Turkey (Istanbul & Mediterranean Coast)

On Wednesday morning I flew to turkey from Graz airport (in this case flying out of Graz which is much more convenient was no more expensive than flying out of Vienna. It is nice that I live near an airport!). Flying into Istanbul the first thing I noticed was all the minarets (minarets are the towers that are attached to mosques where the calls to prayer are announced from, and they were recently banned in Switzerland). There were so many apartment buildings and along the skyline there were also so many tall skinny minarets poking into the sky. Turkey is the first muslim country that I have visited, so this was a completely new sight for me. I had to pay for a visa (15 euro) and then wait in line for the turkish authorities to check my passport. For some reason the line was sooo long and took over an hour to get through. I waited around for a few hours until Jen arrived from Cairo (she is studying arabic there for the year). It was really nice to see such a familiar face in a completely unfamiliar environment. We took a bus to Taxim square (one of the main hubs in Istanbul)

From there we walked to Anelore's house. Jen knows Anelore (a french girl doing an internship in Istanbul this year) from couchsurfing.com. Anelore came to Cairo and stayed there at Jen's house and it was really nice of her to let me stay at her house this trip as well.

To get to her house we had to walk down a main street which was fillllled with people

and also these dudes selling lotto type tickets.

Apparently it is always this crowded. The cab drivers are crazy and don't seem to pay attention to people very much. There are So many places to eat on this street. It seemed like every other store was a place to eat something, either kebab or potatoes or breads or sweets like baklava (YuM!) or turkish delight.

Many of the places sell Döner, which I am familiar with since there are many turkish döner places in Germany and Austria (these two countries in particular have a really large turkish population). I had never seen Döner this big before though.

We met up with Anelore and then went out for a beer with some of her friends. There is only one beer in turkey-Efes, so that is what we drank. The bar across from us had really tiny seats, and different places around istanbul also had these little seats too.

Jen told me that in Cairo you can't buy alcohol or drink in public (muslim law), you can only have it delivered to your house. We sat outside, which you can't do anymore in Austria since it is too cold and snowy. The weather in Turkey was really nice. Jen was cold (compared to Cairo), but for me it was like tropical weather!

While we were sitting drinking our beer a gypsy clarinetist came up to us and wouldnt stop playing really loudly in our ears for money.

After he realized we weren't going to give him any for his pretty bad playing he left us alone. Another old man came to our table as well with a box with 3 small bunny rabbits on top. He picked up one of the bunnies and had it sniff out a small piece of paper which had a fortune on it. We didn't take it though since we didn't want to have to pay him. The bunnies were so cute though!

After our beer we went back to Anelor's and had tea and slept. The next morning Anelore had to wake up to go to work for a few hours (she works at the french consulate). Jen and I went out and had some tea and a baklava type sweet for breakfast

We then walked around to a few different book stores to try to find the only guide book written about the trail that we were going to be hiking on in a few days along the mediterranean coast. We couldn't find it anywhere though. By the way, there are SO many stray cats walking around Istanbul. SOO MANY.

Everywhere you go they are there, kind of strange but also they are generally pretty cute. (generally)

We also looked in some of the shops as well selling jewelry and really pretty plates

and lights

and shawls and sweets.

We got some fresh squeezed pomegranite juice from a vendor on the street.

Why don't more places just sell fresh juice? It is so good and simple to do. We met Anelore for lunch which consisted of fresh bread, lentil soup, eggplant/tomato dish and some noodles and of course chai (tea). Turkish people LOVE their tea. They drink it all day and also after every meal. They usually drink it in lotus shaped glasses

and you can see store clerks going out to buy chai across the street and coming back to the store with a few glasses for the workers. Some people offered us chai in their stores (usually to get us to stay a while and have us buy something). People also sell tea on the streets at night time.

After lunch we met up with some more of Anelor's friends at a cafe where we tried some turkish coffee.

