.
It was another solitary Sunday morning. I was listening to, but not watching, the live television broadcast of the opening race of the Formula One automobile competition season in Abu Dhabi, waiting for Total Rugby to come on, while playing Buddhist Solitaire (to win, you have to lose)*, when I remembered that the Australian girl I had met on the first day of my tour in Cappadocia was a fan of Formula One racing and would be at the race I was currently not watching. Also, the next leg of the racing circuit would take place in Istanbul. Therefore, I took these presentiments as signs that providence was telling me it was now time to set down my reminiscences of that trip.
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Cappadocia is spelled and pronounced Kapadokya by the Turks. It is a region of fantastic geological and historical wonders in the very center of Turkey, truly unique in the world. (Google “Cappadocia” for images and history -- you will be astounded.) For my Washingtonian readers old enough to remember, the ash-fall from the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 was mere mist compared to the deluge of ash that covered this region.
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I had arranged my time in Cappadocia to coincide with when Mavis and Herm (see previous Istanbullet) were scheduled to be there, in the unrealized hope that we might possibly meet. I arrived at the airport in Kayseri at around 6:00 am on an April Thursday. Kayseri (pronounced KIE-sa-ree) was known as Caesarea during the Roman times. By the fourth century AD, it had become a focal point of Christian life and faith. St. Basil the Great, who defended church doctrine against heretical movements, was once its leading cleric.
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Due to the early hour, the only choice for getting to my hotel in Urgup (pronounced with umlauts) was an expensive taxi ride. The Urgup Inn Cave Hotel is a small, family run affair, the kind that Rick Steves advocates. (Sorry, Steve, but I discovered it on my own.) After several inquiries by the taxi driver, it was found up a steep, cobbled, one-lane side street. I was greeted by the owner, Omar (who resembled the villain in Nicholas Cage’s 2010 vehicle, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”). Omar was so mortified that my travel agent had not contacted him so that I could have taken a much cheaper shuttle van from the airport to the hotel, he gave me the best room in the ancient establishment.
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The premises had originally been a monastery carved out of the side of a hill, long since eroded away, of which my room had been the chapel. It had a high, stone, barrel-vaulted/pointed-arched ceiling, and a huge double bed, the head of which abutted the stonework of a small, recessed altar space. The entrance to the bathroom consisted of a small stone archway that required me to duck upon entry. I cannot remember the number of times that I bashed my head against these stones upon exiting, but they were many.
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After a typical Turkish breakfast (cucumber and tomato slices, white cheese, a freshly boiled egg, warm white bread with butter and a selection of toppings, washed down by way of a pot of tea), I was picked up by the tour van for my first day of being a tourist in a long while. Aboard were six Australians,** (two Muslim couples from Melbourne, and a mother/daughter pair from Sydney -- the daughter being the Formula One fan mentioned above), a Turkish couple, a taciturn American woman, a Canadian from Ontario, myself, and the guide, Ali (female).
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Our morning adventure was the Open-Air Museum outside Goreme (pronounced GOO-re-meh). Summarized quote: “The Goreme Valley holds the largest concentration of rock-cut chapels in Cappadocia. Dating largely from the 9th century onwards, the valley’s 30-some chapels were (carved) out of the soft volcanic tuff.” (Insert: “Tuff” is solidified volcanic ash -- you can scrape it away with a finger.) “Many of the churches feature superb Byzantine frescoes depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments, and particularly the life of Christ and the deeds of the saints.” Most of these frescos were literally defaced after the Muslim conquest.
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After lunch, we were taken to a rug factory, where we were subjected to a promotional tour. We watched tiny hooded women sitting cross-legged on a cold marble floor tying countless knots into rugs that could take many months to finish, while an overweight, mustachioed and wigged swell in a silk suit, wearing pointed leather shoes, extrapolated on the superiority of Turkish rugs, “which feature two knots at every junction, instead of the single knots of rugs made in other nearby countries.” (I detest these rug hawkers. In Istanbul, they prowl the tourist areas and prey upon old people who are too polite to tell these well-dressed pests to go away. Instead, the victims are followed and badgered until they are intimidated into wasting their valuable touring time among the ancient sites, and are cajoled into a shop where they are given sweet tea, the knot story, etc. Once I figured out this game, I created a solution: when approached and asked, “Where do you come from?”, I reply, “So, you speak English?” “Yes, sir.” “Then, fuck off!” It works every time.)
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There was one part of this exhibition that I found elucidating, however, and that was when we were shown how silk is mechanically removed from the cocoons—it reminded me of the way fishing line is retrieved on a spinning reel. The final stop of the tour was atop a ridge with an awesome (I never use this word casually) view of the region. I slept soundly that night because this was a lightly populated and historically Christian area. There were no police or ambulance sirens, no honking car horns, nor muezzin (the calls to prayer by the Imams, broadcast loudly from speakers atop the minarets that adorn every mosque).
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* It’s a very simple, mindless game I invented as a kid. You are playing YOU against HIM. YOU always play first (I was a kid, OK?). Thoroughly shuffle the cards six times, using different shuffle patterns, but always use the same order of shuffle patterns. (Do you see why I’ve always thought I am mildly autistic?) Lay down 4 cards in an overlapping line. If the 4th card matches the number, face or suit of the 1st card, remove the 2 cards in between. If you get 4 cards of the same suit in a row, remove all 4, unless, by removing cards in twos you can remove more (it will make sense when you try it). Continue laying down/removing cards until they are all gone. If you have 16 or fewer cards left, you “win” and get to repeat the process until you end up with a line of over 16 cards. YOU then add up the total number of points YOU amassed. Now, HE repeats the process. Since the ultimate winner is the one with the fewest points at the end, the ideal hand is 18. The Buddhist aspect which I, of course, did not understand at the time, is that every time YOU “win”, YOU are adding more points to your total. Each win brings YOU ultimately closer to losing.
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** Australians, Germans and New Zealanders are among the most common tourists in Turkey, a by-product of World War I. Turkey sided with Germany because of her ancient antipathetic relationship with Imperial Russia; the Australians and New Zealanders fought against the Turks because they were members of the British Commonwealth. Thousands died. Churchill lost his position as Lord of the Admiralty due to the naval losses in the Dardanelles. Eventually, the Allies withdrew in one of history’s most remarkable retreats: thousands of soldiers were evacuated without a single casualty due to hostile action. History calls the Gallipoli campaign a failure, yet out of it rose three modern, independent nations: Australia, New Zealand and Turkey.
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Sunday, May 8, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Fun with Mavis and Herm: Part One
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Over twenty-odd years ago, Nancy, Matthew and I moved from Los Angeles to northwestern Wisconsin, to a city named Eau Claire. Eau Claire is, duh, French, and means “clear water,” a misnomer since the river is the color of strong tea. This is due to the tons of bark that were shed from the millions of acres of pine trees that were harvested and rafted down the river past the town during the 19th century. The disintegrating bark continues to release tannin, hence the color of the water. Julia was born in Eau Claire.
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The reason we were in Eau Claire is because I landed my first university teaching position there. Soon, I also took on the job as choir director/organist at Trinity Lutheran Church. That’s where I met the Hermodsons, Mavis, alto, and Warren (Herm), tenor. Warren was a teacher of reading at one of the local junior high schools, and Mavis was establishing a driving school. Most of Mavis’ students were Hmong immigrants. If you have seen the Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino, you have been introduced to these Laotian immigrants, mountain people who backed the US effort in Vietnam, and left en masse to save their ass to the northern Midwest when the communists took over.
