Kate and I arrived today in Zakopane, a ski town in the Tatra mountains on the Polish-Slovak border, known as "Poland's winter playground" according to all of the tourist websites we poured over before our departure. Since the Easter holiday has caused basically all of Poland to come to a standstill, we have the week off from classes and Kate and I decided to treat ourselves to a little mini-vacation. Our hostel is a wooden A-frame cabin covered in freshly fallen snow that looks like it belongs in the film Heidi. The town is absolutely adorable- wooden chalets, cobblestone streets, and the most phenomenal views of the majestic Tatra mountains capped in dense fog and covered with pine trees in the background. When we arrived, the entire town was blanketed in at least a foot and a half of freshly fallen snow, and literally everything was closed for Easter Monday. We made the best of it, though. We spent the afternoon milling around town amidst exhausted skiers, stopped at a creperie and had these incredible steak, mushroom and cheese crepes with three different kinds of sauces, found an outdoor marketplace selling everything from bread baked with patterns, souvenir hatchets, and all kinds of handmade wooden tools. We bought plastic sleds for 8 złoty and joined a bunch of little kids who were sledding down one of the many snow-covered hills, which was so much fun! We spent the evening at a small cafe drinking delicious hot spiced wine, watching the snow fall and taking in our new surroundings.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Auschwitz
I returned from the tour of Auschwitz about 2 hours ago and still can’t really do anything. I tried to nap, failed. Made an omelet (also failed, no spatula). Tried to nap again. Hopefully writing about the experience will help me process it a little.
On the bus to the camp everyone was playing car-ride games, laughing and chatting, but I was feeling pretty quiet. All I could really think about was Ellie Wiesel or Primo Levi and how they might have felt traveling through these same woods by train en route to the camp.
We pulled up and I was struck by the normalcy of the exterior. There was a snack bar near the parking lot. It just doesn’t seem like the kind of place where you’d see a snack bar. We met up with our tour guide, a young Polish guy maybe in his late 20s, who recited his narrative at just the right pace with just the right pauses as if to say “I’ve done this a million times before.” Spittle collected in the left corner of his mouth the entire time. I’m not sure why I noticed.
We began at the famous iron gate to the main barracks at Auschwitz I (the camp is divided into Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II- Birkenau)- with the phrase “Arbeit Macht Frei” (work makes one free) hovering ominously above the camp's entrance. I’ve seen hundreds of pictures of that sign, but when I stood beneath it, it provoked me. I felt angry at the Nazis for trying to convince themselves and their prisoners that their entire project was in any way promoting freedom, angry that they had the audacity to suggest that they knew best when it came to uprooting millions of people from their daily lives for forced labor and extermination in the name of an ideology that is the absolute antithesis of freedom.
The wind blew harder and I wrapped my scarf more tightly around me as we made our way past the commander’s canteen (where an orchestra of prisoners was forced to play a march twice a day, when the prisoners left the camp for work and when they returned, so that the commanders could count them and calculate how many had died that day). The barracks located immediately past the gate were used mostly for Polish political prisoners, who comprised most of the camp’s population from 1940-42, when the first transports of Jews began to arrive.
Most of the barracks have been converted into exhibits as a part of the museum; the first one we visited was barrack #6, an exhibit called “starvation.” As soon as we walked inside I found myself face-to-face with three enormous black-and-white photographs, one of a one-year-old baby, severely underfed, and two photographs of these women who looked like skeletons, one was sitting with her back to the camera, her neck craned towards it. Her enormous dark eyes looked like black holes in her sunken face. In the other photograph, a woman sat naked on a hospital bed next to a nurse, each of her ribs visible beneath her tiny sagging breasts, her sharp knees drawn into hear chest like a helpless child. Our guide explained the prisoners’ diet- a bowl of coffee in the morning, a soup made of water and rotten vegetables in the afternoon, and a slice of black bread with margarine in the evening. I couldn’t stop staring at the photo of the last woman with the nurse. I imagined what it must feel like to feel your body melting into an unrecognizable walking corpse, I looked at her shrunken frame and felt my own skin tighten around my muscles, felt my feet and hands go cold the way hers must have without enough food to circulate her blood. My stomach churned as I thought of the slow process, her body literally eating away at itself. I started to feel nauseous and light-headed, and my vision started to get blurry. Kim had me sit down on the floor with my head down for a few minutes, and I had some water and was fine.
