beyoglu, modern istanbul & some edumacation

16.08.07:

today S and i were going to meet G in his (much cooler) nabe. where turkish people actually hang out, and not only to sell you carpets. S & i met up at the blue mosque, which is sort of halfway between our two places. G and i actually went into the blue mosque another day, but i will tell you about it now. because you need some culture in your life.

HISTORY LESSON NO. ONE

the blue mosque is called the blue mosque because it is one of a few mosques that are adorned with blue tiles on their interior walls. it was built between 1609 and 1616 (and man does it look it) (haha), during the rule of Ahmed I. why was the mosque built? read on ... basically it was built to appease Allah because of a few embarrassing defeats. the blue mosque (which officially is known as sultan ahmed mosque) was the first imperial mosque in over 40 years. because ahmed was a sultan-loser (i.e., he hadn't won any notable victories), he had to use money from the treasury to build it and thus provoked the anger of the ulema.

the mosque was built on the site of the palace of the byzantine emperors (take that!), facing the hagia sophia (pronounced hi-ya sophia) and the hippodrome, a site of great significance apparently (and also a place i walked past without realizing it about 14 times.) like any contractor, the sultan had to buy and then have torn down a bunch of other palaces that were already on the site. this would be one of the first usages of the eminent domain doctrine.

in a move that would be emulated by many important public figures throughout time, the sultan came down to the site to break the first sod in august 1609. he intended for the blue mosque to be the first mosque of his empire. the organization of the mosque was immaculately detailed, with many to-do lists. the opening ceremony was held in 1617, although the building wasn't finished (because contractors were just as unpredictable and unreliable even back then) and the accounts were signed by his successor mustafa I (who must also have inherited a huge deficit).

so there you have it.

S and i met at this historic place and trod the soil that the great man himself walked on. we took the tram to the bottom of the hill leading up to the galata tower.

HISTORY LESSON NO. 2

the galata tower is located north of the golden horn (you have to look that one up yourselves). it's huge, cone-capped, cylindrical and dominates the skyline on the galata side of the golden horn (have you looked it up yet?), which isn't saying much because, well, the area isn't known for its skyscrapers. so get this. the tower was built in 1348 (making the blue mosque modern architecture) as a fortification during an expansion of the genoese colony in constantinople (this is obvs ripped off of wikipedia). there was also an old tower of galata, but that tower was destroyed during the fourth crusade in 1204. during the ottoman period, the tower was used as an observation tower for spotting fires.

in 1638, turkish dare-devil, hezarfen ahmet celebi, used artificial wings (made of gossamer, one wonders?) and flew from this tower over the bhosphorus to the slopes of a mountain over on the anatolian side. for his feat, he was awarded 5 goats and a hudson bay company blanket.

as of 1960, the tower has been open to the touring hordes. there's a restaurant and cafe on the upper floors and there is also a nightclub up there!

okay, back to our riveting tale. we got off the tram and began our steep ascent to the galata tower, where we were meeting up with G. we then meandered our way through a series of musical instrument shops and a few cute-looking cafes (geared toward the tourists going to the tower). we then came to a huge promenade, which is the main strip of beyoglu. i wish i could remember the name of the street and i'm too lazy to look it up. it's the happening area. no matter what time of day you go there, there are tonnes of people milling about. to give you a sense of the area, here's a description.

imagine a large promenade like the champs elysee, but imagine breaking off from it numerous streets and alleys, who then intersect with one another using small streets and alleys. so you have a main artery down the center and then on both sides of it, you have smaller veins running into one another. i think viewing it from above (next time, hot air balloon ride) would be really neat. the main street has mostly shops and restaurants like mcdonald's, starbucks, turkish eateries, some turkish chain cafes, topshop, benetton, etc. G's hotel is just off of the main drag. many of the smaller intersecting streets seem to be themed, like cheap beer alley, tavla-cafe alley, restaurant row, music venue street, etc.

we wound our way down to the modern. the istanbul modern is istanbul's new contemporary art museum - inaugurated in 2004. it's located inside a converted warehouse in the tophane district on the bosphorus. it's the first contemporary art museum in turkey. the location has it's pros and one HUGE con. the pros are the funky industrial/warehouse area is a great venue for a modern art museum and the space is really well used, i thought. the big CON is that giant cruise ships dock basically right beside it. so the awesome view of the bosphorus that you would have is marred by a princess cruise lines floating hotel. ick. lucky for us, the entire ship didn't disembark and come to the museum.

to get to the museum, we walked along a pathway through a bunch of turkish cafes & places with narghile (or shisha or waterpipe or whatever), which was vastly overpriced due to the proximity to the museum i guess. the museum was great. it features a permanent collection on the top floor of turkish artists. with visiting exhibitions downstairs. on thursday, the admission was free. but i would have paid to go in. that's saying a lot.

some of the pieces i really enjoyed are listed here, so you can look them up if you want. or not. or if you are thinking of something awesome to buy me for my birthday. i listed the names of the pieces where i know them. for those of you working the law firm cocktail party circuit, these are sophisticated names to drop the next time pretentious partner X stops by the circle of great conversation you were just having which abruptly halted into awkward silence. it sure beats listening to someone talk about the last time they went fox hunting.

