The Istanbul of Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, was born in Istanbul, in the neighbourhood of Beşiktaş to be precise. In his memoir "Istanbul: Memories of a City", he describes the city with its variegated reality and complex history, both honestly and passionately.

Yet, the Istanbul Pamuk writes about is not exactly the city we know today, modern and colourful, cosmopolitan and full of life. It is the city  he grew up in, one that looks back with nostalgia at its glorious past, which is no longer the capital of an empire but wished it still was. By the end of the book it becomes clear that the author uses Istanbul to talk about himself, and that the city becomes a double for the writer. It is undeniably true that the Istanbul of sultans and harems is long gone, but the city the author remembers, with decrepit wooden houses, pastry shops he visited as a child hand in hand with his mother, and dilapidated streets is not entirely a thing of the past. You can glimpse it now and then, if you happen to get lost or wander some of its more modest neighbourhoods, for example Fatih. Once inhabited by the middle-class of the city, the area around Eminönü is now prevalently a dilapidated neighbourhood that has been taken over by immigrants from other parts of the country.
 

View of Istanbul from the boat

 

This books helped me get in touch with Istanbul, understand its long history, and appreciate the apparent decay of some of its neighbourhoods and the shining newness of others. By reading this memoir you'll make the acquaintance of sultans and paşas, Western writers fascinated by the city, and the characteristic yalis. I understood something about these wooden houses on the shores of the Bosphorous only because I read this book. It is not apparent, by walking through the streets of the city or by taking a boat tour, how much of the city heritage was lost due to fires, decay and careless demolitions, for instance.

Istanbul panorama

Pamuk lingers on the memory of opulent Ottoman palaces falling to pieces, then he tries to explain how Ottoman minds used to think, through a quirky encyclopaedia of the city written by a certain Reşat Ekrem Koçu, explaining how the author freely inserted stories, personal opinions, anecdotes and even his sexual preferences into a publication that was inspired by Western encyclopedias but had a distinctive Turkish flavour. 

 

A wooden house in Sultanahmet

 

Pamuk's slow, descriptive style and his penchant for sad tones might be a bit hard to digest at first, but I think that this book is a great introduction to a complex city that has had a million lives since it was founded more than 2,500 years ago.

Galata Bridge

My Best Unexpected Travel Moments of 2013

So you have been reading about my travel experiences for a while here on my blog. To greet the New Year, I'd like to write a post about the unexpected travel moments of 2013.

1) Seeing a Bollywood movie being filmed in Santorini

 

Last June I was in the beautiful island of Santorini. While I was walking down a street in Fira, the main town, I saw a group of Indian people blocking the street. I realized almost immediately that they were filming a movie, as two young actors were standing in front of one of the most famous panoramic points of the island, kissing and hugging, while a man was filming them. A couple of assistants were making sure that nobody could get too close, and a slightly cheesy Hindi song was playing in the background.

Beautiful Santorini

I stopped to watch for a while, and I quickly realized that I had already seen that actor somewhere, so I asked a girl if the protagonists were famous. She told me that they were both very famous and she told me their names: Hrithik Roshan and Katrina Kaif. I had a closer look at him, and suddenly I remembered him from a Hindi movie where he plays emperor Akhbar! I managed to take this shot of the leading actor, before an assistant told me that pictures were not permitted.

The movie they were filming is called "Bang Bang", and it's going to be a spy story to be released in 2014. I have been to movie sets before (I live in Venice, remember?), but this was a lot smaller. In Venice, when they are filming a movie, they close all the area and you have to find another way to reach your destination. Security is so tight that you can barely see the actors. In this case, the actors were very close and you could totally go and speak to one of them during a break. As a matter of fact, a girl did. She was very excited and kept saying that she couldn't believe her luck. Even though I didn't see any Bollywood dance (how cool would that be?), I really enjoyed the experience, and now I have this quirky travelling moment under my belt.
 