We descended to the basement of another the barrack to see the “starvation cells” and “suffocation cells” where prisoners who had been caught trying to escape were either held until they starved to death, or were forced to stand in a 2-foot-by-2-foot cell with three other prisoners each night after their work was over. Our guide told us the story of a Polish friar, Maximilian Kolbe, who volunteered to go to the starvation cell in the place of another failed escapee, a young father and husband. Father Kolbe survived in the cell for two weeks, after which Nazi commanders led him out to the “Killing Wall” outside the barracks and shot him in the head. Pope John Paul II visited Auschwitz in 2006 and laid a wreath in Kolbe’s cell. The Killing Wall was where a majority of the prisoner executions took place- visitors had placed wreaths and plaques at the base, tucked tiny stones in its cracks. These little tokens of remembrance made it an easier sight to bear.
Next we visited another barracks with glass cases full of the belongings confiscated by prisoners by the Nazis as soon as they arrived at the camp. Suitcases, toothbrushes, combs: the most collection haunting was a case that stretched from one end of a 50 meter room to the other- full of clumps of women’s hair that had been shaved off right before they were sent to the gas chambers. Another room held glass containers full of thousands of shoes. Hundreds of them were so tiny they looked like doll shoes. I saw one dusty brown cowboy boot that looked like it belonged to a six-year-old. I stared at it for probably five full minutes before leaving the room.
Our last stop was the underground gas chamber and crematorium, which our guide told us the Nazis converted to an underground bunker in 1945. At this point, the Red Army’s liberation of the camp was imminent, so the Nazis tried to get rid of as much evidence as possible of the crimes they’d committed. They blew up the two main crematoriums at Birkenau, and marched the remaining prisoners into Germany to be placed at other camps (90% didn’t survive these so-called “Death Marches”). To stand in the same room where the Nazis killed 700 people at a time by pouring Zyklon B crystals down the chimneys is something I can’t really describe with words. I saw the same walls panicked victims clawed at in a vain attempt at escape once the gas began to deplete their oxygen supply. I saw the ovens in which fellow prisoners were forced to place their friends and family members, only to be killed themselves a short time afterward. As I said before, I knew about all of these things. I’ve read the books; I’ve seen the films. But this experience was about more than just intellectual understanding, it was physical, it was visceral, it was real.
We spent the last hour of our tour at the Birkenau camp, which was built using the forced labor of the Auschwitz I prisoners. There we saw the stables meant to house 52 horses, in which upwards of 700 prisoners were forced to sleep two in a bed (a “bed” being a wooden bunk topped with a burlap sack of straw, usually infested with worms, lice, and various infectious diseases). We walked along the famous train tracks leading to the guard tower where the “selection” process took place: after a transport of Jews arrived (after 1943, all Jewish transports were taken directly to Birkenau, the main extermination portion of the camp), their belongings were confiscated, women and children were separated from men, and an S.S. doctor gave each person a three-second visual examination to determine whether they were “fit to work,” and thus at least given the chance of survival (although almost all of them died within two months), or should be sent directly to the gas chambers to be killed immediately. All that’s left of the main crematorium are the bombed-out ruins abandoned by the Nazis before they fled the camp in 1945, but you can still see the underground dressing room, where prisoners were told they would be given a bath before registration, and even assigned numbered hooks on which to hang their clothes, then led into the gas chambers (in which fake showers had been installed to maintain the illusion of a bath to keep everyone calm), where Zyklon B gas caused oxygen deprivation, internal suffocation, and after about 20 minutes, death. Their bodies were transported to the above ground ovens (whose ruins were also still visible) and burned, and their ashes dumped in a nearby hole. The whole process took about an hour. They could kill 2,000 people at a time in one crematorium. Those who were killed were never registered with the camp, so we’ll never know the exact number, but it’s estimated to be about 1.5 million.
