Epilogue

For three days now, people have been asking me: "How was Turkey?" I can only give a lame answer like "it was awesome" or "unbelievable". I am ashamed that, as a lawyer, words fail me in properly conveying the experience of visiting that place and living amongst its people. However, I am in good company. When he returned from his travels, Marco Polo told a visitor that he had not written about half of what he had seen. I feel that way as well.

To be embedded as I was, in a new (to me) culture, the discoveries were literally everywhere I looked. It was intoxicating. Addicting. Returning home has put me into some sort of travel rehab, and now I toil to produce enough time and money to go somewhere else. After all, where else am I to gain knowledge and understanding of the world and have a hell of good time doing it?

In the end, the answer is to travel. One of my favorite authors and TV personalities, Anthony Bourdain, once said that “If I'm an advocate for anything, it's to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else's shoes or at least eat their food, it's a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.” Tony is right. You will find out what is different about your respective cultures, but you also find out what is the same. Ultimately, this will lead to a better understanding of the world, and then finally, of yourself.  Since the trip ended, I feel like my blood runs a little differently. I realized just how young the United States and its culture is. I knew this from books before, but to see it is a different matter entirely. I look at how I eat differently. I see how much the US media bombards us with mostly useless drivel. There's so much more, and I am still discovering them as I get back into my real life.

Travel will affect and change you, and for the better. So, dear reader, I can only echo Anthony Bourdain's advice. Go somewhere, see things. Expand your mind and perspective by seeing how other people live their lives. Drive through their country. Eat their food. Even, if you must, do it on a cruise. Just make sure you bypass the made for tourist crap and go where the locals go. In the end, it will make you a better person.










Thank you for reading this blog. I also want to thank my longtime friends, the Adman family (Hasan Adman, Semra Adman, Tanya Adman Akay, Gungor Akay, Sevda Adman, andTamer A. Adman ) for all of their graciousness and generosity in hosting me and showing me their beautiful country and beautiful people. I am truly thankful that I have had friends like you in my life for the last 20+ years. It was the trip of a lifetime, and I will, one day, return to that wondrous place. I am already missing kebab.

Istanbul

To blog about a couple of days in Istanbul is difficult. It's sorta cliche to say that it is in an exotic city, but most cliche's come into their use honestly, and such is the case here. Greater in numbers than New York City but with a geography more like a much sprawled out Seattle, Istanbul is a city on two continents with a population as diverse as such geography could demand. There are spice markets, mosques, high end retail and street vendors selling everything. Everything is here. All nationalities are here, and East meets West. Want a Ferrari? Over here. Want a refrigerator magnet depicting the famed Blue Mosque? Right here. Trinkets? Armani? Yes. Prices are negotiable, for the trinkets and magnet anyway.

There are smells of the big city. Sewers and car exhaust for sure. In close, some, it is apparent, do not share in my ideas of what personal hygiene should be. But there are others that outnumber the bad: Of food carts selling grilled corn on the cob and roasted chestnuts. Of spices (saffron in particular) in the market. Fish, always fish. If there was a candle of that scent, I would be bringing that home along with the olive oil and raki. There are carts selling simits, a sesame seed encrusted bagel type thing. Food, good food, is everywhere. Cafes are around every corner and the Turks, being who they are, are drinking tea in them. Never really having drank tea before, after this trip I find that I like mine with about a teaspoon of sugar, mildly warm, not hot.

Sounds of the city: Car horns, of loud people talking in Turkish, hawking items. Others are speaking english, some german. They are all here. Then, five times per day, a wailing singing call for muslims to pray at the mosque. The designs of the mosques are partly based upon this call, as there is at least one, often more, magnificent minaret for a caller to climb up and make this call. These days, loudspeakers do this job, and with great effectiveness. The numerous woman walking around in full black burqas are reminders that not all the world wants to live like we do. Indeed, for westerners and Americans alike, Istanbul will challenge us to think about ourselves and others.

There is so much history here. The Ottoman Empire. Of Byzantine emperors and sultans. They ruled over millions in ancient times, and their palaces are still here. The Romans had their way here too, and the magnificent columns they left are still here, some erected a thousand years before Columbus sailed for the New World. They were here then, now and they will likely be here long after you and I are gone from this earth. The Hagia Sophia, the massive domed structure and masterpiece of Byzantine architecture, the seat of power for emperors and pulpits for Christians and Muslims alike, is here, and tourists marvel at the stupendous dome and ponder. The thresholds into these buildings are worn smooth from centuries of thousands walking over them. Indeed, I almost slipped on one. These men were the masters of the universes of their time and now, in the finest tradition of Ozymandius,  the public stalks their palaces as tourists. The underground cistern, once a source for fresh water for the city, is still there, with it's columns holding up a layer of the city. Fish swim above the stone floor, a visual dichotomy that is here for any person to see and believe.

There is history, but there is also the present. Shopping the malls as architecturally modern as any in the world filled with merchandise to please any shopper. The subway, with it's clean, sleek trains and spotless stations would be the envy of New York City or anywhere else where mass public transportation is a necessity. The streets vary from narrow and winding to four laned highways, all paved with stone in the city, asphalt or concrete outside of them. Hilly streets. Street closed off to traffic. Taxis everywhere. A boat tour of the beautiful Bosphorus strait, one of the busiest waterways in the world, shows multi, multi million dollar homes on coastlines and the hills circling them. Write an owner of one of these houses a check for about $15 million and you can have one too.

Until then, I shall admire them from afar, but I will try to admire them in person as often as I can. Istanbul is pretty far off the radar from my home in the midwestern United States, but I will, as health and fortune allow, return here again.

I urge you to do the same.

Real Travel v. Pseudo Traveling

I have been in Turkey for over two weeks now, longer than anywhere I’ve ever spent in one place on one trip (and still 2 days to go). Because of that, and because I’ve been staying with a friend and living local, it’s an entirely different perspective than if you do it with a tour group or other something like it. This way, the local way, is a real treat in travel. Here, for me, there have been no tour groups, no freeze dried spiel on the sites. I visited here the real way and did what the real people here do.

This is the best way to travel. I’ve often told the story of when people tell me how much they loved Alaska. Inevitably, after saying how much the beauty and people of the majestic 49th state wowed them, I then ask them:  Did you go on a cruise? After inevitably saying yes, I tell them how Alaska really is. As someone who motorcycled rather extensively through it, the real part of Alaska, not nicely-wrapped-up-for-the-pseudo-traveller-cruiser Alaska, I can tell you it’s nothing more than a big cedar swamp with the occasional snowy vista. It’s a backwater filled with missionaries, pipelines and people who are, shall we say, a bit different? While I may have enjoyed myself a bit more in a town that catered to the day tripping cruisers, I know what it’s really like there. It ultimately leads to a better understanding of the place you are visiting. In the end, isn’t that why we travel?