Rain in Istanbul

About 5 days ago, Nico and I made another overnight journey from Kapadokya to Istanbul.  Finally we are arriving at what was meant to be our original and most looked forward to destination in Turkey.  There is so much history in this city which is the crossroads of Europe and Asia... Ottoman Empire... and all that which most likely you know more about it than I do.  I really didn't like my world history classes in 9th and 10th grade.

Anyway, the first day we booked a hostel to have somewhere to crash.  And that is pretty much all we did that first day.  Nap, went out for a walk down to the water (Golden Horn and Bosphorous Straight), and then bought some veggies.  For the first time since leaving New Zealand we actually have a kitchen.  It was really nice to put something together, not to say that I don't like going out for Turkish food (which is really really really good) but its also a bit on the expensive side.  Especially when coming from Nepal and SE Asia where I'd complain about paying $4 for a meal.

in the archaeology museum

Next day we went to meet our couchsurfing hosts, Efecan and Duygu.  They are students, into film and photography, and showed us some awesome videos that they've recently made.  Although, also cause they were students and its near then end of the year they were a bit busy.  These few days we did a bit of wandering around, although it really was not all that nice since it was cold, windy and rainy.  There is so much to do in Istanbul... if you feel like paying.  The cheapo's that we are, we ended up skipping out on much of it.  We still did go into the Blue Mosque, check out the AyaSofia, and go to a couple museums.  Yea, the weather was that crappy that I willingly went into two museums that were totally non-science related.  The archeology museum was actually kinda cool with loads of tombs and sarcophagus' from up to 5000 years ago.  Many of them were amazingly well preserved too which was kinda neat.

Blue Mosque by Night

marble slab in the hamam

Probably the highlight of my time in Istanbul and the high point in experiencing Turkish culture was our visit to a Hamam on our last day in the country.  Efecan told us of a good local one on the Asian side of the city that very few tourists go to: Çinili Hamam.  Yea, I paid 37 Lyra to have some really large Turkish man scrub me down.  It was gender separated, so Nico and I just planned to meet at a certain time.  I walk into the building (which is about 400 years new – for a Hamam) and about 10 men who work there look at me, then one gives me a key to the changing room and give no instruction.  One guy comes up and asks, “massage?”.  I ask how much, “Kach para?”, and then they all start laughing.... Looks like I am getting the massage too.  I am really glad that I did a little bit of reading on how these things work, cause no one there speaks any English.  I drop trau, put on the given towel and go sit in the 137ºF sauna in order to get warmed up.

I wasn't totally sure if that is what I was supposed to do since no once else was in there at the time.  After about 10mins I could no longer stand it and went to sit in the main room which has a big marble slab in the middle and is surrounded by a few benches and individual partitions with wash basins in them.  A few minutes later the big Turkish man in nothing but a towel comes in, pulls me to one of the basins and motions for me to sit down.  He then rinses me down, and pulls out what looks like a big mitten shaped brillo pad.  An immense amount of grossness came out along with maybe a layer or two of skin.  He then pulled me over to the giant marble slab, laid me down and started rubbing me down with soap.  I guess this part was the massage, since he rubbed with quite a bit of force.  Then once or twice kinda just pounced down on me with all his mass, cracked a few things, smiled, and said, “extra!”  We went back to the wash basin, and not before determining that I was a tourist from America, he quoted the price for the hamam, 27 Lyra, and then basically told me that I was also paying a 10 Lyra tip.  I wasn't really in a position to argue, so 10 it was.  He then washed my hair, rinsed me down one more time and showed me the way out.  I still had about 50 mins before meeting up with Nico, so I relaxed, cooled off and took a nap in the private changing room.  It was overall a really interesting experience and I might even agree that it was worth it to clear out the grime from traveling in dirty developing nations for the past 5 months.  I really do feel so much cleaner.

From the ferry across the Bosphorus

Anyway, once the rain finally stopped and the sun came out on the last day it was really pleasant there and nice to just wander around.  I think I've realized that for me, a city is just a city, and there are some nice things to do but nothing that I am super excited about.  Now get me in the mountains somewhere, or the canyons of Kapadokya, and I just want to explore everywhere and climb up everything. :)