I don't like it as much as filtered coffee. It has a different taste and also is served in really tiny glasses which are filled about half way with the coffee grounds, which i wasn't expecting and accidentally got a mouthful of coffee grounds (really finely grounded). On the course of the trip I started to develop a taste for the coffee, but I wouldn't ever make it myself. You have to use a special coffee cooker to make it, usually made out of copper or brass.

When you are done drinking the liquid you can turn it upside down on the saucer and the dried grounds can tell your fortune apparently.

While we were sitting outside on this beautiful day drinking our coffee we heard school children singing something across the street. Jen and I went to go look and they were all outside standing facing the flag and a golden bust.

They were saying the national anthem i think. The golden bust is of a guy named Atatürk who Turkey loves. He is the man who brought secularism and democracy to Turkey and so they really love him. Many stores have his portrait hanging somewhere, and apparently all schools have his golden bust too! Heres a pic of him in one of the bakeries we at at

Ballin.

Afterwards Jen and I walked across a bridge to another area of Istanbul (Sultanahmet) to see the Aya Sophia (Hagia Sophia) and the Blue Mosque. There are lots of fisherman on this particular bridge we crossed all the time every day catching mostly sardines.

From this bridge you could see Asia! Part of Istanbul is on the european continent and part on the asian.

The greenish tree part on the right is europe and the land on the left is asia.

I defintely felt like there were a lot more men just hanging out in Turkey than women. There are some cafes where there are ONLY men that sit and play backgammon and drink chai all day, and lots of men walk around together, but i didn't see as many women doing that. We definitely noticed on our trip though that turkish people are very friendly and willing to help and talk to you (and it isn't just because we were girls, it is also something that many people we met had noticed as well).

We got to the Aya Sophia right when it was closing its gates to tourists which ended up being really nice becuase it wasn't too crowded when we went into this church turned mosque. Unfortunately there is a lot of construction going on all the time in this building so there was lots of scaffolding but it was still very impressive.

The dome roof was huge and there are pillars hidden in the walls to make it appear like it is hovering there unsupported. From the outside this building isn't all too impressive

but inside is beautiful with many old mosaics on the upper floor.

There was a special area in the mosque where the sultan could secretly come and pray without having to be around the common folk.

There was also this weird pillar where you stick your finger in and if it comes out wet then you can make a wish or something like that.

We crossed the street to the blue mosque which right when we were getting there was beautiful set against the sunset.

Because it was sunset that meant it was time for evening prayers, which were announced from the minaret as we were entering the courtyard. Watch and make sure to listen too:

Tourists aren't allowed in during the prayer session, but as we were standing in the courtyard I asked a turkish man if he could tell us how muslims pray. he told us the hand signs you do and what parts of your body you wash before you enter the mosque (every mosque has a small bathing area wher eyou can sit and get running water to ritually clean different parts of your head and neck and hands.) I was apparently asking enough questions to have him suggest that we see the service. He talked to the doorman in turkish and said that he could get us in the side to watch. So we put our shoes in bags and walked inside and saw all the men lining up in the front listening to the imam who was reciting something from the quran. they prayed and bowed a while and then when it was over (not more than 15-20 min) we left and walked back to Anelor's. Here is the main entrance to the mosque:

Since it was New Year's Eve there were people on the street selling santa hats... apparently they don't make a difference between new years and christmas:

We went to a bar owned by someone Anelore knew somehow (which ended up being more like a small room upstairs that had some beer and wine and vodka) to celebrate New Years. it felt more like a small get together of friends rather than a New Years party in Istanbul and when it turned 12 it wasn't really that eventful. I kinda wish i would have seen all the fireworks that they shot at Schloßberg here in Graz to celebrate, but I am still glad that I was with friends.

I was there too...Jen has lots of pictures that probably have me in them, maybe I can get some from her later!

We slept in the next morning and then went out for breakfast. Breakfast in Turkey is pretty much the same everywhere you go, but it is very delicious. Bread, honey, jam, feta cheese, sesame spread, hard boiled eggs, butter, yogurt (not the really thick and creamy type but more the thin greek style) tomatoes and cucumbers (and of course chai). It was really delicious and healthy feeling. Afterwards we walked to the Egyptian Bazaar/Spice Market. They were selling lots of spices, cheeses, oils, perfumes, turkish delight, teas and coffees.