Bang bang

 

 

2) Missing a bus just to catch a ride 

 

During my short trip to Slovenia last summer I hiked to Savica Waterfall from Lake Bohinj. Because I was doing everything with public transport, I had only two buses back to the place where I was staying, one at 16.30 and another at 18.30. While I was still hiking my way up to the waterfall (there are 20-30 minutes of steps to reach it), I realized that I would never catch the first bus, as it was already four. I would have to wait for almost two hours to take the next bus, and there wasn't much to do in the area. I thought I would just sit somewhere, order a coffee and read a book, when I met a group of three young men speaking Spanish.

The Waterfall

 

It turned out that two of them were from Colombia, and the third was in fact Slovenian. Igor, the Slovenian guy, was a treasure trove of information about his country. They had a car, so they took me back to Lake Bohinj, where we all stopped for a beer. I learned a lot about Slovenia: its history, its troubled relationship with Italy, and its struggle to preserve all the natural beauty it has. Igor also took us to have coffee and cake in the most famous cake shop in Bled. The four of us also visited Bled castle together, and at the end of the day they accompanied me back to my hostel, as I was a bit tired after the long hike. It was an unexpected turn of my day, so far dedicated to the contemplation of nature and to silence. Who said that it's more difficult to make friends while backpacking Europe?

 

 

3)  Getting lost in Istanbul at night

 

Istanbul is not considered a particularly unsafe town, but getting lost in a new city is always scary. Moreover, I was slightly out of my comfort zone, in a country whose culture is not thoroughly European and where the native language is not one that I know. I was walking back from the European side of Istanbul, after a visit to the Galata Tower and Beyoğlu area.
 

Galata Tower by night

Galata Tower by day

Somehow, I got lost! Finally, after walking down unfamiliar alleys, I reached a bridge. I thought it was the Galata Bridge, because I could see a mosque with its grey minarets on the other side of the bridge, and I thought it was the New Mosque. I  had crossed the Galata Bridge on my way to the European side just a few hours before. It was already dark, around 10.30 in the evening, and it took me a while to realize that I was on the wrong bridge! Moreover, somebody had pointed out the area past that second bridge as unsafe. I wondered if that was true. I decided to make my way back and cross the Golden Horn on the bridge I knew already. There was nobody around to ask for directions, only an old lady. Of course, she didn't speak English. The only thing she could do was pointing the Galata Bridge.

Fishing at the Galata Bridge

It was to my right, but how far it looked! The streets were dim, the sidewalks all dilapidated, there was nobody around, and I was scared. What if I ended up in an unsafe part of the city? After all, Istanbul is big. In the end, nobody harassed me, nothing happened to me and, after A LONG time of walking, I made it to the tram stop in Karaköy. I was helped by a couple of concierges along the way. No catcalls, no shady characters, no dangers along the way. This taught me that there is always a silver lining, even when things are going wrong. 

I hope to have more unexpected travel moments in 2014. Last year, between writing a PhD dissertation and enjoying my new apartment in Venice, I travelled, but not as much as I had hoped for. My trip to India vanished and I'm stull looking for a travel companion to go to Morocco. These are two countries I've been wanting to visit for a while now. I hope to find a way to visit one of these two in the near future...
 

Mosque hopping in Istanbul

So you have read my impressions of the Blue Mosque in one of my recent posts about Istanbul. It's the most famous, the most astonishing, but  also the most touristic of mosques in Istanbul. The Blue Mosque is for sure the most impressive of the mosques in the city, but it's also the busiest and the one where its purpose almost gets lost among the endless lines of tourists who queue, take off their shoes, ask for a scarf, take pictures, and so on.

Courtyard of the Blue Mosque

 

Mosques in Istanbul are free to enter even for non-Muslim people. It's not like this everywhere: in Morocco, for example, it is not permitted due to a different interpretation of a sura in the Quran. During my five days in Istanbul I also visited Süleymaniye Mosque, and Rüstem Pasha Mosque, and every experience was unique. If from the outside Istanbul mosques look a bit underwhelming, with their grey colour and overall similar appearance, the grounds and the interior are always a surprise.