The tour ended, and the group began the long walk along the train tracks. I lagged behind, lingering at the memorial sculpture, a chaotic collection of massive brown boulders and a symbolic crematorium chimney made out of copper. Before I turned back to catch up with the group, a thought struck me: I've always heard the phrase “never again” in response to the Holocaust, but I always wondered, "how?" In the shadow of the monument commemorating the worst atrocity of the 20th century, I began to understand: the solution is knowledge. I don’t just mean teaching kids about the Holocaust in school, although that’s important. I mean all of this knowledge I’m amassing about society, power, democracy, agency, institutions, processes, this knowledge matters, when it’s shared and understood and acted upon, it can help create a bulwark against forces like those responsible for the Holocaust. From our present vantage point, we can study the events leading up to it and see them unfold one after another like dominos, and seek to understand the forces at work that created an environment in which this was possible. As I made my way across the windswept expanse dotted with perfect rows of barracks, surrounded by barbed wire, towards the imposing façade of the main tower, I felt emotionally exhausted and almost dazed, but weirdly at peace with the notion that this experience had become an inalterable element of my consciousness.
On the bus to the camp everyone was playing car-ride games, laughing and chatting, but I was feeling pretty quiet. All I could really think about was Ellie Wiesel or Primo Levi and how they might have felt traveling through these same woods by train en route to the camp.
We pulled up and I was struck by the normalcy of the exterior. There was a snack bar near the parking lot. It just doesn’t seem like the kind of place where you’d see a snack bar. We met up with our tour guide, a young Polish guy maybe in his late 20s, who recited his narrative at just the right pace with just the right pauses as if to say “I’ve done this a million times before.” Spittle collected in the left corner of his mouth the entire time. I’m not sure why I noticed.
We began at the famous iron gate to the main barracks at Auschwitz I (the camp is divided into Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II- Birkenau)- with the phrase “Arbeit Macht Frei” (work makes one free) hovering ominously above the camp's entrance. I’ve seen hundreds of pictures of that sign, but when I stood beneath it, it provoked me. I felt angry at the Nazis for trying to convince themselves and their prisoners that their entire project was in any way promoting freedom, angry that they had the audacity to suggest that they knew best when it came to uprooting millions of people from their daily lives for forced labor and extermination in the name of an ideology that is the absolute antithesis of freedom.
The wind blew harder and I wrapped my scarf more tightly around me as we made our way past the commander’s canteen (where an orchestra of prisoners was forced to play a march twice a day, when the prisoners left the camp for work and when they returned, so that the commanders could count them and calculate how many had died that day). The barracks located immediately past the gate were used mostly for Polish political prisoners, who comprised most of the camp’s population from 1940-42, when the first transports of Jews began to arrive.
Most of the barracks have been converted into exhibits as a part of the museum; the first one we visited was barrack #6, an exhibit called “starvation.” As soon as we walked inside I found myself face-to-face with three enormous black-and-white photographs, one of a one-year-old baby, severely underfed, and two photographs of these women who looked like skeletons, one was sitting with her back to the camera, her neck craned towards it. Her enormous dark eyes looked like black holes in her sunken face. In the other photograph, a woman sat naked on a hospital bed next to a nurse, each of her ribs visible beneath her tiny sagging breasts, her sharp knees drawn into hear chest like a helpless child. Our guide explained the prisoners’ diet- a bowl of coffee in the morning, a soup made of water and rotten vegetables in the afternoon, and a slice of black bread with margarine in the evening. I couldn’t stop staring at the photo of the last woman with the nurse. I imagined what it must feel like to feel your body melting into an unrecognizable walking corpse, I looked at her shrunken frame and felt my own skin tighten around my muscles, felt my feet and hands go cold the way hers must have without enough food to circulate her blood. My stomach churned as I thought of the slow process, her body literally eating away at itself. I started to feel nauseous and light-headed, and my vision started to get blurry. Kim had me sit down on the floor with my head down for a few minutes, and I had some water and was fine.
We descended to the basement of another the barrack to see the “starvation cells” and “suffocation cells” where prisoners who had been caught trying to escape were either held until they starved to death, or were forced to stand in a 2-foot-by-2-foot cell with three other prisoners each night after their work was over. Our guide told us the story of a Polish friar, Maximilian Kolbe, who volunteered to go to the starvation cell in the place of another failed escapee, a young father and husband. Father Kolbe survived in the cell for two weeks, after which Nazi commanders led him out to the “Killing Wall” outside the barracks and shot him in the head. Pope John Paul II visited Auschwitz in 2006 and laid a wreath in Kolbe’s cell. The Killing Wall was where a majority of the prisoner executions took place- visitors had placed wreaths and plaques at the base, tucked tiny stones in its cracks. These little tokens of remembrance made it an easier sight to bear.