They were selling this stuff called "turkish viagra" which is really just a fig filled with walnuts, but I suppose because it resembles a testicle? dunno...

We bought a jasmine flower (dried like a bulb) and later made tea with it (you just seep it in water and it opens up like a big bloom and makes delicious tea!) It was another beautiful sunset.

By the way that mosque is just a mosque, not very important. There are so many mosques and they really dominate the landscape.

We also went to an area where they just sell lots of animals (kinda sad how there are so many in cages though). There were dogs, fishes, birds, chickens, pigeons, turtles, hamsters, and even big jars of leeches!

We then walked to a Hamam (a turkish bath). It wasn't the nicest one, by that i mean it wasnt super pretty inside, but the turkish women were so nice. The men go to one area of the building and the women go to another area. You undress in a little cabin and then wear your towel to the washing room where there are basins along the walls that you fill up with warm water and then pour the water on yourself. You can also sit in a steam room for a while. When the turkish ladies are ready for you, you go lay down on a big marble stone (4 people at a time) and they scrub you really hard with this exfoliating thing they have on their hand. The amount of dead skin that came off is amazing. You can just see it all over and its all grey and gooey. They cleaned everything! legs, arms, back, neck, chest. my arms had the most dead skin. Then you rinse off the skin by the basin and then they take you back to the stone to clean you with soap and kinda massage you a little bit. It was so relaxing and i felt so clean. Afterwards they gave us chai.

We walked back to Anelor's area and had dinner with her friend Sammy. We had a mix of lots of stuff like dolmas, yogurt w/ herbs, some rice and other dishes. It was really delicious. Here is the street we ate on (once again outside).

These small side streets are everywhere just filled with people.

We went out for breakfast again the next day and picked up the trail book at a sports store. We walked to the transportation area of the city to find the best deal for a bus to Fethiye, a city of about 56,000 on the med coast where the trail starts. We found a deal and then got ready to leave that night. Since the bus is 12 hours it was an overnight bus. We bought some cheese and Simit (a sesame round bread that they sell everywhere on the street) to eat on the bus which when we started eating one of the guys told us we couldn't eat because it smelled too strongly. He even sprayed some air freshener stuff around us. lol. Actually the whole bus ride he would go up and down the aisles spraying this stuff to keep the air "fresh" or something. It felt so nice to get off the bus in the morning. For some reason once we got off the bus some guy called out to us "hey spice girls!" and this was so strange because someone else had said that to us in istanbul before we left too. I think they just associate white girls with the spice girls...

Also for some reason many people thought that I was Italian.

The landscape of Fethiye was completely different from Istanbul. Whereas istanbul is a huge city with tons of shops and buildings and people this felt much smaller and it was surrounded by hills.

We had some breakfast at a cafe, where I saw my first knees-to-ears type toilet.

Some places we hiked to had a toilet and this type of squatting toilet, but one place only had this type. It was a new experience to use that! We then got on a bus to take us to the trail head. The trail we walked on was called the Lycian Way.

We walked along the coast but more up in the hills and saw a really nice view of the city Olu Deniz down below and the beautiful blue water.

The city of Olu Deniz is really only "open" during the summer when there are tons of tourists (same for parts of Fethiye near the coast). We walked past a few villages, one of which seemed like it was being built but had no one living there.

The area we were walking through is a large producer of honey, so we could see many small bee keeping boxes along the way.

We also saw some mountain goats and sheep and cows.

We accidentally went the wrong way up a hill (we were confused about the markings) and got to the top of this mountain only to realize we went the wrong way. We did see a cool ram skull up there though.

On the way back down we met a turkish man who was taking his mule down the hill along this path we came up.