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Warren and Mavis are tourists now in Turkey, and we spent most of an early April day together. I met them at their hotel on a brisk Saturday morning and we set off to see some interesting sites that were not on their Istanbul itinerary. We began with a short walk down Barbaros Bulvari (Barbarous Boulevard) then caught a bus to Kabatas (pronounced “Cobatosh,” meaning “rough rocks”) where we took the Metro (urban rail) to Sultanahmet (named after Sultan Ahmet I, who built the Blue Mosque) and their first visitation site, the Basilica Cistern. This underground marvel dates from 532 AD, and is an amazing example of Byzantine engineering. Its existence was unknown for centuries. It wasn’t until over 100 years after the Ottoman conquest (when Constantinople became Istanbul in 1453) that the cistern was rediscovered -- people were found to be collecting water and fish by lowering buckets through holes in their basements. The cistern’s vaulted brick roof is supported by 336 columns, each over 26 feet tall, each capped with an ornately carved capital, each looted from Roman ruins. The two most unique columns rest on huge Medusa head bases. One of the heads is upside down. Tourists gape and ponder why. Why not? The columns were going to be underwater and underground for centuries. Which of the Byzantine engineers could have ever imagined they would be seen by anyone, much less millions of tourists?
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Next, we walked through the huge courtyard of Yeni Camii (pronounced “Yenny Jommy,” meaning “New Mosque”), which dates from the 17th century, making it, by Istanbul standards, new. Then we passed through the Spice Bazaar, an L-shaped collection of crowded, aromatic stalls under a high ceiling, built as an extension of the New Mosque complex. It was originally called the Egyptian Bazaar because it was built using money from spices imported from Egypt.
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Then, we used a Metro/taxi combination to visit the Chora Museum. This remarkable building takes its name from the Greek word “chora,” meaning an area outside of a city or in the countryside. A former monastery, later called the Church of St. Savior, later again called Kariye Camii, Chora originally lay outside the city walls built by Constantine, but was later contained within the massive Theodosian walls built in 423 AD, walls which protected Constantinople from invasion for over 1000 years. The church was destroyed by earthquakes and fires several times, but was always rebuilt. The present church-turned-mosque-turned-museum dates from the 11th century. Its world-famous mosaics date from 1315-21, and depict the genealogy, infancy, and ministry of Jesus. My favorites are those depicting the life of the Virgin, stories taken from the Gospel of St. James written in the 2nd century, subject matter that was extremely popular in the Middle Ages, but later judged as inauthentic (apocryphal).
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We returned to Sultanahmet for an outdoor lunch, where we were protected from the predicted rain (which arrived almost exactly on time) by a sturdy plastic canopy. Full, footsore, but not fatigued, we walked downhill to the Archeological Museum. This enormous musem includes artifacts spanning over 5,000 years. The most amazing thing to me is that this collection of antiquities was only begun in the mid-19th century! It now contains one of the world’s richest gatherings of classical and pre-classical artifacts. I have visited it three times, and have still not seen all the exhibits. In fact, when I visited it this latest time with Mavis and Warren, a whole new wing was open in an area that had been closed before.
.
We taxied back to Besiktas (pronounced “Beshiktosh,” meaning “five rocks”), where I got out, sent the Hermodsons on the way back to their hotel, and caught a bus home, in the happy knowledge that we would be back together in two weeks for more Adventures.
.
Over twenty-odd years ago, Nancy, Matthew and I moved from Los Angeles to northwestern Wisconsin, to a city named Eau Claire. Eau Claire is, duh, French, and means “clear water,” a misnomer since the river is the color of strong tea. This is due to the tons of bark that were shed from the millions of acres of pine trees that were harvested and rafted down the river past the town during the 19th century. The disintegrating bark continues to release tannin, hence the color of the water. Julia was born in Eau Claire.
.
The reason we were in Eau Claire is because I landed my first university teaching position there. Soon, I also took on the job as choir director/organist at Trinity Lutheran Church. That’s where I met the Hermodsons, Mavis, alto, and Warren (Herm), tenor. Warren was a teacher of reading at one of the local junior high schools, and Mavis was establishing a driving school. Most of Mavis’ students were Hmong immigrants. If you have seen the Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino, you have been introduced to these Laotian immigrants, mountain people who backed the US effort in Vietnam, and left en masse to save their ass to the northern Midwest when the communists took over.
.
Warren and Mavis are tourists now in Turkey, and we spent most of an early April day together. I met them at their hotel on a brisk Saturday morning and we set off to see some interesting sites that were not on their Istanbul itinerary. We began with a short walk down Barbaros Bulvari (Barbarous Boulevard) then caught a bus to Kabatas (pronounced “Cobatosh,” meaning “rough rocks”) where we took the Metro (urban rail) to Sultanahmet (named after Sultan Ahmet I, who built the Blue Mosque) and their first visitation site, the Basilica Cistern. This underground marvel dates from 532 AD, and is an amazing example of Byzantine engineering. Its existence was unknown for centuries. It wasn’t until over 100 years after the Ottoman conquest (when Constantinople became Istanbul in 1453) that the cistern was rediscovered -- people were found to be collecting water and fish by lowering buckets through holes in their basements. The cistern’s vaulted brick roof is supported by 336 columns, each over 26 feet tall, each capped with an ornately carved capital, each looted from Roman ruins. The two most unique columns rest on huge Medusa head bases. One of the heads is upside down. Tourists gape and ponder why. Why not? The columns were going to be underwater and underground for centuries. Which of the Byzantine engineers could have ever imagined they would be seen by anyone, much less millions of tourists?
.
Next, we walked through the huge courtyard of Yeni Camii (pronounced “Yenny Jommy,” meaning “New Mosque”), which dates from the 17th century, making it, by Istanbul standards, new. Then we passed through the Spice Bazaar, an L-shaped collection of crowded, aromatic stalls under a high ceiling, built as an extension of the New Mosque complex. It was originally called the Egyptian Bazaar because it was built using money from spices imported from Egypt.
.
Then, we used a Metro/taxi combination to visit the Chora Museum. This remarkable building takes its name from the Greek word “chora,” meaning an area outside of a city or in the countryside. A former monastery, later called the Church of St. Savior, later again called Kariye Camii, Chora originally lay outside the city walls built by Constantine, but was later contained within the massive Theodosian walls built in 423 AD, walls which protected Constantinople from invasion for over 1000 years. The church was destroyed by earthquakes and fires several times, but was always rebuilt. The present church-turned-mosque-turned-
.
We returned to Sultanahmet for an outdoor lunch, where we were protected from the predicted rain (which arrived almost exactly on time) by a sturdy plastic canopy. Full, footsore, but not fatigued, we walked downhill to the Archeological Museum. This enormous musem includes artifacts spanning over 5,000 years. The most amazing thing to me is that this collection of antiquities was only begun in the mid-19th century! It now contains one of the world’s richest gatherings of classical and pre-classical artifacts. I have visited it three times, and have still not seen all the exhibits. In fact, when I visited it this latest time with Mavis and Warren, a whole new wing was open in an area that had been closed before.
.
We taxied back to Besiktas (pronounced “Beshiktosh,” meaning “five rocks”), where I got out, sent the Hermodsons on the way back to their hotel, and caught a bus home, in the happy knowledge that we would be back together in two weeks for more Adventures.
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Sunday, April 10, 2011
Upon Kumpir and LOSEV
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Kumpir
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Driven by a demanding urge for fajitas, and not having eaten Mexican food for many months, and knowing that there was a restaurant in Ortakoy that served them, and having the time and means to obtain them, I was hungrily bustling downhill. (I don’t bustle uphill. It’s simple physics: gravity determines the rate of bustle, and uphill bustling requires muscle, and I swore off on muscles years ago. Aince my rugby days, my philosophy on fitness has been, “No pain, no pain.”) Also it was a windy, misty Saturday and I knew the booksellers and craft tables would be out under the creaking tarpaulins that would be swaying and creaking ominously in the Bosporus breezes, and I was looking forward to obtaining another used book and watching the tourists spend money on junk.
