The Sultan Ahmet Camii: WWJD?

Our hotel in Istanbul was a mere four or five blocks from the Sultan Ahmet Camii (the Mosque of Sultan Ahmet), or as it is is nicknamed, the Blue Mosque, which is famous for its tens of thousands of blue tiles. Several times during our stay in Istanbul, we heard calls to prayer eminating from the mosque, beginning as early as 5 or 6 AM. I remember this clearly as I lie awake on the morning of my first day in Istanbul, adjusting to jet-lag.

We pass the mosque at about 9:30 after a long day touring sites in the Sultanahmet area of Istanbul. To our surprise, the mosque is still open for a little while longer to visitors. We take off our shoes, Jennie puts on a headscarf, and we enter the mosque. Quickly, we are greeted by a very well-dressed man who asks us if this is our first time at the Sultan Ahmet Camii. We respond that it is, and he very "generously" offers to give us a tour of the place for a mere 65 lira (about 45 dollars) to help us appreciate the history of the mosque. I tell him this is more than I can afford, and he suggests I give him a price that would be more reasonable to him. I say 10 lira (about $7.5). He looks vaguely disgusted but compliments me on my intelligence; I retort that I am simply poor. He counters with an offer of 20, and we eventually settle on 15 lira.

He then gives us about a 15 minute tour of the mosque, and at the end tries to usher us to a carpet dealer. Eventually Jennie gives the man a long overdue "Hayır" ("No"), and the guide finally leaves us alone. So where I am initially surprised that I was able to enter the mosque at all as a non-Muslim, I leave surprised and unsettled that I have just had my first haggling experience in Turkey inside a mosque. Should I be unsettled? I don't know, but it occurs to me that the one place where Jesus really flips out in the Bible is when he finds the money-changers operating in the Temple.

After the guide leaves us, we look at the mosque on our own. We are allowed to take photos, but I refrain from using a flash, and unfortunately most of our photos don't come out given how dark the mosque is at 10pm. In the area where only Muslims can go, we see both very reverent practitioners, and casual younger men who are filming handheld videos in jeans. We leave the mosque just as the late evening call to prayer is beginning.

Istanbul: First Offense

For those who know me, know that I used to describe myself as a "freak" when it came to public transportation. Thankfully, that passion has mellowed into a more mild temperament of ardent appreciation. So, of course, upon arrival at the Istanbul airport, it was already settled that we'd ride the metro into the city and walk to the hotel. And of course, after 20 hours of flying, there are two tired, smelly people shrouded with baggage and we are going to ride the metro. Thank you Dustin for being totally game. It turned out to be very easy and it gave us our first cultural exchange - one of inadvertant offense!

After settling into the metro and arranging our bags, Dustin promptly put his feet up on the opposite chair. Moments later a harried Turk came over and with grand gestures shooed Dustin's feet off the chair. Dustin immediately switched positions and crossed his right leg over the left, with his right ankle resting on his left knee, presenting to all passengers the bottom of his new shoes. Before offending anyone else and getting kicked off the train, I hurriedly explained that showing the bottom of the feet, as we just learned, was incredibly rude! Dustin settled into a position with two feet firmly and permanently planted on the ground. Thanks to Serap, my Turkish teacher, for covering that cultural point in class!

Allah kahretsin şu Interneti! (Damn Internet!)

Efforts to post a blog over the last couple days have met with resistance... first, we discover that Internet cafes have Turkish keyboards (c'mon! Now why would they do that?!??), which presents problems. After navigating the keyboard enough to send a VERY short letter to my parents (three sentences... took about 15 minutes), I log into the blog only to discover that all text in the blog's control panel is in Turkish. This is a shame, because I don't really know Turkish (see last entry). After some very helpful assistance from an employee at our hotel in Kapadokya, Jennie and I have figured out how to navigate the Internet in sweet, sweet English.