We went with him back down and when we got to the small village (2o people probably) he gave us some cooked flatbread with spinach, herbs, cheese and it was soooo nice and soo good. He actually ran after us (with 3 kids running and laughing behind him) to give it to us since we had walked past him. These people don't have very much and their houses aren't that nice, but they gave us, 3 random hiking girls, some food.

We arrived at the city of Faralya right as the sun was setting.

We had met a man on the trail earlier in the day who told us that we could stay at a place called George house, and that nothing else was open during the winter time. (We met George, who the house was named after, a really old turkish man who is the father of the current caretaker of the house who lives there with his wife). We found this place and luckily Anelore knows some Turkish to help us see how much it was and what was included in the price. Not many people spoke English out in the villages. The women made us some dinner which was really good. Potatoes, okra, spinach, bread, yogurt, rice pudding, and the most amazing honey we have ever had. In the morning they provided breakfast too and told us we could pick as many delicious oranges as we wanted from the orange trees in the yard. Here is our breakfast tray in the breakfast room:

Here is a view from our hostel in the morning:

Those houses in that picture are almost all of the houses in this village.

We hiked down a path/rocky cliff from the backyard of the house down into Butterfly Valley. It was pretty rocky and we had to use some ropes to navigate the rocks but it was really fun actually.

Butterfly valley seems like it is filled with people during the summer (there is a bar and houses and signs for cold drinks and such) but during the winter it was dead.

There were some dogs that greeted us when we got down to the beach.

There were also a few people living down there, one of them was a hippy canadian guy who is writing a book and chose this place to get some quiet time to write. We sat on the coastal rocks and looked at the hills and water for a while Me with the puppies!

We climbed back up to George house

and then went on to the next village of Kabak. The hiking was beautiful.

When we got to kabak an old man greeted us from the first house which was called "mamas kitchen" and told Anelor that it was the only place open to sleep. We dropped our stuff off there and walked down to the coast a little ways to watch the sunset. We also met a really friendly dog that hung out with us. It was a beautiful sunset.

The evil eye things are everywhere in Turkey.

When we got back to the house "mama" had made us some dinner. Bread, potatoes/tomatoes, bulgar (sooo good!), and snap peas and also a traditional dessert called ashura. yumm. Afterwards we went upstairs where her husband was watching tv and sat in the living room near the stove and drank some chai.

They make chai in turkey by boiling a bigger pot of water and resting a smaller pot on top of that water that has lots of tea leaves in it and some water. You can see that in the previous picture of mama and papa. Then they pour half of the strong tea in the cup and fill the other half of the cup with the hot water. I guess this is becuase they drink tea all day long.

In the morning mama made us breakfast (bread, honey, cucumbers, tomatoes, olives which were soo good and picked in the yard, and eggs which came from her chickens). We thanked mama who was out burning some brush

We then hiked to the next village where we were planning to stay since mama had called them and they were going to let us stay there, but when we got there it was only about 1 oclock. Here is a view from their village

\

so we decded to hike to the next village of Gey where we were told there was also a place to stay. This hike to Gey was so nice, through pines and cliffs. We got to Gey and it was also such a cute little village. Heres a woman walking through the street with her herd:

These people live in such remote locations it is pretty unbelievable. I have never experienced anything like it before. We walked into the village and the old women stop and look at us and smile and say hello (Merhaba). We bought some beer at the local market (which had very very few things, only dried goods and cookies and snacks and beer). We watched the sunset from our little porch

Then the younger woman caretaker told us we could eat upstairs since it was warmer. We had a GREAT meal here. Rice, yogurt with spicy stuff and lots of garlic, and also some sort of meat. Normally none of us eats meat but we were all so hungry and we knew it was 'fresh'. It was probably lamb or something. afterwards she brought us chai and we sat by the fire for awhile just talking.

The next morning we needed to start getting back to Fethiye. A man who lived in the house we stayed at was a school bus driver, so after breakfast we hitched a ride with him (and lots school kids who were really interested in us from this tiny village) to a bus stop where we then took a bus to fethiye. We got to Fethiye about 10 am, but the bus didn't leave until 9pm. We wished we would have kept hiking but we knew that it was better that we got to fethiye with the help of the bus driver than not knowing how to get back later in the day.