.
I thought about stepping into the mosque -- a beautiful, relatively new structure (built in 1853), set right beside the water -- but it was too wet to take off my shoes. So I headed straight for the restaurant. It was closed. Not just for the day. Defunct! Disappointed, I walked over to the used-book vendors and bought a copy of Tristram Shandy, which is one of those books I have always meant to read but never got around to doing so. Then I went to the water’s edge and watched the white-capped Bosporus. The wind was gusting so forcefully that I had to hold onto my hat. Two drenched, crippled guys were peddling purse-sized packets of tissues; I didn't need any but I bought some. At the water's edge, a group of Indian youths were shooting pellet rifles at balloons in the water, getting soaked in the windy mist, laughing hysterically. It looked like fun.
.
Hunger took me to my favorite kumpir stand. Kumpir are not my favorite meal, but they are cheap and warm. A kumpir is a large potato that has been baked in aluminum foil. It is placed in a sturdy paper boat, sliced open but not cut through, then slathered with butter and grated mild, white cheese. The customer then chooses from several toppings that are dolloped on: wiener (sans pork) slices in tomato sauce, potato salad (that’s right, potato salad on top of a potato), corn, peas, diced dill pickles, sliced black or green olives, red hot sauce, sliced pickled mushrooms, diced pickled red lettuce, orange bulgar wheat with parsley accents, a pungent black olive paste, and some slimy pink goop I have never seen before nor tasted. This can all then be topped by a squirted line of ketchup or mayonnaise. My stand is the only one that offers small, hot, yellow peppers.
.
There are nine kumpir stands in a row here, connected by common walls. Each stand sells almost the identical product--the only noticeable difference is in the presentation. (NOTE: This is a common practice in Istanbul shopping malls. There will be entire floors dedicated to shoes or women's clothing, etc. To my untutored shopping eye, the only noticeable difference is in the presentation. Another echo of this practice can be seen on street advertisements, in which the same ad will appear on four adjacent billbords.) In the kumpir stands, behind glass screens, mounds of pickles, olives, bulgar, etc. are displayed with a very creative flair using carrot slices shaped into flowers, stars, faces, or rhythmic patterns similar to the wall and ceiling tiles adorning the interiors of mosques. On the one hand, it is very decorative and pleasing to the eye (Istanbul is a delightful place for practitioners of the photographic arts). On the other hand, everything is almost identical--an apt metaphor for the Turkey I have experienced.
.
LOSEV
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On a Saturday in late March, I was faculty supervisor for three MEFIS International Baccalaureate students who gave an English lesson at the Losemili Cocuklar Vakfi (Home for Children with Leukemia), or LOSEV. The first such home was established in Ankara, the Turkish capital, and the Istanbul house opened in 2005. The children were all healthy, with all their hair, but had missed so much school while they were hospitalized that they come to LOSEV on the weekends for tutoring provided by volunteers, such as my students: Rony Alp (Alp meaning “hero” -- most Turkish names have a meaning), Dilara (½ Turk, ½ German), and Tina (½ Turk, ½ Italian, Jewish -- an interesting name for a Jewish girl, Christina).
.
At any given time, there were between 10-20 children in the room There were not enough chairs so the latecomers had to sit on the heaters or friends’ laps. The number of students constantly fluctuated because the kids would just get up and walk out without notice. The lesson took 45 minutes and covered the prepositions “in, on, under, between, and next to” (I would have used “beside”). Large, laminated pictures of things one might find in parks were held aloft (trash can, fountain, duck pond, zoo, playground, rest rooms, picnic table, swings, statue). The teacher would show the picture and say the word in Turkish; the children would respond in English. I sat next to a boy named Erdem (“virtue”). He left twice and did not return the second time until sandwiches (cold chicken chunks with shredded carrots and lettuce, no mayo) were served for lunch.
.
After the lesson, my students disappeared immediately, giving me some time to read in a nearby park until my ride arrived. I passed a Turkish man sleeping loudly on a bench in midday, and saw a rare black man walking two German Shepherds. Having given up on Tristram Shandy—too obtuse, even for a random/chaotic like myself -- I am reading Snow, by the Nobel Prize winning Turkish author, Orhan Pamuk. If you ever become interested in modern Turkish history and like well-written novels, start with Birds Without Wings, then read Snow.
.
Kumpir
.
Driven by a demanding urge for fajitas, and not having eaten Mexican food for many months, and knowing that there was a restaurant in Ortakoy that served them, and having the time and means to obtain them, I was hungrily bustling downhill. (I don’t bustle uphill. It’s simple physics: gravity determines the rate of bustle, and uphill bustling requires muscle, and I swore off on muscles years ago. Aince my rugby days, my philosophy on fitness has been, “No pain, no pain.”) Also it was a windy, misty Saturday and I knew the booksellers and craft tables would be out under the creaking tarpaulins that would be swaying and creaking ominously in the Bosporus breezes, and I was looking forward to obtaining another used book and watching the tourists spend money on junk.
.
I thought about stepping into the mosque -- a beautiful, relatively new structure (built in 1853), set right beside the water -- but it was too wet to take off my shoes. So I headed straight for the restaurant. It was closed. Not just for the day. Defunct! Disappointed, I walked over to the used-book vendors and bought a copy of Tristram Shandy, which is one of those books I have always meant to read but never got around to doing so. Then I went to the water’s edge and watched the white-capped Bosporus. The wind was gusting so forcefully that I had to hold onto my hat. Two drenched, crippled guys were peddling purse-sized packets of tissues; I didn't need any but I bought some. At the water's edge, a group of Indian youths were shooting pellet rifles at balloons in the water, getting soaked in the windy mist, laughing hysterically. It looked like fun.
.
Hunger took me to my favorite kumpir stand. Kumpir are not my favorite meal, but they are cheap and warm. A kumpir is a large potato that has been baked in aluminum foil. It is placed in a sturdy paper boat, sliced open but not cut through, then slathered with butter and grated mild, white cheese. The customer then chooses from several toppings that are dolloped on: wiener (sans pork) slices in tomato sauce, potato salad (that’s right, potato salad on top of a potato), corn, peas, diced dill pickles, sliced black or green olives, red hot sauce, sliced pickled mushrooms, diced pickled red lettuce, orange bulgar wheat with parsley accents, a pungent black olive paste, and some slimy pink goop I have never seen before nor tasted. This can all then be topped by a squirted line of ketchup or mayonnaise. My stand is the only one that offers small, hot, yellow peppers.
.
There are nine kumpir stands in a row here, connected by common walls. Each stand sells almost the identical product--the only noticeable difference is in the presentation. (NOTE: This is a common practice in Istanbul shopping malls. There will be entire floors dedicated to shoes or women's clothing, etc. To my untutored shopping eye, the only noticeable difference is in the presentation. Another echo of this practice can be seen on street advertisements, in which the same ad will appear on four adjacent billbords.) In the kumpir stands, behind glass screens, mounds of pickles, olives, bulgar, etc. are displayed with a very creative flair using carrot slices shaped into flowers, stars, faces, or rhythmic patterns similar to the wall and ceiling tiles adorning the interiors of mosques. On the one hand, it is very decorative and pleasing to the eye (Istanbul is a delightful place for practitioners of the photographic arts). On the other hand, everything is almost identical--an apt metaphor for the Turkey I have experienced.