Next we visited another barracks with glass cases full of the belongings confiscated by prisoners by the Nazis as soon as they arrived at the camp. Suitcases, toothbrushes, combs: the most collection haunting was a case that stretched from one end of a 50 meter room to the other- full of clumps of women’s hair that had been shaved off right before they were sent to the gas chambers. Another room held glass containers full of thousands of shoes. Hundreds of them were so tiny they looked like doll shoes. I saw one dusty brown cowboy boot that looked like it belonged to a six-year-old. I stared at it for probably five full minutes before leaving the room.
Our last stop was the underground gas chamber and crematorium, which our guide told us the Nazis converted to an underground bunker in 1945. At this point, the Red Army’s liberation of the camp was imminent, so the Nazis tried to get rid of as much evidence as possible of the crimes they’d committed. They blew up the two main crematoriums at Birkenau, and marched the remaining prisoners into Germany to be placed at other camps (90% didn’t survive these so-called “Death Marches”). To stand in the same room where the Nazis killed 700 people at a time by pouring Zyklon B crystals down the chimneys is something I can’t really describe with words. I saw the same walls panicked victims clawed at in a vain attempt at escape once the gas began to deplete their oxygen supply. I saw the ovens in which fellow prisoners were forced to place their friends and family members, only to be killed themselves a short time afterward. As I said before, I knew about all of these things. I’ve read the books; I’ve seen the films. But this experience was about more than just intellectual understanding, it was physical, it was visceral, it was real.
We spent the last hour of our tour at the Birkenau camp, which was built using the forced labor of the Auschwitz I prisoners. There we saw the stables meant to house 52 horses, in which upwards of 700 prisoners were forced to sleep two in a bed (a “bed” being a wooden bunk topped with a burlap sack of straw, usually infested with worms, lice, and various infectious diseases). We walked along the famous train tracks leading to the guard tower where the “selection” process took place: after a transport of Jews arrived (after 1943, all Jewish transports were taken directly to Birkenau, the main extermination portion of the camp), their belongings were confiscated, women and children were separated from men, and an S.S. doctor gave each person a three-second visual examination to determine whether they were “fit to work,” and thus at least given the chance of survival (although almost all of them died within two months), or should be sent directly to the gas chambers to be killed immediately. All that’s left of the main crematorium are the bombed-out ruins abandoned by the Nazis before they fled the camp in 1945, but you can still see the underground dressing room, where prisoners were told they would be given a bath before registration, and even assigned numbered hooks on which to hang their clothes, then led into the gas chambers (in which fake showers had been installed to maintain the illusion of a bath to keep everyone calm), where Zyklon B gas caused oxygen deprivation, internal suffocation, and after about 20 minutes, death. Their bodies were transported to the above ground ovens (whose ruins were also still visible) and burned, and their ashes dumped in a nearby hole. The whole process took about an hour. They could kill 2,000 people at a time in one crematorium. Those who were killed were never registered with the camp, so we’ll never know the exact number, but it’s estimated to be about 1.5 million.
The tour ended, and the group began the long walk along the train tracks. I lagged behind, lingering at the memorial sculpture, a chaotic collection of massive brown boulders and a symbolic crematorium chimney made out of copper. Before I turned back to catch up with the group, a thought struck me: I've always heard the phrase “never again” in response to the Holocaust, but I always wondered, "how?" In the shadow of the monument commemorating the worst atrocity of the 20th century, I began to understand: the solution is knowledge. I don’t just mean teaching kids about the Holocaust in school, although that’s important. I mean all of this knowledge I’m amassing about society, power, democracy, agency, institutions, processes, this knowledge matters, when it’s shared and understood and acted upon, it can help create a bulwark against forces like those responsible for the Holocaust. From our present vantage point, we can study the events leading up to it and see them unfold one after another like dominos, and seek to understand the forces at work that created an environment in which this was possible. As I made my way across the windswept expanse dotted with perfect rows of barracks, surrounded by barbed wire, towards the imposing façade of the main tower, I felt emotionally exhausted and almost dazed, but weirdly at peace with the notion that this experience had become an inalterable element of my consciousness.
