huddled on our mattresses underneath the drafty window without enough blankets.

Day 2 (today) in Jerusalem was our museum day.  We spent the morning in the Tower of David museum, with a 2-hour-long guided tour by a former New Yorker who explained the long history of Jerusalem to us, starting from the Canaanites and ending conveniently with the British (thus avoiding the more recent, more polemical stuff), trying her very best to be come off with a neutral point-of-view and not always succeeding.  To conclude our intense museum-going, we took a city bus to the opposite side of Jerusalem, to the Holocaust Museum, secluded in a wooded park, which despite being a 4-hour-long emotional ordeal was worth it.  It is a well-done museum (much better than I remember the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., being), as you would expect from a memorial in Jerusalem commemorating the deaths of over 6 million Jews and the suffering of countless other survivors.  We once again returned to our hostel completely exhausted after having a nice sit-down dinner in a restaurant.

I’m excited for the next step of our journey tomorrow, and will try to finish up the Istanbul details meanwhile!

Cheers!

A Christmas letter from the Land of Ataturk

Dear Friends (Meegan says this aloud, with a lisp.  “Please put a ‘z’ on the end of that,” says Emily.  “No,” Sarah says, unamused.  “How about f-r-e-n-z?”  Emily begs…):

                While Emily’s packing to take the train to Greece, we thought it would be a good time to sit down and write you a Christmas letter from Istanbul.  Starting, however, is harder than we thought it would be; we are three people, see, with three different brains, and distinctly different personalities.  Sarah, a Bryn Mawr linguistics major from Colorado Springs who spent the semester in Cairo, is the museum-pusher.  She and Meegan, also a Mawrtyr who spent the semester in Granada (not the Caribbean island spelled with an “e”!), Spain, had planned to meet for two weeks of adventure before going home.  Emily, from the University of Minnesota, was in Mombasa and Nairobi in Kenya for four months, has made her way north to Turkey and will continue on as she heads to Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Austria and the Czech Republic before flying back to Minneapolis.  We met in a four-bed room in the Stray Cat Hostel four days ago in Istanbul, instantly “clicked”, and have been exploring this city of two million people and having a great time.

                Highlights on the sites front have included the absolutely stunning Blue Mosque and the Topkapi Ottoman Palaces and Harem, also stunning and which contained supposed holy relics including Moses’ rod, John the Baptist’s forearm, hand and skull, Muhammad’s beard, Joseph’s turban and Abraham’s saucepan.  We did some shopping at the Grand Bazaar, the Spice Bazaar and the bazaar that locals actually use and which is much more exciting, and then headed to Galata Tower, from which we had some amazing views of the city.  The enormous Underground Cistern, built somewhat like a giant, wet, underground Roman temple and sort of with that atmosphere, too, was fun because we (read: Sarah) got to try and identify the different kinds of columns represented.  As it turns out, Doric, Corinthian, and Ionic styles all made an appearance.  Our favorite museums thus far include the Turkish Train museum at the train station, the Istanbul Modern and the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art. 

We have also been to Taksim Square near our hostel and up and down the very European-looking thoroughfare that is Istiklal, then carried on over the Galata Bridge – which is lined with fishermen who somehow manage to catch fish within their own square meter of space without getting their lines tangled up with any of their neighbors’ – and to the nearby fish market.  We also made our way to many parks, in which Sarah and Emily relieved their green-starved eyes, and into the so-called New Mosque, which looked very similar in style to the Blue Mosque but was more frequently used as an actual prayer space by locals.  While entering the latter, we witnessed a group of older women outright prevent a pair of younger women (who we think were Turkish) from entering the mosque in their short skirts (bad taste, in our opinion, no matter where you are in the world) and without head coverings while the men supposedly in charge of ensuring proper dress in the tourist population looked on and seemed not to care – we were struck by the scene and were interested in the fact that it was not men but women who were policing female modesty in the mosque.

                Our range of other experiences has included a lot of walking, eating and bathing Turkish-style.  There are a lot of hills in Istanbul, and though we’ve figured out the wonderful tram system pretty well, in order to really see a city it’s good to walk, especially if you’re a penny-skimping student like we are.  So we’ve been a little sore, and always are completely exhausted by around 7 pm – we’re a bit tired as we write this, actually.  The other day, we opted for a Turkish bath (called a hammam) experience in the evening after a long day of walking and were incredibly pleased with the results.  The bath was incredibly inexpensive and included spending an hour in a steamy marble room, in which we bathed ourselves with warm water (and yes, engaged in a few water fights) and then got scrubbed, massaged and soaped down ‘til we were literally squeaky-clean by a lovely woman who hummed Turkish tunes under her breath.  It was one of the most relaxing experiences that we (collectively) have ever had – except when Meegan erupted in uncontrollable giggles upon having to undergo massage where she is most ticklish.  As for our culinary experiences, we’ve eaten just about every kind of cheap street food we’ve seen: roasted chestnuts, fresh fish sandwiches (with quite a bit too much raw onion), bagel-like breads, lasagna-like pizza, pizza-like sandwiches, rice with chickpeas, the best pomegranate ever grown, sweet tea, Turkish delight and baklava, dried fruits and nuts from the bazaars, and kebabs galore…  It has all been delicious, and none of us has gotten even the slightest bit sick, which is a plus.  Unfortunately, we seem to do quite a bit worse when it comes to trying to prepare our own food in our hostel: we’ve discovered that powdered soups made with not-quite boiling water are not really a great idea (our “tomato soup” yesterday turned out to be a neon-pink color), and most of our dinners have consisted of bread and cheese with unhealthy amounts of sweetened yogurt and cheap ice cream from the small grocery store across the street.