.
LOSEV
.
On a Saturday in late March, I was faculty supervisor for three MEFIS International Baccalaureate students who gave an English lesson at the Losemili Cocuklar Vakfi (Home for Children with Leukemia), or LOSEV. The first such home was established in Ankara, the Turkish capital, and the Istanbul house opened in 2005. The children were all healthy, with all their hair, but had missed so much school while they were hospitalized that they come to LOSEV on the weekends for tutoring provided by volunteers, such as my students: Rony Alp (Alp meaning “hero” -- most Turkish names have a meaning), Dilara (½ Turk, ½ German), and Tina (½ Turk, ½ Italian, Jewish -- an interesting name for a Jewish girl, Christina).
.
At any given time, there were between 10-20 children in the room There were not enough chairs so the latecomers had to sit on the heaters or friends’ laps. The number of students constantly fluctuated because the kids would just get up and walk out without notice. The lesson took 45 minutes and covered the prepositions “in, on, under, between, and next to” (I would have used “beside”). Large, laminated pictures of things one might find in parks were held aloft (trash can, fountain, duck pond, zoo, playground, rest rooms, picnic table, swings, statue). The teacher would show the picture and say the word in Turkish; the children would respond in English. I sat next to a boy named Erdem (“virtue”). He left twice and did not return the second time until sandwiches (cold chicken chunks with shredded carrots and lettuce, no mayo) were served for lunch.
.
After the lesson, my students disappeared immediately, giving me some time to read in a nearby park until my ride arrived. I passed a Turkish man sleeping loudly on a bench in midday, and saw a rare black man walking two German Shepherds. Having given up on Tristram Shandy—too obtuse, even for a random/chaotic like myself -- I am reading Snow, by the Nobel Prize winning Turkish author, Orhan Pamuk. If you ever become interested in modern Turkish history and like well-written novels, start with Birds Without Wings, then read Snow.
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Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Istantidbits V
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More Turkish Delights
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Crepe, Swing = Men's apparel shops
Gluttoni, TENT = Apparel shops for large men
FitFlops, Crash = Men's shoes
ZEN = An air conditioning and heating company
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Differences I noticed between Sophia and Istanbul last Christmas
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Although only 480 km apart, there are distinct physical differences between the humans inhabiting these two major population centers. Where Turks are generally short and thin, Bulgarians tend to be tall and stout. The women are bustier, and only too happy to show one the difference (sartorially speaking, of course). My finely-honed investigative instincts tell me that this is due to religion: one culture believes that drinking beer and eating pork is okay; the other does not. You guess which is which.
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Traffic. The streets in Istanbul are generally narrow and choked with vehicles: trucks frequently party in the opposite lane while the driver drinks tea and/or plays backgammon with friends; cars are parked on the sidewalks, and motorbikes weave among them while we pedestrians are frequently forced to walk in the streets among the honking vehicles; stop/go lights are rare. In other words, it's a jostling, friendly chaos. In Sophia, the streets are very wide, every intersections has stop/go lights, and the sidewalks are free of cars. But so are the streets. The few cars that chugged by were old and worn (like the author, but he still chugs -- just ask anyone who has had the misfortune to sit next to him too long on a bus), and crossing the street was eerily safe. In Sophia, I waited 25 minutes for a taxi, during which time I was turned down by three drivers because they did now know where my hotel was, even when given the address and telephone number. I have never waited over two minutes for a Taxi in Istanbul.
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Turkish TV: The Cigarette Smudge
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I believe I have previously mentioned the monumentally unsuccessful Turkish anti-smoking campaign. Large No Smoking posters adhere to the walls of every public building, with threats of inconsequential fines. On TV, whenever a character appears with a nicotine delivery system in his or her hand or mouth, it is invisibilated by an oval smudge or, in earlier versions, a cartoon flower. So, in Casablanca, Bogie tells Sam to play it again while he broods over the piano with a flower covering his hand while smoke rises in a cinematic wreath of incense around his head.
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It's so silly. The majority of the adult population in Turkey smokes. (Islam forbids drinking alcohol, maybe because alcohol came to the desert peoples carried and abused by the marauding Crusaders. Tobacco hadn't reached the Middle East when the Koran was written. Go figure.) Where I come from, we say of a heavy smoker, "He smokes like a chimney." The Italians have another aphorism: "Fumare della Turka."
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Language
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Turkish is a very economical language. One sees this best when signing bifurcated official documents that have the Turkish text on the left side of the page and the English translation on the right. There is much more white space (fewer words) in the Turkish column. In other words, the original Turks did not waste time creating or absorbing unnecessary words. I know very little Turkish, but my favorite example is in naming the days of the week. The Turks do not have names for Saturday or Monday. They simply call these days after the days they follow: Cuma (Friday) becomes Cumartesi (the day after Friday); Pazar (Sunday) becomes Pazartesi (The day after Sunday. While efficient, a language such as this does not lend itself well to the ambiguities and nuances that create great poetry and plays. For instance, the subtle humor of the Country-Western title, "I Gave Her the Ring, and She Gave Me the Finger," would be lost on the Turk.
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More Turkish Delights
.
Crepe, Swing = Men's apparel shops
Gluttoni, TENT = Apparel shops for large men
FitFlops, Crash = Men's shoes
ZEN = An air conditioning and heating company
.
Differences I noticed between Sophia and Istanbul last Christmas
.
Although only 480 km apart, there are distinct physical differences between the humans inhabiting these two major population centers. Where Turks are generally short and thin, Bulgarians tend to be tall and stout. The women are bustier, and only too happy to show one the difference (sartorially speaking, of course). My finely-honed investigative instincts tell me that this is due to religion: one culture believes that drinking beer and eating pork is okay; the other does not. You guess which is which.
.
Traffic. The streets in Istanbul are generally narrow and choked with vehicles: trucks frequently party in the opposite lane while the driver drinks tea and/or plays backgammon with friends; cars are parked on the sidewalks, and motorbikes weave among them while we pedestrians are frequently forced to walk in the streets among the honking vehicles; stop/go lights are rare. In other words, it's a jostling, friendly chaos. In Sophia, the streets are very wide, every intersections has stop/go lights, and the sidewalks are free of cars. But so are the streets. The few cars that chugged by were old and worn (like the author, but he still chugs -- just ask anyone who has had the misfortune to sit next to him too long on a bus), and crossing the street was eerily safe. In Sophia, I waited 25 minutes for a taxi, during which time I was turned down by three drivers because they did now know where my hotel was, even when given the address and telephone number. I have never waited over two minutes for a Taxi in Istanbul.
.
Turkish TV: The Cigarette Smudge
.
I believe I have previously mentioned the monumentally unsuccessful Turkish anti-smoking campaign. Large No Smoking posters adhere to the walls of every public building, with threats of inconsequential fines. On TV, whenever a character appears with a nicotine delivery system in his or her hand or mouth, it is invisibilated by an oval smudge or, in earlier versions, a cartoon flower. So, in Casablanca, Bogie tells Sam to play it again while he broods over the piano with a flower covering his hand while smoke rises in a cinematic wreath of incense around his head.
.
It's so silly. The majority of the adult population in Turkey smokes. (Islam forbids drinking alcohol, maybe because alcohol came to the desert peoples carried and abused by the marauding Crusaders. Tobacco hadn't reached the Middle East when the Koran was written. Go figure.) Where I come from, we say of a heavy smoker, "He smokes like a chimney." The Italians have another aphorism: "Fumare della Turka."
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Language
.