Friday, March 14, 2008
SiCKO- Turkish Style
So I just returned from the American hospital in Istanbul where I was visiting my friend Jill who has dysentery. That's right, Oregon Trail, "Jill is too weak to hunt" dysentery. She'd been feeling extremely ill for the past few days and was admitted last night, and fortunately she's doing much better. She's a pretty tough cookie who is able to keep a sense of humor in almost any situation, and debilitating infectious disease, it appears, is no exception. She had us all cracking up during the visit- and even though the pretenses were unfortunate, I have to say I have no qualms about spending my last Friday night in Istanbul watching Turkish MTV, reading Cosmo, and drawing pictures with Jill and our other friend Abi. It also gave me a chance to compare the healthcare systems in Turkey and Germany, or more precisely, to compare the hospital in Berlin where I waited with an swollen ankle larger than my fist in a plastic chair chained to the floor for 4 hours before I was seen by a doctor, who wrapped it in an ace bandage and asked me if I had any bigger shoes, to Jill's palacial suite, and caring nurses, the seemingly seemingly gourmet meals (for herself AND her visitors), hassle-free insurance processing and payment, and of course, the nonexistent waiting room (now that says something). Certainly not the contrast I expected.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Experiential Learning
Raindrops are splashing down on the cobblestone streets outside the hostel for the first time since we arrived in Istanbul over a week and a half ago. Reflecting on my day, I remember several times marveling at the degree of my own independence. This trip has really given me the opportunity to test myself and expand my problem-solving and creative thinking skills. For example, I had an interview scheduled this afternoon with an Istanbul-based journalist, columnist, and blogger named Mustafa Akyol (more about the interview in a bit). He gave me his address, and told me to meet him at his home office at noon. I took the metro to his neighborhood, hailed a cab, showed the driver the address on a scrap of paper, which elicited a prompt "NO," an arm movement in the direction of a busy street, and my exit from the cab. I looked around the unfamiliar intersection, found the metro ticket booth, and showed the scrap of paper to the attendant, who gestured towards the same busy street. I headed up the street, and after walking for about 30 minutes through a mostly residential neighborhood, stopping to show my scrap of paper to several passers-by, I found the apartment building with 15 minutes to spare. Congratulating myself, I stopped inside a convenience store for a yogurt, which I ate without a spoon on the store's front stoop. To my surprise, I was greeted after a few moments by the attendant of the neighboring hardware shop, who smiled and handed me an old armchair cushion. What a random act of kindness. I don't think I'll ever forget that gesture. I smiled as I made my way down the street to Mustafa's apartment.
Mustafa's apartment looked like a page from an IKEA catalog. All black and white furniture, sleek lines, and minimalist art. He delivered his well-crafted answers to my questions about Turkey's political climate and the Turkish news media with the same polished ease. Mustafa exemplifies the attitudes of many of Turkey's young, educated, up-and-coming elites. They're tired of the old argument that the state always knows best, that secularism and nationalism comes before liberty and free choice, and that the Turkish people aren't quite "ready" for democracy yet. They believe that moderate and Islam and democracy can and will exist in Turkey, and that Turkish membership in the European Union will mean more economic opportunities, and more importantly, more rights for those groups traditionally oppressed by the Turkish state: the Kurds and Armenians, as well as public intellectuals who dare to question or criticize the military, Muslim women who want both to wear a headscarf and attend university. The interview was a fascinating eye-opener for the political and social changes that are making waves in Turkey today.
I thought about all of the opportunities I've had like this on this trip- for "real world" education, so to speak, during a lecture this afternoon when the professor mentioned the concept of experiential learning in EU-led programs to educate students in Turkish schools about the basic elements of human rights. The cycle goes something like this: experience, reflection, generalization, re-interpretation, back to experience. I was struck by something else she said- in the context of human rights, learning all of the theory in the world doesn't mean anything unless you take those principles and act on them, incorporate them into your daily life and work for a cause you yourself believe in. I think the same can be said about all areas of study- which is why this project is making me so excited about actually going out and someday producing the type of journalism that I'm finding out is so important.
One last thought, not sure how coherent it is. This evening I was enjoying a dinner of Kofte, Turkish lamb meatballs, at a restaurant underneath the Galata bridge facing out at the Marmara Sea with Kate and her friend Leah, who is visiting from Cairo, where she's spending the semester abroad. We were having a great conversation- about the various social and cultural differences in the societies where we found ourselves, about the politics of sex and gender in the U.S. election- and suddenly it occurred to me that in 20 years or so, a lot of the people who I know are going to be doing really, really extraordinary things. It was one of those moments of both supreme contentment and excitement.