We took a small bus down to Olu Deniz (the coastal town we saw from above on the beginning of our hike) and when we got there we saw the turkish man that we saw on the first day of our hike who told us to stay at george house. He works for a paragliding company called "Hector" and introduced us to Hector. Hector asked us if we wanted to go paragliding, Jen and I really wanted to but they were asking for too much money. They asked for 150 Lira which is about 75 euros and we said no. But in Turkey bargaining is very very common and so he was like ok houw about 100. No no. Well I want you to have a good time so I will give you a special price of just 70 Lira. Jen and I thought 35 euro was a really good price, especially since he told us that the korean people who would be doing it with us were paying him 100, and he promised us not to tell anyone what we were paying. Anelore didn't want to come so Jen and I went together. We rode in a jeep with about 12 other people up a dirt road to a clearing up on the mountain.

This took a while, and Man that jeep had some power to drive over that really rocky uneven terrain.

At the clearing they gave us a suit to wear and put this backpack thing on us which was actually like a bucket seat. It was tandem paragliding so we each went with an experienced paraglider. I went with the man we met on the trail. They hook themselves on to you with carribeaners and the parachute is attached to them. Jen took off second and I was last. Jen taking off:

You have to wait for the wind to be just right and then the parachute goes up and you run down the hill as fast as you can until you are in the air and then you can sit down in the seat and the guy behind you controls the chute. I was actually suprised how fast we were really going and it felt sooo strange to be literally just hanging in the air at the mercy of the wind. But there was a great view of the coast below and the mountains out in the water.

Yes i know my leg is in the picture, but it was really scary to take out the camera and take pictures, I was afraid I was going to drop it, so I didn't take too many.

My controller and Jens controller got near eachother at one point so that Jen and I could almost touch eachother. It was so cool to be near her and talking to her way up in the air like that. This is Jen:

We landed and paid and then went back to Fethiye where we ate and just hung out in a restaurant all night until our bus took us back to Istanbul.

We went back to Anelor's house and all took showers and then went to eat another delicious turkish breakfast. Afterwards Jen and I went to the Grand Bazaar which is in a big hall filled with vendors selling clothes and jewelry and some foods. Everyone tries to get you to buy things by asking you "where are you from" or "yes please" and pointing to their stuff. We drank some Salep (really yummy hot milk drink with cinnamon) and then went back to Anelor's. I got ahold of Andrea Frey (my friend from high school) through her friend and then we met up together. It was really nice to see her. Her, her turkish friend and another girl friend who all know eachother from college, and I went to have a beer and then later we met up with Emily Epsten (another high school friend) who is teaching with Andrea in Spain and came to istanbul too for a short time with her friend from a study abroad program she did. We had some dinner and then Jen and Anelore went home and so did Andrea's turkish friend. We didn't order drinks, but we went to a couple of bars to dance. It was fun to be with some old girl friends. They were playing mostly american music, which is kinda sad since I would have liked to dance to some turkish dance music (of which there is a lot) but none of us knew Istanbul very well and we didn't want to go very far so we just went where there was music and it was still fun. Here is a link to one of the turkish dance songs that we heard a lot around when we were in Turkey though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QXT6OUSyIk

The next morning Jen and I had to leave back to the airport. Unfortunately her flight was delayed 4.5 hours, but it was actually good for me since my flight didn't leave until about the time her delayed flight left. We walked around the airport drinking coffee and visiting the duty free shops.

I came home last night after a long day of travel. It feels nice but also kind of lonely, since I had been with Jen and Anelore so much always doing things together all the time. Also I came back to lots of snow and it has been snowing a bit today too, which is a big weather change from turkey where there is sun and cool weather. I still really like the snow though. I gotta go back to work next week but I had a good time in a new country with some old friends this christmas break.