Turkish is a very economical language. One sees this best when signing bifurcated official documents that have the Turkish text on the left side of the page and the English translation on the right. There is much more white space (fewer words) in the Turkish column. In other words, the original Turks did not waste time creating or absorbing unnecessary words. I know very little Turkish, but my favorite example is in naming the days of the week. The Turks do not have names for Saturday or Monday. They simply call these days after the days they follow: Cuma (Friday) becomes Cumartesi (the day after Friday); Pazar (Sunday) becomes Pazartesi (The day after Sunday. While efficient, a language such as this does not lend itself well to the ambiguities and nuances that create great poetry and plays. For instance, the subtle humor of the Country-Western title, "I Gave Her the Ring, and She Gave Me the Finger," would be lost on the Turk.
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Tuesday, February 22, 2011
In My Room at MEF International School
.
Autobiographical songs are the usually the very definition of maudlin -- tearfully sentimental screeds. (For all you Dan Brown Da Vinci Code fans, the term derives from the Old French word Madeleine, describing the weeping of Mary Magdalene.) Brian Wilson’s song, “In My Room,” an early Beach Boys hit, touchingly portrays a boy describing how his bedroom is a haven from his teenage angst, but does not mention the Playboy magazines under his mattress.
.
MEF: Model Educational Facility, or Marble Educational Farce. Here’s why I have come to this sad conclusion:
.
MEF International School (MEFIS) was an afterthought, possibly intended to bring in more money to the MEF National School or, hopefully, some prestige. MEFIS is therefore the stepchild. Like Cinderella, we get the leftovers. My Room is nested on the third floor of the National School’s Music Building. When I must meet with administrators or colleagues, or even need to make photocopies, I face a long, uphill, exposed-to-the-weather walk to the building where the other MEFIS classrooms are located, as well as the cafeteria.
.
My Room is actually located on the fourth floor by American standards, since in Turkey the ground floor is the bottom one and the first floor is the next one up (amazing concept!). However, to get to the ground floor, I have to walk down a flight of marble stairs before I can begin climbing the three flights of marble stairs to My Room. Each flight of stairs consists of 20 marble steps. There is no elevator, hence no wheelchair access. But then, of course, there are no handicapped people in Turkey, as well as no homeless people, no homosexuals, no radicals, etc. In Islamotropolis, these aberrations only occur among the infidels.
.
My Room originally consisted of two L-shaped piano practice rooms. To create My Room, MEF simply removed the dividing wall. Get a piece of graph paper. Starting at the upper left, [1] draw a line down 6 squares; [2] now go horizontally to the right 12 squares; [3] go up 6 squares; [4] go left 4 squares; [5] go down 2 squares; [6] go left 4 squares; [7] go up 2 squares; [8] from there, draw a line to your starting point. You now have a crow, pigeon and seagull view of my room if the roof were removed (which, if such were to occur, would rapidly fill up with guano, since these birds are always swooping by or landing on window sills during the daylight hours).
.
My desk with its circa 1995 computer faces the entryway [7]. On the opposite side of My Room is a mauve “Pearl River” Yamaha upright piano (just tuned today!). Behind the piano, the walls are filled with 3-tiered open wooden cabinets containing six guitars with broken strings, six dusty, unused electronic keyboards, boxes full of discarded drama texts, some ridiculous metallic, so-called Turkish drums, two nice conga drums and, closer, a freestanding cabinet containing my music theory packets and a CD player so old it does not have a pause function. Imagine trying to explain the significance of the six-note French horn transition between the major theme groups in the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 without being able to pause! I knew you would understand my frustration.
.
My Room has two large windows at stages [1] and [3]. The window at stage [1] has protective metal bars to prevent someone from entering my room from the adjacent roof. The window at stage [3] has no such bars, so that a child could fall four stories to certain death by gravity + marble. So, by MEF thinking, it is more important to protect the unusable guitars and dusty electronic keyboards than the children. For reasons obvious to me but not to MEF, I have positioned my piano in front of this window.
.
Position [2] consists of a solid wall of window panes, with a magnificent view of an escarpment of apartment complexes that rises higher than the school, looming above an under-developed valley adorned with serpentine, broken-linked waves of attractive, modern stone walls separated by waste dumps and hungry dogs. Somebody spent a lot of lira to put up those pretty walls, but nothing has yet to come of this speculative investment.
.
Into My Room come children from grades 5 through 9, winded from the climb up the flights of marble stairs. There are not enough chairs for the students in grades 8 (24) and 9 (22) to sit, so the late-comers have to plunk down on the floor or squeeze in onto the heaters. I have to buy pencils and sharpeners to give to those students who arrive without them. Turkish pencils do not have erasers, and classrooms do not have wall-mounted pencil sharpeners. Every student is expected to carry from class to class a zippered cloth bag the size and shape of a Taco Del Mar burrito containing the equivalent of the contents of a competent secretary’s right-hand desk drawer: pencils, pens, erasers, pencil sharpeners, highlighters, adhesive tape, white out, permanent markers, post-its, paper clips, rubber bands, you name it. In the meantime, since I received no classroom supplies this year (I even had to buy my own printer and ink cartridges), I provide my students anything extra or lost from the above categories from a mobile cabinet, a three-drawer knee-banger on coasters with broken knobs that fits under my desk and slides away at the slightest nudge so that I frequently have to disappear under my desk to pull it back into sight, usually bumping my head in front of my bemused students. (Actually, I always do that on purpose to make them laugh.)
.
I am going to miss these kids, and my fellow ex-pat teachers. But I will not regret leaving MEF International School.
.
Autobiographical songs are the usually the very definition of maudlin -- tearfully sentimental screeds. (For all you Dan Brown Da Vinci Code fans, the term derives from the Old French word Madeleine, describing the weeping of Mary Magdalene.) Brian Wilson’s song, “In My Room,” an early Beach Boys hit, touchingly portrays a boy describing how his bedroom is a haven from his teenage angst, but does not mention the Playboy magazines under his mattress.
.
MEF: Model Educational Facility, or Marble Educational Farce. Here’s why I have come to this sad conclusion:
.
MEF International School (MEFIS) was an afterthought, possibly intended to bring in more money to the MEF National School or, hopefully, some prestige. MEFIS is therefore the stepchild. Like Cinderella, we get the leftovers. My Room is nested on the third floor of the National School’s Music Building. When I must meet with administrators or colleagues, or even need to make photocopies, I face a long, uphill, exposed-to-the-weather walk to the building where the other MEFIS classrooms are located, as well as the cafeteria.
.
My Room is actually located on the fourth floor by American standards, since in Turkey the ground floor is the bottom one and the first floor is the next one up (amazing concept!). However, to get to the ground floor, I have to walk down a flight of marble stairs before I can begin climbing the three flights of marble stairs to My Room. Each flight of stairs consists of 20 marble steps. There is no elevator, hence no wheelchair access. But then, of course, there are no handicapped people in Turkey, as well as no homeless people, no homosexuals, no radicals, etc. In Islamotropolis, these aberrations only occur among the infidels.
.
My Room originally consisted of two L-shaped piano practice rooms. To create My Room, MEF simply removed the dividing wall. Get a piece of graph paper. Starting at the upper left, [1] draw a line down 6 squares; [2] now go horizontally to the right 12 squares; [3] go up 6 squares; [4] go left 4 squares; [5] go down 2 squares; [6] go left 4 squares; [7] go up 2 squares; [8] from there, draw a line to your starting point. You now have a crow, pigeon and seagull view of my room if the roof were removed (which, if such were to occur, would rapidly fill up with guano, since these birds are always swooping by or landing on window sills during the daylight hours).
.