Despite this, I have continued to have minor victories in Turkish. The cornerstone of my Turkish has been the phrase Teşekkür ederim ("thank you" -- and also "no thank you"... go figure), which I have both used extremely liberally, and which I also forget about every 2 hours. I have also mixed in generous Merhaba's ("hello's"), and am getting fairly good at Tuvalet nerede? ("Where's the toilet?") I've tried to learn Anlamıyorum ("I don't understand"). This seems like a very useful phrase, but also has too many syllables... so I suppose I will have to keep learning.

Here are some new phrases I have been excited to learn in the Lonely Planet Turkish phrasebook:

• Beni sadece seks için kullanıyorum ("You're just using me for sex" -- a useful phrase to say to get obnoxious street vendors to back off when a simple Hayır -- "no" -- isn't getting the job done.)
  
  
• Kafam iyi ("I'm high" -- both has less syllables than the Turkish phrase for "I don't understand," and simultaneously provides a convincing explanation.)

I'm sure with these phrases I'll be pretty much equipped for any situation. More on this later...

New York to Istanbul

I successfully made it from Champaign to New York yesterday. Despite checking half a dozen times, I found time and time again that I had not forgotten my passport, nor my toiletries, nor (checking again) my passport. What is the only thing that I have forgotten? Well, I guess I forgot to learn a single word of Turkish. (I'm still not entirely sure how the title of this blog is pronounced for that matter...) I talked to a friend Mike at the Blind Pig on my last night in Champaign, and he told me what he believed were the three most important phrases in Turkish. These were: "Çok güzelsin" "Çok ilginçsin," and "Çok komiksin."* He translated for me: "You're so beautiful," "You're so interesting," and "You're so funny!" I thought about it for a little bit, and realized that for some intents and purposes these may actually be the most important phrases in the language. But anyway. Luckily, I have Jennie to lean on here... she very diligently started taking lessons in January for about three hours a week, and promises that we'll be doing a Turkish lesson a day for the first two and a half weeks of the trip.

My day in New York is nice. I stay with Christian and Rachel and we meet up with my friend Kate who I haven't seen in almost two years. We head to a great Irish pub in Astoria, where the bartender gives us free shots of Jameson. Somehow, between the combined forces of Kate, Christian, and the free shots, the night ends with pictures of me in compromising situations. As for now, it is off get some lunch with Christian at the Unidentified Frying Chicken, then off to the airport to meet up with Jennie, and then: Istanbul!

*Thanks goes to Pelin, who helped correct an earlier printed butchering of these phrases.

What's in a Name? The Origin of Raki Roads

The working title of this blog was originally "Travelling Dervishes," which I pictured would be a nifty little double-entendre crossing the Travelling Wilburys with the Whirling Dervishes. For various reasons, I determined that the title was mildly offensive (maybe it had something to do with crossing a band whose most famous song might be "Tweeter and the Monkey Man" with an ancient religious order). Instead, we have Raki Roads. Why is Raki Roads perhaps the best name for a travel-blog about Turkey, ever? There are several reasons:

• One goal of this trip is to sample (generous amounts of) new and exciting alcohols from around the world, and this certainly includes raki, the unofficial "national drink" of Turkey, similar to the Greek Ouzo. The great Ataturk once mused "What a lovely drink this is; it makes one want to be a poet." Perhaps drinking raki will make my blog entries better (ha!)
  
  
• Rocky Road is possibly the single greatest flavor of ice cream, ever. (A couple other contenders: Cherry Garcia, Chocolate Peanut-Butter, Rum Raisin, and of course, Vanilla w/ Orange Sherbet on a hot summer's day.) Three cheers for Rocky Road!
  
  
• We may be doing a fair amount of driving on the roads of Turkey. My friend Nick's past experience in Turkey convinced him that the drivers there are crazy. As he noted, to Turkish drivers, "red lights are only suggestions." Perhaps the drivers are not crazy, but drunk. Rest assured that all harrowing road experiences will be documented here, on Raki Roads.