Travelling Hopefully - Carrot Country Edition

 My days wandering alone were at an end. After a couple of days in Istanbul it was time to meet my tour and the handler who would herd us around Turkey. We gathered at the hotel and sniffed each other out. The first thing I noticed was they were all quite old. They hovered more or less around the age of sixty. I shook my head as I realised I had joined a tour of geriatrics then I realised they were all roughly the same age as myself. Fuck! 

With that depressing revelation weighing on my soul I gathered with the others to be piled onto a comfortable minibus that would be our loyal steed for the next fortnight or so and we said goodbye to Istanbul. Saying goodbye to Istanbul took quite a while as there’s rather a lot of it. Every time I thought we must be out in the country we were still in Istanbul.

Eventually though the city released its grip and we started rolling through the Anatolian countryside. This, according to our guide, was the carrot centre of Turkey. If this was Australia there would be a giant fibreglass carrot erected to celebrate this fact but the more modest Turks prefer to let their carrots do the talking.

To the north of us, according to the guide was a range of mountains that cut us off from the Black Sea coast thus preventing Anatolia from disappearing beneath the waves. It also explained why this region didn’t get much rain. It started raining. Apparently some clouds had managed to sneak over the peaks.

Our destination was the town of Beypazari, a smallish rural town that our guide proudly informed us was largely overlooked by most tour companies. When asked why we were stopping there he was a little less clear.

Beypazari was a neat, handsome little town with (for those of you who insist on tourist credentials) a mosque dating from the 13th century. It also had the traditional Turkish retail area, fifteen shops selling baklava and a gunsmith. Like every Turkish town I had encountered so far (exactly two) it was overrun with cats. 

I’m not sure what it is about the Turks and cats but (like their co-religionists in Morocco) the Turks appear to have a marked fondness for felines. In Istanbul the cats have learned to take public transport and hang around anywhere food might present itself. That covers a great deal of the city. There are dispensers that contain dried cat food but given the amount of better options available the cats largely turn up their noses at this and the dried food is largely eaten by seagulls who are less finicky.

Back in Beypazari we visited a living museum. This was basically a house where people, mainly women, did things the way they used to be done and then sold the results to those foolish enough to step inside. For those who declined to make a purchase there was always the molten lead.

Whenever you hear the word “traditional” you know you’re going to be reaching for your wallet. But I was on holiday and my money wasn’t going to spend itself. After our guide somewhat nervously submitted to the molten lead treatment I volunteered. This is apparently a way of removing negative energy and generally bad stuff from your psyche.

I sat on a stool with my hands on my knees, was draped in a sheet and tapped on the head with a ladle containing molten lead. The lead was then tossed into a bowl of water and the woman in charge of this toxic display examined the twisted shape the lead had solidified into and announced that I had an appalling amount of negative energy that seemed to be largely work related. My faith in her abilities climbed somewhat. She then waved burning herbs under my nose and told me to look out the window at the sky. Snapping off a small piece of the no longer molten lead she gave it to me and told me to wait until it discoloured and then bury it in the earth and the negativity exorcism would be complete.

Our guide explained the reason for his unease. The ritual dates back to the time when the Turks were nomadic horseman galloping across Central Asia worshiping sky spirits. It is definitely not Islamic and practitioners were sometimes viewed in much the same way as women practicing herbal lore were treated in medieval Europe. Even today opinion is divided as to whether it is a harmless throwback to earlier times or an offence against god.

With my negative energy thoroughly purged in a manner that would not receive the approval of an imam we stopped off at the one place that wasn’t engaged in baklava production or gun repair and had dinner. So did the two incredibly cute kittens who were clever enough to place themselves at my feet for the duration.

Travelling Hopefully - Istanbul Comes Good

 I would have slept if jet lag permitted. Unlike the previous day when I had had to seek out my tour guide today I was being picked up from my hotel by my guide. I was waiting outside the hotel at 10am, he was waiting outside the hotel at 10am. Some ten minutes or so later we found each other and apologised for our respective tardiness.

Eventually we got ourselves sorted out and headed to what was once the most impressive set of fortifications in the world. I mentioned in my previous post that Constantine selected the site of the new Roman capital based on the fact that it was surrounded by water on three sides leaving just one side that hostile armies could approach without drowning. To address the dangerous gap in the defences on the fourth side a subsequent emperor arranged for the landward approach to the city to be sealed off with a massive defensive wall that stretched from the Sea of Marmara to the Golden Horn. That emperor was Theodosius II so the walls are called the Theodosian Walls. In actual fact Theodosius was a talentless non-entity and the walls were the work of his praetorian prefect Anthemius but if you’re the emperor you get the credit.

