A quick trip to İstanbul

This past Saturday we flew to İstanbul to attend the wedding of my cousin. As expected, it was pretty hot when we left here.

However İstanbul had other plans for us, but the gray mist over the blue mosque was still dreamy.

Finally at the end of the night, my handsome cousin married to his sweetheart,

and the youngest guest of the party was my 5 months old nephew who had his own quiet plans for the night.

The next day, the newly wed couple flew to Maldives for honeymoon and we flew back to Datça, but guess what??? All the travelling as well as the weather differences made me sick. I think I have some kind of flue, and right now I am laying on my bed on a beautiful summer day and listening the happy sounds coming from the beach. I hope you are all healty and happy..

Tulip Time in İstanbul and home..

I am sure most of you associated tulips with Holland. Well, you are rather correct but do you know that those precious bulbs brought to Holland in the 16th century from here. Ottomans started the commercial cultivation of this wonderful flower.

The period between 1718-1730 named as the tulip period in Ottoman history. Tulips became important in arts, folklore and the daily life. This period described in Wikipedia as:

"The name of the period derives from the tulip craze among the Ottoman court society. Cultivating this culturally ambiguous emblem had become a celebrated practice.The tulip period illustrated the conflicts brought by early modern consumer culture and was a shared material symbolism. During this period the elite and high-class society of the Ottoman Period had established an immense fondness for the tulip, which were utilized in various occasions. Tulips defined nobility and privilege, both in terms of goods and leisure time."

For the last 5 years the municipality started a tulip festival to reassociate this delicate flower with İstanbul. In the first 2-3 weeks of April all the parks and the roadsides in the city covered with tulips of all colors.




A big bunch of tulips also found their way to our home. Hera the puppy who likes to eat all the flowers at home is rather indifferent to them. They are probably not taste as good as they look.





First two photos are from the facebook page of İstanbul

Blogger Friend in İstanbul

Dont you love blogging?? I especially love it when I finally meet a favorite blogger in the real world.Well, Phivos of Taxidiaris and his wife Poppy are here in İstanbul this weekend.


We have met on Friday afternoon and as you can guess there were so many things to share and learn about each other. It was a lovely evening. I believe that a virtual friendship turned into a lifelong one that evening.


We even managed to visit the Orthodox Patriarchate before the dinner. It was a rainy night before the Easter but still lots of visitors were there..


It was so nice to meet with you guys...Lets try to do it again soon...

İstanbul under snow...

First snow wave is already over but we are waiting for the second one later today. Years ago in the early 80s, I was an exchange student in West Virginia - USA. When the first snow of the season covered all over the small town of Keyser, the most frequent question my friends asked me was if I like the snow. They were probably assuming that, coming from Turkey, I was seeing the snow for the first time in my life. Actually the reality was much different. At the time my family was living in a mid Anatolian town -Eskisehir- which was under snow and ice during the entire winter months. Snow only started to vanish slowly in the early days of the spring.

Well, world became a much smaller place since then and today I want to share some snowy photos of İstanbul taken during the last snow blanket.










All photos are taken from the facebook page of İstanbul.

Fish in Bread

The fishermen selling grilled fish on their boats have always been near the Eminonu ferry port. When I was a young banker working on a branch on that district, I often had my lunch there. It was delicious, healthy and cheap. The menu was simple. Grilled fish fillet, stuffed in a half loaf of bread...On a good weather, while you were watching the passing boats, it was a delight to eat fish there.

Since then years passed and for so many years, fishermen who were handing down the fish in bread from their boats to their hungry clients survived and became a part of İstanbul's age old culture.



However when something become so popular, people starts to look ways for making more money out of it and as a result it will start to loose its authenticity. The same thing happened to good old fishermen. Local municipality banned the old boats because of health reasons and started to rent these rather strange boats which were probably copied from the old boats of the Ottoman Sultans. A strange choice but as a result the whole thing turned into a cheap tourist attraction. A very sad ending to the memories of my youth..







They have also added the pickle sellers in the same style.




Well, I miss the old boats and the real fishermen....

I am listening to İstanbul

While I was browsing the net I came across with a beautiful translation of a poem written by the famous Turkish poet Orhan Veli Kanik. I can easily say that it is one of my favorite poems and tells the living spirit of İstanbul with wonderful words.

And I took this photo of the man right at the Bosphorus. His little basket was full of small snacks. He was probably trying to sell them to make the ends meet. His strong and fixated gaze affected me so much. He was most probably thinking the hard times he was facing, but I like to think that he was also listening İstanbul..