My desk with its circa 1995 computer faces the entryway [7]. On the opposite side of My Room is a mauve “Pearl River” Yamaha upright piano (just tuned today!). Behind the piano, the walls are filled with 3-tiered open wooden cabinets containing six guitars with broken strings, six dusty, unused electronic keyboards, boxes full of discarded drama texts, some ridiculous metallic, so-called Turkish drums, two nice conga drums and, closer, a freestanding cabinet containing my music theory packets and a CD player so old it does not have a pause function. Imagine trying to explain the significance of the six-note French horn transition between the major theme groups in the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 without being able to pause! I knew you would understand my frustration.
.
My Room has two large windows at stages [1] and [3]. The window at stage [1] has protective metal bars to prevent someone from entering my room from the adjacent roof. The window at stage [3] has no such bars, so that a child could fall four stories to certain death by gravity + marble. So, by MEF thinking, it is more important to protect the unusable guitars and dusty electronic keyboards than the children. For reasons obvious to me but not to MEF, I have positioned my piano in front of this window.
.
Position [2] consists of a solid wall of window panes, with a magnificent view of an escarpment of apartment complexes that rises higher than the school, looming above an under-developed valley adorned with serpentine, broken-linked waves of attractive, modern stone walls separated by waste dumps and hungry dogs. Somebody spent a lot of lira to put up those pretty walls, but nothing has yet to come of this speculative investment.
.
Into My Room come children from grades 5 through 9, winded from the climb up the flights of marble stairs. There are not enough chairs for the students in grades 8 (24) and 9 (22) to sit, so the late-comers have to plunk down on the floor or squeeze in onto the heaters. I have to buy pencils and sharpeners to give to those students who arrive without them. Turkish pencils do not have erasers, and classrooms do not have wall-mounted pencil sharpeners. Every student is expected to carry from class to class a zippered cloth bag the size and shape of a Taco Del Mar burrito containing the equivalent of the contents of a competent secretary’s right-hand desk drawer: pencils, pens, erasers, pencil sharpeners, highlighters, adhesive tape, white out, permanent markers, post-its, paper clips, rubber bands, you name it. In the meantime, since I received no classroom supplies this year (I even had to buy my own printer and ink cartridges), I provide my students anything extra or lost from the above categories from a mobile cabinet, a three-drawer knee-banger on coasters with broken knobs that fits under my desk and slides away at the slightest nudge so that I frequently have to disappear under my desk to pull it back into sight, usually bumping my head in front of my bemused students. (Actually, I always do that on purpose to make them laugh.)
.
I am going to miss these kids, and my fellow ex-pat teachers. But I will not regret leaving MEF International School.
.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Upon My Second Birthday in Istanbul (February 10, 2011)
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"‘I’m more likely to get hit by a motorcycle on this sidewalk than I am by crossing the street," I thought as I made my way to the bus stop. It was a beautiful Thursday, cold and clear. I was on my way to visit an exhibit that had caught my interest over a year ago, but which I had yet to see. It was billed as the "1453 Panorama", 1453 being the year that Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks and became Istanbul. The exhibit was just outside a stretch of some of the remaining Theodosian walls, magnificent structures that had protected Constantinople for centuries until the Turks finally created cannons powerful enough to bring them down, while the Western Christians refused to provide any reinforcements.
.
The bus was, as usual, quite warm, but today it felt good. After a while it filled up to a point that someone had to sit beside me. Turks do not like to invade the space of foreigners until there is only one choice: stand or sit. They know I am a foreigner because of my mutton-chop beard and the fact that I wear Birkenstocks with socks in cold weather. (They stare at my feet. If my feet were breasts, maybe I could understand better how women must feel when trying to carry on a conversation with a lusty male.) Also, women do not sit next to men until the same choice has to be made. A well-attired woman chose to sit next to me. After a reasonable time, not wanting to appear over-eager or aggressive, I asked if she spoke English. She said “No.”
.
I turned my attention to the ever-changing city. I noticed that Doritos was offering heart-shaped chips in honor of Valentine’s Day (never mind that Valentine was a Christian martyr, sainted in 500 AD). I noticed for the first time that there were huge nests high up in the trees inside the Topkapi Palace complex, big enough for herons. (Topkapi means "cannon ball," which is pertinent to our 1453 theme). I noticed that there were no guards stationed in the Plexiglas cubicles outside Dolmabahce Palace, probably because it was too cold. Normally there would be two formally attired guards with polished steel helmets and ceremonial automatic weapons, no matter how hot it was in direct sunlight, stationed outside the Dolmebahce (pronounced dole-meh-BAH-jeh, meaning a garden built on reclaimed land) Gate, a vigorously ornate barrier that couldn’t stop a motorcycle that had accidentally jumped the curb and had actually come down onto the street for a change. My mind wandered. My current students think Glee is real. They refuse to believe that American high schools are not inhabited by 20-somethings with perfect teeth, nor that all schools do not have million dollar budgets for stage productions.
.
I asked the woman still seated next to me, auf Deutsch, if she spoke German. She said “Nein.” My keenly honed interpersonal skills alerted me that she didn’t want to talk.
.
Upon arriving at the exhibit, I was surprised to see that there was a cue of people outside. That was fine, because I always carry a book (currently "Invictus" -- history and rugby, the perfect combination) just for such contingencies. The entry fee was 10TL, but my teacher pass got me in for 5. Once in the building, I spent the other 5 on an electronic device that would speak to me in English. I slipped it around my neck and went to stand in another line and reopened my book. I then slipped my valise over my shoulder so that it wouldn’t get jostled off when the line finally moved forward.
.
When the line finally moved forward, we ascended a dark, winding staircase and came out under a large dome painted with scenes depicting the glorious Turks killing the infidels. I struggled to get the English translating device to my ears, but its cords had become so entangled in the straps of my valise that they had created a macramé on my chest. I knew that there was a time limit to my visit, having seen previous crowds being ushered out en masse. I had to work fast. My disentanglement struggles were heightened by Turkish children head-butting my private regions. I finally got the cords free and the speaker phones onto my ears in time to hear a brilliant, succinct description of the actions depicted on the huge, convex mural in TURKISH!
.
There was a large fellow standing beside a control panel wearing the costume of a Janissary (the Sultan’s personal guards -- slaves, formerly Christian children). I gestured at the device, said “Ingilizce” (English) and he calmly punched some buttons, each of which I had just pushed to no effect, and English flooded into my ears. I had made it to the second station when the announcement to exit sounded. UNFAIR! I hung in there. One scene depicted the interior of Constantinople, and the narrator said I should be able to see Hagia Sophia in the background. I looked and looked. Then I realized that I didn’t recognize it because it did not have minarets yet! It was just a distant bulge on the horizon. I lingered for as long as I could, then I cautiously dribbled down the stairs like the last drop swirling down a drain.
.
On the way home, I got off the tram in Gulhane (meaning "place of roses"), just outside the North Shield Pub, a venue that carries international rugby on TV. The paper announcements that were adhered to the brick exterior informed me that I now have birthday presents awaiting me this weekend: on Saturday, England vs Italy, and Scotland vs Wales; on Sunday, Ireland vs France.
.
Then I walked on to Sirkeci (pronounced SEER-keh-jee, meaning something to do with a circus) Main Station, which was the last stop of the Orient Express. The foundation stone was laid in 1888 (one year before Washington became a state, and Germany became unified under Bismarck). The station opened in 1890. The first voyage of the Orient Express departed from Paris to the sounds of Mozart’s "Turkish March" (which Nancy plays so well, but which I can no longer stand, since it seems to be the only piece by Wolfgang that Turks know or play. It is constantly ringing in my music building, making me long for “Chopsticks” or “Heart and Soul”). The train passed through Strasbourg, France; Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Ulm and Munich, Germany; Vienna, Austria; Budapest, Hungary; Bucharest, Romania; Rousse and Varna, Bulgaria; and terminated in Sirkeci, Istanbul. The Orient Express stopped running in 1977, the year my son, Matthew, was born (I think). [EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, that's correct. -- MV.]