                Our next adventures take us in vastly different directions (Emily to Eastern Europe; Sarah and Meegan to Jordan and Israel) but we’re thrilled to have happened to end up in the same place for such fun adventures.  We’re all in the process of transitioning from “Study Abroad” mode to “home,” and Istanbul has been a great place for that.  We hope that wherever you are on this Christmas Eve (eve), that it’s a pleasant one and that you’re having adventures (small or large!) of your own.

Much love and best wishes,

Emily, Meegan, and Sarah

Istanbul Day 2

So it’s day #2 in Istanbul, and another great series of adventures.

Today Sarah and I, along with our hostel roommate Emily, got up early to go to the Blue Mosque first thing.  The sign we read last night said: “Ladies must wear long skirt and cover head”, but we were surprised by the number of women who did not cover their heads (we did, and the majority did, but not all) and we certainly were not all wearing skirts.  We arrived at the mosque, took our shoes off, and entered, and my reaction was to jerk to a stop right inside the entrance, holding my shoes, and say, “whoah”.  It’s really fantastically amazing on the inside, with huge domes, all colorfully painted, stained glass windows that let in a lot of light, and lights hanging down.

The carpet is really nice on your feet, and we sat down at the base of a column for a while to admire and rest.

Sarah taught us to recognize some of the Arabic script from the Quran that was written on the walls and explained how the musical notes you’re supposed to sing while reading the Quran are actually written in the script.  I talked to Emily and Sarah for a brief while about some of the architectural elements I had learned about in my class this semester – the huge minbar at the front to the side of the mihrab (both are places where the imam sits/stands to conduct prayer, but the minbar is raised on a high platform so that his voice can reach the far corners of the mosque and the faithful can see him), the dikkas (platforms spaced out through the mosque where some other guys pray, imitating the imam’s movements, so that those who can’t see the imam from where they are can see what they’re supposed to be doing), and the maqsura (the enclosure reserved for the sultan, very close to the mihrab or the minbar and closed off with lattices so that the sultan could pray on Fridays with the rest of his subjects without the rest of the faithful being aware of his presence).  It was really quite amazing.

We then went for a walk through the Grand Bazaar – it looked more like a shopping mall than a Middle Eastern bazaar – and through the Spice Bazaar – which was much more exciting, a bit smaller, a little more disorganized, and we enjoyed it because it had everything to do with food:

 Since we’ve been in Istanbul, shopkeepers all over the city have tried to lure us in with every imaginable catch phrase, usually saying: “Yes please?”  (To which we naturally respond “No, thank you”…  Once yesterday when this exact exchange occurred the man commented immediately afterwards, completely non-sequitur, “You all wear glasses” – why, thank you, storekeeper man, I wasn’t aware of that!)  Today in the bazaars we heard some new tries: “Hello, can I help you spend your money?”  (I liked that one – at least it was completely honest); “It’s my birthday – buy some Turkish delight!”; and “Hello, beautiful ladies!” (which we chose to ignore completely).  Between the bazaars - in the REAL market - we stopped to eat lunch at a kebab place, where I had the most delicious chicken kebab ever.

After our bazaar adventure, we took a ferry across the Bosphorus to the Asian side of Istanbul, where it was much quieter and much less touristy.  We bummed around a bit, found a nice park to sit in, found our way back to the coast and watched the sun set over the skyline of mosques from the rocks.

 We made our way back in another ferry and admired the city night lights all around us.  Upon docking we ate a delicious fresh fish sandwich on a bench covered in cardboard under a pedestrian bridge – the perfect setting for a street scene in My Fair Lady, according to Sarah – from the guys who fish all in a row all along one of the bridges across the Golden Horn (I would be surprised if their lines don’t constantly get tangled up…):

Istanbul is great.  Tomorrow (today, by the time I post this) we have a hammam (public bath) trip planned, along with the Galata Tower and wandering around the area that we’re staying in!