Mustafa's apartment looked like a page from an IKEA catalog. All black and white furniture, sleek lines, and minimalist art. He delivered his well-crafted answers to my questions about Turkey's political climate and the Turkish news media with the same polished ease. Mustafa exemplifies the attitudes of many of Turkey's young, educated, up-and-coming elites. They're tired of the old argument that the state always knows best, that secularism and nationalism comes before liberty and free choice, and that the Turkish people aren't quite "ready" for democracy yet. They believe that moderate and Islam and democracy can and will exist in Turkey, and that Turkish membership in the European Union will mean more economic opportunities, and more importantly, more rights for those groups traditionally oppressed by the Turkish state: the Kurds and Armenians, as well as public intellectuals who dare to question or criticize the military, Muslim women who want both to wear a headscarf and attend university. The interview was a fascinating eye-opener for the political and social changes that are making waves in Turkey today.
I thought about all of the opportunities I've had like this on this trip- for "real world" education, so to speak, during a lecture this afternoon when the professor mentioned the concept of experiential learning in EU-led programs to educate students in Turkish schools about the basic elements of human rights. The cycle goes something like this: experience, reflection, generalization, re-interpretation, back to experience. I was struck by something else she said- in the context of human rights, learning all of the theory in the world doesn't mean anything unless you take those principles and act on them, incorporate them into your daily life and work for a cause you yourself believe in. I think the same can be said about all areas of study- which is why this project is making me so excited about actually going out and someday producing the type of journalism that I'm finding out is so important.
One last thought, not sure how coherent it is. This evening I was enjoying a dinner of Kofte, Turkish lamb meatballs, at a restaurant underneath the Galata bridge facing out at the Marmara Sea with Kate and her friend Leah, who is visiting from Cairo, where she's spending the semester abroad. We were having a great conversation- about the various social and cultural differences in the societies where we found ourselves, about the politics of sex and gender in the U.S. election- and suddenly it occurred to me that in 20 years or so, a lot of the people who I know are going to be doing really, really extraordinary things. It was one of those moments of both supreme contentment and excitement.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Istanbul not Constantinople
Sorry for the long dry spell, I promise I haven't forgotten about the blog! I've been keeping lots of notes and trying to jot my thoughts down before passing out from exhaustion each night. A quick recap: since my last entry, I spent two weeks staying with Ozge in Berlin, attending lectures and meetings with political parties, NGOs, labor unions, business associations for the EiT program, as well as interviewing a few journalists for my independent research project. Of course, I also spent plenty of time exploring the city: museums (lots), nightlife, shops, sampling the varied cuisine, and just walking around Berlin's wide streets- people watching and observing. As things slow down when we return to Poland in a few days, I'll try to include some retroactive posts detailing some of my experiences. Anyway, I've been in Istanbul with the group for a week and a half now, and things have been even more crazy and intense than Berlin. A typical day includes early breakfast is a hardboiled eggs, olives, and fresh-baked bread at the hostel, where I share a tiny room with three of the the other girls on the program. Then we head up Istanbul's main shopping street, Istiklal, Istanbul's equivalent of the Magnificent Mile or the Champs Elysee, crowded with shoppers and vendors selling everything from fake purses to roasted chestnuts and kepabs. Then we take the subway to the Sisli stop, where we walk another mile or so to the Kustepe campus of Bigli University, located in a pretty low-income residential area of the city, which presents an interesting contrast- wealthy students with BMWs and designer clothes attending classes in a gated city block, isolated from the allies of crumbling houses and what seems like hundreds of children running around during the day. We usually have a morning and an afternoon lecture at Bilgi- punctuated by a long lunch break which we usually spend at a local cafe, munching on pilaf or manti, sipping tea, and enjoying the sunny weather. We usually return to the hostel around 4 or so, enough time for a short excursion to one of the city's many eclectic neighborhoods for a look around the shops and sights, maybe a short museum or sightseeing trip, a little bit of reading for class before bed (or, more often, a trip to one of Istiklal's many bars or cafes for a beer, some Raki (Turkish aniseed brandy), or Nargile (water-pipe/hookah), then some much-needed rest for the following day. Like I said, I'll try to do some retroactive posting with musings on my Istanbul experiences (and hopefully some photos and videos), once we return to Krakow and things slow down a bit. For now, I just wanted to give everyone a little update and promise some longer posts later.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Island Fever
Note: I wrote this in my journal earlier today on my trip to the Prince's islands off the coast of Istanbul- no laptops (or cars) allowed.