.
"‘I’m more likely to get hit by a motorcycle on this sidewalk than I am by crossing the street," I thought as I made my way to the bus stop. It was a beautiful Thursday, cold and clear. I was on my way to visit an exhibit that had caught my interest over a year ago, but which I had yet to see. It was billed as the "1453 Panorama", 1453 being the year that Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks and became Istanbul. The exhibit was just outside a stretch of some of the remaining Theodosian walls, magnificent structures that had protected Constantinople for centuries until the Turks finally created cannons powerful enough to bring them down, while the Western Christians refused to provide any reinforcements.
.
The bus was, as usual, quite warm, but today it felt good. After a while it filled up to a point that someone had to sit beside me. Turks do not like to invade the space of foreigners until there is only one choice: stand or sit. They know I am a foreigner because of my mutton-chop beard and the fact that I wear Birkenstocks with socks in cold weather. (They stare at my feet. If my feet were breasts, maybe I could understand better how women must feel when trying to carry on a conversation with a lusty male.) Also, women do not sit next to men until the same choice has to be made. A well-attired woman chose to sit next to me. After a reasonable time, not wanting to appear over-eager or aggressive, I asked if she spoke English. She said “No.”
.
I turned my attention to the ever-changing city. I noticed that Doritos was offering heart-shaped chips in honor of Valentine’s Day (never mind that Valentine was a Christian martyr, sainted in 500 AD). I noticed for the first time that there were huge nests high up in the trees inside the Topkapi Palace complex, big enough for herons. (Topkapi means "cannon ball," which is pertinent to our 1453 theme). I noticed that there were no guards stationed in the Plexiglas cubicles outside Dolmabahce Palace, probably because it was too cold. Normally there would be two formally attired guards with polished steel helmets and ceremonial automatic weapons, no matter how hot it was in direct sunlight, stationed outside the Dolmebahce (pronounced dole-meh-BAH-jeh, meaning a garden built on reclaimed land) Gate, a vigorously ornate barrier that couldn’t stop a motorcycle that had accidentally jumped the curb and had actually come down onto the street for a change. My mind wandered. My current students think Glee is real. They refuse to believe that American high schools are not inhabited by 20-somethings with perfect teeth, nor that all schools do not have million dollar budgets for stage productions.
.
I asked the woman still seated next to me, auf Deutsch, if she spoke German. She said “Nein.” My keenly honed interpersonal skills alerted me that she didn’t want to talk.
.
Upon arriving at the exhibit, I was surprised to see that there was a cue of people outside. That was fine, because I always carry a book (currently "Invictus" -- history and rugby, the perfect combination) just for such contingencies. The entry fee was 10TL, but my teacher pass got me in for 5. Once in the building, I spent the other 5 on an electronic device that would speak to me in English. I slipped it around my neck and went to stand in another line and reopened my book. I then slipped my valise over my shoulder so that it wouldn’t get jostled off when the line finally moved forward.
.
When the line finally moved forward, we ascended a dark, winding staircase and came out under a large dome painted with scenes depicting the glorious Turks killing the infidels. I struggled to get the English translating device to my ears, but its cords had become so entangled in the straps of my valise that they had created a macramé on my chest. I knew that there was a time limit to my visit, having seen previous crowds being ushered out en masse. I had to work fast. My disentanglement struggles were heightened by Turkish children head-butting my private regions. I finally got the cords free and the speaker phones onto my ears in time to hear a brilliant, succinct description of the actions depicted on the huge, convex mural in TURKISH!
.
There was a large fellow standing beside a control panel wearing the costume of a Janissary (the Sultan’s personal guards -- slaves, formerly Christian children). I gestured at the device, said “Ingilizce” (English) and he calmly punched some buttons, each of which I had just pushed to no effect, and English flooded into my ears. I had made it to the second station when the announcement to exit sounded. UNFAIR! I hung in there. One scene depicted the interior of Constantinople, and the narrator said I should be able to see Hagia Sophia in the background. I looked and looked. Then I realized that I didn’t recognize it because it did not have minarets yet! It was just a distant bulge on the horizon. I lingered for as long as I could, then I cautiously dribbled down the stairs like the last drop swirling down a drain.
.
On the way home, I got off the tram in Gulhane (meaning "place of roses"), just outside the North Shield Pub, a venue that carries international rugby on TV. The paper announcements that were adhered to the brick exterior informed me that I now have birthday presents awaiting me this weekend: on Saturday, England vs Italy, and Scotland vs Wales; on Sunday, Ireland vs France.
.
Then I walked on to Sirkeci (pronounced SEER-keh-jee, meaning something to do with a circus) Main Station, which was the last stop of the Orient Express. The foundation stone was laid in 1888 (one year before Washington became a state, and Germany became unified under Bismarck). The station opened in 1890. The first voyage of the Orient Express departed from Paris to the sounds of Mozart’s "Turkish March" (which Nancy plays so well, but which I can no longer stand, since it seems to be the only piece by Wolfgang that Turks know or play. It is constantly ringing in my music building, making me long for “Chopsticks” or “Heart and Soul”). The train passed through Strasbourg, France; Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Ulm and Munich, Germany; Vienna, Austria; Budapest, Hungary; Bucharest, Romania; Rousse and Varna, Bulgaria; and terminated in Sirkeci, Istanbul. The Orient Express stopped running in 1977, the year my son, Matthew, was born (I think). [EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, that's correct. -- MV.]
.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Upon Visiting Dr. ENT
.
Ears are a musician’s best friend. Unless one is a titanic genius like Beethoven, hearing loss can be a career-ending disaster. So, recently, after a morning shower, when I removed the cotton swab I had been using to clean my right ear and noticed that the stem of the swab no longer held a small ball of cotton on the end, I became concerned. Sure enough, after many, many years of cleaning my ears with cotton swabs (a very pleasurable experience, I find), the dreaded warnings of my parents, siblings, teachers and friends had finally come true -- I had a wad of cotton jammed up against an ear drum.
.
It was like when I was hit in the face by a basketball last fall, and one of the lenses of my glasses was knocked out, without my being aware of it at the time, as I was, understandably, slightly dazed. (I don’t play basketball, never have. I can appreciate the athleticism of the sport, especially when played at the higher levels, but I hate being in an over-heated gym, and I always flinch when that horrid klaxon goes off to announce someone is entering/leaving the floor. As a former rugby player, I also dislike sports that have so many time outs—just play the game and have your meetings afterward.) Anyway, this annoyingly long analogy refers to the fact that, during the remainder of that basketball-dazed day, I wondered if I had received a slight concussion, because my vision was blurry. It wasn’t until I casually took off my glasses to rub the lenses clean that I discovered that the left lens was missing. Now I was dealing with blurry, better yet, fuzzy hearing.
.
I tried to remove the wad of cotton myself using first wooden toothpicks (stupid, yes, but I’m a guy), then the sharp, curved end of a device intended for flossing teeth. No luck, and, luckily, no damage. So I went to the school doctor in hopes that he could help. I took a clean cotton swab from which I had removed the cotton from one end (Why take the original? Who wants a ball of day-old ear wax in their breast pocket for a couple of hours? Shrek?). Using the open-ended swab, I mimed the action and the doctor got the idea. He probed my ear with a light, and tried to extract the wad with the smallest pair of tweezers he had—a surgical clamp (you know, the kind that, so I’ve heard, makes a good roach clip). He shoved a roach clip down my ear canal! Needless to say, it didn’t work.