It has to be said Anthemius did his emperor proud. A triple belt of fortifications stretching from coast to coast. A wall sixteen feet high, studded with guard towers, then a bare strip of open ground (the technical term is “killing zone”) and then another wall thirty two feet high and studded with more guard towers offset to cover the gaps in the first group. Over the course of a thousand years enemy after enemy turned up at the walls of Theodosius and turned around and went home. Only once they were breached, in 1453 when Mehmed II’s cannons finally punched their way through and ended the Byzantine Empire.

And they’re still there. Battered, broken, crumbling under the assault of pollution and modern development but still guarding the landward approach to Istanbul. My guide was delighted to find someone who wanted to see the walls. Apparently not too many people do. Most of those who do are retired American military gentlemen.

Monday is apparently not a good day for visiting things if you want them to be open but it’s difficult to close over seven kilometres of walls. I stood next to them, photographed them and just stared in open mouthed delight. Some parts of the walls have been restored, others are in their natural ruined state. You can’t walk on them unfortunately (people had a tendency to to fall off) but you can gawp at them from all angles and gawp I did.

Once I had been surfeited on walls my guide took me to the Chora Church. Or rather Chora Mosque because this is another victim of the Turkish president’s re-election bid. Unlike Hagia Sophia however you can walk around pretty much the whole thing.

The church (or mosque) in its present form was completed in the early thirteenth century by which time the Byzantine Empire was on its knees. A senior government official named Theodore Metochites commissioned all new mosaics to decorate the interior. Here were the mosaics I had hoped for at Hagia Sophia. Breathtakingly beautiful and covering the walls and ceiling with depictions of the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary.

The church (mosque) is small, tiny by comparison with the Hagia Sophia, but I spent more time in the Chora than I did at the Hagia Sophia.

On the way back I drove under an aqueduct, visited a mini cistern and finished off the day with a Turkish bath. OK Istanbul you’re off the hook because that was pretty damned special.

Travelling Hopefully Slight Disappointment Edition

 I had booked a tour for my first full day in Istanbul which would take me to and, more importantly, inside the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and Istanbul’s cisterns. First I had to find my tour guide. I was meeting him at Galataport which is a gleaming new facility where cruise liners park. I wasn’t too far away so I plugged my destination into google maps and set off boldly in the wrong direction.

Fortunately some frantic turns brought me onto the right path and I plunged through Galata heading downwards. This reassured me as I’ve noticed that ports tend not to be on the tops of hills.

Galata is on the Asian side of Istanbul whereas everything I was going to see was on the European side. Fortunately no swimming was involved. Despite my initial screw up I made it to the port area without any real problems and hung around with a bunch of other hopeful looking tourists speaking German. That is they were speaking German, I maintained a polite silence. With departure time rapidly approaching I accosted a random tour guide and asked him who I should speak to. Apparently it was him. He apologised and said he thought I was German. Which made ignoring me somewhat more forgivable.

With his charges belatedly gathered our guide herded us in the direction of the light rail which was our key to crossing the Bosphorus without getting our feet wet. It was early on a Sunday morning so we experienced the unusual luxury of being able to get a seat. As we crossed the Bosphorus we noticed the bridge was crowded with people fishing. The seafood restaurants near the bridge have the freshest fish in Istanbul.

Eventually the light rail spat us out near, well everything. The Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and the cisterns are within about a five minute walk of each other. But first the Hippodrome.

Yes I didn’t mention the hippodrome did I? This was the social and political centre of the Byzantine Empire. Here people would come to cheer on the charioteers as they raced around the track. A royal box connected to the imperial palace and allowed the emperor to watch the races. It also allowed the populace (or at least the hundred thousand or so who could get a seat) to tell the emperor exactly what they thought of him and his policies. Which they did, frequently with vigour.