The Bosphorous trip: what a disappointment!

There are times during your travels when you just feel you have to do something. It was the case for the Bosphorous trip I took during my 5-day stay in Istanbul: guidebooks and travel bloggers keep saying that no trip to Istanbul is complete without a trip to the Bosphorous. I must say that I agree that it helps to move away from Sultanahmet and Beyoğlu in order to understand the morphology of a city like Istanbul, but the Bosphorous trip kind of let me down.

This doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it, but simply that I didn't connect with the sights as strongly as I did with the rest of the city.



Rumeli Hisari and the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge on the Bosphorous

First of all, I was worried about the touristy side of the Bosphorous trip. I had imagined a trip in a ferryboat used by locals, so I opted for the longer Bosphorous trip on the public ferry, which arrives almost at the end of the strait and then comes back, stopping at both the Anatolian and the European sides along the way. The other option is a private boat tour that goes closer to the shore but perhaps is more touristic. I was planning to make a couple of stops along the way and come back with a bus, like many guidebooks suggested, so I bought a one-way ticket (15TL).
 

First of all, I arrived at Eminönü, the same dock I used to go to Üsküdar on the Asian side of the city. The boat was waiting there for the passengers to board. Everybody was a tourist, to the point that they were selling audio guides. I bought one, but it was a mistake: it didn't work very well and I manually had to click on the building I saw from the boat, trying to guess basically.
 

The famous yalis, the wooden houses on the waterside, were nice but I couldn't understand which ones were fake and which ones were real, perhaps restored. I had imagined much bigger palaces on the shores, but then I am spoiled because I live in Venice. The only one I recognized from the boat was Dolmabahçe palace, in the neighbourhood of Beşiktaş. The landscape is pleasant, but nothing memorable.
 

Yali on the Bosphorous

No information was given on timetables, on what were the best attractions to stop at. We decided to visit Dolmabahçe Palace, because Beylerbeyi (an Imperial Ottan summer residence built in the 1860s) was closing early that day. I had planned to stop at Rumeli Hisari, a fortress on the European side, but after seeing it from the boat I concluded that it wasn't that special. I had hoped to see the famous pink flowers in bloom but I guess it was too late. Maybe I was wrong about Rumeli Hisari, who knows!
 

We got off at Sariyer. Nothing to do there: I had expected a quaint little town or a fishing village, but what I found was a nondescript town with some waterside restaurants. We ate in a big restaurant with a terrace on the Bosphorous. I think my friend and I ordered a simple kebab, but they were very slow to serve us. After lunch our adventure on the minibus started! Instead of a regular bus, some girls (who were very excited about practicing their English with us, which made me think that this part of the Bosphorous doesn't get many tourists) told us it was faster to take the minibus. So we boarded this private-looking minivan that drove at a crazy speed towards our next destination.

 

 

Why I was disappointed with Dolmabahçe Palace

 

 

When we finally arrived in front of the palace, we found a line at the closed gate. The ticket office was also closed, and there was nobody who could explain what was happening.  Nobody seemed to speak English, not the guards, and  strangely not the visitors lining for the palace. We assumed that the ticket office had closed for the day and that no more visitors were allowed in the palace, as a sign seemed to explain. Thanks to my persistence, we waited ten minutes  more in front of the closed gates, and somebody in the queue was kind enough to explain that the palace was free for the day, but that everybody had to wait for their turn to enter.

Looks closed, doesn't it?

 

After the guards inexplicably allowed a larger group to enter, we made it through the gates. What we saw was a park with a clock tower in a style that looked almost baroque or rococo. The visit to the actual palace is allowed only through a guided tour. There are guided tours in Turkish and English. We waited for a tour in English to start and we were finally allowed in the palace. Before entering, we had to wear some plastic bags over our shoes since most of the palace is carpeted. My feet immediately felt hot and sweaty, it was very uncomfortable and I couldn't wait for the tour to end.
 