.
He recommended me to Dr. ENT who works in a clinic in Besiktas, and wrote me a note with all the necessary information. A Turkish friend told me that the doctor’s note would be easily understood by any taxi driver, and that I should arrive in the morning so as to avoid a crowd and not have to wait a long time. So I followed her advice and slept in until 11:00. I didn’t want to take a taxi from my apartment all the way to the clinic (too expensive), and my friend had warned that the clinic was a top of a very steep hill, but if I took a bus all the way to Besiktas the taxi drivers wouldn’t take me because the trip was too short for them to make a decent fare.
.
So I took a bus to Ortakoy, then walked half the way to Besiktas. It’s level, along the Bosphorous, and the weather outside wasn't frightful (doot-da-doot-doot-da-DOO-doot ). The taxi driver drove me right up to the building that I assumed housed the clinic. To do so, he made a sharp left turn from the middle lane of a busy, six-lane Boulevard (not an unusual tactic by Istanbul driving standards), cutting off a passenger car which had to brake suddenly and was immediately rammed from behind by another vehicle. Undaunted, my taxi driver continued his multi-lane U-turn, leaving behind the honking, swearing occupants of the vehicles damaged by this maneuver. We both understood his situation: he needed to get out of there, fast. I paid quickly, laughed as he sped away, and entered the building.
.
After climbing two flights of stairs, I was told that I was in the wrong building, and I needed to go back outside and turn left at !@#$%^&* Street. Which I did. !@#$%^&* Street consisted of a stairway of 186 concrete steps. Once I reached the top, I faced even more climbing up a very steep street. But wait! There was a guard kiosk that protected an upper entrance to the same building I had just left. I could have taken an elevator! The guard looked at my note and started laughing. I was too winded to join in the jocular ribaldry. He pointed me back down the stairs to one building farther to the left. He was still laughing as I started down.
.
Once I entered the correct building, I had to climb 36 more stairs to get to the clinic. So my morning step aerobics regimen included 222 ascending and descending stairs, all accomplished without breakfast and while half deaf. I checked in, hung up my hat and coat and waited for a seat to open. The place was packed, mostly with families of small children. Turks are very fecund. But why is there so much illness of the ears, noses and throats of the young, especially since they bundle the children up so tightly at the slightest hint of coolness? Today, the temperature was in the 40’s (F), yet anyone with a fur-lined hood had it tightly winched around their head, zipped parkas and ski gloves were everywhere. Maybe it’s because, oh, what the hell, I don’t care.
.
Dr. ENT saw me after a mere 20 minute wait. The wad was out in seconds. He repeated the warnings of my parents, siblings, teachers and friends. I now have 20/20 hearing again. So, I have learned a valuable later-in-life lesson: when it comes to showers and cotton swabs -- no more showers!
.
Ears are a musician’s best friend. Unless one is a titanic genius like Beethoven, hearing loss can be a career-ending disaster. So, recently, after a morning shower, when I removed the cotton swab I had been using to clean my right ear and noticed that the stem of the swab no longer held a small ball of cotton on the end, I became concerned. Sure enough, after many, many years of cleaning my ears with cotton swabs (a very pleasurable experience, I find), the dreaded warnings of my parents, siblings, teachers and friends had finally come true -- I had a wad of cotton jammed up against an ear drum.
.
It was like when I was hit in the face by a basketball last fall, and one of the lenses of my glasses was knocked out, without my being aware of it at the time, as I was, understandably, slightly dazed. (I don’t play basketball, never have. I can appreciate the athleticism of the sport, especially when played at the higher levels, but I hate being in an over-heated gym, and I always flinch when that horrid klaxon goes off to announce someone is entering/leaving the floor. As a former rugby player, I also dislike sports that have so many time outs—just play the game and have your meetings afterward.) Anyway, this annoyingly long analogy refers to the fact that, during the remainder of that basketball-dazed day, I wondered if I had received a slight concussion, because my vision was blurry. It wasn’t until I casually took off my glasses to rub the lenses clean that I discovered that the left lens was missing. Now I was dealing with blurry, better yet, fuzzy hearing.
.
I tried to remove the wad of cotton myself using first wooden toothpicks (stupid, yes, but I’m a guy), then the sharp, curved end of a device intended for flossing teeth. No luck, and, luckily, no damage. So I went to the school doctor in hopes that he could help. I took a clean cotton swab from which I had removed the cotton from one end (Why take the original? Who wants a ball of day-old ear wax in their breast pocket for a couple of hours? Shrek?). Using the open-ended swab, I mimed the action and the doctor got the idea. He probed my ear with a light, and tried to extract the wad with the smallest pair of tweezers he had—a surgical clamp (you know, the kind that, so I’ve heard, makes a good roach clip). He shoved a roach clip down my ear canal! Needless to say, it didn’t work.
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He recommended me to Dr. ENT who works in a clinic in Besiktas, and wrote me a note with all the necessary information. A Turkish friend told me that the doctor’s note would be easily understood by any taxi driver, and that I should arrive in the morning so as to avoid a crowd and not have to wait a long time. So I followed her advice and slept in until 11:00. I didn’t want to take a taxi from my apartment all the way to the clinic (too expensive), and my friend had warned that the clinic was a top of a very steep hill, but if I took a bus all the way to Besiktas the taxi drivers wouldn’t take me because the trip was too short for them to make a decent fare.
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So I took a bus to Ortakoy, then walked half the way to Besiktas. It’s level, along the Bosphorous, and the weather outside wasn't frightful (doot-da-doot-doot-da-DOO-doot ). The taxi driver drove me right up to the building that I assumed housed the clinic. To do so, he made a sharp left turn from the middle lane of a busy, six-lane Boulevard (not an unusual tactic by Istanbul driving standards), cutting off a passenger car which had to brake suddenly and was immediately rammed from behind by another vehicle. Undaunted, my taxi driver continued his multi-lane U-turn, leaving behind the honking, swearing occupants of the vehicles damaged by this maneuver. We both understood his situation: he needed to get out of there, fast. I paid quickly, laughed as he sped away, and entered the building.
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After climbing two flights of stairs, I was told that I was in the wrong building, and I needed to go back outside and turn left at !@#$%^&* Street. Which I did. !@#$%^&* Street consisted of a stairway of 186 concrete steps. Once I reached the top, I faced even more climbing up a very steep street. But wait! There was a guard kiosk that protected an upper entrance to the same building I had just left. I could have taken an elevator! The guard looked at my note and started laughing. I was too winded to join in the jocular ribaldry. He pointed me back down the stairs to one building farther to the left. He was still laughing as I started down.
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Once I entered the correct building, I had to climb 36 more stairs to get to the clinic. So my morning step aerobics regimen included 222 ascending and descending stairs, all accomplished without breakfast and while half deaf. I checked in, hung up my hat and coat and waited for a seat to open. The place was packed, mostly with families of small children. Turks are very fecund. But why is there so much illness of the ears, noses and throats of the young, especially since they bundle the children up so tightly at the slightest hint of coolness? Today, the temperature was in the 40’s (F), yet anyone with a fur-lined hood had it tightly winched around their head, zipped parkas and ski gloves were everywhere. Maybe it’s because, oh, what the hell, I don’t care.
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Dr. ENT saw me after a mere 20 minute wait. The wad was out in seconds. He repeated the warnings of my parents, siblings, teachers and friends. I now have 20/20 hearing again. So, I have learned a valuable later-in-life lesson: when it comes to showers and cotton swabs -- no more showers!
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