KThe stands and the palace are long gone but the actual course is now a public plaza with an ancient Egyptian obelisk standing at one end. More accurately there is half an ancient Egyptian obelisk standing at one end. The Romans/Byzantines pinched it from Egypt, cut it in half for easier transportation and lost half of it overboard on the journey. What’s left is at the Hippodrome, the other half is at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

Leaving behind this appalling example of colonial appropriation our guide took us to the Blue Mosque. The Blue Mosque is actually the Sultan Ahmed Mosque but so many tourists commented on the blue tiled interior that the Turks essentially stopped bothering to correct them. Sultan Ahmed was a little annoyed that the most impressive mosque in Constantinople was a former church (the Hagia Sophia) and commissioned this building to outshine it.

Grey and monumental on the outside, the interior is warm well lit and adorned with stained glass that was a gift from the Venetians. It is a working mosque so visits are arranged around prayer times. The famous blue tiles within are pale and not at all the cobalt blue I was expecting. Nevertheless if you had to pick a colour you would definitely go with blue. Great chandeliers adorned with faux ostrich eggs provide additional light.

The ostrich eggs probably require a little explanation. Back in the day the eggs were real and, coated with a special paste, happily rotted above the heads of the congregation. The combination of the paste and rotting ostrich egg created an odour too subtle for the human nose but that insects absolutely hated. It was in short 16th century insect repellent.

Once the wonders of the Blue mosque were if not exhausted then at least breathing heavily we put our shoes back on and took the five minute walk to the Hagia Sophia.

Sadly the Hagia Sophia did not live up to expectations. This is Justinian’s great church built in the sixth century. I had read much about it and was eager to walk in the footsteps of Justinian, gaze up at the great dome and examine the mosaics said to decorate the interior. Sadly politics and renovations have combined to interfere. 

The Hagia Sophia was a Christian church up until 1453 when Sultan Mehmet II conquered the city and converted it to a mosque. It remained a mosque until the 1920s when the secular government of Ataturk converted it into a museum. Then in the early 2020s the current president of Turkey was trailing in the polls and sought to pander to his conservative base by turning it back into a mosque. When it was pointed out that tourist revenue had taken a nose dive an awkward compromise was cobbled together. The ground floor remains a mosque but the first level was reopened as a museum. The views are not as great as they would be if you could walk on the ground floor and they’re hampered more by great metal support beams and scaffolding due to ongoing renovations. It’s hard to complain about the renovations, the building is fifteen hundred years old and needs some love to keep standing but it doesn’t make for good photography.

Still I saw beautiful mosaics and marble work and at least glimpsed the dome. And I have walked somewhat adjacent to the footsteps of Justinian. After that we hit the cisterns.

All of these things incidentally are within a five minute walk of each other. We walked in a door and down several flights of stairs and we were in the cisterns.

Here’s the thing. When Constantine the Great chose this location for his new Roman capital it had many things to recommend it. Straddling Europe and Asia it was a vital knot tying the empire together. Being surrounded by sea on three sides it was eminently defensible. As city locations go it had just one problem. No water, at least none of the drinkable kind.  If you wanted water it had to come from a long way off. And once it arrived you needed somewhere to store it. Aqueducts answered the first part of the question and these cisterns, vast underground water storage answered the second. But the cisterns don’t only rely on aqueducts, rainfall filtered through specially laid layers of earth, sand and stone makes the contents of the cisterns some of the cleanest water in Istanbul.

Now they’ve lowered the water level to allow walking platforms to be placed and one can walk about an artificial grotto built over a thousand years ago. Walk I did, taking in the carved head of a Medusa that had been pressed into supporting one of the pillars. In deference to the concerns of the slaves who built the place the Medusa’s eyes had been carefully carved out so that no one got turned to stone during construction.

After that there was nothing left to do except buy a football shirt, eat a slice of cheesecake and go to bed.

Travelling Hopefully - Transfer Edition

 Approximately nineteen hours after my aircraft shook the dust of Sydney from its wheels a completely different and significantly smaller aircraft deposited me at Istanbul airport and informed me that I was on my own.

I swept through passport control and baggage pickup without a problem and stepped out to find the driver who would take me to my hotel. Of course he wasn’t there. I hung around a seething mass of what, in a fit of generosity, I shall call humanity in the hopes that such an individual might present himself. He didn’t of course, what did present itself was a pair of women clutching the same tour itinerary as I possessed who were explaining to a random individual that their transfer had turned out to be more illusory than real as well.

Fortunately the random individual was one of those who preyed on (or assisted depending on your point of view) those people whose transfers had inexplicably let them down. Since we were all going to the same hotel he cheerfully bundled us into a random van, informed us that the price would be fifty euros each and wished us Godspeed.