I'm so at peace right now. I took a ferry from the Galata Bridge near our hostel to the Prince's Islands- about 45 minutes off the coast of Istanbul in the Marmara Sea. Seagulls flocked around the boat as we sliced through the glimmering blue-green sea. A warm breeze and the sun on my face- perfect. I got off at Heybeliada Island, found a bike rental shop on the boardwalk and took off on an ill-fitting red mountain bike with squeaky breaks. I'm making my way around the island on a road that runs through a large state park of some kind. I just stopped to climb what looks like an old stone watchtower on the edge of a steep rock face overlooking the sea and the neighboring Islands. [Check out the view!]
The stairs to the tower were nothing but rusting steel frames (no actual steps), so it probably wasn't the safest decision to climb them, but I did it anyway. When I reached the top, I asked a Turkish man who was there with another man and two small children if he'd take my photo, and afterwards the kids chirped "Hello!" The little girl told me her name was Dora, and offered me a gummy bear. I asked the two men where they were from (Istanbul), and told them my origins and whereabouts when they asked. I love having conversations with local people here, they're so friendly.
This place is exactly what I needed. Quiet, beautiful, partially wooded, with sweeping views of the sea, nearby islands, and in the disance, the outline of the city skyline along the coast. Birds chirping, sailboats floating by, couples picnicing in the grass- after a week in the colorful but chaotic city, this feels like paradise.
Later I hopped back on the ferry to check out a second island, Büyükada. It reminded me of a cross between Key West and Mackinac Island, before both became tourist meccas. Beautiful colorful villas, palm trees, winding streets full of fruit vendors and fish restaurants. I had the two best culinary experiences of the trip yet- no joke. First, a waffle (homemade before my very eyes) smothered in dark chocolate sauce with sliced bananas, sprinkled with crushed pistachios, followed by a piece of fire-baked pita bread with melted mozzarella cheese and miniature salty mushrooms. I ate them both sitting on the deck of the ferry, watching the sun set over the water. Could not have been a more perfect day.
I'm so at peace right now. I took a ferry from the Galata Bridge near our hostel to the Prince's Islands- about 45 minutes off the coast of Istanbul in the Marmara Sea. Seagulls flocked around the boat as we sliced through the glimmering blue-green sea. A warm breeze and the sun on my face- perfect. I got off at Heybeliada Island, found a bike rental shop on the boardwalk and took off on an ill-fitting red mountain bike with squeaky breaks. I'm making my way around the island on a road that runs through a large state park of some kind. I just stopped to climb what looks like an old stone watchtower on the edge of a steep rock face overlooking the sea and the neighboring Islands. [Check out the view!]
The stairs to the tower were nothing but rusting steel frames (no actual steps), so it probably wasn't the safest decision to climb them, but I did it anyway. When I reached the top, I asked a Turkish man who was there with another man and two small children if he'd take my photo, and afterwards the kids chirped "Hello!" The little girl told me her name was Dora, and offered me a gummy bear. I asked the two men where they were from (Istanbul), and told them my origins and whereabouts when they asked. I love having conversations with local people here, they're so friendly.This place is exactly what I needed. Quiet, beautiful, partially wooded, with sweeping views of the sea, nearby islands, and in the disance, the outline of the city skyline along the coast. Birds chirping, sailboats floating by, couples picnicing in the grass- after a week in the colorful but chaotic city, this feels like paradise.
Later I hopped back on the ferry to check out a second island, Büyükada. It reminded me of a cross between Key West and Mackinac Island, before both became tourist meccas. Beautiful colorful villas, palm trees, winding streets full of fruit vendors and fish restaurants. I had the two best culinary experiences of the trip yet- no joke. First, a waffle (homemade before my very eyes) smothered in dark chocolate sauce with sliced bananas, sprinkled with crushed pistachios, followed by a piece of fire-baked pita bread with melted mozzarella cheese and miniature salty mushrooms. I ate them both sitting on the deck of the ferry, watching the sun set over the water. Could not have been a more perfect day.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
First Impressions
It's past 3am and we've just arrived at our hostel in Istanbul. On the bus ride from the airport, I was too curious to sleep. As we sped down the highway, we passed lots of hillside apartment buildings that looked like layer cakes stacked on top of one another and car factories with exotic foreign names like Ford and Mercedes. We crossed the Bosphorus on an enormous suspension bridge lit by neon lights with a magnificent view of the illuminated Asian and European sides of the city. On either bank, blue, yellow, and white lights twinkled- one of the international students said that's the sign of a poor city- when the night lights aren't all the same color. I'd never heard that one before.