With bags on my feet

The tour guide spoke English in a funny way, and sometimes it was hard to understand what he was saying. Unfortunately, the tour was rushed (about 35-40 minutes), but there is no other way to see Dolmabahçe Palace. The palace itself is an interesting mixture of Ottoman architecture and Western influence,  with an evident penchant for the  rococo style, and lots of crystal. At times it felt tacky and showy, rather than opulent. Also, horribly dusty. On a more positive note, the crystal chandelier in the Ceremonial Hall is really impressive. The guide pointed out that it's not true that it was gifted by Queen Victoria, as it's written in some guidebooks, but the Sultans paid for all of it. As a matter of fact, the sultans fell into debt in order to build this palace.

We also visited the bedroom where Kamal Ataturk died, as well as the harem and the most luxurious rooms in the palace. Photos were not allowed inside, so this is the only one I managed to take. It is a photo of the chandelier in the entrance hall of the palace.

The only picture I managed to take inside the palace

Some parts of the palace were inexplicably bare, others luxuriously furnished and decorated. Overall, it gave me the impression of a decadent empire. As a matter of fact, Dolmabahçe Palace was built in  the middle of the 19th century when the Ottoman Empire was losing its grip. It remained the residence of the Ottoman Sultans until the end of the Caliphate in the 1920s, when it became the summer presidential residence of the republic. This is why Ataturk died here, in 1938.
 

Overall, it wasn't as mind-blowing as Topkapi Palace, but since I didn't pay the entrance fee I cannot complain. On a normal day I think you'd pay 40 TL (€14,60/$19,60) for a joint ticket (Salamlik + Harem), it's way too much. I'd pay about half for that visit.
 

Dolmabahçe Palace

The silver lining is that I learned something more about Turkish history, another piece of the puzzle let's call it. I think it's important to see Dolmabahçe Palace  in order to understand the evolution of Turkish taste. Maybe just don't expect to like it madly!

Have you got any suggestions for a more satisfying Bosphorous trip? Were you luckier than me during your trip?

The joy of visiting Istanbul's bazaars

Grand Bazaar

 

One of the joys of visiting Istanbul is to get lost in the maze of the Grand Bazaar. I had heard lots of stories about this bazaar, about how men try to lure you into buying their merchandise, about how you have to bargain for everything you want unless you want to pay an exorbitant price, and how you are sometimes offered cups of tea during the negotiation.

If you look at the inscription on the entrance gates - Kapali çarşi is Turkish for "covered bazaar" - you'll see the date of inception, 1461. The Grand Bazaar was built before Christopher Columbus discovered America, just to give you an idea! At the apex of the Ottoman Empire, it was considered unrivalled in Europe for the quality and the wide range of goods available.
 

One of the entrances to the Grand Bazaar

The holy trinity of Istanbul: the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace and Hagia Sophia

I will start my insights on three of Istanbul must-sees with a tip: spread these visits on three separate days, one for each day, and leave the rest of the time for other things: the Basilica Cistern, the Spice Bazaar or Süleymaniye Mosque.

 

The Blue Mosque

The Blue Mosque is the most famous mosque in Istanbul and its silhouette is almost as recognizable as that of the Tour Eiffel in Paris. It is huge: you can spend plenty of time sitting in the main courtyard, reading a book or watching the people go by. Of course before entering you have to take off your shoes and, if you are a woman, cover your head. The entrance is free of charge, but during prayer time the mosque is closed to the public.

The beautiful Blue Mosque, the most important mosque of Istanbul

Üsküdar: exploring the Asian side of Istanbul

No visit to Istanbul is complete without a ferry ride to the Asian side. For my first escape into Asia, I chose the neighbourhood of Üsküdar, just a short journey from Eminönü, the ferry dock near the Galata Bridge (3TL, €1,10). The ferryboat was a bit smelly and old, but it gave me an impression of how Turkey must have been until a few years ago. I must confess that this part of Istanbul, almost completely devoid of tourists, stole my heart.