I AM LISTENING TO ISTANBUL

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed;

At first there blows a gentle breeze

And the leaves on the trees

Softly flutter or sway;

Out there, far away,

The bells of water carriers incessantly ring;

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed.

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed;

Then suddenly birds fly by,

Flocks of birds, high up, in a hue and cry

While nets are drawn in the fishing grounds

And a woman's feet begin to dabble in the water.

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed.

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed.

The Grand Bazaar is serene and cool,

A hubbub at the hub of the market,

Mosque yards are brimful of pigeons,

At the docks while hammers bang and clang

Spring winds bear the smell of sweat;

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed.

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed;

Still giddy since bygone bacchanals,

A seaside mansion with dingy boathouses is fast asleep,

Amid the din and drone of southern winds, reposed,

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed.

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed.

Now a dainty girl walks by on the sidewalk:

Cusswords, tunes and songs, malapert remarks;

Something falls on the ground out of her hand,

It's a rose I guess.

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed.

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed;

A bird flutters round your skirt;

I know your brow is moist with sweat

And your lips are wet.

A silver moon rises beyond the pine trees:

I can sense it all in your heart's throbbing.

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed.

Orhan Veli Kanik (1914-1950)

Translated by Talat Sait Halman (1982)

Archaic Statues

When I look back at my university years, I now realize that learning new stuff was only a duty for me. I had to get good grades, graduate from the university and start working. OK, I admit that I had so much fun at that time but learning was not definitely on my fun list.

I think I started to appreciate the beauty and wisdom of learning new things after 30 and since then I am always seeking new seminars and classes. Thru the years my main interest areas developed in history of arts and history of religions. Since September, I started to take archaeolgy and history of arts classes at a nearbt private art academy. Nowadays I am learning so many new and astonishing things and I am enjoying it immensly.

To give you an example, I learned to appreciate the beauty of archaic sculptures. I have been to Istanbul Archaeology Museum several times, but these sculptures never really took my attention. After seeing so many photos of them at the class, I had to see the real deal myself. So on of the last days of 2009,hubby and I made the last excursion of the year. Our aim was to see the statues of the archaic period (7th-6th cc BC)

In this period monumental statues were made for the first time in place of the small figurines produced in the preceeding ages. These statues are called Kore ( dressed female) and Kouros (naked male) As they are very rare, they are among the most valuable assets of museums, and to find a complete one is a difficult issue. There are probably only a dozen in the world

Unfortunately there is not a complete Kuros or a Kore in Istanbul,but the kouros head displayed was a masterpiece of its time. Its really something fabulous. If you wonder what happened to the rest of his body, we are lucky to know that it did not disseapear in the dark corridors of history but found himself a home in the Samos Museum.

Here are some very simple tips for you to identify these statues.

- Frontal upright stance with the body weight balanced on the feet.

-Calm smile on the lips

-Almond shaped eyes

-Beaded style hairs.

I learned that there are two complete Kouros statues in Turkey, one in İzmir, one in Bergama. I am intending to go and see them this coming summer but in the meantime,to give you an idea here is one from Athens..

Autumn Picnic..

I have been away for some time.. First the pc was not feeling good then it was me.. Now pc is OK and I am recovering.. In the meantime cold, rainy and gray winter days suddenly invaded our lives... Snowy scenes from the eastern part of the country are on TV news..

Well, I was still enjoying the autumn and definitely not ready for winter. However, heavy coats we started the wear, and accumulated gas bill are telling a different story...Even Hera, who is going to experience her first winter started to protest the indoor life.

So our last picnic just a week ago seems like a distant memory...

and the beautiful colors of the fall....

İstanbul by night

Its been a long time that I did not meet with my friends from my banking days. So we went to a fish restaurant last night. There were lots of catching up to do, many gossip, delicious fish and mezzes, plenty of raki and wine...As we were not able to go out for some time, because of hubby's knee, it was such a welcoming relief to us.

The restaurant we went called, Tarihi Karaköy Balıkçısı is located in Istanbul’s Perşembe Pazarı district; a shady area near the Golden Horn filled with small shops that sell plastic pipes and bathroom fixtures. Definitely not a place you could expect to find a nice restaurant. However when you reach to the top floor of an old building, you are finding a very nice place and a magnificent view of the Golden Horn Bridge, Egyptian Bazaar, several of the mosques and the façade of Topkapi Palace. Sometimes I feel like İstanbul is like a gift box. You dont know what to expect until you open it.

I ate the speciality of the place, sea bass wrapped and cooked in parchment paper. It was a wonderful Saturday night filled with nice weather that you cant expect in October, friendship, lots of laughter and an amazing view for our soul...