I saw the first Mosque of my lifetime- I think they're the most beautiful houses of worship of any religion, at least on the outside. The towering minarets look like rockets about to blast off into space. I also noticed countless Turkish flags, all of them rippling in the warm night breeze and majestically illuminated by spotlights. The bus let us off in a square at the top of a hill, where we descended via a winding, narrow cobblestone street full of cafes and music shops closed for the night. I can't wait to start exploring.
I saw the first Mosque of my lifetime- I think they're the most beautiful houses of worship of any religion, at least on the outside. The towering minarets look like rockets about to blast off into space. I also noticed countless Turkish flags, all of them rippling in the warm night breeze and majestically illuminated by spotlights. The bus let us off in a square at the top of a hill, where we descended via a winding, narrow cobblestone street full of cafes and music shops closed for the night. I can't wait to start exploring.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Imminent Departure, Part Deux
Just some final random thoughts on Berlin before tomorrow's departure to the Near East.
This city has been both challenging and incredibly rewarding. It's almost like in order to really discover it, you have to prove you're up to the challenge. First of all, it's geographically enormous. Four times the size of Paris, territory-wise. In terms of population, it's not even the largest city in Germany (I think it ranks third behind Frankfurt and Munich). Consequently, it feels more like a collection of neighborhoods than one city- though there's no mistaking a distinct Berlin vibe that echoes throughout all of its far-flung regions. The style is thrift-store chic; vintage leather boots and a bright-colored scarf. It tastes like a melt-in-your mouth pastry, feels like a strong warm wind through your hair as the subway rushes past you on the platform, smells like the deepest-fried french fries and the juiciest currywurst. Sounds like the "psshhh-POP" of the bartender de-capping an ice-cold beer. It's the sun glittering off the surface of the magnificent dome of the Reichstag, the young dads with one kid in the bike seat and one on the handlebars, riding to school each morning. It's a college-aged kid with a guitar playing a Bob Dylan song on the subway for coins, the buckets of every color olive imaginable under a white tent at the outdoor market, the slowly spinning top of juicy lamb waiting to be carved at the kebab stand, the faded peace signs spray-painted on the graying fragments of the great dividing wall, now a gallery, a landmark, But it's like you can only see those things if you resign yourself to the fact that you can't go hunting for them. You have to get off at a random U-Bahn stop, walk around the neighborhood, and let them come to you.
This city has been both challenging and incredibly rewarding. It's almost like in order to really discover it, you have to prove you're up to the challenge. First of all, it's geographically enormous. Four times the size of Paris, territory-wise. In terms of population, it's not even the largest city in Germany (I think it ranks third behind Frankfurt and Munich). Consequently, it feels more like a collection of neighborhoods than one city- though there's no mistaking a distinct Berlin vibe that echoes throughout all of its far-flung regions. The style is thrift-store chic; vintage leather boots and a bright-colored scarf. It tastes like a melt-in-your mouth pastry, feels like a strong warm wind through your hair as the subway rushes past you on the platform, smells like the deepest-fried french fries and the juiciest currywurst. Sounds like the "psshhh-POP" of the bartender de-capping an ice-cold beer. It's the sun glittering off the surface of the magnificent dome of the Reichstag, the young dads with one kid in the bike seat and one on the handlebars, riding to school each morning. It's a college-aged kid with a guitar playing a Bob Dylan song on the subway for coins, the buckets of every color olive imaginable under a white tent at the outdoor market, the slowly spinning top of juicy lamb waiting to be carved at the kebab stand, the faded peace signs spray-painted on the graying fragments of the great dividing wall, now a gallery, a landmark, But it's like you can only see those things if you resign yourself to the fact that you can't go hunting for them. You have to get off at a random U-Bahn stop, walk around the neighborhood, and let them come to you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)