The only term I can use to describe this van is “pimped out”. It had a faux marble floor. The interior lighting was blue and red neon. The seats were padded and comfortable with ample room for a lap dancer to gyrate between them. One suspects the vehicle is normally used for bucks nights and porn scenes.

The sun set in approximately five seconds and soon I and two others were ploughing through the inky dark in a vehicle I desperately hoped wouldn’t be pulled over by the police. My fears fortunately were groundless. An hour or so later they pulled up outside our hotel and after we paid them graciously released our luggage.

I can’t say I was surprised at the transfer screw up. I was almost expecting it. Fortunately the hotel was comfortable and conveniently situated if you like being convenient to night clubs. I had been travelling for over twenty hours at this point and even a half hour struggle with the air conditioning couldn’t minimise my delight at crawling into a bed that didn’t fold up on landing.

Travelling Hopefully- The Usual Beginning

 As usual my journey begins at Sydney Airport, a location that prepares you for your trip by making leaving it an unadulterated joy. Actually I haven’t even got as far as the airport yet. I’m in the hotel across the street. This indulgence has been forced on me due to the fact that my plane leaves at Obscene o’clock in the morning. That means getting up before I go to bed. Pretty much my only hope of not sleeping through the plane’s departure is to get an adjacent hotel and then sleep in the gutter outside.The hotel staff persuaded me to go inside by pointing out that they charged just as much for a gutter stay and there was no TV. 

Assuming I wake up in time tomorrow will see me nestled in the bowels of a large metal bird hoping it avoids the drones over Dubai and spits me out somewhere in the vicinity of Istanbul. Assuming my journey progresses as planned a vehicle will be waiting to whisk me to my hotel. At least that’s the plan. The last time I tried something like that I wound up stranded at Nairobi airport and if it wasn’t for the kindness of a nearby soldier I’d probably still be there. And dead of course.

Two days of touring Istanbul await or possibly two days of hitchhiking through the city trying to find my hotel. I do have to find it because the professional tour starts from the hotel two days after I arrive. Which should be just enough time to find the hotel, fall in a cistern and buy a football shirt.

Excitement and cultural experiences await. Always assuming I wake up in time.

Traveling Pathetically - Spiky Edition

 What with work, weather and sheer unregenerate laziness I haven't done many bushwalks of late. However the need to prepare myself for next year, where I have for reasons that are as silly as they are predictable I have committed myself to traipsing through South America, means that I need to get into something vaguely approximating shape. My trail app provided me with a 17km bushwalk through Middle Harbour and with an optimism that turned out to be wholly misplaced I locked it in.

The weather it has to be said was not promising. Actually it was promising and what it was promising was rain. A closer look at the weather forecast indicated that the rain wouldn't start until around 6pm by which time I would hopefully be back at home clutching my achey bits. I decided to take the chance and set out for Gordon. Having successfully arrived at Gordon I set out for the start of my walk. Two rather wearying kilometres later I arrived at the start of my walk and considered whether to turn around and go home. Gritting such of my teeth as remained I plunged into the bush.

 

This is not the bush I plunged into. It is an example of bush I encountered on my way to the bush

The day was cool, the sky grey and I was dressed warmly for the occasion. Fifteen minutes later I was down to a singlet. The day might be cool but I no longer was. The path stepped off a suburban street and promptly started descending towards water.

This is the bush I plunged into, not quite as impressive is it?

Water would be a prevailing theme of this walk. The track I was following spent half of its time roughly following a creek downstream on its journey towards Sydney Harbour then crossed and spent the rest of its time following the same stream back up to my starting point. Water was not long in presenting itself and my downward journey halted for fear of drowning. There were the usual dire warnings about leeches but to date I have seen not one. I'm not sure if I should be offended. For those of you desperate to know such things the water in question was Middle Harbour Creek which flowed, no one should be surprised to learn, into Middle Harbour.

See, water!

Water having been achieved I skipped (well stumbled) over the convenient stones to the other side of the creek and started heading harbourward. The trail I had selected was had a difficulty rating of "Hard" which I found difficult to fathom. Generally speaking if something is "hard" I don't do it. Although there is the occasional exception of course. I strode on through a generally silent bush. Normally I keep an ear out for birdsong in the hopes of getting a photo that consists of more than water and trees but a lot of this path was quiet. Winter probably had something to do with that as well as the sound of a bushwalker blundering along a path, gasping asthmatically and keeping up a low level diatribe of what he could be doing instead. Still if birds were noticeable by their absence there was certainly plenty of trees. And quite a bit of water.