Flower vendor near the ferry dock

Istanbul: my best meals there (and the food scams)

I had eaten Turkish food before, in this or that other restaurant during the year and a half that I lived in London. It was good food, prepared simply, but healthy and fulfilling, but I knew in Istanbul there were going to be many other options. I have no idea if the food I tried in Istanbul was genuinely Turkish or a mish-mash of various influences, but it was certainly very tasty and inexpensive.



Spice delight

 

The magic of Istanbul

Where to begin with Istanbul? Well, I was trying to organize a trip outside of Europe for a while now, but both times I was not lucky and I ended up staying at home. I didn't know much about Istanbul before starting to research it, but because I was alone I wanted to go to a safe city, one that I could feel comfortable wandering alone, but that at the same time had a non-European feeling to it. I settled on Istanbul, a city that conflates Western and Eastern cultures in interesting ways.

Istanbul was the capital of many different empires - most notably the Byzantine  and the Ottoman empire - and it went by different names: Byzantium, Costantinople and now Istanbul. With one foot in Europe and the other in Asia, Istanbul has been one of the most important cities in European history. Sacked during the Fourth Crusade of 1202-04 because of trickster Venetians who saw it as a rival city, it was then probably the largest and most sophisticated city in the world.  It was conquered  in 1453 by Sultan Mehmet II, and became the capital of the Ottoman Empire. At the height of its power, the Ottoman Empire controlled much of Southeastern Europe, Western Asia and North Africa, so the influence of this city is felt in a considerable portion of the world. The  empire collapsed only after the First World War, and now Turkey is ironically fighting its battle to enter the European Union.  
 

First glimpse of the main square of Sultanahmet

"Travel Your Way" Photo Competition

Rhino Car Hire has launched an interesting photo competition, and I have been invited to participate by Dana from Time Travel Plans. The prize are £1,000 for the overall winner, and a SONY Nex-3N Compact Camera System worth £379 for every category winner. 

 

Travel bloggers are invited to submit their photos of their travels on different means of transport. Not that I want to compete with "real" photographers, but I thought browsing through my old photographs would be both interesting and funny!

 

By road

 

I was on a road trip with my parents through the lakes of Northern Italy. We stopped in Omegna, on the northern tip of Lake d'Orta, a small yet lovely lake in Piedmont, when we spotted this car, parked in front of a driving school. How would it be to take a road trip on this jewel of a car?




Old 'cinquecento' parked in Omegna, Lake d'Orta

By air

I was at Girona airport after a trip to Barcelona, and I snapped this picture from the big window in the waiting hall. I call it "The Power of Ryanair".


The Power of Ryanair. Girona, Spain

By sea

This one is more about travelling by water, but I realized I hadn't posted this picture. Slovenia is a country for lovers of outdoor activities. In Lake Bohinj you can hike from one side to the other, or you can rent a canoe and paddle your way to the next beach.

Lonely canoeing in Lake Bohinj, Slovenia



By Rail

I travel by train a lot, but I struggled to find a good picture of my journeys on the railways of Europe and beyond. Then I had an illumination: the train is not the only way to travel on rails! And this is when I remembered about this picture taken last May in Istanbul. I was a bit bored and disappointed by Istiklal Caddesi: to me it looked like any other big commercial street. It could have been in any European city. Then I heard the ring of the tram, and I was suddenly ecstatic about Istiklal Caddesi. I travelled with the tram a lot while in Istanbul, and it is a safe and easy way to move around the city.



Tram and veiled woman in Istiklal Caddesi, Istanbul



Now it's time to nominate five other bloggers I follow and invite them to participate in this photo competition: Bon Voyage, Lauren, Travelling Book Junkie, abitofculture, You Should Go too! and Danik the Explorer.


Happy travels everyone!