* turan erol (ararat mountain, 2002)
* balkan naci islimyeli (straitjacket, air-water-earth-fire-ash I, woman in black)
* bedn rahmi eyuboglu (self-portrait, 1964)
* ergin inan (self-portrait, 1996)
* burhan uygur (kapi, 1987-89)
* cihat burak (the death of the poet)
* fahre inissa zeid (my hell, 1951)
* monica bonvicini
* bakim noktasi (pitstop I, II and III, 2007)

the big visiting exhibit was andreas gursky photographs (hong kong shanghai bank, 1994, montparnasse, 1993, pcfi paris, 2003, kuwait stock exchange, 2007, times square, ny, 1997, madonna I, 2001, may day V, 2006, chicago board of trade II, 1999 - these a few that i noted.) gurksy hangs at the MoMa too, so some of the pieces were familiar.

there was a super cool photography exhibit - a young turkish photographer named ahmet polat. the exhibit is called kim sin set? which means who are you? polat is the first turkish photographer to have won the "Best Young Artist" award from international center of photography (the place i took my digital photography workshop, not that i'm winning any awards for my stuff). anyway, the istanbul modern's website is a little too flashy for lo-fi me, so i am giving up on mining it for more information about polat. the exhibition consists of 82 photographs on various issues, immigrants in transvaal, homeless in tilburg, the 1999 marmara earthquake, turkish ghettos in the hague, etc.

the other really neat thing (that i would like to do in my home if i someday own one) was this cool faux ceiling of hanging books that the museum had in its education wing. super cool. the installation was created by richard wentworth.

so after our fill of amazing art and i of the gift shop, we stopped off for tea/drinks at one of the cafes we had to wind our way through to get to the museum. there were some other foreigners sitting near us. one of them, a blond woman G said was british, was like a melting together of posh spice & britney spears. in the worst possible way. they were icky. anyway, the place we stopped for tea had these awesome barbapapa looking beanbag chairs. the chairs actually resembled the blobby shape of the barbapapas!

after tea, we took the funicular up the hill (the funicular is really clean & really air conditioned & thus really super-fantastic) to grab some lunch. S was leaving istanbul to go meet up with some friends from school whose parents lived somewhere outside of istanbul. sad. i really like hanging out with her. hopefully, we'll see one another again, either in ny or in korea. we found a great place for lunch and i had an awesome shish tavuk in a pita. we then dropped S off at the bottom of galata hill. G and i walked back up, again winding our way up to the main street in beyoglu. we stopped by G's hostel to do our business (not dirty business; just WC business, but apparently the front desk guy thought that G had once brought S back to his room for some sexin' because he said that they could only stay in G's room for 5 minutes. anyway, there are a lot of things to say about that 5 minute comment but i will refrain because this is a PG-13 blog.)

we wandered off in search of internet. found it. and then came the best part of our trip. we found an awesome place to get tea, smoke narghile & play tavla. it turns out that on our first time there, we were at one of the cafes and then subsequently we were at a neighbouring cafe called viva cafe. we only realized this on my last day in town, when the guy we thought of as "our guy" told us that he actually worked at a different cafe. so this was the second time i played tavla. at first, i was on a total winning streak. major beginner's luck. people at other tables were amazed by my prowess, but then the inevitable happened. as quick as was my meteoric rise was my tumultuous fall to the abyss of tavla. G is a super teacher though. i feel like i am armed with some good moves and that i have a great foundation for occasionally winning. never again did i reach the amazing summit of such victory. but something to work toward.

we set off post-tavla to search for a place called peyote that i read about in my guidebook. it's supposed to be a cool place to hear indie music. we walked around and around and around the intersecting veins of beyoglu. we were on a mission. even the 7500 restauranteurs trying to woo us with their yummy smelling foods were not enough to tempt us to abort the mission. we did finally find it. but what an anti-climax. we don't really know how the place is since we walked up the stairs only to be told that they were full. but on a positive note, G did get a WC break out of it. so all was not lost.

we then went and grabbed some dinner. i had turkish pizza. it was delicious. post-pizza, i head home on the funicular and then the tram. ah sweet home.

i got huge blisters on my feet. blisters like winnipeg mosquito bites. blisters like blood suckers. blisters like covering the entire ball of my foot. ouch.