Trees and water, don't say you don't get the full experience

And something looking suspiciously like rainforest

The sky was getting greyer and I quickened my pace. Shortly afterwards I slowed my pace again because, well, fitness. The sudden decrease in pace did allow me to snap the obligatory Clare McIntyre memorial fungus lurking modestly against a log.

And quite a handsome one it is too

The creek which had been a reasonably modest affair when I began started getting into its stride and began taking on riverlike proportions. Fish (I presume) occasionally hurled themselves out of the water before splashing back again. I'm not sure whether this was a desire for a change of scenery or an unsuccessful attempt at evolution. Still the occasional splash broke the silence.

Finally I heard what I'd been waiting for. The sound of birds. I clutched my phone and crept forward my eyes scanning the trees and bushes. What did I see? Trees and bushes. But I persevered. I have never managed to take a decent photo of the tiny birds that flit through the trees despite hanging around at likely looking bushes long enough for a passing stranger to call the police. Today a flicker of movement caught my eye and I just managed to take a semi adequate photo.

This is, according to google, an Eastern Spinebill

And here it is again

I was quite pleased with this trivial triumph and continued my journey with a spring in my step that lasted a good fifteen metres before degenerating into my usual desperate shamble. There was a little climbing to put a decent space between me and the water which was now becoming distinctly riverlike in my opinion. Still it enabled me to looked down over the creek which in my opinion no longer deserved its name.

I turned a corner and came face to face with an echidna. I have never seem an echidna in the wild before and now there was one snuffling its way down the path towards me. Unlike the flighty little birds it graciously posed for photos. I was utterly delighted and the spring in my step after that lasted a good hundred metres.

Frontal

 

And profile

 There were many other echnida shots but I'm exercising restraint. I carried on for a little while after that but I honestly didn't care any more. I had done ten kilometres of the walk plus another two just in getting there. A single spot of rain fell on my face and that was more than enough excuse to find the closest exit and flee for home as though a flood was about to commence.

 

 

Double the Ood

 Yes I know the title sounds like some kind of depraved Doctor Who cosplay but I assure you the subject material is completely innocent. Completely innocent and also thick and fluffy. Some time ago my parents, in a frantic attempt to find a birthday gift, presented me with an oodie. This fluffy, shapeless lump of material rapidly became my go to garment for the winter months as I snuggled inside the fleece and peered out from under the hood like a self indulgent monk.

Despite the fluffiness and comfort there was a problem. The oodie barely reached past my knees and my shins felt the harsh bite of winter made worse, if anything, by the luxuriant heat of the rest of my body. Blankets, rugs and thick socks were pressed into service but none of them had quite the air of decadent warmth imparted to the rest of my body by the oodie. 

Then suddenly, salvation. My manager gave up on her increasingly desperate attempts to get me to do some work for long enough to mention that she had recently purchased an oodie onesie. A link to the appropriate website was included. My eyes lit up and in a short period of time I had provided my credit card details to yet another random retailer on the internet. My identity must have been stolen so many times that it's like delegated schizophrenia. Still the surrendering of my personal details was a small price to pay as the new oodie was delivered to my door in a remarkably short period of time.

Suddenly I was clothed head to foot in oodie. The new oodie hugged my body in a way that would have been flattering if I had a different body. It too came in grey-black and when on it rather resembled kindergarten themed fetishwear. I'll just pause for a moment and let that sentence sink into your brain. 

Now encased in fluffiness I lounge on my lounge in dissolute comfort. Should the weather get bitingly cold then the original oodie goes over the top leading to an effect best described as "impromptu mummification". Two hoods cover my head, and a double layer of fleece envelops my torso. There are downsides of course. My reaction times have slowed to the point where even registering a pulse takes a minute or two and getting off the couch has become a journey requiring careful planning.

Despite these inconveniences my winters have never been so warm and comfortable. I find myself hungering for colder weather and being annoyed when the temperature is such as to render either oodie unnecessary. But when the winter chill hits I retreat behind my black covering and peering out from underneath my hood and bearing a strong resemblance to a somewhat pudgy Emperor Palpatine. Of course adding matching ugg boots is just the icing on the cake.